This is Camp Okizu in 2007, our beloved cancer camp in Berry Creek, CA. We started going to camp as a family in 2004, and both Adam and Rin have attended by themselves every summer since they were eight. Adam has been a counselor for two years now, this past summer online, which was challenging but very rewarding for him. Okizu provides camp free of charge for children with cancer and their families. We love it there.
Okizu was badly burned this past week, in a massive fire that had been burning since our first terrible heatwave in August, but was fanned and spread by the high winds we had during our most recent terrible heatwave, a week ago. Berry Creek was one of the communities that was hardest hit, with a wave of fire that bore down so quickly that many people simply could not escape.
Here’s how the lodge looks now.
image credit: Sacramento Bee
We will do everything we can to help Okizu rebuild.
The smoke is still quite bad here in California, but we are hoping it will move out this week. Unfortunately we need wind to move it, and wind isn’t so great either, in terms of fire. Oregon is having a hell of a time right now, and our hearts are with everyone involved there. There are fires burning up and down the west coast and the western third of the country.
Fire has been much on our minds, but classes and work and life do continue despite it.
The day after Labor Day, a professor of mine read aloud an excellent poem, which I thought you might enjoy as much as I did. It’s called “Worker” and was written by the poet laureate of Berkeley, who also happens to be my professor’s neighbor.
“He who works with his hands is a laborer,
He who works with his hands & his head
is a craftsman, he who works with his hands
& his head and his heart is an artist,
so you said, brother Francis.
Were you then an artist, brother,
rebuilding St. Damian & the chapel
Our Lady Queen of the Angels of Porciúncula?
I do not know man or woman who works
only with the hands without the head
weighed down as it be or without heart
though it be bitter & hurting.
It is unjust circumstances that separate
the hands from the head & the heart.
Laborers, crafts-folk, artists
we are all workers —
we earn our bread & put
bread, & wine, on the tables.
If poverty there be it is no fault of ours;
the Earth is generous when it does not fall
into the hands of the greedy.
If there is baptism of water & blood
so also there is of sweat. ”
As we drove down highway 101 from San Jose to San Luis Obispo on the 4th to drop Adam off at college, we drove through the beautiful salad bowl that is that particular valley in California. But the bowl was filled with smoke, and we were in a terrible heatwave, and the migrant workers, covered head to toe in flannel to ward off the rays of the sun, and masked because of Covid, were bent over harvesting cauliflower and romaine, working for pennies. That is definitely a baptism of sweat. I hope our future world honors labor, hard labor, essential workers, more than it does now.
Finally, here are a series of videos for you, which are part of my Environmental Justice module in one of my classes. Each one is inspiring - some are easy to watch and very entertaining, and some are hard to watch and may make you feel uncomfortable. Personally I learned from each one and thought you might be interested too.
Today we realized our family has been sheltering in place for six months.
I still haven’t torn out the summer garden. I keep meaning to, but every weekend carries its own challenges; one weekend it’s 110 degrees, the next the air quality is so bad that we have to stay inside with doors and windows shut. On Labor Day, it was 111 degrees here. Two days later it was 68 because the smoke had blocked so much sun. It’s been a hell of a ride.