Happy Spring!
In my neck of the woods (Connecticut) it’s way below normal temperature (in the 30s) and the fourth late winter (early spring) snowstorm has just begun.
We just returned from several days visiting family in Orange County, California – which I’ve always dissed as having boring weather where it’s always in the 70s and sunny – but this time it was a nice reprieve, even though it was colder than normal there (topping out at around 60 degrees).
We’re always looking for fun new things to do with our 5-year-old granddaughter, Eliza. This time we visited the mission at San Juan Capistrano, about a half hour drive from her home in Irvine. Ever since I learned that the migratory swallows always return to Capistrano on March 19, I’ve been intrigued with visiting, since that’s my birthday, St. Joseph’s Day.
We were departing on March 17, so we missed that by a couple of days, but we went anyway on March 16. We saw the former homes of some swallows, built under the eaves of some of the old buildings, but we didn’t see a single swallow. We learned that major construction to stabilize the mission church many years ago drove a lot of the swallows elsewhere – now the peak viewing areas are nearby highway underpasses – but in more recent years at least some have returned. However, I couldn't find any reports that they actually did return on March 19.
The highlight for me was seeing all the beautiful flowers and some trees, many of which I was able to identify with a brochure featuring the flora and their locations on the property. I don’t know why, but I enjoy these things more when I know what they are, and they are completely different from what grows where I live. Eliza had a great time feeding about a dozen huge koi that were swimming around a fountain, and she also stayed engaged as we walked around the premises for two hours with a phone-like apparatus that talked to us each time we punched a different number, to learn about the history of the place.
The mission was one of either 7 or 9 (accounts vary) established by Father Junipero Serra along the California coast. He was a Spanish priest who came to California in the late 1700s to convert the indigenous peoples he encountered. The talking history mentioned that the interaction between the Spaniards and the natives was “challenging” to the latter, but overall made it sound like they benefitted more than lost through European contact. They were given a choice of whether to come into the mission, and if they did they had to give up their culture and become Catholic. Some accounts say they were basically treated like slaves; the most generous interpretation is that they were treated like children.
Serra was beatified in 1988 (an important step toward sainthood), and canonized by Pope Francis in 2015, and was therefore referred to as “Saint Serra” in the explanations we read at the mission. There was some opposition to this process by some indigenous scholars (one called the missions “concentration camps” and “a place of death”), although according to Wikipedia, other native people supported it, saying on balance that Serra treated the Indians well and sometimes intervened to protect them from the rapes and beatings of the Spanish soldiers garrisoned at the missions. Some of his supporters say much of the criticism results from “ahistorical value judgments” – that old slippery slope, if ever there was one.
The photo above shows the ruins of the mission church, which collapsed in an earthquake just a few years after construction was finished.
The day after we visited the mission, we went to a bird sanctuary just a few minutes from Eliza’s house and saw hundreds of cliff swallows – the same species that made Capistrano famous.
They seemed to dive-bomb us, not out of hostility but because we just happened to be on their erratic flight paths. They are beautiful with iridescent dark blue backs. We also saw all kinds of other birds, from giant pelicans to tiny jeweled hummingbirds. Another highlight of our trip.
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I’ve managed to get to the end of February without posting my monthly blog. It’s not that there’s nothing to write about; in fact, it’s the opposite. I’ve been so deluged with actions to organize or attend, and bombarded with mostly horrible news, that I don’t know where to begin.

Well, the thing on top of mind is, of course, the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The students’ responses have been incredibly inspiring, and they’ve already gotten action in Florida: raising the age of purchasing long guns from 18 to 21, creating a short waiting period before purchase, and banning bump stocks.* They didn’t get their main demand – banning assault rifles. But they – and students across the country – are going to keep organizing. They’ve already raised millions of dollars for their March 24 rally in D.C. for gun safety, which I plan to attend. I’ll also help fund students to go from Connecticut.
* Correction: I should have known this was too good to be true. None of these has passed yet, though all are on the table, which in itself may be a tiny victory.

