There's an idea floating around. It tickled my ear and I followed it because it makes sense to me.

Instead of waiting until our loved ones leave us, could we tell them, while they still have ears to hear, clearly, the why and how we love them? Could we have a gathering of souls to celebrate one life whose expiration date is visible, whose bar code is fading, who, as my friend John says, has a rip in his space suit? 

He does, my friend John. He has a rip in his space suit, but he's still suited up and his face is tilted toward the sun, and he's still writing. God, is he a good writer.

I have only four of his pieces, shared with me over the past four years, but a mutual friend is getting a thumb drive full of many more of John's pieces so we, his writing community, can peruse, savor, read, and relish his style, breadth, depth, and the scope of his prowess on the page. 

John is a teacher, a synthesizer of wisdom won by living through hard times. His writing leaps off the page to comfort, question, hold accountable, or point out the delicacy of nature's beauty, or intricacies of the heart.

The plan is to meet in a cozy home and be together, reading from his work or from our own work.  We'll talk truthfully, raise a glass, hug, laugh, reminisce. Is crying aloud allowed? I don't think there are any rules. Mustn't be rules. No rules allowed, that is the first rule.

This song keeps playing in my head. It's written by Capote and Arlen and Barbra Streisand sings it on her People Album.

Don't like good byes, tears or sighs, 
I'm not too good at leavin' time,
I've got no taste for grievin' time, 
      no, no, no, no, not me.

You've been my dear one, ever my near one, 
I never thought that you would find 
another lover different kind, 
       but it came to be...

I presume John's going dancing with the angels while we struggle on below. It won't be as bright a world when he takes his light from it and from us. Good thing we've got night vision goggles and can always find his heart beating on the pages of his poems and recollections of adventures he had down here. 

Phoooey! I want to mend his space suit, kick Charlie to the curb in a far-away galaxy. Charlie is what he calls the cancer that's been his closest companion these past two or three years. I hate Charlie.

I'm glad we get to gather together whether the weather be fine as a feather but further more I want MORE. More time, please. More time with our friend. 

*poof* 

Hate good byes.

Love Is In the Air

So is dust, and leaves, and trash! The wind is fierce!

Part of the fence blew down.

Like a missing tooth, the gap lets us see more than we'd wish to of our neighbor's backyard.

Some roads were closed today in Oakland until fallen trees across them could be removed.

Today was the first time I saw actual photos of Australia from space. It's a bright orange glow. I can see how the tiniest spark on a day like today here, when winds are SO strong, could create a firestorm. We, too, could kiss goodbye our home, our neighbors, our neighborhood, the nearby park, the coyotes, deer, birds, newts, frogs, bugs... EVERY CRITTER. 

Climate change in Oakland means we're living day to day in a tinder box while the matches get closer and the winds more violent.

I'm visualizing soggy green hills. I'm dreaming of placid, gentle breezes. I'm praying for climate stability and a mandatory Twelve Step Program for arsonists.

March 15, I'll be one of five readers for a Sunday service dedicated to the environment. We've got to redouble our efforts to turn things around. Historically, in Rome, the ides of March was celebrated as the beginning of a new year, and a day for settling debts. I think it fitting we pay tribute to Mother Gaia, our beautiful Earth on this day. We owe her much debt. The Ides of March wasn't such a good day for Julius Caesar in the year 44 A.D. Perhaps we can look forward to something smashing happening to our 45th "leader" of the free world. Some large celebration, perhaps, of his head falling off, or at least his hair. 

I'm also fantasizing about who next will fill the Oval Office. Praying for any competent adult.

Fantasies abound about a clean sweep to get the lout out; Mousse-o-leenie mangled; the oval orifice occupied with offal; the trumpeter trampled; ANY COMPETENT ADULT IN THE WHITEHOUSE!!! NOT DJT!!!

Meanwhile, the fierce winds blow round the globe igniting fires with the smallest spark.  We're lucky there's still a bit of water in these hills. In a month or so, we'd best be very mindful. 

What would my beloved and I do? Where would we go if we survived a conflagration that took the entire house, neighborhood, park, all the critters, neighbors, birds, bugs and bobolinks? 

Those startling photos of Australia from space are harbingers of good change, I'd like to think. Surely, the devastation there must be a game changer for us. I am heartened to hear there are pagan people down on the ground who are doing good things for the animals. Making them little garments for their healing wounds; sewing slippers and mittens for burned koalas and kangaroos. 

