School Assembly, Proud to be an American, Local Flavor with LaSara Firefox, aka Yoga Mama

This is yet another example for how diverse this region of our country, the US of A, is. In this Northern California valley, outside the (very small) city of Ukiah, generations of farmers and ranchers have worked the land and husbanded their livestock.

While I've lived in this general area all my life (over a hill, through another valley, and up a small mountain), and in this particular valley for over a decade, only recently am I being seen as a local.

Yes, this town can be provincial. Yes, the hills seem to hem us in sometimes. But these hills are also refuge, home.

As with every land, there is a bloody history to this place; cowboys and Indians, massacres, small pox. English place-names that are slowly, over time, being replaced by the names of tribes, commemoration of battles, and of treaties broken.

But that history is mostly forgotten here, mostly displaced and replaces by up to seven generations of the same family owning the ranch or farm. Seven generations of memories that span a particular number of square miles of soil.

People identify with their land here, generation after generation struggling with the question; "Do I head back to the ranch, or not?" Lineages, generations of heritage, hanging in the balance of the deep and difficult question.

This tie to the land, and the lineages borne to and by it, produces a special kind of patriotism; not jingoistic, not overstated, not inflated. Just the simple pride found in how the land claims you, as much as you claim it.

The diversity of our region can be easily seen in the choices made by ranchers, farmers, and vintners alike. Some of the first, and much of the best (yeah, okay, local pride speaking there) of the organic, non-GMO foods available today come from this region.

To be honest, I'll only eat free-range, grass fed beef, and if you're gonna get it, this is the place to do so.

Here, in this land it sometimes seems that time forgot, you can buy a fresh, butchered cow by the half or whole from the ranch across the way.

Stick that fresh, clean meat in the deep freezer, and there are your meals for the winter. And praise the land, and God, and whoever else you pray to, for little havens like this one, where it's still that simple.

Consumer demand, paired with our own interesting hybrids; rippies (red-neck-hippies), hip-necks (hippie-rednecks), and more. We have harvard-educated dreamers who come "home" to inherit the dreams of the generations that went before.

And then there are those who run out of the county without a glance back, never to return.

But that land-bond, that true sense of what it means to be "of" a place, brings a catch of the breath, and slightest tear to the eye of even this slightly embarrassed, once-upon-a-time hardened-of-heart, anti-imperialist, anarchist, post-riot grrrl of a mom...and I find myself, to my great surprise, yep, Proud to be an American.

(Spring, 09)

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