Action in D.C. will be a lot harder, but I really feel this may finally be the change we’ve needed for decades. Besides legislation, some businesses have cut ties with the NRA and Dick's Sporting Goods said it would stop selling assault rifles and not sell any guns to anyone under 21.

Also a lot going on climate-wise. I attended a Teach-In for a Livable World! Climate Justice Now! that was organized largely by 350 CT and Sierra Club of CT. There was a good turnout (about a hundred people) for a six-hour event that included some excellent speakers who all made the point that if we don’t practice intersectionality across our various “silos” (like the environment, and women’s, labor and people of color movements) we will never succeed in our quest to lower greenhouse gas emissions enough to save the earth for humanity (and other living things).

The labor speaker was Sean Sweeney from Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, and he gave a great talk about the need for public energy systems, not private, for-profit ones, even if they are “green.” An excerpt of his half-hour talk is at this week’s Between the Lines radio show.

(There's a glitch in my website where instead of highlighting a word, it highlights the whole paragraph, so just click anywhere on it to connect to the link.)

Anne Hendrixson, director of Population and Development Programs at Hampshire College, raised some controversial issues regarding women’s reproductive rights and population, denying almost any role of population in contributing to climate change. I’ll be posting some of her talk later, so check back here for links.

When I feel burned out or depressed, I’ve loved listening to and spying the cardinals, who always sing at the tops of trees. They’re around all winter, of course, but they don’t sing for months in the fall and early winter – ‘til about February, when they start up again. The winter – aside from some bitter cold days in December – has been mostly mild, with little snow, which makes me sad. But we could still get a storm or two before spring fully springs. I’m already looking at seed catalogues for my garden.
 

Some of us are old enough to remember the career advice Dustin Hoffman got in The Graduate (or young enough to have seen it in reruns): “One word, son: plastics.” That was in 1967. And plastics did indeed take off, proliferating into an unbelievable flowering of disposable and non-disposable items. Think plastic bags, plastic storage containers, plastic bottles, plastic utensils, plastic pots for plants, plastic wrap, plastic cups and more long-lasting items like plastic pipes in the ground, plastic cars on the road and plastic jets in the air (or at least partially plastic).  We even have plastic clothing: it’s called Fleece. And plastics are critical in the health care field, from heart stents to replacement body parts.

For years I’ve tried to minimize my use of fossil fuels, from which plastic is made, but which are consumed much more abundantly in gasoline and heating fuel and electricity. I always thought plastics were a tiny percentage of the problem and not something I needed to worry about.

But at the summit against oil and gas infrastructure last November in Pittsburgh, for the first time I heard people talking about fighting “cracker plants,” explained here in a report from State Impact Pennsylvania, a joint project of NPR stations in the state: “In June 2016, Shell Chemical Appalachia announced it plans to build a massive, multi-billion dollar petrochemical plant (known as an ethane cracker) in Potter Township, Beaver County, about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. ‘Cracker’ is industry lingo for a plant that takes oil and gas and breaks it into smaller molecules, to create ethylene, which is used in plastics manufacturing.” It would create toxic air pollution and lead to negative health outcomes for at least some residents.

But plastics manufacturing isn’t a “tiny” part of the problem. According to an article in The Guardian, plastic production is planned to increase by 40% in the next decade. “The global plastic binge, which is already causing widespread damage to oceans, habitats and food chains, is set to increase dramatically over the next 10 years after multibillion dollar investments in a new generation of plastics plants in the U.S.”

So I decided to do a “plastics cleanse.” But it’s not that easy. I use a straw to drink my coffee, and I plan to get a set of bamboo straws, but first I thought I’d use up the dozens of plastic straws I’ve accumulated over the years. My daughter uses a lunch bag that is an alternative to plastic bags, and I can get one, but first I may as well use up the hundreds of plastic bags of all sizes I have in the house. I have three fleece tops, and nothing could be cozier in cold weather, and since I already have them I might as well keep wearing them, though if they ever wear out (they show no sign of doing so) I could replace them with flannel or wool. There’s also a lot of plastic in all my electronic devices, and I’m not sure how I’d replace them when they wear out or get broken.

