March 2025 – Susan Feathers

When You Are Down and Out, Turn to Art, Beauty and Love

Who so loves, believes the impossible. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

One of my favorite Sunday morning Treasures is the arrival of The Marginalian in my email box. This vibrant publication is the work of Maria Poplova who weekly researches a topic and then finds all the associations in literature and science that impinge on it. Indeed, there have been days when I just followed links through a topic and found myself in a world of magic and mystery.

I think this is the topic of this post today as I was reminded to look up from my focus on the anthill of politics in America to the broad heavens above and the depths of the human heart. Rx: I highly recommend you subscribe.

A second influence today is a Substack writer, Elizabeth Wainwright, a young mother and writer from England. On March 27 she posted the most beautiful and profound writing “following bees, starlings, coral, Mary, and justice.”

Songs for a new world. Plus, Writing. She begins with this line:

“I have been thinking about community, and the non-human world, and Mary mother of Jesus, and change, and new life.”

I have learned and relearned through Elizabeth what it means to live a committed life, to follow your heart no matter the consequences and to be forever a Traveller or Storyteller.

Is Everything We Love for Sale?

When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. ~ Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic

Trump is now siting public lands, lands which belong to all of us, our National Parks, refuges and places where we recreate, hunt, find inspiration – as resources for sale (oil, minerals, etc.).

Here is a short but informative interview by Heather Cox Richardson with Wes Siler about what is at risk.

In the quote below the title of this post, I provide a link to the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Wisconsin which continues the legacy of Leopold, one of America’s most brilliant writers about land as a community to which we belong. A park ranger, a scientist, a professor and a hunter – Leopold has given Americans a treasure of wisdom about managing public lands and about how we value and understand the natural treasures which give us life.

In 2013, I attended the Land Ethic Leader training at the Foundation. Inspired, I returned to my home in Pensacola, Florida and gave presentations about the Land Ethic and what we can learn from it. IT IS THE ANTIDOTE TO TRUMP’S IDEA THAT LAND IS A COMMODITY TO BE BOUGHT AND SOLD.

The Land Ethic_A Sand County Almanac Download

“Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to perserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Aldo Leopold, A Land Ethic

Trump’s Unraveling of America’s Food System

A hungry man is not a free man. ~ Adlai E. Stevenson

American farmers are the losers in the destruction of USAID and the winnowing of USDA through Trump tariffs. These actions are causing an enlarging tremor in the U.S. agricultural system. American citizens and families, and hungry people across the world will suffer. This is another example of how bottom line transactional leadership by billionaires is utterly dumb to the layers of business relationships, and trust between growers and the government to grow our food for here and abroad. Once the trust is broken, and all the pieces of the system are weakened, it cannot simply be restarted with a ‘Whoops, so sorry.’

It’s happening in Wisconsin!

All politics is local. ~ A common assertion in U.S. politics. Let’s act like we believe it!!

Ben Winkler, Democratic Party Chair in Wisconsin, is calling on all citizens who want to preserve our democracy to understand what is happening in Wisconsin.

It is very important to watch and participate to make sure we have a democratic Justice in that seat. Watch the video for Ben’s explanation why Wisconsin’s court is a key pressure point to stop gerrymandering by MAGAS. Just to show how key this vote is to MAGAS, and to freedom loving Americans, Elon Musk is investing more than 10 millions of dollars to influence the vote.

Read more and follow Ben on Bluesky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyXba-vx1sw

Ben invites Americans across the nation to get involved calling Wisconsin voters, many of whom do not know about the vote.

Wikler on The Contrarian on Substack.

Sowing Seeds of Liberty

I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live. ~ Albert Schweitzer in Out of My Life and Thought

In Albert Schweitzer’s conclusion about an ethical basis of life. he concludes that all of us are part of a vast interrelated life – each individual striving for liberty. A tree, a fawn, a human …

The infantile actions of a man causing destruction at home and abroad, is not liberty but a prison of human passions run amuck. There is no ethical basis for what is happening to our nation, our home, our livelihood – our future.

This morning I decided that no matter what the MAGA movement dreams, it will end in ashes and fury. The seeds of democracy are aligned with natural forces and therefore cannot be tamped down but rather will rise anew among us. Already the Destroyer has refreshed the fields of America with the seeds of Liberty.

I will return to the people who have inspired my personal growth and share them with readers and seed my field with freedom and confidence that all this horror will end with the new bloom of a nation conceived under God with freedom and liberty for all.

Restored farm and the shack of the Aldo Leopold family.

Dreaming a New World

Below is the dedication of my first novel, Threshold, in which I give credit to my grandparents for sparking the idea to write a novel of hope and possibilities.

Dedication of the Novel Building Air Castles Download

Cracks in the Pillars of Democracy

Three of the seven pillars of democracy laid out in the Democracy Playbook 2025—protect elections, defend rule of law, and fight corruption—have been put under acute stress by the actions of the new Trump administration. ~ Jonathan Katz and Eric Urby, February 13, 2025 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/dangerous-cracks-in-us-democracy-pillars/

Let’s be frank. These are dangerous times for our American Democracy. Every day we witness more direct attacks on the guardrails put in place by the Founders in the Constitution. The project of democratic governance has been the labor of citizens, elected representatives, institutions and the government for all years since that founding and ratification in 1787.

Until now.

Will we stand up? Will democracy prevail through its greatest threat?

Check out the Brookings analysis with excellent references to check out.

The Great Seal of the United State of America

Sell not liberty to purchase power.

Ltr to Jen A. Kiggans_3-07-25_ SF Download

With Ukraine, For Democracy

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power. ~ Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1738

The American people are rising up to oppose the illegal and dangerous actions and policies of the current administration. Listen to the shameful Oval Office actions of two anarchists toward Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28 – a date which will live in infamy! Start the video at 40 minutes.

Yes, the curtains have been drawn back to show that the current administration aligns with anarchists against America’s long term allies and thus imperiling the American people and destabilizing the entire world of freedom loving peoples. Watch Zelensky state the truth. Start at 40 minutes.

All those who voted this administration into power – after ample demonstration of their incompetence and contempt for democratic ideals and governance – have betrayed our nation!