The Earth Can Sue

From the Globe & Mail July 23, 2009

“Last February, the town of Shapleigh, Maine, population 2,326, passed an unusual ordinance,” The Boston Globe reports. “Shapleigh sought to protect its aquifers from Nestle Corp., which draws heavily on the region for its Poland Spring bottled water…[The town] tried something new – a move at once humble in its method and audacious in its ambition. At a town meeting, residents voted, 114-66, to endow all the town’s natural assets with legal rights: ‘Natural communities and ecosystems possess inalienable rights to exist, flourish and naturally evolve within the Town of Shapleigh.’ It further decreed that any town resident had ’standing’ to seek relief for damages caused to nature – permitting, for example, a lawsuit on behalf of a stream.”

Dump Site 41 in Tiny Township on Georgian Bay might consider this too.

See also, Michel Serres: The Natural Contract

nest video

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nido/nest installation

Arbor Genesis

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I found myself sitting in the basement archives of Ottawa U which is under the medical services building at Somerset E. and King Edward, in an attempt to get to know the site better, and as a response to Gruenewald’s questions: Who was here? What happened here? What needs to be conserved? What needs to be created? There are binders to consult in the archives that list possible contents of boxes going back about a hundred years. Not many listings have the word “environment” in them. “ecology” is not listed. I chose one box for the archivist to find for me; it was marked “Environment 1990″. On opening it I came face to face with the first file “SICK BUILDING SYNDROME” in block letters, a 20 page report on how putting ourselves in plastic envelopes within concrete boxes in order to reduce energy consumption is not the road to healthy environmental relationships.

The second thing I came across was this lovely invitation to a tree planting ceremony called Arbor Genesis: “Through the simple act of planting one tree on Convocation day, the 1990-91 Teacher Education graduates begin the creation of a small park of flowering trees for all to enjoy, beside Lamoureux Hall. Please plan on attending this special occasion with your family and friends.” and then there’s a quote from Jean Giono’s The Man Who Planted Trees: “But the transformation took place so gradually that it became part of the pattern without causing any astonishment”

We’ve decided to make a large nest in the tree, which I believe is this little flowering crab, with the left over plant matter from our garden. I’m told that “nido” is nest in Italian, and also means nursery school.  I like this idea of “place”, a first place we all started from.

As far as I can tell, this is the only flowering tree that was planted. What was to be the arbor was planted with maple trees all at the same time at a later date.

able gardener 1 September Post

The past few weeks, I am thinking about food security and the labour of those who cultivate the food we eat. I have been working as a TA for a course on Global Education and Social Justice for pre-service teachers and we have been discussing migrant justice issues… we have just finished readings about migrant farm workers. In particular I am thinking about Deborah Barndt’s work on the Tomasita Project, which is described in her book Tangled Routes. Barndt traces the path of the tomato from cultivation to packaging and marketing in North American supermarkets. Again, I think the Children’s Garden could draw links to these readings. I think many educators underestimate young children’s understanding of social, political and economic issues, and the kind of analysis they are capable of.

Resilience alliance

research on resilience in socio-ecological systems

Do corn, beans and squash as a companion planting which survives brutal construction zone conditions constitute a system with built in resiliences?

Chris Turner (p.37) author of “The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need” quotes Brian Walker of the Resilience Alliance: “With resilience …we kind of embrace uncertainty. And we try to say that the minute you get too certain, as if you know what the answer is, you’re likely to come unstuck. You need slack in the system. You need to have the messiness that enables self-organization in the system in ways that are not predictable. The best goal is to try to build a general resilience. Things like having strong connectivity, but also some modularity in the system so it’s not all highly connected everywhere. And lots of diversity”.

