A quick note, I have seen lots of memes and posts lately about individual police officers being upstanding people on the job. I agree, I know some fantastic officers. That does not mean, however, that policing in the US is not racist, bad, and leads to very negative outcomes for primarily BIPOC. It is the system of policing, not police officers as a whole. We hear all the time that the problem is a few bad apples. No, the problem is a system that allows and encourages the behavior of a few bad apples and the rest of the system that oppresses BIPOC. When someone tampered with Tylenol in Chicago in 1982, we did not say oh it was just a few bad bottles. No, we re-manufactured the dang bottles and passed federal anti-tampering laws. Every time you struggle to take off a safety cap and safety seal on a new bottle, that is because “A total of seven people died in the original poisonings, with several more deaths in subsequent copycat crimes.” Around a dozen people died and we redid the entire system. All that because of a few bad apples. One attempted shoe boomer, and we end up taking all our shoes off to get on a plane. Billions of shoes on and off. Think of how many BIPOC have died at the hands of police, been incorrectly killed by the States, and spent years and decades behind bars. It is the system, NOT the officers. They just work the way the system designed their jobs to work. If you care about police officers, CHANGE THE D*(& SYSTEM!!! If you care about the blue line then change the D&^% system.
What is truly amazing is that humans live our lives like what we believe is true, when most of it isn’t. We believe in race, in class, that global warming isn’t true, that America’s form of government is the best in the world, in the dollar. in brand identities, in national boundaries, in thousands of different gods, that chocolate is not a drug, that men should control womens’ bodies, that there is a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans, that humans are the only intelligent species on earth, that there is no life other than us in the universe, that there is just one universe, that caffeine is not a drug, that we need to buy buy buy, and I could go on and on. Just think what humans believed 100 years ago, 100 before that, 100 before that, 100 before that. Most things believed 100 years ago were false, and even more were false 100 years before that, and even more…. The basic fact is that most of what we currently believe will be proven false or overthrown in another 50 let alone 100 years. So what this leads to, is the basic fact that why are we in such a rush to destroy the earth we live on. We are all basically on a starship traveling through space and right now there is no Planet B. Maybe we should all slow the F down and chill for a bit. Oh by the way, if what you believe is actually wrong, why not the hell cut everyone else some slack maybe try to live in peace and drop all the barriers we have thrown up between ourselves. At this point the way we are headed we are all just passengers on the Titanic. That is unless we unify overthrow the current Captains and turn this boat in another direction.
When you spend all day outraged at the latest and newest outrage of the day, you can easily miss the beautiful things.
2/10/21
There is a beauty and excitement among all creatures great and small in waiting
2/11/21
Love, hope can be hidden and appear to be gone, but Spring will come with the sun.
2/12/21
Life persists despite things that can bury it, life persists and with sun and time it heals and grows.
2/15/21
Before the storm, there is a pause, a last minute scurrying, a checking of resources, then a settling into wait. Watch the birds they know this. The plants as well
2/16/21
Even while buried in a storm worth of snow, life, light, hope persist. In times of disaster and storm life knows to rest, to conserve energy to manage through. To use the resources wisely that have been carefully stored away in warmer days.
2/17/09
Like grief or trauma light and Spring can seem so far away while life is buried deeply under heavy, heavy snow.
2/18/19
Sublimation is the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas state, without passing through the liquid state. That is why the snow slowly just disappears. That is what will happen. If only grief and trauma, like snow, could disappear. But instead the injury goes from dark to bruised to discolored. Winter to Spring is a process of transformation. It’s a journey.
2/22/21
Life waits. Still buried, but still alive. This feels like the country right now with Covid. Still under the crushing weight, but knowing that soon we will be past it.
2/23/21
After snow and darkness life can feel broken and deformed but light and time lead to new growth and life
2/24/21
As the world turns and changes do we cuddle together for warmth for support? Is this our true nature – to live among others in communities of support? If indeed so, then what deep dysfunction keeps us from doing so?
2/26/21
There is no climatic battle, no blazing fight between seasons it is as simple as light bringing warmth more light with each rotation of the earth, and so with us with each rotation a day slips away. Live it well, live them all well. Love them well.
3/1/21
Warm now but bitter cold is moving in. As I take the picture one lone snowflake lands. Weather like life is sometimes suspended between choices and change.
March 2,21
Bulbs planted over a decade ago through multiple winters and seasons persist. How many have not? How many did not make it to this Spring, to this season? Life persists, but not for all. Imagine your garden with Spring flowers that come up every Spring for those you lost. Every spring for a few weeks or months they could blaze with color.
March 3/21
My Farmer friends already know we are in Mud season. How did we become so divorced from food and the land that we did not know that? What other things have we lost? What does the sometimes calamitous change of seasons nudge us to remember, to know, to learn? To forget?
March 4/21 Cold wind has come through. It is so easy to focus on the weather, just like on your current mood, joys, frustrations…. Yet how often do we not notice the climate? Where is your life trending? What is/are the long-term things you need to attend to, notice, enjoy before it/they are gone? It is often not the day to day changes that cause our long-term regrets, but the things long-term we failed to appreciate, do, enjoy, embrace, cherish, relish, attend to. Often this is because we put it off waiting for the next sunny, rainy, day. 3/26/21
When Spring finally arrives it brings storms and gusts of winds and traveling companions to set off with amid the flowers on another grand adventure.
The great difficulty with white privilege is its sheer ubiquity and its sheer seductiveness. Imagine that you are a beautiful woman or man and people just open doors for you, offer their arms, offer you the best seating, you do not ask for it, but it just happens. After a while, you believe that you must deserve it, that it is yours by right. But it does not, it simply is a result of your youthful beauty. Also, the simple fact that your culture values your particular kind of beauty. You look around and see other beautiful people being treated the same way. Maybe you see that this is a system. Maybe you realize that the system may harm you. You are given the best seats because your presence advertises for and improves the brand of the restaurant you are in. They may put your picture up on the wall, to say beauty was here. You may not realize that there are entire groups of people who are excluded from this life through no fault of their own. Then someone throws water on you and says you are hurting people because of this system, a system you may or may not have realized was even there, a system you know that you did not set up. But by genetics or luck, your parents and grandparents were also beautiful people. They earned more money, were able to own more property because beauty can attract money. All of their earnings passed down to you, allowing you to go to better schools and to earn more yourself. Now you are asked to turn it down, to say this is not fair, that the system is wrong. Will you? or will you fight to maintain the system for your own beautiful children?
leavingleavesineaves 