Lately our world has turned upside down as fears of COVID-19 and its fallout constrict the collective breath of humanity.
Many authorities have responded with unprecedented orders of shutdowns and quarantines, prompting others to imagine even worse scenarios of widespread social and economic collapse of even greater consequence as well as erosion of civil liberties.
It is a hard time, not the best of springs. But the silver lining in this cloud surely includes some major soul lessons for us all, including compassion, gratitude and humility.
Compassion and Gratitude: it’s Hard for Everyone
First, it invites us to appreciate that this is a big challenge for nearly everyone. For a small percent, it means actual pain and death from the disease. For the vast majority, it means myriad fears and hardships: of loved ones dying, of losing a job, a business, social group, or even food and shelter as savings disappear. As we try to comprehend the scale of all the lost dreams, the lost social supports, the lost security, the lost hope it is clear that all people deserve gentle compassion as this unfolds, including ourselves.
In addition to compassion, we can feel great gratitude towards the countless front line health care workers who serve in the face of personal risk, the farmers, grocers , delivery workers and others who continue to serve us faithfully. And let us also feel both compassion and gratitude towards our political leaders as they struggle to make crucial decisions in which they could err by either doing too little or too much. Who would want such a responsibility? What if you get it wrong?
The Humility of Accepting That We Do Not Know
Both compassion and gratitude are expressions of love. And so is humility, the integrity of knowing when we do not know, and of refraining from asserting that we have a corner on the truth as we enter the maelstrom of both mainstream and dissident views flying back and forth on social media, without which we are apt to sink into disrespect and incivility. We are all called to this kind of humility as we watch how we each respond to this crisis through the filters of our conditioned beliefs, experiences, position and training.
Conditioned thinking is just a fact of being human. Some are conditioned to conform, making sacrifices and following all the guidelines without question or complaint. Others incline towards dissent and project into this crisis a power grab by hidden elites, be it the Illuminati, Big Pharma or the Anti-Christ. Or they spread the meme that this not viral, but rather the start of 5G taking down humanity, secure in believing they alone know what's going on. Yet others, even MD's, assert that this is not caused by a virus at all.
Meanwhile others seek to apply reason and evidence, which is not as clear as some assert, criticizing any minority medical scientists who dare to suggest that the authorities are overreacting with dangerous and Draconian measures to a wave of illness not far from the normal peaks of influenza.
The common thread is that we all want to know what is going on, what caused it and what it means for our future. And we all come to our conclusions: even as I wrote this a message popped into my Facebook feed from someone I don’t really know, a self-described spiritual teacher: “Something fishy is going on here.”
OK, maybe, but maybe not. Right now at least, can we really know for sure? We can make some educated guesses, but there is really very little we can know with 100% certainty about this almost unprecedented development. So we can but do our best to understand, not overreact, and allow others the same.
Looking deeper spiritually speaking, this shows us how intolerant our minds are of not knowing, especially about things that seem dangerous. We can observe how much we want to find answers and then to believe what we believe, justified or not. It reveals how much fearful stories constrict the mind, whether stories about an avalanche of death and disease, about a police state or about economic and social collapse. You name it. The stories of fear are countless and they lead to isolation, blame and attack.
Is there a gentler and more intelligent way? What if we took this moment as an opportunity to set aside fear and acknowledge the supreme truth that it is OK not to know. We each see but a tiny fragment of reality and we are all reaping a lesson in the personal and collective humility of “NOT knowing.”
So why is this? Why do we rarely question our own beliefs?
Perhaps it is that we hold onto an unexamined assumption that we CAN know the answers, that they are there somehow, and that knowing them will save us. This creates a false sense of security and superiority as the mind takes pride in knowing, in believing that our own particular beliefs are superior to those of others.
But if we are honest and humble, we soon learn that one of the few things that we can actually know for sure is how much we do not know. We can believe that we know, but that does not make it so. And ignorance of this truth is behind most of the disharmony and dysfunction in our social and political world.
Not Knowing: Better Than It Sounds
Though we may find ourselves again and again reverting to thinking we can find all the answers to life's challenges, not knowing is better than it sounds. Not knowing opens up space for new ideas and new responses not constricted by fear, panic or groupthink. It opens up space for guidance from a deeper intelligence behind all life. And it removes so many mental barriers between people and cultures.
Not knowing opens up space to be still and at peace, to pause in the face of fear, take a deep breath and invoke the goodness with each of us and life. Then, and only then, can we can meet this global challenge with the compassion, gratitude, humility and love that we need to climb this and every mountain.
Life is a creative journey. Every day, each moment, each act, each though is an opportunity for creative expression. And, like actors in a vast cosmic play, together we all co-create this infinitely complex thing we call human life on Earth.
I once read that in every species there are two currents: the conservatives, who maintain what has been working so far, and the innovators, the creative explorers who try new things and who become the cutting edge of evolution. And though these forces often clash, we need both and it is a dance between them. Both have a place.
I would add to this observation, however. It’s not us versus them. I think we each have both of these forces within us: the ability to keep on keeping on, to plug away with the known, and also, the spark of the creative that drives us to try new things.
Keeping things going in the standard way has obvious benefits and limits. As for innovation, trying new things often seems to have no higher purpose other than play, perhaps play itself being how we best learn. And sometimes our most treasured innovations and ventures may not succeed as we hoped. Sometimes they create problems, as creative chemistry and industry have done.
But sometimes they can and do change the world. When Steve Jobs hired the people at Apple who created the many devices that have interconnected the greater mind of humanity, wisely, he chose those who also excelled in humanities and arts over the technocrats.
