Change Is in the Air
The things of nature are born and fade away in the rhythm of the seasons. ~ Kenneth Yasuda, from Seeds from a Birch Tree by Clark Strand, p. 33, The Way of Haiku
In the same way as I now feel a subtle shift in the air and light, and walk over a rain of tiny acorns from tall willow oaks, the Americans are witnessing the fall of a dictator and his racist regime. The Trump Administration is applying ever more dehumanization on the public as he feels his own fall from power.
American voters are turning away from the violent and shameful acts of President Trump and the whole of the administration, the Republican led Congress (in lock step with Trump) and the Supreme Court (“courting” Trump’s Executive Privilege). They will all live in infamy in our history.
We have our own Gulag Archipelago across the U.S.A. in detention centers, in hand gloves that deliver extended taser shocks; force feeding detainees on hunger strike in protest of violations of their rights; and in separation of families and children from parents to name only a few violations of human rights. The countries accepting these human beings that America tosses out like trash are participants in our American gulag.
I recall my horror in reading Boris Pasternak’s novel, Dr. Zhivago when I was 16. Sharp in my mind is that Thanksgiving at my grandparents in Tennessee. Even my Grandmother and Grandfather had read it. At the time, my father was a newly retired Air Force pilot. He had been part of the Strategic Air Command which closely monitored Russia in the early 60s. We had returned to Dad’s hometown in the Smoky Mountains where his parents lived in a small hamlet, Watauga. So, at Thanksgiving in 1961, Dad recorded our conversation at the big dinner table with roasted turkey, stuffing and gravy, green beans and pumpkin pie in tow. He had just purchased a Wollensak tape recorder thank goodness, so the sound today is clear as a bell. The discussion included everyone present including my kid sisters whose comments had nothing to do with Russian gulags but which make the tape a family classic. My grandfather’s bass voice resonated as he and my grandmother recalled WWI and WWII and their views on the present day threat of Russian encroachment around the world.
Russia in the 1930 – 50’s penal system – the Gulag Archipelago – was known for torture and as a black hole from which people never returned. Dissidents in particular were sent there which is devastatingly detailed in Dr. Zhivago.
America’s version of the Gulag disappears immigrants and U.S. citizens alike into countries (the archipelago) where their lives are at risk, or where they do not speak the language and have no relatives or friends. These gulags are privately owned and operated by friends of Trump who receive millions of dollars in no-bid contracts.
Our policy is Out of Sight, Out of Mind. Except, in America citizens are making sure they are in sight and on our minds. The laws of America are broken; human rights violations are perpetrated; and the ICE gulag wolves are unconstrained to reap violence and even death in the name of this President and the MAGA Republicans.
In t961, as a young teen, I recall how Pasternak developed an enduring love story set in the 1930 to 50’s Russia while sustaining a sense of dread and loss of freedom. In my wildest dreams I could not have imagined an American political party and President and his cohort of henchmen in the white house, would perpetrate crimes on our own people. Like Hitler, immigrants to this administration are rats and lowlife.
Now, the fall of American integrity, the whole of what we have created together is twirling down to the ground as leaves from a tree in autumn. Our government has become the enemy of the People. .. of Liberty herself.
In just seven decades from my reading of this historic novel, an authoritarian government is in control of the House, the Senate, the President and the Supreme Court. The wolves are devouring the chickens but the roosters have sharp talons. We are in that violent battle now and we do not know how long we must endure the travesties perpetrated on us.
My fervent hope is that a groundswell of voters will coalesce to at least take over the House of Representatives. Already the MAGA forces led by the Orange Menace are brewing up a so-called emergency in our voting system, portraying the opposing parties as Communists and the worst people on Earth. Well, I am one of them, and I assert my will along with millions of Americans that they cannot outlast millions of voters who have known freedom and the rule of law long enough that they will never succumb to such terror.
On Wikipedia, if you search, “The Gulag Archipelago” – a 7 volume summary of an inmate’s journey as an imprisoned dissident in the Russian system of labor camps – there is this quote from the author, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, that sends chills up my spine for how closely it echoes what is happening to immigrants and citizens in America’s detention camps:
Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes….
