labingi

In the great crossover 'verse in my head, this is the 45th anniversary of the Downfall of Sauron. I don't have any brilliant new thoughts on Middle-earth to share right now, but I appreciate that this day usually falls during my spring break, thus allowing me to celebrate it at home in Glen Ellen, which, being the land where I grew up, has always been Middle-earth to me, especially in the spring.

It's scary hot out for March right now, into the lower '80's F today, a reminder that the old world has gone, and, as our tenants pointed out, you never know what the weather is going to do from day to day. I will say this, though: I see real recovery from the fire. It feels like the first time the scars have looked significantly healed. Our two surviving legacy oaks, Drus and Maxima, who were surely dealt lethal blows in the fire (in 2017) both look surprisingly happy. Maxima has so much new growth it practically looks like a tree again. I don't know how this can be because neither of them have a square foot of healthy bark left anywhere, but they are still trucking along and the more power to them.

There's been a lot of rain this year, and the creeks are higher than I've seen them in a long time, which is always pleasant and welcome.

These are not specifically Middle-earth thoughts, but I think they are Middle-earthy. To have a keen eye for the land you love is very Middle-earthy thing.

Good news for the planet...

How Alexander von Humboldt Is Like an Anime Sadist:
An Observation about Climate Change and Non-Eurocentric Voices (with Apologies to Alexander)

Ai no Kusabi is a well-known 1980s-90s boys love light novel/anime by Rieko Yoshihara set in a hierarchical dystopian future in which the elite "Blondie" Iason sexually enslaves "mongrel" Riki, separating him from his previous boyfriend and friends. The ruling Blondies are artificially constructed superhumans typified by cold, emotionless behavior. Iason radically departs from his culture's laws and norms by experiencing sexual passion for Riki and, eventually, something the story depicts as love, albeit of an unhealthy, primitive variety.

In the course of revising my essay for the upcoming anthology on Jeff VanderMeer's science fiction, Surreal Entanglements, I recently read the short essay, "Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a New Global Ethos" by Paul J. Crutzen, who coined the term "Anthropocene," and journalist Christian Schwägerl. The essay makes several good points about limiting consumption and leveraging technology to combat climate change, but I take issue with its overarching thesis that "humans [are] masters of planet Earth" and must take responsibility for making the Earth what we want it to be. I'm not opposed to taking responsibility; it's the mastery, I question. Our current crisis suggests to me that we have no idea how to "master" the Earth; indeed, it is running quite out of our control. And even if we could "master" it, why ever would we want a master-slave relationship to define our experience of living on Earth?

In the course of making their argument, Crutzen and Schwärgerl invoke the concept of a "world organism," a phrase they attribute to the renowned 18th- and 19th-century naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, not, they say, to some "esoteric Gaia guru." In other words, Humboldt, unlike those hippies, is a credible authority. They observe, "Humboldt wanted us to see how deeply interlinked our lives are with the richness of nature…." I have enormous regard for Humboldt. I hold him to be one of the greatest Renaissance men Western Civilization has produced and am gratified to be an alumna of the California State University that bears his name.

But invoking Humboldt—to the explicit exclusion of other "gurus"—as one's central authority on the interconnectedness of humanity with the rest of the world is like making Iason one's authority on love. Humboldt was as far ahead of dominant Western Civilization in understanding ecological relatedness as Iason is ahead of his fellow Blondies in comprehending the human heart. But every single character in Ai no Kusabi who is not a Blondie comprehends love an order of magnitude better than Iason. The vast majority of indigenous societies, and, indeed many traditions around the world, have understood for a very long time that human beings are fundamentally interlinked with the rest of the world. And very many have understood it and lived far better and longer than Eurocentric society. We need to let them, people such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, be our authorities on the subject. They might teach us about the folly of our fantasies of mastery over everything else.

At my request, our tenant checked on our old tree, Senex. This photo is a little hard to interpret, even if you know the tree, but the trunk, which was largely old and rotten burned out completely.



Senex was an old tree and certainly in its declining years, but I am very saddened by its passing. It has always been there, ever since I can remember. I'm glad that several years ago, I developed the habit of saying goodbye to our named trees on the morning I'd leave from a visit. We had six of them throughout my childhood. We lost Howgie to the oak fungus a few years ago. In this fire, we have lost Quercus Frater and Senex. I am hopeful that Quercus Maxima, Drus, and Phagos [edit: Phegos, my bad] have survived. Even so, we've now lost three of six. I used to think I might see one or maybe two of the die in my lifetime. Now, I feel there's a real chance I'll see them all gone in the next few years. This is not normal. This is climate crisis.

Goodbye, Senex, my grandparent.

Over here in Oregon, we are bathed in ash and setting temperature records as fires rage in the Columbia Gorge, and I have soothed my sense of frustration a little by purchasing 150 tons in carbon offsets from Climate Neutral Now.

It is true offsets are not the best answer. Like geoengineering, they can make us feel like we're doing something when what we really need to do is reign in our own carbon emissions. But they do do something: these UN-vetted projects are not only reducing carbon emissions but helping create jobs, education, and healthier local environments in the developing world.

As opposed to REDD+, which has been widely accused of exploiting indigenous populations in the name of industry offsets, Climate Neutral Now favors local projects that return benefits to the local ecology/economy. I encourage folks to check it out.