DAY 40*

Dear Universe - As we all know some days are easier than others. I hear uncertainty sneaking through the most confident of my compatriots. My questions are endless. Is shutting everything down going to be an endless spiral down destined to break our spirit? Or, will it clear the path for our ascension; for a renewed reverence of our interdependent place in the universe? Could it break our materialism and addictions allowing us to see the imbalances we’ve co-created? I have no answers. Only more questions.

So....
Here is how I am starting my 40th day in physical distancing quaran-time. With a list for all I am grateful for today and everyday -
My family (human and non-human)
My home
My friends
My work
My Coop

The clean water flowing
The clean skies clearing
The paychecks arriving
The garden greening
The UPS and mail people delivering
The healers risking and tending
The birds
The lengthening days

And then, I rise (with Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise)

For those of you still reading, the below is an excerpt is from Heather Cox Richardson yesterday. Follow her on facebook or sign up for her newsletters.  She is a brilliant historian and current day truth slayer. Heather, Rebecca Solnit and adrienne maree brown slay it everyday.

“Today’s other big news was Trump’s suggestion at his coronavirus briefing that it would be worth studying whether injecting disinfectant into patients would kill the novel coronavirus. "And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?" he said. "Because, you see, it gets on the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that. So that you're going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds — it sounds interesting to me." He also suggested using heat and light to kill the virus.
Doctors were horrified at his comment, calling it irresponsible and dangerous. Disinfectants are poisonous and are deadly if they are used inappropriately. “To be clear:” emergency medicine physician Dara Kass tweeted, “Intracavitary UV light and swallowing bleach or isopropyl alcohol can kill you. Don’t do it.”

WTF? WHY IS THIS IDIOT STILL IN THE WHITE HOUSE?

I also recommend checking out Gov. Cuomo taking on McConnell in a recent NYT article.  The perfect ticket would have been Warren/Cuomo. Sigh. 


*my day 40 was Friday, April 24th - not sure who is in charge of an official count.

This is a test of the emergency interdependence network. Will the collective awaken?  Is this the unraveling of society as we know it?   Is the pause button working?  Has the curve flattened?   Who is in charge of the truth?  Is the data we are provided reliable?  What does it mean to NOT trust science?  Who calls the closures, the openings, the shelter in place orders - the president, the governor, the mayor, the minister?  Can we question authority without being socially ostracized for not taking care of the collective?  We still, we stay - all in the name of protecting each other.  What are we really protecting ourselves from?

We have  moved from the screen in the cubicle or classroom to the screen in the home office or spare bedroom, if we are lucky enough to have those.  How about a therapist seeing patients from her bathrooms!   We  socially isolate while a virus knocks on the doors of our elders, our infirm.  Frontlin-ers - grocery stockers, postal workers, internet providers are keeping us connected and fed.   Physicians, nurses, researchers, and all first responders risk their lives to keep us alive and safe.   

Pearl Buck is quoted as saying, "If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday."  I don't want to dwell in yesterday, but I can't help leaning on prophecies that said we humans would be here now.  Many  cultures called this and have words for this time:  orita in Yorubo, the narrows from an Abenaki educator, the 7th prophecy from the Ojibwe, and how about the road less traveled from Vermont's very own Robert Frost.   It is time to say good-bye to our old ways. 

I have dozens of questions and no answers.  I am trying to be ok with that. 

These are extraordinary times. Asking extraordinary things from each one of us. I keep coming back to the idea/question - what am I being asked to learn here, now, in this place, in this time? How can we open to the lessons and the love to consciously move forward with this vast example of interdependence and inter-connectedness to all living beings remaining at the center of our every breath? Time will tell. For now, I am trying to show up in each moment and that is not always easy. Sending you all love and please take good care. As a friend has said this is the great “unraveling of society as we know it”. May we follow the thread of this new, yet old, knowing to the human’s embrace of perennial practices in the great unknown.

I hope you are finding rituals, comforts, and movement to stay strong as we wait this out, comfort each other and send a collective prayer to those on the front lines. 

I wanted to share a poem by Jan Zwicky (courage-zwicky-poem.pdf).  I've also added some recent photos here.

re- a prefix, occurring originally in loanwords from Latin, used with the meaning “again” or “again and again” to indicate repetition, or with the meaning “back” or “backward” to indicate withdrawal or backward motion.

By Nadine Canter Barnicle

The words reimagine, recreate, regenerate, reciprocate, respect have been coming up a lot for me.  This prefix, re-, carries a lot of power, intention, and direction.   I think it is particularly important in front of the word imagine.   Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens emphasizes the power of the human imagination.  He writes about the Homo Sapiens emergence and how we humans imagined today’s world into being.  And he means how we imagined everything, from the keyboard I type on to the roads we travel, to the cars we drive in – and, as we all read this issue of Spring Under the Sun  - how we create waste and what we do with it.  Harari believes we humans can re-imagine our way to a perennial world.  I believe we can as well.

Since reading his book, Harari has inspired me to re-imagine just about everything in my world.  How I greet the day; how I process information and connections; how, when, and what I eat; how I listen and how I respond.  That last one was inspired by a family friend who passed away recently at 89 with a terminal illness. At her funeral someone shared some of her lasts notes on her “to do” list – she had written - listen longer before responding.  If she could reimagine how she listened and responded to her world knowing she had days left, why can’t we  envision a world where we aren’t polluting and destroying when we still have life and hope?   Can we reimagine how we consume?  What we consume?  What it means to live in a zero waste world?