Boris Pastenak built his novel on The Gulag Archipeligo by tracing Dr. Yuri Zhivago’s life and his love, Lara, during these times. As a young teenager I recall feeling the doom overshadowing this couple’s deep love for each other and the example of their common resistance to the inhumanity of governance under Lenin, another despot who rose on the waves of an ideology that reduced humans to mere fodder.
Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. His novel and poetry was lauded. I recall that in the back of the edition my family purchased, then were many poems by Yuri Zhivago (aka Boris Pasternak), a physician and Russian poet. I memorized many of them and recited them over the years.
Read a Review of Dr. Zhivago from The New Republic.
Doctor Zhivago opens in the first years of the century, spans the revolution, civil war and terror of the thirties, and ends with an epilogue in the mid-1940s. On a level far deeper than politics and with a strength and purity that must remove all doubts, it persuades us that the yearning for freedom remains indestructible.
Climate.us
Climate.us is the nonprofit successor to Climate.gov, delivering climate data and information to promote public climate literacy and to equip people to turn knowledge into meaningful conversations and climate-conscious actions. At a moment when critical climate information was being deleted or distorted, we stepped up to rescue key climate resources—including the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s now-deleted Fifth National Climate Assessment—and to ensure the public has continued easy access to the facts. Climate.us
This graph above can be found on Climate.us. at https://www.climate.us/maps-data.
Here is a link to the Climate Dashboard where you can follow indicators of climate change.
Go Here for the Fifth National Climate Assessment clone off the now defunct official U.S. Government website.
Currently there are three employees blowing out each day to keep building the sites’ resources and turning out easy to understand measures about our changing climate, actions that need to be taken to protect the public. If you can, be sure to leave a donation to help them keep our citizens informed and supported to take actions to preserve home and country. https://www.climate.us/donate
Overdrawn
that the world should become so immune to its own losses seemed inconceivable 25 years ago. Now that we have re-learned how remarkably obtuse humankind can be when dazzled by monetary and material gain, we must shine the light all the brighter on the singularity and prescience of Schumacher’s work and vision.
–Paul Hawken in “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered: 25 Years Later…
When I first read Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, it was 1981. I was concerned then by food security and exploring why hunger and poverty persist. At that time, I was leading a community effort to raise funding for hunger relief with the goal that at least some of it would be invested in longer term solutions. That project is the Harry Chapin Run Against Hunger, now in its 46th year.
Schumacher called his understanding of sustaining economics as “economics as if people mattered.” He was a British Economist who had identified the most effective size and orientation for production to address the needs of the community where it operates.
He showed in real time examples that the ideal size for a company was no more than 500 employees. A company that size can achieve economic wealth while improving the lives of employees and contributing to the community it impacts.
As time progressed, and I studied to become an environmental educator, his research and understanding about “economics as if people mattered,” I saw these principles at work in nature Herself.
On Earth five principles of sustainability are followed. 1. a limitless, nonpolluting energy source; 2. avoidance of over drafting the carrying capacity of an ecosystem;3. maintenance of biodiversity generation to generation; 4. recycling of waste; and 5. adaptation to change.
We are operating at a deficit.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has released its 2026 report on the state of heating of the Earth and contributing factors. Here is the Press Release.
The Global Annual-to-Decadal Update also takes a look at the observed climate over the past five years and gives regional predictions for temperatures and precipitation over the next five years.
Annual global mean near-surface temperatures during 2026–2030 are predicted to range between 1.3°C and 1.9°C above the 1850-1900 average. It is likely (86% chance) that one year between 2026 and 2030 will surpass 2024 as the warmest year on record, according to the update.
It is very likely (91% chance) that the global mean near-surface temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average levels for at least one year between 2026 and 2030. This level was also temporarily exceeded in 2024, when the global average surface temperature was about 1.55 °C above the pre-industrial baseline.
It is likely (75% chance) that the 2026-2030 five-year mean will exceed 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average. It is considered exceptionally unlikely (less than 1%) that any single year will exceed 2°C above the 1850-1900 average in the next five years.
