rambling

Italy, Late 19th Century

PAIR OF ARCHIMEDES PARABOLIC REFLECTOR MIRRORS

Copper mirrors.

What if the children go to schools unafraid of tear gas and bullets?

What if the birds come back, and the bees are healed, and every species moves from endangered, to threatened, to thriving?

What if the rainforest ADVANCES?

What if every parking lot had solar panels? What if every structure had solar panels? What if we built climbing gyms and terraced gardens in the skeletons of old coal power plants?

What if you baked your neighbor bread, and they shared their home-grown blackberries?

What if every person who needed a home, had one? What if every person who needed healing was healed?

What if every body was treasured for what it was, not what it should be?

What if every trans child's parents attended their graduation, their wedding, their new-name-day?

What if every warehouse became a closed-circle repair station? Goods flowing out, and back, and out again? What if landfills started to SHRINK?

What if the water and air were clean? What if there was enough public transit that the cars dwindled, leaving the streets safe for kids on bikes, evening deer, midnight cats and foxes?

What if we win?

The condors are back. The whales are saved. The sea turtles are no longer endangered. The cranes are back. The bees are recovering. The air in LA and Tokyo and London is clean again. The aquifers in the LA Basin are refilling.

Children are kinder than previous generations. Parents are stopping the abuse cycle. Being trans and queer is more acceptable than ever on a ground level.

It's hard to see if you're young, if you don't know how to step back from social media and the news. But remember--bad news sells, and the algorithm knows despair keeps you scrolling. It's a skewed lens.

We are fighting and we are winning against this adminstration's bullying. We are coming together against the bullies and they are running away scared because they don't understand that we will do that.

People are working hard every day to find ways to make sure fewer animals get hit by cars and planes and rockets.

Maker spaces are more common than ever. Solar and wind are more common than ever. Coal plants are shutting down every day.

Unprecedented numbers of acres are being bought back or given back to their rightful stewards, and the world heals because of it. People are working hard every day to learn how to help a forest recover faster.

We are not at zero. We are at decades of effort to heal the world. We've come SO far.

In 1982 there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. In 1992, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with its public and private partners, began reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild. In 2001 the first wild nesting occurred in Grand Canyon National Park since re-introduction. In 2002 there were only 8 pairs of wild nesting birds population-wide. In 2008, for the first time since the program began, more California condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity. Today there are nearly 500 – more than half of them flying free in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja Mexico.

When I was born, there were no condors in the wild. I'm 37 now, and there are over 250 condors flying free.

When my mom was born in 1955, there were days when she wasn't allowed to go outside to play, because of the air pollution. When I was born, that never happened anymore.

When I was born, humpback whales were critically endangered, and people thought they were going to go extinct. Today, they've recovered to exceed their recorded numbers. Other whales too!

We fixed it.

instead ask:

is it SINCERE

was it CATHARTIC

was it FUN TO MAKE

is it MADE BY ME

No. That thought would clang against the simple dignity we sense in nature, the dignity of a living thing inhabiting a life.

You are that sparrow. You are the branch she rests upon.

Narrow-bridged Mud Turtle (Kinosternon angustipons), family Kinosternidae

This turtle is one of dozens of species in Central America that remain understudied, with so much left to discover. This spring, our team trekked into Central America to begin uncovering some of these mysteries. This work is critical to protecting species that could vanish before we ever understand how to stop their extinction. Some of these efforts recently came to fruition with the publication of the paper, “In Search of the Narrow-bridged Mud Turtle, Kinosternon angustipons Legler, 1965: A Knowledge Gap and Forgotten Species” in Herpetology Notes. The paper is co-authored by TSA team members Eric Muscher, Natalia Gallego-Garcia, and Andrew Walde, alongside Emmanuel Bello-Suazo, Rio D. Para, Cristian Ramirez, Norberto F. Solano Cordero, Zachary Siders, and Arron Tuggle. Since the species was first described in 1965, almost nothing has been published about it. We’re proud to help advance discovery for this turtle and for dozens of other species still in need of research. Read the paper here: https://herpetologynotes.org/index.php/hn/article/view/293

IUCN Red List Status: Vulnerable (Last assessed in 1996, but no new research available to update the status) Photograph by Rio Dante Para