For the past week I've had a headache, partially from heat and wildfire smoke, and I've been anxious about the possibility of losing my home and community to fire.
But this afternoon a friend told me about a new locally made plant based fudgesicle, and I went out and bought one as soon as I could. I spent a moment in the shade enjoying a beautiful summer day, eating my fudgesicle, enjoying every nibble. Then I rode my bike home when it was half eaten, eating the rest while coasting down the road.
There's still every possibility of a forest fire, but for a brief moment I enjoyed the feeling of a beautiful summer day anyways.
I will hang onto that feeling. It was like a kind of making peace.
Diana, you and others may appreciate this article on positivity. It shows the power of why we need to find the positive in things because being positive literally changes our world: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/the-power-of-positivity
If there's no beauty and joy to be had in this world, why are we struggling for peace, justice and the wellbeing of our fellow humans, animals and ecology?
I see beauty every day when I see squirrels, hear birds singing, even when I see bugs crawling across the sidewalk. I refuse to see any beauty in war, in Zionism, in racism, in misogyny. If I start seeing beauty in those things, that will be the day I am fucked.
Have you tried leaving them a bowl of water or filling a bird bath nearby that they could access? If your suspicion is correct, that would probably help..
I've lost so many of my gardens to squirrels, chipmunks, moles, deer, and groundhogs that it's actually making me re-evaluate my commitment to humane repellant options next year.
I can count on my hands the number of birds my cats have killed in all the time I lived here (and we have bird feeders EVERYwhere.) And never alluded to squirrels NOT damaging your orchard, but to your allusion that small animals must die because they inconvenience you. News flash: they lived there before you did.
And wanting squirrels and rabbits to die from maulings from DOGS is fucking sadistic.
PS If your dogs were on my property, I’d be outraged too. If I wanted a fuckin dog running around disturbing my wildlife I’d have one of my own. My state has laws against that shit; your dog’s either in side a fence or on a leash. What a concept.
Hi gypsy. Good to hear from you but you posted this under the wrong comment.
Never in my wildest thoughts would I have thought writing "Learn to share." would have created such a furour.
Being called inexperienced is a bit funny too. I'm 67 years old and started working in the garden at 7 years old, picked on a commercial farm starting in grade school, had my own gardens on and off when I could up till now. The last 10 years Ive lived on a few "organic " farms where "farming" is taking your SNAP card to the health food store for your organic yummies raised and picked immigrant slave labor. If a movie were made of the farming methods they use and it was released in the 30s it would have been considered either a 3 stooges movie or a horror movie.
Hawaii just passed legislation where you have to get your cats fixed and chipped at $200-$300 each with fines and fees. Feeding strays is a crime. Can't wait for the malls and tourists sites to get overwhelmed with rats. Rats are a lot easier to catch than birds and meatier too. Plus they like to swing them around by the tail and throw them in the air. Proof positive to me that cats are smarter than politicians. Can't wait for the rat solution. Maybe napalm or fuel air explosives delivered by AI drones?
Bull. One bite in each tomato ruins the whole tomato. If he has 50 tomatoes, he's making sauce and canning it, and you only do that when you've saved up enough days' worth. I know, I've got 35 tomato plants, and the squirrels aren't bothering them because they're behind a good fence, and because the squirrels are too busy ruining my apples, pears, and peaches. I call 'em spawn of Satan and want people or dogs to kill them (and this year, also rabbits) but I do still have as one of the pictures on my wall, a photo of a bunch of baby squirrels looking out of a nest in a tree. They're so cute, those damn spawn of Satan.
"Learn to share" is the statement of an inexperienced gardener.
When my son was about 9 he marched into my room and informed me that humans are viruses. Some days, it seems that he might have been right. Maybe we can develop a vaccine that will make humans not dangerous.
Bullshit, Mary. I’ve been gardening for well over 40 years and have 45+ fruit trees as well.
The only creatures around here that cause minor damage to my orchard are whitetail deer, and I ain’t killin Bambi cause he nibbled on a branch.
If y’all are havin trouble with squirrels (of all fucking things 🙄) there are these little predatory creatures called CATS that are just dandy at keepin squirrels at bay.
