Hummingbirds buzz me daily now. I have come to realize they are letting me know it’s time to refill their feeders. The old sheep can’t quite make it to the orchard, but they wait eagerly for the little green apples trees are letting go. Chicks follow me, expecting treats and their insistence is charming. The young saplings look weary from the heat and I feel their relief when I get to them with water. These are tiny acts of love and kindness that fill my cup and keep me human. In a world that challenges compassion and ridicules empathy, it is delicious to discover that our humanity has not been erased.
There is an opportunity that waits for us every day and really every moment, if we have the eyes for it. It’s the chance to be human. I’ve come to acknowledge that being human is not automatic. It requires something more than merely being alive. It is a conscious choice and a practice.
I have found that I am most weary, not from the labors of my day, but of the missed opportunities to share my humanity and to delight in another’s.
The shocking and horrid death of Corey Ruiz at the hands of the state brought new challenges. Accusations that this violence was inevitable and deserved played heavily and heartlessly. It was salt in our woundedness as human beings. It takes a tremendous effort to overcome the depth of sorrow that we feel and to seek the clarity needed for this moment.
And what is this needed clarity? It is the ability to walk in pain, sorrow and anger and not be swallowed by the abyss of hatred. It is the courage to find within us the determination to rise again. It is the choice to be human.
There is an outpouring of love and concern for the family and the community in Madison at this time of grief. The vigil continues there and the demands remain. From Wisconsin Bailout the People Movement.
Echo Valley Hope Board’s response to the killing of Corey Ruiz by Madison police on July 22. Echo Valley Hope will continue to support efforts to eradicate racism and violence in the systems that were created for our protection. The execution of Corey Ruiz, a Black man, by Madison police and witnessed by bystanders demands our united voices for change. We support voices demanding the abolishment of deadly force. We demand an independent investigation into this murder. We will continue to work to restore human dignity. Racism and violence must be abolished from our systems. No more excuses
For more statements from member groups of WNPJ on the killing of Corey Ruiz, visit the Facebook page.
This week has been a roller coaster with extreme temps and choking smoke dulling the senses and dimming the mind. But even in these wicked days every moment counts. Every drop of Good matters. Every step toward Clarity brings us closer to our home and to ourselves.
This photo is from a post by Gregory LaForme on the fires in Canada. Read his post below.
The week began with an interview with Francesca Hong for my podcast Changing the Narrative. I was and remain in respect of the humanity she brings to her campaign for Governor of Wisconsin. She has risen against tremendous odds to bring a sense of hope and dignity to our state. I welcome you to listen to our conversation.
If you have been reading my work over the years you probably know I have little faith in systems, and even less in politics. But my faith in the human spirit never waivers. Not in our ignorance, but in the wisdom that shines through when we take time to cultivate it.
The powers that be are throwing curve balls into this election. Both parties are sure they can sway the outcome, and perhaps they will. But that is still up to us. And the question will remain: Who do we want to be? Team Hong’s slogan, “We Make Better Possible” is not empty rhetoric. It engages and empowers We the People. And rise we must, while we still have choice.
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I also invite you to check out our nonprofit Echo Valley Hope e-news Revolution of Understanding. It is full of hope and actions of wonderful people striving to make a difference.
As Indigenous people endure the fires, with lives and communities upended and little help extended to them, let us remember: What happens to one, happens to all. Let us continue to find ways to lessen the suffering of all people and the earth. We can. These are matters of priority and choice.
CORPORATE PROFIT, GOVERNMENT NEGLECT: HOW FIRST NATIONS ARE BEING LEFT TO BURN IN ONTARIO
While northern Ontario communities breathe toxic smoke and face emergency evacuations, we need to talk about the man-made choices driving this crisis. This isn’t just a natural disaster. It is the direct result of corporate greed and severe government negligence.
Look at Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, also known as Collins First Nation, located northwest of Thunder Bay. Earlier this week, a fast-moving, massive wildfire completely consumed and destroyed the entire community in less than an hour.
