ancestors

The Emerald – ND #143

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Sky Bridge (to our ancestors?) – Photo: L. Weikel

The Emerald

It’s been almost exactly two months since I discovered a podcast that I’m excited to share with you. It’s a wonderful respite from my usual fare, which runs the gamut of legal analysis of current affairs and politics to astrology. Instead of any of those topics, The Emerald covers subjects that make me smile and nod, and occasionally gasp at the resonance with what I know in my heart to be true.

I took a podcasting course two years ago, and then re-took it again this past fall. No, I haven’t been holding out on you. The idea remains, but finding the internal bandwidth to create it on a consistent basis eludes me. For now, anyway.

But the course itself was wonderful, both technically and in the fact that it introduced me to a cadre of people I never would’ve met had we not shared the aspiration to give literal voice to our passions. I hung out in a couple of groups self-selected for our shared interests, and it was in one of those that I received a recommendation to check out The Emerald Podcast.

An Irony

In spite of the fact that I took a podcasting course – twice, no less –I actually listened to very, very few, especially at the time. I don’t want to spend my time in nature with AirPods in my ears. I still resist shutting out the voices of the wind and birds, the stomping of deer hooves and accompanying snorts, the songs of the peepers, tree frogs, crickets and locusts. (Yes, I was surprised the other day to hear locusts so early in the summer.)

I listen to more podcasts now, though I still find myself only listening part-way to a lot of them. The Emerald, though, is different. The creator, Joshua Michael Schrei, has both a delivery and depth of knowledge that I respect, enjoy, and am inspired by.

Yearning to Share

A real plus for me has been the fact that I discovered The Emerald only recently – but it began back in 2019. So I have four years’ worth of episodes I’ve been slowly working my way through, savoring them bit by bit.

But the episode that captured my attention and engendered my devotion was this one: Animism is Normative Consciousness. It’s a rebroadcast (May 9, 2023) of one of his earlier episodes. I’m not entirely sure what possessed him to go back and add to it, apparently tweaking it from its original broadcast (which I believe I’m only an episode or two away from reaching). But as it happens, the remastered episode landed in my email inbox on May 9th of this year and its title kept nagging at me until I surrendered. All I can say is that, when I finally listened, it made my heart beat a little faster and all my cells sing, “Yes!”

So, my friends. I want the opportunity to make your hearts sing in exclamation, too. Give this a try. You’ll catch your breath and know the truth of what you’re hearing. And hopefully, you’ll understand why I’ve been yearning to share this with you.

ND #143

Pandemic Journal – Day 755

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My Pandemic Journal – Photo: L. Weikel

Shortly into this downhill slide our country is experiencing, I felt in my bones that something wasn’t right. Indeed, I wrote a post about what I saw unfolding in our country that, upon re-reading it for the first time this evening, has me sort of wondering at the sad accuracy of my screed back at the beginning of March (almost nine months to the day ago). And while I was finishing up the last few pages of my journal at the time, I actually started a new one on the 7th of April – and eerily enough, declared on the very first page that it would probably end up being my “Pandemic Journal.”

To quote myself and my inelegant observation that day: “The shitstorm has already started.”

Our Unique Experiences

I suspect every person who keeps a journal has some idea in the back of their head that someone, someday, may find value in the description of our mundane lives and thoughts, our descriptions of what we encounter in our daily lives, and how we perceive the slow steamroller of life’s events. It’s intriguing to me to consider that what I take for granted as everyday normality will someday read as a curiosity. Quaint, even. But that’s ok. That feels like a normal evolution of consciousness. It’s the way we are.

I nevertheless wish I could read the musings of my own ancestors. Would I find their thoughts and innermost contemplations quaint? Or would I find them even more profound than I sometimes fancy my own? (I’d like to think I would.)

Cool Opportunity

Anyway, just today I discovered this very cool project being undertaken by the University of Connecticut. It’s called the Pandemic Journaling Project. I encourage you to check it out. No matter whether you’ve contracted Covid-19 or not, lost or suffered through scary times with a loved one, lost your job, had your opportunity to contribute to society multiplied, been exhausted as a healthcare worker, organized the less fortunate for safer working conditions, or found yourself staring at four walls all day wondering who you are and what this scourge has done to your life…here is a place to document it.

Someone, someday, may discover something remarkable about our experience of the infamous 2020. We may display hues of resiliency we never dreamed possible. We may exhibit compassion or despair in equal measures, only to be buoyed by the tiniest gesture of kindness coming from a totally unexpected source.

Documenting the large and small experiences of living through these times is a gift we can all give to our progeny. If you check out this site, you will see there are a number of ways you can make a contribution. Verbally, by the written word, privately, or allow your thoughts and experiences to be shared.

Tomorrow I will share with you the blow I suffered with respect to my Pandemic Journal. It’s taken me all these months to share, but maybe now is the time.

(T-356)

Total Lunar Eclipse – Day Seventy

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Photos by L. Weikel

Total Lunar Eclipse

I don’t have anything to say about tonight’s astronomical event that hasn’t been said a million times over.

Standing outside in the single digit air, wind whipping through the bare boughs of the ash, black walnut, and maple trees, I’m startled by the cracking emanating from some of them. I’m grateful that we only had to endure tons of rain the past few days, otherwise the weight of what would have been snow would almost certainly be snapping those boughs instead of stressing them to their crackling brink.

The wind is whipping, though. My wind chimes clatter and clang themselves into a frenzy. My fingers numb up within moments.

Being a fan of Mother Nature and always game to either stay up really late or get up at the crack of dawn (preferring the staying up late than the getting up early, if I’m honest) to snag a first-hand experience, I never fail to feel a connection back millennia, to ancestors who were equally (if not vastly more) fascinated by the machinations of our celestial neighbors. Honestly, I almost literally feel those generations rippling back through the soles of my feet, all of us standing rooted to the Earth, staring wide-eyed into the vastness above.

I doubt it took them very long to figure out that their world was not coming to an end when the moon turned blood red, for it’s not all that rare of an occurrence. Especially when there was no tv and the entertainment was the stars, planets, and constellations.

Total eclipses are rare enough to be remarkable, though. For instance, I’m pretty sure tonight’s is the only such eclipse in 2019, at least visible to North America. But what did they think when they occurred? More interesting to me, what did they feel? A connection backward in time? Forward? Could they feel me reaching back to them from now?

It’s undeniable that there is something profoundly primal and humbling about witnessing tonight’s lunar hide-n-seek in Earth’s shadow. We are but specks in the grand scheme our galaxy, the Milky Way.

And when you realize that we know there are billions of galaxies in our universe…

**Poof**

Mind. Blown.

(T-1041) Photo by L. Weikel