Yes and no. Fencing is critical if you're serious about growing food, but is not 100% reliable. And yes, the most serious invasive pest on this planet is certainly Homo sapiens. But you're here now--if you want to stay alive you have to kill something. Even if you're vegan, you have to kill the plants you eat, and all the plants that you call weeds, which would grow where you're growing your crops instead. If you're buying food instead, someone else is doing that, and probably using more destructive methods than you would.
I'm fully aware of the food chain .PETA people eat tasty animals. However , mice and insects are one thing. We can do much to protect our food stuffs without having to kill everything. His live trapping is a great way to relocate, rather than eradicate. Then again squirrel stew is good too.
In this, Tom, I'm with Satan. If your tomatoes are being eaten, cage 'em. The tomatoes, not the squirrels. In other matters I generally agree with you.
No way am I caging 50 tomato plants. I do cage the occasional squirrel though, in a have a hart trap. Let em go at the wooded edge of a nearby WalMart parking lot; always a treat to see how fast and far they leap out of the back of my truck when I open the trap.
I do plant a few tomatoes scattered around the garden fence line (it’s a half acre), so it’s not like the squirrels don’t have any tomato access.
My Son and I place a mixed bird seed on the ground near a large tree. It's amazing to see, all types of birds, rabbits, squirrels eating together in peace after they realize the food continues. We have a pair of ducks and geese that return for years nesting near a nearby creek. That gives me hope we humans can be at peace once we get rid of the Billionaires 1789 French Roast : )
One of the cutest things I ever saw in my life was a squirrel hanging upside down by his back feet on one of my apple trees. He had an apple in his front paws and was happily munching on it 🥰 Try putting out a water source for them…I have six birdbaths and a half-acre pond—and they’ll leave them ‘maters alone.
I look to Nature for beauty. Without it there is nothing. Which is why it breaks me apart that we are destroying it...with our pollution, or senseless violence, our uncontrolled breeding, our ravenous greed.
As a species, we deserve extinction. So yes, we absolutely should appreciate the short time we have been privileged to exist here.
a little pushback. It isn't the human species that deserves extinction: it's the dominant culture, a culture based on domination, which has successfully taken over the world. But there have been countless cultures that lived in balance and reverence with the rest of creation. So we're clearly capable of it. What we haven't figured out is how to defeat the domination culture which is happy to use violence to remain dominant.
I take issue with that. Where is the beauty in a Palestinian parent hold their small child that was just blown to bits by a U.S. made bomb delivered by Zionist barbarians?
There is an old saying of the sages and saints that “too much bitterness leads to hell.”
There is a lot in this world that can and do frustrate us, irritate us and make us angry. Every day, we experience and come face to face with acts and events, with people and groups of people that enrage us without fail. To be angry most, if not all, of the time is actually the condition of the average person in these latter days of modernity. And to be angry in the virtual world is as if it is a requirement nowadays, a default setting of being present on the social media platforms: “I am angry, therefore I exist” to twist the dominant Cartesian logic of the times. Rage is all around us, in abundant supply, especially in the hellish dungeons of the social media.
Anger is of course a legitimate human emotion and it cannot be denied. There is even sacred rage---anger that is completely justified, just as there is the concept of a “just war” in many world religions or civilizations inspired by these world religions. But in these dystopian times when anger turns into bitterness, then the harm that is done to the agent of rage far exceeds that done to the object of rage: bitterness destroys the angry person more effectively than the object or target of rage.
And what should one do to be on one’s guard in these dark times? Well, here’s another piece of wisdom from the past, and this one is from a Taoist (Chinese) sage which says that, “When the world is on fire, the sage tends to his garden.” This should not be seen as apathy, or as indifference towards the world and its problems, but understood as it has always been understood throughout history and across civilizations: as the profound wisdom that engagement with the world, especially by those of us who have not engaged, or who have failed to engage fully and sincerely with our own inner selves, with our own inner moral, intellectual and spiritual universes, does not always lead to the betterment of the world around us and often does more damage to both the worlds within and without. “Before we embark on the mission to rid the world of thorns and nails which are scattered all over the place, we need to put on our shoes” as an old African proverb informs us. (oops, too long!)
