Are you wondering why you haven’t seen many posts here lately about what’s going on at the farm? Have we packed it in, rehomed the animals, started a new chapter? Short answer: no.
Farm life is still occurring – but in the context of current events, it almost feels wrong to post about hatching chicks, broodies sitting on nests, wildcrafting from the land’s bounty, slipping in mud and landing on a feed bucket (and deforming it a bit, lol)…and I think it’s because there are events occurring that make my mundanity seem relatively insignificant. I want to post about the incredible beauty of the pre-dawn firmament, the Pleiades glowing overhead and Venus shining like a beacon just behind the towering silver maple…but, then, I think that this may merely distract from what should really occupy our collective attention.
We recently saw Neowise, the comet, when it was visible in our area. It was a once-in-a-lifetime event, one we will never have a chance to see again. It was breathtaking and humbling at the same time to see the traveler, seemingly still in the night sky, knowing it would not return for another 6,800 years. And my thoughts returned to the crises at hand, the most pressing of which is the very real possibility of extinction due to what is clearly at least human-accelerated climate change. What will the Earth look like when Neowise passes by it next time? Will it look like Venus, theorized to have once looked like Earth until a runaway greenhouse effect burned off its atmosphere? Will there be no one here to gaze at the night sky and feel the joy of seeing shooting stars (like the Perseids, still visible now) and the craters on the Moon?
I want to live in a fair, just, and polite society where citizens are concerned about more than just taking care of their own desires and needs, where there are truly opportunities for success and fulfillment for everyone, where decency is the minimum standard and where the majority of people aspire to be better than merely decent. I’m shocked that here and now, it’s clear that we’ve slipped so far from where I thought we had advanced, that self-absorption and self-protection are more common than selflessness or even kindness (perhaps the human condition?), that so many are unwilling to think for themselves…and I believe that social media has had a role in this social regression.
Believing as I do in social media’s culpability in delivering society to this sordid place, I struggle with whether I should continue to participate in social media at all…and while blogging isn’t considered “social media”, I sometimes even question my own motives for blogging and whether it makes sense to continue. With these issues, both existential and prosaic, whirling around in my head and demanding reflection, it can be a mighty internal struggle to post anything at all.
Yes, GC, I am an idealist. Regardless of what I’ve seen and experienced, I think humans can do and be better, that I don’t have to accept that “it is what it is”, and that enough people care and are willing to make a difference. If I’m right, future people will gaze into the night sky when Neowise appears again and their sense of awe will connect them to people who’ve done the same for thousands of years before them.
Don’t worry – farm posts will still happen. The daily goings-on here help keep me maintain perspective, and I hope you find them enjoyable, entertaining, and/or educational, too.