To Dine with Purpose: For the Earth

On March 31, 2025 By AnnIn Activism, Earth care, Prairie talesLeave a comment

The devastating storm system that tore through a dozen states in mid-March wreaked havoc in all of them. Over a hundred tornadoes ripped through communities from Louisiana to Illinois, east to the Atlantic coast. The funnels destroyed hundreds of homes and left over 24 people dead. In northwest Kansas, the system’s unprecedented straight-line winds of 50 to 60 mph with gusts over 70 mph blew in a dust cloud that engulfed Interstate 70. Over fifty drivers lost sight of the highway and plowed into other cars and semi-trucks in front of them. Eight fatalities resulted from the largest pile-up of automobiles in decades. The highway remained closed for days.

None of this should come as a surprise. Shock, maybe, but no surprise. We’ve known for decades that our actions stress the living veneer on our miraculous home planet, Earth. Yet we meet steeper resistance to action with each passing day. If the unprecedented storms across our country aren’t enough to shake sense into our leaders, what will be?

I fell in love with nature years ago and my devotion to wilderness, landforms and wildlife led me to share our growing predicament many times since Earth Day #1 in 1970. As a public high school student enrolled in Earth Science class at the time, I proudly sported my green armband through all the activities of that day. Since then, after earning a bachelor of science degree in geology, I’ve helped with Earth Day exhibits at our local park, highway cleanups, recycling efforts, care packages for extended family featuring Earth-friendly products for daily life, helped my own students with environmental projects, wrapped trees with green ribbons (and later removed them for the trees’ sake), planned and orchestrated a series of environmental film screenings at our local theater, and connected the dots with 350.org in the crazy weather of 2012. It became obvious that our amazing planet deserves attention not just one day each year, but every day. As indigenous leaders on every continent teach us, the Earth does not belong to humans. Rather we belong to the Earth. We ignore the warning signs at our own peril.

I continue efforts to educate others. Several weeks ago, I came across a link to an article titled “These 15 Foods Could Disappear Due to Climate Change.” (https://worth.com/15-foods-disappear-due-to-climate-change/) The probable impact of climate disruption on familiar foods was shocking. If only people knew, I thought. The list gave me an idea: I could promote local gatherings that served many of the foods on the list. To kick it off, I invited a diverse group of friends for a “Dinner with Purpose: For the Earth.” I set up a buffet with information cards about each food item and how the Earth’s delectable gifts may become rare for our grandkids. The menu included chocolate candy appetizers, taco salad with all the trimmings, scalloped potatoes, with mixed fruit salad and blueberry muffins for dessert. Drinks included fresh squeezed limeades, coffee, and wine. In all we enjoyed 14 of the 15 listed items from the list of disappearing foods.

The dinner was a hit and I consider the evening a two-fold success. The information cards spurred good conversations about climate disruption and its consequences, and we all enjoyed ourselves at the same time—an act of total resistance under an administration that wants us to cower in fear and apprehension.

Several in attendance expressed their intention to hold an Earth dinner themselves, a delicious way to spread the word. Perhaps you’d like to join the fun and host a dinner for your family and friends. April 22 is the 55^th anniversary of Earth Day #1, but any day will serve to honor and celebrate the generosity of our home planet and remind ourselves what is at stake.

Guests discuss information about the food items at risk.

A Festive Time at College Hill Coffee

On September 19, 2023September 20, 2023 By AnnIn books, fiction, Firestorm Sonata, Prairie talesLeave a comment

Come chat with Ann and take a look at Firestorm Sonata.

Saturday, September 23, 2023

Noon until 2:00 pm

College Hill Coffee, 403 Soward Street, Winfield, Kansas

About Firestorm Sonata:

In peak condition, scout Sharenda Kamine is certain her field skills will insure her safety as she seeks supplies needed by the fortress she calls home. She must, however, prove her worth to the authoritarian commander of this isolated pocket of survivors. With reluctance, he grants her request to work alone and she heads across dust dunes of what once was southern Kansas, confident she will master any challenge she meets. But she is unprepared to find a window into the past, which simultaneously offers a future ripe with possibilities. She must decide whether she will honor her commitment to the Fort, or escape to freedom with Gran, the only family she knows.

