It’s a Good News Day!

I keep thinking I need to limit my interests, bring more focus into my life, get better organized, be more productive, stop being such  a dilettante. Then I enjoy a spectacular sunrise like this morning’s and have a morning full of varied readings like today's and think maybe focus isn’t the issue.

From today’s High Country News Editor’s note I found my paradigm for this year and then some:

Experience wonder as often and as deeply as possible. Find places that make your heart sing. Take care of your people, your community, your compatriots. Use only what you need. Measure your decisions by how much justice and joy they generate in the world. Take care of the land — the big open spaces and the intimate close-knit ones. Navigate with grace, yielding when necessary and surmounting obstacles that would keep you from staying true to yourself. Keep good company. Help those in need. Release your worries and fears, and indulge in what makes you feel confident and strong. Find your center, look around, breathe in. Respect plant life. Admire animals. Worship rocks. Take a stand for what you believe in.

Before I read that, I came across something on Twitter (@JohnHthePoet) that gives me hope more people understand how complicated it’s going to be making a just transition from where we are now to renewable energy based economies by 2050. Common Dreams has published a piece on Shifting Wasteful Consumption. It’s definitely worth a read.

Cutting global emissions by 50% by 2030 will take everything we have. Each of us needs to pull on every lever we can and be as big a part of that change as possible. The most important levers we can pull are those that change systems, such as taking away the power of fossil fuel and agribusiness companies have over our political systems, and working for sustainable practices in the institutions around us. While for most people, that kind of work is outside their comfort zone, it is in fact fairly easy to get involved in making a difference that way.  

In addition to that system change work, middle-class people in every country need to reduce the emissions that come from a few key practices that they have control over. Meat eating, flying, and driving gas-powered cars are all areas where consumption patterns matter, and where those emitting more carbon than they need to can lower their own emissions by making personal changes. By shifting those habits, we are sending social messages to others that those low-carbon practices are desirable, and we see close up what is needed to make those low carbon options easy and desirable. By making the changes ourselves we are more likely to advocate for larger changes; and in the meantime, we emit less carbon. 

some favorite water: St. Croix river

Photo by J. Harrington

In themarginalian,  Maria Popova brought  to our attention what looks like a delightful book in her piece about Almost Nothing, yet Everything: A Stunning Japanese Illustrated Poem Celebrating Water and the Wonder of Life. I’ve experienced wonder and awe at the beauty and power of water for as long as I can remember. Since Ms. Popova has added this book to her list of the loveliest children’s books of 2021, I now have a perfect rationale to acquire a copy to share with the Granddaughter.

Last, and far from least, the Daily Yonder has published an article on focus about the author of a book on Durable Trades. The article ’s title: Focus on Family-Centric Trades Could Save Rural Economies, Entrepreneur Says. Since I don’t believe that the solution to our current urban-rural divide is to have everyone except the last three industrial farmers move into the cities, I’m happy that folks are looking at how to rejuvenate rural economies through  efforts other than extractive industries or FoxConn plants.

Plus, one other last thing, which I haven’t yet seen covered by our local or national main stream media, Slashdot has noted that a New Patent-Free COVID Vaccine Developed As 'Gift To the World’ :

A new COVID-19 vaccine, developed by researchers from the Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, is being offered patent-free to vaccine manufacturers across the world. Human trials have shown the vaccine to be safe and effective, with India already authorizing its use as production ramps up to over 100 million doses per month

There’s beauty and progress and success happening throughout our world, even in the midst of a pandemic and during our climate crises. There’s also a bunch of crap being focused on by main stream media. As William Gibson told us years ago: 

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.

The Economist, December 4, 2003” 

Our choice is to work to increase the distribution of the kind of future(s) we want for ourselves and our descendants. That takes more than fussing  about what’s wrong with _________. [Fill in the blank]

The Future

By Neal Bowers

(Detroit, 1950)

Because the jobs were there

and a man could get rich

working on the line, the South

retreated North to Michigan,

whole families eating crackers and baloney

by the side of the road,

changing drivers to keep

moving through corn fields

and foreign towns,

sundown and darkness,

the moon a prophecy of chrome,

the stars 10 million headlights

of the cars they would build.

Ahead lay a city bright with steel;

behind, the dark fields folded

over everything they knew;

and when they dozed

on cramped back seats, they dreamed

such dreams as the road can make,

of drifting on a lake or stream

or lying down in hay to dream of traveling,

so that when they woke to a bump,

a couch, a voice saying, “It’s your turn,”

they were lost to themselves

and took a few moments

to remember their names.

Mostly behind their backs,

the locals called them

rednecks, crackers, goddamned rebs.

Strange to be strange,

in their new neighborhoods,

to be ethnic with a thick accent

and a taste for food the grocers didn’t stock—

hog jowl and blackeyes, turnip greens,

roasting ears, souse-meat—

the butcher shrugging,

the produce man shaking his head.

Sometimes their own voices

took them by surprise,

sounding odd and out of place

in the din of a city bus, ringing

lost in the evening air when

they called their children in for supper.

At work they touched

parts of tomorrow,

next year’s models always

taking shape and vanishing,

the present obsolete, the past

merely a rumor,

all hours blurring

into one continuous moment

of finishing a fragment,

each piece the same piece,

movements identical,

endless, like a punishment in hell.

No way out but back

to their old lives, a future

they already knew by heart,

a few on the road each month

in cars they may have helped assemble,

tokens of their failed success,

legacies for boys to find

years later rusting on some lot,

banged up but still a dream

and fast enough when overhauled

to make them feel they could blast

straight into tomorrow,

as they raced their engines at each stoplight

and cruised their towns in circles.

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