We're all in this together. Your side of the life boat has a hole? I'm gonna sink too. Let us work together, shall we? What can I do right here right now? Stop eating meat. Almost. Drive less. Check. Refuse plastic bags, bottles, and one-time-use containers? Not there yet. Closer, but not complete.

Our granddaughter will inherit this earth from her parents. As her grandmother, I can say I have been fighting since the first Earth Day to make the world a better place for her, but it seems such a pitiful little difference that I've made on her behalf. I remember singing the songs. I remember signing petitions for ZPG (Zero Population Growth), but I already had two wonderful daughters, one of whom will not have children of her own, though we have a grand cat which she and her husband love very much. Cats don't leave a very large carbon footprint. They do eat birds if allowed outside. Bradbuy is not outside off leash. He's relatively neutral with his minimal carbon manufacturing. 

As a grandmother, I'm saddened by the woefully inadequate measures my country's government is implementing in order to mitigate the effects of our huge appetite for coal, oil, gas, and meat. I'm worried in the short run about the whole city around me burning up. I'm worried in the long run for all the refugees fleeing war-torn lands and drowned out coastal habitats. Big changes a comin'! 

[Deleted: A foul-mouthed rant against the tyrant.]

We may not ever again see both sides of the congress getting along amicably. There is so much work to do but polarization has arrested any progress. No one can work under the conditions now established. Democrats and Republicans just fight about everything... including how to fight. I'm working to tone down my rhetoric. I'm working hard to tame and harness my rage at the status quo for people of color, LBGTQ folk, women, children, and the natural world. I'm working on as many fronts as I can. I'm longing for equality to descend. It does not seem to be doing so, at least not from the skies over my town. Women are treated abysmally. Females of all ilk are still being bullied. 

Joaquin Phoenix used his acceptance speech for  Best Actor Oscar to wax environmental and to complain about how we all degrade the earth by our thoughtless use of too many resources. 

Would that our president heard it. Would that he could be the least bit kind, aware, gentle, thoughtful, or interested in anything other than himself. Then we might not be in as big a pile of doody as we are. He could LEAD us to repair what we've damaged and stop further damage to the world by legislating change of our evil ways.

Love is in the air? Where?

Beyond Despair: Are There Soul-utions?

During a recent Coffee and Conversation for a gaggle of gals at my Church of Last Resort, one of the mutually agreed upon topics was what to do to care for the earth and stop giving in to the debilitating paralysis of overwhelm and guilt that there's scarcely any one thing a lone person can do to make a difference.

Another group discussed Caregiver Burn Out, and how to take care of ourselves. The other tackled How Not to Despair In Despairing Times (for Liberals).

There were seven in our group. After sharing our sadness, rage, feeling frozen, and impotent to turn the tide of the lemming-like leap humans collectively seem to be making over the nearest cliff, we came up with some Soul-utions. 

In NO particular order, these suggestions were offered.

~Form a support group to help each other do things that stop adding to the problems of pollution, plastic inundation, over-consumption, and greed. Support also can help assuage guilt of not being able to do more, so we CAN keep moving forward without slitting our wrists!

~Know (or believe) that what we do at home is FELT throughout California, which MAY lead the nation in how to lower the fever Mother Earth is now experiencing. The analogy was shared about the beating of a butterfly's wings in Outer Mongolia being felt in the winds of the Sahara.

~Create small projects to do with others... like encouraging  coffee shops to stop giving out plastic straws. Encourage folks to bring their own re-usable mug to coffee shops, etc.

~Go into schools to help kids learn to sort trash. Empower them to know their actions make a difference. Give them hope: They're not alone, we're all in this crusade to reclaim our earth together. One of the women in our group teaches at an intermediate school. She says the many waste bin options for sorting lunchroom discards are willfully ignored by students who are so burdened by the weight of impending doom, they feel there's no hope. They are also angry to the point of acting out, or, worse, acting out their anger internally in the form of depression and even suicide! Yikes! These children are our future! Please, let us join with them and offer hope through action! The teacher is going to check with her administrator to see if we might bring a team of helper/sorter/listeners for several days to just be with and hopefully empower and instill hope in the children.

~Take a fact sheet and two or three friends to see the manager of our local grocery store. Hand over a hand-out with phone numbers and ideas for more ecological approaches to packaging instead of one time use plastic. Entreat them to lobby for their customers who want not the plastic. Send the ideas to headquarters. Tell the Corporate Officers we won't be buying their plastic tubs of salad, and sandwiches anymore and why.