My ancestor John Adams, a founding president and a farmer, also spoke of this, pointing to the natural order of stability and security first, then innovation and play. He said that he studied politics and war and government, so that his children could study science and math and navigation and business, so that their children could explore painting and poetry and ceramics and architecture. And that is exactly what happened. I am one of the lucky descendants who got to explore the creative arts, which I did. Though we have always lived to some extenet under the shadows of the nuclear age and a time of environmental threat, most of us here are the lucky children who have been able to live creative lives in a time of abundance, liberty and opportunity.
For me, that has meant a lot of exploration of the visual arts, as well as writing. As you can see from the small fraction of my work on display here, I explored a diversity of media. I used crayons and acrylics, oils and pastels and whatever I could find. I glued spaghetti and eucalyptus buttons, sand, plaster, jewels and beans alongside pencil and paint. I explored portraits of Native Americans that seemed to draw out unhealed issues from other lives. I printed up little books and inspired sayings and sold them at craft fairs.All along, I create abstracts that remind me of the formless and infinitely creative space behind all form.
As Adams invited, I have also been at least a wannabe architect and city planner. In 1994 I designed our passive solar home in Eugene, where we lived and made a living for twenty years. To decorate our homes I tried my hand at stained glass, floral wreaths, hand painted clocks and ceramics, homemade futons and sofas, and more than I can remember. It was lovely and comforting to nest in. Home is my refuge. It is safety, comfort and that stable conservative thread that keeps life going.
As I said, I also wrote, and have done a lot of critical thinking and research about many matters. Creativity is widely curious and I think you will find this trait in many artists. With my husband Richard, a veterinarian, I co-authored a best selling Rodale book with innovative recipes that led the way to feeding home prepared diets for companion animals. As of March 2017, it is now in its 4th edition, to which I made major contributions and also illustrated.
At times I blamed this book, along with the overcast skies of Oregon, for taking over the artist in me, drawing out my left brain and opening up many business and teaching opportunities we worked on together for many years. But it has also given us both a powerful chance to impact a lot of people with messages about healthy food, about sustainability, ecology, right relationship and holistic thinking.
And that leads to another thread woven throughout this life story, not unlike the one that called to Adams. Ever since college years at Berkeley I have longed to change the world for the better. I think that has called many or most of us as well. HOW to do that has always been the biggest challenge.
Though I started as an art major, fine art seemed incapable of changing the world to really meet the social and environmental challenges of our day. Thinking it held the answers, I entered a PhD program in social psychology in 1971: change society, change the world. But soon this was clearly too stalwart and limited to silly predictable experiments you’d have to “prove” with abstruse statistics.
And so, like many of our generation, I explored social change through personal transformation and spirituality. For a while, during our 20 years in Oregon I was a licensed counselor, but that too, soon seemed too narrow and too self absorbed, leading more into the ego than beyond it.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. Meanwhile, I kept busy and helped secure our retirement years renovating real estate.
Yet inside I still longed to serve the higher good, to do what most needs doing at this point in history, AND at the same time, to follow my natural inclination and gifts to express beauty.
It is often hard to see how the threads of your life weave together when you are in the midst of it. All I knew was that about 2006 I really wanted to come to Sedona and paint and become part of the wonderful art community that is here, whose heart is the Sedona Arts Center, which will now receive 25% of sales in this show.
So we moved here. I studied at SAC and I taught at SAC. I’ve won a number of fine awards and have been in the Plein Air Festival seven times. Drawing on my experience creating events and workshops with Richard for veterinarians, I’ve created group shows with poetry readings, have had my own gallery for a while.
Mostly, I painted landscapes, thinking I would spend the rest of my life perfecting that gift as much as I could. I did focus, more than I ever have, and I feel good about the many beautiful landscape paintings and pastels that resulted.
At the same time, I soon began to integrate my interests and wrote a lot of heart felt poetry to accompany many of my paintings. I am very pleased with how these two, as well as spirituality, came together in my 2013 book, “Spirit of the Earth.” The threads of the tapestry began to join, and I hope you will take a look at it. Many people have found it inspiring, including me. It comes through me more than from me.
So, as in the 1980s in California, I again began a serious study of painting landscapes, and soon, to grow them. In the tradition of countless ancestors, I have always kept a garden, and here on the rocky dry soils of Sedona with an abundance of hungry wildlife, necessity has been the mother of invention, as it has always been in all species. This time the Muse of Creativity led to designing and building a variety of screenhouses and container gardens to grow and defend lovely greens, tomatoes, potatoes, garlic and more.
About 2012 I began offer green living, garden tours and presentations to interested people, including on YouTube. In 2014 it morphed into a monthly potluck group. This time the creative act was less about stuff and more about relationships. It became a community of people sharing an interest in creating a better world, together. Many of you, as you know, are here.
We often watch films and in October 2014 many of us saw the life changing film,“Cowspiracy.” Overnight, after learning the profound truth that a simple, healthy change of diet was truly probably the most important thing any of us can do to change the world for the better, most of us made the switch to a whole food plant based diet.
Now, each day we eat this way we each save about 1100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 sf of rain forest and one innocent animal’s precious life. And that matters, because, unless more of us make this change, and soon, in ten years we could lose the Amazon to grazing and to growing livestock feed. Animals agriculture is the #1 human contributor to greenhouse gases and in the coming decades we will lose much of our fresh water supplies to its inefficiencies. If we continue eating seafood as we are, by 2050 we could fish out the entire ocean. This is not a good legacy to leave our grandchildren, nor all the life forms of this blue green jewel of a planet spinning in space.
