Month: May 2022

Glimpses into Kay’s mind at work.

When Kay was six she visited one of her cousin’s families down near the Columbia, and was thrilled to find that they raised bunnies!  And then appalled to learn that the rabbits were killed for meat!  So later that day Kay snuck off, opened the cage doors, and released the bunnies, thinking they’d run off to join Bambi and friends, I guess.

Kay was an activist from the beginning.

It’s been two years, and I thank you all for coming here today, to share stories and insights about Kay, and do everything we can to conjure her.  Sharing memories is great, but a more meaningful way to keep her alive, at least for me, is to identify what she had to teach me, and use it in my own life.  It is helpful to me.  And if her lessons are still in play, then she is still impacting our world.  Here’s ten of them:

1) Keep your eyes open and active.  Engage with the people around you.  See what they have to offer.  And if their path aligns with yours, recognize what you can offer them.  Pay attention to the resources and opportunities that walk through the door.  Or are on the horizon.  Stop and think: what can this person contribute to the dance?  What can my network do to assist them?  Take advantage.

2) That applies to new technologies as well.  In the mid-80s she was using an “electronic bulletin board”, an early email, to communicate with other activists.  She and Jim Puckett would vie for access to the one Greenpeace computer in the office, while the rest of us were still pecking on typewriters and telex machines.

3) Kay was adept at contemplating what she wanted, identifying a goal, and making a plan to achieve it.  She was also great at helping others address challenges.  She’d confront them with questions “What do you want?  No, seriously, where do you want to be?  Great.  Now how are you going to get there?”  And through a relentless and cheerful dance, she’d help folks map out a path leading to their goals.  What steps need to be taken.  What resources are needed for each step.  What personnel.  What skills.  What partners.  What networks.  Plan it out, write it out, and especially with groups, she made the effort visual.  Get a white board.  Colored markers.  Poster paper on an easel.  The pictures help you develop a more meaningful strategy.  I’ll post some examples on callalilyrebel.org.

4) Then put the plan in play.  Don’t be afraid of trying.  If you fail, fine.  If you hadn’t tried, you wouldn’t have achieved what you wanted anyway.  And if you do fail, then analyze your mistakes, learn from them, and become smarter.  But if you succeed, then yea!  You’re moving forward.

Kay transferred to Stadium High School because it had an early graduation program.  She couldn’t wait to get into the world outside Tacoma.  She got married, and lived on a farm.  A year and a half later, she decided, “nope, not for me”.  She moved to Seattle and became a baker.  A year later she tried her hand at art.  Nice, but no.  Then she tried activism, which turned out to be her calling.  But she was never deterred when her choices didn’t work out.

5) Be strategic: look for where your investment of time, energy, or financial support will return more.  Make sure the juice is worth the squeeze.  I think Kay tried to steer her foundation support to activists in smaller, more remote locations, where a $5000 grant could mean a lot more, than it would to established outfits in cities.

 6) Invest in networks, ones that can carry the work forward even when you’re engaged elsewhere.  Kay helped organize and fund a Surfrider academy that recruited activist individuals from different Washington coastal communities, once a year.  This program trained the participants in politics, and fundraising, and media, and allowed them to select a task to perform mutually.  Like “let’s promote tribal fish sales”.  The project may or may not have worked, but regardless, the diverse group of engaged individuals walked away with a working knowledge of their colleagues, and how they could assist one another.  A network that hadn’t existed before, and which could strengthen future capacity of activists on the Coast.

7) She was seriously impatient with ineptitude, arrogance, and people who didn’t care.  Kay did not condemn them.  Just didn’t want to be around them because they were a drain.  They wasted her time.  She fired her boss once, working for Greenpeace International.  She spent a full year documenting his incompetence, making sure his bosses saw the evidence, until they dumped him.  But her effort wasn’t based on animosity.  She simply hated the fact that he was wasting her work.

And pay attention to whether or not people show up.  Whether they attempt to deliver on what they promise.  Whether they call.  Many folk’s love and commitment is just aspirational.

8) Work.  Work hard, and effectively.  I’ve been giving away many of the hundreds of books she read, and was really surprised to find dozens of the kind of volumes I would never pick up in a bookstore.  Self-help books: on finance, on public speaking, on statistics, on how to construct an argument, and 16 volumes on how to write.  Kay is a published author.  She didn’t stumble into her talent.  She worked for it.

9) Be hungry.  Be audacious.  Don’t wait.  The time is now.  When her liver cancer metastasized, surgery was no longer an option, and Kay recognized she was going to die, she told me she was terrified.  But after two days, she concluded “Well, this is boring”, and got back to work.  She wasn’t about to let fear waste her agency, her chance to do things.

Many of these qualities are obvious, even mundane. But the thing is, Kay used these tools every day, all the time, actively.  We can all feed that hunger, and put her smarts in play, whether it’s one of those above, or other lessons that might speak to you.  I believe it’s a way we can keep her alive.

10) I left out one quality, maybe the most important: humor.  I can crack jokes, but never replicate her quick wit.  From her early observation that “Bruce and I have the perfect relationship.  I’m monogamous.  And he’s slow”.  To the therapist at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance who asked her “how do you feel about dying?”  To which she instantly responded “Well, at least I won’t have to be around for the 2020 election.”

Nor can I match the laugh that expressed her marvel at it all.  Life is so cool, so weird and wonderful, and the situations that we find ourselves in are so messed up, that all you can do is laugh.  And her laugh always invited you to join.  You’ve heard it, and you know what I mean.  I’ll try to post two slices of it.  Kay and I were driving down a remote highway in Idaho, when we were stopped by a herd of cattle, slowly crossing the road.  She recorded the encounter.  And a second video Pam took shows her watching sea lions on the CHB patrol boat on Commencement Bay.

I miss her hugely.  I am comforted by the fact that I have a lot of company.

Sunday, May 22, 2022

Recording of Zoom stream of gathering at The Pagoda at Point Defiance Park.

Kay’s son, Nate Hoeft, made this montage shown at Kay’s Celebration of Life in Tacoma on May 22nd, 2022. The Celebration was streamed and recorded and is available here: https://callalilyrebel.org/celebration-of-kays-life/