OPINION

Arizona farm gives refuge from pain, for man and beast alike

Published

2 years ago

October 22, 2022

CORNVILLE, Ariz. (AP) — The leader has the name of her dead baby spelled out in beads on her left wrist, and standing before her is a mother so grief-choked by her young son’s death that she flips on her side at one point in this creekside yoga class and sobs. In the next row, a woman whose daughter died by suicide goes through the poses next to a man with a tattoo of three little ducks, one for each of the children who was murdered.

Just beyond, in the fields of this sanctuary for the grieving, is a sheep whose babies were snatched by coyotes, a goat saved from slaughter and a horse that was badly mistreated carrying loads at the Grand Canyon.

Soon, the morning fog will lift and the chorus of cicadas will end the quiet. But for a moment, all is still, as if nature has paused to acknowledge this gathering of worldly suffering.

“There’s a comfort in knowing,” says Suzy Elghanayan, a mother whose young son died earlier this year of a seizure, “that we’re all in the same place that we never wanted to be.”

The world turns away from stories like theirs because it’s too hard to imagine burying a child. So mourning people from around the globe journey to this patch of farmland just outside the red rocks of Sedona.

There is no talk at Selah Carefarm of ending the pain of loss, just of building the emotional muscle to handle it.

Here, the names of the dead can be spoken and the agony of loss can be shown. No one turns away.

Grief farm consoles families of lost loved ones

The Selah Carefarm in Sedona, Arizona hosts people experiencing traumatic grief, usually through the death of a child or any homicide or suicide. They are consoled by others in similar situations, counselors and rescued animals. (Oct. 20) (AP video by Eugene Garcia)

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(AP video by Eugene Garcia)

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Joanne Cacciatore was a mother of three in a customer service job when her baby died during delivery.

Long after she closed the lid to the tiny pink casket, the grief consumed her. She’d sob for hours and withered to 90 lbs. She didn’t want to live. All she thought about was death.

“Every cell in my body aches,” she wrote in her journal a few months after the death in 1994. “I won’t smile as often as my old self. Smiling hurts now. Most everything hurts some days, even breathing.”

Cacciatore became consumed with understanding the abyss of heartache she inhabited. But counseling and bereavement groups were as disappointing as the body of research Cacciatore found on traumatic loss.

So, she set out on twin paths for answers: Enrolling in college for the first time, focusing her studies on grief, and starting a support group and foundation for others like her.

Today, all these years after the death that set her on this journey, those academic and therapeutic pursuits have converged on the vegan farm, which opened five years ago. As plans for Selah took shape, Cacciatore was reminded of the two dogs who stayed by her side even when the depths of her sorrow were too much for many friends. So the farm is home to dozens of animals, many rescued from abuse and neglect, that are central to many visitors’ experience here.

While most who come to Selah take part in counseling sessions, Cacciatore believes visitors’ experiences with the animals can be just as transformative. Across the farm, stories repeat of someone washed over by a wave of grief only to find an animal seem to offer comfort – a donkey nestling its face in a crying woman’s shoulder or a horse pressing its head against a grieving heart.

“There’s a resonance,” Cacciatore says. “There’s a symbiosis,”

The 10-acre swath of valley feels something like a bohemian enclave crossed with a kibbutz. In the day, the sprawling expanse is baked in sun, all the way back to the creek at the farm’s border, where a family of otters comes to play. At night, under star-flecked skies of indigo, paths are lit by lanterns and strings of bulbs glow, and all is quiet but the gentle flow of spring water snaking through irrigation ditches.

It is an oasis, but a constantly changing one, reinvented by each new visitor leaving their imprint.

On one tree, the grieving tie strips of fabric that rain like multicolored tickertape, remnants of their loved one’s favorite shirts and socks and pillowcases. Nearby, little medallions stamped with the names of the dead twinkle in the breeze. And in a grotto beneath an ash tree, the brokenhearted have clipped prayer cards to the branches, left objects including a baseball and a toy truck, and painted dozens of stones memorializing someone gone too soon.

