Grounded in springtime -
planting and potting and cleaning!
And the Cicadas are due any minute now!
We called them the 17 year Locusts.
Magicicada.
Living as nymphs, 8 feet below the surface,
feeding on tree root sap in underground bunkers,
(and I thought they were sleeping!),
17 years later,
they emerge through tunnels that they create,
to shed their skins
and reveal the insect that we are familiar with,
the Cicada.
The males sing their hearts out
waiting for a reply from a willing female.
5 weeks later they are gone - deceased- it's over -
except for the thousands of eggs left behind in the bark of their preferred trees.
These eggs become larvae that fall to the ground
and become the hardy nymphs that live quietly underground
for a very long time!
Yes, the "song" can be annoying, deafening even,
but it is truly fascinating to ponder such a life
and to witness its Grand Finale!
Grounded indeed!
©2021 Laine Quinn
Photo of a bog on a farm nearby!
The Earth is breathing a sigh of relief today,
the 50th anniversary of Earth Day,
because her brainy humans have shut down
the engines of pollution.
No, it can't go on like this - or can it?
(There was a reason that manufacturing left the USA,
besides cheap labor -
lax environmental controls.
Maybe the countries who host these pollutors
will realize what they have sacrificed.)
Happy Earth Day!
© 2020Laine Quinn, Angel Wing in the sky.
It's been over a month since I've been to the beach.
Emotions seem to be wrapped up in worry and uncertainty,
and I don't miss it in the usual way.
But I do miss it!
©Laine Quinn 2019 St. Augustine Beach, sunrise.
"The shore means many things to many people. Of its varied moods
the one usually considered typical is not so at all.
The true spirit does not reside in the gentle surf that laps
a sun drenched bathing beach on a summer day.
Instead, it is on a lonely shore at dawn or twilight,
or in storm or midnight darkness that we sense a mysterious something
that we recognize as the the reality of the sea.
For the ocean has nothing to do with humanity.
It is supremely unaware of man..."
And the ocean was there at the beginnings of life on earth,
spawning all that we know and recognize as our world,
over many many millions of years.
"Everything in that scene caused me to feel apart,
remembering that the relation of birds to the sea
is rooted in millions of years,
that man came but yesterday."
Rachel Carson, quoted from the book LOST WOODS The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, edited by Linda Lear.
Photos Credit, © Laine Quinn White Crest, Wellfleet Mass.
and Dark Sky, Herring Cove, Provincetown Mass.
and Black Skimmers, Vilano Beach, St. Augustine Fl.
(Sea gull wondering if it is safe to join the others...)
*"If social distancing needs to be extended long term,
scientists recommend forming an inner circle of uninfected friends and family
that you can rely on
to maintain social bonds..."
Some others call this a pod -
forming a pod of trusted friends and family.
But when can we do that?
When is it safe -
when the very best thing we can do is to isolate?
Listen to your heart...
when it feels okay,
then wait another week!
If it still feels okay,
take small steps.
Go slowly.
Be sure.
Trust your feelings.
*Quoted from a CNN article by Ryan Prior.
© 2020 Laine Quinn St. Augustine inlet with the Schooner, Freedom and a gaggle of gulls. Or should I say a pod?
Where beauty is -
there rests the soul.
Azaleas in full force in St. Augustine.
Ecola
I walked by the sea-creek side.
The wind laughed, the gulls cried.
Sweet water lapped on the salt sand
between the deep sea and the deep land.
Ursula K. LeGuin
Years ago, Joseph Campbell told us that the poets would save us.
I begin to understand.
From Ursula K LeGuin's book of poems, "Late in the Day."
Joseph Campbell, in his series, "The Power of Myth."
Photo of St. Augustine Beach, ©2020LaineQuinn
It might seem incredulous
that there were peaceful, cooperative, undefended cities in so called prehistory.
But go back as recently as 1492, when Columbus sailed across the Atlantic
in search of a route to China and India.
Luckily for him and his crew,
there was land in between,
and after nearly 3 months of sailing,
they landed in what he named Hispaniola, in the Bahamas.
*"The Indians," Columbus reported,
"are so naive and so free with their possessions
that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it.
When you ask for something they have, they never say no.
To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone."
How he and his men responded to these handsome, well built people
who carried no weapons,
is shameful and obscene.
And thus began the conquest of the Americas,
spreading the European model of power and tyranny like a disease.
We are the descendants of these warring people
who believed in a winner take all mentality.
We are also the descendants of the peaceful, generous people,
who loved nature and life.
We can set our sights on making more and more powerful and accurate weapons.
Or we can set our sights on technologies that support life
and can turn back the clock on certain environmental collapse.
