Friday, December 31, 2010

Susan Bright


June 10,1945-December 29,2010

W
hen I went by the Armadillo a couple of days before Christmas, JC told me that Susan was at home sick. We had hugged on the opening day, but I had missed her during the week. Jay told me she was thinking of going to the Hospital. Since my partner is a physician, I gave him her cell phone number.

By Christmas Day, we learned that Susan was in St Davids.

"What's happening?" I asked Jay.

On Sunday, Susan was still talking about her condition, but under pretty heavy sedation. She told Jay that she felt like aliens had invaded her body. And indeed they had. Monday, the doctors put some stents in her kidneys hoping to reawaken them. By now she was becoming delirious. On Tuesday, her strong will and human force asserted itself. That evening, she was moved from IMC to a larger room on the fourth floor.

We brought in a small radio and we put in on KUT. Bill Bunch came by and he told her that he was missing her at the Springs. By Wednesday morning, Susan's walk on this earth was complete.

The daughter of William Bright, an oil executive, and Ann Safford, Susan Safford Bright was born in Pennsylvania on June 10th, 1945, just a few weeks after the fall of Nazi Germany, and two months before Hiroshima. She was raised on the left coast though. She was educated better than most of us, going both to Yale and to Stanford.

The first time I saw her was not in person but on video. Her husband to be, John Andrews (JC, Jay) was working on a video documentary of Austin Poets with Jim Norman, and they had come out to Space City Video to edit the tape.

I watched JC as he edited Susan's strong delivery. She was clearly a bird of a different feather. (She would hate me for saying that)

For the next 35 years, we raised our children , talked politics, and published together. Her publishing house, Plainview Press, published three of my books and more than 350 other works. Together, Susan and I managed to make Earthfamilyalpha the huge wealth of opinion, philosophy, poetry, and art that it is ... Over 1300 posts in four and a half years.

We would love to get a link from Truth Out or Crooks and Liars and watch the hits come in. We marveled how we could post something and then see readers from the other side of the globe reading our words an hour later. In the perfection of things, the Play in the Light post that I posted with word of her grave condition was picked up by Finn at Crooks and Liars. Her grave condition soon became national.

To say that Susan was a force would be a dent in her poetic nature....she was force.

Yet this piece from KXAN, like all the rest of us, can't resist saying it:

"Bright was a poet, publisher, activist, educator, mother, grandmother, friend and feminist. Since the 1970s, Bright was a "force of nature" among Austin's writers and activists. She authored 17 books of poetry; three won Austin Book Awards. Tirades and Evidence of Grace won the Violet Crown Award.

In 1990, Bright was selected as Woman of the Year by the Austin Women's Political caucus. For more than 30 years she was the editor and driving force behind the small, fiercely independent Plain View Press.

In her book Breathing Under Water and in many other works, Bright revealed herself to be the oracle of Barton Springs. At critical turning points in the struggle to save Barton Springs, Bright recited her work as testimony at public hearings before the Austin City Council.

In 2009 she recruited children and families to spring to the defense of Barton Springs' heritage trees. Her poem from that time, "Legend," concludes:

It is said the thirst of Earth’s
great trees calls water
from depths which are invisible
causing springs to flow.

Bright named one of the trees marked for removal, the one closest to the Philosopher's Rock statue at the front gate, the "Poet's Tree."

Michael Barnes writes in the Statesman:

"A good deal of her energy was devoted to the battle to protect Barton Springs, where she swam.

"Susan was the oracle of Barton Springs," said environmental activist Bill Bunch, executive director of the Save Our Springs Alliance. "She knew the springs like no one else. Her poetry will guide community efforts to save the springs for decades to come."

Since the 1970s, Bright participated in activist causes for women, peace and the environment. She helped organize festivals, workshops and conferences, including the Women's Way Festival.

She was a member of the Women in Black movement, a group that gathered weekly at the south gate of the state Capitol after 9/11 to call for peace.

"Ours is not an organization," Bright said at the time. "It does not have a doctrine. Women in Black is merely an idea. We just want wars to stop.

She later helped the Coalition for Visible Ballots and the National Ballot Integrity Project, groups that advocated honest voting and discouraged electronic voting."