For Andy, “My Twin Forever.” For Monica, “Loved Forever.” For Jade, “Forever One Day Old.”

Memories of the dead are everywhere. The farm’s guest house was made possible by donors, just like everything else here, and names of their lost ones are on everything from benches to butterfly gardens.

___

After a few days here, many find the stories of their beloved have become so stitched into the farm’s fabric it makes hallowed ground of earth on which the dead never set foot.

For Liz Castleman, it is a place she has come to feel her son Charlie’s presence even more than home. A rock with a dinosaur painted on it honors him and a wooden bird soars with his name. Strawberries at the farm have even been forever rebranded as Charlieberries in recognition of his favorite fruit.

Few in Castleman’s life can bear to hear about her son anymore, three years after he died before even reaching his third birthday. When she first came to the farm, part of her wondered if Cacciatore might somehow have the power to bring Charlie back. In a way, she did. She’s returned five more times because here, people relish hearing of the whip-smart boy who made friends wherever he went, who’d do anything to earn a laugh, who was so outgoing in class a teacher dubbed him “Mayor of Babytown.”

“All of the old safe spaces are gone. The farm, it really is the one safe space,” says 46-year-old Castleman, whose son died while under anesthesia during an MRI, likely due to an underlying genetic disorder. “There’s something, I don’t know if it’s magical, but you know that anything you say is OK and anything you feel is OK. It’s just a complete bubble from the rest of the world.”

Many who come here have been frustrated by communities and counselors who tell them to move on from their loss. They’ve been pushed to be medicated or plied with platitudes that hurt more than help. Friends tell a grieving mom that God needed an angel or ask a brokenhearted spouse why he’s still wearing his wedding ring. Again and again, they’re told to forget and move on.

Here, though, visitors learn the void will be with them, some way or another, forever.

“I’m picturing my life with my grief always with me and how I’m going to live life with that grief,” says 58-year-old Elghanayan, struggling to imagine her years unfolding without her 20-year-old son Luca, the compassionate, rock-climbing, surfing, piano-playing aspiring scientist. “I have to figure out how to get up and breathe every day and take one step every day and pray my years go by swiftly.”

If it seems counterintuitive that coming to a place where every story is sad could actually uplift, Selah’s adherents point to their own experiences on the farm and the inching progress they’ve made.

Erik Denton, a 35-year-old repeat visitor to Selah, is certain he can’t ever get over the deaths of his three children last year, but he’s functioning again. He does the dishes and makes his bed. He doesn’t hole up alone for days at a time. He’s again able to talk about the children he loves: 3-year-old Joanna, the firecracker who climbed trees and helped friends; 2-year-old Terry, the mischief maker who seemed to think no one was watching; and 6-month-old Sierra, the silly girl who just had begun to ooh and aah.

Denton’s ex-girlfriend, the children’s mother, has been charged in their drownings in a bathtub and sometimes repeating the story or hearing another mourner’s tragedy becomes too much for him. But mostly, Denton feels as if he can connect with people here more than anywhere else.

“Even though we’re surrounded by so much pain, we’re together,” he says.

___

A sense of solidarity is inescapable at Selah. Guests eagerly trade stories of their lost loved ones. And when someone is hurting, human or animal, they can count on others being by their side.

This day, Cacciatore is shaken because Shirin, a chocolate brown sheep with a white stripe across her belly, has been growing sicker and can’t be coaxed to eat, not even her favorite cookies.

Shirin was rescued after her two babies were taken by coyotes. Her udders were full for lambs no longer around to feed. She remained so shaken by it all that no one could get close to her for weeks.

As Cacciatore awaits the veterinarian, she and a frequent farm guest, 57-year-old Jill Loforte Carroll, dote on the sheep. Cacciatore tries to coax Shirin to eat some leaves and Loforte Carroll cues a recording of “La Vie en Rose” sung by her daughter Sierra before the quietly observant, shyly funny 21-year-old died by suicide seven years ago.

For a moment, it’s just three mournful moms sharing a patch of field.