Love will get us there and respect -
for each other and for the world we live in.
Let's let our better angels have their day once again.
*From Howard Zinn's, A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 1492 - PRESENT.
When you have peaceful, cooperative cities
that are unfortified:
no walls or fortresses -
that have not developed weapons of death:
there was no need for those things,
as their neighbors were friendly -
and violent warring tribes from the surrounding arid lands
invade and destroy everything in their path,
installing their vengeful, jealous gods to displace the nurturing goddess -
things change.
And they change dramatically and violently and relatively quickly.
1,000 or 2,000 years to undo 30,000 years
of human development.
In her book, The Chalice and the Blade,
Eisler makes the case that patriarchy and its elevation
of war and fear and power over others
is an anomaly,
a blip on the evolutionary screen.
The Pale Blue Dot
View from Voyager, Earth as seen from deep space. NASA
It's a detour off the path of human development.
A mistake that needs correction.
That must be corrected.
Photo of the Earth from deep space. APOD "ThePaleBlueDot"
Astronomy Picture of the Day, February 14th 2020.
"Our hopes for peaceful human coexistence are not,
as we are so often told, utopian dreams."
Riane Eisler
Peaceful cooperation existed long, long ago and set the foundation for civilization.
Human HISTORY OURSTORY goes back 30,000 years.
In most early societies technologies were developed
that supported and enhanced
the quality of life.
Otherwise what might have become of us?
These were cooperative societies,
with both men and women working together for the common good.
30,000 years of improving life for all.
Over millennia, these early societies developed farming,
fishing, the domestication of animals,
weaving, and even town planning.
The arts flourished.
As a result of that cooperative living,
10,000 years ago - thriving, complex city states were abundant in the fertile Mediterranean Basin.
Yes, these were "gynocentric, or woman-centered societies,
with the deity represented in female form,
symbolizing the generative, nurturing and creative powers of nature."
These peoples, our ancestors, lived close to nature and the stars
and had great respect for all life.
Was it a matriarchy? Not in the sense of being opposite to patriarchy.
These were egalitarian cultures that bestowed equal value on all citizens.
"A partnership society,
in which neither half of humanity is ranked over the other
and diversity is not equated with inferiority or superiority."
Everyone is King of the Hill!
(Queen, Princess, Prince and Spot!)
Of the Hill!
Quotes are from the amazing book, The Chalice and the Blade, Our History, Our Future, extensively researched and written by Riane Eisler in 1987.
...It''s about my journey going from a liberal civil rights lawyer
who was tinkering with the machine,
and believed that we could somehow get the to the Promised Land
if we just filed the next best lawsuit,
or met the the governor,
or organize the right number of people for the next protest,
to someone who now believes that much more revolutionary change is required,
and it's not simply a political revolution.
A moral and spiritual revolution is also required of us now.
This is what is required of us to begin to treat each person decently,
with respect and love
and by extension,
the earth and all aboard her.
*(Author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness",
talking about her new book.)
Photo of Tropical Day Flower and Dragonfly, ©2013 Laine Quinn
Taken at Longwood Gardens, in Delaware.
So,
in my alternate universe...
There was no degradation of the earth.
Clean Air.
Clean Water.
No lies, no wars in the oil rich Middle East, no lives lost.
The U.S. military would be doing what it is charged with-
protecting Democracy,
not dismantling it worldwide.
Cancer would still be a rare disease,
not the Big Business that it is today.
Our Government by the people, and for the people would stand by the people,
and not the greedy aggressive corporations that have given us this dystopia.
Family Farms would have been protected,
and the Giant Agri-Business would never have been allowed.
Our food would be wholesome and delicious-
the soil rich in nutrients-
bees would thrive.
And the peacemakers never would have been assassinated,
and they would have led the way to peace and prosperity for all people.
"You might say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one."
John Lennon
©2020 Laine Quinn, Earth Flag, Home!
John Lennon Quote from the song "Imagine"
There is an interview with the Four Women of "The Squad" on Democracy Now.
After reading the transcript of these four diverse women,
at a time when I was getting very disheartened about the state of the country and the world,
I found HOPE!
They are, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York,
Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts,
Rashida Tlaib of Michigan
and
Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
These women are on the front lines and they are passionate and positive
and Hopeful!
So, whatever you do, don't lose Hope.
Hope will get us through.
Love and compassion
and passion for the things we love -
will get us through.
©2020 Laine Quinn, Wild Waves
While burning a few things on the deck in the chiminnea,
I noticed these caterpillars munching away on the Butterfly Weed.
It was over a month ago. There were about 10 or 12 of them, and they decimated that plant.