Susan Bright was a poet. A real poet. Once she told me that she tried and often did write a poem every day. She thought poetically. She saw the world as a poet. And she saw humankind's struggle with war and injustice as a great tragedy and loss of potential as only a poet sensibility can feel and see. I often introduced her as the real poet laureate of Texas... certainly of Austin.

When I first met Susan, she was pretty scary. She was a strong defender of women's rights and a stellar advocate for them. She was as serious an activist as I had known.

But as the years rolled by and we shared the lives of our children, and our similar views of the world and of the political universe, her softer, loving side revealed itself sometimes perhaps to a fault I would think. Over and over, her love for her son trumped her bright mind.

She loved her family deeply, and she loved Barton Springs.

The Polar Bears will honor her tomorrow.

As should we all.

SB was not just bright,

she was brilliant.

And in the best spirit of our human potential,

Her gifts have left earth

a smarter, more compassionate place,

And I,

like so many many others,

Will mourn her.


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You can make your comments here or go to her site at Caringbridge.

NOTICE:

The Susan Bright Memorial and Swim will be Sunday Jan. 16th at 11 AM at (and in) Barton Springs Pool in Austin Texas. It will be an open service. Afterwards, there will be a pot luck gathering in the Tree Court. Please bring your food and drinks and swimming wear (if you choose) and join us as we honor and remember Susan and the gifts of words she left for us.


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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Susan Bright Work


There is a lot of interest in Susan's Bright's work since her morning passing yesterday.

In the last six years, she made substantial contributions to Earthfamilyalpha.

Here are the works that can be found in the poetry subsections of each year and her most recent work. You can also click on the poetry tag.

YEAR ONE AND TWO

Eulogy /Sweet Bird of the Revolution/ Scary Food

Of a Feather / A Hotter Hole /Slaughter Suits / Pander Blab / Whose Death Squads? / Un-Gerrymandered / Dancing in the Street / Who Benefits? / Into the Deep /Body Snatchers /Tar Sands / El Diablo / Gimmie More Torture! / Wise Use / Satyagraha (Truth Force) / Inside the Train / Uganda / Momentum / Forever August / Arresting Karl Rove / Blogging With the Prez / The Third Brother / Stories We Live By / Sweep Dreams / Don't Buy It / Earth Council / Modern War Speak / Tell Halaf Mother Goddess / Women in Black / Surrounded / Reparations / Middle East School / Everyone's Child / Sleep Baby Sleep / Children of Earth / Weep, and then act / The End of History / Winning / Can We Change? / The Melt Up / Multinational Gunk / Is it Thursday Yet? / Bad Water /Slave Ship / On the Wing / Once in a Blue Moon / Planetary Essences / Bring Our Soldiers Home / Sweet Music / Home Spun / Go There / Scare Mask / Seed Storm / Something there is / Moving / Gifts of our Time / The Day and the Dark / Pie / X / Door Number Two / Origami / Communication / Deconstruction / Have a Cookie

YEAR THREE

Bridges of Words / Global Is Local / Soheil Najm: Iraqi Poet / Giant in the Hood / Ali Bilir: Turkish Poet / For my Palestinian sisters / Lost Under Church / Naming the Glee / Is this Love / Ghettoetry / Crazy Listening / Sohrab Sepehri, poetry and art / Women For A Better World / Being A Nut / Big Circle / The Universe is Hear to Now Us / Labor Day Parable / Luke / Asra’a / Flying Pools / Swimming in Baghdad / The Thirst of Water / Lady Bird / Herding Cats / River Friend / Oh By The Way / Graveyard Universe / What Profit / Moment finds Place / Wandering Stranger / Unbomb Iraq / Earth Day Possibilities / Respite / Wars Are Not Solutions / Light and Worship and Us / Flight Of the Bumblebee / Lecto divina / Line in Water / Endebbe Road, cont. / Phoenix On Our Street / White Crosses / Three Iranian Women Poets / Screaming at the Robot / Mosul / What We Honor / Prayer for the Abuser / Or Not /Peace Train / Last Act / Peace Surge / The Age of Quan Yin / Send the Bush Twins / Diving into the Future / Blind Executioner / New Strategy / Apology / Unbomb Iraq / International - Law? / Family /Pie

