Thanks, Monica. Good info and I feel very much the same on information-overload. It's hard to take your eyes off the 'show' but at the same time, it's an enormous time-suck and I often wonder how could I be spending my time in a more productive and/or enjoyable way? I guess we each have to navigate that for ourselves. I listened to a Mike Yeadon interview recently where he said he didn't need to collect any more stamps - he had enough scientific data already to know there was a plan and that they lied about everything. Couldn't agree more.
100%! I don't need to collect any more stamps, either.
I sort of love the drama, in a way. I like challenges and this feels like a big challenge, what we're going through.
But... what's life worth if we're not living it? The smartest people of all may be those that are not paying attention to ANY of it on either side of the political aisle. 🙃
Yup. Keeping us busy ain't it? I suspect our time is better spent finding ways around the nonsense. But I also see a great opportunity in finding each other during this period. So... good stuff in it too.
While I'm gobsmacked at the Covid bioweapon evil that has descended on the world, I try to do something every day to relieve the suffering of some living creature (I am a volunteer animal rescuer, mostly felines). It helps me not to feel as if I can't do a damned thing about the globalist psychopaths' plans to enslave us, other than try to educate normies to stop taking boosters. In short, I concentrate on the small stuff that I am able to do.
I am inspired by Albert Schweitzer's "The Ethic of Reverence for Life" (from his Civilization and Ethics). Here's an excerpt that I love to quote:
"A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which he is able to succour, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no ice crystal that sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, breaks off no flower, and is careful not to crush any insect as he walks. If he works by lamplight on a summer evening, he prefers to keep the window shut and to breathe stifling air, rather than to see insect after insect fall on his table with singed and sinking wings.
If he goes out into the street after a rainstorm and sees a worm which has strayed there, he reflects that it will certainly dry up in the sunshine, if it does not quickly regain the damp soil into which it can creep, and so he helps it back from the deadly paving stones into the lush grass. Should he pass by an insect which has fallen into a pool, he spares the time to reach it a leaf or stalk on which it may clamber and save itself.
He is not afraid of being laughed at as sentimental. It is indeed the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that coloured men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolishness has now become a recognized truth. Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race was so long before it recognized thoughtless injury to life as incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life."
I still am, and I'm also an inveterate bee- and spider-rescuer from swimming pools. And if it's a bumblebee that I've rescued, I feel especially blessed.
I smothered my front lawn to create a native plant pollinator, wildlife garden. The earth was initially hard- a pain to dig- and its color was medium brown, to light brown, not much organic matter visible. It felt rocky. So I did the easiest thing: put cardboard down, mulch, straw and use raised beds in the meantime. I started this in late 2019, completed in 2020. So last year, I didn’t see much improvement yet and didn’t start the back as a result, which is a very large project. This year the front is amazing! The most beautiful black earth FULL OF earthworms. I can almost feel the microbial activity down there! Obviously I regret not starting the back now, which I will do piecemeal. I did do the furthermost rear, where the deer go. The rest is fenced for my dog and pig. I am putting in no mod native grass varieties. I highly recommend doing this. Just a few layers. I did a little mulch under the cardboard, a layer of cardboard, more mulch, and straw. The latter needs frequent replenishing. Throwing refuse- leaf litter etc- is a good idea too. Last year I added kelp meal, gypsum, natural amendments, worm castings, etc around too. Minimal work. Seriously, supporting nature and letting her processes work for you is the way. My bee and butterfly population exploded almost right away. I previously only saw wasps.
Yeah for cardboard! I live in fear that one of these days the merchants who now give it away will recognise it as the precious resource it is and start charging.
My county has public bins to recycle cardboard so if I don’t have enough, I just go there (5 minutes away) and pull out what others leave. People look at me quizzically. The biggest pain is getting rid of the tape but I got lazy and let nature do it. After a while, it dries up and peels off by itself.
I am in the Black Hills of SD. I moved up from the southern hills, which were big time clay. Now in the central hills and its more loamy silt with an area that’s really sandy.
We are on vacation so I have been reading less than normal, and I feel happier. There is a fine line between gathering knowledge and information and busying ourselves learning it all and doing nothing with it. I don’t write a Substack, I dont have friends nearby that are anywhere near the same wavelength as I am - in fact I’ve been an outlier for so long it’s just what I’m used to now. So I’m not really *doing* anything other than riling myself up. So I’ll be reading less and less - one of my faves is Coffee & Covid because It gives a good roundup of all the news, and I usually read RTE and The Good Citizen and I like your approach here as well. Time to find ways to live in the real world again!
Agree with you, there is too much going on to keep up with it all at the moment. Is this overload deliberate? Or is this just the randomness and chaos of our time? Or is it a bit of both?
When short on resources or overwhelmed with various constraints, remember to triage or prioritize.
1) Which are the most significant or risky events/topics?
2) Which are the most likely/common?
3) Are any likely/common also significantly risky?
It's always best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. You cannot rely on bandaids for bullet wounds.
But disasters and emergencies are rare(ish), so don't forget the more common day to day things either.
If all you have are airway adjuncts and tourniquets and then find yourself presented with blisters and stubbed toes. You may seem almost as useless too.
Yes. It is proving impossible to keep up. Manley Hopkins would be decrying the wasted hours and powers. So, to the gardens!