Everybody and everyone will be impacted due to this global heating mostly from fossil fuel burning which through the industrial age to the tech age has exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth’s ecosystems. We are seriously overdrawn on all measures of sustainable living.
The operational principles of Mother Earth’s body from which we all derive our lives, give us the signs to follow now. While we as yet cannot remove the greenhouse gases already in excess, we can at least stabilize our climate by countries switching as quick as possible away from burning fossil fuels.
Meantime, its all about adaptation. How we live, what we eat, how well we care for our families and others, and having the right kind of leaders in place.
America is in a world of hurt from an ignorant and ideologically driven autocracy forced on its citizens by traitors to our government and people. So here we must work at all levels to adapt. Innovative ideas for reducing our impact on nature (i.e. fresh and ocean water; soil quality; affordability; homes that make their own energy; grid development for clean electrical sources; moratoria on any technology that threatens the well-being of all life on earth; thinking outside the box of conventional thinking…these all can generate exciting new jobs for upcoming generations. Lets get to that.
To be continued …
Photo above from Norfolk Academy in Norfolk, Virginia. All new public schools should install roof top solar and existing schools can install on schools when they replace the roofing. Just put into policy.
The Saga of Menhaden: Example of Marine Fisheries at Risk
Entering a New Age of Discernment
The food production and supply systems across our regions, nation, and the world are now interlinked tightly. This is everyone’s issue. Organizations like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation will become even more important in upcoming years as we will all have to make decisions that require careful, thoughtful decision making. Access to the best science and public awareness will be key to whether we collectively chart a course that assures water and food supplies remain robust, free of pathogens, and equitably available to everyone.
The University of California Bren School of Environmental Science and Management has a promising vision of how we can sustain and innovate in food production from the oceans during these changing ecological decades.
Food Insecurity Looms Behind the Headlines
There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from a grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.
Food Security is threatened all across the Earth as climate change is ramping up in extreme heat, consequent drought, fires and flooding, and in rising costs to farmers. In some parts of the world, new crops may need to be considered. For decades now, groups across the world have been working to create new genetic seed varieties that can thrive under adverse conditions.
In the eastern United States, once the breadbasket of a new democracy, farmers are facing daily threats to crops. Changing seasonal patterns, drought, loss of pollinators and other synergistic insects; rising costs of diesel fuel and fertilizer, and saltwater inundation from sea level rise challenge crop production.
Out west in the breadbaskets of America where water is the limiting factor, a historic long-term drought has resulted in Federal oversight of the states sharing the Colorado River system to stem a catastrophe where 40 million people live in major cities of our nation: Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas.
This is an impending health crisis. Water is the limiting factor of human life. Water is first and a healthy, stable food supply is second. These major growing areas (the Imperial Valley in California, Arizona farms and orchards, and to some extent the northern Mexico food production supported by the Colorado River valley are all threatened by the drought on the once mighty Colorado River – caused by historic overuse of the river.
When the Colorado River Pact formed in 1922 among seven states (Upper Basin and Lower Basin states), the allocations were made using average annual flow data that was based on historic high volume. Later, after the Colorado River system was dammed and redirected to flow to agriculture and cities, scientists discovered that 100-year droughts were common in the geological record. In spite of John Wesley Powell’s historic expedition to the West and navigation of the wild Colorado River (paid for by Congress) to assess whether America’s western lands could be developed by harnessing the Colorado, he reported back to Congress that the lands were water restricted to 1-10” of rainfall per year. He cautioned Congress that big construction schemes should not be developed in deserts. Congress ignored his report. And here we are.
America’s Once Historic Breadbasket of the World is in Crisis
Let us be sober for once and look with a clear eye at our country’s situation. Farmers are sending signals that weather and climate are making it harder to bring their crops to harvest and economics are hindering it, too. Also, our long-held pride in small farmers at the center of production is giving away to corporate farms. Those small family farms that grace so much of the Southeast may soon be a relic of the past.
Our country is focused internationally, spending our wealth on unwarranted wars when we have a catastrophe brewing at home: loss of food security.
