Tag Archives: Climate Catastrophe

Where I’m Finding Inspiration for the Year Ahead

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December 30 always feels like a hyphen to me. A little gap. It is the space between the past year and the next. Traditionally, it is a day of reflection for me. I look for inspiration for the year ahead. Not resolutions. That’s not my thing. I’m looking for a bit of a North Star, if you will. Something to guide me in 2024.

Inspiration can come to me during meditation. But meditation doesn’t always help when I’m looking for what to DO. That’s because meditation is about being, not doing.

Often, I need more. When that happens, I’ll pull a word out of the little bag of words I keep. Or I’ll pull a tarot card and think about what it means in the context of whatever problem I face. Sometimes, I’ll play “Bingo” with any number of books I keep handy that offer brief inspirations and insights, which means I’ll open to one random page and see what it offers me.

St Roger of Cannae

St Roger of Cannae. Source: Wikipedia

Today, I looked up which saint has their feast day on December 30 and discovered Saint Roger of Cannae. This is a surprising thing for me, an ex-Catholic, to do. But inspiration can come from anywhere. According to Wikipedia, (which admits their page on Saint Roger is lacking detail) he was the Bishop of Cannae in a region of what is now southern Italy. The region was destroyed by Normans in 1083. Little is known about him. Even saintoftheday.com has little to go on. And my own little reference guide to saints, Saints: A Visual Guide does not even list him.

Saint Roger is sort of a forgotten saint, I guess. Little known. Known just enough. That appeals to me. Fame would be a burden, I think.

“Roger contributed to the moral and material reconstruction of the ancient city of Apulia, supporting his fellow citizens with the consolations of faith and the material aid” after it was destroyed, says Wikipedia. Saintoftheday.com writes that after Cannae was sacked, “Where some saw only destruction, Roger saw an opportunity to create an even more welcoming and compassionate community.”

Bingo. That’s exactly the kind of inspiration I’m looking for today.

When I think back to the beginning of 2020, I thought building a better community was the possibility that the pandemic offered us. It was horrible, yes, but it also showed us important things we could be better at. I remember that first week after planes stopped and cars stopped and everyone stayed home, I went for a very solitary and quiet walk down to Lake Ontario. The sky was SO BLUE. I hadn’t seen a sky like that since I was a kid. The pollution was clearing. I thought, “Oh! Look. Look how fast we could fix what ails us.” Sometime later, I stood in awe as a ten point buck walked in the forest along the Humber River. Where had he been all this time? I saw foxes. And turtles. And so many birds. In Toronto, a huge and sprawling city.

Sigh. I was so naive. I admit I have felt very bitter about the lost opportunity. I haven’t always taken it well. Like many of us, I’ve been adrift in conflicting emotion. The pandemic challenges our relationships as we negotiate our different responses. I feel let down by my fellow humans. As a person with serious health challenges, I often feel abandoned as the world goes “back to normal” and opportunities to participate more safely evaporate. Ableism is what makes my life harder, not mask wearing.

Anyway, although those hopes I had for a better world are mostly dashed, reading about Saint Roger, I felt a little jump with the words “create an even more welcoming and compassionate community.” I realize that is still the goal.

Fortunately, more opportunities are right in front of us. Climate change will test us even more than Covid. If Covid was the quiz, climate catastrophe is the final exam. It’s not one any of us can pass without each other’s help. We need a study group.* And, of course, the pandemic and climate are connected. Failure is almost certain, but how we fail matters.

I am not a patient person. And I am notoriously blunt. It puts people off. I’m going to try to do better. Oh dear. That sounds ominously like a resolution.

A more compassionate community is possible. Even if we are being sacked by the Normans. Whoever they were. I’ll keep Saint Roger with me in 2024.

*Subscribe and follow along with The Grim Reader posts, which is a kind of book club of one about all the climate change books I’m reading, and, I realize, a kind of study group too. Comments on posts are always welcome.