I disagree. It is necessary for us to engage. But also to tend our gardens (continue everyday life) AND the thing that is lacking--work with others to DEPICT, envision, and begin building the better world. Most people tune out because they don't see a better alternative as possible, not so much because of indoctrination ("There Is No Alternative") as because their imaginations are atrophied from too much screen time. And how is the future depicted on screens? Mostly as dystopias, sometimes as a glorious future of everything metallic and shiny and robots and flying cars--a vision which is divorced from reality and which excites people like Elon Musk but makes emotionally healthy people recoil. If there were visions of the better world which IS possible, and ideally also depictions of the path to get there from here--a lot more people might engage.
Thank you for pointing out the wondrousness of the realm we are in Caitlin and bringing it to the forefront. I have a hard time seeing bombs as beautiful though and pollution. But being joyful for the good things that are around us at the same time adds "joy to the world" and I feel it goes into some kind of treasury in the aether or something of that kind. It adds to the synergistic energies in the world, thus countering the dystopian ones and lifting our overall vibrancy and vibration.
I do think though that anyone who lives luxuriously is being rather oblivious. Money could be spent lifting others rather than another car or another renovation on a perfectly good bathroom say. Imagine if we helped each other! That would make the world really beautiful because our lack of togetherness and collaboration makes this world less beautiful and more miserable and that is within our own ability to change.
One must also be mindful of that "illuminated psycopath", Friedrich Nietzsche's advice: "If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you". There is wisdom in it. The abysses of our times, many as they are and everywhere as they are, not only gaze back into you but actually and quickly pull you in, if you are not on guard.
LOVE THIS, thanks. In 2017 after "Hothouse Earth" was released I went through a very dark few years realising that there wasn't a snowball's hope in hell of the powers that be understanding it's significance and acting with the extreme urgency and radically enough tpo prevent us crossing the thresholds to runaway climate change. My posts were especially morose at that time. A friend who was seeing my anguish travelled from the City to Manly to buy me a coffee and told me of his own struggles and how he refused to let it get him down - how his friends called hi the happy doomist. This was a revelation for me and this is now how I describe myself. I also experienced a "fuck it" moment when participating in an avocacy effort on Manly beach trying to get youth to get more active in having a survivable future - we just got the eye-roll from all age groups. So then and there I decided that now in my 70's, having spent a lifetime of climate research and activism and depriving myself quite a lot to do the right thing, in my remaining years I was going to still enjoy myself whilst still trying to make BIG things change. For the past 4 years, I've been working with Prof Peter Newman from Curtin Uni WA, researching and fporecasting the lives lost to climate change - the results are horrifying (challenging my happy doomist aspirations). We are currently awaiting the peer review verdict on the fifth version of our paper - but I'm encouraged that it took 8 attempts to get "Hothouse Earth" published!!!
"The failure to see beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
True. Beauty is always there, but the beholder has to open more than just their eyes--they must open their heart and be willing to accept and cherish the beauty that is everywhere.
Your words are a thing of beauty in this article. It is a very useful and uplifting gift in this time of so much despair. I love it that you chose to write this treatise of encouragement. Thank you, dear Caitlin, from an American man of 85 years in Northern California.
I love the timing of this article!
For the past week I've had a headache, partially from heat and wildfire smoke, and I've been anxious about the possibility of losing my home and community to fire.
But this afternoon a friend told me about a new locally made plant based fudgesicle, and I went out and bought one as soon as I could. I spent a moment in the shade enjoying a beautiful summer day, eating my fudgesicle, enjoying every nibble. Then I rode my bike home when it was half eaten, eating the rest while coasting down the road.
There's still every possibility of a forest fire, but for a brief moment I enjoyed the feeling of a beautiful summer day anyways.
I will hang onto that feeling. It was like a kind of making peace.
Thank you, that is a beautiful story, keep writing me friend : )
It was a pleasure to share it, Landru.
Diana, you and others may appreciate this article on positivity. It shows the power of why we need to find the positive in things because being positive literally changes our world: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/the-power-of-positivity
Wow! Those stories were pretty astounding. Our minds are so powerful.
If there's no beauty and joy to be had in this world, why are we struggling for peace, justice and the wellbeing of our fellow humans, animals and ecology?