We see it now as millions of American families are priced out of the healthier foods due to rising costs caused by worldwide tariffs and consequent downstream price forcing. (I’ve watched the price of even the humble sweet potato rise from $0.69 to $1.29 per pound in just a year.)
Access to fertilizer and affordable diesel and climate impacts are chasing each other for front runner position with threats to water supply leading the race. Another runner nipping at their heels is saltwater inundation and drought-caused salination of soils from rapid evaporation. All these factors are combining to potentially reduce food security.
What do we mean by food security?
While there are a variety of ways to understand food security, it contains systems that intersect and combine to create access to a stable healthy food supply. American Agriculture and food industry have striven a century to create what we enjoy today.
- access to healthy food (affordability, quality and reasonable proximity);
- stable agricultural production season to season (predictable costs to farmers for production both nationally and internationally with oversight to assure farmers are supported in creating market demand for high quality food production);
- predictable seasons and growth conditions);
- land use (should water-loving crops like cotton or corn for ethanol be grown or crops grown for meat production be carved back when water supply is limited?)
- land management for stable freshwater supply and healthy soil;
- scientific innovations for seed production, pest control, deep soil health;
- fair and stable markets and
- nonpolluting, affordable sources of power for food production/transportation..
For centuries, American farmers and international partners have created a robust and dependable food supply for the nation and many other countries around the world. For a century at least, the U.S.A. has supplied emergency food wherever famine develops.
Our national supermarkets are a wonder to international visitors. At least up to now. Dangers lurk that currently threaten our national and international food security.
Stay tuned for the next post on food production from our oceans, lakes and rivers. Please comment on this post so that we can all benefit from our collective wisdom on this critical matter.
Additional Resources:
Small Planet Institute: Diet for a Small Planet
How SNAP Fights Poverty:
- Resource Relief: Buying food with electronic benefit cards lets low-income families use their own limited cash for rent, utilities, and medicine. [https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/the-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap]
- Reaching the Poorest: More than half of all benefits go to households living at or below half of the federal poverty line. [Ibid]
- Protecting Children: The program has a strong positive effect on kids, lowering both the count and the hardship levels of child poverty. [usda.gov/about-usda/news/bl]
- Economic Boost: Every dollar spent through SNAP creates about $1.50 to $1.80 in local economic activity by supporting grocery stores and farms. [https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/social-policy/explainer-understanding-snap-program-and-what-cuts]
Coming to terms…
Yoda (Star Wars): “To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose.”
One frustrating reality is that several major news stations talk as if we are in a normal political time. Nothing could be further than the truth.
I follow Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an American historian whose focus is fascism and authoritarian leaders. Her Substack account is Lucid which I highly recommend. In this time I value clarity and Ruth has penetrating insight into the dangerous man in the White House.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat Interview with Johnathon Swan, Co-Author with Maggie Haberman of Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump
Fire and Flood: Earth in Transition
“Any fool can destroy trees.” ~ John Muir, from “Save the Redwoods” essay in John Muir, Nature Writings, The Library of America, p. 830, 1997, N.Y., N.Y.
Study the maps from the Berkeley Climate Monthly Report (previous post on this blog). Study Europe, especially France and Spain. This heat pattern was long predicted by climate scientists yet with all we know, and without any hope of a global effort to reduce heat producing carbon emissions, it may yet all come true and then some.
Heating on land takes human lives, destroys forests whose carbon sequestration is fundamental to the gentle climate we have known for at least the last 10,000 years. We have depended on weather patterns known to us as seasons of the year. Farmers have known these patterns and have planned accordingly.
As agriculture varies over the centuries and location, humans have learned how to extract the most food out of a given piece of land. Extraction from tilling the land we have recently observed destroys the underlying networks of mycelia that are the conduits of water and minerals and the central hub of the lives of millions of microbes and invertebrates whose lives make our abundant foodshed possible.
We are entering a new era of life on Earth. Across the world people and organizations labor to restore ecosystems and to protect species. Notable too are the family by family efforts to plant natives to support insects and birds and other of our kin at risk from climate change, pesticides, and general disruption of their life cycles in their habitats.
