"May You Live in Interesting Times": A Curse or a Blessing?

We are in the depth of winter. Last night the temperature dipped to -9 degrees. The sun is back after several days of low hanging clouds. Night time subzero temperatures will continue for several days.

In the midst of this winter, we continue moving through unprecedented times. Climate change is increasingly obvious, raising the question if we have entered the sixth mass extension. The pandemic wages on while vaccines are slowly being distributed. Asking if you got a vaccine shot is a common question among my friends. The Capitol was ransacked on January 6th, halting the certification of the election for several hours. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were inaugurated with nearly 25,000 National Guard troops on stand by. Trump's second Senate trail is history.  

In passing, I mention the Super Bowl with all its hype, greed and a distraction for many, but not so much for me. I tuned in occasionally. The half time show was beyond my comprehension, while reminding me of the chaos of our current times. 

"May you live in interesting times" supposedly is the English translation of a traditional Chinese curse.  I will leave it up to you as to whether our times are a curse or a potential blessing. I think it's a little of both. A curse because these times are emotionally draining and full of suffering; especially for the loved ones of those nearly 483,000 who have died. Feeling vulnerable, exposed, and anxious about the future is a norm for most of us. At the same time, we may be in a midst of a transformation towards a new order.  Joanna Macy, environmental activist, and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and ecology, writes about the "Great Turning." Here's what she had to say in a 2009 article:

"The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization. The ecological and social crises we face are caused by an economic system dependent on accelerating growth. This self-destructing political economy sets its goals and measures its performance in terms of ever-increasing corporate profits—in other words by how fast materials can be extracted from Earth and turned into consumer products, weapons, and waste. A revolution is under way because people are realizing that our needs can be met without destroying our world." https://www.ecoliteracy.org/article/great-turning

Regarding pandemics, New Yorker author Lawrence Wright, investigates the history of pandemic in a July 13, 2020  article entitled, "How Pandemic Wreak Havoc---- And Open Minds."  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/how-pandemics-wreak-havoc-and-open-minds.

Wright asks this question in his introduction to the article: "The plague marked the end of the Middle Ages and the start of a great cultural renewal. Could the coronavirus, for all its destruction, offer a similar opportunity for radical change?"

Wright, along with Gianna Pomata, a retired professor at the Institute of the History of Medicine, at Johns Hopkins University, tells us about the history of the plague and its effects. Here's just one of the fascinating comments: 

 "Pomata told me, “What happens after the Black Death, it’s like a wind—fresh air coming in, the fresh air of common sense.” The intellectual overthrow of the scholastic-medicine establishment in the Middle Ages was caused by doctors who set aside the classical texts and gradually turned to empirical evidence. It was a revival of medical science, which had been dismissed after the fall of ancient Rome, a thousand years earlier. “After the Black Death, nothing was the same,” Pomata said. “What I expect now is something as dramatic is going to happen, not so much in medicine but in economy and culture. Because of danger, there’s this wonderful human response, which is to think in a new way.”

Are we thinking in new ways as Pomata hopes we are? I see some signs. General Motors recently announced their goal of eliminating gas and diesel fuel vehicles by 2035 and replacing all with electrical ones. Working at home is now acceptable by large corporations like Google. The pandemic has heightened our awareness of social and economic inequalities while underscoring how deeply interconnected we all are. The January 6th insurrection points out the fragility of our democracy. Seeing clearly is often the first step towards right action.  

Locally, a group of Madison citizens is thinking in new ways about development. They have created a non-profit and launched the "Save the Farm!" campaign, an effort to redevelop a 65-acre property on Madison's far eastside. The former Voit farm is ripe for development and for sale. I drive past the Milwaukee Street property on my way to the dentist. The barn, silo, and home still stand.

The non-profit hopes to buy the farm and develop the property in unconventional ways. They imagine a "purpose-built neighborhood that incorporates core values of anti-racism, diversity/inclusion, affordable housing, urban agricultural and environmental sustainability." 

An investment cooperative is being organized, allowing ordinary citizens to purchase shares. The campaign is now determining how many would potentially be interested in buying shares.  Ann and I have indicated our interest. If you are interested, please see https://www.savethefarm.net/   You provide contact information and how much you may want to invest, without any obligation to follow through.

