In my native state (Texas), summer was a seven month season, April through October. Here in Wisconsin it's shorter: three months if we're lucky.
Since moving here 11 years ago and getting in sync with the local seasons, I've developed some sadness and anger at this holy day. How can it be the longest day of the year, when summer is just starting to establish itself!?!
Season markers are changing everywhere. The five-month winters of my early years in Wisconsin have shrunk to a three-month season. I must admit I don't mind that at all. If we're settling into three months for each season around here, I can appreciate that.
But settling doesn't describe what's happening. Major shifts are happening in climate and season. We all know that. I don't mean to preach to the choir, but I have to say this makes me sadder and angrier than the yearly decline of length-of-days that begins now.
I'm remembering
what I read several months ago in Joanna Powell Colbert's Gaian Tarot Artist's Journal:
A few weeks ago, Craig and I went down to Seattle to hear Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak. We left the auditorium thinking, When can we vote for him? A very impassioned and brilliant man. The most thought-provoking idea I took away with me was this: when asked what the single most important thing each of us can do to protect the environment is, he answered: get involved on the federal level. I was quite surprised, as I am a longtime advocate of "acting locally." But he said that the Big Corporations just love the books and articles that come out that are titled "50 things you can do to save the earth," etc. because those books put the responsibility on each of us instead of them. Not that we shouldn't recycle, carpool, etc -- all those things that help to minimize impact on the environment -- but, he said, lasting change will only occur at the federal level.
Wherever you are, may your summer be beautiful and bountiful, and may you add "acting federally" to your environmental philosophy and activism.
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