able 1 Spiral

August: Barb. Pat and I worked with clay, placing spirals around the garden. This visceral experience was fascinating… holding the clay facilitated a sense of wonder and appreciation for the growth of this garden… in spite of such adverse conditions, the garden continues to flourish… I am really moved by the resilience of these relatively small gardens surrounded by clattering and sputtering machines. I think it would make a wonderful metaphor for a children’s book… B’s project also reminds me of a children’s book I have been writing for some time. It is called The Spaghetti Garden and it is inspired by my friend who immigrated to Canada from Italy after the Second World War. She is an avid gardener and recounts stories describing the significance of her garden in her first years in Montreal. After9/11, she saw many parallels between how she was treated as an immigrant from a fascist society, and the emerging Islamaphobia at the time [of 9/11]. After watching the news, she would say to me: You have to remember that this was a time when most people in Montreal had never heard of spaghetti. Hearing her experiences as a young person in a new country made me think of her garden as a metaphor for resilience… and the resilience of the garden at Ottawa U reminds me of her stories.

able gardener 1 June post

The children’s garden is in the very early stages of growth and has an important presence near the education building. It is exciting to think about what will be cultivated and also the concept of it being a “post-colonial” garden. I really appreciate Barbara’s commitment to this project and her attention to the agricultural practices of first peoples. I am hopeful that a new generation of teachers will  be  attentive to issues of food security, and especially culturally-appropriate food. The post-colonial garden reminds me of an initiative in Toronto, the Afri-Can Food Basket, which was an important food security movement: http://www.africanfoodbasket.com/

One of the co-founders was a fellow student at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and he inspired so many people with his commitment to the cultivation of, and access to, healthy and culturally-appropriate food. As I left Ottawa U. I walked past an elementary school near the campus and saw kids playing beside oak trees and small bushes. It was exciting to envision them in the process of cultivating food in the school yard. Undoubtedly they would bring important skills to such initiatives, in addition to learning new ones. I think that kids also bring an important element of wonder. Holding a seed, placing it deep in the earth and knowing that food will be cultivated is a realization that must elicit wonder!

We are using up the earth

There was an article in the Globe and Mail newspaper this weekend which was an excerpt from Margaret Atwood’s new book, The Year of The Flood. “…back to the post-apocalyptic future” were some of the words in the byline heading up the item and I think this diminishes not only Atwood’s work but also the legitimate feelings of fear and unease about environmental disaster that many people have and which Atwood is able to give words to.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/were-using-up-the-earth/article1276475/

It also put me in mind of Caryl Churchill’s remarkable play “Seven Jewish Children” where different parental voices over ten minutes tell how to explain to their children what happened at Gaza this year and in these ways possibly be able to deny their own passive complicity. Because sometimes our silence(s) are interpreted by our children as complicity. (listen to it here http://politics-infozone.com/audio/7jewishChildren.mov on cbc with intro by Michael Enright and make up your own mind, it takes about 15 hypnotic minutes)

Atwood gives words to the silence, the unspeakable. What do we tell our children about our own complicity in the atrocities regularly committed against the “more-than-human-world”?

Tell them we didn’t know.

Tell her we couldn’t know.

Tell them it wasn’t us.

Tell them we had to have that stuff.

Tell her we were doing our best.

Tell them we wanted to protect them.

Tell them the animals didn’t feel anything.

Don’t frighten her.

Tell her  god’s on our side.

Tell her  it was the economy.

Tell them we were misinformed.

We didn’t know about the deaths.

Tell her it’s not our fault.

etc.  Yes, there were fantastic creatures when we were children, but they “disappeared”

Tell them they disappeared.

post script, Sept 9th Globe and Mail front page:   Grizzlies Starve as Salmon Disappear

Tell them they disappeared.

Tell them they are absent.

from the article: The grizzlies are absent this year. “I’ve never seen anything like this…I’ve been doing this for 11 years and this is the worst I’ve seen it… Last year on the Mussel River, I saw 27 bears. This year it’s six. That’s an indication of what it’s like everywhere… I’ve never seen bears hungry in the fall before, but last year they were starving… I noticed in the spring there weren’t as many bears coming out, but I felt it was premature to jump to any conclusions… but now there just aren’t any bears. It’s scary. I think a lot are dead. I think they died in their dens [last winter].  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/grizzlies-starve-as-salmon-disappear/article1279874/

Writing the disaster is scary. Climate change? Who can be against change? Why not call it global ecological disaster,   and jump to some conclusions.

September semester site/ caged planters

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