#because she gave me chicken pox on purpose when i was 5

[papermint-airplane]

The saga of Laura's right arm 😭

Monday night, I developed a big rash on my right forearm. It was itchy and bumpy and horrible but I didn't think too much of it because I have been going through a horrendous eczema flare up recently so I was just like "ugh another rash to join my collection" and treated it like I do my other breakout sites.

But then the itching kept going. If you've never had eczema before, it itches at first but then it usually stops itching in favor of hurting real bad because your skin is cracking open and bleeding. Fun shit. That didn't happen though. It just kept itching worse and worse and spreading up my arm to the crook of my elbow.

Yesterday, while I was at work, I noticed the bumps were getting bigger and bigger. That's right, your girl had hives. I figured I'd just take a Benadryl and go to bed and be fine the next day. And I was. Kind of. This morning, the itching had stopped and the hives had gone away but MY ENTIRE ARM WAS SWOLLEN. It felt solid and hot and extremely painful. Also the pain wasn't just where the rash had been, it was radiating up my arm and my shoulder was really sore as though I pulled a muscle. Also I felt gross and run down like my body was fighting something off. The swelling was freaking me out so I took two Aleve and I was thinking "if this doesn't do it, I'm going to have to go to urgent care" which I don't want to do because...well...I'm American. You know how healthcare shit is for us. Fortunately the pills did the trick because the swelling is down considerably and so is the soreness. I just don't know what happened in the first place. Did something bite me? Is this an allergic reaction to the ridiculous amount of pollen everywhere? Did I touch something weird at the gas station Monday morning? The fact that it was affecting my entire arm is really worrying me. Hopefully whatever it was is gone now but I am stocking up on Benadryl just in case.

If you don't hear from me by tomorrow, my arm probably fell off. 😭😭

[cabreraarchive]

Laws against Native Americans

In 1850 the California legislature passed an Act for the Government and Protection of Indians that essentially forced many Native Americans into servitude. The law provided for the forced labor of loitering or orphaned Native Americans, regulated their employment, and defined a special class of Indian crimes with punishments.

James Rawls, historian The name of the law sounds benign, but the effect was malign in the extreme degree. Any white person under this law could declare Indians who were simply strolling about, who were not gainfully employed, to be vagrants, and take that charge before a justice of the peace, and a justice of the peace would then have those Indians seized and sold at public auction. And the person who bought them would have their labor for four months without compensation.

In the early days of the Gold Rush, from the very beginning, frustrated Anglo American miners banded together to form groups of essentially vigilante or volunteer militia groups. They were ad hoc organizations, and their stated objective was to exterminate the "red devils," to eliminate the obstacles that the native Californians had become in their minds. And their modus operandi was to attack native villages wherever they might find them in the vicinity of their mining activities, to eliminate their presence utterly, killing the men, the women, and the children. And this was considered to be a necessity.

The only way we will be able to mine in security, if all of these people are exterminated." And the language that they used at the time, "extermination," was precisely describing what they were attempting to do.

The Native Americans in California of course attempted to resist the onslaughts onto their villages. They would fight back with whatever weapons they had at hand. But they were vastly outgunned and vastly outnumbered, and were very infrequently able to mount an effective defense. Usually it was more a matter of fleeing, trying to get away. We have accounts of the white vigilantes or rangers simply firing into the creek or going into the woods and using hatchets or other weapons, guns, to kill those. We have many descriptions of those when they're attacking on a stream or a river, and the natives are being shot as they're floating down, trying to escape from this terrible onslaught.

But we should also remember that those bands of Indian hunters could receive local compensation for their actions. Many communities through Gold Rush California offered bounties for Indian heads, Indian scalps, or Indian ears. And so the Indian raiders could bring the evidence of their kill in, and receive direct local compensation. Furthermore, the state of California passed legislation authorizing more than a million dollars for the reimbursement of additional expenses that the Indian hunters may have incurred. And then that was passed on eventually to the federal Congress, where Congress passed legislation also authorizing additional federal funds for this purpose. So what we have here in California during the Gold Rush, quite clearly, was a case of genocide, mass murder that was legalized and publicly subsidized.

Frank LaPena, professor, Native American Studies There was a person, up in Humboldt County, who was found with a small child, a young Indian child. And they ask him, "What are you doing with this child?" He said, "I am protecting him. He's an orphan." And they say, "Well, how do you know he's orphan?" He said, "I killed his parents."

