A blog about art, ecofeminism, and being human in the earth community
Autumn is my favorite time of year, and I often feel most alive in the transitional days of October, November and early December. This year it has been particularly poignant to appreciate the season’s beauty during weeks consumed by the darkness of horrific terror and the brutality of retaliatory war halfway around the world in…
I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a part of the Earth Community—and specifically an artist in the earth community. My science teacher spouse reminds me that the idea that Earth itself is a community that human beings are inextricably a part of is not a new one in the scientific world. But…
In her book If Women Rose Rooted and related writings, Sharon Blackie coins the term “eco-heroine” to describe women whose life work follows “a path to understanding how deeply enmeshed we are in the web of life on this planet.” Such a path, she says, “requires us to step into our own power and take back…
To honor Tyre Nichols and in protest of his brutal murder on January 7, 2023, I’m posting a trio of small paintings of sunsets. By now it is well-known that Nichols, the 29-year old Black man beaten to death by police in Memphis, Tennessee, was a generous, vibrant and creative spirit, a talented photographer who…
I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation and we scientists…
Replenish acrylic and pastel on canvas 16″ x 20″ Elena Stone Sometimes words won’t come to me, but images almost always do. And this is the image that came to completion as I found myself wrapped in the fog and fatigue of Covid aftermath, when every thought I attempted to formulate ended with REST, REST,…
Theory -the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well as the trees- theory can be a dew that rises from earth and collects in the rain cloud and returns to earth over and over. But if it doesn’t smell of the earth, it isn’t good for the earth. — Adrienne Rich, Notes Toward a…
“Environmental Justice is Reproductive Justice. The Supreme Court is working hard to destroy both. Let’s not let them.” This was the stark posting from the Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights (CWHHR), the home base of this blog, during the final week of June. Six hard-right Supreme Court justices had just voted not only…
Isn’t it infuriating how quickly the media pivoted from a short-lived and cursory acknowledgement of Earth Day to obsessing about Elon Musk? In an article entitled “Ancient Green: Moss, Climate and Deep Time”, one of my favorite environmental writers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, has found a way to bridge the disconnect. Writing for Earth Day in…
Joanna Macy, leading thinker and spiritual activist of the antinuclear and deep ecology movements, writes, “The web of life both cradles us and calls us to weave it further.” Rebecca Solnit, brilliant and prolific feminist author and historian, writes, “Think of hope as a banner woven from those gossamer threads, from a sense of the…