And so now, much of my life is now dedicated to spreading the word about making this shift, through blogs, working with others, offering presentations, and creating significant changes to the 2017 edition of our Rodale book, after learning that dogs in particular, can not only adapt to but live longer and healthier on a plant based diet as well. And their dietary footprint on the earth is quite significant, especially due to the trend to feed them lots and lots of fresh raw meat. I also hope you will take a look at this latest edition, which I got to illustrate (the originals are for sale here) or at least take one of the free postcards available here. It includes a recipe that has helped one dog live to age 26, and others to advanced years as well. Also, please take a copy of my plant based diet suggestions for humans. They are simple, healthy and tasty.
So that’s my story, for now.
What can we learn about creativity from from this particular life of diverse wanderings and focused production, as well as musings upon your own?
First, we need to understand who we are. We are all highly creative beings whose every thought impacts the world. It is our very nature, because we are inseparable from the creative Source of all life, the great orchestrator of it all, which often orchestrates in ways we cannot presently understand from our little corner of the world. I think in our afterlife “life review” it will all be clear.
Second, I think we each come in with a mission. Changing the world is important to many of us, and so are many other things that we come here to learn. How to love, how to forgive, how to be patient, how to trust, how to create.
Third, every act we perform is a creative one. We don’t always seem be able to create or have choice over much of what happens in life, but we always get to choose how we react to it and what we make of it. Therein lies our happiness, and our power to transform life.
Fourth, let us honor both sides of us: the creative innovator and the tried and true conservative that keeps the food growing and the houses built and the bills paid.
Finally, let us trust the course of events and to be patient. It can be confusing to tie together diverse interests that seem to call in different directions or to find out which doors will open and which will close, and why.
To do that I have found it best to trust my heart and to respond to the doors that open and walk away from those that close. Without questioning my impulses, I have usually just followed them with confidence.
Proceeding in this way, with I know now that I have made a difference in this world, not necessarily in a way that I could ever have predicted, but I know that I have contributed to a chain of events that is helping to awaken this world. And where that leads next in terms of creative projects, I have no idea, but I will trust where my heart and life leads me.
Despite all the bad news in the world, I have also come to believe that a very positive future awaits humanity and our planet. In the still of the night, just before dawn, sometimes I awaken and I know that the best is yet to come. Many others report this sense as well, including some who have had deep experiences with the Light in Near Death Experiences. There will be hard times, for sure, but I believe we will get through it. It is the grand power of nature, of life itself, that is expressing through each of us in zillions of ways that no single one of us can truly comprehend.
Life is creative and innovative and so are we. Let us trust that.
Thank you so much for coming and for the creative acts that each of you do to make a better and more beautiful world.
In Wendell Berry’s book of essays, The Gift of Good Land (North Point Press, 1981), the essay “Solving for Pattern” is one I have returned to multiple times in the past 35 years. While the book is about agriculture, it is equally about culture in general. Berry says industrial farming solutions to food production “destroy, first, the health of the soil and, finally, the health of human communities,” and that he “could just as easily be talking about sanitation systems that pollute, school systems that graduate illiterate students, medical cures that cause disease .... This is the kind of surprise that is characteristic of our time: the cure proves incurable....” He goes on to say “it is only when it is understood that our agricultural dilemma is characteristic not of our agriculture but of our time that we can begin to understand why these surprises happen, and to work out standards of judgment that may prevent them.”
Berry describes three kinds of solutions to problems:
The solution that causes a ramifying series of new problems, in which the new problems can’t be solved by the expertise that produced the initial solution. He uses the example of cattle feed lots that produce a factory-like order and efficiency, but this mechanical order immediately produces biological disorder in damaging the health of the animals, the surrounding land and watershed, adjoining ecosystems, and the economic and physical health of human communities.
The solution which immediately worsens the problem it was intended to solve – as when the problem of soil compaction is “solved” by a bigger tractor, which further compacts the soil, which makes a need for a still bigger tractor. We see similar results with drug treatments that create side effects requiring additional drugs to counteract these effects, each drug adding still more side effects, ultimately destroying the health of the person seeking a cure.
These two kinds of solutions are obviously bad, serving “one good at the expense of another” and leaving the original problem unsolved.
3. It is when “health is set down as the aim” that the third kind of solution becomes evident – a solution that causes a ramifying series of solutions, and takes into account the larger pattern or patterns within which the problem exists. In other words, the solution takes a systemic view of the world. This is the move away from reductionism that T. Colin Campbell describes in his book Whole.
As Berry says, “A bad solution is bad, then, because it acts destructively upon the larger patterns in which it is contained ... most likely, because it is formed in ignorance or disregard of them. A bad solution solves for a single purpose or goal, such as increased production. And it is typical of such solutions that they achieve stupendous increases in production at exorbitant biological and social costs.
A good solution is good because it is in harmony with those larger patterns ... the way a healthy organ acts within the body.”
When I think about the benefits of plant-based nutrition, what I see is a “good solution,” in harmony with larger patterns. It is a solution that promotes health and prevents disease. It is a solution that preserves rainforests, allows oceans to recover from animal agriculture pollutants, and fish to recover from human harvesting. It is a solution that saves animals from cruel and inhumane lives and deaths, and saves the land from the impact of industrial livestock production. It is a solution that doesn’t just stop the increase in human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, but significantly reduces those emissions. And with 18% of our GDP going to healthcare spending, it is a solution that heals our economy and frees up resources for infrastructure, education and other development.
