Fw: [Redbadbear] Fine phone visit with Barbara Beecher

I've just finished a fine and rather long and thoroughly lively phone visit with Barbara Beecher -- now in her late '80s and still living in her home in the North Carolina mountain country.  Some health issues but she, of course, carries on very well indeed.  As most know, she is the spouse of the late activist social justice poet, John Beecher, who passed away a little more than 30 years ago in California.  Barbara herself has a well deserved reputation for her intricately done, high caliber woodblock print carvings.  I first met the Beechers in the Fall of '59. when, a grad student at Arizona State University, I and others were raising funds for the great Mine-Mill copper strike and also for the Union's labor defense. And Eldri and I were good friends of theirs all the way through and, obviously, remain so with Barbara.   http://hunterbear.org/next_great_step_of_the_way.htm

Of particular contemporary relevance is the fact that at least half of our long phone talk was devoted to the Israel/Palestinian situation and 
the endless series of tragedies in that vein -- and certainly the present one. I was not surprised to find Barbara Beecher still firmly on the side of the Palestinian people.  And John Beecher was also always on their side.

Hunter

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

Key pieces from our big Jackson Mississippi Movement 
scrapbook.  Three consecutive and full pages beginning with
this Link:  http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm
See my personal reflections on Medgar Evers:
http://hunterbear.org/medgar_w.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded, and with more photos in Fall 2012. Material on our Native
background.)  And see Personal Background Narrative: 
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm  (Updated into 2012) 

For the new (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement
of 1962-63:  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm