Category Archives: Human Health

A Haggis Hiatus

Hi, everyone! How have you been?

I just returned from my vacation in the UK (all around Scotland and then a stint to London) and decided to disconnect while I was gone, hence my silence over the past two weeks..

Can’t say I’m super thrilled to be back – the second we touched down in D.C., reality pelted us hard, right upside the head like a noxious smell you weren’t expecting. One sad or embarrassing story after another about the happenings in the grand U.S. of A. came flooding into our phones and I realized coming back was a terrible idea.

Sigh.

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What It Means to be American: Part One

It feels like the world is burning around me, literally and figuratively. Wildfires, wars, and hate-fueled politicians riling up their base to spread more hate…and an occasional Waymo car – that was us. Well, not me, specifically, but that was ‘team left of the middle’, burning with their own rage against the Federal police-state in Los Angeles. They call it a victimless crime to burn a driverless car, but there is no such thing. I can, at the very least, understand their anger, if not their actions.

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Today I Tasted the Devastation of a Wildfire

And I wasn’t even near it!

The air quality where I live has been generally poor, as of late. Not from one wildfire, but from two, plus a Haboob from the Middle East that blew sand halfway around the world to settle on the East Coast of the U.S.. It was the fire in New Jersey, however, that left a film in my mouth and throat and a grimy feel on my skin this past Saturday.

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Brick and Mortar Brought us Back

The other night I was invited to watch a friend present some poetry at a local bookshop. Every second Friday of every month the bookshop hosts a Poetry and Prose night where anyone can come and present their work. As I sat there listening to the thoughts, emotions, and personal stories of the lives of strangers, I started to hear a theme weave through the words of these writers. A theme of advocacy for human rights, environmental justice, and political cries against our current Federal administration, writ large.

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A Look Back on 2020: What I Learned

I could probably write a book on this subject. I generally don’t think we talk enough about the positive things that come from tragedy and disaster. It’s probably why our culture is so fearful and morbid about death or why we are always suffering from “never enough” syndrome. I’m not a psychologist, just an internet expert, so don’t take my word for it – I’m just over here, speculating. That said here is my (not quite complete, but who has time to read these days) list of positive lessons I learned from the pandemic.

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A Look Back on 2020: Enter the Lockdown

I have been thinking a lot lately about our life during the pandemic, partly as it has come up in conversation a lot with friends. This is a blog and not a series of peer-reviewed scientific papers. I would need months to dive deep into the literature we have compiled on the “lessons learned” from the COVID-19 pandemic response, so this will not be that. Rather, I’d like to share some lessons-learned and thoughts on the pandemic that I have heard amongst my group of friends and within my family unit.

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Regenerating Life and Love: The People

I am going to pivot a bit on this one – bail on the format I was previously using (see my first three in the Regenerating Life and Love series: Intro, the Environment, and Animals and Fungi). When it comes to Mount St Helens, it is true that tourism, the logging industry, and other human activities have resumed in the area, but I am not certain how I feel about some of our resilience in the aftermath of this particular catastrophic event. When we speak about systems in nature regenerating life, we often look at them in terms of returning, recovering, and perhaps even overcoming (a forest fire might open up coniferous seeds to yield new forests or a species returning to spawning areas after an oil spill). We like things we can measure and track over time. Useful as that might be, it tends to also ignore the grey spaces of regeneration and healing. And for the human factor, this might be the most important bit.

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The Disposable Society and My Current Rage

I am taking a pause this week from my Regenerating Life and Love posts to rage. There are so many things happening in my country right now. Depending on your ideologies, they might be horrifying or exciting. I’ve tried multiple times to bring myself into a space of understanding and contemplation, but I am struggling. What I am witnessing is, for me, horrifying.

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