To be sure, societal change to plant-based nutrition will cause other problems, particularly for the individuals and industries that make their livings from the production of animal products, or for those whose business is to attempt to mitigate the negative effects of these products (e.g. the pharmaceutical and sickness care industries). But these are the problems of transition, as we move away from unhealthy practices. These are problems like that of the obese person who must buy new clothes when he or she achieves a healthy weight. They are still problems that must be addressed, and they will cause difficulty, but they are ones we should welcome. As we trade harmful and unsustainable practices for those in harmony with nature (both our own nature and that of the larger world), we find solutions that build on each other, reinforcing the pattern of systemic health – in our bodies, our communities, and the natural world.
Beverly Ann Bow, co-founder, Healthy World Sedona,
My main art form this last year has been so full of learning about the huge environmental impact of the way we eat upon our one and only planet. This 10 minute video is drawn on months of research, and a bit of technical learning about A-V. I hope you find it as inspiring to watch as it was to produce. Please share! Feel free share and to embed on other sites. We need to get the word out!
Recently a good friend and I have been dialoguing by email on the subject of diet. Formerly a vegetarian, she began eating meat again, feeling that it was best for her health. To her credit, she tries to obtain it from humane, local and grass fed sources. My view was and is that we need to really listen to the science that shows how we can thrive on plant-based diets and that the sustainability of the Earth itself really depends upon that. Not to mention the immense suffering factory farming causes to animals, even as it uses the minimal amount of resources.
My friend's shift to eating meat turns out to be a common story among once-vegetarian friends, promoted by a series of high-protein diet fads in the past two decades (Atkins, Paleo, Zone, Body Type O, etc.) , controverting even the current healthy diet recommendations of the WHO and the USDA, primarily based on plant foods.
It has been a fruitful discussion. Most of all, it has become apparent that in exploring this or any issue of importance, the starting place, and the ground we walk upon, is the state of mind in which discussion occurs.
If we proceed from egoic consciousness, full of images of self and other, our past conclusions and assumptions and fixed ideas, we will not see anything new. Nor can we truly draw upon a greater intelligence that binds together the interests of all living things and the Earth as a whole.
The challenge of humanity, as well as its blessing, seem to be our capacity for thought, memory and beliefs. While it has brought us a long way materially and technologically, it has also created huge, increasingly complex social and environmental problems.
Why is that?
By its very nature, thought divides, separates, contrasts and compares: my beliefs vs. yours, humanity vs. nature, good vs. bad, the interests of profit but not of the people, and so on. We are each deeply conditioned to operate and think as though we were separate, limited individuals, struggling to survive, to be right, to achieve, to think well of ourselves and our family/tribe/group of identity.
This can be seen as a collective stream of consciousness we all share, even as we imagine ourselves to be separate entities. Once this consciousness was more tribal and more connected with Nature, the "Ancient Mind "described in the lovely new book, The Holy Universe: A New Story of Creation for the Heart, Soul, and Spirit," by David Christopher. Now our human consciousness is almost entirely absorbed in the "Modern Mind," a secular/technological/profit-based/dominating way of thinking that is bringing us to brink of environmental disaster, given our numbers.
What is most needed now, as we face any problem, is a comprehensive, whole system consciousness, what Christopher calls the "Planetary Mind." Such a state seeks the highest good of all. It is a deeper intelligence behind all life and it wants to awaken in each of us, drawing upon yet transcending all the knowledge we have accumulated.
To come together to solve our individual and collective challenges, That includes all our prides, our accomplishments, our conclusions, our ideas that we know and the other does not, and even the whole construction of the me and the you, the us and the them. This takes being comfortable, daily, with not knowing. It takes a humility that is not a self image, but a genuine realization that the mind, as we know it, is very limited and divisive.
Then, from a deeper well of stillness and the intelligence of Life itself, we can seek and along the way find solutions that are for the highest good of all, whether it's for our bodies, our families, our businesses, our nations or our planet.
Wonderfully, the best solution for a given problem often helps to solve many other issues.
For instance, learning how to eat without meat, dairy or eggs has widespread benefits, starting with your own health (see videos by Drs. John McDougall, Dean Ornish and others), a sustainable and satisfying diet that with little effort can make you lean, fit and long lived.
But in addition to this, for every day you eat a plant based diet you save:
• 1100 gallons of fresh water
• 45 pounds of grain
• 30 square feet of pristine rainforest (=an acre a year)
• 20 pounds of C02
• a lifetime of suffering of one animal life (98% of them in stressful and cruel factory farms shuttered away from our view).
Amazing, huh? I am so excited about the vegan diet lately precisely because it is one of those issues that works at so many levels on so many environmental and spiritual problems, offering us a beautiful way to live our values of integrity, compassion and kindness. It feels good, it tastes good, and it's more healthful. And it's downright joyful and enlightening to know that it accomplishes all of that.
So, for every problem we encounter, let us put aside our differences and our past conclusions and habits. Let us approach our issues with a beginner's mind that is open and caring. Then we will find the answers that work for all.
Sedona artist Susan Pitcairn increasingly finds herself exploring the art of “green living” these days, which will be featured at her home from 11 am to 2 pm at this year’s National Solar Tour in Sedona Saturday October 4th as well as a “Greening Harmony” educational garden tour October 11th.
“My husband Richard calls me ‘Farmer Sue’ lately,” she jokes. A neighbor even asked if she was selling produce, as she can be seen daily puttering around several versions of “garden houses” she has built in the past year, her name for screened structures that can be covered with plastic and made into greenhouses in the winter.
Susan Pitcairn in her rainwater-fed "Garden House,"
a "Green Living" exhibit on this year's National Solar Tour.
“I thought she was kidding,” remarks Pitcairn. “We would starve to death on what I manage to grow here, between all the critters, the soil and hot,dry weather. My potato and squash beds were totally wasted by javelinas one night when I left the gate open, and we may never learn who cleanly removed a football sized watermelon near our ‘Thousand Dollar’ tomatoes. But seriously, I’m learning a lot about how to grow vegetables in Sedona.”
“I’ve just discovered microgreens,” she smiles. “They are fast and easy to bring to harvest going before the aphids know what happened.”
And it’s not just gardening she’s exploring. Walk around the Pitcairn’s 1990 stucco at 1865 Gun Fury Road and you will see an outdoor shower, a solar oven, a “laundry to landscape” greywater setup, two rain tanks installed by permaculturist Chris Anderson of ProBuild, a sometimes steaming compost pile and a terraced orchard designed to absorb rainwater.
Walk in the garage and you will find a ZENN Neighborhood Electric Vehicle and two hill-conquering electric bikes, powered solely by solar energy drawn from their rooftop photovoltaic system installed by Louis Galluzzi in 2012.
The Pitcairns cut waste and recycle so conscientiously that they have cancelled regular trash pickup. Instead, they take a trash bag every few months to Sir Moves a Lot, by Sedona Recyles, who hauls it away for $4.
Nationally known for bringing a similar environmental ethic to their best-selling Rodale classic, “Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide for Natural Health for Dogs and Cats,” both Susan and Richard are finding it fun and exciting exploring how to live more lightly and have convened a monthly “Permaculture Potluck Group” of like-minded friends who share ideas.
Concerned about depletion of fossil fuels as well as aquifers, fisheries and forests, plus an increasing array of toxins in food and water, the Pitcairns are guardedly optimistic that humans will eventually learn how to live sustainably as we adapt to the changes brought about by modern technology and population growth.
“And we aim to learn and share what the ordinary person can do to be part of the solution, without waiting on someone else to take action,” Susan offers.
Finding herself the only homeowner to approach the American Solar Energy Society this year to offer their home for their 19th National Solar Tour, Susan was by default appointed as local tour organizer. In the process she has enlisted and learned from several experts on solar energy and sustainability who will be featured on the 2014 tour: October 4th 9 to 4 in Sedona and October 5th from 11 to 5 in Jerome and Cottonwood.
“It’s been a lot of last-minute work,” she notes, “but it’s worth it. The earth is worth it. We are all worth it.”
Printable detailed schedules and maps of the two days of local tours are at https://susanpitcairn.com/events. Or google “National Solar Tour” and use the online map on your phone. For more information contact Susan Pitcairn: 928-203-1095.
Susan Pitcairn cooking up a free lunch in the solar oven for this year's National Solar Tour.
If you care about what's happening to nature with our excessive use of plastic, please take a look at a couple of videos I just posted to YouTube.
They are colorful slide shows about why and how to reduce plastic in our shopping choices. They include fun and creative ways to use homemade products and repurposed containers in kitchen, bath and laundry.
This version has nice music and moves pretty quickly, for 11 minutes:
Are you old enough, like me, to remember life before plastic grocery bags? (1977). I also still remember when there weren't foam coffee cups and plastic drinking bottles everywhere, and all the rest. Somehow we did manage...
In just a few decades, our collective consumption of plastic has become astronomical and quite unsustainable. Plastic consumes 10% of our oil consumption, is toxic to nature and to us, and it is overwhelming the oceans. In some parts of the vast plastic garbage patch between Hawaii and California plastic debris outweighs plankton (the basis of the ocean food chain) by 6:1. Marine birds and mammals are dying because their stomachs are full of our plastic debris rather than real food.
In fact, 10% of our plastic garbage ends up in the ocean every year, some from ships and platforms, but 80% from our litter washing down streams, rivers and storm drains. And then there's just the growing mountains and mountains of landfill waste, where most of it goes.
We can do better, and we must, not only with plastic but with all our trash. Each of us Americans generate about 800 pounds of waste a year, such as 300 million disposasble coffee cups a day, which can't be recycled. Ouch.
The good news is that 65% of our garbage could be recycled, 30-33% could be composted and only 2-5% is truly trash.
I like hearing that and my personal goal is that all my garbage is of the "truly trash" sort, and near zero.
For most of us, plastic is our biggest trash challenge. Just watch"Plastic Planet" on Netflix, the movie "Bag It," or read "Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and You Can Too," by Beth Terry, or "Plastic: A Toxic Love Story," by Susan Freinkel. They are life-changing eye openers.
And it's a change for the better. By switching back to earlier ways, before plastic took over our lives, we can greatly reduce our body's toxic load, not to mention the planet's. Amazingly, 93% of Americans over age six have BPA in their urine, a plastic used to line cans and found in sippy cups, dishes, tub toys, thermals receipts and hard polycarbonate bottles. It is a reproductive, developmental and systemic tosciant that disrupts endrocrine systems, increases birth defect, diabetes and certain cancers.
And then there's phthalates, added to PVC (polyvinyl chloride) to soften our cling wrap, squeeze bottles, and our vinyl binder covers, purses, toys, shower curtains, garden hoses, IV tubes, blinds, floors, siding, windows, wires and much more. Phthalates cause similar problems as BPA, disrupting hormones and neural development, contributing to asthma, autism and various cancers. These are just two of the bad actors in the production, use, recycling and breakdown of plastics.
