Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Stephanie Woodard Today, danger confronts all of us on this Earth. “We were already facing climate change, and now there is the pandemic,” Skye says. The seeds will always be there, to provide both food and a spiritual connection to the Earth, he says. “They are how we will survive.”
The Woodland Community Land Trust was incorporated in 1979, making it one of the oldest Community Land Trusts (CLTs) established in the United States. Located in the Clearfork Valley of northeastern Tennessee, a low-income Appalachian community dominated by extractive industry and concentrated land holding, economic, and political power, Woodland recently marked its 40th year in operation.
We should know better, and do better. For those of us who are white in America, that includes grappling with our own identity—particularly the fact that white privilege is as much a part of the scaffolding of our society as fossil fuels, environmental destruction, and unsustainable consumption and growth.
Six River Farm is a diverse organic vegetable farm located on the shores of Merrymeeting Bay in Bowdoinham, Maine. Nate and Gabrielle both have roots in New England. They work with a small crew of employees, to grow a wide range of produce which they sell seasonally at local farmers markets, restaurants and natural food stores.
So to the question ‘how will humanity’s collective household pay for Covid-19?’ my answer is neither to squeeze the poor, nor to squeeze the future by closing your eyes and believing in the magic of the money tree. Instead, I’d suggest you look out your old spade and hoe from the back of the garden shed. There’s work to be done.
As the beginning of the end of lockdown comes into view in England, a new fear should be taking shape. We entered the pandemic a grossly unequal society; we will leave it with those inequalities sharpened and multiplied.
Water is in the hands of large producers who have dried out our territory and compromised the lives of our communities. Ours is an extreme case: Chile has entirely privatised water, which means that theft is institutionalised. Chile has clearly prioritised extractive industries over the rights of communities to water.
Futures were volatile last week with prices bouncing between $31 and $35 a barrel in response to the latest news. Oil closed out May on Friday with a record monthly gain of 88 percent on hopes demand for oil would continue to rise as economies reopen and crude production continues to fall.
So let’s walk our way out of this pandemic. Walk our way to mental, emotional and physical health. Walk our way back to social
cohesion. Walk our way back to a functional society where anger and suspicion aren’t the normal ways we interact with each other.
But there’s another story that the American burying beetle is a part of. It’s the less-told but equally important story of bringing uncharismatic minifauna back from the brink through cooperation among sometimes-opposing groups: private landowners, public officials and conservation activists.
The lockdown and threat of a global pandemic has turned a lot of people who previously may have depended solely on supermarkets for their food into gardeners and would-be farmers overnight.
Note that “neighborhoods” are not necessarily “communities.” Community feeling and friendships can obviously exist among neighbors, but they don’t have to: what really matters to a neighborhood is proximity.
