Cathy Edgett

Posted on June 28, 2022June 28, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

On a Depressing Note

I’m reading The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh. The book shows how capitalism leads to domination and destruction of this sensitive planet, a living system on which we depend.

On the subject of our use of fossil fuels and how they affect the environment, he begins with a steam-powered battleship called the Nemesis that allowed the British to destroy the Chinese navy in 1840.

“Since then the use of fossil fuels in war-making has risen in a steep curve. During the Second World War the American military’s consumption of petroleum amounted to one gallon of petroleum per soldier per day; during the first Gulf War this rose to four gallons per soldier per day; in the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rate of consumption surged to sixteen gallons per soldier per day.”

“Today the Pentagon is the single largest consumer of energy in the United States – and probably in the world. The U.S. military maintains vast fleets of vehicles, ships, and aircraft, and many of these consume huge amounts of fossil fuels. A non-nuclear aircraft carrier consumes 5,621 gallons of fuel per hour; in other words, those vessels burn up as much fuel in one day as a small midwestern town might use in a year. But a single F-16 aircraft consumes a third as much fuel in one hour of ordinary operations – around 1,700 gallons. If the plane’s afterburners are engaged, it consumes two and a half times as much fuel per hour as an aircraft carrier – 14,400 gallons. The U.S.Air Force has around a thousand F-16’s, and they are but a small part of the air fleet.”

“In the 1990’s the three branches of the U.S. military consumed approximately 25 billions tons of fuel per year. This was more than a fifth of the country’s total consumption, and “more than the total commercial energy consumption of nearly two thirds of the world’s countries”. During the years of the Iraq War, the U.S. military was consuming around 1.3 billion gallons of oil annually for its Middle Eastern operations alone.”

The author continues with statistics and points out the Department of Defense “generates 500,000 tons of toxic waste annually, more than the top five US chemical companies combined, and it is estimated that the armed forces of the major world powers produce the greatest amount of hazardous waste in the world.”

As we struggle to get money for climate change, we and other countries continue to fund the military without question even though the military is well aware of the dangers of climate change. They’re already dealing with the problems of sea-level rise affecting many of their bases. In addition, “In 2018 Hurricane Michael struck the Tyndall Air Force base in Florida with great force, damaging seventeen jets, each worth a third of a billion dollars.”

This book is depressing and I’m reading it slowly but I think we all need to be aware of our increasing dependence on the military and how both political parties vote to support their insatiable demands.

Are we spending money in a way that makes sense when it comes to continuing to live on an inhabitable planet? Not all of us are going to want to, or be able to, head out to Mars. I like it here.

Posted on June 27, 2022June 27, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Beckoning Calm

This morning Samantha Wallen of Write in Power invites me to look around and notice something I don’t pay much attention to. I note that my printer sits on the desk, a heavy presence, patient, waiting until I decide something needs a harder form, something I can hold in my hands.

Is that where unsettlement comes from, that place of waiting, and now I hear a chirp. The nest has little birds and they’re waking up.

Attention is the doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity.

– Robin Wall Kimmerer

Posted on June 26, 2022 by Cathy Edgett · 10 Comments

The Right to Choose

Amidst all that’s happening, I’m reading The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh.

It shows the conflict between native people living in harmony with Mother Earth and those who seek to domesticate, dominate, murder, and control.

I’ll give an example from the book of our horrific past in this country that demonstrates what happened this week with a Supreme Court now dominated by those who lied to be on it.

“The differences between European and Indian conception of living on the land have never been more eloquently summarized than by the Oglala Lakota chief Standing Bear: “We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as ‘wild’. Only to the white man was Nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was the land infested with ‘wild animals’ and ‘savage’ people. To us, it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.”

Ghosh continues: “These contrasting conceptions, suggests the Native American botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, were ultimately founded on radically different stories about the world, like those of Skywoman and Eve.” She writes:

“On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world was shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for all. On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden … That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast.”

Posted on June 22, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Passage

The days are long with light. I’m continuously looking up into the sky. This morning I saw the moon and shining planets. My daughter-in-law’s father passed away at this time of Solstice, the sun so brightly overhead for those of us in the northern hemisphere. I feel it as a beacon for him as he releases his body and like a caterpillar leaving its chrysalis to become a butterfly moves on where we can’t see.