Firestorm Sonata is the third in a series of dramatic stories featuring pianos and their families. It follows Sundrop Sonata (2016) and Sonata of Elsie Lenore (2020). Book 3, Firestorm Sonata, is the first book in the series which is set in a future with very different landscapes than we know today. A Climate Fiction tale, it explores the roles of pianos and musicians in a changing environment such as those predicted by today’s climatologists.

Known to many as the local piano tuner, few people realize that Ann Christine Fell has been a naturalist all her life and taught science in the Winfield schools before she opened her piano business. As a musician, piano technician, photographer, mother, and grandmother, she has gleaned details from a lifetime of wide-ranging experiences that bring her fictional stories to life for Kansas friends and neighbors. She lives on the edge of the scenic Kansas Flint Hills with her husband, her grandson, and her piano.

Firestorm Sonata: The Story Behind the Story

On August 18, 2023 By AnnIn books, Earth care, fiction, Firestorm Sonata, novels, Prairie tales, WritingLeave a comment

The third novel in my Sonata series of adventure tales featuring pianos and their families is now available on Amazon. I have mixed feelings about it. The completion of this journey has been months in the making and I’m relieved to finally get there. It’s been a lot of hard work, with repeated readings and editing through the summer, each time thinking this would be it, and each time finding more things that needed to change. I finally drew a line. This is it. Ready or not. And Firestorm is launched. May she find a path through the maze of words out there in the cyberverse and not disappoint.

Firestorm Sonata:

This tale is a first for me, to set the events in the future. During my work on the second Sonata, Sonata of Elsie Lenore, a friend I respect, a retired college professor and elder in my community, shared an article with me. “Confronting the Climate Crisis Through Fiction: Visualizing a climate-ravaged world may actually be the key to mobilizing action.” Those who know me well know my passion for the natural world, for the planet Earth. As a college freshman 50 years ago—get that FIFTY—I took a life-changing class called “Can Man Survive?” in the biology department at Fort Hays State University in Kansas. It was based on the then-current knowledge about all the impacts our human activities had on water, air, land—and climate. We’ve known about greenhouse gasses for my entire life. Even longer. Some folks predicted serious impacts early in the industrial revolution, over a hundred years ago.

The evidence is mounting in 2023. This summer is already setting records. Extreme weather events around the world fill the news from catastrophic flooding to record-setting temperatures and untamable fires. Chile, Canada, Greece, Italy, China, India, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Sudan, Madagascar, Zimbabwe–the list goes on. In North America, water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico hit 100+ in places, with 100% mortality in some coral reefs.

My own community cleans up after a straight-line windstorm that downed whole trees in our favorite parks and city streets, demolished our neighbor’s hay storage barn, and wreaked havoc on the county fair. Cleanup will continue for weeks. The cost has soared toward $2,000,000 already in our one small town. And yet, we humans continue a path deemed to be disastrous for all life on the planet, just so oil companies can reap growing mega-profits at the expense of everything else we hold dear. If fictional tales set in a grim future environment will shake us into action, I decided I must try.

It’s been my privilege to offer continued piano service across south-central Kansas for nearly thirty years. I’ve kept climate records at each job, recording temperature and humidity. It’s increasingly hard to advise piano owners what their best plan of service should be. With seasonal swings in temperature and humidity becoming more unpredictable, the effects on pianos are easy to see. Tuning stability is now a figment of the imagination.

Pianos are my world. So is the prairie ecosystem. I began to ask some hard questions as I twisted those pins on my annual calls. “What’s with all the earthquakes in Kansas and Oklahoma?” In my college geology classes I learned this area is the “stable” part of the continent. Earthquakes are supposed to be extremely rare. And yet here we are.

