Cheryl Leutjen's Blog

Learning from the LEGO Movie. “Everything is awesome Everything is cool when you’re part of a team. Everything is awesome, when we’re living our dream.”** I woke to discover the Lego Movie theme song had hijacked the normally blank spaces of my morning mind. Horrors. As pernicious as “It’s a Small World,” I cannot silence it, no matter how fiercely I reject the premise. Everything is decidedly NOT awesome right now. The jarring discord between that cheery refrain and the stark reality of this post-democratic dystopia pains me like cat claws on a chalkboard. If you’re blissfully free of this not-so-awesome earworm, I urge you not to Google it. I do take comfort in knowing that creator Andy Samberg actually apologized for its creation: “Yes, I do apologize for that. Especially to everyone out there with kids. That’s a hard row to hoe. But we didn’t write the hook, you know? We inherited it, and we just added some dumb raps.”*** I haven’t seen the LEGO Movie in exactly eleven eons–doesn’t 2014 sound that long ago now? So why, in these times of exalting the worst and jailing the rest of us, why is this saccharin song now my unwelcome […]

Reclaiming HOPE from the Rubble A friend in Missouri texts, “5000 homes in St Louis destroyed by tornadoes but FEMA defunding means no assistance.” Another friend with stage 4 cancer hopes for a clinical trial but worries about NIH grant defunding. A friend in West Virginia shares of farmers poised to lose everything because of canceled conservation grants. I have thoughts, but believe it or not, I am not up for a political rant today. I’m focusing on all the feel-good things because I refuse to give up my HOPE, along with my faith in basic humanity. I’m doing all the usuals for mental health: journal, meditate, walk, pray, and make crappy art. What’s giving me a real uplift is interviewing folks for the Saving OurSelves: Commun ities versus Eco-Apocalypse YouTube series I launched May 1st. Connecting with people who continue to do the work, no matter what awful things may happen is encouraging. As Heather McLeod of Northwest (Ontario) Climate Gathering told me: “We know what to do. Little of it is Federal. Almost all of it happens somewhere specific aka is local. And requires no remarkable skills or training. Grow Food. Clean up. Take care of one another. […]

When It’s Not All Cards and Sloppy Kisses. The night before Mother’s Day, I posted on Facebook that I was “gearing up for my day of sleeping in, receiving adulation and general sloth.” I did sleep in, by my definition, but still woke up long before my children stirred. As in recent years past, I patiently waited in bed, reading my book and enjoying the coffee my husband, David, brought me. When it came time to go to church, I got up and got dressed. “Aren’t you going to wake the kids up to go with you?” David asked. He knew I had given them three suggestions of Mother’s Day gifts, and Suggestion #1 was that they go to church with me. “No,” I said, “it’s not a ‘gift’ if I have to make them go.” On the way to church, tears slid down my cheeks as I recalled when they couldn’t wait to wake me up at the crack of dawn, eagerly presenting me with handmade cards and macaroni art and cold toast with too much jam. One year, my daughter even made a menu for me on which she had listed everything in the kitchen which she knew […]

Can Buy Nothing Groups Help Fill the Tariff Voids? Thinking about the empty store shelves we will soon see, I am feeling ever more grateful for my Buy Nothing group. I’ve received so much from my neighbors, from a tiny needle threader to a foldout couch for my office. Half my office is outfitted with things I received from my group. And some of the staples on my kitchen pantry shelves, too. I wrote my Buy Nothing members a note of gratitude today, thanking them for their generosity over the years. I closed with this plea: “As our usual supply chains become less reliable, I hope we all turn to each other for what we need, as much as we can. Consider taking a look around your place, your garage or storage shed. What could someone else be using right now? Let’s be here for each other even more in these chaotic times. Sometimes it’s not even the thing we’re giving that is so meaningful; it’s that someone cared enough about a neighbor to give it.” I used to cling to things that I might need “someday,” but later discovered, all too often, the things all moldy and moth-eaten. I’m less likely to […]

Celebrating the Least Among Us. Is it just me? What I keep hearing, seeing and foaming at the mouth about is the cult-like adoration of the few, the ones with extreme wealth and power, the ones who hold most of our wealth in their grubby LITTLE hands. Have you seen that? Yeah. I just read in Forbes that each person in the top 1% of the U.S. holds an average of about $14.85 million in wealth, while each in the bottom FIFTY PER CENT holds, on average, $19k. And, of course, many people have a lot less. So, I’ve been thinking about these guys – and I’m betting that most of them, quite coincidentally, I am sure, are men with bank accounts far bigger than their hearts, assuming they still have one. I’ve been wondering what do these uber-wealthy folks really contribute to society? Do they make life better for all of us or just themselves? Take a certain electric car company CEO, for example. (PLEASE, SOMEONE TAKE HIM). Sure, his companies have transformed the EV car market and satellite technology, but did he invent any of that? Or does he just write checks and fire people who disagree with […]