Then yesterday,
while leaning over the rail to reach a hanging pot I spied this little one in the same area.
She is no bigger than the joint of my thumb.
Will she emerge from her cocoon?
We will have to wait and see.
I brought her indoors, as the temperature was dropping.
There is so much hidden in plain sight that we never even notice.
It was chance that led me to the caterpillars and the butterfly.
Look at the little bugs on the left.
I didn't even see them until I blew the photo up!
Garden Joy! February in Florida, annuals to plant!
©2020 Laine Quinn
What if, instead of multiple networks of highways,
America was crisscrossed with lines of light rail?
And there were lovely terminals scattered everywhere,
and people could travel safely and comfortably,
south to north and east to west and back again,
in climate controlled modern rail cars?
Imagine the lives that wouldn't have been lost over the last 50 years to highway fatalities.
Wakanda!
The fictional city in the Black Panther movie,
where women were empowered equally to men
and developed technologies of peace.
A City outside of the greedy capitalist unsustainable consumer economy
that we have spread through the globe like a virus threatening our very existence.
A fictional utopia?
Yes.
But we are living in a real dystopia,
one that with a few different choices would improve exponentially.
This Earth really is a Paradise that we need to reclaim.
Imagine that over 100 years of air pollution from cars and trucks
never happened.
That the arduous task of extracting oil from the earth was abandoned.
When Henry Ford was building cars,
he experimented with bio-fuels,
namely Hemp, the versatile plant that matured in a single season
and grew in every state in the Union.
Unfortunately Ford Motor Company was subsidized by Standard Oil,
John D. Rockefeller's cash cow and defiler of the earth and air.
Hemp not only threatened oil production,
but could easily have replaced cotton
and the cotton industry was having nothing to do with that.
Same with Paper.
And Pharmaceuticals?
Forget it.
Hemp,
quick - renewable-
inexpensive
abundant,
and in those times of monopolized industries,
Banned.
The Titans of Industry and Wall Street have given us the world we live in.
The environment is decimated and we have endless profitable wars,
killing off the regular folks who just want to live a good life.
And now we have to fight a Sisyphaen battle to reclaim our right to breathe,
to be healthy,
to live to see our children's children.
One step at a time.
Researching information about Henry Ford unearthed some dark facts. To see the link above click on his name.
How long has this been going on?
Tsk, Tsk......
HELP!
What if, when chemical companies came up with the idea
to spray food crops with the deadly compounds
that were developed in wartime,
someone very important had said,
"This is a really bad idea."
OR
What if, 20 or 30 years later, when a bright caring poet/scientist
saw the effects of these deadly poisons first hand
and sounded the alarm, that birds were dying, bees and butterflies too.
And the chemical big wigs had said,
"Oh my, this is not what we had intended.
We can do better than this."
If either one of those things had happened,
we would have vegetables and fruits
that actually tasted like something, instead of tasting like nothing.
And the bees and butterflies wouldn't be on the edge of extinction.
The Earth would be healthier and her people and their children.
Silent Spring was published in 1962, by Rachel Carson who died of breast cancer 2 years later, in 1964.
"Though much is taken, much remains and much returns." John Elder quoting Wordsworth with an addition, in Courage for the Earth, Celebrating the life and writings of Rachel Carson.
Things we can do...feed the birds, and plant flowers that attract bees and butterflies and grow our own veggies!!!! And buy organic when we can afford to.
When you bought groceries in the '50's and early 60's,
they were packed in sturdy paper bags.
These bags were then used as trash bags that,
when full, were taken outside to metal trash cans.
(I can still hear the sound of the metal cans on trash day!)
Milk and soda came in returnable glass bottles that never made their way to the trash
because you could get money for returning them!
There was no plastic.
No Styrofoam.
Until there was.
And now the earth is drowning in plastic.
In those short 50 or so years,
drowning in plastic.
So...
Paper grocery bags?
Insist on it.
Cloth?
Even better.
Paper trash bags?
Why not?
Be creative -
small steps for mankind and womankind and children kind.
The Earth will survive human recklessness,
but humans won't.
Paper is a renewable resource, and with the return of the versatile Hemp plant, there is even more reason to have faith in paper.
"...a soulful ecology is rooted in the feeling that this world is our home
and that our responsibility to it comes not from obligation
or logic, but from true affection.
...As long as the heart is involved, care of the place will follow."
Thomas Moore, Care of The Soul
The thing to understand is that this in not your fault or my fault
because we didn't recycle enough or we use too much plastic,
or we believed that Round Up was safe.
The problem is institutionalized.
