Coronavirus Climate Read: Braiding Sweetgrass

Last month, while urban farming and foraging for sour cherries, I listened to Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Not long after, Adrienne Maree Brown posted the following pull quotes to instagram, and shared her reflection that this book could be read as a prequel or foundational text for her own work, Emergent Strategy. I couldn't agree more, both texts are gifts. Braiding Sweetgrass is a work of understanding our place in society and our responsibility to our ecological home. It's definitely worth a read, a way to come home to this land offering new teachers in the species we coexist with. Enjoy these quotes from Kimmerer, curated by Brown:

We offer so much gratitude for both these women, and all Black and Indigenous teachers, for their work and wisdom. Miigwech!

Stop Line 3 Webinar

While we continue to wait for the Four Necessity Valve Turner Trial, environmental protections continue to be removed and fossil fuel infrastructure projects go forward, further endangering a livable future.

MN 350 is hosting a webinar on Tuesday evening to share updates on the Line 3 project in northern Minnesota that expands and reroutes a pipeline through environmentally and culturally sensitive landscapes. The old Line 3 pipeline is in dangerously bad condition, speaking poorly of the long-term maintenance plan for pipelines.

The webinar is Tuesday, June 30, 2020 6:30 PM -  8:00 PM CT you can register here.

Summer Solstice - the Fullness of Time

Today is the longest day of the year - the day when the most light falls on the earth. In agrarian societies, this day was a time to celebrate the growing season thus far and hope for fertile harvests. In this technological age, when so many humans are isolated from noticing that the days are growing longer or (as of tomorrow) shorter, it can be easy to lose track of the natural systems that support our very life. On this day of abundant light, what will you choose to focus on?

Perhaps you're still processing Juneteenth and need to take a deeper dive into its meaning.

Perhaps you're in Illinois, where we have the responsibility to stop the proposed DAPL Double.

Perhaps you're participating in the Poor People's Campaign Moral March on Washington.

Perhaps you've turned off technology for a day to enjoy nature.

Perhaps you're in the streets, advocating for black lives.

Perhaps you're preparing for a great Father's Day tomorrow.

Perhaps you're at home, watching and learning.

Perhaps you're ill, or nursing a friend or family member, or mourning the dead.

Perhaps you're going back to work in this time of uncertainty.

Wherever you are as you read this, breathe deep. Hold it in, and really feel how it is to be filled up, full to bursting, completely satiated.

Let it out, slowly, and feel your energy going out into the world, where it will make an impact you can neither know nor control.

This is the most basic abundance in the world, available to us all. Even breath can be (and is) denied, as we have seen this early-summer-time. But perhaps practicing this everyday freedom to breathe deep, to fill up, to be immersed in more than we can hold, will help us believe in the greater abundances available if only we dare to divest from the systems of exploitation, pollution, punishment, and denial, and invest instead in the systems of renewal, tending, and sharing.