Seeds for Thought: an Ecopsychology Blog

Quantum Shift

Check out Quantum Shift Media, a new web video network that new employee Leif Utne (of Utne Reader fame) calls "a sort of YouTube with a conscience". Their current featured video is entitled SOIL: The Secret Solution to Global Warming.

Missa Gaia

For the Earth forever turning
For the skies, for every sea
For our lives, for all we cherish,
Sing we our joyful song of peace

For the world we raise our voices,
For the home that gives us birth;
In our song of joy returning
Home to the blue-green hills of earth

I don’t know where I first heard that this song was inspired by a science fiction story by Robert Heinlein but each time I hear it I am reminded in the haunting last line of the iconic image of the “earth rise” taken by one of the Apollo astronauts. Wikipedia provides a bit of background. Heinlein tells a story about a radiation-blinded spaceship engineer crisscrossing the solar system humming poetic lyrics about “home” as if the spaceship and crew were a contemporary tramp steamer.

the happiness bird

I'm not a twitcher but I like seeing birds, and my favourite is the kingfisher. I'm lucky enough to have seen a few but sightings are rare and they always lift my spirits.

Last night we walked around a newly discovered (by us) local ecology reserve. Disused gravel pits in a small strip between the river and the road, hardly anyone goes there.

So this abandoned pit is now a clear stretch of water, blue in the midsummer evening sun. Over it I saw a kingfisher fly into a tree, and it emerged a few moments later so my partner saw it too. Not just the turquise blue but the bright orange underbelly illuminated by the low sun. It flew across and was gone, but is still imprinted in my mind as a glowing vision of pure happiness.

Are we predisposed to love that colour? The oasis in a desert. The longed for cooling stream. A reminder of the preciousness of water as we wonder how long these small wild places can hold on.

on being hippy happy

We are moving to rural Lincolnshire next month... and on our NEW BLOG we cite our reasons for doing so: peak oil and climate change. But I didn't explain it well enough because I've left out the whole happiness factor.

Getting "back to the land" has intrinsic value. Being a part of the cycles, having the weather as part of your daily plan, hearing the wind from the caravan or yurt in a different way than you would experience it in a house... Ditto for the rain.

Not being tempted by shops and cafes and pubs. Really having to want to go somewhere in order to get there.

Freedom and space to ride my bicycle. The sea just two miles away.

Knowing precisely the origin of my food. Even the chicken.

Taking advantage of daylight. The seasons right under me, around me, through me.

River Dance

I was just in Minneapolis last weekend and happened to meet the amazingly fabulous Marylee Hardenbergh, who has been choreographing and dancing with humans and rivers and other animate creatures on several continents for many years now.

(Photo credit: Leigh Malmer/J.O.Phelps)

She is currently preparing for her troupe's 11th annual site-specific performance, Solstice River XI, which will occur at the Stone Arch Bridge in downtown Minneapolis this Solstice, June 21st, at 8pm. If you are anywhere near there - Go see it!!!

Thinking about a different war

I’ve been thinking about the Vietnam War lately—partly because I just completed teaching a class on Asian American Literature at the University of Minnesota, and we spent some time on the Vietnam War because it was the direct cause of almost all the Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian immigration to the US during the past three decades. My class of 31 included three Vietnamese American students and seven Hmong American students, some of whom were born in refugee camps in Thailand where a large number of Hmong people still live, waiting to get home or get out, more than 30 years after the end of the war that dispossessed them of their land. I’ll write more about this—the importance of place and the land in the writing of many Asian American authors is something I was somewhat surprised but pleased to find.

But back to war. I’ve also been thinking about Vietnam because for anyone who remembers that time, especially any US person over the age of about 50, it’s difficult not to compare what is happening today in Iraq with what happened then—the wars themselves and the US reasons for being in them, as well as the public response and the Congressional action (or lack thereof) in stopping both of these insane and dangerous wars. As the job approval rating for Bush sinks below 30 percent, and the Congress elected with a crystal clear mandate last fall to end this war refuses to take up its responsibility, many who remember Vietnam are recalling how that war ended. Some say the Congress simply refused to authorize more funds, and that was it. Is that what really happened?

Into the Woods

If you go out in the woods today you're in for a big surprise.
If you go out in the woods today you'd better go in disguise.

(from the Teddy Bear’s Picnic)

I attended a delightful presentation of the musical "Into the Woods" by the Sondheim Society to benefit the restoration of wind damage in Stanley Park. It was both whimsical and serious. Into the Woods featured a blend of modern themes with characters from classic fairy tales, including Jack and the Beanstock, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel. With a little artistic license characters from these fairy tales venture ” into the woods” and confront the “shadows” that the author Joseph Campbell suggested makes these stories so appealing to all ages.