Because it is a remote, fly-in community with no road access, residents were left with zero emergency government help as the flames advanced. Families, children, and elders had to drop everything, run to the beach, and pile into a handful of boats to watch their entire community burn to the ground from across the water.
Chief Helen Paavola stated that they survived it, but now they have absolutely nothing.
This tragedy was entirely preventable. The truth behind what led to this begins with spraying for profit, which creates the ultimate tinderbox. For decades, the province has permitted big forestry companies to aerially spray chemical herbicides, like glyphosate, over public Crown lands. They do this to kill off deciduous trees like trembling aspen, birch, and maple. They want to eliminate competition so profitable cash-crop conifers, like pine and spruce, grow faster for timber harvest.
But nature designed deciduous trees to act as natural firebreaks because they do not burn easily. By wiping them out to build single-species plantations, the government has created high-risk monoculture forests that burn far faster, leaving dead, chemically withered wood to serve as kindling.
While our forests became tinderboxes, the Ford government systematically stripped away the resources needed to fight the flames. Premier Doug Ford gutted the emergency forest firefighting budget, introducing deep permanent cuts. Years later, despite worsening climate risks, his administration quietly slashed tens of millions more from wildland firefighting and emergency preparedness. Because of these choices, Ontario’s frontline wildland firefighting force has shrunk year after year, leaving remote northern communities chronically short on emergency crews, pilots, and critical response capacity.
First Nations bear the brunt of these political and corporate calculations. Indigenous people make up only a small fraction of the population, but they account for the vast majority of all wildfire evacuations. Because many reserves are located in these targeted, fire-prone regions, these communities are on the front lines. Not only are they facing terrifying, long-term displacements from their homes, but the aerial spraying itself poisons their traditional territories. It obliterates native berry patches, destroys sacred medicinal plants, drives away moose populations, and risks local water contamination.
The bottom line is clear. We are sacrificing ecosystems, human health, and Indigenous treaty rights to protect corporate timber bottom lines and balance reckless provincial budgets. We cannot allow the government to underfund emergency services while actively making the landscape more dangerous.
Wake up and share this message. Talk to your local representatives and demand accountability for northern communities. Support the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Elders and organizations like Stop the Spray Canada who are actively fighting to end chemical forestry management.
I’ve often heard that what grows most prevalent around you may be what you need. Every year for the past twenty-five I’ve witnessed Nature’s care taking of my chosen home. Every year battles wage with unwanted invasives that if left unchecked upend the natural ecosystem. And then there are sweet victories when the cleared space allows the original wonders to emerge. I’m not one for chemical herbicides; the clearing of unwanteds is a labor of love.
A visiting Mapuche elder once walked the land and told me, “As this land heals you’ll see purple flowers everywhere.” Healing has its own deep roots. Did she mean healing from the clear-cutting decades before, or was she referring to the disregard so many have for the land we inhabit, for the land that holds us and nourishes us? The amazing trees that shade us from intense heat and whose dead trunks and branches keep our fires going in winter. The delicious “weeds”, so bountifully given, from nettles to lamb quarters, purslane and others will always keep hunger at bay. Along with chicory and blackcaps that are springing up everywhere, there are the precious elderberry. (Elderberry tonic has been my go-to through the biting winters to maintain good health).
An honorable mention must also be given to the mushrooms that coexist with us; and the eager black walnuts that insist on expanding their territory even though they are forbidden in the apple orchard. (Black walnut’s roots have a knack of poisoning apple trees and other plants, but the early leaves make a great de-wormer for my sheep and their nuts are delicious, their wood is exquisite and so we co-exist).
It’s an amazing gift this natural world.
This year, if the buds on the monarda plants have their way, the landscape will be a sea of purple. Monarda or bee balm is a wonderful anti-inflammatory. Native to Wisconsin it has been heralded as helpful with digestion and with coughs. And it’s a beautiful pollinator plant; just ask the bees.
