In 1993 Kay spent nearly a month in Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, and Uruguay, to meet folks who wanted help fighting World Bank-funded projects that were destroying natural habitat, and imperiling people who lived there. I found a notebook she used during the trip, with a few journal entries. It included a description of a boat trip in the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland, and some of the fantastic wildlife she saw there. Including predatory fish, and bugs…
“A night from hell. It’s hot beyond imagination. Our river boat has beached itself on a spit of sand for the night. Our crew made us a huge dinner, including piranha soup. We were hot, sweaty, dripping from sticky dirt, and went in swimming to cool off. The ecology professor, Carolina, is telling us not to worry, since the piranha don’t swim on the wide, sandy parts of the river. Meanwhile, on the other side of the boat, our hearty crew, who stood in the river up to their necks while drinking beer, had gone fishing. They then showed us a bowl full of still-alive piranha captured from the waters we’d been swimming in. Deborah sticks a table knife in one’s mouth and its tiny sharp teeth click on the metal, making a dangerous sound. No piranhas, eh? But we get to eat them instead of them eating us. Sopa de Piranha is actually not too bad!
On the beach we made a huge fire to keep the mosquitos away. The crew brings table and chairs from the boat to the beach, lays out an enormous feast, and we drink tons of beer. After dinner I begin thinking about sleep, and realize a mosquito net would have been wise. I first drag a mattress from the boat out to the beach, thinking there might be a breeze to keep the critters away. I cover up and lay there for about 5 minutes, listening to the hum of the mosquitos, as they have no trouble finding me. There is no breeze.
Next I drag the mattress back to the boat, and return for sleep in the tiny bunkroom/hot house/sardine can-without-air. I claim the hammock again, this time on the river side of the deck. There I cover my hot, sticky, sweaty body with an impermeable layer of repellent. Then I cover myself up inside the hammock, making a tent with the sheet. I lay, waiting for sleep to come, while the full moon rises over the water, and the night critters begin their loud, raucous bellowing. Mosquitos, ignoring the repellent, are attacking me through the bottom of the hammock, seemingly by the thousands.
After about an hour of misery, my legs and back covered with welts that itch like crazy, I sit up and put on another layer of slimy chemical cream, this time hydrocortisone to stop the itching. I lie back down in the hammock, make my little tent, and pray for a breeze, a wind, a rainstorm, something!
Meanwhile our grizzled captain, asleep on the deck below, starts snoring like a bandsaw. Deborah and Beto, awake under a mosquito net, begin laughing. The snoring and laughter continue, contributing to the river noise which is rising in pitch as the night wears on. I am still being harassed by mosquitos. There is no possibility of sleep. This goes on for hours.
Finally, I decide that if I am going to keep from going insane, I have to change my strategy. So I sit up in the hammock, cover my head and body with the sheet (now soaked in sweat, repellent, and itch cream), and look at the river. To keep my mind from tortuous thoughts, I concentrate on river sounds. I take one sound at a time, imagining the animals that are out there, hopefully eating mosquitos. I decide that the price of the incredible diversity and abundance of life in this swamp is my blood. I am part the food chain. It’s OK, a small contribution of one sleepless night in this fantastic wilderness.”
Among many South American projects Kay worked on in the 1990s, one sought to protect the largest wetland on earth: the Pantanal in Brazil.
In the early-1990s there were plans to engineer the Paraguay River like we’ve done to the Mississippi. Remove the natural back-and-forth meanders, straighten channels and tributaries, and dredge the river bottom, again and again, to allow for cheap transport. In this case it would let barges carry Brazilian soybeans to downriver ports, and to the Atlantic.
The project was called the “hidrovia”, waterway, I guess. The engineering would increase the speed and volume of the river, and lower the water table, which would dramatically damage the surrounding wetlands. Kay worked with local and international NGOs to investigate impacts to the Pantanal, and was surprised to find that the US Army Corps of Engineers was advising hidrovia proponents in Argentina. The Corps has a notorious history of habitat-destructing engineering projects in the US. So the NGOs set up a meeting at the Corps’ office in Buenos Aires, to find out if steps were being taken to protect the wetlands.
