An environment is characterized by its society, the area, and all of its inhabitants.  All of the characters in All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki, have very distinct identities that were transformed by many different aspects of their lives.

Princess Jefferson

Your Role As a Seed

            “I don’t want to be a vegetable.” (Ozeiki p.352). No one wants to be a vegetable, still and dependent upon others for survival, but everyone wants to be a seed. A seed that can grow to be whatever it desires to be. A seed that with a little love and patience can grow into the world’s tallest tree or strongest earthly object. A seed can be anything that takes the form of life. Mother nature is unique. She gives every seed a task, and every seed must find its way to fulfill that task.

I almost started crying when we watched Deaf Jam becaues the poetry was so beautiful and powerful. I love the concept of bringing slam poetry and Deaf poetry together. I was at first weirded out that they were only focusing on the one girl, but I understand now! 

As, I was reading Oreskes, and Conway's Novel, " The Collapse of Western Civilization", I began to think back to the "Sixth Extinction", by Elizabeth Kolbert. I have never been a person of nature because it was not a value that my parents had instilled in me, nor was it a topic i chose to eduate myself on. I possess within me a guilt so deep for what I cannot change that i sometimes, turn my head and focus more on the things that I can. This book tells me how wrong this is. This book as devastating as the facts were, said to me, stop waiting for someone else to fix the problem. What can you do Princess to ensure that Earth and its inhabitants both microscropic and cellular can be sustained?

“Anachronistic Encounters”:

Cross-Temporal Touch and the Expansive Present in Beloved

Introduction

A quote Anne asked me to post:

"You feel your whiteness properly at the American border. Most of the time being white is an absence of problems. The police don’t bother you so you don’t notice the police not bothering you. You get the job so you don’t notice not getting it. Your children are not confused with criminals. I live in downtown Toronto, in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in one of the most open cities in the world, where multiculturalism is the dominant civic value and the inert virtue of tolerance is the most prominent inheritance of the British empire, so if you squint you can pretend the ancient categories are dissipating into a haze of enlightenment and intermarriage.

Not at the border."

I really liked this short essay on how our history would be viewed by someone from the distant future. I thought e was spot on on the fact that America would have a leader that does not believe in climate change and a congress that would follow suit. I believe this book is suppose to be a warning of what could really happen on earth if we continue down our current path. We probabaly will follow it all the way through. We are a stubborn and ignorant species that enjoys its luxeries.

"Indeed, the most startling aspect of this story is just how much these people knew, and how unable they were to act upon what they knew."(Oreskes, Conway 2)

I can see how scientists trying to react for environmental issues, but economists and entrepreneurs view the issues as not crucial enough to sacrifice economy. The cost is huge, and the action has to be done early. No one can see how the exact future will be, so the procrastination gives them the illusion that they can keep doing what they are doing now, and the upheaval would never descend. Finally their hesitation and indulgence resulted in the collapse of Western Civilization.

The Collapse of Western Civilization is a very factual sounding book. It speaks about many global environmental historic events In a scientific way. For me, quite frankly I didn't really notice it was speaking from a distant future for a little while. Once I realized it was based in the future it became a little more interesting but similar to All Over Creation felt forced in some aspects with factual information. Although the book sci-fi, it doesn't really feel like it because I really can't speak to whether the facts were real or not and what was based on true events if any.

From Terry Tempest Williams--

It is morning. I am mourning.
And the river is before me.

I am a writer without words who is struggling to find them.

I am holding the balm of beauty, this river, this desert, so vulnerable, all of us.

I am trying to shape my despair into some form of action, but for now, I am standing on the cold edge of grief.

We are staring at a belligerent rejection of change by our fellow Americans who believe they have voted for change.

The seismic shock of a new political landscape is settling.