Good words from Stephen Harvey on Sycamore list -- and commentary by me

Thanks very much, Stephen --  truly good words (attached below) that I'm going to send around.  Good words are very welcome here in these times!  Nothing too unusual around our far-up corner these past few days.  However, when Syracuse University Press sent me, as Professor Hunter Gray, my copy of Brian Rice's book on Iroquois cosmology and related dimensions, someone "down town" had poked a hole about a dime's width right in the middle of the address side.  It penetrated all the way down through the bubble-wrap to the book's cover.  Damaged postal mail, some of it very damaged, has characterized our situation here at various points since we came in '97.  In due course, I'll post some of the considerable historical stuff.  All of these things and many more ills "go with the turf" of any effective social justice activist organizer. But the joy of worthwhile struggles always trumps the mosquitoes. With cool heads and never recklessly, we just keep on, keeping on -- full ahead and steady.

Again, thanks much for the very good words on my Jackson book.  Lots of extremely brave grassroots people in that dramatic upheaval.

All best and Solidarity Forever.

Hunter Bear

Hunter:
  I wanted to let you know that I have finally finished reading "Jackson, Mississippi."  I bought a copy a while ago but, because of my terrible habit of continually requesting books from the library, it kept being pre-empted by books which I had to finish within a certain time.
   Anyway, just wanted to say that "Jackson" was a magnificent read.  Although I am familiar with stories of personal sacrifice and struggle from the Civil Rights movement, reading your honest, eloquent and often painful account was a reminder of how much people involved in the movement really put on the line.  I read the section about Medgar Evers' murder, and the subsequent march after his funeral, with heart in my mouth.
  I was impressed, also, by your summary of what you were involved in in the years after Jackson.  My admiration for you, already considerable, was certainly increased.
  It also made me feel honoured all over again, that Joan Mulholland dropped in for a visit here several years ago when she was in the region and my kids could meet her (although I think that I unnerved her somewhat by driving her a little too fast in my old truck to get her to the ferry terminal!)
   anyway, all the best.    Stephen



HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website with much
material on grassroots organizing techniques:
www.hunterbear.org  The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
.
See the new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new substantial 
introduction by me. This book is a full, very detailed 
discussion of the rise and development of the Jackson  
Movement of 1962-63.  And this book is also an organizer's
how-to manual:  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

And see the related http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm 
and also "Fifty Years: Remembering Medgar Evers" :          
 http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3876

See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Many photos.)