whengrandmotherspeaks.com

Last night I had cause to call 911. Someone had started a campfire in the canyon. I could see it clearly from my deck.

At around 9 I was drawn to the deck by yelling, cursing and the loud sound I associate with teenage boys drinking. I looked over and there they were, maybe half a dozen, circled around a fire that was flaming fairly high and sending sparks up into what I know to be fire-prone eucalyptus trees.

Yikes!

Even though I was fairly certain their purpose was benign, I knew the results could be disastrous. Even though we are not at our driest season, San Diego canyons are always vulnerable to fire – always.

Because I walk the canyon I was able to tell the dispatcher how best to get to the area and I walked down to meet them – well, almost ran because they got there in a hurry. It wasn’t long before they had everything under control.

Except… I looked over the balcony again to watch them haul their equipment back and was shocked to see a second, much smaller fire across the dry creek. I knew the fire men (yes, it was all men last night I’m almost sure) were unlikely to be able to see it.

This time I did run back to their truck. Gasping I told one fellow I was almost sure I was seeing another blaze.

You’ve got to love these guys. Although he was skeptical and said he thought I was probably seeing a reflection, he came back to my house so I could show him what I was seeing.

Sure enough, he was down the stairs and on his radio headed for a much smaller, but none-the-less very real fire. They put that out and did some exploring up and down the canyon to make sure nothing else was on fire.

I am so very grateful.

I’m also thinking that some education around the canyon neighborhood is in order. A close friend of mine works with CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) here. There she knows are some of the folks who also volunteer to keep our canyons safe and she will get the necessary contact information to me.

As my friend tells it, there is not only an opportunity for education in this experience, but for some real community building.

Community building started last night. I talked with several neighbors I hadn’t met before. I’m looking forward to more – not fire, but community.

Love and blessings,

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

Yesterday I didn’t see the hawks. Although I was tempted to blame them, as in “where did they go,” I realized the cause was more likely within myself. I was busy, busy, busy.

Some place along the way I realized that although what I was doing was (probably) important, I really hadn’t stopped to look for my young flying friends.

This morning I determined to pay more attention, and sure enough, there they were. This time they were flying back and forth through the canyon, mostly below me.

Years ago I had a realization that one of my jobs was to smile at all babies.

Today I realized that one of my jobs is to slow down enough to enjoy the hawks!

Where could you slow down and pay attention?

Love and blessings,

Several days ago I was both startled and delighted to see two young hawks on a eucalyptus tree off my deck. No, I was so enchanted I didn’t even think to take a picture.

Later that same day as I was driving away from my home, one of the youngsters was perched on a low traffic sign. My window was open; I stopped and we looked at each other eye-to-eye for a few moments. I’m not at all sure what happened but it seemed if something had.

Now I’m coming to expect the flying beasts.

Yesterday I tried mimicking their cry. Then I thought to try youtube and found this:

Okay, these aren’t red tails and they certainly aren’t captive, and they aren’t screaming like that at all, but when I pushed the volume up it seemed my buddies at least listened.

This morning I thought I’d missed them. Instead, when I took my cereal onto the deck, there they were, this time on a wire off to the right.

Again I mimicked their sound and this time one of them seemed to be responding. I’d cry, he would cry back, back and forth until she tired of the game and headed for a tree.

When I take time to look, to see, to be with the hawks, or the smaller birds, or just with the stillness of the breeze, I begin to maybe feel part of the whole.

What a treat. What a blessing.

Thanks for being there,

There’s so much information about the BP oil disaster! The web cams, of course. Sites like Audubon Magazine have a category called oil spill which will break your heart. Google ran Gulf Coast Oil Leak: What Are Your Suggestions? which so far has had 15,835 people have submitted 7,468 suggestions and you can read them, vote on them and leave your own.

I don’t know about you, but I can hardly bear to look at pictures of oil drowned birds and turtles, and hear of whales feeding oil drenched plankton. The plight of the fishermen, oil workers, restaurant owners and the families of the 11 who died in the explosion plus those who are most likely being poisoned in the cleanup effort fills me with grief and despair.

It’s so easy to point fingers. BP cut corners, the regulators failed in their jobs – all true, but only part of the picture.

For I have my part in this continuing tragedy. My computer and it’s peripherals are mostly unsustainable plastic, generated using oil in ways I don’t understand. In fact, the amount of plastic in my life blows me away.

