The Art of Launching a Second Blog

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IT’S A BLOG!!

Now, why would I want to do that to myself? Like building and maintaining a blog with almost weekly posts isn’t enough of a responsibility? The short answer is that I have more to say about an entirely different subject than this blog on my personal meanderings can handle. My new genre is on how to take action to preserve the health of the planet in the age of climate change and other environmental degradation.  This form of activism is by making small lifestyle changes.

I started chipping away on the concept of my new blog “One Sweet Earth” in late 2019 with the hopes of a New Year’s launch.  That was wishful thinking as I forgot how daunting building a new blog can be.  Selecting the right theme, how to build a menu with categories and pages is daunting enough without wrestling with WordPress’s new block editor.  Then there’s writing content and in this case illustrating it. A good portion of “One Sweet Earth” is in my sketchbook.

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The Art of Surrender

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I spent several years working and exploring in remote corners of Alaska as a young woman.  This required transportation in floatplanes and small boats to rocky shores, arctic lakes, meandering rivers

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and remote airstrips.  The weather played an important part in determining departure and pickup times. It seemed that the pickups were often the most delayed.  Maybe that’s because it was the end of a trip when I was tired, cold, and desperately in need of a shower and my own bed.

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An Old Take on Going Viral

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My university education steeped me enough ecology and natural science where I developed a different view about modern humanity and our dismal treatment of our natural environment.  A couple years back I wrote this poem to give myself some comfort (in a sciencey kind of way) that the Earth will be just fine without our presence.  I never shared it until now as it seems so appropriate to the times…

 

 

STARTING FRESH

Beyond the scope of our perceptions

They live, thrive even

Unseen

The precursors of life 

That once rose out of primordial goo

Giving rise to our modern-day selves

In the span of millennia

 

Now they keep house 

In the dark soil

On doorknobs

In the lining of our guts,

Or riding on the currents of air and water 

 

They are the good guys and the bad guys

Working the magic of digestion, decomposition, disease 

Keeping life on Earth in a delicate balance

As they go about their quiet business

While we humans multiply and innovate

Thinking the planet is ours to consume

And ours to fix

 

In the end will come the justice of Nature

Indiscriminate of zealot, terrorist, or model citizen

From microbes, having no other intelligence 

Than the genius of mutation

A plague perhaps, unleashed with a single sneeze

 

Our technology, heroes, and gods will not save us

The Earth will rest, then heal in its time

Nature will learn from her mistakes

And new life will rise

Our presence recorded in a layer of rock

Six inches thick

 

On that note…

Be well everyone and make the most of your social isolation! 


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How to Fall in Love With Poetry in Eight Minutes

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”

Robert Frost

His voice made me halt abruptly as I walked my dog down a country road. I was listening to a new podcast on my phone. It was a most comforting, soft Irishman’s voice, padraigotuama_headshot-300x300-1the kind you know the speaker has depth, an old soul worth a listen with total commitment.  That voice was that of Pádraig Ó Tuama, the host of the podcast “Poetry Unbound”, part of the On Being Project  He was introducing himself and the podcast.  Then he began to read the poem  “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade” by Brad Aaron Modlin.  Not only was I was utterly transfixed by the way he read the poem, his interpretation that followed illuminated this piece in a way that I never could have in my own reading.

I came late to poetry, the reading and writing of it.  To be honest there are few poets and poems I really love. I have been guilty of quick reading,  passing over an author’s words like speeding down a road without noticing the scenery. But with Padraig’s reading and interpretations, I am finding new love in unlikely poems.  He pays attention deeply to what the author is saying in each line and then makes the poem come alive to the listener.  After his guidance, he reads the piece again so you can fully appreciate the poem’s magic.

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