YEAR FOUR

The America We Want To Be / Joe Blow / GOP and Women / Coloring / Bang Bang Bang / Baghdad Poet: Soheil Najm / Noise / Day in the Life of a Poet: Baghdad / Tangled up in Blue / New Wings / Eulogy for 4000 Neighborhood Kids / Put A Little Love In Your Heart / Thanal Online: C. P. Aboobacker / Ali Bilir: from Migration Ballads / International Women's Day 08 / Another World Is Possible / Tearful Awakening / Rise Up / Iraqi Poet: Siham Jabbar / Sadiq Assaieg: This is Baghdad / Zebra: Close Up and Vast / Iraqi Poet: Mohammed al-Nassar / Love In a World At War / New Year's Day, 08 / Oh / Iraqi Poet: Mohammed Mazloom / Iraqi poet: Faliha Hassan / Poems from Iraq / Pie / Giant At the End

Susan's work is not just bright...

It is most definitely brilliant.

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Play in the Light



It's been more than six years since the beginning of Earthfamilyalpha.

And for much of the last year and a half, earthfamilyalpha has been little more than a personal blog with the occassional travel video to Buenos Aires, to the profound ground zero of NYC, the great sink hole in Real de Catorce, the magic desert of Wirikuta, and the majestic red rocks and petroglyphs of Sedona.

During this year, so much has happened on so many levels, it is a bit difficult to get your hands around it.

On the personal side, my mom and her younger brother passed on within 3 weeks of each other just last month. My partner's Mom lost 2 sisters within months. A 61 year old Uncle passed while driving down the interstate making a great circle in a northwestern meadow before coming to a tragic yet nonviolent rest.

In the Community, we passed an ambitious energy plan for renewable energy on Earth Day only to have it linked to the issue of affordability and placed in policy purgatory as the economic forces of bottom lines artfully changed the framing to their home court. Soon, it would morph even further into the issue of transparency. Almost a year after its presentation, the Earth Day generation plan is still in chains. We seem to have forgotten that affordability and transparency aren't such big deals...if you are dead.

Yet, from a larger perspective, the work that we did creating the Plug In Partners campaign, a campaign that was pioneered in our community, came to a full fruition. Last week, I rode and drove what would become the new Volt for a good friend and environmental activist. It was sporty and truly deserving of the accolades it has received. This series plug in hybrid, extended range electric car is precisely what we invisioned four years ago when we began our National Campaign.

It, and its technological cousins will change the energy world in a profound way. These electric transportation appliances will allow our entire energy system to be unified in ways that will ultimately make a significant change in all things energy. The former manager of the Utility will pick his Volt up after the New Year.

On the National political scene, we watched as the spark of power ignited the smoldering fire of racism and the electorate voted in a party that has the approval rating of baked liver balls. And then we watched as both parties spent a trillion dollars to show us how bipartisanship can work, giving much of it to the rich, while taking just as much of it out of social security.

In this year, the beginning of true health care was created, despite the greatest lie of the year award going to those who characterized the former Republican health plan of the 90s as a Government takeover.

Meanwhile on the Global Scene, the Mexican climate change conference managed to convince itself that it came out of their own venue with a draw, despite the scientific concensus that 2010 will probably be the hottest year on record, eclipsing 2005 and 1998.

Few seem to know or care that the same Public Relations firms who postponed the truth about the health affects of personal smoking have now created doubt in climate change and the science behind it. They have made true inroads into the public consciousness regarding the imminent danger of our global fires and they have a network and a political party to spread that doubt.

From a technological perspective, the smart phones have arrived. Texting is beginning to replace e mail. And the tablet, and its ramifications is right behind. My partner rarely, if ever uses her home computer, now that she has her Ipad. And with her I phone, no dinner conversation is ever left with a dangling fact. No longer can you just say something at work or at dinner. Is the murder rate in Houston worse than in Mexico? Look it up.

As the year ends, we find ourselves not in central Mexico in the mountains, but more likely on the Texas coast, perhaps for more reasons than I might know.

Life is such a great play of potential and wonder for each of us.

To judge one year, one week, one moment,

Is like measuring a wave,

or finding fault with a cloud.

For as we work in the world,

We must also play in the light.


Important Notice: Susan Bright, the poet, publisher, and contributor to Earthfamilyalpha is gravely ill. She is in St Davids Hospital. More later.

Susan passed into the light at 8:15 Wed morning December 29th, 2010.

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