A Question of Action

Here in Oregon we are doing the Happy Dance at news of a new 43,000 acre national forest near Bend that will help protect against urban sprawl and give wildlife room to roam. With that in mind, I would like to share this essay by author Barbara Kingsolver titled Understanding the Value of Wild Places. Excerpt:

It's a privilege to live any part of one's life in proximity of nature. It is a privilege, apparently, even to know nature is out there at all. In the summer of 1996, human life on Earth made a subtle, uncelebrated passage from mostly rural to mostly urban. More that half of all humans now live in cities....I find this exodus from the land makes me unspeakably sad. I think of the children who will never know intuitively, that a flower is a plant's way of making love, or what silence sounds like or that trees breathe out what we breathe in..I wonder what it will mean for us to forget that food, like rain, is not a product but a process. I wonder how we will imagine the infinite when we have never seen how the stars fill a dark night sky.

According to the Wild Hunt, Orion Foxwood made this statement at PantheaCon 2010 and the quote is making it's way around the earthwise net:

The Earth isn’t running a democracy. She is calling us all into action whether we like it or not.

Yes, yes and again yes. As always, I come back to loving the questions we ask ourselves. As a Green Witch I ask this question on a daily basis: "What is right action in this place and time?" The answers may differ for each person but the fundamental need for action does not, even as the question itself becomes ever more urgent for us all.

Sia

Celtic Tree of Life by the talented Kevin Dyer at Compost.com. You can buy copies of his creations at that gallery link.

The Obama Death Panel Debate

Trust Jon Stewart and the staff at The Daily Show to hit the political nail on the head, again and again and again and be fiendishly funny doing it. Posted here you will find a clip titled The Obama Death Panel Debate which had me on the floor. The entire episode which focused on the increasing insanity of the health care "debate" in this country at town hall meetings, is well worth watching. Also, don't miss the interview with Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (1)

Enjoy,

Sia

Endnotes:

Publisher Comments:

(1) In this groundbreaking epic biography, Douglas Brinkley draws on never-before-published materials to examine the life and achievements of our naturalist president. By setting aside more than 230 million acres of wild America for posterity between 1901 and 1909, Theodore Roosevelt made conservation a universal endeavor. This crusade for the American wilderness was perhaps the greatest U.S. presidential initiative between the Civil War and World War I. Roosevelt's most important legacies led to the creation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and passage of the Antiquities Act in 1906. His executive orders saved such treasures as Devils Tower, the Grand Canyon, and the Petrified Forest.

Tracing the role that nature played in Roosevelt's storied career, Brinkley brilliantly analyzes the influence that the works of John James Audubon and Charles Darwin had on the young man who would become our twenty-sixth president. With descriptive flair, the author illuminates Roosevelt's bird watching in the Adirondacks, wildlife obsession in Yellowstone, hikes in the Blue Ridge Mountains, ranching in the Dakota Territory, hunting in the Big Horn Mountains, and outdoor romps through Idaho and Wyoming. He also profiles Roosevelt's incredible circle of naturalist friends, including the Catskills poet John Burroughs, Boone and Crockett Club cofounder George Bird Grinnell, forestry zealot Gifford Pinchot, buffalo breeder William Hornaday, Sierra Club founder John Muir, U.S. Biological Survey wizard C. Hart Merriam, Oregon Audubon Society founder William L. Finley, and pelican protector Paul Kroegel, among many others. He brings to life hilarious anecdotes of wild-pig hunting in Texas and badger saving in Kansas, wolf catching in Oklahoma and grouse flushing in Iowa. Even the story of the teddy bear gets its definitive treatment.

Destined to become a classic, this extraordinary and timeless biography offers a penetrating and colorful look at Roosevelt's naturalist achievements, a legacy now more important than ever. Raising a Paul Revere-like alarm about American wildlife in peril--including buffalo, manatees, antelope, egrets, and elk--Roosevelt saved entire species from probable extinction. As we face the problems of global warming, overpopulation, and sustainable land management, this imposing leader's stout resolution to protect our environment is an inspiration and a contemporary call to arms for us all.