I see signs of thinking and acting in new ways in my neighborhood. The Dudgeon-Monroe Neighborhood Association now has an Anti-Racism Committee, formed in 2020 in response to concerns about systemic racism in our community. Here's the mission statement: "We connect the Dudgeon-Monroe neighborhood to issues of racial equity in a way intended to inspire action and policy-making towards dismantling systemic racism." For more information see https://www.dmna.org/antiracism

Another neighborhood example of thinking in new ways is a subaward proposal Sandy and I, as co-chairs of the Southwest Path Committee, just submitted to the UW Arboretum. The Arboretum received an Environmental Protection Agency grant to promote stormwater community engagement and education at the neighborhood level. If funded, along with our partners, we plan to install two 400 square feet rain gardens on park land adjacent to Wingra School, and conduct educational outreach activities. Activities involve Wingra School teachers, staff and families, as well as residents of the Dudgeon-Monroe neighborhood and other nearby neighborhoods.

Rather than just emphasizing best practices, we take a wider perspective towards stormwater.  During a "kick-off" Community Gathering for 60 residents, a member of the Ho-Chunk nation will be invited to offer a local Indigenous perspective on water. We hope that this offering linked to Traditional Ecological Knowledge will inspire participants to reframe stormwater management as water stewardship.  Wingra School, after rain gardens are installed, will also invite members of the Ho-Chunk and Ojibwe speaking Nations to share plant names in their respective language, and explain the multidimensional meaning language and words have in their cultures. With this base of knowledge, signs will be made for plants that include Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe, Spanish and English languages. 

I am optimistic that we will be funded. We will need volunteers. If you live in the Madison area and are interested in volunteering, please contact me at jblasczyk13@gmail.com. There are several ways of lending a hand, which I will gladly explain when you contact me. 

I like to think that our eleven year effort involving Prospect Gardens is another example of thinking in new ways. The prairie plants with their deep roots keep rain water at the site while beautifying a previously ugly, weed-invested site. Otherwise the rain water would find its way into the ditches along the bike path and eventually into a stormwater drain and into Lake Wingra. 

The raspberry and gooseberry patches provide snacks for passersby. The cherry trees and the elderberry shrubs likewise offer food for both birds and humans. Neighbors, while volunteering and afterwards, have developed deeper connections. Prospect Gardens' future depends upon volunteers and the need is constant. Please contact me at jblasczyk13@gmail.com,  if you are interested in lending a hand. 

Prospect Gardens now are covered in deep snow patiently waiting for spring. In late January, prior to the arrival of the deep snow, I took the following pictures while visiting the Gardens. January, if you recall, was quite mild.  These pictures testify to the beauty of the Gardens, even in late January. I offer these along with quotations for your reflections. For me, Prospect Gardens continues to teach me to look at and experience life in new ways.

“Among our Potawatomi people, women are the Keepers of Water. We carry the sacred water to ceremonies and act on its behalf. “Women have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers,” my sister said. “We carry our babies in internal ponds and they come forth into the world on a wave of water. It is our responsibility to safeguard the water for all our relations.” ― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

"As I walk with Beauty
As I walk, as I walk,
The universe is walking with me,
In beauty it walks before me,
In beauty it walks behind me,
In beauty it walks below me,
In beauty it walks above me,
Beauty is on every side."

—Traditional Navajo Prayer

“I don’t think that it is more technology we need, or more money or more data. We need a change in heart, a change in ethics, away from an anthropocentric worldview that considers the Earth our exploitable property to a biocentric, life-centered worldview in which an ethic of respect and reciprocity can grow."  

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Returning the Gift, Minding Nature May 2014

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”

Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

  “Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”

― Wendell Berry

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

George Bernard Shaw

“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.”

—Barbara Ward

Spring will surely arrive, the Earth will thaw, and the plants pictured above will once again rise up. I end with this poem by Jane Kenyon and her message of imagining spring. 

February: Thinking Of Flowers 

Now wind torments the field,

turning the white surface back

on itself, back and back on itself,

like an animal licking a wound.

Nothing but white--the air, the light;

only one brown milkweed pod

bobbing in the gully, smallest

brown boat on the immense tide.

A single green sprouting thing

would restore me. . . .

Then think of the tall delphinium,

swaying, or the bee when it comes

to the tongue of the burgundy lily.