What has all this taught me? The land, like all else, thrives on love. Keep loving.
It’s hot. People are being stretched to their limits. If not from the radical swings of Nature, from the ignorance of human beings. The earthquake calamity in Venezuela is exacerbated by international corporate theft of oil revenues. The people impacted are receiving little help. Hunger is taking hold, bodies remain trapped and hope is dissipating.
From all accounts, Sudan is bracing for another wave of violence. Amnesty International and others point to a war that would end if outside forces stopped weaponizing both sides. This is a battle for the control of resources. It shows no mercy on innocent lives. And let us not forget the human slaughter that Israel continues in Palestine and now in Lebanon as the world watches in real time.
We’re in crisis that most media and elected officials refuse to acknowledge in any meaningful way. One has to dig deep to uncover the inhumanity. Here in Wisconsin, masked ICE agents are targeting people who are in full compliance with immigration laws. In Milwaukee, police are allowing ICE to override laws created to curtail their violent operations. Families are disrupted and dreams are crushed as deaths in ICE custody rise in the inhuman, for-profit facilities we have allowed.
But if you dig deep, you will learn that Native tribes fought for the closure of Alligator Alcatraz with the Miccosukee Tribe and environmental groups winning the case to end the detention center. You will hear of countries sending aid to Venezuela, and NGO’s risking all to help those in need. But you have to dig. Because those in power know that if the full picture of system collapse and human misery is shown, people will rise.
And People are rising. Despite the lies and the corruption. Despite the obscene wealth that knows no compassion, People are rising. Community action groups are springing up to fight data centers, transmission and pipelines, and to protect their immigrant neighbors. And people are voting. This battle to save our souls is not over.
Those who recognize we share the same watering hole are asserting their humanity. And we will win.
Let’s celebrate that which is worthy of celebration!
Some things never took on me. As a teen I had a fierce reaction against the Vietnam war when most people were blindly in support, before the narratives changed and the body count rose. I remember at even younger years, I was not willing to mistreat or even speak poorly of children less advantaged. And I never understood the disregard and dehumanization of Black children who I counted as friends. I hated the stigmas on diversity or anything that smacked of difference issued by “God fearing, church goers”. Their hypocrisy was repugnant to me. It chased me from religion, but not from my Creator.
A favored aunt tried to help me “see the plight of white people”, offering books that spoke of being outnumbered and more. I felt sorry for her. I didn’t realize at the time she was unwittingly warning me of what was yet to come. That those Sunday worshiping, people of God were about to unleash hatred so vile as to make me want to withdraw from society as a whole.
But that’s not my fate. I choose instead to champion the truly Good in all of us. And however desperate the times appear; I’m committed to fulfilling my life’s purpose: to be fully human, fully alive. I’ve lived a life of questioning and choosing. And my choices, while not easily executed, have allowed a love of humanity and of the earth that I cherish.
Baraboo, Wiscsonsin will be celebrating Juneteenth for the third year. It’s a community refusing to surrender to the racism that has haunted it. Haunted all of us. I’ll be there again. This is what we need. To celebrate our stories of victory, to revel in the colors of the rainbow and to delight in our diversity which is our strength.
It’s time for the silent to waken. The line is drawn. We are either human or we are not. There is no other choice. Time to dance.
Abolish ICE. End racism. Choose humanity. Celebrate Juneteenth.
As the swirl of BS continues and it seems harder to find hints of humanity, compassion and kindness, remember this: The United States was born as a republic led by an aristocracy of white men. Yet the Declaration of Independence offered some of the highest human ideals ever written: All men are created equal and the right to the pursuit of happiness – unless of course you were Indigenous, a Slave, or a Woman. For these lofty ideals to become true for all required that equality, equity and the pursuit of justice would become a relentless effort. Two hundred and fifty years of blood, sweat and tears from some of the most courageous and passionate people brought us tremendous victories.
