Reply to Lew Perin (@babelcarp)

Dear Lew,

Thanks for the email. I know this is Thanksgiving weekend, but not sure what year. The blasts from the past are blaring fast. Somehow I just remembered I have a tea blog. No joke, I been off tea for a little over a week after getting a tooth pulled, my first non-wisdom adult tooth, the kind when they pull it nothing grows back. 

"Your dental hygiene is perfect, why do you have a completely decayed tooth?" the hygienist asks. 

"Pesticides probably.." I am prepared to launch into discussing my puerh tea hobby to divert from the tubs of truth Dubble Bubble gum I ordered before Halloween. 

"It's rotted from inside out," says the dentist with the pliers.

"Yeah, it's definitely the pesticides, or the herbicides even." The dead tooth is covered with tea stains where the floss can't reach, leaving my alternate truth firmly intact. Maybe I will skip the Swiss Colony Butter Toffee this Christmas, if I live that long. 

A gaping hole in my face that won't get filled. No super hot tea for a month, dentist says. I don't like cold purrrr...

My blasts from the past are firmly in the news. Childhood memories of Lake Superior, the Ojibwe, Bayfield locals...four years of archival research, a million emails, convent visits and memories. My friend publishes her book, she pulls so many threads into a huge, soaring narrative. And she even put me in it! The book will be a classic.

Medicine River
by Mary Annette Pember

Not long before her book, there was the film. The sisters sponsored a showing, and then said they "provided" the film, alternate truth. The film will tell you about a decaying oil pipeline running through the Lake Superior wild rice beds.

Oh, all the way to the Vatican, for the general of my order got elected to the presidency of the LCWR, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). Side note: If you have an activist memory and go way back to 1979, Sister Theresa Kane was the president of the LCWR back then and famously told John Paul II to start ordaining women as priests. So, yeah that US nun group. My order got elected twice. 

Main note: When the film came out, Sister Sue resigned the presidency, after meeting with both Pope Francis, who then passed away like the next day, and then with Pope Leo too. Less than a month ago, the order decided to do a land grant to the Ojibwe. Historic level, first ever "reparations" in the Catholic Church for the boarding schools. Sort of.

Ojibwe friend phones. 

"Wut. Why are they asking for $33,000?" 

"It's what they paid for it in 1966. "

"The chief said, 'if it's a gift, why not $1?'"

"Did they say why?"

"Yeah I asked," said my friend. "They just sat there and said nothing."

"Ah, you ran up against their obedience. They can't talk about the internals. The order is divided. Half deny any child abuse, and think it was a good school, and they won't accept the word 'reparations.'" 

I saw them horrifyingly divided, on my visit. On that visit, my provincial asked me if I had taken a set of Corelware when I left. 30 years ago. A social blunder on her part, which I called out by mailing a check for $35, because I knew she would send it back, and she did. So, I get the mentality of the $33,000, nuns and thrift, the circumstances we all come from in early life play a role. Getting back the orginal investment must be the thing that passed the measure on votes, because by my view reparations allegedly didn't. 

I think it good, however, that the land parcel will not fall into a tourist trade. The sisters no longer need it. The tribe said they buried people on the island. 

A step, but I think whatever unsaid historical child abuse I was swallowing ended up rotting in my tooth. Unless the tea pesticides did it. 

Life has more jokes for me blasting from the past. 

My high school boyfriend is running for US Congress. 

Apparently, life is not fully complete for me until I see a US congressional candidate on TV, and think "yeah, I went parking with this guy." 

(I'm not linking anything, because I dunno why. Anyone can look it up. It's 7th Wisconsin District. Where all the Ojibwe tribes are, coincidentally. He's a nice guy, go vote. )

Last time I saw him, I was still in the order and he called me a religious fanatic. He just tweeted "Wow, wow" about the Ojibwe land deal, however. Are the Sisters fanatics now? Am I? You know I am. 

SO I AM JUST FINE. 

How are you?

But I cannot find my 2005 Naka tea. I'm sure I own two or three. Unless I drank them? It's a 357g-er, so it can't just go anywhere. 

Gah, they cost $620 now. 

This was supposed to be my cancer tea, Lew. And I just drank it up...I guess...did I? 

I haven't heard from you in years. Blast from the past so fast, I should probably get my affairs in order? If I drank the Naka, surely it must be time. If not, I will write you again. We had some good tea with Sebastian that day in Manhattan. 

Cwyn