Back when I was writing Madness on the Brink of Eco-Apocalypse last year, I was mad, sad and apoplectic that we weren’t doing more to stanch the hemorrhaging of Earth’s dying life support systems. But I took hope by reporting on the positive work of so many groups showcased in the book —to inspire the rest of us to do more. Because the answers aren’t unknown; we truly lack only the will. I prayed that my book could help foster some momentum. Fast forward to April 2025. To say that I struggle to maintain that hopeful outlook now is an understatement akin to saying I am a bit fond of cheese. Witnessing the current federal administration pull funding for studies, fire scientists, and punish the universities where they work. . . well, let’s just say I’ve scheduled an appointment with my cardiologist to reconsider the dosage of my blood pressure meds. I nearly gave up on Earth Day this year. Me. I doubted I had the heart. Thankfully, I’d started recording a series of conversations with some of those groups featured in Madness for a new YouTube channel. The continued resolve and hopefulness I am hearing from these communities shames me out of my […]

From the Aftermath of the Los Angeles Fire Storms. “Be your own algorithm.” Imprinted on 70s era Dymo embossed tape, that slogan pops up in the promo reel at our local nonprofit movie theater, Vidiots. A place dedicated to both art and creating community, I’m thrilled this gem moved into my neighborhood just in time to help me process . . . . ::gestures wildly:: . . . whatever is happening right now. We go to Vidiots for creative therapy a lot, so much that I’d begun to tune out that promo reel. Until, that is, we sat in the darkened theater one evening last January as winds howled outside. We’d come to see The Porcelain War, a documentary by three artists (and their dog) torn between making art and making war to defend their homeland from Russia’s violent invasion. Two of those artists, Slava Leontyev and Anya Stasenko, and their dog, attended the screening and shared their personal reflections after the film. The angry roar just outside the theater walls provided an apt “it’s dangerous to be here” ambiance for their harrowing tale. This was January 7, 2025, the day after Congress certified the election of our new king […]

Wrangling Mad Thoughts with a Very Ripe Banana It’s been a while since I’ve posted, since I’ve written a complete sentence, really. It’s not that I don’t have thoughts. It’s more that they’ve multiplied so furiously, like fruit flies,* their frenzied copulating, flitting and buzzing rendering my one basic skill — transferring words to page — an elusive impossibility. This morning, I put a very ripe banana on my writing desk, in the hopes of enticing the furious fliers to settle long enough for me to pen a few words. Long enough to say, at the very least, I’m still here. If only I could remember how sentences work. I look over my attempts at writing from the past few days and find such gems as, “to say whatever is happening right now ____ would be a gross an understatement.” Like the elusive fruit flies, I can see what should fill in the blank, but I can’t swat fast enough to smack it down on the page. I do know this: to say that putting my thoughts and feelings into words is a struggle right now would be a gross understatement. And yet, writing is my best therapy, and oh […]

Words of Wisdom from an Earth-Loving Canadian Witnessing the rising contempt for the values I deem sacrosanct, and the dismantling of institutions that we, the People, charged to uphold them, devastates me. And that’s an understatement of the “the Titanic went a bit off course” variety. How about you? Good thing I’ve practiced up for moments like these. When something as simple as finding a phone book on your doorstep sends you into a white-hot rage, a mindfulness practice is as essential as a can of spinach is for Popeye the Sailor’s courage. Translation for younger folks: “… a mindfulness practice is as essential as Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir, is for unlocking his super powers.” I believe I even wrote a book, Love Earth Now, about laying a strong personal foundation for weathering the storms — both physical and metaphorical. When I find myself shaking with white-hot rage, which now happens about as frequently as I pee (often), I lean into my meditation and prayer practice even more. I attack the elliptical machine at the gym with a fervor I usually reserve for cheese dip at a Superbowl party. And I reach out to like-hearted friends, desperate to remember that I […]

I’ve been thinking of this 1976 movie, Network, for a while. I even referenced the most famous quote in my new book because it summed up my own fury and frustration, the feelings that led me to write said book, MADNESSS on the Brink of Eco-Apocalypse. Imagine my shock, then, to discover that my local movie theater is showing this movie tomorrow night (January 17 at 7pm)! Vidiots has been there for us so many times, but this is above and beyond. I ❤️ @vidiots I have to go to that screening. Especially after the week we have had here in Los Angeles County. Climate change set up the “perfect” storm for us, from the unprecedented rains of the past two years—which spawned so much more vegetation than usual, to the utter drought of this winter that dried up so much of that foliage—coupled with the stronger than usual, hurricane-force winds. Anyone thinking Los Angeles just “wasn’t prepared,” tell me: just how does one prepare for 100mph winds shooting fire across three football fields per minute. THREE HUNDRED YARDS A MINUTE. And I thought I was MAD back when I was writing this book, months before these latest disasters—because yes, […]