Since the conference, I’m more aware of who pays the price for my plastic conveniences, and I hope that will help me minimize its use.

P.S. The photo above has nothing to do with this topic; it’s just showing how I like to decompress after dealing with all these daunting problems. Oh, wait! My skis are partially made of plastic, too.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/creating-plastic-from-greenhouse-gases-180954540/#WljJye53ZYyAM30w.99

10 Things You Can Do to Minimize Plastic Use -- http://bit.ly/2nI9TEi

https://phys.org/news/2017-07-billion-metric-tons-scientists-total.html#jCp

To maintain my sanity in these insane times, I have to focus on positive developments, ongoing fights that have a chance of succeeding, or at least actions showcasing solidarity. There have been plenty of them lately. 

A few weeks ago I attended the People vs Oil and Gas Infrastructure Summit (catchy name, I know) in Pittsburgh, with more than 300 other activists. I met people working on both gas and oil pipeline struggles, including many native Americans from Canada and the U.S. A highlight of the conference was an indigenous-led “water walk” from the hotel several blocks to where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers merge to form the Ohio River (which later flows into the Mississippi, giving a clear sense of rivers as being the veins of the earth). It’s a very sacred place, and when we got there the leaders said prayers and smudged us with sage. It was evening of a mid-November day, but in keeping with the warm weather we’ve had almost all fall, it was just a lovely evening (no gloves or hat needed), albeit a reminder of the “climate, changed” as one woman put it.

I interviewed a man who works with the Sierra Club’s Labor and Economic Justice program, who had some insights into how labor activists and climate activists can support each other more. You can listen/read about it here.

An awards ceremony featured three grassroots activists who have either won battles or have helped move the struggle forward in significant ways. I was really touched by Frank Finan, a widower who bought a high-tech FLIR camera that reveals leaking gas that otherwise is invisible and has no smell either. He has taken it on his own dime all over the country to help myriad other fights. I mention he’s a widower because when he gave his brief acceptance speech he gave his wife so much credit for his life’s work, which endeared him to me. Another Pennsylvania man, Ray Kemble, has been on the front lines of the fight against Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, which in turn has filed a SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) against him, putting him in danger of losing his home (which is surrounded by fracking wells). The other winner was Ranjana Bhandari, a woman from Texas who organized her neighbors and won a fight to stop fracking in Lake Arlington.

Early Monday morning after the conference, Rising Tide Pittsburgh and allies pulled off a great action by erecting two tripods with a person suspended from each and three people locked down to each other between the tripods (see photo above) at the entrance to an office park that houses many fossil fuel companies, and succeeded in blocking the road for several hours.  They were raising the alarm about the terrible destruction that fracking does to their families and communities. Someone at the conference had suggested that it might be more effective to lobby elected officials as the woman from Texas had done, but the direct action proponents always point out that they act after all the other avenues of redress have been exhausted and their concerns have not been addressed. I was with a team that blocked the road further up, advising drivers to make a U-turn because they couldn’t get through anyway. All were compliant; most were silent but a half dozen cursed us. I kept thinking of Heather Heyer being mowed down in Charlottesville and hoped none of the drivers would weaponize their vehicle toward us.
When the cops dismantled the protest, just the tripod-sitters were charged with a couple of misdemeanors.

You can read a story about it here.

Closer to home, on November 30 about a dozen of us pulled off a very fun but meaningful action around the City of New Haven’s tree lighting festival on the Green, which happened to be sponsored by Wells Fargo. We have a campaign to get the city to move its $10 million-plus per day operating budget out of Wells, so we wrote new words to some holiday songs, donned our elf hats, and strolled the Green, singing to thousands of people and handing out flyers. You can read the story and watch the two-minute video

here.

The mayor responded that the city is gradually moving its money (which is fine, but we’re saying it should be to a local bank and she hasn’t yet declared a definite alternative bank for the bulk of the funds), and she said Wells Fargo was being a “good corporate citizen” by sponsoring the event. That sent some of us into paroxysms of scornful laughter; “corporate” doesn’t go with “citizen,” and “good” doesn’t go with “Wells Fargo.”