“What about the wildfires?” Every year we hear about more extreme fires. California, Oregon, Texas, Idaho. There have been successive record-breaking fires that started in Oklahoma and raged across the state line into Kansas, burning hundreds of thousands of grass acres, killing animals (including livestock) that were trapped in its path.April 2016, a fire burned over 400,000 acres, the largest blaze ever in Kansas (at the time); March 2017, 600,000 acres burned in southwest Kansas, people were evacuated from small towns in the area; December 2021—fires in northwest Kansas, fanned by winds stronger than hurricane force, burned 400,000 acres.

Then there were the Canadian fires this summer that burned for weeks, sending ash and smoke into the air across northern US. And Maui—MAUI?? An island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a drought and a spark? The death toll from the Maui fire continues to grow.

I tried to imagine what my home county would look like after an extended drought, followed by a massive firestorm. Perhaps lightning would ignite an oil spill created by one of those fracking earthquakes. Add to the mix technology that can’t receive satellite signals, towers that topple in storms, and no way to receive news from the rest of the world.

What would my piano family do? What would become of them and their pianos? Would it even matter anymore if basic survival was the most pressing need? Unfortunately basic survival is already the most pressing need for far too many of Earth’s creatures, including pockets of human beings.

Thus, Firestorm Sonata was born. My deepest thanks to everyone who begged for another tale, who listened when I felt discouraged, and who offered words that bolstered me to keep on writing. You all comprise the village which raised Firestorm Sonata from a small seed to fruition. May she have wings to take her beyond my imagination and in her own way make our planet and our future a little brighter for all living things.

A Glimpse of Grace for Earth Day 2021

On April 22, 2021 By AnnIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I was invited to share a few thoughts for Earth Sunday at my church this year. The presentation received enthusiastic endorsements and is worth passing along. I share it below.

A year and a half ago, I headed to Nebraska for an “Elders for the Earth” retreat with the Hunters and Aurora from GUMC. I found it exhilarating to be with a roomful of folks attuned to the ballooning climate crisis, and respectful of the leadership offered by the world’s indigenous peoples.

There were seminars by experts in various fields, including a biology professor, a Catholic sister who shared how the global climate crisis affects our immigration issues, a panel of farmers who advocated for regenerative agriculture, and the Nebraska Sierra Club. Most important for me was the connection with others who share my anxiety about the future of life on Earth and who want to do something about it.

The weekend concluded with a native American smudging ceremony and we returned to our homes pledging actions to effect change that fit our own situations.

Little did I know how much that retreat would change my life. I returned home with ideas for action and a reading list. In the process of working through the books, COVID hit and our old “normal” world changed overnight.

None of us have escaped the COVID months unscathed. If we didn’t contract the virus ourselves, we certainly knew those who did. We all know people who suffered severe symptoms, and even some who succumbed to the virus. Yet in spite of the dire consequences, COVID months provided opportunities to stretch in different directions. I found myself zooming into conference calls with literally hundreds of people around the world, enrolling in online classes that focused on our climate challenges, as well as social justice, and economic systems. Through leadership of indigenous peoples around the world, I expanded my horizons and my hopes for our common future supported by an expanding awareness of our Earth community.

A couple of people and their ideas kept showing up in my varied explorations.

One was Robin Wall Kimmerer, a mother, a scientist, a writer and a member of the Citizen Potawatomie nation. Her book Braiding Sweetgrass helped change my life during COVID. The first time I ever read about Robin was in the run-up to last year’s 50^th anniversary of Earth day in the Sierra magazine. She was a featured contributor and her description of a conversation with a student echoes in my mind yet today. “I’m sorry,” she said to this student, “that you have to still fight these environmental battles.” The student responded, “Don’t you see that this is the best possible time to be alive?” (What?! Climate chaos? Extinction crisis?) The student looked her in the eyes and said, “We are on the precipice. When everything hangs in the balance, it matters where I stand. How wonderful to live in a time when everything that I do matters.”

I actually had never thought of it quite like that. But that one idea opened lots of doors. The Elders Retreat helped me realize how complex the crisis we face really is.

Every part of our lives is impacted, from the food we eat to our economy, transportation, government, justice.

Everything on planet Earth is interconnected in ways we are just beginning to understand and no part of my life is immune to change.

Situations highlighting inequities in every area of our lives exploded over the last year. I could easily give in to hopelessness about our children’s future.

