MUFFIN MOUNTAIN

I discovered a new take on This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie. Last week I was speaking about how I wrote my novel Falling Through the Cracks at the Sonoita, Arizona Rotary Club. They begin their meeting with a pledge to the flag and then they sing a song. Pastor Chuck Carlson had adapted the rousing folksong to our land, the Patagonia-Sonoita-Elgin area. So we sang:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From Patagonia, to the Biscuit Mountain,
From Parker Canyon to the Empiritas,
This land is made for you and me.

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me a mountain skyline
I saw below me a golden valley.
This land was made for you and me.
[Chorus]

I’ve roamed and rambled, I’ve followed my footsteps
To the awesome vastness of our diamond grasslands
And all around me the wind keeps saying
This land was made for you and me.
[Chorus]

What fun! You could write an adaptation for the region where you live, too. That’s the essence of folk music.

And the Biscuit Mountain is a favorite landmark of mine, so I was glad others feel the same. Only I persist in calling it the “Muffin Mountain.” When artist Laura Bock, daughter of my friends Jane and Carl Bock, was a little girl, she called it the Muffin Mountain. It looks way more like a muffin than a biscuit (note the well-rounded top). Her father told her it was called Biscuit Mountain because cowboys were more likely to eat a biscuit than a muffin. That’s true, but I stand loyal to the truth of Laura, who is now a woman with children of her own. I wonder what she remembers of the Muffin Mountain.

This land is our land. We get to call it what we like and sing about it.

Troy Davis

I wrote my letter to the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles today, asking them to grant clemency and commute the death sentence of Troy Davis. Have you read about him? Massive protests [people wearing "I Am Troy Davis" t-shirts] in Georgia and support from Amnesty and NAACP and Desmund Tutu have been to no avail. His third and last date of execution has been set for 7 pm this September 21, ironically also the International Day of Peace. There are so many serious doubts about the eyewitness testimonies used to convict him of the murder of police Officer MacPhail in Savannah, GA. There was no evidence linking Troy Davis to the crime and the murder weapon was never found. One of the chief witnesses against him was one of the other suspects in the case. Since his original trial, eye witness testimony has been shown to be very unreliable, especially in contrast to DNA evidence of which there was none for this crime. On top of that most of the witnesses have retracted their testimony. One juror was viewed on CNN, saying “If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not be on death row.” One witness was a woman in a 2nd floor balcony across the street from the shooting that took place in a dark parking lot. She could not have recognized or identified Troy Davis or anyone as the perpetrator, yet she was a court witness and helped convict Troy Davis.

You can read all about it at www.amnestyusa.org if you wish. The only thing that can stop the execution of Troy Davis, since all appeals have been exhausted, is the State Board of Pardons and Paroles in Georgia. I hope you’ll take some time to read about Troy Davis. I hope you’ll write a letter to the parole board in his support. He does not deserve to die. I hope Georgia will not kill him. If it could happen to him, it could happen to me. Or you. Here’s the letter I’m sending:

Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, SE
Suite 458, Balcony Level, East Tower
Atlanta, Georgia 30334-4909

Dear Board members,

I call upon you to grant clemency and to commute the death sentence of Troy Davis. His guilt has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, since doubts continue even after the federal evidentiary hearing in 2010. The crime of killing a policeman is huge, but executing the wrong man for the murder does not help either Officer MacPhail or his family or the justice system in Georgia.

I make my plea to you, the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which itself was established to be a failsafe against the irreversible error of executing an innocent person, and to all current members of the Board, that stated in 2007 that the Board would not allow any execution to proceed where there was any doubt about the guilt of the prisoner. Grave doubts remain today about the guilt of Troy Davis. His original conviction was based on eyewitness testimony that, since that time, has been shown to be unreliable in general and has been retracted specifically in the Troy Davis case by most of the witnesses. Since 1976 more than 130 people have been released from death row in the USA on the grounds of innocence, even though they were found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt at their original trial.

Witness Benjamin Gordon, only 16-years-old at the time of the shooting of Officer MacPhail, later said he was coerced by police into signing a statement implicating Troy Davis, and Gordon signed another statement implicating his relative in 2008. Gordon was declared “not a credible witness” by Judge Moore, and yet she upheld Davis’s conviction that was based on this unreliable witness’s testimony. Another witness “identified” Troy Davis as the shooter even though she was across the street from the shooting that took place in a dark parking lot. She could not possibly have seen well enough to recognize and identify Troy Davis from her vantage point. Yet her testimony, in a trial with minimal real evidence, was used to convict Troy Davis and sentence him to death.

