The advice we get is too simplistic
When I was a kid, I remember being told that what I can do to “save the environment” was to turn the water off when I brush my teeth and to turn off the lights when leaving a room. This advice seemed a laughably inadequate response to the factories, trucks, planes, roads, and buildings I saw spewing pollution all around. The idea was: small, simple actions can make a difference if everyone does it. This is true, but it isn’t working.
Most of the advice we hear about how to stop global warming…
I’d been eying that dead Elm, standing at the edge of the field, for firewood.
A ghostly figure, standing tall amid all green late summer.
Probably made it 30 years before the disease found it. Succumbing to join its brethren.
Yet, it stood. Dried and stripped of color by the sun that had once been sustaining.
Light, now pealed bark, leaves long gone from brittle branches.
As I considered my approach, angle of attack, orange saw in hand,
A hairy woodpecker eyed me from neighboring scrag, his sideways glance disapproving.
Knowing what havoc the monster in my hands could reap.
The unique type of anxiety we experience under the COVID-19 cloud
I’ve been sick before. We all have. First comes the itchy throat or runny nose. Then that feeling deep in your body. Like you immune system ramping up to attention. You feel drained. Other things get much less important.
That is the point at which normally begin to re-frame my mental state from “I’m getting sick” to “I’m fighting something off”. I break out my arsenal of herbal and mineral remedies. Zinc, echinacea, herbal tea, raw honey, throat spray, propolis, salt water, neti pot etc. I basically throw everything…
When I got out of the final meeting of a working group formed by the state legislature here in Vermont to examine how to prevent exposure to toxic chemicals, we had been meeting for 6 months in response to a widespread drinking water contamination in the the Bennington area.
The environmental and public health agencies have been spending huge sums of money to find the contamination, test residents blood for a toxic chemical, and replace drinking water wells with municipal water lines. This has cost the state (Vermont tax payers) millions. …
This might seem to many as being a bit odd: Someone finds it amusing to revise the Declaration of Independence in accordance with modern times. However, this timeless document has so many little gems in it that it should be revisited regularly and (I think) revised to be more aligned with the issues we face today.
Thomas Jefferson himself said “Every generation needs a new revolution.” This has been more or less true in the broader sense of the word. Revolutions have been fought with regularity against a variety of injustices. Slavery, civil rights, TBGTQ+ rights, women’s rights, etc. Today…
I Balcom
Father, partner, teacher, student of Nature, scientist, and writer.