When the vet arrives, their fears are confirmed, and as injections to euthanize are given, Cacciatore massages the sheep, repeatedly cooing reassuring words as her tears fall to the dirt below.

“It’s OK, baby girl, it’s OK,” she says. “You’re the prettiest girl.”

By the time the vet looks up with a knowing nod, seven people crouch around Shirin, splayed across the field in such anguished drama it seems fit for a Renaissance painting. On a farm shaped by death, another has arrived, but those who gathered infused it with as much beauty and comfort as they could.

“It’s not our children,” Cacciatore says before burying Shirin beneath a hulking persimmon tree, “but it’s still hard.”

This is Cacciatore’s life now, one she never could have imagined before her own tragedy. She has a Ph.D. and a research professorship at Arizona State University. A book on loss, “Bearing the Unbearable,” was well received. A fiercely loyal following has found solace in her work and her counseling.

“I had a little girl who was born and who died, and it changed the trajectory of my life,” she says. “But I’d give it back in a minute just to have her back.”

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OPINION

Disgraced ex-PM Liz Truss seeks to ruin any hopes for normal UK-China ties

Published

1 year ago

May 18, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

The former premier’s Taiwan trip is nothing but a provocation for Beijing to lash out at London, sinking any constructive dialogue

Liz Truss will always be remembered as a disastrous prime minister who spent only a month in office and was outlasted by a head of lettuce.

Her disastrous budget plans sent shudders through the UK economy, eliciting criticism from the British people, MPs and foreign leaders alike. Her ideology-driven political decisions found little sympathy with the public, which repaid her with abysmal approval ratings.

You’d think someone like that would have little credibility as a political adviser, but that apparently isn’t the case. Taiwan, which frequently pays washed-up Western right-wing fanatics to come and visit them as a political stunt, invited Liz Truss to Taipei on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Truss then gave a hawkish speech where she called for an end to all cooperation and dialogue with Beijing and the preparation of Russia-style sanctions in the event of a Taiwan conflict. She also repeated her suggestion of an “Economic NATO” – despite a track record that makes her the last person you’d want to listen to for economic advice.

‘Economic NATO’ needed to counter China – Truss

Since her brief stay in Downing Street, she has rebranded herself as a full-time anti-China hawk, and now uses her party position and credentials as a former prime minister to try to undermine her successor’s attempts to carefully edge back towards engagement with China. Truss was always a fantasist, a pro-Brexit zealot who embraced a confrontational stance during her time as foreign secretary.

However, as you can imagine, all you need to do to reinvent yourself these days is to become a China basher. It doesn’t matter how much of a joke you otherwise might be. Hence, the UK media made sure that her stay and words in Taiwan were given widespread coverage without the context of her political failures. The UK government has already distanced itself from her trip – a fact that Beijing should take careful notice of (and no doubt has).

The British Conservative Party has always been rife with that sort of factionalism. While the opposition Labour Party tends to hard-line suppress the more ideological wing of its MPs (hence the purge of the left-wing Corbynite faction), Tory ideologues have long held power as a “disruptive” force on the government itself, undermining its foreign policy. It’s a fracture which emerged during the Margaret Thatcher era, where following the breakdown of the “post-war consensus” of economic pragmatism, ideology gained ascendency in the party and soon manifested into Euroscepticism.

This tug of war lasted 30 years, making it harder for Conservative prime ministers to maintain a working relationship with the EU, and eventually culminating in Brexit itself. Once that was out of the way, these ideologues found a new target: China. While Truss has opportunistically jumped on this bandwagon, former arch-Brexiter Iain Duncan Smith had already made himself the UK’s Sinophobe-in-chief. Their common goal is simply to undermine stable ties with Beijing and provoke conflict by spurring on backbench rebellions, making them a challenge for the government to handle.

Taiwan predicts timeline for conflict with China

Consequently, while Truss may be a national laughingstock thanks to her disastrous tenure as prime minister, this new role she is taking on enables her to cause disruption on this issue. Taiwan, of course, knows this, because its entire foreign policy is premised on trying to undermine the ties of other countries’ relationships with Beijing by spending large amounts of money on inviting figures such as Truss. The timing of the trip was deliberate, coming immediately after the British foreign secretary’s engagement with a senior Chinese official following the coronation of King Charles III.

