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TRANSFORMATIONS

On the heels of Earth Day, this is a special "Transformations" edition with an expanded roundup of actions, ideas, inspirations, and good news culled from the past week.

How do we change?

Be more like Nick Cave

Nick gave up his artist man-Cave to reengage with the world.

Nick Cave - The Red Hand Files - Issue #192 - I understand from having seen 20,000 Days on Earth that you keep an office separate for your creative work. Do you have any recommendations on how I can create a sacred space that allows me to go in and shut the door and lock out the world?
Dear Brian, For most of my creative life I did indeed maintain an office at home. This office, with its massive desk, typewriter, shelves...

Green your banking

Don't let your money be invested in the planet's demise.

Go Climate Positive with Ando!
Offsetting your carbon footprint is a worthwhile goal, and while achieving “Net Zero” status—nullifying your footprint—is amazing, it’s even better to be Climate Positive, offsetting more carbon emissions than you create.

Give locally

Donate to those already doing the heavy lifting.

Home - Chesapeake Climate Action Network
We’re building a movement to fight climate change across our region and beyond. Donate for Earth Month. GET INVOLVED We’ve recently launched a new Membership program to expand leadership and strengthen our community. Learn more JOIN THE MOVEMENT The best thing you can do to get involved is sign up f…

Be more like Sweden

Minimizing waste + killing it with recycling and waste-to-energy.

How Sweden Sends Just 1% of Its Trash to Landfills
The country incinerates nearly half its garbage to create the energy that powers its homes and buildings.

Track Russian eco-crimes in Ukraine

Actually that's covered.

Group documenting eco-crimes in Ukraine war
Climate change expert Sofia Sadogurska speaks to CTV’s Your Morning about efforts to document eco-crimes in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Meet at the barricades

First we need to stop the fascists, again.

The Lincoln Project: The Union
Dedicated Americans Protecting Democracy

Come on up for the rising

I mean, if a destroyed town in a deep-red US state can go green...

What Is the Future of America’s Greenest Town?
After a tornado, Greensburg, Kansas rebuilt as a shining example of red-state sustainability. It wants to be more than a curiosity.

Compost yourself

If all else fails.

Inside the rise of human composting and other green burial practices
The quest to save the planet doesn’t end when your life does.

Focus on solutions

Doesn't mean you have to be perfect, or delusional.

Be an Earth Hero

There's an app for that.

Make your yard a habitat

If you have one.



We are interdependent with the body of the Earth. The minerals of the soil make up our wheat and our bones, the storm clouds become our drinks and our blood, the oxygen from the trees and forests is the air we breathe. The more consciously we realize this shared destiny, the more compassion arises for the earth itself. Your family is all of humanity, all the animals, all beings on earth. Include them all in your heart. Live with gratitude. What the times ask is a change of consciousness - a shift from the fearful, separate consciousness, the consciousness of us versus them, to the consciousness of connection and interdependence. - Jack Kornfield [Image: NASA/Mark Vande Hei]


PRIMORDIAL MOTHER SPEAKS FOR HERSELF

An Earth Day poem by Zakiya McKenzie

[via Topia]

1.

Before the birth of civilisation
I was
Primordial
Picked from the order of which
Root itself burst first
In the wet, blackout belly of blue
Deep secret sages and siren sisters
Seen only in the slumbering (submarine) visions
Of divine women who open their eyes
Not knowing they carry my blessing on their heads

When night wraps up in deep violet and delicate velvet
These siren sage women exhale
(Children sleep)
Wanderers moving through shadow
Floating as galaxy
Everything within

When light flees into shooting star and no wish can satisfy
She is like the drinking gourd
Playing the hand of the sky
Pulling hope through hardship
Steering boat through woods of discord
The caravan’s only true guide
through astral waves and landed shore

Before the growth of modernisation
I was the mother primordial
Watched over by the old woman who
sat with daughters she did not bear
Yet poured into them
with the affinity of moss covering softness
Shaded from time

Taller branches older
For ideas, for flowers
Folded into terra firma
As a baby is swaddled
As a tonic is swallowed
For rhythms that flow through connected veins
Turning bitterwood to sweetwater
when heartblood is mixed in

2.

Primordial mother answers to many names
Oya, daughter of chaos
thrashing as hair pulled from scalp
Howling outwards, whirling inwards
Still
An eye full of calm
As smoke is silence and signal
in the same
She is sweet with the salt of duality
Her mercy is potion that washes the throat
Of those under her grip
She opens the gate while watching the earth rot
Ushering empty souls to overflowing plots
Standing guard at this monument to the anthropocene
Waiting to close the crypt and end the script
Of this earth exhibition

Like a fledging bird finding steadiness on wind
If it never returns, she won’t say a thing
For content is primordial mother
that in this eleventh hour
She gave
She gives
Refusal of honey for taste blunted on sour
Is outside of her power
She may wail for her creation but will preserve her essence
For primordial mother will return to elemental nothingness

3.

Before the birth of anything sure
My bones chalked and my flesh mangled
into dust that made me indistinguishable
From that which made the first man

Zakiya McKenzie was 2019 Writer in Residence for Forestry England and, at Ujima 98FM in Bristol, she was a Black and Green Ambassador. Zakiya is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter with the Caribbean Literary Heritage project, researching Black British journalism in the post–war period. Her debut pamphlet, Testimonies on the History of Jamaica Volume I, is a piece of historical fiction exploring environmental implications, published by Rough Trade Books in 2021. Follow @ZakiyaMedia.



Music Declares Emergency

We are excited to announce our support for @EarthPercent Earth Day X Bandcamp campaign - 100s of artists releasing previously unheard music to raise money for climate causes⁠.

For a limited time only!

EarthPercent
EarthPercent is unleashing the power of music in service of the planet. We seek to include the planet as a stakeholder in music by asking artists, companies and individuals to commit a small % of their revenue to be distributed to the most effective organisations working on the climate emergency, un…