Then get to work, bit by bit, finding fun ways to reduce plastic consumption and have a better life in the process.
When Richard and I shop for groceries, for example, we bring an attractive basket we keep by the back door, filled with:
-empty jars marked with tare weights and bin numbers for bulk foods, all ready to put back in the pantry at home when filled.
-Chico or produce and grocery bags
-Cotton canvas or "net" bags,
-A few of those polypropylene "fabric" bags, which I'll never buy again (can't wash or recycle; plastic; fall apart soon).
-a few re-used plastic bags and paper sacks (especially the nice ones for coffee beans) if needed. (til we run out....)
Not only does this reduce plastic and other trash, toxics and expense, it always impresses our cheerful checkout clerk, who remarks on it admiringly. But honestly, I wish it wouldn't. I wish it would just become what everyone does. Will you help me out?
It's spring in Sedona and we love it! The birds are singing, there are at last earthworms in our garden, and everything is planted! So let's hope we don't have any late snows this year, huh?
Recently I learned some very useful things on a local garden tour that are worth sharing, especially for other with sandy dry soils such as we have here in Arizona.
At an exceptionally abundant garden the owner shared her easy recipe for making a soil innoculant that really helps build beneficial microorganisms in your soil, which feed the soil, hold the moisture and help the roots uptake nutrients much better. Esp. good here for our sandy humus-poor soil. (She also uses plenty of peat moss to help hold water, and coconut coir is probably an even better product, as it doesn't repel water.):
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Recipe for Soil Innoculant
In a five gallon bucket of non-chlorinated water (let tap water off-gas a day or so), add:
--a handful of fertile dark soil or compost
--2-3 Tbs. molasses
--minerals (e.g. rock phophate, granite dust, kelp, or a product called "Azomite" is particularly good.)
Let it sit in the sun a couple of week til it smells strong. Pour on garden, compost, outdoor container plants, etc.
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I have also been using Soil Secret products from New Mexico this year, recommended by another gardener on the tour, which has similar humic acid-based products like this ready-made, plus earthworm castings, quality compost and other microbial-wise products that feed the soil critters. I've seen the results already since adding it in January, along with a lot of leaves we collected in a local storm drain area.
Our garden soil is much darker and richer looking.
I've also discovered a great line of soil amendments by Dr. Earth (potting soil, compost, kelp, alfalfa, fish emulsion, rock phosphate, worm castings and more---- many in recyclable cardboard boxes.) Worm castings are especially intriguing, as they contain earthworm eggs.
Minerals needed: One gardener also said a key to growing things in sandy soils is to realize that they are mineral poor, except for iron and silica. They lack the complex of minerals found in granite-based soils. So she procured a bunch of granite dust from a landscape supply place when she established her garden. I was thinking of getting some granite dust from a countertop maker, but then also read that it can be high in radioactive uranium so I'm thinking I'll use other stuff like Rock Phosphate, Greensand (ocean-derived), kelp, alfalfa, and maybe some Azomite (Utah lake bed), which has great reiviews (and maybe a bit of radioactivity also).
Container Gardens: Another solution one gal uses is to garden in oak barrels and huge plastic pots from landscapers, since her available area is already heavily covered with landscape rock.
She just tosses leaves in the bottom of a container, then a mix of kitchen scraps, chicken manure, soil and leaves. She tops the whole thing with more leaves and then just plants right in the container when it's broken down and ready to go.
How easy is that? Potatoes do really well in this system too; just dump the barrel out when the tops die back. No damage or digging.
We also had some of our best production using containers this last year, including nice kale and greens during the winter. We used a semi-hydroponic system with water wells under the soil, the Garden Patch Grow Box. Easy to keep watered with hose or drip.
Water catchment: At another site on the tour, a gardener showed how she slows and spreads our natural rainwater, using barrels, gravity, mulches, and semi-circles of rocks ('smiles') to open up to and catch the flow of water as it moves across the land (as opposed to circles of rocks for container watering).
The key is to think of the whole yard as a natural watershed, with the roof at the top. As it moves downhill, use small berms, channels to direct it to mulched areas where you want to absorb water for plantings.
Paths, driveways and patios are best if they higher than nearby planting areas: direct their runoff to plants, holding it near the base with semi-circles ("smiles") of rocks and small berms.
We are catching some of our roof water with a small cistern, but I'm hesitant to expand this because the rain seems to wash off some of the paint color from our concrete roof tiles and I'm concerned it may not be good for edibles especially.
Growing your own food is one way to reconnect with nature, to save money (hopefully!) and have fresh organic produce aplenty. Lately I have been enjoying a fantastic and healthy Kale Smoothie every morning from our abundant kale:
Kale Smoothie
Blenderize:
1 bunch kale
1 banana
2-3 dates
hemp seed or flax oil
water as needed to cover
Finally, it's a lot of fun to play in the garden and that was evident most of all on the smiling faces and in the generous spirits of the many who opened up their gardens to the public to share what they are doing.
"Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance.
For example, there's nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate and we have disease."
Reading this wise passage this delightful spring morning out on our patio, I saw a perfect analogy to our current communications technology.
The Internet and cellular communications technologies have the same potential and destructiveness as thought, on which they are based, and which they spread. They can bring us beautiful spiritual teachings such as the above (and save trees) or they can help us keep in touch with people all over the world. Likewise, cell phones and surfing the net connect us with each other, often in positive ways.
