Notices by Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ (bethsawin@spore.social), page 2

What changes when you see the call to fit into the requirements of the living Earth as an opportunity for growth in wisdom and wellbeing, instead of a sacrifice? When you see how limits promote some kinds of growth?

Love maple syrup, homegrown food & multi-generational living? How about snow-shoveling, meetings, and pretty constant practice at listening, self-reflection & the art of compromise? There's an apartment for sale in my VT co-housing community. More info: https://www.cobbhill.org/houses

Ask yourself who does the narrative that infectious diseases and climate disasters are inevitable benefit?

Calling for a ceasefire while supplying arms.
Naming climate goals while extracting oil.
Declaring war on cancer while allowing novel chemicals & plastics in food, water and air.
Spending billions on vaccine against a global infectious disease but not sharing it.

My garden near dusk, a pocket of calm if you need one.

It's 2035. You just walked out your door into a world that got through the shocks of 2024 -26 more connected, a little ecologically healthier, with civil and human rights strengthened & with commitment to actually being a just & ecological society. What's the 1st thing you see?

In moments of uncertainty I like to think about "good bets" -- choices and actions that seem most likely to be helpful no matter what comes next. Here are a few on my mind. What would you add?

I needed to stop scrolling so I went for a run. Recommended. Along the ways there was a turtle in the middle of the road, and I moved her to safety. Also recommended. So much needs help! Find a little way to help and do it. I also had a few thoughts while plodding uphill...

Don't leave environmental collapse out of your analysis of democracy collapse. Some questions:
- to what degree has premonitions of ecological collapse led to these power grabs?
- to what degree will these power grabs accelerate ecological collapse?

-How can your movements be more fit to the conditions of destabilization and collapse than the structures of consolidated power?

In what ways can those organized around love and community, sufficiency and ecology, find advantages vs structures of consolidated power, under conditions of destabilization? No answers from me, but I think these are good questions.

Love nature, be skeptical of economics, think in systems, and be the weirdo AI cannot comprehend. A friend asked "AI" about my book (which is still being typeset so I don't see how the book can have been "learned" from yet by that insatiable copy and paste machine).

@seanbala @KrusekopfD @KrusekopfD I checked with the organizers who confirmed it is free if you don't need a certificate. If you click on each of the four courses you can access the all of the materials directly. I know that accessibility was an important goal they had.

An amazing new resource for us all has just been released, a labor of love, intelligence, and care, and a weaving of much wisdom from many sources to help us meet this moment in time. https://www.edx.org/certificates/professional-certificate/wisconsinx-psychology-of-resilience

It's free and self-paced, and I'm already making plans to go through the material together with others in my community.

Just wrote my next "letter from the director" to come out in June. This one is about how this gardening project had me thinking about salmon, trains, justice & Joanna Macy's Great Turning. If that sounds interesting there's time to sign up to receive...https://www.multisolving.org/#newsletter

My town email list-serve is full of celebratory bird sightings, vernal pool posts & amphibian crossing concerns. Despite centuries of culture, economics & education shouting that we are separate from nature and one another, people still want the frogs to make it across the road.

You know this planet with auroras and eclipses? It has orchids, grass snakes & mangoes too. Rainbow trout and diatoms and self-organizing college students and star fish. What are the odds of it all & how about a just and equitable economy and then living lives of awestruck peace?

May your society grow food in a way that doesn't imperil the bird and mammal worlds with viruses, the insect world with chemicals, the climate with heat trapping gases, and the oceans with dead zones.
-- a wish for us all

This #EarthDay2024 I'd like to introduce you a friend of mine. World, please meet "Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World" which will look more like a book & less like a binder in a patch of daffodils when it's released by IslandPress in fall 2024!