Make peace, be kind, be gentle.
Thank you for that. You are kind, loving, and caring.
To Landru ❤️
I see beauty every day when I see squirrels, hear birds singing, even when I see bugs crawling across the sidewalk. I refuse to see any beauty in war, in Zionism, in racism, in misogyny. If I start seeing beauty in those things, that will be the day I am fucked.
Squirrels are cool. Except when they steal tomatoes from my garden, take them up on a fence rail, and only eat one bite. Then they are Satan’s spawn.
that's a bit harsh. Haven't you ever had something you thought you wanted, but only took one bite?
Not with the same thing, over and over. I think they are doing it as much for the water inside the tomato as for the fruit itself.
Like I said, squirrels are mostly cool. They give my Labs a reason to exercise.
Tom, have you ever heard of “cats”?
Have you tried leaving them a bowl of water or filling a bird bath nearby that they could access? If your suspicion is correct, that would probably help..
I've lost so many of my gardens to squirrels, chipmunks, moles, deer, and groundhogs that it's actually making me re-evaluate my commitment to humane repellant options next year.
Be thankful it's a squirrel and not wild piggies that tear up the entire garden. Learn to share. One squirrel bite isn't much.
Common intelligence?
I can count on my hands the number of birds my cats have killed in all the time I lived here (and we have bird feeders EVERYwhere.) And never alluded to squirrels NOT damaging your orchard, but to your allusion that small animals must die because they inconvenience you. News flash: they lived there before you did.
And wanting squirrels and rabbits to die from maulings from DOGS is fucking sadistic.
PS If your dogs were on my property, I’d be outraged too. If I wanted a fuckin dog running around disturbing my wildlife I’d have one of my own. My state has laws against that shit; your dog’s either in side a fence or on a leash. What a concept.
Hi gypsy. Good to hear from you but you posted this under the wrong comment.
Never in my wildest thoughts would I have thought writing "Learn to share." would have created such a furour.
Being called inexperienced is a bit funny too. I'm 67 years old and started working in the garden at 7 years old, picked on a commercial farm starting in grade school, had my own gardens on and off when I could up till now. The last 10 years Ive lived on a few "organic " farms where "farming" is taking your SNAP card to the health food store for your organic yummies raised and picked immigrant slave labor. If a movie were made of the farming methods they use and it was released in the 30s it would have been considered either a 3 stooges movie or a horror movie.
Hawaii just passed legislation where you have to get your cats fixed and chipped at $200-$300 each with fines and fees. Feeding strays is a crime. Can't wait for the malls and tourists sites to get overwhelmed with rats. Rats are a lot easier to catch than birds and meatier too. Plus they like to swing them around by the tail and throw them in the air. Proof positive to me that cats are smarter than politicians. Can't wait for the rat solution. Maybe napalm or fuel air explosives delivered by AI drones?
Have a great day.
Bull. One bite in each tomato ruins the whole tomato. If he has 50 tomatoes, he's making sauce and canning it, and you only do that when you've saved up enough days' worth. I know, I've got 35 tomato plants, and the squirrels aren't bothering them because they're behind a good fence, and because the squirrels are too busy ruining my apples, pears, and peaches. I call 'em spawn of Satan and want people or dogs to kill them (and this year, also rabbits) but I do still have as one of the pictures on my wall, a photo of a bunch of baby squirrels looking out of a nest in a tree. They're so cute, those damn spawn of Satan.
"Learn to share" is the statement of an inexperienced gardener.
You want people or dogs to kill them? You think that creatures that do not obey human wishes deserve to die? And rabbits? You need help.
When my son was about 9 he marched into my room and informed me that humans are viruses. Some days, it seems that he might have been right. Maybe we can develop a vaccine that will make humans not dangerous.
Bullshit, Mary. I’ve been gardening for well over 40 years and have 45+ fruit trees as well.
The only creatures around here that cause minor damage to my orchard are whitetail deer, and I ain’t killin Bambi cause he nibbled on a branch.
If y’all are havin trouble with squirrels (of all fucking things 🙄) there are these little predatory creatures called CATS that are just dandy at keepin squirrels at bay.
Good fences make good neighbors! This includes wildlife, which suffers from human encroachment.
