Lughnasa Kate’s Moon
Dark ecology. I’ll post more about this both here and on AncientrailsGreatwheel.com, but it interests me a lot right now. It’s a contrarian view of the climate crisis, but not in a denier vein. These are folks who accept climate science, but take a pessimists look at the likelihood of change, at least change sufficient to stave off disaster. They don’t see it happening. This could be equated to the final stage of the grief process, acceptance.
I’m not familiar enough now with the movement to comment in depth, but the tone of it strikes a chord in me. Admittedly, it’s a melancholy chord though the more you know about both climate science and the current political will to tackle change, the more that chord may come to dominate the melody of your life. It’s either brave, facing reality in spite of its horror, or defeatist. Maybe it’s both.
Whichever it is, it feels like an important approach to climate change at an emotional level and one I want to better understand. If you want a sense of dark ecology’s direction, take a look at this manifesto on the Dark Mountain website.
Carpenter’s malady. Jon drove to Lakewood for urgent care yesterday, an infected unremoved splinter. This is a midpoint picture of the work he’s doing. He has cabinet maker level skills. The panels on the facing of the benches are made from small pieces of cedar, the lip of the bench is wood from his old house on Pontiac. When finished, Kate will add cushions over the bench lids. One half of the seating around our beetle-kill pine dining table will now be cushioned benches.
“Earth rapidly is approaching the point where the amount of warming locked in by human pollution exceeds the limits nations set last year at the international climate meeting in Paris, according to government-backed research unveiled Monday.
So there is not only the Donald to wreak havoc with the future, but the already emitted carbon dioxide and other gases like methane.
How can we work now to help them be resilient, proactive in their adaptive strategies? How can we work now to help them develop psychological/spiritual tools for coping with the cultural stresses that are inevitable? We cannot brush away the bad effects by magical thinking. Oh, the world will catch on and act in time. No, it won’t and it hasn’t. We need sober work on how to live with changed weather, increased heat, moving targets for animals and crops in terms of altered seasons, the disruptions of sea level rise, spread of insect borne diseases and the like.
Jon starts back to work today. One last month of commuting from Conifer to Aurora, then he moves into his house. It’s been a series of difficult, often wrenching moments for him since last May. He decided then he’d had enough of his marriage to Jen.
Judy and I met in the midst of the rebellion of the late 60’s. We were both running from wherever we’d been, whoever we’d become and ran right into each other. Smack. The relationship with her was intense, a wedding on an ancient burial mound in Indiana, a quick honeymoon to Canada, then a move to Wisconsin, leaving behind Indiana forever. We played a lot of sheepshead in Appleton and I remember the cases of beer stacked around the house while we played. Neither one of us knew how to sustain our marriage so we split apart without divorcing, got back together briefly, bought a farm together and proceeded to wreck our life together with bickering, long absences.
The proselytizing Roman Catholics gathered in Lughnasa and turned it into Lammas, a sabbat name used often in Wiccan circles, but in fact part of a persistent and largely successful attempt by the Catholic church to eliminate the old Celtic faith. Parishioners baked loaves of bread (lammas means loaf mass) from the first harvested grains and brought them to mass.
A glorious time of year when the crops were good, Lughnasa also kicked off a long succession of market days, actually weeks, when celebrations were common. The tradition of Lughnasa market days with their heaps of produce from gardens and fields came to the United States with the Celts who immigrated here, many into the Appalachian mountains where their culture fed folk music and crafts into the new country. Their Lughnasa celebrations, then known as fairs, are the genesis of county and state fairs.
Kate has a garden remnant doing surprisingly well. She got this plant from a project at Beth Evergreen and had me transplant it. We will have a bit of Lughnasa sometime soon, if the fruits on it ripen. If they don’t, we plan to have fried green tomatoes. Kudos to Kate for accomplishing a difficult feat at 8,800 feet, growing tomatoes. She’s my Demeter.