Kay described the office as “palatial”, and the group was met by a Corps director who gave them all happy talk about how wonderful the hidrovia would be. She, and others, responded with questions. Direct questions. Technical questions. She said the director became increasingly agitated. After 30 minutes he asked them to leave. They said they had an hourlong appointment, and he hadn’t begun to answer their inquiries. He then called security, and guards forced them to leave. Dumped them in a parking lot.
This was 30 years ago, and I really don’t know the issue. Apparently ongoing local pushback got bad press, and forced international agencies, who were asked to provide loans for the hidrovia, to investigate. The project stalled. I don’t know who asked the questions at the meeting. But Kay always did thorough preparation, and was unwilling to accept convenient statements that didn’t answer her concerns. Classic Treakle.
I looked up hidrovia online today, and it seems like there is now a renewed effort to channelize and dredge the Paraguay river.
In late Spring 2020, I was uncharacteristically down. It was clear Earth is responding systematically, inevitably to the heat under which we are placing it. So much that we have come to revere and love will be leaving their home on Earth – and us.
In late Spring 2020, Kay – our smart, practical, funny, strategic, environment-protecting, magnificent Kay – was coming to the end of living here on Earth. For all the time Kay’s liver had been crumpling from Asarco’s emissions, Bruce had been by her side; her family had been there for her; friends had spent precious moments with her. Some of us sent photos of flowers, because Kay is, well, flowers. So many were working to make Kay’s troubled days as comfortable and happy as possible. And Kay was still funny and beautiful and practical and interested in all of us (and especially Colin).
Two days before Kay was to depart, I sent her a photo of a colleague’s young daughter holding a flower up to the camera. “With all my love,” I wrote.
“Back at you with love and poppies,” Kay replied within minutes, accompanied by the photo of a beautiful red poppy from her garden.
And that, in an instant, taught me how best to face not only Kay’s fading but also the fading of too much of life here on Earth: So much is still so beautiful and worthy of our love. Take care of the Earth every day and try to make it as comfortable as possible. Send poppies to each other.
And remember Kay.
Author:
Mary O'Brien
Connected:
Friend since 1989 when we met on the Board of Directors of Pesticide Action Network - North America
It’s been almost 2 years now since we lost my sister. In some ways it seems like a lifetime ago, in others it seems like yesterday. The crazy couple of years we’ve all spent during the pandemic is kind of a blur, so many things have changed, so many lives have changed, our social fabric has changed, and so many people have been lost. Families have been suspended from gatherings like this, and we’ve been delayed the chance to honor my amazing sister.
My 3 older sisters, Kandy, Karen and Kay, and I have always been close, thankfully, and I’m so fortunate to have grown up in this family. Learning how to treat people, how to respect women, how to be thoughtful and mindful of others, how to work hard, to love all, and to love the earth. Each of my sisters forged their own independent paths in life and successful careers, with long loving marriages to Mike, Philip and Bruce. And I’m just so lucky to have had them in my life, through good and bad, and now here to support each other as we’ve been processing losing one of us. It’s been hard, and we’re still grieving, but as Kay would expect, we’re living life, moving on, being thoughtful and doing meaningful things. And celebrating her with family and friends.
For Kay, her path took her away from home when I was in my teens, when she committed her life work to the Earth. HER Earth. She took ownership of it, and responsibility for it, and did something impactful with her life to try to preserve it. My parents were a little worried I think at first, her independence and “stubbornness” her “radicalness” concerned them, maybe confused them, but definitely worried them. Her first arrest for protesting and the media attention of the time, were both shocking, and exhilarating. I was like “woohoo!! That’s MY SISTER!! I didn’t really know at the time what the hell was going on, I just know that I thought she was cool. Mom was like “Oh what will the neighbors think”, and Dad was “Let her go, she’s doing what she wants, and she’s probably right!”. And so it began, her lifelong mission for the EARTH. We were always proud of her work, her accomplishments, her writing, her articles, her achievements, and always interested in where her trips took her. We miss her laugh, her dinners, her brilliance, her use in its many forms of the work fuck. Her smart, sharp sense of humor. Her instincts and insightfulness. The Earth has lost a fierce warrior, but we’ve lost a sister, a wife, a mom, a grandma, an aunt, and a friend.
