Getting at the Roots: An Earth Day Reflection by Xochitl Alvizo

Last Monday on Earth Day I planted my little seeds (though I acknowledge Sara Wright’s point in her las post that every day is earth day!). I’m in a new apartment and don’t have the outdoor space I used to in my previous home. I live in a courtyard-facing apartment complex with a beautiful desert garden in the middle, but no outdoor space that the tenants are allowed to work in. I do, however, have a big, beautiful living room window that gets a lot of direct sunlight. For Earth Day, then, I started my little potted-plant garden. As I put together the tiny pots, pressed in the place for and placed the seeds, covered and watered them, I inevitably reflected on the magic of it all. The pots look empty except for the soil, and yet, I’m to expect lettuce from them in some weeks or months. A seeming impossibility, but it will happen—slow, but nonetheless, steady growth happens.

The little seeds now in place.
The apartment complex desert garden I see through my window.
Continue reading “Getting at the Roots: An Earth Day Reflection by Xochitl Alvizo”

Earth Day Reflection by Sara Wright

I awakened this morning to frozen raindrops hanging from trees – jeweled beads, snow capped hills, and a cacophony of spring songs – I was serenaded by robins, chickadees, phoebes, goldfinches, and nuthatch tweets as I walked out the door into the early morning sun. I listened for the cardinals, who for the moment were absent. It was cold! 28 degrees at the end of April speaks to anomalies, or more realistically, Climate Change.

Yesterday we had rain, and working in the still damp air is literally a healing experience. The fragrance is a combination of chemicals released by soil-dwelling bacteria, oils released from plants during dry spells and ozone created when lightning splits oxygen and nitrogen molecules that then turn into nitric oxide.

I dug in baby trees that I had rescued from the side of the road the day before. Salt kills tender cedar seedlings if the road crew misses slaughtering them. Around Maine trees are worthless except as an economically viable product, a heartbreaking reality for someone like me. Continue reading “Earth Day Reflection by Sara Wright”

A Love Poem for My Mother, On Earth Day by Candice Rose Valenzuela

Candice Rose Valenzuela teaches English Literature at Castlemont High School in East Oakland, California, and she has been teaching and organizing inner-city youth for the past eight years. She is currently pursuing a Masters in East-West Psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies, and desires to bring indigenous healing methodologies into teaching and learning in the inner-city.

I wrote this poem in observance of Earth Day, April 22nd 2014, and it was inspired by the work of Audre Lorde, Starhawk and Christine Hoff Kraemer in their discussion of the powerful erotic pulse underpinning our connection with ourselves and with all beings on Earth. 

as a child, i spent a lot of time wondering what love is.
and this was because

expressions of it around me were unclear, inconsistent, fleeting or unnamed

but mostly because no one

could teach me to see

what they themselves were blind to.

this is for my Mother. To let her know I see.

Continue reading “A Love Poem for My Mother, On Earth Day by Candice Rose Valenzuela”