We are indebted to faithful DP correspondent Janet Coster, co-author of the deeply revelatory The Lure of the Ring, for sending us two quotes from Joanna Macy, as relayed from Bill Plotkin’s Nature and the Human Soul.
We further relay the first quote below, to be followed by the second next week. Image added by DP.


ALLISON SAAR, HADES D.W.P. (2016)

Next week: Widening Circles.
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Leave a comment | tags: Allison Saar, Bill Plotkin, extinction rebellion, Janet Coster, joanna macy, Lure of the Ring | posted in bearings, buoys, DP
What can art do in the face of the unfolding climate crisis? This simple question haunts the editorial offices of DP like an angry ancestor.
James Berger, author of the excellent After the End, offers a few helpful insights in an interview that first appeared a month or so before Covid 19; we relay a reprise below, with images from the now dismantled Banksy Dismaland.







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Leave a comment | tags: after the end, dismaland, James berger | posted in bearings, DP, riptides
OK, now that we have your full attention: surely the time has come, for the thousandth time, to delete your Facebook account.
Listing the reasons would consume a year’s worth of DP, yet we are grateful to a DP correspondent for alerting us to a powerfully concise summary in the Opinion pages of the NYT, written by the ever-lucid Jamelle Bouie.
Excerpts below, with images and captions added by DP.


FROM THE RED PILL TO THE RED BUTTON


FAREWELL TO THE ZUCKED THUMB

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Leave a comment | tags: facebook toxic, jamelle bouie, toxic social media | posted in bearings, DP, riptides
As wildfires continue their hungry devastation across California and Oregon, we have been re-reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a spare yet powerful novel that we have always thought of as an anticipatory documentary narrative, describing a near future now in the process of presenting itself.
A favorite passage:


NOTHING TO SEE
And the closing passage:

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Leave a comment | tags: climate emergency, Cormac mccarthy, the road, wildfires | posted in bearings, buoys, DP
Now comes a trio of statements released in opposition to yet another spasm of human supremacist violence, this time in the shape of fish farm legislation promoted by an ecocidal administration under cover of Covid.
First up, from the Don’t Cage Our Ocean Coalition:


Next, from coalition member Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA):


And finally, from the Recirculating Farms Coalition:

Lest we forget, Mother Ocean is the mother of us all;
one day in the not so distant future she shall rise up and swallow us whole,
and bring such toxic delusions full stop.

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Leave a comment | tags: Don't cage our ocean, Human Supremacism, toxic ocean ecology | posted in bearings, DP, riptides
Now comes faithful DP correspondent Jon Swan with a few Chekhovian thoughts on life in the pyrocene. Captions to widely circulating images added by DP.


TINY HOUSE FOR WOOD DEMONS


POOF

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Leave a comment | tags: climate emergency, jon swan essay, pyrocene, wood demon | posted in bearings, buoys, DP
California wildfires once again remind us that the Climate Emergency is not something that happens in 2030 or 2050: the Climate Emergency is happening right now, and we are in the midst of its varied modes of contagion.
We turn to fire historian Stephen Pyne whose recently updated Fire: A Brief History is highly recommended to those who wish to understand how we arrived into an era he suggests we name the “pyrocene”.
Excerpts from an essay published during last year’s Season of Fire Siege below; images are from news accounts, with captions added by DP.


LITHIC LANDSCAPE AT FLASH POINT


CONTAGION UNMASKED WITHIN THE PYROCENE

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Leave a comment | tags: climate emergency, Stephen pyne, wildfires | posted in bearings, DP, riptides
This week, we stay with Elaine Scarry and the Boston Review, via a 2011 interview following the publication of her book, Thinking in an Emergency. Her thoughts (excerpted below) resonate all the more strongly nine years later, within the context of our deepening ecological and political crisis. Images are self-explanatory.





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Leave a comment | tags: Elaine scarry, permanent emergency | posted in bearings, buoys, DP
During this week of commemoration, being 75 years since the United States dropped two bombs on overwhelmingly civilian populations in Japan, we turn to Elaine Scarry in the pages of the Boston Review.
The entire essay is worth a close read; excerpts below, with archival photos added by DP.


FAT MAN


LITTLE BOY
[…]

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Leave a comment | tags: Elaine scarry, expendability, hiroshima, limber cruelty, philosophy after hiroshima, White supremacism | posted in bearings, buoys, DP
This week, among the many books that have sustained us during CovidTimes, we celebrate the voice of Ocean Vuong, both in his “memoir” (in quotes because it is so much more than that!) and in his equally as exhilarating book of poems, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, a title we wish we had found ourselves.
In roaming through various interviews online, we are relieved to find the same exceptional qualities in dialogue with others. Excerpts from one of these (within the worthy On Being project) below, with images relayed from the studio of Chie Hitotsuyama.







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Leave a comment | tags: Chie Hitotsuyama, ocean vuong, words and imagination | posted in bearings, buoys, DP