Posts in: Relatedness

There is no such thing as the “environment”

Sallie McFague, Blessed are the Consumers: Everything is interconnected. Philosopher Bruno Latour has imagined such a world. Its primary characteristic is that there is no “environment,” no external world that is our playfield. Rather, there is “one world,” a cosmos, a totality of things, all of which are “insiders,” members of the collective who have voice. Hence, “we must connect the question of the common world to the question of the common good.

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Think globally, act hyperlocally

The amount of land (more or less) under my control right now is 0.14 acres. This amounts to: 1.79 x 10-5 of my town 4.84 x 10-7 of my county 6.01 x 10-9 of my state 5.76 x 10-11 of the United States 3.82 x 10-12 of land on Earth So, not much. HOWEVER, this is an advantage when I attempt to think about the energy flows. For example, I was never very worried about food waste since it is biodegradable and would break down in the landfill fairly quickly.

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Spotted at a local greenhouse: tiny iridescent frog nestled inside a tiger lily.


Trans-species collaboration

In the stirring closing lines of Carmel Point, Robinson Jeffers writes: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little But how is this to be done? One way is surely as a philosophical practice that builds ways of thinking with the more-than-human world instead of thinking about it. That is essential. Yet for those of us who tend to live too much in our own heads, what practical actions can be taken?

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Entwined being of plant and soil

In the course of this article on future agricultural possibilities that actually build the soil, George Monbiot passes on some interesting facts about plant interaction with soil. Plants release between 11% and 40% of the sugars they make into the soil, into the area around the plant called the rhizosphere. These released sugars activate bacteria in the rhizosphere needed for the plant’s health and growth. The rhizosphere acts as an “external gut” for the plant.

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I’m a beekeeper now

About three weeks ago, a friend asked me if I wanted to help him keep bees–to which, of course, I said yes. The bees live on his property, which is much more spacious and near bee amenities like woods, water, crops and flowers. And so we set up our first hive. And then (a day after I posted about wanting expand the web of relations in my life), a wild swarm showed up at my friend’s house.

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Happy Earth Day. Later today, Rachel and I plan to mulch some open areas in our backyard for more native species plantings. I’m also learning how to identify garlic mustard (one, two) so I can pull it during my hikes this year. Call it guerrilla forestry.


Robin Wall Kimmerer:

The mosses remember that this is not the first time the glaciers have melted. If time is a line, as western thinking presumes, we might think this is a unique moment for which we have to devise a solution that enables that line to continue. If time is a circle, as the Indigenous worldview presumes, the knowledge we need is already within the circle; we just have to remember it to find it again and let it teach us.


Dark Green Religion

Introductory note: The following is an edited transcript of a video I posted in the early days of the pandemic. (You know, those days when we had no idea what would happen next so we started making YouTube videos in order to distract ourselves. Also, having watched it now two years later, it’s clear I have no future as a YouTuber.) The video discusses the book Dark Green Religion by Bron Taylor.

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