Hell's Bells on Earth Day

Finding Anything Good Down that Rabbit Hole?

Hell’s bells, as my father-in-law used to say. The news piles up so fast, I’ve begun to wonder if I should narrow my focus. We can’t take it all in every day.

That’s why I retreated last week, if you want to call it that, and turned to other tasks and work and family and friends.

As I try to resist paying attention to everything all at once, it’s comforting to know all those demonstrating and speaking up are doing so with slightly different motivation, interests, and personal slants. Resistance will always be a collection of individual efforts.

Even within this small group of Scuttlebutt readers, we have among us an environmentalist in Northern Minnesota; a tech company guy in the UK (whose products are designed in the UK, made in China, and sold in the U.S.); friends who’ve stepped back into their legal profession to support teen immigrants; a family in Taiwan; travelers who fear coming back through US Border Security; those who’ve lost jobs; those who are relying on Medicaid; artists, teachers, military veterans, parents, cancer patients, and so on. And we’re talking about only a few dozen subscribers.

I want to stand up for everybody, and my nature is to go down every rabbit hole to learn more about what we’re up against and fighting for. But I didn’t know where to start, so I took a walk.

Walking and Climate Change

While I walked, I listened to a podcast episode from the series Wiser than Me by Julia Louise-Dreyfus. It’s a good series of interviews, and I hadn’t realized a new season had begun. In honor of Earth Day, Louise-Dreyfus interviewed Dr. Sylvia Earle, a marine biologist, an oceanographer, an 89-year-old “aquanot” who’s been exploring the ocean depths for decades.

It was a relief to ponder the big picture of our planet’s health, such as it is, rather than the minutiae of government and politics.

Asked what actions we mere mortals can take, Earle replied, “So many possible things…. Everybody has power. My question is ‘What have you got?’ Craft your own recipe for what you can do. Start in your backyard, your community. Find something that you can do that inspires you.”

Take a walk and give it a listen. It brings together, in the name of protecting our planet, pretty much all the inspiration and urgency you might need today. It doesn’t hurt that your walk might get you out on a sunny day to observe tree buds sprouting in willow-green colors, ducks paired up on the open water, robins bouncing across lawns, and frogs making a racket in the pond.

That, to my mind, is the antidote to the trauma and grief we are experiencing. Let’s acknowledge that, even though irreparable damage to our democracy and international standing has already been done – and that things will get worse before they get better – there are still ways to engage.

More (Easter) Rabbit Holes

While I’m on the podcast track, here are a couple more enlightening podcasts.

Cooking and Courts. Cooking is a great diversion, don’t you think? Interesting Times is a new podcast by The New York Times. In this episode, which I listened to as I prepared dinners for the week, host Ross Douthat interviews Jeff Goldsmith, former head of White House Legal Counsel (under George W Bush). They get into the weeds on various court cases involving this administration. Which is to say, if you are wondering how the hell this is happening and how on earth the courts (not to mention Congress) might protect us from this disaster, listen up.

Driving to Yoga. While you are in traffic, listen to this conversational approach to understanding U.S. trade with China and the complicated impact of tariffs. Thanks, LH, for passing this along.

Late addition: I’m guessing a bunch of people glossed over the defunding of Harvard this week, dismissing the news as a hardship the legendary university could overcome. But take a closer look at this heartbreaking move against higher education and the research it supports – and see this for the vindictive move it is, with such potentially damaging results. I appreciate this New Yorker article all the more because its author, Atul Gawande, served as USAID’s Global Health Director. He knows whereof he speaks. The Cost of Defunding Harvard.

More Scuttlebutt

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