We grew up in a small, 2 story, 3 bedroom house just a little over a mile from this very spot. We spent years in this park, riding our bikes down here, spending summer days at Owen Beach, having picnics, hiking, playing on the beach and cliffs, and beach combing. Kandy and Karen even worked here in the park in their teens. I still come here often, it’s a kind of sanctuary for me, and I think it was for Kay too, that’s why we’re here today. She loved this building and all of the gardens here at the Point.
In that small 3 bedroom house, Kay and I shared bunkbeds in the smallest of the 3 rooms. I don’t have much memory of that period because I was so young, but I do know Kay was not thrilled sharing a room with her little brother. So when Kandy moved out when I was about 6, Kay moved into the middle room with Karen, and I had the little room all to myself. While I’m certain Karen and Kay were already close sisters before then, it was likely the foundation for their incredible lifetime sisterhood bond. They were best friends. Dad called them Sam & George. Kay was Sam I think. They shared so much together, even through the years Kay lived away, they spoke all the time, and got together for memorable family vacations and hikes with the kids, Nate, Alie & Hanna. And later trips to Europe.
Karen was with her every step of the way through her illness and to the very end of her life. I know that was incredibly hard, and I know Kay was so grateful for having her there, Kandy and I were too. Kandy and Kay were close too, speaking often when she was away, more so when she moved back home. They’d have lunch occasionally, and they loved going to Watson’s Nursery every spring to shop and explore. And Kandy and Kay were able to share some special walks around her yard, and quiet conversations in the garden toward the end.
Kay and I were close, but really didn’t talk much in the years she was away. We were both raising families, having careers, and time and life just got away from us. But I was SO happy when she moved back home, and we became really close then. She was there for me when I needed it most, in a tough patch in my life in 2007-08. Her and Bruce took me in and let me live with them for several months, while I was sorting some things out. Bruce was not so thrilled I know, but Kay never hesitated, and was right there for me for as long as and for whatever I needed. And while she was supportive of me, she was also brutally honest with me, blunt, and always straight with me with timely, smart, pragmatic, loving advice.
When I was in 6th grade, I ran for student body president against Doug Jackson. Kay was in high school at Stadium, and was a budding artist. Her art class at the time was drawing and painting Disney and Charlie Brown characters. I remember she made my campaign posters using Mickey Mouse, Charlie Brown and Snoopy in the themes, and I remember one of Charlie Brown’s voice bubbles as my slogan, saying “Don’t vote for a Mouse, vote for a Man, John Treakle for President”. Not sure who came up with that, but I lost that election. But I’ll tell you I had the coolest campaign posters in the history of Sherman Elementary School.
We had a lot of great summers at Offut Lake as kids, camping out, swimming, campfires, teenage hi-jinx and shenanigans with the Fidlers, the legend of the “Skinny Dip”. Great memories we’ve laughed often about over the years. Kay always enjoyed the Peterson Family reunions, and even though she was living in DC for all those years, she sometimes found her way back home for one of them. Sometimes a Thanksgiving or Christmas visit, sometimes passing through on her way to or from somewhere afar.
We always looked forward to hearing the latest from her world travels, or what she was working on currently, or where or who her current anger and outrage were being unleashed on. A lot of that was deep, and complicated, and beyond my scope of understanding sometimes, but always fascinating, and intriguing and interesting. I loved her passion and brilliance, fighting for what she believed in, and her willing engagement in the process of change. One of Kay’s first jobs, was working for Barney Bagel & Suzie Cream Cheese on the first floor of the Old City Hall building, here in Tacoma. I remember hanging out one day with her there, and after work she took me up into clock tower, which you weren’t supposed to be able to have access to, but there was some sneaky secret way she found out about and we found our way up there. That was cool.
