The adoption of regenerative agricultural practices is a low-cost, ready-to-deploy approach to combat the climate crisis on a meaningful scale. But numerous challenges remain that hinder widespread adoption. ~ American Farmlands Trust
I have drafted a fiction story based in Kentucky about a young woman farmer who sets out to regenerate the land of her family’s legacy farm. Readers learn the challenges that stand in the way of family farmers and young people trying to do the right thing on their land.
In part, I based the novel on the experiences of the No-Till Growers whom I came to know when I lived in Bowling Green, KY. I was part of a Community Supported Farmer network who grew my food.
These young farmers are the true dreamers of America. And I think you’ll agree with me that this is a time for dreams that are based in reality.
Afternoon Glow Just Before Hay Harvest at Dream Acres Farm
To readers: I recommend Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder as historians and active citizens – as people who can provide trustworthy guidance as we move into a period. While we are entering a stark reality in he U.S.A., there is still much we can do to protect democracy, and there are long term strategies to protect the nearly 250 years of progress toward equality for all and the rule of law. In fact, if we do not engage in protecting this progress, we may lose it all.
What American Voters Actually Voted For
In state governments citizens voted to restore or protect abortion rights for women’s health; better wages; higher taxes on super wealthy, equality under the law, protection of workers’ rights. Voters also voted for climate mitigation and green energy development. Americans voted to protect right to fair voting rules. This is what Americans voted for on both sides of the political ticket.
Why did more than half of them then vote for Trump? They were deceived. Disinformation created a picture that by voting for the MAGA movement you would get all those things. They are in for a big disappointment.
We don’t have to stand by while Trump and his cronies hack away at democratic institutions and use violence against the American people.
We are entering a period of potential internal destruction/reconstruction of our governing structure (with the wealthiest men in the world in charge now) with promises to withdraw from international leadership (even participating at all) with other countries working together to keep a rules-based system of world peace. We’ll be cronies with Putin and the like. We are probably entering a period of isolation from other democracies while the new governance forms partnerships and deals with other autocracies that increase their power and individual wealth.
Trump promises to withdraw from the climate accords and he and the elected party deny that climate change is real. Call your Senators and Representatives to let them know you do not support this, even if they are MAGA recruits.
So we have some slivers of light and hope. On the local and state levels we can start building coalitions as a stabilizing force to what is happening federally. Many states are already working on this. Call your representatives.
All over the country we are witnessing right wing leaders declaring loyalty to Trump: “He is always right. Whatever he tells me to do, I will do it.” This is an acute sign of impending autocratic rule. Right from the play book.
Timothy Snyder, Yale professor of history, and author of On Tyranny and most recently On Freedom, calls this ‘obeying in advance’ to the dictator.
What can we do? We get in touch with our Senators and Representatives to tell them no, we do not believe this is right. We need to do this now. Also, create communities. Work together. You are probably already in one or more that have been active on one or more of these aspects of democratic governance.
Unqualified individuals and cronies of Trump are moving into powerful position such as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense (heading up our entire miliary establishment). Shout from the mountain tops that you do not agree and will not support it!!!!!
Remember, Kamala and Tim built a large coalition of democracy-loving citizens from left, right and center.
We must now step up together to defend our country.
In a timely interview by Jon Stewart with Heather Cox Richardson, the historian reflects on how Americans chose an autocracy as our form of government, and then reflected that we have witnessed the end of the American century.
In that century Americans rose to the moment to protect America by joining free nations in the world to overcome autocracies led by Nazi Germany who strove to establish a white Christian oligarchy and rule by a few powerful men.
Richardson is a respected historian of history who publishes Letters from An Americans on Substack in which millions of readers learn to interpret the present moment in politics by understanding our history. She has become an island of sanity in the stream of disinformation on social media and legacy media. Richardson observes that voters in a “swirl of disinformation” voted for something they do not expect. In fact we elected an autocrat with eyes on dismantling our institutions that protect our democracy.
On this Veteran’s Day, how can I go to my father’s memory – a man who fought in WWII as a B-29 pilot and then came back to our democracy and served for another 22 years as an Air Force officer – now that we just threw away the country, the democracy, for which he risked his life and defended at great risk against autocracies that threatened the world?
We lost our democracy on November 5, 2024.
The truth is that Kamala Harris ran a strongly democratic campaign in a centrist coalition which gained Republicans, independents, and a diverse electorate in the belief that a majority of people with agency, doing the best for as many as possible, can continue a lasting, democracy. [This is a paraphrase from Heather Cox Richardson.]
This, then, is my tribute to all the Veterans – to the memory of my father, Edward B. Feathers, Colonel, US Air Force and recipient of the Air Medal of the Army Air Corp (now the Air Force)- who risked their lives in defense of democracy as did Veterans throughout our history.I pledge to you to devote what is left of my life to gain back the democracy we have lost.
My sources of inspiration are men and women who have graced our world by writing or painting or creating soliliques about nature, about the land, about the nonhuman existence. Trees, bears, bugs, soil, water in all its forms. The human, with our species ability to think, rarely understands how thought stands between the experience of being alive and the life of the mind.
Thought can stand between wonder and the mind – our political constructs a recent example. I have to relearn this periodically. Nature is an endless well of creativity and joy and the font from which the best thoughts arose when our species had ready and more intact nature for inspiration.
People can be wells of beauty, too. Think on a little child and the wonderment in his eyes…before thoughts circumvent that pure sense of wonderment into an altered form of itself. The people whom I turn to for inspiration go to nature often and some eventually return to a life in the wood.
Aspen grove by cabin – Frank Waters Foundation
Somewhere in “there” we might reside in joy and be a part of a constructed world. We would need to rethink almost everything about modern Western culture that places a dollar value on everything. Everything.