But they can also become an addiction, keeping us from being fully present with those who are actually around us, with the beauty of the day, and with our own souls. When communication technologies get out of control and in disregard for the well-being of the total organism that is Planet Earth, they, too, become a cancer, flooding us and all of nature with dangerous microwave technologies that break the blood-brain barrier, damage DNA, depress all the neurotransmitters, upset sleep and cardiac rhythms, cause infertility and much more. And it's spiraling out of control, as one professor said it, "the greatest biological experiment ever conducted on humanity."
The communications microwave technology that enables all this can even be (and is) used as a stealth weapon, purposefully directed at our so-called enemies or potentially at activists and dissidents (see this moving interview with Barrie Trower, a concerned physicist trained in microwave warfare). In the same way, our we can and do direct negative thoughts at others that can function as a form of "negative prayer," as Larry Dossey MD describes.
Or, pulsed electromagnetic radiation at the same frequencies as those of the Earth (known as the Schumann frequencies) , the therapy known as PEMS, can also be used to heal bones and much more. Just going barefoot and connecting with the Earth brings us these same frequencies. And at the level of mind and thought, spiritual healers and directed prayers have been found scientifically to make a difference, sometimes miraculously, for the better.
The words we think, say and email can harm, or they can heal. Thoughts can confuse, depress and distract us, or they can help us accomplish many useful tasks and create beautiful and useful things. The same goes for its technologies.
It's up to us how to use this double-edged sword of Mind and its incredible technological creations.
Microwave technologies, used carefully and sparingly, can bring us access to a wise book on our E reader or a great YouTube video via our (hopefully)wireless-disabled, ethernet-enabled computer. Yet, as well known health writer Ann Gittleman explains, they can zap us and those who are most vulnerable around us (babies, electrosensitives, elderly, etc.) with stress-creating frequencies that upset the normal electromagnetic functions of every cell in our bodies.
It's my hope that if you have found your way to this article, that you will follow up on the above links, educate yourself and make some changes.
Lately we've been watching fascinating documentaries on Netflix and reading books * that explore past and potential threats to our planet. Maybe it's just 2012-mania, maybe a bit of intuitive preparation, or maybe just an effect of getting older and ever-closer to our personal "end times."
First, the Bad News
In any case, humanity surely faces some big challenges now and in the coming decades:
(1) A rapidly-growing population already beyond the Earth's carrying capacity;
(2) Global warming that is melting the ice caps, destabilizing the climate, spawning hurricanes, floods, drought and the melting of Himalayan glaciers that supply the great rivers of Asia on which billions depend for survival.
(3) Add to that: depleted fisheries, aquifers, forests and coral reefs and lessened oxygen levels from deforestation and carbon-generated acidification of our oceans;
(4) Not to mention what our microwave/RF/cell technologies seem to be doing to reduce honeybees, whose pollination is crucial to crops;
(5) Plus, of course, the unknown longterm impacts of our wholesale release of GMO's, pesticides, radioactive particles and thousands of other dangerous and toxic substances we've injected into the soil, water and air.
All this is really hard on our food supplies, let alone our health and DNA. So, sadly, it seems inevitable in this century that we will undergo a good-sized population decline from starvation and other issues resulting from our own actions (or inactions). It will be heartbreaking, and heart-opening.
As if that wasn't enough potential catastrophe to deal with, there are several wild cards that could come our way any time: including occasional monstrous earthquakes, solar flares,volcanic eruptions, asteroid hits, magnetic pole shifts, and glaciations. They could take down the grid, destroy communications, play havoc with the weather and much more.
Well, that's the bad news in a nutshell, sorry to say.
It's more than enough to make one wonder, can humanity survive all this?
The Good News
The good news is that, yes, we can. We've done it before.
As it turns out, Homo Sapiens is all about climate change.
In fact, the pressing need to adapt to the especially challenging cold times of the last two million years is precisely what led to our unique intelligence, language, social cooperation, innovation and the ability to plan.
Huh? Read on.
Two Million Years Down, Six Million Years to Go
Well, it's a long story, painstakingly pieced together by countless archaologists and paleoclimatologists from evidence all over the world. Here's the short version of what they've found, as I understand it from some fascinating books.*
Believe it or not, all we humans have ever known is a Glacial Age, mostly consisting of challenge after challenge. And ... we've got millions of years to go before it ends.
The climate has been tough, cold and unstable since our origins. In fact, our big brains are really just one of Nature's evolutionary responses. Only by learning to think, plan and use symbolic language could our nomadic ancestors survive the bitter cold, droughts and shifting landscapes typical of the mostly-cold periods of the current long Glacial Age. Their smarts enabled them to:
• Make and use hunting tools;
• Create the cooperative hunts needed to take down large, dangerous Ice Age herbivores best adapted to cold dry conditions;
• Find, gather, preserve and store whatever was available: meat, berries, nuts, tubers, etc.;
• Build fires in caves or nomadic shelters in order to keep from freezing to death (after all, we all started out in Africa);
• Clothe ourselves in thick fur capes (as far as the Neanderthals got), and, eventually, layered sewn clothing (CroMagnons);
• Through language, to share valuable information with neighbors, like where to find food, water and better conditions (uniquely CroMagnon).
And that's how we did it. That's how we have so far survived the cold, dry Glacial Age that is all we've ever known. And it seems to be why we made it and the Neanderthals did not.
"Huh? " you may say, "Sure doesn't LOOK or FEEL that cold! And what about global warming?"
