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St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
People on both sides of the issues of abortion and contraception held events at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location. The police set up barriers to created separate areas for each group.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
There was a time before...
She stood on the side of a mountain... 8,000 kilometres from home. And had not a care in the world.
She was a slip of a girl then, weighing only 54 kg and thought nothing of climbing halfway up a mountain, halfway around the world. The fearlessness of youth, or perhaps the naivety.
She was innocent then. It was before she knew true love, although there were two men in her life awaiting her return, and for better or worse she would choose one over the other. It was before digital cameras and so she carried a bunch of film cannisters with her in a canvas backpack and shot each frame with care, meting out the film so it would last the journey. It was before marriage and it was before the trials of pregnancy would change her body, before childbirth, before her life burst with the joy of her children, before the responsibilities of parenthood, the weight of mortgages, the stress of employment, of deadlines. Before the magic of the internet, before divorce, before smart-phones, before love. It was before.
She had spent the morning exploring the colour of the local markets in the township of Pisac. Pyramids of green coca leaves towering on colourful blankets, hundreds of different varieties of potatoes piled up like the crumbling Incan ruins that dominated the mountain above (Peru is home to over 4,000 varieties of potato). Canvases of yellow and purple corn cobs. Fluffy white alpacas, spitting and snorting, their hooves skittering on the stone-paved square as busy women pushed and shoved their way in the business of markets, buying and selling and haggling. Brown children with red rosy cheeks. Snotty and grubby with wide brown eyes and matted dusty mops of hair played in the shade of a pisonay tree that dominated the plaza. The aroma of roasted guinea pigs and the stench of animal manure pervaded.
The local people were generally shorter than her 5’1’’ and for once in her life she could look over the heads of the crowds of people, colourfully dressed in local costumes, scarlets and ultramarines and magentas, and sporting an odd assortment of head-gear. There were no other tourists then, just her and her brother.
The day, is still clear in her memory, standing on the hillside among the Incan ruins, over 2,000 metres above sea level. She can still remember the crispness and chill of the air in the shadow of the mountain. The slight headache she had from the altitude, the shortness of breath as her lungs gasped for air as she climbed ever upward on rocky steps and through grassy terraces. She paused for breath to survey the scene below, and gazed across to the ruined granaries that clung to the steep hillside opposite. She drank in the stillness and the quiet.
The village disappeared from view beneath the terraces, in the lee of the mountain. The river writhed through the valley below in silvery snakes and occasionally, carried on vesper of wind, the ubiquitous strains of Peruvian pan pipes whispered in her ears. A kestrel hovered in the impossible blueness of the sky above. So clear that when she looked up she felt like she was falling upwards into it. But that was before she became “iffy” about heights.
She had cut her hair short, like a boy, but only for ease of travelling for the 3 months she would be in South America. Her hair grew quickly, so she wasn’t afraid of wearing it short, she remembers the unfamiliar breath of the cool air as it brushed the back of her neck.
And she rested for a while on the cut and fitted stones of the temples.
And she snacked on corn chips, small rectangular ones that weren’t salted, that weren’t flavoured in any way.
And she drank carbonated orange drink out of a bottle clearly marked “Coca Cola”.
Later they would stop at a roadside restaurant near Ollantaytambo. An old Spanish-style villa on the banks of the Urubamba River, where it cut its way through the Andes. The day had become suddenly hot and they sought leafy shelter under a vine-covered pergola in the gardens beyond, swatting flies and waiting for service. Dry bread arrived. And a menacing bowl of Jalapeños. The bread was hard like a brick, too hard to bite into, she tried to gnaw at it, but worried she’d break a tooth. Instead they dipped it, to soften it, into the juice of the jalapeños. The chillies were frighteningly hot and the juice-soaked bread tingled on her lips.
She was 8,000 kilometres from home. She was high on adventure. She was optimistic and she was young and she was carefree. But that was in a time before.
How could she know where her life would take her or how much her heart could possibly break.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Supporters and opponents of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Opponents and supporters of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Opponents and supporters of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Opponents and supporters of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Supporters and opponents of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Opponents and supporters of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Opponents and supporters of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Supporters and opponents of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Supporters and opponents of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Supporters and opponents of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Supporters and opponents of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Governor O'Malley receives Betty Tyler award from Planned Parenthood by Tom Nappi at Baltimore, Maryland
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Supporters and opponents of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Supporters and opponents of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Governor O'Malley receives Betty Tyler award from Planned Parenthood by Tom Nappi at Baltimore, Maryland
St. Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2012
Supporters and opponents of Planned Parenthood held separate gatherings at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood location.
2012-04-06 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.