But I can’t allow myself that luxury. Those who can least afford to do anything about our climate are the neighbors we are to love and care for. One of my remote friends shared a gift that COVID presented her, the realization that families are made not by birth but by intention. COVID made our family grow to 7.9 billion people.

I can’t afford a moment of despair. But how do I find hope? There are hundreds of thousands of groups working toward a viable future around the world, representing millions of people. That gives me hope.

Another resource that the retreat introduced that I encountered over and over was the Drawdown project.

Through it I learned that we have at least 80 different ways to bring about a Drawdown of the warming gasses in our atmosphere. As COVID loosens its grip on our hometown, and our planet, we have a chance to return cautiously to a new “normal”—certainly not the old one—

that will put us on the path toward restoration of a healthy and viable planet for all of God’s creation. I find that exciting news, and I hope you do too. No one person can do it all, but I can do my part.

As one human family, with each of us doing our part, that will make the difference we need.

Day 2: The Power of Love

On October 8, 2020 By AnnIn Activism, Earth care, Letters to SeptannaLeave a comment

Dear Tanna,

I wonder where and how you live, so far removed from my own reality. Are there crowds around you? Or has the human population declined? Do you live isolated from communities? Or do you live in a town? Or a city? Is there any countryside left?

We live on a small farm, with a picturesque pond in our front yard. A few years ago, our daughter brought half a dozen ducks and they provided passing entertainment through the years. Ducks can be hilarious when you watch them.

But they provided moments of introspection as well. Sometimes a duck will successfully hatch a clutch of eggs and it becomes imperative to herd them into the hen house for their own protection. This world is a big bad place for a baby duck—cats, coyotes, turtles, skunks, opossums, and even duck siblings make survival a real challenge. Hazards await even in a hen house.

Baby ducks are some of the cutest things! But messy. With a capital M. And they grow fast. After incubation, when that first chip appears on the egg shell, you wait and watch with bated breath until the little duck fully emerges. I am astounded at how compactly they curl into that little egg.

But the ducklings don’t always make it to adulthood. One morning I arrived in the hen house to release the fowl for some sunshine in the fenced yard, and found one little duck dead in the corner, smothered by cuddling ducklings during the night. I lifted that limp little body. Recently vibrant, it had peeped to its mother duck, and ran to keep up with her. And now—nothing. The body was the same perfect little miracle, but the spark of life was gone.

Life truly is a mystery. You could have all the right ingredients, a perfect physical specimen, but without that spark, there is nothing. When I held my own newborn daughter, I felt reverence for the spark which filled her perfect little form with life, so recently infused from the great mystery, so close to the Divine. I closed my eyes and breathed in the miracle, a prayer of awe and gratitude swirling in my mind.

I have been reading more than usual these last months, due in part to the slower pace of life brought on by the COVID 19 pandemic. One book, Eyes to the Wind, was written by a young man named Ady Barkan during the time he suffered with declining health due to ALS, a dread disease which in my time is a certain death proclamation. In your time, Tanna, I hope this disease has become non-existent, but today it is an incurable descent into neurological and physical hell until only the eyes can be controlled by the spark of life trapped inside the withered body.

Technology has provided remarkable possibilities for someone diagnosed with ALS. Ady described his excruciatingly slow writing process, with a special computer mounted on his wheel chair that tracked his eye pupils to identify letters, one-at-a-time, through infrared light. He finished an amazing book this way.

Tears filled my eyes as I visualized his painstaking process. He was still there. His essence remained vitally alive, trapped in a shrinking world. When the control he exerts over his eyes disappears, the essence of the man will be vitally alive, screaming silently inside his head.

I thought of that duckling and began to wonder if the essence of Ady wouldn’t even still exist after his physical self dies? What will I discover about my own spark of life as I pass from the physical realm?

With more final farewells than I care to count in my own life—family members and friends, including two infant children, my first husband, my parents, grandmothers, fathers-in-law, friends—I ponder their sparks, their essences. Instead of simply being squelched like a candle flame in the breeze, their essences returned to the mysterious invisible divine pool, an ocean of love. They are with me still, swirling and caressing, whispering encouragement as I scratch words across this page.