From the auto industry to plastics manufacturing,
oil producers have held sway over these industries for a century.
Chemical companies have been spreading their propaganda since WWII.
And governments have been holding their hands ever since
and silencing concerned voices.
There are little things that we can do in our lives and homes.
And lots of little things add up.
More later!
Home sweet Home! The cat, the hammock, and the flowers are still with me in my new home!
"If kindness takes a little longer,
it's worth the extra time."
Eleanor McEvoy
When we develop kindness towards ourselves,
we can change the atmosphere of our days and lives;
the atmosphere of our homes and work environments,
and our relationships.
Kindness, first for ourselves.
All love and peace radiate from our tender hearts.
They say we have ten years, it might be less, to get this right, to turn around the dire need that the earth is in.
If we wake up everyday with a kind heart and gentleness towards ourselves,
then we can appreciate the beauty that is all around us.
This appreciation for life can carry us to the finish line,
one day at a time.
The kindness quote is from a song by Eleanor McEvoy. I recommend the book "Loving Kindness" by Sharon Salzberg for some kind inspiration.
Flagler Beach pier love notes, ©Laine Quinn
Whenever I see a line of pelicans coming along the beach, over the waves,
their wingtips just grazing the water, I get a little bit jealous of how simple
their life appears to be.
It seems that the creatures of this world are better at meeting their daily needs
than the oh so intelligent higher mammals who actually destroy or poison
the very things that support them.
From now on, my blog is dedicated to our home planet,
the lifeboat that we - all of us - are sailing on through space.
I am joining the chorus of concerned citizens of Mother Earth
to do my small part to alleviate the pressure of too many years
of human recklessness that has threatened our time here.
My first step is appreciation, and gratitude for the beautiful world we still live in.
The wonderful old oak trees in my neighborhood, and just last week, the hungry caterpillar on the butterfly weed,
and of course the beaches and all the life bursting there, the birds and fishes and dolphins.
A heartfelt appreciation and gratitude.
Bowing in humility before the multiplicity of life, here on planet Earth.
Brown Pelicans doing what they do as they surf along the waves at St. Augustine Beach.
©LaineQuinn 2020
Just before the Hurricane,
this little one emerges.
She's on her way to the turbulent waves.
We on the shore want so badly to help,
but we know better and walk beside her,
well meaning, helpless, guardians,
until a wave envelopes her -
back and forth
and she is gone
on her long journey
to everywhere.
Baby Turtle, September 1, 2019. The lifeguards assured me that she would make it!
© Laine Quinn 2019
The American Experiment has never lived up to its promise
of self-government and Liberty and Justice for All.
From the start it was non-inclusive, predatory and rigged
in favor of the "ruling class", the so called "people".
But this doesn't mean that a course correction wouldn't change things for the better.
America, (which has never been great, truth be told) can be good.
The promise is there and the vision is there and the American People
are good people.
Corporations are not people and have not been good for the people for some time.
Greed is not pretty, not for Americans or for the planet.
Have we reached the pinnacle of American Greed?
Let them go to Mars.
Let's stay here and take care of our own beautiful ailing planet.
Sorry for the political post, it has been brewing for awhile.
©2019 Laine Quinn Flag at the Oldest Wooden School House in St. Augustine Florida.
A serene scene for anxious times...
Mother Nature hasn't given up on us yet.
St. Augustine Beach, 9.11.19 ©Laine Quinn
What we can do to support the climate strike on Friday, the 20th of September-
Don't buy anything on line that has to be delivered to your home, buy local.
Don't throw away any plastic at all for that day.
Drive as little as possible.
Be kind!
The seed factory in a Sago Palm brings to mind part of a quote from Kahlil Gibran,
...life's longing for itself.
Isn't that how this gorgeous planet evolved,
one seedling at a time?
© 2019 Laine Quinn Sago Drama!
The sea oats are green again,
beginning their cycle from spring to fall to winter...
Living in Florida, it's easy to forget what season it is,
but there are ways of being reminded,
and the sea oats jarred me out of late summer to early summer,
right where we are!
Shooting with my phone, I couldn't see the screen and only hoped that I had gotten the line of pelicans in the shot!
©2019, Laine Quinn St. Augustine Beach
Through the trees...
June 17th Full moon!
©Laine Quinn 2019
Tree of Life,
re-imagined at Disney Park, Animal Kingdom.
Look closely at the life carved into this man-made tree.
Real trees have even more mysteries and secrets,
kept over the centuries and passed down the generations.
©Laine Quinn 2019, Disney's Pandora Tree of Life. Possibly Ostrich in the foreground!
Backyard Buddha, with 2 lizards! © Laine Quinn 2019