As humans we are conditioned to not see our power.  We are born into lives with expectations and supposed to’s.  And, yet we really do have power, we have voices we are trained not to use.  We have choices.   We can start small like my friend at 89 with just awareness and intentions. We are the only species that has the choice not to self-annihilate.  William McDonough and Michael Braungart write in their follow up book to the seminal Cradle to Cradle:

"What about the information you accrue over life that can be converted into solutions?  What about contacts you  make that can be converted into action?  What about the wisdom you gain that can be converted into pleasure? Or friends into a web of community?  Humans can begin celebrating our own growth, our own emission over our lifetimes, to engage in a fruitful way with the rest of the natural world… You cannot downcycle life. Life upcycles.  It is valuable at every step.  The insect is not lowly compared to the human.  It’s just all part of the web of life.   So there is no such thing as a waste. No human who’s a waste. No tree that’s a waste…Upcycling eliminates the concept of waste." 
The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability - Designing for Abundance

McDonough and Braungart know this is not easy. But, they believe we can design our way to zero waste. Re-imagine.  Re-design.  They state:  “The goal of upcycle is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world with clean air, water, soil, and power – economically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed.”  I can’t think of more inspiring words as we celebrate Earth Day and join together cooperatively, leading with love to reimagine.   I highly recommend putting both of these books mentioned on your reading list!

Boardmember Nadine Canter Barnicle is a visiting scholar and community-engagement specialist for the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College.  

I'd like to say I have something utterly profound to wax on about here for a first official WDA blog post.  But today a colleague shared an opinion piece by the mostly venerable David Brooks and I have very few words to add.  I could not have said what he says here any better. I have called out a few sentences that resonate deeply for me as well as numbered the "5" lies to make them more accessible. What Brooks shares is utterly profound; ideas we must all make manifest as we set intentions guided by our hearts and love for all living beings.  We got this. We have no choice.

Five Lies Our Culture Tells
The cultural roots of our political problems.
By David Brooks, April 15, 2019
The New York Times

Four years ago, in the midst of the Obama presidency, I published a book called “The Road to Character.” American culture seemed to be in decent shape and my focus was on how individuals can deepen their inner lives. This week, in the midst of the Trump presidency, I’ve got another book, “The Second Mountain.” It’s become clear in the interim that things are not in good shape, that our problems are societal. The whole country is going through some sort of spiritual and emotional crisis.

College mental health facilities are swamped, suicide rates are spiking, the president’s repulsive behavior is tolerated or even celebrated by tens of millions of Americans. At the root of it all is the following problem: We’ve created a culture based on lies.

Here are some of them:
1) Career success is fulfilling. This is the lie we foist on the young. In their tender years we put the most privileged of them inside a college admissions process that puts achievement and status anxiety at the center of their lives. That begins advertising’s lifelong mantra — if you make it, life will be good.
Everybody who has actually tasted success can tell you that’s not true. I remember when the editor of my first book called to tell me it had made the best-seller list. It felt like … nothing. It was external to me.
The truth is, success spares you from the shame you might experience if you feel yourself a failure, but career success alone does not provide positive peace or fulfillment. If you build your life around it, your ambitions will always race out in front of what you’ve achieved, leaving you anxious and dissatisfied.

2) I can make myself happy. This is the lie of self-sufficiency. This is the lie that happiness is an individual accomplishment. If I can have just one more victory, lose 15 pounds or get better at meditation, then I will be happy.
But people looking back on their lives from their deathbeds tell us that happiness is found amid thick and loving relationships. It is found by defeating self-sufficiency for a state of mutual dependence. It is found in the giving and receiving of care.
It’s easy to say you live for relationships, but it’s very hard to do. It’s hard to see other people in all their complexity. It’s hard to communicate from your depths, not your shallows. It’s hard to stop performing! No one teaches us these skills.

3) Life is an individual journey. This is the lie books like Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” tell. In adulthood, each person goes on a personal trip and racks up a bunch of experiences, and whoever has the most experiences wins. This lie encourages people to believe freedom is the absence of restraint. Be unattached. Stay on the move. Keep your options open.
In reality, the people who live best tie themselves down. They don’t ask: What cool thing can I do next? They ask: What is my responsibility here? They respond to some problem or get called out of themselves by a deep love.
By planting themselves in one neighborhood, one organization or one mission, they earn trust. They have the freedom to make a lasting difference. It’s the chains we choose that set us free.

4) You have to find your own truth. This is the privatization of meaning. It’s not up to the schools to teach a coherent set of moral values, or a society. Everybody chooses his or her own values. Come up with your own answers to life’s ultimate questions! You do you!
The problem is that unless your name is Aristotle, you probably can’t do it. Most of us wind up with a few vague moral feelings but no moral clarity or sense of purpose.
The reality is that values are created and passed down by strong, self-confident communities and institutions. People absorb their values by submitting to communities and institutions and taking part in the conversations that take place within them. It’s a group process.

5) Rich and successful people are worth more than poorer and less successful people. We pretend we don’t tell this lie, but our whole meritocracy points to it. In fact, the meritocracy contains a skein of lies.
The message of the meritocracy is that you are what you accomplish. The false promise of the meritocracy is that you can earn dignity by attaching yourself to prestigious brands. The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love — that if you perform well, people will love you.
The sociology of the meritocracy is that society is organized around a set of inner rings with the high achievers inside and everyone else further out. The anthropology of the meritocracy is that you are not a soul to be saved but a set of skills to be maximized.

No wonder it’s so hard to be a young adult today. No wonder our society is fragmenting. We’ve taken the lies of hyper-individualism and we’ve made them the unspoken assumptions that govern how we live.

We talk a lot about the political revolution we need. The cultural revolution is more important.

More from me soon. I am headed back to work on this cultural revolution through my work with Middlebury College students.  With endless love,  Nadine