What if...

 I’m rereading Joseph Campbell’s Power of the Myth. It’s casual reading; the book sits on the generous window sill in my studio next to a fat leather chair we brought back from the twin’s apartment in Colorado. I sit there now and then during the day and read a few pages usually with coffee. I find something to think about, to ponder, and then I move on. It’s a luxury of summer – my life here at home consists of stations and I move through them each day – this for me is heaven.

I can easily, like you, get caught up in my world and focus on my immediate surroundings, but then I "hear" or see things and I am jolted out of it and flung into a realm that is bigger and certainly more intense than my little world on Vida Shaw Road.

To inject negativity into this pretty little portrait of summer, I am noticing the climate change in a colossal way. Here, at my house, a place I have lived 27 years, the figs are over before they were even ready last year, same with the concord grapes and the pear trees will be finished long before July ends. It is usually nearly August when my chickens have their pear fest under the pear trees – that’s when they enjoy all of the pears that have over ripened and fallen off and are laced with “protein” (bugs) ;this year they are celebrating in late June, an entire month earlier. I have no authority to get into this whole issue of climate change and global warming but I am certain things are not as they were. Of course, nothing that is alive ever stays the same; change is part of the universe – it has to occur. I suppose I just mention this to encourage all of us to be mindful of our habits that do harm. The little things really do, cumulatively, make a difference. All of those stores require destroying land which in turn destroys the homes of hundreds of animals and then those huge stores must be filled up with “stuff” that is mostly made of plastics that have to be shipped or trucked in from faraway places – many times, China – and then when we have enough of it it has to be trucked or shipped to some land fill and we can buy more “stuff”.

 I’m sure most of you have seen the vintage video, “The Story of Stuff”, but like Joseph Campbell’s Power of the Myth, it’s worth a “reread”. Ok, I’m done. {Perhaps you can find something on this beautiful summer day that you can recycle or reuse instead of buying and perhaps this action can become a habit and we can all take better care of our planet. Small footprints are so wonderful; I strive to leave one).

http://youtu.be/gLBE5QAYXp8

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