~Take our left-over glass bottles and jars to the bulk bins, where available, to bring home our groceries in multi-use containers instead of relying on plastic one-time-use boxes, bags, and bottles. This works for things like shampoos, conditioners, lotions, potions, nuts, flours, seeds, powders, candies, cereals, grains, and dried fruits. We can even take a glass container to the butcher counter and have it filled with our choice from the meat case. Many stores now take a tare weight of our container, we fill it, then they re-weigh it and put a price sticker on it for the cashier to read in barcode form! So cool!

~Eat less animal protein. Eat more plant protein.

~Pick up trash on walks, especially plastics so they don't go into the ocean and kill marine life and birds.

~Look for new ecological MYCELIUM PACKAGING! Coming to a store near you soon! (we hope!) There's a Zero Waste grocery store in North Oakland on Telegraph that is full of ideas about shopping without wasting anything!
https://zerowastecalifornia.org/bulk-grocery-stores/ 

~Know the facts about the three biggest contributors to global warming according to environmental guru Jerry Rifkin: 
     1.  Buildings are the biggest contaminators of the environment: manufacturing of building materials, waste on demolition, etc. 
     2.  Second is meat consumption. 
     3.  Third is transportation. 

~Every drop in the bucket of a pro-earth action goes into the whole to become quarts, gallons, rivers and seas.  We cannot afford to feel helpless and hopeless. Keep on doing whatever we can to make up for being selfish,  unenlightened, ungrateful children of Mother Earth!

~Start small. Let's do what we can where we're planted. 

~Fires... are fearsome. Winds are fierce. Drought dries and shrivels all that once grew green. 

~Plastics & convenience are seductive. How do we wake up? Stay Woke?

~California MAY lead the country out of the dark ages where we suffer under the Trumpeting Bovine who's deregulating car manufacturers so we can guzzle even MORE gas.

~Global stability is a grass roots endeavor. OUR leaders are modeling and supporting greed. We who can, must take things into our own hands and persevere. Doing so cuts the victim stance in the bud. We are empowered people... or to use Holly Near's words: "We are a peaceful angry people and we are marching, marching for our lives..."

~One of our church members is Irish. She said the violence during the Troubles in Ireland was taken-on at the grass roots level. Those who led the peaceful demonstrations became leaders of the politicians, not the other way round. 

~Vote for environmentally woke candidates who will fight greed and overgrowth.

~Volunteering to register voters in swing states is a possible action for some.

~In The Hundredth Monkey by Ken Keyes,  Vision Books, 1981, the author describes something that happened on an archipelago of islands off the coast of Japan in 1952. Scientists provided Macaca Fuscata Monkeys sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste but not the gritty sand. An eighteen month old female named Imo discovered the potatoes were easier to eat when she washed them in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and taught their mothers too. The cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958, all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.  At some point there was a critical mass number of monkeys performing this action on the one island.  A curious thing happened! Without being shown how, the potato-washing behavior jumped to the monkeys on all the other islands in the archipelago, instantaneously! When that (imaginary number) hundredth monkey picked up the behavior, the mind field was strong enough to jump to the minds of other monkeys on other islands. When we Californians have a critical mass number of humans performing good things in honor of, and to save Mother Earth, the behavior may jump to other states. The story of the Hundredth Monkey is timely. Let's review how powerful our minds are in terms of influencing other's minds. We can call ourselves Environ-Mentalists! And Eartha Kids!!!

~We cannot control what Earth does. She may blow her stack through volcanoes, tremble under us, send us winds, furious tornados, hurricanes, monsoons, and droughts. We cannot invest in the outcomes of our actions, but only do what seems right and good and hope for the best. 

~Greed and overgrowth are not the way Nature does it. These human traits are not replicated in nature. There are natural boundaries in the natural world. Eventually, balance is restored when things get out of hand. 

~ Read What's the Matter With Kansas? How the Conservatives Won the Heart of America, by Thomas Frank.

~Elie Weisel attests: No one cried in Auschwitz. They played music, buried their violins to save the music, found community essential. Meaning was more important than bread. Getting bread for the children gave life meaning.  What gives our lives meaning? What can we do to keep hope alive?

~Grandmothers are motivated to hand down a better planet than it seems we've got left. Greening Grannies and Vigil Aunties, UNITE!!!

~There are good waste management procedures in some places. Do more of that!

~Is the action, product, or support I'm about to do/buy/give good for the children's children's children to the Seventh Generation? If not, to the best of my ability, could I NOT DO THAT? BUY THAT? SUPPORT THAT?

~Drops in the bucket become POURING not just drops. Between Greed and Climate Deniers there's a lack of respect for life. All is connected. Escalating climate change is due to greed.

~Pull on one thread. See where it leads.