For those of us who vaguely thought there were one or two Ice-Age-blips in the past, with the last one ending about 15-17,000 years ago, it's time for a serious update. Decades of careful science from global archaelogy, paleoclimatology and deep core samples have pieced together a rather surprising picture. Here are the highlights:
• In the last billion years, there have been three major Glacial Ages, each lasting about 8-10 million years.
• Weare now just at the start of the third one, which began about 2 million years ago.(brrrr!)
• So far in this Glacial Age, the Earth has gone through 19-20 periods of glaciation (what you and I think of as Ice Ages, typically 60-90,000 years long ) with shorter inter-glacial warmings in-between (10-40,000 years).
• During all of agriculture and recorded civilization, our ancestors have been basking in a shorter "interglacial" (the last 17,000 years).
• The short term forecast: Expect extreme cold and increased glaciation within a few hundred years.
• The long-term forecast: Expect ongoing cold trends and climate gyrations for the next six million years.
Hang in there, humanity. We can do this. It's all we've ever done, and it's not like the whole planet is under glaciers. It just kinda shifts things around and creates different landscapes and niches. And at least we have a heads-up this time so we can do some prep!
What Creates Glacial Ages?
So what make these long cold spells? In the big picture, each Glacial Age is thought to be the result of how the continental plates split apart, drift and sometimes obstruct the free flow of warm tropical waters to the poles. Like the Gulf Stream that moderates Europe, a good equatorial-polar exchange has made for a nicer global climate for most of the last billion years. (Think widespread tropics, Californias, Gulf Streams, Mediterraneans, redwoods, dinosaurs, lots of warm ocean...)
But, during Glacial Ages that flow is relatively obstructed, creating greater contrasts between the Equator and poles. That makes for lousy summers in the high latitudes farther from the tropic, too darn cool to totally melt last winter's snowfall and definitely too cold to grow a decent tomato So, year by year, snow and ice build up, far too much to scrape and shovel. Before long, you've got some mighty glaciers ever-extending their range.
These glacial sheets are huge, locking up global water supplies. That means lower ocean levels (exposing continental shelves, creating bridges between land masses) and less rainfall. The result: most of a long Glacial Age has cold, dry, wind-swept conditions with more grass and scrub, less forests and more large migratory grazing animals like bison, mammoths and their predators (including us). It's not all buried in ice; I'm pretty sure it's still fairly warm in the tropics, but definitely drier and more temperate, more dominated by dry grassy savannahs than by rain forests. That's not all bad. It can make for some large herds of grazing beasts, for example...
Sometimes it's wetter and more enjoyable overall, though, like in this interglacial period that we now know is soon coming to an end.
Why the Shorter Interglacial Periods?
Why do these variations even occur in a Glacial Age? It's now been found that by a guy named Milankovitch, that, within all ages since the Earth coalesced from the heavy particles of a supernova some 4-5 billion years ago, there are certain predictable cycles that significantly impact how much sun we receive. That is a major driver of minor climate fluctuations within larger periods. (Plus sun-clouding debris from asteroid hits or from huge volcanic eruptions like Sumatra's Mt. Toba that some 73,000 years ago that nearly wiped out our predessors, reducing us to maybe 10,000 people worldwide and leaving as much as 9 feet of ash in some lakes in India. But I digress...)
Known as the Milankovitch cycle, there are mathematically predictable intersections of three astronomical cycles of our planet that make for a bigger phase about 100,000 years long:
1. a 105,000-year cycle in the degree of elongation in the Earth's elliptical orbit;
2. a 41,000-year cycle of in the degree of tilt of the Earth's axis (creating lesser or greater seasonal contrasts);
3. a 21,000-year cycle of when the equinox occurs (January, February or March; please don't ask me to explain this one...).
The Amazingness of It All
Isn't this all quite amazing?
First, it's amazing that humans have been able to figure all this out and see which way the wind is blowing. Hats off to generations of dedicated scientists. What an incredible art form that in many ways exceeds our the humble paintings and sculptures of we traditional artists. It may be bad news, but at least it helps us plan, that's for sure, like maybe start buying equatorial real estate? (To plan well, I might add, it seems advisable that we all examine and let go of some of our fixed ideas and limiting dogmas are are the downside of our cognitive abilities, an evolutionary process that seems to be well underway, thankfully.)
Second, it's amazing in that, for all we know, our tendency to produce greenhouse gases is Nature's way of using us to moderate this Glacial Age and save some very nicely-evolved ecosystems that She is quite fond of... Now, wouldn't that be ironic? I've even thought about writing a novel with that as a twist.
Don't get me wrong. Fossil fuels are running out, whatever harm or benefit their release into the atmosphere may ultimately cause. So we all need to conserve resources, cut pollution and generate renewable energy like mad. Personally, we are installing a photovoltaic system on our roof as I write this, to capture but a small fraction of the Sun's vast stores of free energy available all over the planet. Our Sun sends us far more energy than we can ever use if we will but get serious about tapping it.
For us, it will supply all our needs, shared back and forth with the grid. It will turn on our energy-saving LED lights, run this computer so I can communicate with you, cook our food (along with our beloved Tulsi Solar Oven), run our air conditioner and charge our electric car. It's also cost-effective and a great investment at a time when little else is. How cool is that?
Well, maybe not quite as cool as a Glacial Age! But that, as we have seen, is another story.
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* FOR MORE INFO, check out these books, nicely written for the average Homo Sapiens:
"After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America," by E.C. Pielou
"Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans," by Brian Fagan.
Also, see these intriguing science documentaries about global natural and societal issues facing us.