I’m with passage and grief, the heart overflowing with entry into what we can’t understand and yet we look upward and within, touched deeply with the meaning we sense and know is there.

In and through cables, flowers, and trees

Posted on June 21, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

The Living Present

Years ago I took a workshop with Anne C. Klein. Now I read her words from “Revisiting Ritual”.

Our mind wanders incessantly, but our body and senses are always in the present. To investigate our embodied experience is to investigate the living present.

I’m with what it is to investigate the living present, and in that to juice the sacred within, to feel the touch of lungs on heart swinging through like monkeys in trees, branching and expanding the roles we share.

The octopus has three hearts and nine brains, a central brain and one in each of its eight arms. We have ten fingers. What might we stretch and embrace to reach even beyond what we see?

On Juneteeth, we remember that 157 years ago, white Americans enslaved African Americans because of the color of their skin. We remember and change.

Posted on June 20, 2022June 20, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Enchantment

I wake enchanted with how a child finds a branched stick and then a hole perfect for insertion, and then, trying different rocks finds two just right to create a story about a bird in a nest.

Yesterday we were talking about the problem of the homeless, the range of reasons. How do we help each one?

We begin with the children. We have the money to educate each child in the way that most nourishes their intellect and encourages their creativity. Don’t we have room for diversity in problem solving as we honor the abundance of ways each of us participates in our intake and outtake of the world?

The bunkers and tunnels in the Marin Headlands were once used for defense of the Golden Gate. Now, they provide views and a place to count hawks as they migrate.

Bears celebrate the Warriors win at The Overlook

Posted on June 19, 2022 by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Father’s Day

Today we walked half-way across the Golden Gate Bridge on a beautiful day. We went up to Hawk Hill. Grandchild found a stick and a hole. Add two rocks and a home for a bird in her nest appeared. Life works like that.

What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me here in my chest.

– Rumi

Posted on June 18, 2022June 18, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Gratitude

Yesterday my neighbor invited some neighbors over for afternoon tea which actually was wine, sparkling water, and goodies, most perfect for “tea”. We were outside in the garden that her husband, even at the age of 86, maintains beautifully.

Today I had my dental cleaning and my dental hygienist was in the office alone with country western music playing. I remembered when I was in radiation and would lie down on the table and listen to the music of the day. One day it was “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” by Kenny Chesney. I relaxed so far into the table, they had to stop treatment and readjust me.

Life is good for me these days.

Terry Tempest Williams:

The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.

My neighbor’s yard and garden looking up!

Posted on June 17, 2022June 17, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Exploring Roots

Yesterday I was at the Legion of honor for the Guo Pei exhibit, a “Couture Fantasy” and a fantasy it was. Guo Pei was raised during the Cultural Revolution in China when everyone wore the same outfit in gray or brown. There was no display of creativity or uniqueness. She listened to stories from her grandmother of beautiful clothes and jewelry. From that her imagination grew and flowed and she says “Working to create something is like a religion to me.”

Guo Pei: “There is a Chinese saying: “One flower, one world: one leaf and one awakening.” For me, flowers express happiness, joy, and pleasure. When I was little, my maternal grandmother told me, “The bigger the tree, the more luxurious its roots.” What this means to me is that the parts of someone you see, like their successes, are due to really good development of their roots. The roots of a plant can sometimes be even more beautiful than what is visible. Many flowers fruit at the root or bloom underground. I tell my children that if you want to be very successful in the future, you have to cultivate, and you must cultivate downward and not upward. What people ultimately see of you – for example, my work – is only a tiny part of everything.”

Posted on June 16, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Low Tide

The moon was still in the sky when I rose this morning. The moon influences the tides and I knew yesterday would be a low, low, so I went to the marsh to see the mud exposed where water often flows.

I think it’s clear these are challenging times, and as I walk by houseboats sitting on mud I think of how clearly those who live there know the rise and fall four times a day.

I’m with these words of Mark Matousek, from “A Splinter of Love”.

In grief we access parts of ourselves that were somehow unavailable to us in the past. With awareness, the journey through grief becomes a path to wholeness.