August 2025 – Susan Feathers

Out of the Ashes, into the Sun

Beginning about the middle of 2023, we entered the really steep part of this growth curve that could redefine our future, crossing another invisible line, this one marking the installation of a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels on this planet everyday. ~ Bill McKibben, Here Comes the Sun; Introduction, p. 3.

I want to help promote Bill’s book which was just released, written in 2024 with updated figures about the world’s and the U.S.’s transition to solar and wind power.

UPDATE: 8.28.25

But first, I want to share that Bill expertly and with flare and humor, traces humankind’s history of burning things for power and light. Scanning over our journey as a species, we can see how all that came before from burning wood, coal, oil and gas will be surpassed at warp speed as cheap, clean energy replaces those sources. Solar and wind energy are AVAILABLE TO ANYONE which will not only revolutionize how we live but will shift power because, as Bill points out, solar energy is diffuse – available for anyone anywhere on Earth.

Where people who were once able to hoard and control the availability of energy, that will no longer be true. People everywhere will be freed to experience a healthier and more robust life.

Are we in time to stem the worst of a heating Earth and oceans? Bill brings readers up to date on climate science and clean industry, soberly laying out what we have to do and by when to stop additional heating. The race is on but the current U.S. leadership has declared climate change a hoax. That decision is the real hoax – one that imperials Americans and the world.

The book is full of hope and good sense and a realistic estimation of where we are and what we must do over the next 4 and a half years (by 2030) and 24 years (by 2050). Most of the solar industry development is in China but in spite of all the obstacles in America’s way, its happening here as well.

We are going to buy the cheapest energy, the cheapest cars and transportation, and everyone will have access equally. That is a Revolution in America and across the planet.

VOLTS INTERVIEW WITH BILL MCKIBBEN AND JAMIE HENN

SUN DAY, SEPTEMBER 21, THIRD ACT AND PARTNERS

Here Comes the Sun by Bill McKibben

Truth Marches On

I wonder if Dr. Barber or Dr. Richardson can fully understand how their work and their voice sustains so many of us citizens in the U.S.A. who are stunned at the rapid destruction of The Republic. Let me express my deep gratitude to each of them for their vital work for justice and truth.

When I hear about young people who are using Chat GPT as a substitute friend and advisor, I understand how the last ten years of Donald Trump, the Pandemic, and a long slide toward autocracy here and abroad, has robbed our nation’s vigor and civic verve. A crime of the heart and soul.

I just want to say a prayer for everyone in America and worldwide suffering from violence, injustice, and the misuse of power in their leadership.

It’s a dismal time but one when hope still burns in the hearts of the people.

Americans Under Assault

Well-fed people can enhance their dignity, their health and their learning capacity. Putting resources into social programs is not expenditure. It is investment. ~ Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

Tonight I opened a notice from the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore. This organization serves hundreds of thousands of people living in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Right now, 152,720 people in Southeastern Virginia are having trouble accessing fresh and nutritious food… ~ Christopher Tan, President and CEO of the Foodbank.

Today, I talked to a nonprofit customer of mine whose organization assists people experiencing homelessness or near eviction. She said the need was rising sharply as households are unable to pay the rising rental or mortgage payments. Families who never dreamed they’d be on the street are facing that possibility as the cost and availability of affordable housing rises out of reach.

Then I opened a letter from the Southern Environmental Law Center which has worked on behalf of a healthy environment for 40 years.

The streams and rivers that provide our drinking water. The air we breathe. The wild places and wildlife we love. The communities we call home, from the coast to the mountains. …Right now, they are all at risk. And amidst it all, we face a changing climate-one that’s intensifying our storms, eroding our beaches, and supercharging summers. ~ Southern Environmental Law Center

The current administration has cut back social and environmental programs intended for the betterment of the people, and ended policies all legally and constitutionally passed by the Congress of the USA. Legally, the Republicans have impounded funds delegated for the American people. By doing so, deaths have already occurred and suffering is growing among citizens in what was once a prosperous, strong democratic governing body which adhered to the principle that a democracy is rule by consent of the governed. But Trump and his despicable helpmates have damaged and intend to destroy democratic governance in our country.

Friends we are only in the first year of this destruction. Forces are being amassed in major cities and along borders to control the people, but its all in the name of cleaning up crime or getting rid of dangerous criminals. It is not.

Project 2025, conceived by the likes of Steve Miller and Russell Vought and the Heritage Foundation – supported by far right conservatives – intends to destroy democracy and replace it with autocratic rule.