This is not worthy of the American system of justice. Georgia should align with the international community by taking the position that people should only be convicted of murder when there is clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts. Certainly no one should be executed when doubts remain in their case, and there are definitely major doubts in the case of Troy Davis. Again, I call upon you to grant clemency and to commute the death sentence of Troy Davis.

Against the Rosemont Mine

Inside Tucson Business dot com is taking a poll in which people can vote yes or no on supporting the Rosemont mine and leave a comment. The Rosemont Mine is not the proposed mine in the Patagonia Mountains that I’ve written about before. Rosemont (lovely name for such an ugly thing) is one proposed by the same Canadian businesspeople for mining copper in the Santa Rita Mountains that stand majestically between Tucson and Patagonia. I, as you would guess, voted NO and wrote the following comment.

I STRONGLY OPPOSE the Rosemont mine. Some say Arizona has a “rich history” of mines. Well, the riches did not go to the workers, that’s for sure. They historically went to the already rich owners, and in the case of Rosemont the owners are not even Americans. They will take our rich heritage and on balance contribute nothing to the city of Tucson. Look at the slag heaps to the west of I-19 if you want to see how ugly the Santa Ritas will look from Hwy 83 after the mine dumps its waste onto our public lands. Right now that is a beautiful scenic drive, but the mine will destroy that beauty. And make no mistake, beauty brings money and jobs far into our future, not just for the short period until the copper is gone. Tourism is a major contributor to the economy of southern Arizona. Tourists do not hike on slag heaps, take motorcycle trips past waste dumps, or drive along un-scenic highways menaced by huge trucks carrying toxic chemicals. Wake up Tucsonans and everyone in southern Arizona. Protect your heritage. Work against the Rosemont mine. We will have to work hard for our rights to our public lands, because the Forest Service is not doing it for us.

MINE UPDATE

People often ask me what’s happening with the mine that threatens Patagonia, and since we are at a critical first step in the National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA] process of trying to keep the mine from coming, I thought I’d write something here about it. At this point you may be able to participate only if you’re local to Patagonia, but you still may be interested in what’s going on even if you live somewhere else.

Arizona Minerals Inc. [AzMin] formerly known as Wildcat Silver finished its exploratory drilling and/or blasting on its own land. Now they have asked the US Forest Service [FS] to permit them to do exploratory drilling on FS public lands via approval of AzMin’s submitted Plan of Operations. Once they do that, NEPA allows the public to comment on this Plan of Operations—not the mine yet, just the exploratory drilling. It’s been explained to me in Patagonia Area Resource Alliance [PARA] Watchdogs meetings that at this juncture the FS is required only to read our comments, not to actually pay any attention to them in making their decision. NEPA is a transparency process only, I was told. We get to know what the FS is doing but not to influence what they are doing with our so-called public lands.

Members of the public now have until June 28 (late notice for some of you, I’m sorry) to write to the FS to tell them what we think about the impact the drilling will have on us. This was extended from June 9 because some early writers found that their emails were not reaching the FS. We need to let the FS and AzMin know that there are a lot of people opposed to what AzMin wants to do. More than 100 letters have already been sent. This is a more impressive number if you realize that each letter is equal, in terms of the portion of the local population, to 394 letters from Tucson citizens.

If you think the exploratory drilling will negatively impact you, whether due to concerns about the toxicity of the chemicals used, destruction of wildlife habitat by building roads into the FS land, noise weight & speed of trucks going through Patagonia 24/7 for 300 days, unknown impact on endangered species (stated as unknown on the AzMin application to drill), or whatever else, please write a comment letter telling the FS.

For your comments to be read, your letter or email must have or do the following:
For Emails—
You MUST include on the Subject Line: Arizona Mineral Exploration NEPA.
You should reference OMB# 0596-0022.
You should send it to these 3 email addresses:
comments-southwestern-coronado@fs.fed.us
parawatchdogs@gmail.com
rahern@fs.fed.us

For Letters—
Include the subject “Arizona Mineral Exploration NEPA” at the top.
You should reference OMB# 0596-0022.
Mail it to:
Richard Ahern, Minerals Program Director
Coronado National Forest, Supervisor’s Office
300 W. Congress Street
Tucson, AZ 85701

If you would like help or advice in writing your comments, email PARA at parawatchdogs@gmail.com.