It’s not a big leap of faith to include my grandmothers and grandfathers back seven generations when our nation was still young. The essences of Charley and Frank, Wiley, Eliza, Alma, John, William, Clarissa, Edwin, Edith, Thomas and even another Ann swirl around me—people I never met but who contributed to my own life and breath. And it’s not such a stretch to think that the coming generations swirl in that ether of love, all the way through seven to you, Septanna. You also are with me as I write today, the mystery and miracle of life to come.

I keep thinking of the miracle of life during these days of vicious campaigning. We get hits several times a week in the postal box or on our phones from groups bent on spreading blatant lies about candidates we favor. I hope my friends and neighbors can see through the propaganda. When one candidate has nothing specific to offer besides lies about the other, that is called negative campaigning. It lacks integrity and makes me angry. Why not explain what you have to offer instead of slander your opponent? Voters should go to the source and seek the “rest of the story.”

Take Dr. Barbara Bollier, for example. I heard her speak. She’s intelligent and compassionate—hardly the extremist the other side claims. Dr. Bollier is a physician whose focus in life is to make things better for people. She wants to heal the ailing government. The opposition calls her an extremist liberal. How they come up with that is beyond me. She recently left the conservative party due to its extremist demands.

They say she wants to take away guns, but she herself grew up hunting with her family. She is not anti-gun. She wants common sense gun control to protect children, and to keep firearms away from psychotic shooters. She wants to save lives. Who can argue with that?

They say she is in favor of late term abortions, when in reality, she voted against an late term extremist abortion bill because it was based on flawed science. It also represented an unconscionable intrusion into the patient/physician relationship by government.

If we acknowledge that every life is unique, does it not follow that no two pregnancies are the same? You can’t have a one-size-fits-all policy for pregnant women. If something goes deadly wrong in an unborn child’s development, there need to be options—legal, safe options, offered with love and compassion to a mother already in anguish. As a woman, physician, and mother herself, Dr. Barbara Bollier understands this. Furthermore, given our ailing atmosphere, chemically ridden food, and poisonous water supply, the chances of severe birth defects increase as the environment degrades. There must be options for desperate, grieving families.

For many voters in today’s world, abortion is a hot-button issue. I suppose we all have them. For me, the climate crisis we face overshadows every other issue. If we cannot arrest the degradation of the living planet, nothing else on the list of issues matters. Dr. Bollier has been endorsed by environmental groups. That matters to me. I want you to have a healthy world in your time, Tanna.

The most powerful force in the universe is Love. We’re surrounded by love, the essence of our ancestors and departed loved ones. And there is a big difference between loving compassion and regulating life through legislation. Dr. Bollier is correct. The government should stay out of medicine and leave it up to trained physicians.

And so, I plan to vote for Dr. Bollier this November because of her common sense, and her compassionate approach to the current issues. I hope she wins.

You are out there, Tanna. I lift my affection on the winds of the Spirit to touch you in the unrealized future domain.

With my enduring affection and best wishes, Your 7^th Generation Grandmother.

That Open Window

On September 2, 2020 By AnnIn Activism, books, Earth care, NatureLeave a comment

Sheltering at home has not prevented or even postponed any adventures in life. Maybe it changed the route a bit. But like the proverbial door versus the window, my window opened onto an international stage and increased my exposure to international connections. And THAT, friends, is a most exciting adventure.

About a month ago, I received an email invitation to join a virtual book launch, London time! You know me and books, not to mention book launches. This book spoke to my heart, Every Woman’s Guide to Saving the Planet, by Natalie Isaacs. I had to make that Zoom launch.

With no clear recollection of the date I first learned about Natalie Isaacs and her Australian-based environmental group 1 Million Women, I do remember being intrigued and I signed up to support the mostly Australian project in my Kansas grandmother’s heart. We all recall the horror felt in the sights and sounds of the rash of bush fires in Australia last January, as well as the bleaching of coral reefs off Australian beaches. Climate change has no boundaries on the planet. Go for it, Aussie friends!