It’s almost all in place. The only thing left to do is rise up en mass and break down the barriers and take back the country. That would be the start. Then the long but potentially powerful remaking of our democracy. This will be the project of generations.

Look around. The signs of suffering are everywhere.

Black Swan Moment

In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. ~ Anne Frank

A Black Swan moment is unprecedented, a surprise, and when it occurs it changes everything.

State of the Climate Report

The annual climate assessment from the American Meteorological Society

SotC in 2024 Press Highlights Download

Below is the full report.

SotC2024 Download

See Link Here for the World Meteorological Organization maps, stats, and key messages.

Clearly, the captain of the American ship needs to read the stars.

Poster for State of the Climate 2024

State of the Climate 2024_Poster Download

John Adams: Delivering the most happiness to the people.

…happiness is the end of government…consent the means…sovereignty the people…these are the foundations of government. from Thoughts on Government, John Adams.

My ruminations have turned to reading the founders and I can find no better founder than John Adams as a reference to what was forming in the minds of Americans brought together in Philadelphia to consider whether to declare independence or keep negotiating with Great Britain, hoping for mercy.

Adams was already thinking about the structure of the new government. He drew from the well of classic and modern scholars of governance and the rights of man. Both links on this post take you to the original document, Thoughts on Governance, where you can see why and how our Constitution came to the structure we have upheld for nearly 250 years.

Adams was for Independence from the start. In his own mind, he contemplated what a new government structure would best support the full flowering of a republic, which he asserted was the only form that could promote the general happiness of the people. By happiness Adams espoused an understanding it meant a government founded on virtue which would deliver the most happiness to the most people. (McCullough, John Adams, p. 102).

Further, Adams argued that good government was republican in nature, and the true idea of a republic was founded on the idea of an ’empire of laws and not men’. Thoughts on Government, National Constitution Center.

Question to Readers: What evidence do we observe today in American government that derives from a government based on virtue?

Leave a reply on this post for all to consider!

Wikipedia Commons: https://images.app.goo.gl/Exs3CFZaBPCHCfxg8

A formula for national chaos…

At the White House 2 + 2 = 0. ~ Anonymous

Republicans justifying cuts to programs through the One Big Beautiful Bill (Rescissions Act of 2025) assert that the States and private sector will make up for cuts to federal funding in the Congressional budget.

Alice Ruhnke, President of GrantStation, lists the ways the bill is disabling the Nonprofit Sector which provides a big swath of the Social Safety Net in America.

Read her work here. Interesting to see the progression month by month. Pay attention to proposed changes to the Johnson Amendment (1954). If passed, it would drag churches and charitable organizations into the maelstrom of partisanship politics.

The Path of Plentitude

For a new beginning. In out of the way places of the heart, where your thoughts never think to wonder, this beginning has been quietly forming, waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, feeling the emptiness growing inside you. Noticing how you willed yourself on, still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety and the gray promises that sameness whispered, heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight when your courage kindled and out you stepped onto new ground your eyes young again with energy and dream. A path of plentitude opening before you. Though your destination is not yet clear, you can trust the promise of this opening, unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning that is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure, holding nothing back. Learn to find ease in risk, soon you will be home in a new rhythm, for your soul senses the world that awaits you. ~ John O’Donohue, The Space Between Us

Dear Readers,

On my walk this morning, I chose to listen again to readings from John O’Donohue’s great works of poetry, spirit and landscape. John’s deep faith and philosophy emanate from his first experiences as a child growing up in Western Ireland in the landscape of the Burren.

Readers who have followed my blog over the years know that I, too, take my inspiration from the enduring spirit imbued withing each distinct landscape. For me that has always been the limestone region of East Tennessee and particularly along the Watauga River where my grandparent’s home was my spiritual center. I grew up in a military family, moving as frequently as once a year. But, every year possible, my parents brought my sisters and me back to the “Hilltop Farm” for summers or Christmas celebrations. Like John, this landscape form the warp and weft of me.

What brought me to remember John’s blessing quoted above, is the reminder that the path of plentitude is within us. We only have to awaken our imagination to it.

In this time in America …

The power of the people in a democracy lies within each citizen, each person living on this sacred landscape. We must return to our deepest convictions that a free people must act together in eternal vigilance against an evil that hates liberty, wishes to slash and burn the spirit that we hold as an educated and free people whose combined efforts and guardianship has made this nation great, not perfect, but striving always toward the values it holds as our sacred trust.