It’s why I don’t have chickens, nor cats. Both will tear up a freshly seeded garden bed. I’ve trained my dogs that’s a no no.
Good fencing makes good neighbors. Human encroachment has destroyed millions of acres. Don't treat the squirrels or deer ,rabbits like Palestinians!
Yes and no. Fencing is critical if you're serious about growing food, but is not 100% reliable. And yes, the most serious invasive pest on this planet is certainly Homo sapiens. But you're here now--if you want to stay alive you have to kill something. Even if you're vegan, you have to kill the plants you eat, and all the plants that you call weeds, which would grow where you're growing your crops instead. If you're buying food instead, someone else is doing that, and probably using more destructive methods than you would.
I'm fully aware of the food chain .PETA people eat tasty animals. However , mice and insects are one thing. We can do much to protect our food stuffs without having to kill everything. His live trapping is a great way to relocate, rather than eradicate. Then again squirrel stew is good too.
In this, Tom, I'm with Satan. If your tomatoes are being eaten, cage 'em. The tomatoes, not the squirrels. In other matters I generally agree with you.
No way am I caging 50 tomato plants. I do cage the occasional squirrel though, in a have a hart trap. Let em go at the wooded edge of a nearby WalMart parking lot; always a treat to see how fast and far they leap out of the back of my truck when I open the trap.
I do plant a few tomatoes scattered around the garden fence line (it’s a half acre), so it’s not like the squirrels don’t have any tomato access.
Yeah, they drive me crazy when they do that to my tomatoes, too!
My Son and I place a mixed bird seed on the ground near a large tree. It's amazing to see, all types of birds, rabbits, squirrels eating together in peace after they realize the food continues. We have a pair of ducks and geese that return for years nesting near a nearby creek. That gives me hope we humans can be at peace once we get rid of the Billionaires 1789 French Roast : )
One of the cutest things I ever saw in my life was a squirrel hanging upside down by his back feet on one of my apple trees. He had an apple in his front paws and was happily munching on it 🥰 Try putting out a water source for them…I have six birdbaths and a half-acre pond—and they’ll leave them ‘maters alone.
the deepest beauty is in an act of kindness.
It's a mindset. I'm currently working on mine. 🙂
Thank you!💐
ditto
I look to Nature for beauty. Without it there is nothing. Which is why it breaks me apart that we are destroying it...with our pollution, or senseless violence, our uncontrolled breeding, our ravenous greed.
As a species, we deserve extinction. So yes, we absolutely should appreciate the short time we have been privileged to exist here.
a little pushback. It isn't the human species that deserves extinction: it's the dominant culture, a culture based on domination, which has successfully taken over the world. But there have been countless cultures that lived in balance and reverence with the rest of creation. So we're clearly capable of it. What we haven't figured out is how to defeat the domination culture which is happy to use violence to remain dominant.
Ok yes, agreed.
“There is beauty in everything.”
I take issue with that. Where is the beauty in a Palestinian parent hold their small child that was just blown to bits by a U.S. made bomb delivered by Zionist barbarians?
“There is beauty in everything”. ??? Means there is beauty in bullshit ? Mmmmmm ???,
There is beauty in supporting a Free Palestine. There is beauty in One State Palestine.
There is an old saying of the sages and saints that “too much bitterness leads to hell.”
There is a lot in this world that can and do frustrate us, irritate us and make us angry. Every day, we experience and come face to face with acts and events, with people and groups of people that enrage us without fail. To be angry most, if not all, of the time is actually the condition of the average person in these latter days of modernity. And to be angry in the virtual world is as if it is a requirement nowadays, a default setting of being present on the social media platforms: “I am angry, therefore I exist” to twist the dominant Cartesian logic of the times. Rage is all around us, in abundant supply, especially in the hellish dungeons of the social media.
Anger is of course a legitimate human emotion and it cannot be denied. There is even sacred rage---anger that is completely justified, just as there is the concept of a “just war” in many world religions or civilizations inspired by these world religions. But in these dystopian times when anger turns into bitterness, then the harm that is done to the agent of rage far exceeds that done to the object of rage: bitterness destroys the angry person more effectively than the object or target of rage.
