Notices by Derek Caelin 🌱 (derek@social.coop), page 3

Saying it again in video form: hope and action in #TheLordOfTheRings. If you're not feeling very hopeful right now, that's understandable. We see a lot of the characters in LoTR acting without hope.

"We do it because every person organized and campaign won and fraction of a degree of global warming prevented will save lives. Because movements that believe are far more powerful than movements that don't. And, yes, we fight because fighting is one of the ways we get to nurture our courage and generosity and hope and all those other fundamentally human traits that we treasure most—because our lives will be infinitely richer in that struggle than outside of it."

Rebecca Solnit has some great things to say here:

"So, what do we do when the world is ending? The same things that so many of the giants on whose shoulders we stand did when their worlds were ending. We choose to face our despair—to walk toward it and through it—choose to take action, choose to build movements. We do it because we don't know how it ends, because there are possibilities out there that we simply can't see from here."

The big difference between Denethor and the Company is actually not whether they have hope. Most of the company agree that it is unlikely that they will succeed.

Denethor is different because he loses hope, and decides to give up. Not only does he decide to kill himself - he is willing to bring down others who depend on him. He tries to kill Faramir. He gives up on the defense of Minas Tirith, and the people who rely on him.

Giving up hurts other people.

The third section of my book is going to talk about the role of hope in climate action - how do people keep moving when...

/waves hand at the situation.

The big takeaway, for me, is that hope is not a prerequisite for action in LoTR. It is a reward.

Sam gives up hope on the slopes of Orodruin, but resolves to carry on regardless. Faramir fights even though "it is long since we had any hope". Gandalf gambles everything on a what is admittedly "a fool's hope".

They act, even so.

“He turned to the Company. ‘We must do without hope,’ he said. ‘At least we may yet be avenged. Let us gird ourselves and weep no more! Come! We have a long road, and much to do.”

‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.

‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

@kissane Oh my gosh. I studied abroad in the Czech Republic almost 20 years ago and frequently took the train in from Hostivař! This made my day, thank you.

Take care of yourselves today... and every day this week.

Take care of yourselves today... and every day this week.

Soil short fiction contest:

"Imagine a better future that starts with the soil. It could be near term. It could be eons away. How could the ways we shape and coexist with the earth shape our lived experience? What human and non-human sagas might unfold? What if looking forward meant looking down, at the earth beneath our feet, not up at the stars? Is there hope to be found?"

https://tractorbeam.earth/#maitake-by-the-sea

#writing

Sitting here wondering if @futurebird has opinions on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJhqX21idBk

Listen to: Hackers steal information from 31 million Internet Archive users - https://one.npr.org/i/nx-s1-5163783:nx-s1-5232072-1

@camilabrun I drop dead love this

@kate alphabetically by genre! (Married to a librarian)

@Br3nda thank you, I will try to be sensitive to this concern.

@Br3nda ah, sorry. Te Urewara shows up in a chapter on the rights (and personhood) of nature.

@benfulton Something that surprised me to learn is that Tolkien didn't consider the Shire to be an ideal that we should strive for.

"...Hobbits are not a Utopian vision," he wrote, "or recommended as an ideal in their own or any age. They, as all peoples and their situations, are an historical accident - as the Elves point out to Frodo - and an impermanent one in the long view."

☝️ FYI above message: @dynamic @Br3nda @Virginicus @Zumbador @RhinosWorryMe

Tagging you because you engaged with me on this topic before.

Read an excerpt from my upcoming book, "Where The Roots Are Long": https://derek.caelin.cloud/where-the-roots-are-long/

What do #Ents have to do with illegal miners in the Amazon rainforest? What do water protectors share with Hobbits traversing the wastes of Mordor? "Where the Roots are long" explores environmental themes in the Lord of the Rings and how they resonate in the modern environmentalist movement.

#LordOfTheRings #writing #books #bookstodon #ClimateCrisis