Taipei hopes that Beijing’s backlash over the Truss visit will target the UK government as a whole and punish the country. China has a record for being abrasive like this, having done so with the Czech Republic in the past and not winning any friends there as a result. If Truss is therefore allowed to dictate the flow of UK-China relations, she wins. Besides her, the UK has never been provocative on Taiwan at a senior level such as with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit last year for the US.

Thus, rather than causing a crisis, China should wait until the upcoming Taiwan elections take place and hope that the more pro-China Kuomintang Party (KMT), which once governed the whole country, will take power and stabilize cross-strait ties again. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) thrives off creating crises, as does the US with its military deployments, and amidst it all there is no intention for cool heads to prevail. While Pelosi was a blatant violation and huge provocation of the One China policy and US commitment to it, the Truss trip is an opportunistic PR stunt by a washed-up has-been who almost ran her country into the ground in a month. Ignore, move on and forget.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.

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OPINION

India facing challenge to steer SCO agenda away from Western-dominated frameworks

Published

1 year ago

May 17, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is looking at ways to address the most pressing global issues without being a disruptive influence

The upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit promises to be a watershed moment in the bloc’s history, coming amid unprecedented global challenges and new, emergent tensions.

While the SCO Foreign Ministers meeting, which took place on May 4 and 5, was tasked with preparing the agenda for the July 3-4 summit in New Delhi, there is still much work to do to ensure that India’s chairmanship will be a success.

The West has broken virtually all links with Russia because of the Ukraine conflict. Western sanctions against Russia are unprecedented in scope, carrying significant ramifications also for the developing world, including the economic disruptions caused by the weaponization of the US dollar. The European security architecture is in tatters. For the West to seek Russia’s strategic defeat while the country possesses formidable military and material resources makes no sense. Risking a potential nuclear conflict in particular is totally irresponsible.

The European Union has lost its already limited capacity to play an independent role, especially with Germany losing clout and Brussels appropriating more power. The doors of dialogue and diplomacy are being kept closed as NATO seeks military advantage over Russia, and uses Ukraine as a proxy.

At the other end of Eurasia, US-China tensions are rising over Taiwan, regional maritime disputes, strengthening of US-centered regional alliances and NATO overtures to Japan and South Korea. The US and the EU are warning China against supplying lethal arms to Russia under pain of sanctions, even as they seek China’s support in persuading Russia to end its military intervention in Ukraine, and this in the background of the high-level dialogue between the US and China having virtually broken down.

Can Eurasia’s rising political bloc show a united front against the West’s encroachment?

Both Russia and China, the principal pillars of the SCO, are at loggerheads with the West to different degrees, and the summit agenda will inevitably reflect this reality. The SCO represents a building block of multipolarity within the global system at the political, economic and security levels, a goal reiterated at the Foreign Ministers’ meeting.

While the other SCO members have robust links to both Russia and China, their connections with India are not as strong, despite mutual goodwill and shared interests. This is largely due to a lack of contiguity and direct access to Central Asia. With Iran and Belarus joining as full members, the SCO will achieve greater Eurasian depth. Both of these countries have been politically and economically targeted by the West. The SCO Foreign Ministers meeting also agreed on May 5 to grant dialogue partner status to Kuwait, the Maldives, Myanmar and the UAE, in addition to the nine existing dialogue partners. The growing interest demonstrates the appeal of the SCO as a grouping of non-Western countries that provide an alternative platform for nations to pursue their interests outside the Western-dominated international system.

Association with the SCO increases their margin to maneuver, primarily at the political and economic levels. Diplomatic support, hedging against Western sanctions, access to non-Western development banks, benefits from connectivity projects and infrastructure development, cooperation against terrorism, extremism and separatism, are obvious advantages.