April Moore, Nisenan Maidu, educator By the time that the Gold Rush and events afterwards had occurred, so much had happened, not just Sutter enslaving and terrorizing the native peoples, but an epidemic had erupted previous to this: smallpox, chicken pox, unusual diseases that they had no defenses. So their population had been decimated.

Then it became decimated again after the Gold Rush: because of their aboriginal rights as landowners they needed to be eradicated and removed. So a process went into motion to make it legal to kill Indian people.

And at one point it was something in the neighborhood of $25 for a male body part, whether it was a scalp, a hand, or the whole body; and then $5 for a child or a woman. In many cases, they only had to bring in the scalp. And in other cases, the whole body was brought in to prove that they had this individual, they'd killed this person, and receive their reward.

And it was well after 1900 when the law was repealed, that bounty hunting, or whatever you may want to call it, on the California Indians was repealed. It was shortly after the discovery of Ishi that the nation, or I should say the state, became aware of the fact that it was still legal to kill Indians. So that the law had to be changed.

Violence and Sanctuary

The U.S. policies of removal of native people as Europeans pioneered further west was bound to the tragic cry of extermination as the settlements reached the west coast. Sanctuary of a sort was provided through reservations, which gave the natives refuge from the threats of the new invaders.

However, the conditions at reservations were less than satisfactory.

April Moore, Nisenan Maidu, educator There was what we called a roundup. It's a very sad story. They went along the foothill areas, especially above Sacramento and all along this ridge, gathering up all these native peoples, mostly Maidu people, and forcing them to march down through the valley, over by the Sutter Butte, but first they had to cross the Sacramento River.

And very few Indian people knew how to swim, because they had no need to swim. They didn't take those chances by crossing rivers. If they knew how, they would do it in reed boats. But they were forced to cross the river, so there was a large percentage of these Maidu people who actually drowned, including the children and the infants.

And then whoever survived the crossing of the Sacramento River were taken over to the Round Valley Reservation and forced to live there. Those that escaped, hid. And they stayed hidden for quite some time. They took on Hispanic or Mexican surnames and melted into the community not as natives, but as Mexican Americans. They could pass. They'd just say they were, and most people didn't pay attention and believed them.

James Rawls, historian I had the occasion of visiting with an elderly Pomo woman several years ago, who shared with me a story from her family history. She said her village was attacked somewhere along the Navarro River, by a group of white raiders. She thought perhaps they were trying to seize children for the Indian slave trade at the time. She wasn't sure. But she knew that they were under attack.

And so a native woman fled with her family, trying to get her children away. She left her smallest child, which was still in a cradleboard, under some brush, and got away across the river. After the whites had left, she returned, trying to find her family. And she could see that her smallest child was still apparently safely there, under this brush. But when she lifted it up, she found that the child had been pinned to the earth with a knife, that the raiders apparently had regarded that child as too small to worry with, but they managed to kill the child instead.

And as this woman told me that story, the tears came down her cheeks as if this had just happened. And that made me realize that even though these events we're talking about occurred 150 years or more ago, they still are living memories of native people in California. There are wounds that are still unhealed and are very tender and very deep

Frank LaPena, professor, Native American Studies The Gold Rush forced people out of their traditional regions, and it made some of the rules and laws of the new state, the white state, and these rules and laws made the Indians change. People would say "Well, you know, what we're going to do is, we're going to give you these sanctuary areas, and we're going to give you food and that, and we're going to provide things for you that you didn't have before."

And all of that sounds good, but in fact what happened is, when people were on reservations, for instance, the food that was supposed to go to them, and the cattle that was supposed to be herded to them, and things that were supposed to be provided to them were never done.

What you can sense is that there is a sanctuary that is provided for them. Even though they might be eating out of troughs, even though they might be overworked, they have some sense of security there. And we see this taking place as we look at some of the things that happened with statehood. And we also see that in many cases where the people were given this sanctuary, they are protected from some of the kinds of killings and hunting down and herding off people to imprison them in the reservation areas. We see that they do have a protection there.