In spite of these local or regional efforts, we have passed a point where Earth’s biological systems are irrevocably disrupted by climate forcing that has caused drought, floods, fire, mega-storms and now, these play back on each other for a forcing effect. The fires in the NE USA, Canada, and Europe are illustrative. The fires are so intense now that they are creating their own weather. When this happens, no human intervention can stop them. More people are displaced.
We have passed tipping points now. No going back. This could have been stopped or slowed down had we stuck together across political and social divides but we did not. We know Mother Earth’s creatures are malleable and ultimately able to adapt under favorable conditions. Its still possible that there are things we can do now but they are hard and will need big collaborations to achieve.
This fact has been hard for me personally to acknowledge. Generally, I am an optimist believing there is hope to make change happen soon enough. But those changes, at least in America, have been stymied and denigrated by leaders and some of the public alike. All that fossil fuel lobbying paid off? No one will be unscathed by the coming Earth changes. Nature will endure but in some form we cannot predict nor whether we’ll survive to be part of it. Nature is responsive and ultimately able to change under different conditions.
America embraces capitalism as its economic religion and oath. The vagaries of the system have boomeranged over the decades between the forces of greed and the forces of prudence and justice. In America the forces of avarice and greed are in the White House at present, half the Congress unwilling to stop it, and the other half powerless. Citizens and representatives still in touch with reality are forming coalitions and I feel a groundswell forming to stop them. But when? The world is burning around us. How much longer can rich and powerful people live in altered realities with all their power and wealth? Don’t hold your breath. Better to join with friends and people who DO possess reason and power through the Constitution.
I am not giving up nor are you. There is a growing coalescence among neighbors and communities across the U.S. We can do amazing things together; we can’t stop climate change but we can adapt to it using not only our wits, but also by cultivating a reverence for the Earth we forgot somewhere on the way to “get the gold”.
The reason our culture has not embraced an intelligent relationship with our planet is the way we consider humans separate from other species and the land and waters of Mother Earth. Yet nothing could be further from the truth no matter what some religions may teach. We are a biological species. Our contribution to the whole biota is that we are reasoning creatures and we have an opposable thumb and we make stuff. We could be very useful to Mother Earth by understanding how the natural world works and that we are one among millions of species. I am no fool that that change of worldview could happen in America soon enough, but a great deal of our people are coming to this understanding. So, a major action we can take is to be in a spiritual posture of humility and take actions to undo the conditions that are causing climate change.
We can’t stop it now, but we can mute the impacts and then learn what the new realities will mean for ALL life on Earth and adjust how we live. That is, we embrace and recall reverence for life which our species once embraced. We should turn to the original keepers of North America, the Tribal Nations across this land. We can learn from their understanding of our place in the great panoply of life on this land.
More on Heat: Berkeley Earth Monthly Report
Graphs and Data These summarize results for land and ocean warming globally during the month of June.
During June of 2026, global warming measured 1.49 degrees Centigrade. I think it is worth listening to the zoom session for those of you who want more context with the numbers.
Gulf Islands National Sea Shore in Winter Garb
Odyssey: An epic journey
“Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured.”
― Homer, The Odyssey on Goodreads
Americans are flocking to the movie theater and IMAX theaters to watch Christopher Nolan‘s film adaptation of the Homeric tale, The Odyssey. From ancient Greek literature, it is an epic about Odysseus’ journey to return home after the Trojan Wars.
Serendipitous in the modern era? A homecoming to a time when humans lived together with the world’s biota in harmony and reciprocity?
A modern drama as people battle the cyclopes of our political time?
Last night I wrote to key players in an army set to strip America of her democracy, to replace it with autocratic rule: Republican Representative of Virginia. Here is my battle cry hymn:
Americans we are on an Odyssey like none before in our nation’s history, except perhaps the Civil War. But, I think this time is much more perilous because so much is at stake. While this government is causing havoc everywhere and distracting us from the stabilizing work to keep our children healthy and stabilize climate so they have a future, everything is hanging in the balance.
We are the Odysseus of our time. Let us not fail our kids and grandkids.
Susan Feathers 