India has taken its current presidency of the SCO seriously, organizing and hosting more than 100 meetings and events, including 15 ministerial level meetings. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has also stressed the great importance for India of developing multifaceted cooperation. He introduced the term ‘SECURE’ SCO on the basis of Security, Economic Development, Connectivity, Unity, Respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity, and Environmental protection.

As SCO Chair, India initiated an unprecedented engagement with the organization’s Observers and Dialogue Partners by inviting them to participate in more than 14 socio-cultural events. Many of the events hosted by India occurred for the first time in the framework of the SCO, such as the Millet Food Festival, Film Festival, Cultural Festival, the Tourism Mart, and Conference on Shared Buddhist Heritage.

Moscow Region representatives conduct roadshows to entice Delhi and Mumbai investors

Jaishankar noted that as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical upheavals, global supply chains had been disrupted, leading to a serious impact on delivering energy, food, and fertilizers to developing nations. He viewed these challenges as an opportunity for SCO members to address them collaboratively, noting that with more than 40% of the world’s population within the SCO, its collective decisions would surely have a global impact.

Additionally, Jaishankar highlighted the unabated menace of terrorism, and that combating it was one of the original mandates of the SCO. He drew attention to the unfolding situation in Afghanistan where the immediate priorities included providing humanitarian assistance, ensuring a truly inclusive and representative government, combating terrorism and drug trafficking and preserving the rights of women, children and minorities. This was echoed by the Chinese foreign minister.

India expressed its willingness to share its expertise and experience in the field of startups having helped cultivate over 70,000, more than 100 of which were ‘unicorns’. Last year, it proposed the creation of a Startups and Innovation working groups as well as one focused on traditional medicines, and the SCO meeting approved plans to operationalize these initiatives.

India believes that the SCO should look at reform and modernization to keep the organization relevant in a rapidly transforming world, and noted that discussions on these issues had already commenced. It also sought support for its long-standing demand to make English the SCO’s third official language, as this would enable a deeper engagement with English-speaking members and would take the SCO’s work to a global audience.

India also proposed the New Delhi Declaration as an SCO Summit Declaration at the meeting, as well as four other thematic joint statements on cooperation in de-radicalization strategies, promotion of millets, sustainable lifestyles to address climate change and digital transformation. India sought support for a timely finalization of these documents for approval at the SCO Summit.

Indian delegation wraps up successful business tour in Russia

According to Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, all participating parties considered the SCO as an important platform for joint combat against terrorism, separatism, drug trafficking, as well as cyber crimes. All favored more cooperation in such fields as transportation, energy, finance, investment, trade, the digital economy, regional connectivity, deeper cultural and people-to-people exchanges, environmental protection, climate change, sustainable development, and SCO’s strengthened cooperation with the United Nations and BRICS countries.

The meeting also offered the gathered foreign ministers an opportunity for intense bilateral meetings. For example, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met his Chinese counterpart to discuss the implementation of agreements reached between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in March.

The SCO continues to enlarge its footprint, widen its agenda, and carve out a non-Western space in the international system, but some key points of friction remain between members especially China and India. The two countries are currently embroiled in a border dispute that has yet to be settled. Additionally, India stands in opposition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative due to India’s concerns about connected sovereignty issues.

The other, less important fault line, is India-Pakistan relations. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bhutto Zardari did not help matters by making indirect jibes at India during his speech at the SCO meeting and further criticism of New Delhi in his interviews to the media. His comments elicited a sharp response by the Indian Foreign Minister, but only after the SCO meeting was completed. Pakistan is currently in the throes of a major internal crisis, which may affect its participation in the SCO summit. However, India-Pakistan differences are not germane to the SCO’s growing stature. Far more important is the Russia-India-China triangle.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.

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OPINION

China isn’t the biggest threat to Italy’s prosperity

Published

1 year ago

May 16, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

Rome is considering leaving the Belt and Road Initiative in a move which will place virtue signaling to other Western states above its own interests

Italy’s membership of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is up for renewal at the end of this year, and Western media outlets are speculating that Rome may choose to leave the pact.