Oh My Heart—And Yours

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I recently received inevitable bad news. Twentyish years ago, when I was treated for cancer, I had chemotherapy and radiation. Everyone thinks chemo is hard (and it is) but radiation is also a very big deal. Radiation affected my heart and lungs. I have worked hard over the years to keep my cardio strength up. But I can’t keep ahead of it anymore. Radiation has calcified my aortic heart valve. I will undergo open heart surgery in the spring to replace it.

(I’m begging you, please don’t send medical advice.)

I’m ok. I’ve always known this was a possibility. I plan on living through it. I’m grateful to all the people who gave me this last twenty years. I got to see my wonderful child grow up and become the most superb adult.

And let’s face it, when I’m given that long list of side-effects and asked if I understand, what I hear is “Do I want to die now or later?” My answer is always, “Later.” I have a feeling I’m about to sign off on another bunch of those.

I have things I say about this turn of events. “The chickens have come home to roost,” is one. When I’m feeling slightly bitter, I might say, “Cancer: the gift that keeps on giving.” And now, a new one via my friend Marnie, whose parter has had open heart surgery twice: “It sounds dramatic, but remember, for the surgeon, it’s their Tuesday morning.” Good perspective. Thanks for that, Marnie.

I will stay in the hospital for seven to ten days. There are a lot of things to worry about and contracting covid shouldn’t be one of them. Currently, there is a mask mandate for hospital workers in my jurisdiction, but who knows if it will still exist in the spring.

I honestly don’t know what kind of monster would visit a cardiac ICU without a mask on. Or any part of a hospital.

Can you imagine having that covid cough after your sternum has been cracked open? I can’t.

This is where you come in.

I hear people lamenting the state of the world. It is lamentable. They ask, “What can I do?”  Whatever the issue is that you are lamenting, the answer is to take action. Action (hopefully informed action) fends off depression, for one thing. It’s great for that. It gives you a sense of control and gets you out of your own head, often because you are helping other people.

If you are concerned about the suffering and sickness all around you, the first and easiest action you can take to lessen it is to wear a mask. I’m going to say something harsh here. Get ready. If you are not willing to wear a mask, take a hard look at yourself. You really don’t care about the sickness and suffering all around you.

I cannot think of a situation that is not made worse by the pandemic and that would not be eased if SARS-C0V-2 were brought under control. Palestinians are getting covid while being bombed to near oblivion. But if genocide is your goal, covid is your helper. Climate disasters are made worse by people getting covid. Any illness or weakness you have lurking in your body is made worse by this vascular disease that can affect every organ in your body, including your brain. The decimation of your immune system means you will be sick more often. These are all known things. Get your head out of the sand and do some reading.

I’ve been wearing a mask since the beginning. It’s part of my life now. It is my normal. It is me, living with covid.

I am no longer willing to cut people with privilege and means any slack on this. If you are unaware of the criminal obfuscation going on around the airborne nature of this disease by public health and our so called leaders, it is because you don’t want to be aware of it. That’s on you. I wash my hands of you (knowing that hand-washing doesn’t do much to stop covid.) And if you are one of those public health people or alleged leaders, start doing your job. Start with distributing free masks. Then work on cleaning indoor air in public spaces you are responsible for.

I’ll still be active here. I’ll continue to talk about covid, about this new foray into the heart of me, and I’ll carry on with The Grim Reader. The pandemic and covid are conjoined twins of disaster. It’s important we keep trying our best.

And for those of you who will newly mask or mask again, thank you. For those who never stopped, thank you. We are all connected. We can’t ever forget that.

Travelling in Troubling Times

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Fires near Kelowna BC. Photo Credit: The Canadian Press.

British Columbia, the province in which I live, has just issued fire-zone travel bans in response to unprecedented wildfires. Evacuations are underway. Non-emergency vehicles are not needed on the roads while people try to escape to somewhere else.

I wonder: how long will any of us be travelling anymore?