I wanted to participate in this book launch. It had an international, boundary-ignoring appeal. So I dragged myself to my office early in the morning of August 18 to meet faces from Australia, the UK, and other nations around the world, (Spain, Philippines, Germany, Canada) as well as a few other participants in the states (Illinois, California, Arkansas, Ohio). The organization Natalie founded in 2009 has received international awards at the UN Climate Conferences.

On that Tuesday morning, at 6:30 am, Natalie Isaacs launched her book to the UK. She herself, and many other participants, spoke from Australia where it was evening already. In London, it was 12:30, lunch time, and it was morning in the west.

With a youthful countenance that belies her grandmotherly status, Natalie opened the meeting with the notion that we are talking about profound behavior changes and how to make them stick. A cosmetics manufacturer for 24 years, she had heard about the climate challenge, but believed there was nothing she could do about it. Then came 2006, and the release of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The problem became hers and she set out to learn what she could do about it.

“When you don’t know enough about something, it’s easier to do nothing,” she said.

After 2006, she did something—something simple—but she saw an amazing result and it changed her life. She discovered ways to reduce her family’s electricity consumption by 20%. She realized that climate change wasn’t somebody else’s problem. “It was about me, and about living a different way of life.”

A lot of personal witness and encouragement was shared in that one-hour Zoom call. Towards the end, she offered a few minutes of break-out time with other participants. I was thrilled to be paired with a 30-something woman, Anna, in Melbourne, Australia. How invigorating to share perspectives from opposite sides of the planet!

Wrapped tightly in a warm robe, Anna was preparing to retire for the night. Her window already revealed nighttime outside. I was first a bit puzzled why she looked cold—it’s so warm here—until I remembered that it’s winter down under!

We returned to the main group moments later to wrap up the session. Natalie Isaacs gave two important take-away thoughts.

#1: We must understand—in our hearts (the woman’s realm) as well as our heads—that everything we do shapes the world. Though individual actions and choices seem inconsequential, we must realize we are a collective! Just do something. One small act leads to another.

#2: We need to nurture a relationship with Earth, just like we do with our families and friends. When you truly love something, you fight for it. And it’s a reciprocal relationship. Earth provides everything needed for our healthy, satisfying life. “Don’t take without giving back,” Natalie said. It’s as simple as that.

I just had to have one of her books. Clicking on the links provided, I ran into the same roadblock every time. The book suppliers and outlets do not yet have delivery options in Kansas, nor I suppose, in any of the states or countries in the western hemisphere. On the Amazon website, I learned that the US launch on Amazon will occur late this month (September 2020.) However, the e-book is already available.

The book’s prologue on my Kindle described the history of 1 Million Women. I learned the organization was launched in 2009. It is the story of individual women taking on the climate crisis by changing everyday “behaviours” (habits). Sections in the book give “Toolkits” for addressing consumerism and overconsumption, food, energy, plastic use, fashion and cosmetics, economic power, the burgeoning waste stream, and travel.

There is a free app you can download on your smart devices to help discriminate between choices. (Search: 1 Million Women app).

There is no time to waste, Natalie reminds us. “No time to talk about guilt or scold ourselves.” Just do something. With action from a million women—a million women on every continent, I would add—“Together we can literally change the world.”

The Zoom meeting concluded with more music from a previous Australian Love Earth festival, Katie Noonan singing “I Am Woman” and it brought back memories of Helen Reddy’s voice: “I am strong. I am invincible.”

What are you waiting for? Please share this post. Order one of Natalie’s books. Connect with your friends. Make some new friends. Take action.

