Mom was visiting Haalie and me at the Miccosukee Embassy yesterday where I have been doing Sanctuary. Before she divorced my dad we use to live in Miami Shores, Florida on NE 13th Ave and 99th Street when he just took on the job as the Chief Ranger for Everglades National Park.  Perhaps it was the stress of driving each day back and forth into the boondocks with dad leaving before sunrise and returning long after sunset, but within a year of moving here, mom had had enough of raising me "alone" (her word) in the "heat and humidity" (she hated living here) and divorced the guy, taking me back with a yanking hand (as I remember it) to New Jersey (read my books). 

Anyway, she brought an old picture of me hoisting up a book into the banyan tree on the side of our house. You can see my dad's old boat in the background. And blue tarps on the roof of the house, his solution to a leaky roof.

Seeing that old photo brought back some fond and not so fond memories. I truly loved that tree and would spend hours on end up in its branches to read and to get away from the shouting and cursing of my parents down below. I distinctly remember the day it was taken. It was early in the morning, the sun was just rising and because my father took the picture, it was on a Saturday or Sunday when he was home. He encouraged me to climb trees and again, if you read my books, got me into karate by the time I was twelve because, by God, he may not have a son but that doesn't mean he can't make me the son he never had! 

He was laughing when he saw me up there and snapped the picture. Mom, on the other hand, was screaming her head off while simultaneously scolding dad for cheering me on and yelling up at me to "get down from there this minute before you break your neck!" 

New Seminole Osceola Beer has an ABV of 28% and is proudly illegal in 15 states. Based on the ancient and legendary ritual "Black Drink" brewed by many Southeastern U.S. tribes, we choose to brand it with the English corruption of its Seminole name:  Osceola!

The Muscogee peoples call the black drink ássi. In ceremonies, the drink is passed around with each participant using the opportunity to sing (yahola).  The ritual name for such a person is Asi Yahola (Black Drink Singer) and if said real fast (or slurred from too much brewski) sounds like... Osceola. 

Right now the only place you can get it is deep in the Everglades on a camo covered hammock where Nokosee is setting up a craft brewery. All proceeds are going to "the Cause." If you read my books, you'll know that someday soon you'll be able to pick up a six-pack "at the third alligator on the right."

When Nokosee first introduced me to this... thing, I nearly jumped out of my... Wait, I wasn't wearing anything when he reached into the water, whipped it out and dangled it-- and I'm talking about the... thing, not that other "thing"-- in my face.  We were swimming and making love in the water surrounding a lonely hammock deep in the Everglades. Just him, me and the... thing.  Anyway, I couldn't get out of the water fast enough and yelled at him to stop, and to keep that squirming... thing away from me! He told me this is what happens when toxic chemicals are introduced into the Everglades.

At the time, I had just ran away from my home in New Jersey on my 18th birthday present, a classic Indian motorcycle with fringe saddlebag-- yes, I was spoiled but the bike was a bribe to keep me home, to go to college, and to fargedabou my loincloth clad, warpaint wearing psycho hunk down in the Everglades. Of course, if you read my books, you know it didn't work. And you'd know too that in the beginning I believed everything he said. Why? Because he was the "expert" about all things Everglades and just about everything I knew was sold at Hot Topic where I worked the cash register and sold shit to kids like me. But this... thing to me was something the Toxic Avenger would have as a pet and I believed the poor... thing had a muy bad encounter with some kind of toxic chemical that had floated out of the sugar cane fields up near Lake Okeechobee all the way down here. I didn't learn until yesterday that toxic chemicals have nothing to do with its looks. 

It's the rare (about 50-years since it was last seen and studied) and legendary Florida Leopard Eel, a giant salamander with leopard spots and only a face its mother could love. Its called Siren reticulata (reticulated siren), and it belongs to a rare genus of giant salamanders called Sirenidae.  It's two-feet of long and sinuous slime with only a pair of front legs. That stuff you see around its head, those are its gills. 

Looking back, Nokosee probably was just trying to convince me to join up with the New Seminole to fight the Man and to save Gaia and, yeah, it worked because, who wouldn't want to save creatures from looking like Frankenstein monsters? I'll have to ask him if that's what he had in mind next time he visits the Miccosukee Embassy where I'm doing Sanctuary. 

You can learn more about the... thing and the scientists who captured it here.

According to a recent Harper's Bazaar magazine article, "Sixty-four anti-protest bills have been introduced by the state legislators since November 8, 2016—an unprecedented level of hostility towards protesters in the 21st century, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). North Dakota legislators narrowly defeated a bill that would have allowed drivers to run over and kill protesters without being jailed; meanwhile an increasing number of states want to make it a crime to plan a pipeline protest."

This is just one example of Trump's rule when it comes to the environment. Big Oil and Big Business want to stifle protest against these kind of projects. When that doesn't work, violence is their go-to action through actors who Big will disavow but who were incentivised to "act out" by Big and Republican propaganda. 

The article goes on to mention hundreds  of women who were physically attacked and murdered across Gaia because they had the courage to stand up to Big. 

In the U.S., Indigenous attorney and activist Tara Houska  was "zip-tied and locked in a dog kennel when she was arrested, and strip-searched."

LeeAnne Walters has had her house broken into, her tires slashed, and the lug nuts loosened on her vehicle.

Cherri Foytlin, an indigenous woman of Diné and Cherokee descent, had her cat poisoned to death and bricks thrown through her car windows.

And because you're a woman, the Gaia haters will label you a "bad mother," perhaps the worst invective they can throw at a woman activist feeling guilty about the time she is not with her children while defending the environment. 

Elizabeth Yeampierre, a New York attorney and climate justice leader, believes women tend to lead the fight to save Gaia "because of their life-giving connection to their children and the earth, and their frustration with gender inequity."

If you read my books, you know I and the New Seminole took a more "proactive" approach to saving Gaia.  We failed mightily. That's why I'm doing Sanctuary at the Miccosukee Embassy in Miami and my love Nokosee is on the run. At first I resisted Micco Busimanolotome Osceola's vision of the New Seminole which he founded. It required we go guerrilla on the "Outside," his word for the "civilized world" on both sides of the Everglades. But over time I came to see the world the way he did, one ran by a cancerous corporate greed sanctioned by governments which will stop at nothing to ensure its profitability. It is the mission of the New Seminole to carry on and I applaud all women who are willing to put themselves and the lives of their families at risk in order to save the world.