I’m hoping to do some real caroling before the month is out, and grab a little holiday spirit. Our son, daughter and granddaughter will be with us for Christmas, which will be a big shot of happiness.

We recorded all ten episodes – 18 hours – of Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s Vietnam War documentary and have been watching it a half-hour to an hour at a time, and we just finished.

I have several strong impressions about this film. One is that almost all the footage – and all the footage of the war itself – was new to me. That’s because when I transferred from a small, conservative Catholic women’s college to the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 1967, I was primed to get involved in the antiwar movement. The first time I ever passed out a leaflet it was to tell my fellow students about a protest against Dow Chemical recruiters coming up on October 18. Dow, the makers of napalm. You’ll note that we just passed the 50th anniversary of that event.

I went to my Sociology 101 class and the professor dismissed us early, telling us our assignment was to either participate in the protest or to observe it, and then share our impressions either way. I don’t remember if I tried to enter the building where the recruiters were going to be and couldn’t get in, or preferred to join the protest outside, but in any case, I was outside when all hell broke loose. The cops went crazy shooting tear gas everywhere (they were wearing masks that did make them look like pigs, though I never called them that) and beating any protester they could get their hands on.

When I watched the report in my dorm on the nightly network news, I was so disgusted by the coverage – all pro-cop and anti-student – that I vowed never to watch TV news of the war or protests again, and I didn’t.

Seeing the unbelievable destruction the U.S. carried out in that small country – dropping more bombs than we did in all of World War II, defoliating a quarter of the land with birth defect-creating Agent Orange, dropping napalm bombs on civilians and combatants alike, burning villages and killing men, women and children – underscored why I was so against the war, why I marched with fellow students and was tear-gassed on what seemed like a weekly basis.

Another thing I was unaware of was how many Americans marched in favor of the war as late as 1972.  I knew about the “silent majority,” and I heard about the hard hats who beat protesters in New York City, but I didn’t know there were big marches with people as motivated to protest for the war as we were against it.

With the burning of the cities in the 1960s, the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK, and the rage of the anti-war movement and corresponding rage of the cops and the National Guard, it seems a miracle so many of us survived that decade from 1965 to 1975. While I was in the middle of it, it didn’t seem that crazy or dangerous. Maybe it was the confidence of youth.

I had a sign in my dorm room that read, “Girls say Yes to boys who say No” (unaware of the sexism inherent in that) and in fact my first really serious boyfriend had not even registered for the draft and then had taken part in a draft file burning action as a member of the Catholic Left. I spent a lot of time going to trials in Milwaukee, Chicago, Indiana and Washington, D.C. and visiting folks in prison.

There is a false equivalency portrayed in the Vietnam War film, showing that both sides did terrible things. I’m sure both sides did do terrible things, but the level of destruction carried out by the U.S. military was unprecedented and we had invaded their country, after all, so it was not surprising the Vietnamese fought back.

What are the lessons? Well, one is that it’s good to have some protection against tear gas (and now pepper spray), which is why some protesters – not just the cops – now wear gas masks.

Another is that the military learned not to let reporters and photographers have unfettered access to a war zone, to show what’s really happening on the ground.

Another is that, even though I felt part of a big, collective, anti-war society, we were in fact very isolated from anybody who didn’t think as we did, and it’s important to have conversations with others who have different points of view, and to build broader coalitions than we had 50 years ago.

Trump just visited Vietnam, and polls show he’s more popular there than he is at home. American companies operate all over the country. It’s not exactly the outcome I expected when I protested the war and the U.S. lost.

We returned to FERC -- the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee -- on Sept. 20 for its first commissioners' meeting in 8 months. Without a quorum, they couldn't approve all the fracked gas pipelines, compressor stations and other projects waiting in the wings (more than 50). Beyond Extreme Energy, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Green America and Berks Gas Truth (a local group in PA) organized the FERC Vacancies Campaign, with more than 200 groups signing on. We carried out phone and Twitter campaigns, personally lobbied all Senate offices, and conducted four protests of the commissioner nominees at the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee resulting in arrests, including of a 25-year veteran of FERC.