If my gas and electric company doesn’t use coal, and I don’t think it does, it’s not because of virtue, but costs. I cook with “natural” gas, drilled from wells not unlike oil wells and transported thousands of miles under pressure through pipes I know little about. My car runs on gasoline distilled perhaps from the oil in the very well that is trashing the gulf and even though I work not to drive one or two days a week, I’m still not willing to only walk or ride bikes. And buses take too long, or so I say.

My fury at myself and others grows because I remember when President Carter set the stage to solve our oil addiction way back in 1977. In 1979 he installed solar panels on the White House. I also remember when, in 1986 President Reagan took them down - apparently because we were in a period of low oil prices.

You know what, I didn’t protest Reagan’s move even though I thought it was awful. Like so many, I’ve recycled a bit, reduced some of my purchasing and my driving, but I’m as locked into our oil addiction as any BP executive is.

As an individual I can only do a tiny bit. If, however, we were to really join hands and insist on alternative energy and conservation while we were getting there, the human species and many more might have a chance on this planet.

I’m looking for a place to sign up. Do you know of one?

Jonathan Fields has a provocative post called Tree-Hugging For Money. A former SEC lawyer, he makes it clear that U.S. law requires corporations to maximize shareholder profit and that the measure of that profit is only share price. Which, obviously, is one of the reasons we on this small planet are in trouble.

Of course, many deny we’re in trouble, although I’ve heard less of that denial since the BP oil disaster, as any of their admittedly fascinating web cams show. This continuing outpouring of oil into the Gulf of Mexico could be a blessing of sorts, IF it moves us toward a crash program of sustainability.

The seeds for true sustainability are already available. Jonathan points to Patagonia, the clothing manufacturer long recognized as perhaps the greenest profitable company in the world. Of course, it’s privately held so isn’t required to maximize shareholder profit. But note, it is profitable – enough so it donates at least 1% of its sales to environmental causes. (Also see 1% For The Planet and note that not one Fortune 500 company is there.)

Jonathan also talks about Interface, the floor covering company that is moving toward zero waste. Founder Ray Anderson talked to TED on the business logic of sustainability – worth a listen.

Those two company understand that we are all part of the whole and that they have an obligation not to pollute, or if they are polluting to not only stop it, but turn their efforts toward restoration.

There are, of course, some signs of some improvement. Products That Are Earth-and-Profit Friendly is the headline in the June 11, 2010 New York Times. I’m not particularly reassured, however, when the approach to “earth friendly” is driven by cost-cutting rather than an understanding of the environmental costs of business as usual and a commitment to change at core.

But it’s obvious isn’t it that long-term sustainability is the only real answer? If Patagonia, Interface and other 1% companies can make a profit moving toward sustainability couldn’t they all? I think so. I don’t understand why there is so much resistance to moving in that direction.

What do you think? How can we move corporations toward sustainability?

~Photo by Flavio Takemoto; found at: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/flaivoloka

I’ve been rereading Joanna Macy’s World As Lover, World as Self. I picked it up because of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, along our Gulf Coast.

I took a workshop with Macy years ago and there she talked about the need each of us has to grieve what we’ve done and what’s happening to the planet. As oil continues to pour out of that broken well I can barely bring myself to watch the multitude of webcams documenting the continuing crisis.

Apparently I never read the whole book way back then. As I’m moving through it now I’m finding she has distilled many Buddhist teachings in a way that truly resonates with me.

What occurred to me this morning was to contemplate how often my thinking tends to see me as a separate individual with little or no connection to the whole. Yet the spiritual paths I know assure us we are all part of the whole, that “… the kingdom… is within…” (Luke17:21KJV). Science, particularly systems theory and quantum physics, would seem to prove those connections.

So how would my thinking, feeling and behavior change if that knowledge of connection, of reciprocity were really grounded in my being. What would happen if I replaced my(!) feelings of separateness and isolation with a knowing deep down I truly am part of the whole and that what I do or don’t do is part of how it all works out?

I found myself wondering if it was possible greed came from the fear that sense of separateness brings and I think perhaps it is. For I do believe it’s fear that is the basis of the hell-bent-drive for profits at any cost attitude that apparently was at least partially responsible for the deep water oil well explosion that is resulting in an environmental crisis of as yet unknown and unrecognized proportion.

If, as some Native American tribes were wont to do, we actually thought in terms of not today, or tomorrow or even our own children and grand children, but on out to the Seventh Generation, which is another way of expressing how we’re part of the whole, wildly different choices would have been made with very different results.

I’d like to move more in that direction which is why I’m(!) actively working to feel my way to more connection.

How does this resonate with you? Let’s talk about it.

Love and blessing,

Anne also blogs at www.aboutfreelancewriting.com