Song of the Week

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Magnetite! ICE raids! Fred Hampton! Let’s get started.

Magnetite is found in human brains, and most famously in the noses of salmon who use these magnetized crystals that are embedded in special olfactory cells. They use these crystals to navigate through oceans, and back to their birthplaces by helping them sense direction and magnetic intensity. This is what gives salmon their incredible homing abilities. This skill is also referred to as magnetoreception, which is a great word! So where does magnetite come from? Bacteria create it, gathering iron from water. My god this is cool.

Magnetite is a naturally magnetic black iron oxide mineral (see photo below) and a major iron ore, known for attracting magnets and is found in various rocks and living organisms as mentioned above. 

I hiked to Magnetic Rock this summer, which I had been wanting to do for many years. I finally found myself solo, with some time on my hands, and on the Gunflint Trail so I set off on the 3 mile round trip hike. This place does not get enough attention, and while I spent a few hours online searching for a Ojibwe and Dakota perspective about this place, I wasn’t able to find anything. If you know anything more about this, please let me know. The walk to Magnetic Rock was slippery, and fun. It was rainy, and the rocky trail was dotted with hundreds of Pear Puffballs to my left and right which I harvested along the way. I passed by a Russian woman who, staying dry under her umbrella, was carrying an unwieldily cat carrier. Yes with her cat inside. Perhaps they needed some magnetic healing? She looked annoyed that the hike was likely more than the 1.5 miles we were told. It is worth the slightly longer hike though. Once you reach the magnetic rock you start to wonder about deep time, magnetic fields, glaciers, and how the hell you and this rock got here.

Here is why I am writing this. I know where my home is. I know where my homes are. I can find them when I need them, which has made me a relentless person in many ways. Sometimes, it makes me a pain in the ass. Mostly, it’s helpful. I don’t know if humans use magnetite like salmon do, though I suspect we do from what I’ve read about it and how I sense my way through the world when I’m lost. This subconscious 6th sense is about closing your eyes, feeling your body in the time-space continuum, and finding your true north.

With ICE still heavily present in Minneapolis and MN at large right now, I invite you, us to home-in. What are your superpowers? Where do you feel your magnetite crystals? How can you get creative, in a nourishing way, to imagine the world you want and keep working towards it? Can you take one step closer this week? There’s about 200 folks who get this newsletter, if each one of us receiving this talked to ten people this week who were not yet plugged into this work, invited them to take actionable steps to organize our communities, we could involve 2,000 more people, THIS WEEK. Tap into your somatic knowing and if you get distracted easily, just pull up ten people on your email or phone right now and tap them in. If you’re not on a ICE Watch thread yet, and you live in Minneapolis, reach out to me and I’ll get you started. Or attend a Monarca training, they can help you plug in also. The more of us who are involved, the safer we will be.

This brings me to Fred Hampton. Remembering Chairman Fred Hampton by Ricardo Levins Morales. Ricardo said in this article that stories get passed on through repetition. He always posts this about Fred Hampton this week. I wanted to uplift this article so we remember him, and that what threatens the FBI and ICE the most— is standing with the most vulnerable, and refusing to take the bait to fight horizontally against each other. In doing so, we bridge the race and class divides that can take down even the most powerful amongst us.

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xoxo Eiko