"Let's not deceive ourselves: that damaged planet will not be safe for the little ones. The children need at healthy world that provides them a healthy life, not a poisoned, bulldozed, desperate world, where forests burn and rivers run dry. Not an insane, nihilistic, unstable world where the powerful people pursue profit, even to the end of civilization. What else is my work, my role-responsibility, the duty that comes with loving the children, if not to defend their future?" "Earth's Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World." Kathleen Dean Moore 2021
"Goin' home, I've done enough to sow my little name
Goin' where the fields are green and I can do my macramé
A buffoon fumblin' without a clue, likes to shift the blame
And often feels betrayed, there's gonna be some changes made
There's gonna be some changes made
Gonna be some changes, changes made
Can't keep on doing what I've been doing these days
Look in the mirror, I see a clown's face
It's gotta take it off, gotta get myself straight
Gonna be some changes, changes made" Bruce Hornsby 2004 "Gonna Be Some Changes Made"
Congress, get off your asses and pass federal gun safety legislation- dying from gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children age 1-19 in the United States. Congratulations. Well done.
Do not tell me you care about children! Do not tell me you value life! You are liars who care about power and profit and nothing else. Shame on you and shame on us for allowing you to continue.
IF you care about children:
Make the child tax credit permanent.
Improve SNAP and continue the summer meals program.
Pass the Equal Rights Amendment to empower women.
Require paid parental leave.
Fund and require science based comprehensive sexuality and gender education. Children deserve knowledge as they grow into their bodies and explore identities, not shame and ridicule from narrow minded adults.
Fund Single payer healthcare to give access to care for all.
Pass a federal law to keep abortion legal and contraception accessible.
Raise the federal minimum wage, consider a universal basic income.
Tax the billionaires and stop whining about the cost of funding social programs while you continue to accelerate funding of the war machine.
Stop destroying our planet by extracting and burning fossil fuels.
Stop denying that we are part of nature. We need all the other members of our ecosystem for the health of ourselves and of the planet. We rush on towards the extinction of millions of species, including our own thinking somehow we will outsmart evolution.
Allow people time for the necessity of reflection in nature, for creativity, for art ,for the nurturing of children and of relationships.
End agribusiness and support small farming, vegetarian based diet and an end to highly processed foods. Make whole food cheap and processed foods expensive. Stop destroying waterways. Save the bees.
Stop protecting profits at the expense of people.
"The gift of nature tells us there is a persistence to life that no measure of insolence of greed can destroy." KDM
We can change. We just have to stop living in fear and prioritizing the pursuit of money over all else.
Look around. Read a book. Stop listening to people who spew hatred.
"Meanwhile Earth turns, birds fly north or south, fish rise or sink in the currents, the moon spills light on snow or sand, and we --do we think we turn the crank that spins the Earth? A good dose of wonder, a night of roaring waves, a faceful of stars, the kick in the pants of an infinite universe, the huge unknowing--these remind us that there is beauty we didn't create. There is mystery we cannot fathom. There are interests that are not our own. There is time we cannot measure. When we live humbly in full awareness of the astonishing fact that we have any place at all in such a world, we live richer, deeper lives, more fully realizing our humanity. And so a sense of wonder impels us to act respectfully in the world. There is meaning and significance in these products of time and rock and water, far beyond their usefulness to human purposes. The sweep of time and the operations of chance have created a world that leaves us delighted and dazed, struggling to understand the very fact of it, its colors, its squeaks and songs. It deserves respect, which is to say that a sense of wonder leads us to celebrate and honor the Earth. Too a sense of wonder shows us our own responsibilities to care for the objects of wonder-to do them no harm, to protect their thriving. Rachel (Carson)-"Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction." To the extent that she is right, wonder may be the keystone virtue in our time of reckless destruction, a source of decency and hope and restraint." KDM p. 210
Just stop.
Peace out.
Sheila
https://www.tiktok.com/@michaelkosta_/video/7098512768285838634
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3bfn4W4zojSwZoPPwAEd7H?si=85985b78c77e40f2