April Moore, Nisenan Maidu, educator One of [my grandmother's] stories that really stuck with me, it was so emotional, the way she portrayed it. It was an event that happened to her aunt and her two great-aunts. It was some time during the early part of the morning. These aunts, two aunts and this baby and other family members were living out in this small village site, and they'd heard this noise, and it had woken them up. They weren't quite sure what it was.

And suddenly all this noise started up -- the gunfire, the screaming, the shouting -- and then they heard all these different people screaming and shouting. So they ran out to look, to see what was going on, and had seen these soldiers on horses who were taking people and killing them, slamming children against rocks and trees, and just running down men and shooting them. And they were violating the bodies by cutting them up. So these two aunts grabbed the baby because they couldn't find their sister, the mother of the baby, because she'd fled in fear, apparently.

So they grabbed this infant and ran as far as they could go, and hid.

And in order to keep the baby from crying and drawing attention to them, they would put their hand over her nose and her mouth, like that, to stop the baby from crying but not cut off her air, just long enough to keep her quiet.

And eventually the sun rose. And they stayed hidden until it was mid-morning and they couldn't hear anything. And they went back and found just all this carnage. So they gathered what they could find, which wasn't much because they basically burned this whole village site down, and walked to the nearest village that they knew of, and informed this group of people, who were actually their relatives also, that this had happened, to beware.

And from that point on, they had runners in this community. And these runners would go from village to village, and inform all these other villages that people were coming and they were going to get killed. So they more or less kind of had a little telegraph system, but it was a physical one, by running. And they spread the word so a lot of the Maidu people had to get up and move and get out of the way. And they had sentries posted all along the main routes. And whenever they saw dust coming up the path or a trail, they knew that it wasn't other Indian people; it had to be these people on horses. So they'd send someone down to the village site and warn everybody, and they'd just take off and hide.

[mikeconphoto]

"Breast Cancer Awareness Month" -By MikeCon Photography

Here I sit thinking about how when I first began photography that I wanted to be the "Jerry Maguire" type of photographer with my clients.  I wanted to understand their needs and find out what makes them all "unique", or "beautiful".  For me,  one's character is EVERYTHING!  I've lost so many people that I was acquainted with just because their character was seriously flawed.  Hell, they still keep on with their petty nonsense...whining isn't winning! 

Eventually, all of that pettiness got old, and I had to grow into a better "Jerry Maguire" for myself.  I had to start focusing in on the good people.  I tuned all the outside noise out and opened myself up to my clients to allow them to know that we're in this together....win or lose!  

Here's one of my winners...  Ms. Alicia Copeland...

 ...I met Alicia Copeland on 10 December 2014 at a studio when I was just beginning to learn studio photography.  We were going to do a year-long project called, "Black Barbie" because we wanted to inspire young black girls that Barbie can be strong, intelligent, fashionable, and most of all....BEAUTIFUL!  We ended up not doing the entire shoot because of conflicting schedules (mainly my own from travel), and we both just kept on as great friends.  In 2016, Alicia contacted me to do a photo shoot with her and her Fiance Jeremiah. 

We met up at Washington Park in Denver and the three of us really just "clicked".  They were so fun to work with, and we talked about them and their future plans.  The one thing that Alicia told me that made me tear up was that she wanted to do this photoshoot because she was diagnosed with cancer and she wanted something to feel good about before she lost her hair to chemotherapy.   Throughout this entire time, I continued to keep in contact with Alicia to ensure that she's doing okay.  

I want to make sure before I let Alicia speak, I'm going to give a huge shout out to her Fiance Jeremiah Daniels.  This guy has been so supportive like a good man should!  A lot of guys wouldn't know how to handle this at a young age, but this man has stood there like a champion and I'm proud to call him a friend!

Now here's Alicia's story...  