Since no environmental impact assessment of the Plan of Operations area has been made, I suggest you ask for one. There are endangered species in Santa Cruz County, and without an assessment we can’t know whether they are in the areas to be drilled or how they will be affected.

This is only the beginning of the fight. We can only comment on the exploratory drilling now. If you don’t write a letter now, you can still participate in the process later on when we will need support from a broader and broader group of concerned Americans, including those not living here. Thank you for doing whatever you can do.

Half-Toast

You’ve heard of half-baked, right? Well, I just discovered half-toasted.

Yes, I inadvertently discovered it after forgetting a slice of bread on my kitchen counter for about 3 hours. This is summer in Arizona, you know, and due to low winter rainfall and in fact no rain at all for months, we are definitely in arid lands.

It just so happens that lately, I have been craving toast and lamenting the fact that, to limit electricity use in our solar-powered house, we don’t possess a toaster. Now I find that I don’t need one. At least not if I’m willing to settle for half-toast.

You see, I discovered that if you leave a piece of toast sitting out on your counter (or probably anywhere your dog won’t find it) for long enough—in Arizona—in the summertime—you end up with bread dried just the same as if you’d toasted it. Not butter-melting hot the same, of course, but crispy crunchy the same. If you’re willing to settle for warm rather than hot toast, and at this point I am (who wants to eat something hot in this weather anyway?), and if you’re satisfied with the dried aspect of toast only, as I apparently am, you can happily munch on half-toast in the middle of the day. What joy!

Now in case you’re doubtful of the sufficiency of half-warm toast, please note that the British intentionally cool their toast down to room temperature after heating it up in the first place. They go for crisp half-toast! In fact, they invented a device for setting your toast out to cool before you eat it. So half-toasted is desirable in England. And half-toasted, though never before spoken of, has been practiced there for years upon years.

I know what you’re thinking. People all over the world deprecate the boredom of English cooking. But I’ve always been a literary anglophile. Now it turns out that I am, at least in this one tiny aspect, a foody anglophile.

But wait. I don’t need to justify what I do in Arizona by what they do in England. Arizona can stand on its own, can stand up for itself. Who cares what anybody else does anywhere else? I, here in hot, dry Arizona, have invented half-toast, a wonderful way to save energy while enjoying one of life’s delights. Hooray for me! Next time you feel like having afternoon tea, come over to my house for half-toast. I’ll put the kettle on.

SATAN’S LIBRARY

I wrote this long ago, April 17, 2006 to be precise. I’m posting it now because I found it on a recent trip back to Georgia and a lot of my friends haven’t seen it. ~~~Janice
* * *

SATAN’S LIBRARY

I never thought that my mother-in-law might consider me weird—a poor housekeeper yes, a lax disciplinarian maybe, but not deviantly strange—until my husband asked me to remove my books from the nightstand. His mother was visiting for a few days and would sleep in our room.

I thought my reading selection showed my intellectual side, but he thought Mother would find it bizarre and worry about my state of mind. “Impossible! They’re all fine books,” I claimed. Then I examined the titles.

Blood and Guts. How was Mother to know this is a history of medicine and surgery? She’d wonder how I could enjoy such an obviously gory book.

The Bait of Satan. Not absolutely clear that this was lent to me by a Christian woman and discusses how we often let stress consume us and lead us away from the path of God. It has Bible quotes, but she’d think I worship the devil.

Reading Lolita in Tehran. So what if it’s a bestseller by a literature professor about teaching forbidden classics to women in Iran? A double whammy as far as my mother-in-law could see—a trashy sex novel paired with a Muslim city. Again, an unchristian book.

Wicked. No way to tell that this is a fairy tale, the retelling of The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch. Mother would never know that, and she’d believe I was reading a whole book about sin.

Could she find nothing about Christian virtue? Well, there was one more book on the pile.

The Dante Club. That’s a whodunit, but with the reference to Dante’s Inferno, she’d know it’s about hell—worse yet, having a membership in hell. The last straw! She’d never sleep through the night.

I hid them all in the basement. How terrible to be judged by my books’ covers.

Memorial Day, 2011

I appreciated the Memorial Day comments of my f(F)riend Ellen on FaceBook. In response:

I’ve been learning over the past years to respect soldiers for the choices they’ve made, as I hope they will/would respect mine, even though we disagree about the wisdom of those choices. Standing with Women in Black at the UGA Arch, I’ve held signs that say “Support Our Troops. Bring Them Home Now.” I have to honor someone who gives their life, or is willing to risk it, in standing up for what they believe. Still, I think many are confusing issues when they say our soldiers in Iraq fought for our Freedom. I hope their fighting brought about somebody’s freedom, at least. But even if it is something noble that they did, I’m still sad that they did it.