Even though their quorum has been restored, and the two final nominees will be approved any day, we've also scored some important victories. For one, on Aug. 22, according to an activist group in Virginia, "the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a landmark decision, vacating FERC’s approval of the Sabal Trail Pipeline in Florida.  The court determined that FERC is required to consider the foreseeable effects of developing gas pipelines and that those effects include the production of greenhouse gases from methane. This decision is a potential game changer for the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast Pipelines, because it is estimated that together they will produce greenhouse gases equivalent to that produced by 45 coal-fired plants or 158 million metric tons per year.  In fact, these two pipelines alone would more than double Virginia’s carbon footprint."  (More details here.) This is huge, since FERC always claims it has no mandate to consider global warming impacts of the projects it approves.

Then, in what the group calls a "stunning reversal," on Sept. 7 the West Virginia DEP withdrew its earlier approval of a water quality permit required for the Mountain Valley pipeline to proceed. It gave no reason for this extraordinary action, saying only that it needed to “reevaluate the complete application.”

And, the Williams company challenged the NY Department of Environmental Conservation's  denial last year of the water quality permit for the $1 billion Constitution Pipeline and lost in court.

Finally, the NC Dept. of Environmental Quality in mid-September announced a minimum several-month delay in approving a permit for the Atlantic Coast pipeline, which would go from West Virginia through Virginia and North Carolina. Maybe it had something to do with a two-week fast undertaken by Greg Yost, a fellow BXEer, in front of the DEQ headquarters. In any case, pipeline opponents all over the country are revved up to keep fighting -- and winning as many battles as possible in hopes of not losing the war.
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Below is the op-ed published last week in the New Haven Register, in case you haven't seen it elsewhere:

My brother is a denier of human impact on climate change and I’m a climate activist. He thinks the Republican governors of Texas and Florida, Greg Abbott and Rick Scott, respectively, provided great business-like leadership in organizing their states’ responses to hurricanes Harvey and Irma; I think they’re criminals who contributed to the disaster by denying the human impact on climate change and, at least in Scott’s case, forbidding state employees to even use the term “climate change.”

My brother thinks these unprecedented storms – Harvey for dropping the most rain ever in one event on the U.S., Irma for being the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever – are just random events, and furthermore says there haven’t been many hurricanes lately, especially not any to hit Florida in the past several years. I think these super storms are exactly what climate scientists have been predicting will be the result of global warming, as warmer ocean water generates stronger – not necessarily more – hurricanes, and warmer air holds more moisture. I guess he also doesn’t count super-powerful hurricanes and cyclones that have hit other parts of the world in recent years, like the Philippines.

He agrees with Republican politicians who say it’s wrong to “politicize” the disasters by talking about climate change. I say climate disruption is about physics, not politics, and the stronger storms, massive flooding, season-long forest fires and other disasters we see on a regular basis are not influenced by what politicians say. All these events could, however, be influenced by what we do – or don’t do.

Another problem is that the media almost never mentioned the climate connection in their 24/7 coverage of the storms. A report from the watchdog group Public Citizen looked at a full week’s worth of coverage of Harvey from 18 outlets and found that only four included any significant reporting on climate. Rather than “politicizing” the issue, these four just reported what’s actually happening. The lack of coverage – like the governor’s edict not to mention the words “climate change” – reminds me of the small child who covers her eyes and thinks no one can see her. Climate disruption is the elephant in the room, whether we choose to see it or not.

I long for the days when concern for the climate was a bipartisan issue. Remember that TV ad back in 2008 with Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich sitting on a couch together, agreeing on the need for action? And in other parts of the world it’s just an everyday topic of conversation. On my once in a lifetime trip to the Alps this summer, a guide pointed to the glacier in front of us and noted that it has shrunk drastically in the past 20 years “due to global warming.” 

Climate scientists say the atmosphere should hold no more than 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide if we want to avoid fundamental changes to our earth systems. Pre-industrial levels were at 280 ppm, and we’re now at 407 ppm.  So we have our work cut out for us.

Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, has a good way of explaining it. In an article in the Atlantic, he said, “…a storm like Harvey could have happened even if there was no climate change.” But, he added, “The human contribution can be up to 30 percent or so of the total rainfall coming out of the storm. It may have been a strong storm, and it may have caused a lot of problems anyway—but [human-caused climate change] amplifies the damage considerably.”

So, I say to my brother, “I’ll agree that climate change isn’t causing all the hurricanes if you’ll agree that climate change does play a part.” Deal?

My husband, Rob, and I planned a two-week hiking trip through France, Italy and Switzerland, circumnavigating Mt. Blanc, the highest peak in Europe (15,781 feet). This was a big trip for us to celebrate our 40th anniversary. We don’t fly much apart from the two trips a year we take from Connecticut to southern California to visit our daughter and her family, mostly due to concerns about climate change, since flying is by far the quickest way to blow up your carbon footprint.

While in Chamonix, France (the base from which hikers and alpinists get to Mt. Blanc), I would look up and see a dozen or more multi-hued sails floating through the air with two people attached to them: an instructor and a newbie, paragliding. It looked irresistible to me, and I decided I had to try it.

With the help of the wonderful staff at our small hotel, we found a company and I signed up for a noon meeting with my instructor, David, at the base of the ski lift that would take us to the jumping off spot. He checked all his lines (there were dozens) and helped me into my harness, which was similar to a climbing harness so I was a little familiar. He told me he would tell me when to run off the cliff and to not stop running until we were in the air. He also apologized that his previous customer, after insisting on doing aerial acrobatics, had thrown up on him and he hoped it didn't smell too bad. I assured him I couldn't smell anything. So we took several running steps and found ourselves airborne. It was amazing, thrilling, beautiful. Unfortunately almost immediately after take off I began feeling slightly nauseated – nothing two serious but a little uncomfortable. It was better when he talked to me so he pointed out several things including two small glaciers that we're right in front of us. He, as a Chamonix native probably about 30 years old, pointed out that they had receded drastically in his lifetime "due to global warming" he said.

I found this little exchange enlightening, like it was just a normal thing for a regular person (not a scientist or political activist) to bring up the issue of climate change, like it was just a fact of life and not controversial at all. Of course in France and just about everywhere else in the world outside the U.S., it is just a fact and not controversial at all. It’s also very sad (and devastating for the Chamonix economy) that the glaciers are disappearing.

We took several great hikes on our own before we were to meet up with the group and leader who would guide us through the three countries around Mt. Blanc. Unfortunately, an hour before we were to meet, Rob threw his back out and we ended up using our trip insurance to come home almost a week early, since he felt that doing several more days of rigorous hiking (and especially the downhills) would be either impossible or foolish.

He thought the problem started as we sat in the economy section of the flight going over, so we got booked on Business Class on a non-stop flight from Geneva to New York. That was a first for me and truly amazing. How was it different from what I like to call “steerage”? Let me count the ways. The bathrooms are twice as big, with free tubes of moisturizer available. We were offered a hot, damp washcloth at the beginning and end of the flight to refresh ourselves. There were tons of movies and TV shows available for free. The food – two full meals – was excellent. There was tons of leg room. And the seats were set up in alternating rows, so everyone on board had a chance to fully recline. (In other words, no one was sitting directly behind or in front of another passenger.) And one of the flight attendants came by and asked me by name if I needed anything.

Ironically, a few days earlier I’d read an article saying how damaging air travel is for the planet but suggesting ways to minimize one’s carbon footprint if one is going to fly anyway. It said that flying first class or business (which seem the same to me) can generate up to 9 times the global warming gases of a seat in economy. So it was a little ironic that as we flew in those seats, Rob was reading a book about climate change.

 After my last post (in which I said I felt a part of nature, one animal among many), I couldn’t ignore the four dead animals I passed on my bike within a hundred feet of each other on Fitch Street in New Haven – a squirrel, a chipmunk, a blue jay and a possum, which was so mashed I could only identify it by its naked tail. All massacred by motorists.