This struggle made by (primarily) marginalized Peoples must be the pride of this nation, not its castaways. And while the arrogant attempt to erase our history and whitewash our struggles, it’s incumbent upon us to celebrate the 250 years of valiant courage and unbridled wisdom of those who resisted injustice.
The stories of persistent valor that are handed down, whether written or verbal, in song or in art, must be held as sacred and continue to be shared. Teach our children the legacy of which they can be proud. Remind them that our Native siblings are still here despite attempted genocide. Remind them of the resiliency of all who were brought here against their will to be enslaved. Help them understand that socialism, feared by the elites, gave us fire departments, the post office, public schools, unions, better working conditions and so much more.
Let’s stop wasting time on the small minded, the greedy and the power hungry. They have risen from time to time, but have never triumphed. We know their history intimately. We carry the scars. It is time to uplift and honor those who never allowed ignorance to win. However daunting the challenge, we cannot sacrifice the gains that humanity has made. We must persevere.
Let’s come together to celebrate the true victors. The ones who never surrendered their love or their humanity. Let’s begin again. And all that is now being done to destroy human dignity can be undone. Do not despair. We will rise stronger; our light will be brighter.
And let us acknowledge that this country was and remains imperfect, and rather, see it as a work of art, perhaps never to be finished but always available for our love and corrections. We are living in a time of correction. Your voice and your clarity are needed.
If your media intake is limited to FOX, MSN, CNN and the like, you’re being lulled into aggression or passivity. Facts in these arenas are designed to distract and divide. I want to direct you to your humanity.
If you’re among those holding your breath in hopes that some divine hand will reshape the current course of insanity, I would tell you to stop wasting your time. There’s no hero coming to save the day. The hope is that we, as individuals and collectively, will take the time to learn how we got here and find creative ways to revolutionize our communities, our nation and the world.
If the fire in your belly has been all but extinguished, I would suggest to you to find the fighters among us who have not given up. The clear eyed, passionate truth tellers. The marginalized who are no longer controlled by corporate money and the empire. Free your mind and your heart will thank you.
Because we’re not born to be enslaved. We’re born to enjoy the magnificence of this creation. We’re not born to enslave others or to control their uniqueness in any way. We’re not here to destroy the garden, but to co-create with it.
There are people challenging the status quo of hate and fear. I count myself among them. I seek out their wisdom. Not to follow or mimic, but to fuel my thirst for peace and justice, so I can carry on.
Lastly, I have come to appreciate the independent journalists and creative minds on Substack. Many have been driven from corporate media of their outspoken criticism of inhumanity and injustice. Danielle Moodie, Wajahat Ali, Joy Reid, Jared Yates Sexton, Katie Phang, Trita Parsi and Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez are a few of my favorites.
Still other are artists and activists seeking community and the chance to be heard. Take time to catch the poetry, photography and heart of Mustava Santiago Ali and Justin Mott. You can find all of these and many more on my profile page at Substack. Discover and share the diversity of thought and will that is our right and our heritage as human beings.
When we know one another, when we see each other’s humanity, we will change course.
There are things that show up in your garden that just should not be there. Wisdom tells us to pull weeds or put up a fence to keep varmints out early in the season. If we don’t, the effort it will take at harvest will be overwhelming and disappointing.
These days I spend cutting wild rose and autumn olive in the orchard. Years ago, someone warned me that the wild rose could take over. I ignored his plea to take action. A little aromatic rose couldn’t be that bad, right? I was wrong. Like grape vine, the tentacles of the wild rose reach into the apple branches and are destructive. They tear through clothing and no animal cares to eat them.
photo: wild rose encroaching on a young oak….but not for long.
Not catching the encroachment of autumn olive on the perimeters was another mistake. Both invasives take their toll on the diversity of indigenous wildflowers and luscious greens. Now as I spend time clearing away what should not have been, I delight in the variety, and the increased abundance of wildlife tells me I am on the right path.
Another bonus of tending the orchard is the respite from the madness that surrounds us these days. And I have to acknowledge the obvious. The seeds of colonial destruction and the cruelty of capitalism should never have been allowed to take root in the garden of the Americas.