I think all the glory painting is a way of trying to cope with the unbearable fact of amazing people whom we love dying before their time. If you thought it was all a mess and a boondoggle and your loved one died in it, that would yank the guts right out of your stomach, bend your knees down and make you cry, or scream.

We have to keep waging peace and praying that someday peace will be the main way we humans answer our questions and deal with our needs.

Tucson Festival of Books – Come see me there!

To all my friends in Arizona,
I’ll be selling my novel “Falling Through the Cracks” at the Tucson Festival of Books on the UofA campus on Saturday, March 12 from 1:30 to 3 pm. Look for me at my table in the Authors Pavilion WEST Tent, where I would love to sign a copy for you. Hope to see you there! And tell your friends, too. It will be a wonderful opportunity to shop for books—in a gigantic outdoor bookstore.
Meanwhile, if you want to read about my book, two 5-star reviews of it from Amazon.com are included below. “Falling Through the Cracks” is a novel of love, mystery, and family – rebuilding a family after a murder – and it takes place in both Tucson, AZ and Athens, GA. It has 2 murders, 2 mysteries, a love story, and 5 recipes but is not a who-dunnit, a genre romance, or a cookbook. Like real life, it has a mixture of funny, sad, happy, and horrible.
Happy reading,
Janice

AMAZON.COM 5-STAR REVIEWS of
FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS by JLC Pulliam

A MYSTERY AND MUCH MORE February 23, 2010
by Sherry Mullens of Tubac, Arizona

Janice Pulliam has written an intriguing story of murder, friendship, unlikely romance and the power of love to break through emotional barriers. A page turner from start to finish, it shows how events from the past can affect our lives in ways we might never even imagine. Pulliam is an insightful author, one who feels that difficult life circumstances can be negotiated in a positive way. Her characters are charming and real and I would love to read a sequel to find out what life has in store for them next!

&

TEACHING AND LEARNING COME TOGETHER December 12, 2009
by Jane H. Bock of Loveland, Colorado

The mysteries in this beautifully written story are not far removed from most people’s everyday lives. In this case we learn with the characters how to break through what seem to be impossible barriers and come to human understanding. The story shows several ways that love can be expressed, including a suppressed love that is bounded by shame. And you hope while reading that the obvious secrets that are a major part of the story will somehow be revealed. The secrets are revealed slowly so that there are no secret room illogical sorts of surprises that can weaken a mystery and annoy the careful reader. An important thread in the story is the value of supportive and critical friendship among women. I recommend this book without hesitation to all those who have even a passing interest in schools and how they are administrated, to teachers, to parents whose children have ever been designated ‘different’, and especially to all those who are adopted or know the joy of adopting children.

Mountain

Every once in awhile, I write a poem. Here’s my most recent. (Unfortunately, I can’t get wordpress to indent. Even though I type it with indentations, when it appears on the blog there are none. Grrr.)

MOUNTAIN

Must be hard to be a mountain.
majestic
automatically
far-seeing and timeless
go with the territory
beautiful with snowcaps and waterfalls
goes without saying.
But you can’t budge.

minute creatures accidentally burn off your trees,
dig into your side to carve a road
or a mine.
you can’t shrug them off.

volcanic forces below can burst you open
you a mere passage for their power

water source and weathermaker
refuge of the powerless
born in upheaval
resting for eons
only faith can move you,
but someone else’s.

Must be hard to be a mountain.

written Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011

Pecan Update

I called to order pecans from North Georgia Pecan Company, but they don’t ship pecans after Christmas. So I couldn’t get any.

On this blog, I promised to try out and report on any Arizona pecan source that a reader recommended, but no one did. However, someone did recommend another source for Georgia pecans. My former classmate Denny emailed me. She said she orders from Sunnyland Farms in Albany, GA, and they never disappoint her. Turns out, I’d ordered pecans from their catalog decades ago. So, in order not to go pecanless until next November, I decided to give Sunnyland another chance, this time online. I got 5 lbs. of mammoth pecan halves and THEY ARE DELICIOUS. Good size, good color, good texture, and great taste. If you want to know what delicious Georgia pecans taste like, you should try them. Thanks, Denny!