"It started one night while I was bowling, and I felt a horrible pain under my left arm that I never felt before.  I texted my sister and she made me promise I would go get it checked out. I knew something wasn’t right because I knew my body.  The pain went away before I saw a doctor, and I was told because of my age it was probably some fibrous tissue so I accepted that and moved on.  Months went by and it seemed as though my “fibrous tissue” was getting bigger.  Life allowed me to keep pushing it aside and saying I would deal with it later.  Finally, the day came when I figured I would get it checked out...again.  The next doctor insisted I have an x-ray done.  My results came back suspicious so I was sent to another facility for an ultrasound, mammogram, and biopsy.  My nurse told me that it could either be fibrous tissue or cancer.  In my head, I thought, 'there is no way it could be cancer...I’m too young'.  I was sent off to have a CT and Bone scan done just in case it was cancer so that the oncologist would have all the information she needed.  As I was sitting in the hospital waiting room to have my scans done I got a phone call. It was my nurse...I couldn’t tell by her voice what my results were but she sounded upbeat so I was a little hopeful.  I went upstairs as fast as I could to see her. She broke the news to me...I had breast cancer. It was at least stage 2, 3, or 4 because it was in my lymph nodes.  She told me the typical treatment plan...chemo, surgery, and radiation. I didn’t cry and just smiled at her and told her I was okay. I went back downstairs to finish my scans, and I looked around at everyone around me. I didn’t belong there.  I was “healthy”.  I lifted heavy weights 5-6 days week and bowled several days a week.  I’m a nanny and massage therapist so I’m constantly on the go and moving.  Daily I looked up new healthy recipes to cook.  The most I’ve ever had in life was the chicken pox as a child and the common cold, not even the Flu!  Cancer doesn’t just affect the “sick”. Next, I saw an alternative doctor who gave me a better understanding of cancer.  We ALL have cancer cells in our body.  Mine just went rogue and needed to be controlled.  I left his office ready to take back my body. A few days later, I met my oncologist, who told me that statistics show that black women are more likely to get diagnosed with breast cancer at a young age versus other races. This was quite shocking to hear because when I thought of breast cancer I always thought of older white women.  At least that’s what is shown mainly during Breast Cancer Awareness. I was informed that I was stage 4 because they saw something suspicious in my sternum.  She explained all of her recommendations from chemo, mastectomy, radiation, and hormone treatments.  I accepted it all until she said she didn’t want me to ever give birth. That was the one thing I couldn’t accept... I put off starting chemo as long as I could.  I was supposed to be planning my wedding and my future with the love of my life.  This was supposed to be my Golden Year, 28 years old, excited about the future ahead not preparing for the biggest change my body/life had ever seen. I completed 5 of 8 rounds of chemo.  I stopped early due to certain side effects that my body couldn’t tolerate.  I opted for only a unilateral mastectomy and refused radiation.  I made my OWN decisions.  I didn’t let the doctors push me into doing everything just because it was standard protocol.  This is my body and I have choices. I never questioned the Lord and asked why is this happening to me.  My purpose in life is to help others and be a light for those that don’t know Him.  I decided to find the good in my situation. I built a stronger relationship with God and my family.  The Lord opened my eyes to what was really important in life.  He has blessed me in more ways than I can count. There have been so many times this past year that my bills shouldn’t have been paid or my body shouldn’t have been moving, but He always made a way. I have continued to workout and work throughout my journey.  They tell you to be careful around people and germs (and you should).  Needless to say, though I’m a bit of a rule breaker. My fiancé Jeremiah kept me motivated in the gym and giving massages was some of the best calming escapes.  When I’m giving a massage my job is to relax and/or help my client with a particular issue.  However, at the same time, I receive the exact same benefits and more because I was able to help someone. The worst part of this journey has been others reactions to my diagnosis.  I typically get the “I’m so sorry you are dying face”.  Please don’t feel sorry for me because I don’t feel sorry for myself. Some days are harder than others but every day I get up and thank the Lord for my life. I may not know what the future holds for me but I do know that the Lord continues to open doors for me so I know I have a purpose.  I am here right now to touch people’s lives figuratively and literally. I have learned throughout this journey to be present.  Present in my relationships, my job, and in Him. I needed to slow down and Breathe. I still struggle at times and fall back into my old fast-paced routine.  Every now and then, I hear a little voice whisper, “slow down and enjoy this moment right here”.  Many times we are so focused on the future and past that we forget the Present. Below are the dates of how things went in my journey: August 2016: Diagnosed September 2016: Started chemo January 31: Mastectomy July 31: 2nd Surgery November 14: 3rd Surgery"

Thank you all for making the time to read this and being so encouraging.  We hit turning points in our lives all the time, and we all go through things in life.  It's how you deal with it that matters.  Again, this is why I only involve myself with "high character" people like Alicia and Jeremiah.  They make me realize why I love being a photographer!