I am disinclined to fly anywhere anymore. At least not for pleasure. (But seriously, the pleasure of flying ended a long time ago. Cramped, uncomfortable seats, intolerable security lines, unexplained delays, and so much more have made flying an experience to get through rather than one to enjoy.) For me, the end of masking made flying dangerous to my health. It’s a grand opportunity to catch SARS-CoV-2. A recent study found over 80% of US flights had Omicron RNA in the wastewater, and the number of people coughing or otherwise visibly ill on the two flights I have taken since the start of the pandemic easily convinced me that flying is a bad idea for me unless absolutely necessary.

I took those two flights wearing a respirator and carrying a personal air purifier.

Me, waiting for a flight in November 2022. Funny/Not funny story. I was in the Air Canada Lounge and this woman not 15 feet away from me was having her snack and complaining to her friend that she didn’t even know why she was eating because she couldn’t taste anything. She said, ”Isn’t that weird?” No. Not so much weird as it is SARS-C0V-2. I moved to the other side of the lounge, where, likely, someone else had it too.

By 2019 standards, I looked ridiculous. By pandemic standards, I look just fine, at least to me. (Although I also look disastrously tired in this photo. It had been a long and difficult trip. And I can tell you, people stared.)

But what has really landed me in my own personal no-fly zone is the climate crisis. One of the half dozen or so truly impactful things I can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to stop flying, or at least stop flying except when absolutely necessary.

What constitutes absolutely necessary? For me, the two air travel trips I have taken since the start of the pandemic were to prevent looming family crises. The thing is, we’ve come of age at a time when it is typical to live far away from family, and I do. Air travel made it possible to live like this and still be involved. Sometimes, I will have to travel by air if we want to be in touch on vital family matters. For me, I have decided this is necessary.

If I’m going, if I’m going to burn up all that carbon, I’ll make the absolute most of it. I combined the first trip with a book tour. To be clear, I would not have taken the book tour to Toronto if there also hadn’t been important family matters to attend to.

A vacation with air travel is a whole other thing. I can’t justify it anymore.

This summer, my partner and I drove our hybrid vehicle on our vacation as we camped and visited friends. Nothing is perfect, you know? Driving is better than flying. But it’s not great. There’s no holier than thou going on here. (One of my new favourite expressions is ”granolier than thou.”) I am by no means the person who lives an exemplary life. Like all of us, I’m struggling to learn how to live in our new pandemicene era. I’m just sharing one of my own personal decisions, a judgement I made for myself—not for others.

It’s a privilege to travel in so many ways, one which I acknowledge and am grateful to have had. I am giving up a privilege. I’m not giving up clean water. But it’s also not like giving up turnips, which I do not like. That would be easy to do. I’m giving up possibility. I’m giving up something with positive associations. It’s been a long journey to first recognize and then deal with the new negative associations. And the airline industry hasn’t helped. I would get daily offers from Air Canada and Aeroplan in my inbox. I finally unsubscribed.

And what about driving? Some of the areas of BC that we travelled through by car this summer are now, just a few weeks later, ablaze. Our road trip did not help. I’m grappling with that. Earlier this summer, I read a news story about planes full of tourists continuing to land in Greece even though the country was in a state of emergency because of wildfires. A sister of a friend is flying to Maui in September. It just feels bad to me. It feels bad for me. It is not something I would do. Again, I make that judgement for myself. I’m not saying no one should ever go to Maui or Greece again. They depend on tourism. Or at least they have until now.

Now it seems they need their resources for themselves. Last November, we drove through the region where Lytton is, and there were signs asking people not to visit. Of course, we did not go there. I get it. No one needs a bunch of lookie-loos. People need to grieve, to regroup, to kick the ashes. And they don’t need me trying to buy a sandwich while they do it.

So, for now, rather than travelling in troubling times, I’ll be staying close to home. I’ll be revelling in the joys of the here and now, in the small pleasures of my glorious neighbourhood. That’s not anything to be upset about.