And what should one do to be on one’s guard in these dark times? Well, here’s another piece of wisdom from the past, and this one is from a Taoist (Chinese) sage which says that, “When the world is on fire, the sage tends to his garden.” This should not be seen as apathy, or as indifference towards the world and its problems, but understood as it has always been understood throughout history and across civilizations: as the profound wisdom that engagement with the world, especially by those of us who have not engaged, or who have failed to engage fully and sincerely with our own inner selves, with our own inner moral, intellectual and spiritual universes, does not always lead to the betterment of the world around us and often does more damage to both the worlds within and without. “Before we embark on the mission to rid the world of thorns and nails which are scattered all over the place, we need to put on our shoes” as an old African proverb informs us. (oops, too long!)
I disagree. It is necessary for us to engage. But also to tend our gardens (continue everyday life) AND the thing that is lacking--work with others to DEPICT, envision, and begin building the better world. Most people tune out because they don't see a better alternative as possible, not so much because of indoctrination ("There Is No Alternative") as because their imaginations are atrophied from too much screen time. And how is the future depicted on screens? Mostly as dystopias, sometimes as a glorious future of everything metallic and shiny and robots and flying cars--a vision which is divorced from reality and which excites people like Elon Musk but makes emotionally healthy people recoil. If there were visions of the better world which IS possible, and ideally also depictions of the path to get there from here--a lot more people might engage.
Yes, the beauty of being in the moment is precious.
Thank you for pointing out the wondrousness of the realm we are in Caitlin and bringing it to the forefront. I have a hard time seeing bombs as beautiful though and pollution. But being joyful for the good things that are around us at the same time adds "joy to the world" and I feel it goes into some kind of treasury in the aether or something of that kind. It adds to the synergistic energies in the world, thus countering the dystopian ones and lifting our overall vibrancy and vibration.
I do think though that anyone who lives luxuriously is being rather oblivious. Money could be spent lifting others rather than another car or another renovation on a perfectly good bathroom say. Imagine if we helped each other! That would make the world really beautiful because our lack of togetherness and collaboration makes this world less beautiful and more miserable and that is within our own ability to change.
Seems like you wrote it for me. I am not deleting it; I will keep it to read a few more times.
"Beauty will save the world." (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
One must also be mindful of that "illuminated psycopath", Friedrich Nietzsche's advice: "If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you". There is wisdom in it. The abysses of our times, many as they are and everywhere as they are, not only gaze back into you but actually and quickly pull you in, if you are not on guard.
LOVE THIS, thanks. In 2017 after "Hothouse Earth" was released I went through a very dark few years realising that there wasn't a snowball's hope in hell of the powers that be understanding it's significance and acting with the extreme urgency and radically enough tpo prevent us crossing the thresholds to runaway climate change. My posts were especially morose at that time. A friend who was seeing my anguish travelled from the City to Manly to buy me a coffee and told me of his own struggles and how he refused to let it get him down - how his friends called hi the happy doomist. This was a revelation for me and this is now how I describe myself. I also experienced a "fuck it" moment when participating in an avocacy effort on Manly beach trying to get youth to get more active in having a survivable future - we just got the eye-roll from all age groups. So then and there I decided that now in my 70's, having spent a lifetime of climate research and activism and depriving myself quite a lot to do the right thing, in my remaining years I was going to still enjoy myself whilst still trying to make BIG things change. For the past 4 years, I've been working with Prof Peter Newman from Curtin Uni WA, researching and fporecasting the lives lost to climate change - the results are horrifying (challenging my happy doomist aspirations). We are currently awaiting the peer review verdict on the fifth version of our paper - but I'm encouraged that it took 8 attempts to get "Hothouse Earth" published!!!
👍 I’m in WA. Prof Newman was around when I was at Curtin - years ago. I will look forward - if that’s the right term - to reading it when published.
"The failure to see beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
True. Beauty is always there, but the beholder has to open more than just their eyes--they must open their heart and be willing to accept and cherish the beauty that is everywhere.
Your words are a thing of beauty in this article. It is a very useful and uplifting gift in this time of so much despair. I love it that you chose to write this treatise of encouragement. Thank you, dear Caitlin, from an American man of 85 years in Northern California.