We must do all that we can, in whatever ways that we can, to stop the encroachment of ignorance into our lives and our communities. Truth telling and not recoiling from the backlash that will surely come is an antidote. Finding like-minded souls willing to forge a new way is essential. And key is the enjoyment of the discovery of what has always been: being human in this glorious home we call earth.
Hope to see some of you here in Madison on Sunday, May 10, 6 pm. Independent journalism and beloved community.Carry on Amy Goodman!
Sometime during the course of the Wisconsin winter, I decided it was time to visit an old friend and to explore a bit of New Orleans. Amtrack is becoming my favorite mode of travel and it is a straight shot to the Big Easy from the Driftless. Nothing disappointed in the wonderings. Smiling faces, warm greetings, amazing food and vibrant colors told the stories of a city still finding its way after Katrina. The community spirit was deeply touching and the diversities of interwoven cultures and lifestyles were absolutely refreshing.
But it was on this day that the reckonings of the past brought the inhumanity of the present in sharp focus. We made the hour drive to Whitney Plantation. This is not your storybook wedding venue kind of place. This is, as our guide told us, a place to “become comfortable with the uncomfortable”. This is not a glorified walk through Antebellum South, where opulent displays of wealth hid the violent and cruel underbelly of slavery. This was a dignified accounting of the life of the enslaved, much of it told in their own words. And as I found myself drawn into the lives portrayed there, the parallels of modern kidnapping, detention centers and prisons became more relevant. The storylines of racism, sexual abuses, and of separated families, while enslavers continue to amass wealth, are far too familiar.
Yet what was most striking were the people who are keeping the stories alive. The caretakers of this place and of the memories. The ones who honor the names, the tears and the hardships and in doing so they offer us a chance to bear witness.
There is responsibility in witnessing inhumanity, should you accept it. It is to become human and then to find a way to be accountable.
It’s easy to say, “We need transformation’; it’s yet another thing to be actively engaged in it. Transformation, by its nature, implies urgency to move from one state of being into another. Nature repeatedly shows us this. The butterfly is not alone in this emerging. Whether nature’s rapid transformations of insects and amphibians or the slow altering of the seasons, these shifts are essential for survival and the balance of life’s systems. And what are the consequences of not transforming?
Stagnation does not serve us. In traditional Chinese Medicine stagnation refers to restriction that hinders vital energy and ultimately causes pain and dis-ease. That’s why people seek movement in the forms of Tai chi and Qi Gong, to avoid stagnation and to maintain health’s optimum balance. And to a great extent it works.
But when we are identifying disease within our communities, our state and world, movement alone will not suffice. There must be clear thinking and honest assessing of the conditions causing our illnesses – literally and figuratively.
Wisdom would dictate that no single individual should be saddled with the obligation and responsibility of what we have come to know as leadership. Marx had it wrong, following is in fact the opium of the masses, organized religion is only a symptom. The giving away of our individual accountability to ourselves, our communities and the earth has led us to this imperiled moment. Handing our power to a leader brings a stagnation that we can not afford in this urgent time. Cooperation and community where everyone assumes responsibility to the whole is what is needed now. And that will be a transformative step that we have not yet tried.
Many of us prefer status quo thinking and are not prepared to rock the boat. Understood. There are people desperate to crown a new king to follow, both on the left and the right. Tucker Carlson and Pete Buttigieg come to mind in this delusional attraction. But transformation requires immediacy and I would say to you, if this is not your moment to be accountable as a human being, capable of clear thinking and decisive action, please step aside.
There are many brilliant minds and stellar hearts seeking to bring more than hope back to our existence. There are communities of people readying for the transformation needed for all of us to create better ways forward. Look to the ones creating community. Look to the ones invigorating more than resistance; look to the determined, to the unrelenting. The people refusing to accept ‘this is how it must be’. And maybe then you will realize you are an essential part in this massive shift – for all of us.
let kindness win 