Climate news, if you care to hear it, is grim in many areas!  The ocean’s fish nursery, coral reefs, are mostly dead and dying; the ice cliffs of Antartica, falling into the sea, are raising sea levels, putting millions of human and animal homes under water.

WE, North Bay people, underwent terrible fires last year even if they didn’t hit our personal homes.  We knew the fires just missed us and will come again and again and still we’re not really ready. Does ANYONE EVER really get ready for wild fires?  And don’t we need to grieve for lost lives and for the trauma we all went through?  More to come, folks.  May as well create a support group asap.  Aqus Community can help; we’re starting to look at ways we can help at our home, Oasis Community Farm.

As 16 year old Grete Thunberg of Sweeden tells the world, our house is on fire; stop everything and take care of it!

We must do climate actions to approach Climate Justice, a whole new story of how people and nature CAN get along including a deep need to be nourished by good ideas, good people, good vibrations!  We need to see that surprizing light through the storm, showing us the path homeward.  Mostly, we have to make new paths and gather people to walk them.

Good idea to talk with each other, join Daily Acts and buy into the Sonoma Climate Challenge; work with a half-dozen groups to further the possibility of a Green New Deal for all of us.  Urgently needed.

A few months ago, our venerable Center for Climate Protection (CCP) held a hopeful evening talk with Adam Hochschild, author, Bury the Chains, where Hockschild tells of the 63 year passion project of one English Parlimentarian and his associates to change how the world views slavery – and end it.  CCP called the event “The Impossible is Possible,” one guy actually made a huge diffence worldwide!

So Petaluma has a couple of soft victories of note:

  • There IS no asphalt plant at our bird sanctuary, Shollenberger Park, along the Petaluma River.  Enough slow down and blockage was offered pubically for years that necessary water permits were never issued.
  • Plans are now underway to open Petaluma’s own Lafferty Ranch to the public after many years of being held hostage by a rich man and his wife who thought their rights to shoot at eagles was more important than our right to bring children up to Sonoma Mountain to see the great view of where we live.

So keeping on keeping on works!  Just have to focus on what can be done, blocked, created together to make our communities more resilient.  Food forests!  Protecting wetlands!  Go solar!  Just for starters.

That said, our Sonoma County Pachamama Alliance is in the process of bringing DRAWDOWN (100 projects that reverse global warming) workshops to Sonoma County along with connections to upcoming Sunrise Hubs, Extinction Rebellion chapters, Climate Mobilization actions and more…all part of the same story, all part of “it’s all yer relatives” as Bioneers would have it.  We believe public education changes things!

Here’s a poem I kept on my frig many years, found as a tattered yellowed part of a page:

“Don’t Quit.”

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow–
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor’s cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out–
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit–
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.

Author Unknown.

 

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