VERY smart advice! Adding a note from a person who is having tech troubles:
Get to know your farmers! (they already know heaps about growing food in your area). And invest in compost and year-round growing infrastructure. And coordinate with your neighbors - not everyone needs to know how to do everything but maybe some people are good at cooking and some are good at childcare or fixing tools and some know how to sew and mend clothes and other people are good at splitting firewood or organizing group efforts.
Frivolity / morale / mental and spiritual wellbeing
Make art. It can suck, but make art. Not only does it feel good to create if that’s your calling, it also gives others something to enjoy.
Make beauty for its own sake. Make practical items like quilts and socks, and turn them loose into the community. Make cartoons and protest pieces to get your messages out. Make music alone or with others. Write poetic lamentations to process your grief and speculative fiction about the future you want to bring into being. Interpretive dance also counts as exercise.
First, let's refocus - When a conversation is filled with hatred of "other" or of what's occurring, now, wait for the moment when the cathartic outpouring (we all need to vent sometimes) becomes anger for anger's sake and refocus your chat with "So, how are you healing yourself in this..." or "what actions do you want to engage in or talk about...".
Of course, this all being said, I fully support walking away from anyone spewing hate or "othering" any of the beautiful humans in this world. This is more about our unfruitful us/them that undermines good work needed and valuable education and recognition "across the aisle".
Second, let's engage with Nature much, much more - The best thing is the immediate benefit to our health and stress. The bigger and longer-term societal impacts are huge and not yet appreciated.
One of the things I have come to recognize is that our separation from Nature has made us think things can be "fixed" with the flip of a switch or a "scaled tech solution". We then silo our work and our discussions to these singular fixes on a sole issue. Nature shows us the passage of time that is needed to create a garden that feeds or soothes, reveal the value of a bike or walking path as use increases, and make connections with neighbors and neighborhood businesses.
We need time, process, and iterations, and Nature can help us to see this.
I think we are going to need our own microtransit. There is a LOT of need to get around and the public options are only getting worse. A few people with vans and a really good organizer could do a lot of transporting people to and from events, work, school, all the things.
i have been thinking about this too, eli! public transit (including "medicaid rides") is heavily funded by the federal government. we should definitely be thinking about how to provide rides to work, grocery shopping, appointments, etc.
I think we've suffered this disaster in large part because many people think there's a safety net that will catch them, guard rails, gatekeepers who will keep the bad people out; all political decisions are aesthetic, all elections have no more lasting effect on society than a super bowl.
But things do go away. There is no more Rome, no more Byzantium. There are no more dodos, no more Neanderthals.
What I hope people will do is recognize the things they've assumed other people would take care of for them and start taking some of the responsibility on themselves, and I don't mean responsibility just for themselves but for the common good. Vaccinate your kids for the sake of other people's kids. Vote for other people's welfare. Be kind to others so we all can live in a kind society. Prove to others that you're trustworthy so we can rebuild the trust we have lost.
We need each other. Maybe the first step is to remind each other of that.
Love this Paula! I’m not sure if this suggestion is really “active” enough, but what comes to mind is a section on finding inspiration for alternative ways of living/ being/ doing, for me a lot of this comes from reading (books and substacks, and also podcasts).
Some recent reads I’d put on the list,
- Returning Home to Our Bodies by Abigail Rose Clarke
- Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
- What if We Get it Right (I already know you’d put this one at the top of the list 😊) by Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson
- Relationality by David Jay
- anything by Robin Wall Kimmerer
For podcasts,
- WILD by Sarah Wilson (she also has a great substack, “This is Precious”)
- We Are The Great Turning with Joanna Macy
(Actually now that I’ve started this list I’m wondering if you could crowdsource this as an entirely separate post - I’d love to dive into the recommendations you and those in your network would add here)
These are wonderful! I have a few ideas about the climate anxious and very online on my website thelittleregen.com. I’ll be adding to it. There’s also just been a LinkedIn post about digital and irl citizen science projects that I might ‘at’ you in. Zooniverse was mentioned.
Also, I’ll mention because I’m so climate concerned and such a digital busybody that there’s a list I have of multifamily and large buildings in nyc that qualify for special funding to decarbonize and need notification. It was mentioned in our Climate Reality NYC meet up. I contacted the first listed building on Facebook and wrote this Google review of the building: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hA2fFa12iK7NWTM96?g_st=ic
Contact me if you want to know the list of nyc buildings eligible for intro 654 funding.
(They do plan irl meetings between council members and boards/hoas)
VERY smart advice! Adding a note from a person who is having tech troubles:
Get to know your farmers! (they already know heaps about growing food in your area). And invest in compost and year-round growing infrastructure. And coordinate with your neighbors - not everyone needs to know how to do everything but maybe some people are good at cooking and some are good at childcare or fixing tools and some know how to sew and mend clothes and other people are good at splitting firewood or organizing group efforts.