I came to believe that what is on the news, the fear-saturated society in which we have become experts at scaring the s**t out of ourselves, is real. Then, I go to the trees or the mountains and step into wonder and commune with them. I had forgotten we are not in a political jail without a get-out-of- jail free card. My God, I got sucked down that well of artificiality, again!
It’s not that I step completely away from our self-made social terribles, but only that I remember what is real, where my soul resides, and how to stay sane when the world we’ve made becomes insane, as it has in my country now. We got here because so many of us believed a contructed image, a constructed reality that is anything but real. Because of that, we have lost our minds.
I step toward beauty. I step toward love and communion as one of God’s beings on a vast and beautiful planet spinning in a universe more awesome than we can ever conceive. I understand that I do not understand.
Mozart never finished the score to the Requiem mass. The story of how it was finally finished is a drama itself. See this history. **What is important here is that others picked up the mantle to finish it and ultimately this work was performed and now lives across the planet as hope in the face of death.
I leave this with readers who mourn the loss of our democratic principles in the election of Donald Trump and the rise of autocracy in the USA.
I am broken-hearted on this day, November 6, 2024. But, I will not yield to oppressive forces in my homeland. Our Constitution is truth manifest. These are times when Americans have faltered in their discernment of what the 2024 election means for the American experiment. God help us.
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generations. John F. Kennedy
Will the peaceful transfer of power and the rule of law prevail in the United States of America?
Dear Readers, America is at the brink.
How a candidate more UNqualified to lead this nation, and a man who committed crimes against the country, when he incited an insurrection, EVER WAS PRESIDENT continues to baffle me.
Autocracy is a creeping malice that begins when Americans forget their obligation to think for themselves, to learn the truth and speak their minds about that truth. To be an American takes effort on everyone’s part.
It saddens me that in today’s America we have forced candidates to speak about what they will give us, what they will do for us. We no longer discuss what we should be collectively under the mantle of this great nation’s mandate: All people are created equal and leaders govern under the consent of the people. We have obligations and responsibilities to keep democracy strong, as well as having rights.
No one has said this better than a notable Republican Judge. Michael Luttig was appointed by George H.W. Bush and served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006. Here is the link to his recent Opinion in the New York Times. I encourage readers to take time to read it.
Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny and most recently Freedom, offers a Substack message about the moguls and news agencies “Obeying in Advance” – in anticipation of a dictator coming to power.
It is the lowest form of behavior, to cower in the belief that a dictator will reek havoc on you and your business interests for your political position. That has made our nation smell very bad. Our body politic reeks of cowardice and self aggrandizement today as we witness the cowering of our news agencies and people with too much money and power, kneel to the dictator. We have not learned from the 20th Century which documents how Hilter and the Nazi movement came to power.
Jeff Bezos (billionaire owner of Amazon and The Washington Post) decided the paper will not endorse Kamala Harris as promised. In that, he has lent his endorsement to a dictator promising retribution, destruction of our democratic government, promises to support the rich and powerful, and head honcho for a right-wing, Christian nationalism movement building over the last decade with the emergence of a man not fit to be our President.
The Washington Post not endorsing Harris and Walz to remain neutral right when the nation teeters on the knife edge of tyranny is a massive error of judgement. Anticipation of retribution: what a cowardly lot you all are.
Americans, drink your coffee and stand in front of a mirror. Do you want to be ruled by powerful megawealthy and people who purport to care about you but don’t give a damn in reality?
Let them eat cake! Echoes from history are not whispering today, they are shouting! The news agencies turning their backs on you and your family to be “neutral” or to endorse a vindictive man with no regard for the American Republic, let alone understanding of what it is, will regret their action. History will record it. But there will be decades of suffering before it ends.
Adding this message from the Editor of the Guardian today, 10-26-24:
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief
What does the richest man on the planet really want from a Donald Trump victory?That is a question our reporters and columnists have been answering this week as Elon Musk ramps up his involvement in the US presidential election. Musk has been giving away millions of dollars to voters in swing states who sign a petition tied to his political action committee (Pac). Oliver Laughland watched the potentially illegal spectacle play out in Pittsburgh on Sunday.The most obvious answer to what Musk wants, wrote Blake Montgomery, tech editor for Guardian US (and the new author of our TechScape newsletter), is a dramatic burst of deregulation in the US and beyond. That point was made clear in this analysis by Nick Robins-Early and Rachel Leingang, two Guardian US reporters who specialise in the threat of mis- and disinformation. The pair looked at how Musk has ploughed millions into Republican campaigns and used his 202m-follower X account as a megaphone to promote Trump. On Politics Weekly America, Rachel and host Jonathan Freedland considered how culture wars play into why Elon Musk needs Trump to win, and Adam Gabbatt and Lucy Hough discussed Musk’s millions on our must-listen daily Election Extra podcast too.Blake revealed this week how Musk’s pro-Trump Pac is pouring millions into Facebook ads, while Hugo Lowell exposed some potentially bad news for Trump’s campaign, revealing claims that canvassers working for Musk’s America Pac may not have knocked on the doors they claimed to.None of this is what those of us who believe in democracy, equality and a fairer distribution of wealth would want, and it’s our journalistic challenge to hold the world’s richest man to account. As Marina Hyde put it: “There have been vested interests as long as there has been US politics, of course. But no robber baron of the Gilded Age was ever this relatively rich, or as artlessly open about what – and whom – a relatively tiny amount of money can buy.”This week Tesla’s profits jumped again, making Musk even richer and even more powerful. Our scrutiny of Musk over the past few years has certainly caught his attention (he has called the Guardian “insufferable” alongside other much ruder messages) – and our editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris this week won’t have helped on that front. But while the former president has a man worth $250bn in his corner, we have readers like you. If you can afford to support the Guardian today, please do.
Susan Feathers 