Her first car was a rusty, multi-colored, late 50’s Volvo. I remember she carried a gallon of water with her always, because it overheated regularly, jumper cables because she had a bad battery, and a tire pump, because she had a slow leak in one of her tires. When she was selling it, I recall Dad taking a call from somebody interested in it, and the guy asked what color it was, Dad said “What color is it? Well it depends on which side you’re standing on”. I think she sold it for $50, and bought the green Volkswagon Bug she moved to Seattle with.
She moved to Seattle when she was maybe 19 or 20, at first I think to work at the BB&SCC up there, but I think the early workings of Greenpeace were then forming. I remember staying with her one summer for a few days at her apartment on Queen Anne Hill. She went to work and left me in her apartment for the day, I was probably 14, and I recall riding her green Schwinn Varsity 10 speed bike down QA Hill to Seattle Center. I crashed and scuffed up the tape on her handle bars, and was so worried that she was going to be mad at me, but she brushed it off, said it was no big deal, and was more concerned about my scraped and bloodied knees and elbows, and she thought Mom would be mad at her because she let me get broken while I was in her care in the big city.
From Seattle Kay moved on, first to San Francisco, then Washington D.C. And so for the next few decades, she immersed herself in her passion and her work, and we watched from afar. Admiring her, being inspired by her, and always interested in her work. Mom and Dad finally came to understand what she was doing, and accepted her “adventurist spirit”, and were proud of what she was doing. And they were always glad when she came home for a visit.
In 2006 I think it was, the opportunity for her to come back home came through a job with the Harder Foundation as its Executive Director. A super great job for her, and we were so glad to have her and Bruce back.
She loved the job, and being home, and her and Bruce settled into life in Tacoma. She was able to focus her passion and efforts on preserving northwest waters, shorelines, fish runs, rivers, streams and forests, and so much more. Working with state and local governments, counties, municipalities, tribes, environmental organizations and others, with many of you, making a real impact in her own backyard. And at home she was also able to engage in one of her other passions, gardening, in HER own backyard. We all enjoyed the fruits of her efforts in so many backyard family gatherings over the past several years.
When Nate and Halie had little Colin, she was such a happy grandma, she was effusive in her praise for his latest tooth, or smile, or something funny he said or did. Then, she was robbed of all that. I’m fortunate to have 10 grandkids and one more on the way, and I know what a blessing it is to be a grandparent. Sadly, she was robbed of that.
I remember exactly where I was when I got the call from Kay, telling me of her diagnosis of liver cancer. She was very straight forward and pragmatic about it, as she was about everything, facing it straight on, and mad as hell. So she went off to fight like hell for the next 2 years. We had dinner often, before the pandemic, and we would just talk, and cry, and laugh. All 3 of my sisters and I were able to get together for dinner in February of 2020, which was the last time we were all together. Toward the end, when she knew her fight was over, she handled it with such grace and strength, and a realism that I just admire. As Covid was gripping the planet, and shutting things down, for obvious reasons Kay and Bruce isolated, and we weren’t able to visit in person. But we spoke or texted often in her final months and weeks, and Kay and I played “Words with Friends” on our phones. Then I got a call from her on the Sunday before she died, and she simply said that she was checking out this week, so I should come over that afternoon to say goodbye. We had about a 90 minute visit, where we cried a lot, laughed some, sat in silence some, and said goodbye. It was sad and surreal, and fucked up. It was just so unfair. It made me mad. But we said goodbye, we had to, and she passed a couple days later.
We’re better as a family for having had Kay in our lives, and the planet and your communities, are better for having her too. We appreciate all the stories that have been shared Calla Lilly Rebel over the past 2 years, and today, of how Kay impacted your lives, or inspired your lives, and we’re inspired by how many lives she touched in her lifetime. There was so much about her I didn’t know. Her absence has left a hole, and we miss her.
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 isstillimpacting 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) Investin 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.