As a daily cyclist into downtown New Haven (I drive a car, but not that often) I have my own issues with motorists, where I sometimes feel like roadkill-in-the-making, but to see these beautiful animals just flattened, block after block, is heartbreaking and maddening. Whenever my indoor cat sneaks out I picture her being flattened, too, although with their nine lives, I haven’t seen many dead cats on the road.

Then today as I was riding down the curvy road from the top of East Rock, partially braking, I came within a whisker of killing a chipmunk myself, so I have to take responsibility, too (although in fact he escaped).

I’ve never considered myself an animal rights activist, although as a mostly vegetarian for the past 40 years, and a strict vegetarian for the past 20, at least I don’t eat them. My philosophy is live and let live, unless they actually land on me, like mosquitos or ticks.
I still remember the sermon of a ministerial student at my church about 25 years ago. She told the story of driving cross-country and stopping to move off the highway every road-killed animal she encountered, as a gesture of respect for all life. Whether apocryphal or not, it obviously made a big impression on me.

I’m a Unitarian Universalist, and I coincidentally just noticed an ad in our quarterly magazine that asked “What if our first principle could be…The inherent worth and dignity of every being? The wording currently says, “The inherent worth and dignity of every person.” The group, the First Principle Project, is seeking a bylaw change to their proposed wording. The ad goes on to say that it’s not just a bylaw change, “it is a deepening of faith and relationships through conversations with each other when we ask: How can we live more deeply connected to all life? What does it mean to be a human animal in a muiltispecies world? How can we love both human nature and all of nature?" So…non-carnivorous food for thought.

You know how once you start picking up litter you notice litter everywhere and it’s hard to stop? That’s how I feel about road kill now. Although I haven’t moved every dead animal out of the road, I’ve started taking photos of them. The one above is a beautiful skunk killed right near my house (the one below is a baby woodchuck). Yes, it stank, but so does the whole idea that killing all these four-leggeds is not a crime.

After Trump was elected and especially after he was inaugurated, I spent several months working madly on a range of issues, focusing on refugees, immigrants, health care and pipelines (indigenous rights and climate). I felt super motivated and like I was part of a rising tidal wave of opposition to his anti-human (except for the 1%) and anti-all other living things agenda. Some of my friends and just folks I know in the progressive community were shell-shocked, depressed and didn’t know what to do. I told them I didn’t know how long I could keep it up (we were just three months into what’s supposed to be a four-year term), but for the time being I was good.

Then sometime in May I hit a wall. I felt very tired and needed to sleep more than usual. I wasn’t exactly depressed; it was more a feeling of being at loose ends and seeing the enormity of the task at hand and feeling lost in it all.

At the same time, I started noticing the life around me more – or rather, the life around me got in my face. On a hike, a scarlet tanager sat on a branch a few feet away and serenaded us (pictured above, not a photo I took because I preferred just looking with my eyes). Then on two bird hikes in a row, many beautiful and not that common (at least to me) birds flew all around me or perched for minutes at a time on branches where we got a perfect view of them: orioles, indigo buntings, bluebirds, green herons, black and white warblers, rose-breasted grosbeaks and many more. Then while on my bike yesterday I saw a great blue heron fly overhead, its neck extended and its legs? And two weeks in a row, I spotted a big, orangey-eared coyote, once crossing a road and the other time in a field five miles away. I’d never seen one in Connecticut before.

But I didn’t just observe these creatures – I felt like I was part of nature, just one species among many. I wasn’t out to kill them or deprive them of food or habitat. I was just sharing Earth with them. It was a very peaceful and even hopeful feeling.

I hope I can hold onto it to keep me going forward in the work ahead.

Click here for the interview I did with the lead plaintiff in the Juliana v Trump case of 21 children and youth suing the U.S. government over climate change.

And click here for the latest nonviolent direct action by Beyond Extreme Energy as five people disrupted the Senate hearing on the nominations of two Trumpistas to join the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which currently lacks a quorum. We want to keep it that way as long as possible, in order to minimize the destruction to communities and climate that FERC enables.