Italy became the first and only G7 nation to join China’s multi-billion-dollar infrastructure vision, signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) just before a tidal wave of anti-China sentiment was unleashed on the world. Indeed, the country’s leadership was in a very different place then, with Italy being led by Giuseppe Conte of the Five Star Movement, whose populism faulted the Euro-Atlantic establishment for decimating the Italian economy through the 2008 debt crisis and the brutal austerity measures which followed. It is little wonder that Italy had decided to look eastwards.

Even 15 years on from the events of 2008, Italy’s economy still has not fully recovered. It was worth $2.4 trillion at the end of that year, but is only at $2.1 trillion now, and barely growing at all. New and concurrent economic crises have taken a toll. Italy’s current leadership no longer believes all roads lead to Rome, let alone to China’s modern-day Silk Road – rather, they lead to Washington. As pressure on the country has grown, its successive leaders, Mario Draghi and Giorgia Meloni, have sought to reset its foreign policy back to transatlantic-oriented goals, ending its rebellion against the establishment and thus contemplating quitting China’s grand initiative.

Italy may exit ‘New Silk Road’ – FT

Oddly enough, the truth remains that it is the EU and US that stand as the biggest threat to Italy’s prosperity, not China. While dumping the BRI will receive plaudits from the US-dominated commentary circles in these countries, the reality is that they offer no alternative, no plans, and no incentives to make Italy a wealthier country. It is the “sick man” of the G7, an advanced economy that has increasingly lost its competitiveness, but also one that has been thrust into decline by being a southern EU country and a net loser of Eurozone policies.

It is precisely because of the economic upheavals that the country has faced over the past 15 years and widespread political dissatisfaction, that radical and populist politics have gained ground. China was rightfully seen as an alternative, a country that could rapidly expand Italy’s exports and invest in crumbling public infrastructure. However, this has quickly become politically incorrect. Italy’s leaders argue that BRI participation has been a waste of time. However, the reality is that when Eurocrat Mario Draghi came to office, he sought to reset Italy’s foreign policy and began using new “golden powers” to veto and cancel Chinese investments in Italy on a large scale. In 2021 alone, he blocked three Chinese takeovers, including a seed and vegetable producer.

Following Draghi, Giorgia Meloni, despite her outward populism, has been even more prone to pledging Rome’s loyalty to the transatlantic cause, having decided to become vocal in support of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia and even visit Kiev. At this stage, it is very little surprise that her country is contemplating canceling participation in the BRI, something which can score political points and help dispel doubts about her loyalty to Brussels and Washington. Predictably, the mainstream media narrative readily depicts the BRI in predatory and malign terms, ignoring the obvious empirical truth that it is the EU that has saddled Italy with a national debt larger than its GDP, and not China. Of course, there is no alternative scheme or plan for Italy on offer should it leave the BRI, meaning it is cutting its nose off to spite its face.

EU defenseless against China – Berlusconi

By forfeiting its BRI membership, Italy will undoubtedly lose the opportunity to massively enhance its trade competitiveness, namely by opting out of projects such as Chinese-owned ports and railway links. As an example of this, Greece, to the southeast, has positioned itself as a “gateway to Europe” through Chinese ownership of Pireaus port and its connecting railways, which allows cargo to go up through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, into the port and then across Europe. Italy could have competed for a share of this, but it has chosen not to, and it’s not like it will be selling anything additional to the US with its protectionist “America first” policies, is it?

In doing so, Italy has chosen to stop being a leader pursuing its own path in the world to better strengthen its global clout, but instead to be a follower, to play second fiddle to the transatlantic establishment which doesn’t see it as a particularly prominent partner to begin with. Italy joined the BRI precisely because it was sick of being a “rule taker” from Brussels, in a similar vein to what Greece has experienced. Now it appears happy again to hold up the political orthodoxy of the elitist, US-led G7. In doing so, it can kiss goodbye any hopes of becoming a powerful and influential country again anytime soon. Italy is admired mostly for its past, as opposed to what it offers to the world presently, and if its current leadership has its way, that will likely remain the case.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.

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