Kathleen > Recent Status Updates

Rewarding but wow, still a heavy and painful read. To return to: 1. Life fixes things. Bring life - plants, people, animals, microbes - and it’s probably climate friendly; 2. No, soil is not sentient. Honoring traditional practices doesn’t mean nature is God; 3. I’m glad you “made your voice heard.” Sadly - like when “breaking your silence” - no one hears who isn’t listening

Mary Annaïse Hegler brings the same tone to her essay that I appreciated in Johnston’s: there’s something grounding in acknowledging we are beyond the point of no consequence. But that makes every little thing we can save all the more important to live for

Admittedly I’m always happy when someone interrupts me reading this anthology 😅 So damn serious. I am enjoying finding climate poets, though! Added Hirshfield to my To Read list

Listening to this during a long run was probably more than I could digest at one time 😅 Idea that stuck out was by Pierre-Louis: all our stories assume humans are bad for the environment. Like, Earth would be better off without us, and our job is to minimize the damage. What could we change about our mental health / motivation as activists to develop a symbiotic narrative instead? 🤔

Jack Newfield is my 2026 muse: « Compassion without anger can become pity. Knowledge without anger stagnantes into cynicism. Anger improves lucidity, persistance, audacity, and memory. »

Kind of a relief to take a prophetic break from Kings / Chronicles. In a way, I love how imperfect Jonah is. He’s a prophet! But he’s so hard-headed about hating the Assyrians he wants them all to die to prove his own power of foresight. Deeply flawed people can still be conduits for wisdom and miracles

Katharine Hayhoe is legend as a climate communicator. She delivers here: talking effectively about climate change is choosing how to express a universal issue in terms of an individual’s personal values. Plus, haunting: « We are learning all the old things, newly shined and numbered. » - Anne Haven McDonnell

Interesting insight by Thomas that « Save the Ocean » may be more politically palatable than « Save the Planet. » Admittedly I ask the same question Gunn-Wright poses rhetorically - Is the Green New Deal just a a progressive omnibus? - but I downloaded the bill to read anyway because she’s right that unified values preclude actionable plans

They have said the only reason there are Books 1 & 2 in the Old Testament was because there was a physical limit to how long a scroll could be. Seems right. Kings 1 ends abruptly in tumult, where I expect the next book will pick up. Like Judges all over again

Yea I would work for Heather McTeer Toney. She sounds boss. Harjo’s reflections on eligibility for elected office were also thoughtful

The work Mary Anne Hitt’s led on the US Beyond Coal campaign is really impressive 👏🏻

“ Showing up creates the possibility for something different to happen.” - Abbie Dillen, President, Earthjustice

Hard to read militant essays like Naomi Klein’s when it would seem “the moment” has passed. More like a 20 Mile March (HT Jim Collin’s) than a moment. But Klein is right is that it’s in imagining a future we want that we keep going, finding the means as they arise, regardless of the context

Todd has launched us straight into the Fall of Troy, written by a single author 1000 years after Homer’s compilation of The Iliad. In the narrator’s words… Greek fan fiction. 😆 This translation is more archaic than what we recently listened to, so it took some time to adjust. Odd accent choices for character voices 😅

Looked up Adrienne Maree Brown after her brief chapter on emergent strategy. Still utopian but in a more scientific way? Reminiscent of when Carlos Rovelli on quantum physics starts to remind you of a philosopher

What do you mean The Iliad ends without describing the fall of Troy?? This is just The Epic Tale of That Time Achilles Threw a Fit and Didn’t Murder and Then Did Murder Lots of Trojans. Gods Enjoyed

In which we forgot we were in a war, took a break for a bit, and fulfilled all of Achilles’ melodramatic desires for a memorial pageant for his boy-toy Patroclus. Minor subplots for cheating / winning / prizes in contests

Okay, inking the definitive clues definitely helps you to not accidentally erase them when puzzling through options 😆

This section requires more concentration… large grid! But seems more mechanical - just follow the x’s! Guessing the false statement was more ambiguous. Still loving that hilarious mini-narratives though 🕵🏻‍♀️

“King Ray” and “King Jerry” are the opposing monarchs of Judah and Israel?? JESUS WEPT 😫

I attended a Yawanawa Singing Circle hosted by a German medicine woman in Kenya. She acknowledged that neither she nor her (native) teachers knew the meaning of the words they sang, but were preserving the tradition for its emotional resonance. Which I read as, « we hope that someday we’ll understand better why it feels significant to do this » Cool mystery! Not a basis for running modern organizations

The essay written by the forester was, to me, more compelling than the long excerpt (from Mitchell’s book?) in advocating for fresh paradigms on which to base our relationship with nature. Indigenous knowledge is incomplete in the same way that scientific knowledge is incomplete; deifying one in response to historical deification of the other does not somehow achieve balance.

I don’t usually make notes on specific chapters, but in my mind Rehoboam vs. Jeroboam is oddly reminiscent of Christophe vs. Pétion dividing Haiti. Christophe always believed there could be a reunion. But also enslaved people for his building projects, sowing the seeds of his own destruction

Infantry must be psychologically exhausted from the whiplash of this battle. 😅 Is suspension of disbelief that Patroclus’ armor disappears, or that his body remains intact after hours of two armies trying to tug it in opposite directions? Achilles pities himself after sending his best friend to die as proxy to spite a king who took (then returned) a girl who he’s never mentioned since 🤷🏻‍♀️

So far, this collection is very 2020-coded. Back when we believed that naming all specific interest groups was enough to protect them from the tyranny of the majority. But we could be in for some moving poetry / prose

“To become visionary requires translating intangibles… this is where most companies fail to make the grade… The single most important point to take away from this book is the critical importance of creating tangible mechanisms aligned to preserve the core and stimulate progress.”

Forgive me for my impatience with the incredulity the authors treat having a founding manifesto. I mean... any religious person realizes having a purpose is the reason people get out of bed in the morning. Still, given the original publication date, it's reasonable to consider that this was a significant finding at the time. Nowadays, you have saturation of ideals that are greenwashing for corporate greed

This is breezy reading if you've already read Good to Great. Some theories proposed as speculative here (charismatic CEOs are negatively correlated with long-term performance) are empirically tested in Good to Great. What's puzzling so far: the desire to build a company is, in it of itself, is worth building one for. Legacy for the sake of legacy is worth a lifetime of work? Hmmm

I will admit I laughed at loud at the “media coverage of the hatching egg” metaphor. “Egg achieves sudden breakthrough! Becomes chicken overnight!” 😆 🐣

Well, I’m going to be underwhelmed if this whole Flywheel concept is just: “diligently continue to celebrate and share incremental wins”