21 Days and counting

Well, as you may have figured, we're going back to full-time living in the RV.  The challenge is that this one has an interior living space of about 20 ft long by 6'2" wide  the interior height is 6'3" which doesn't leave a lot of room for storage of things. We each will have two overhead cabinets for clothing and other articles and we'll share three drawers in the bath area as well as a wardrobe cabinet for hanging items. We have figured out a tidy home for everything and we've been working on identifying what must come with us.   On the outside, we'll have a couple of bicycles on a rear door mounted rack and probably a couple of camp chairs as our living and play room will be the great outdoors.  Inside there will be space for two guitars, a mandolin, and a melodica as well as our sound equipment in case we have any gigs to play along the way.

Anyway, Janie and I are committed to doing this for at least the next year and we're pretty good at living with little, and with sharing space, so we think we can do it.

We went to North Dakota in August to join the Standing Rock community in standing to protect the water of the Missouri River (M'ni Sosa) or (m'nisosa). After our first visit, we went back four more times over the last few months.  Here are some random pics of Brigid and her surroundings.

As you can see, Our last trip was during a lovely ground blizzard.

Upon our return from the last trip on Dec 3rd, 2016, we decided that we needed to be free to be able to stand with (mainly) Indigenous People as they struggle with oppressing corporations, misunderstandings, and governments around Turtle Island.  So, in 19 days Janie will work her last day of work here in Colorado, and in 21 days we intend to depart on our tour.  We have called it the "Indigenous Peoples Solidarity and Listening" Tour, The "From Standing Rock to You" Tour to name a couple.  We're still searching for that perfect title.

By the way, since our friends at Standing Rock (which means particularly the camps of Sacred Stone, Rosebud, and Oceti Sakowin) seemed to welcome our representation of Veterans for Peace (VFP), we hope to represent VFP in our travels for this upcoming year.  We hope to communicate closely with national and our local chapter and let them know what we find.  They will be able to help spread the word about injustice we find, as well as call out a team of Veterans for Peace where appropriate in case we are needed to stand on the front lines as directed by the local folks on the ground.

Thanks for following along.  Please encourage us to keep up the blog.... don't let us get lazy.  Also invite us to your local areas if there is need or if we can educate and play music for some of your friends.  

Mitakuye Oyasin

Martin Bates (The States)

Things are changing.  We're going back on the road.  More later.  Here's our lovely Brigid who will take us on more grand adventures.