~ Katrina Amaral, Timberdoodle Farm, https://www.timberdoodlesawmill.com/
me again: I'll pick this up along with some of your other contributions in a future post. :-)
so many great ideas pouring in! i'm organizing my thoughts about how/where to present them. meanwhile, please continue sharing and contributing. <3
Frivolity / morale / mental and spiritual wellbeing
Make art. It can suck, but make art. Not only does it feel good to create if that’s your calling, it also gives others something to enjoy.
Make beauty for its own sake. Make practical items like quilts and socks, and turn them loose into the community. Make cartoons and protest pieces to get your messages out. Make music alone or with others. Write poetic lamentations to process your grief and speculative fiction about the future you want to bring into being. Interpretive dance also counts as exercise.
Make. Art.
(Addendum, who the hell am I and how did I get in here? Friend of a friend of a friend. The internet is a strange place.)
it's nice for it to be strange in the good way sometimes.... :-) thanks for being here! i love your ideas.
I would like to add two:
First, let's refocus - When a conversation is filled with hatred of "other" or of what's occurring, now, wait for the moment when the cathartic outpouring (we all need to vent sometimes) becomes anger for anger's sake and refocus your chat with "So, how are you healing yourself in this..." or "what actions do you want to engage in or talk about...".
Of course, this all being said, I fully support walking away from anyone spewing hate or "othering" any of the beautiful humans in this world. This is more about our unfruitful us/them that undermines good work needed and valuable education and recognition "across the aisle".
Second, let's engage with Nature much, much more - The best thing is the immediate benefit to our health and stress. The bigger and longer-term societal impacts are huge and not yet appreciated.
One of the things I have come to recognize is that our separation from Nature has made us think things can be "fixed" with the flip of a switch or a "scaled tech solution". We then silo our work and our discussions to these singular fixes on a sole issue. Nature shows us the passage of time that is needed to create a garden that feeds or soothes, reveal the value of a bike or walking path as use increases, and make connections with neighbors and neighborhood businesses.
We need time, process, and iterations, and Nature can help us to see this.
love these! thank you, jodi!
I think we are going to need our own microtransit. There is a LOT of need to get around and the public options are only getting worse. A few people with vans and a really good organizer could do a lot of transporting people to and from events, work, school, all the things.
i have been thinking about this too, eli! public transit (including "medicaid rides") is heavily funded by the federal government. we should definitely be thinking about how to provide rides to work, grocery shopping, appointments, etc.
I think we've suffered this disaster in large part because many people think there's a safety net that will catch them, guard rails, gatekeepers who will keep the bad people out; all political decisions are aesthetic, all elections have no more lasting effect on society than a super bowl.
But things do go away. There is no more Rome, no more Byzantium. There are no more dodos, no more Neanderthals.
What I hope people will do is recognize the things they've assumed other people would take care of for them and start taking some of the responsibility on themselves, and I don't mean responsibility just for themselves but for the common good. Vaccinate your kids for the sake of other people's kids. Vote for other people's welfare. Be kind to others so we all can live in a kind society. Prove to others that you're trustworthy so we can rebuild the trust we have lost.
We need each other. Maybe the first step is to remind each other of that.
Love this Paula! I’m not sure if this suggestion is really “active” enough, but what comes to mind is a section on finding inspiration for alternative ways of living/ being/ doing, for me a lot of this comes from reading (books and substacks, and also podcasts).
Some recent reads I’d put on the list,
- Returning Home to Our Bodies by Abigail Rose Clarke
- Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
- What if We Get it Right (I already know you’d put this one at the top of the list 😊) by Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson
- Relationality by David Jay
- anything by Robin Wall Kimmerer
For podcasts,
- WILD by Sarah Wilson (she also has a great substack, “This is Precious”)
- We Are The Great Turning with Joanna Macy
(Actually now that I’ve started this list I’m wondering if you could crowdsource this as an entirely separate post - I’d love to dive into the recommendations you and those in your network would add here)
I love this! I am foreseeing a need to break things up into many posts. I am loving the reading list idea.
These are wonderful! I have a few ideas about the climate anxious and very online on my website thelittleregen.com. I’ll be adding to it. There’s also just been a LinkedIn post about digital and irl citizen science projects that I might ‘at’ you in. Zooniverse was mentioned.
Also, I’ll mention because I’m so climate concerned and such a digital busybody that there’s a list I have of multifamily and large buildings in nyc that qualify for special funding to decarbonize and need notification. It was mentioned in our Climate Reality NYC meet up. I contacted the first listed building on Facebook and wrote this Google review of the building: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hA2fFa12iK7NWTM96?g_st=ic
Contact me if you want to know the list of nyc buildings eligible for intro 654 funding.
(They do plan irl meetings between council members and boards/hoas)
Thanks, Annette! I will check out these resources.