Having Nothing is Living Free, 1

On March 9, 2020 By AnnIn books, fiction, Music and pianos, novels, Prairie tales, Sonata of Elsie Lenore1 Comment

In early March, 2019, I flew to Miami for the first time in my life where I met the rest of a tour group bound for Cuba the next day. Eight of us in the group took a tour with Mario, a Cuban-American bus driver, to see downtown Little Havana, a rough and tumble place. He bought Cuban coffee shots for those who wanted to try it from an outdoor café and we walked along the streets, finally arriving at a Cuban pub for a first experience with mojitos– and very loud salsa music. It was interesting to see the art hung around, even from the ceiling and watch young (or not so young) dancers. Though the lead vocalist, a woman from Puerto Rico, and the percussionist were live, the main melody was a recording, so I would didn’t agree that it was live music. Toward the end of our stay, a guy joined in on the previously silent grand piano. Alas, the music volume was so cranked up, the piano was still unheard. I had not remembered earplugs, but started carrying them with me everywhere I went. However, I never needed them again. Cuban street music and performed music is genuinely live and is not limited to fortissimo volume.

A mural nearby showed some black girls in white, representing a weekly Sunday ritual in Havana, a silent protest against the communists in Havana.

The next day our group caught a flight to Santa Clara, Cuba. Our tour was a People-to-People tour sponsored by Road Scholar. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was ready for anything, to soak up the experience as research for the scenes from Sonata of Elsie Lenore that are set in Cuba.

My first view of Cuba from the airplane was through clouds, but I identified agricultural fields, and a field of solar panels. The time was 4:45 pm EST. We landed at the Santa Clara airport* at 4:55, de-planed down a set of stairs and walked to the airport door. My first step in Cuba occurred at 5:02 pm.

It was a long day of waiting for a little bit of travel, but we had finally arrived and worked our way through Cuban customs. One lady’s checked bag was lost, but the rest of us gathered our bags, met our Cuban Guide Ilen (pronounced “Elaine”) headed to the waiting bus where we met our bus driver, Ernesto. Our first views along the road included horse-drawn wagons, rough dwellings, banana, guava, and maybe tobacco fields, and lots of palm trees. Trash was piled at intervals in the roadside ditches, or in waterways. Dogs scratched through the refuse. A dead dog lay in one ditch, with vultures gathering.

Then we arrived at our lodging, Los Caneyes, and WOW!

*In the last few months travel to Cuba has been restricted only to the Havana airport. Americans today would not be able to duplicate the itinerary we enjoyed.

Download the KINDLE version Free for a limited time.

Paper copy 2nd edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085HNCCDW

Grandmother’s Stories

On April 5, 2017 By AnnIn Activism, Earth care, Healing, History, Letters to Septanna, Nature, WritingLeave a comment

I remember being fascinated by the stories my grandmother told of her early days. Horses and wagons. Moving to Kansas in a covered wagon. The tornado which destroyed their farmhouse a few months before my dad was born. The floods they endured after record cloudbursts up-river.

What kind of stories will I be able to tell my grandchildren? Or my children theirs? What could happen if we don’t take immediate steps to change the direction we’re headed? These might become the good old days of fairy tales and adventure stories.

Just imagine. . .

The silver-haired woman smoothed locks of the squirming girl child in front of her. “Hold still, Cam, dear. Two minutes. I’ll get your braids done.”

“Aw, Gran,” the child protested. “I hate when you fix my hair. It hurts.”

“The longer we wait, the more it will hurt. Shush now and sit still.” She combed the locks with knobby fingers, veins of age rising on the backs of her hands. “If only I had a comb.” The woman sighed.

“What’s a comb, Gran?”

“It’s a tool to help work out the knots in a little girl’s hair.”

“You used to have a comb, didn’t you? Years ago, when you were little?”

“I had many things, Cam.”

“Tell me.”

“We had plenty of combs and brushes for our hair. And our teeth.”

“Teeth! You combed knots out of your teeth?”

Gran laughed. “Not exactly. We brushed our teeth to keep them healthy.”

“So they wouldn’t fall out of your mouth, right?”

“You remember, child. Yes. We had a lot of things you’d never believe.”

“Like what?”

“Like cars, to drive us wherever we wanted to go.”

“On wheels?”

“With rubber tires. And we had a whole house for every family. And plenty to eat, with appliances to fix our food.”

“What’s a ‘plance’?”

Gran laughed. “Appliance,” she pronounced the word carefully. “Appliances were tools for a house. There were refrigerators for cooling our food to keep it from spoiling, and stoves to cook our meals. We had tools that would chop our food, or mix it up so we could bake cakes and pies in our ovens.”

