All quiet here this morning — able to think clearly without the thudding din of stun grenades being fired a few roads away. I try not to show any fear so that the dogs don’t pick up my anxiety. ‘Just thunder,’ I say in a soothing voice. The housemate’s battered old car has a problem with its battery, so we are hoping this doesn’t mean financial disaster in February. We will get through, but nail-biting stuff when it comes to unexpected bills and repairs.
Listening to the quiet as if it is something new. And hoping that the wage negotiations reach some satisfactory compromise and the calls for more effective and sensitive policing help the situation. Resilience is the quality I find most often in those who live and work out here, the resilience that helps us come back and start over, try again, not give up, keep going.
Rainforest defender and climate activist Rebecca Tarbotton has died by accidental drowning at the early age of 39 in Mexico, leaving a great legacy of eco-conservation and a healing vision that inspired many:
“We need to remember that the work of our time is bigger than climate change. We need to be setting our sights higher and deeper. What we’re really talking about, if we’re honest with ourselves, is transforming everything about the way we live on this planet…. We don’t always know exactly what it is that creates social change. It takes everything from science all the way to faith, and it’s that fertile place right in the middle where really exceptional campaigning happens – and that is where I strive to be.”
At the age of 88, David Ferry has won the National Book Award for poetry in the United States. Eighty-eight years old and still working creatively, able to write such moving and musical lines as these:
When, moments after she died, I looked into her face,
It was as untelling as something natural,
A lake, say, the surface of it unreadable,
Its sources of meaning unfindable anymore.
Her mouth was open as if she had something to say;
But maybe my saying so is a figure of speech.
Oh Mary, I am so glad to hear that things have calmed down there. I’m still praying though…
I don’t know when things will return to normal again Mary Christine — the violence resumed yesterday with looting and attempts to burn down a hospice. So ugly and criminal. We are just hanging on. Thanks for the prayers, that means a great deal to me.
I’m catching up here. Glad that things are peaceful at the moment. The volatility of such a beautiful place is a paradox. I will settle for anything to help our damaged planet–but I am doubtful that most people care enough to do anything.
Syd I am with you — I do work here with conservation groups working to save endangered animal and plant species and to educate young people about the need for ecological awareness. But it feels like a losing battle much of the time.
The Western Cape Floral region is a Unesco world heritage site under threat — the plant biodiversity of the fynbos is greater than that of the Amazon. Sadly, according to IUCN’s Red List of endangered species, the fynbos biome also contains the highest number of endangered plants in the world, making the conservation of this area vitally important. In other words, I live amongst
9 000 vascular plant species, of which 69% are endemic. You’ll understand this as a scientist — these plants are irreplaceable and magnificent in their diversity and beauty. Another subject very close to my heart.
But maybe my saying so is a figure of speech. What a lovely, evocative line. Thanks for the post. Glad to hear outside things are less unstable today for all of you. xo
Susan, if you look at the link to the New Yorker, various of Dan Ferry’s books are listed and I’m sure you’d like more of his work. Check Poetry Foundation too.
Yes, glad to hear you are getting a respite. So alien and frightening to think of stun grenades going off just a few streets over. Thanks for the David Ferry quote — I hadn’t heard of him.
Not ‘alien’ G — one problem is that in the US, you get scanty and irregular news from anywhere outside of America, so you have no context in which to understand what is happening. (When I was in New York, I felt as if I was living inside a bubble.) The violence in the US with SWAT teams and police in urban ghettos may not be very different and if you deconstruct the ‘Otherness’ of what you think of as the Third World, you’ll know that your violence is akin to ours in many ways.