The old woman’s fingers worked quickly, easing tangles from the child’s hair. She traced a part down the middle of her granddaughter’s head and tossed half the tresses to the front, across Cam’s chest.

“Tell me about the water,” Cam said.

“Oh yes. There was water, running from faucets in the kitchens and bathrooms—water to wash our food—and the dishes we ate on. We had water to wash ourselves. Even our hair!”

“You washed hair?”

“My yes. There’s nothing that feels so fine as a soft and silky head of clean hair.”

“And you could wash every day?”

“Every single day. Twice if we wanted to.”

“What about the flushes?”

“Our fancy toilets? Every family had one or two in their houses—special thrones for a privy. And you could flick the handle on the tank and flush your products down with swirling water.”

“Like magic.”

“It seems so now, little Cam. It didn’t seem magical to me then. When you have so much that is right at your fingertips, you get lazy. And you take it all for granted.”

“Like it will always be there?”

“Exactly. Like it was always there and always will be. Then something happens that shakes you awake and you realize how lucky you have been.”

Gran finished the second braid, knotted the grimy ends and tied a bit of twine around it.

“Tell me the story again, Gran. Tell me about how you lost my grandpa.”

Gran removed a polished stick from her own silver hair and shook her locks until they cascaded around her shoulders. “What—has Philip given you a day off?”

Cam grinned. “He’s off somewhere with the scouts. Tell me the story again.”

“About Grandpa Stefano?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. That story.” Gran combed her own hair, smoothed it into one long tress and twisted it to the top of her head. Holding it with one hand, she fished the polished stick from her worn skirt pocket and worked it through the twist until her hair was again secured neatly on top of her head. “I think you’ve heard this tale before. Where should I begin?”

“Where you always do.”

“Of course. It’s always best to begin at the beginning. Come with me, Cam. Let’s walk.”

Imagine the wasteland where Cam and her grandmother would walk. Then think of the huge wildfires we’ve seen each of the last two springs. Think of the erratic and unpredictable weather patterns. Think of the epidemic of earthquakes influenced by fracking procedures. We could be one, maybe two, generations from a life very different from what we now know. Our choices matter very much.

Vote, while you still can. Vote for a candidate who respects the voices of the little guys. If we can’t change our leadership, our landscape and our future could look very bleak.

Rolling Up the Sleeves of Hope

On June 9, 2013 By AnnIn Earth care, Letters to Septanna2 Comments

A few days ago, I attended the annual meeting of our state Interfaith Power and Light. The guest keynote speaker, founder of the national organization, was Rev. Sally Bingham of California. She delivered an inspirational message.

Key points included the notion that climate change is the most important and serious challenge facing this generation, and those to come. It is a spiritual and a moral issue. All faith traditions include tenets of stewardship for our God-given world. If our habits, our lifestyles, generate waste products which ultimately will destroy the basis of life as we know it, it is our moral responsibility, our sacred duty, to do something about it. In the Christian tradition, we must acknowledge that “What you do to even the least of these, you do to me.”

Creation care is a matter of faith. It is as important as love for our neighbors, and the mission of saving souls. For there will be no souls to save if we don’t protect our air and our water. Ultimately, another way to care about people is to care about the environment.

Climate skeptics suggest the threat is over-rated. What if they’re right? What if we clean up our act to stem a crisis that may never happen? At the very least, we’d accomplish some good things: our children would enjoy a future world where people could live healthier. Wealth would be more equitably distributed. Our air and water would not be for sale to the highest bidder, but would be clean and plentiful for all.

What if the environmentalists and climate scientists are right and we sit back and do nothing? We face a bleak future, one in which this lovely planet will no longer provide a home for humanity and countless other life forms that God created.

It makes a great deal of sense to act in a way that insures a future for life on Earth.

Bingham concluded her address with an invitation to say yes to the call as stewards of creation. “Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up,” she said. We are called to respond actively toward a vision of hope for our future. There’s a lot of work to do. Let’s get busy.

The Bridge

Tag: Climate change