I would highly recommend checking out Keith St Jean's "Canadian Permaculture Legacy" on youtube if you're all going to get into food gardening. He has a great food forest of his own and has documented it from the beginning. Then there are people like Charles Dowding and Huw Richards with more conventional veg bed gardens, but incorporating permaculture/no dig. Also the Weedy Gardener for a visual feast. Permaculture guru, Geoff Lawton, for hardcore info. Common denominator - soil health.
Also, if you haven't read Louis Bromfield yet, now is the time. Because we are all, here in these Substack havens, in the category that he termed "tetched" - and that is glorious, indeed!
Love that updated NPC meme haha. I used an earlier version of that in a piece about Ukraine. We should start a poll to see what the next media-driven focus will be -> "Bidan"/Harris -> "pandemic" -> Ukraine -> Roe v. Wade -> ???
It's too early for the next pandemic; but that's coming of course. The groundwork is being laid by the WHO and Fauci already.
Hi Monica, like you I'm a permanent resident in NZ (living here since 1984). Now that I can leave and return, I will be able to visit my dear sister who is ill in Ireland and asking her little sister to come and visit.
My thinking, or rather what I'm able to deduce so far is that the plants burning down are no accidents, that COVID is entirely a scheme in order for us non-psycophaths to play along.
Agreed. And the psychopaths know us so well that their propaganda is just too effective. Here in NZ, we were bombarded for years with we Kiwis being in "the Team of Five Million" who all were expected to "be kind" and to "Unite Against Covid-19" by getting your jabs "to protect others". Psychopaths always take advantage of regular peeps' altruistic tendencies and the commonly known, human psychological desire to feel part of the larger group -- to "belong," to have allies.
Thanks, Monica. Good info and I feel very much the same on information-overload. It's hard to take your eyes off the 'show' but at the same time, it's an enormous time-suck and I often wonder how could I be spending my time in a more productive and/or enjoyable way? I guess we each have to navigate that for ourselves. I listened to a Mike Yeadon interview recently where he said he didn't need to collect any more stamps - he had enough scientific data already to know there was a plan and that they lied about everything. Couldn't agree more.
100%! I don't need to collect any more stamps, either.
I sort of love the drama, in a way. I like challenges and this feels like a big challenge, what we're going through.
But... what's life worth if we're not living it? The smartest people of all may be those that are not paying attention to ANY of it on either side of the political aisle. 🙃
That's funny about the clueless - I've thought the same thing.
Exactly. I sometimes fear that we are also getting sucked into the mass formation psychosis vortex too, just by focusing on it so much.
On the other hand, we can't just sit and watch the world go into full Jonestown.
My wife and I are trying our best to make sure we set aside time that is totally free of all of this. Daily/weekly.
Yup. Keeping us busy ain't it? I suspect our time is better spent finding ways around the nonsense. But I also see a great opportunity in finding each other during this period. So... good stuff in it too.
Exactly. And, in time: "The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." Socrates
While I'm gobsmacked at the Covid bioweapon evil that has descended on the world, I try to do something every day to relieve the suffering of some living creature (I am a volunteer animal rescuer, mostly felines). It helps me not to feel as if I can't do a damned thing about the globalist psychopaths' plans to enslave us, other than try to educate normies to stop taking boosters. In short, I concentrate on the small stuff that I am able to do.
I am inspired by Albert Schweitzer's "The Ethic of Reverence for Life" (from his Civilization and Ethics). Here's an excerpt that I love to quote:
"A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which he is able to succour, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no ice crystal that sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, breaks off no flower, and is careful not to crush any insect as he walks. If he works by lamplight on a summer evening, he prefers to keep the window shut and to breathe stifling air, rather than to see insect after insect fall on his table with singed and sinking wings.
If he goes out into the street after a rainstorm and sees a worm which has strayed there, he reflects that it will certainly dry up in the sunshine, if it does not quickly regain the damp soil into which it can creep, and so he helps it back from the deadly paving stones into the lush grass. Should he pass by an insect which has fallen into a pool, he spares the time to reach it a leaf or stalk on which it may clamber and save itself.
He is not afraid of being laughed at as sentimental. It is indeed the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that coloured men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolishness has now become a recognized truth. Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race was so long before it recognized thoughtless injury to life as incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life."
I love this.
I was a worm rescuer as a little girl. 🪱 🐛
I still am, and I'm also an inveterate bee- and spider-rescuer from swimming pools. And if it's a bumblebee that I've rescued, I feel especially blessed.
A Buddhist!
A Christian married to a Buddhist!
Yes!!
I smothered my front lawn to create a native plant pollinator, wildlife garden. The earth was initially hard- a pain to dig- and its color was medium brown, to light brown, not much organic matter visible. It felt rocky. So I did the easiest thing: put cardboard down, mulch, straw and use raised beds in the meantime. I started this in late 2019, completed in 2020. So last year, I didn’t see much improvement yet and didn’t start the back as a result, which is a very large project. This year the front is amazing! The most beautiful black earth FULL OF earthworms. I can almost feel the microbial activity down there! Obviously I regret not starting the back now, which I will do piecemeal. I did do the furthermost rear, where the deer go. The rest is fenced for my dog and pig. I am putting in no mod native grass varieties. I highly recommend doing this. Just a few layers. I did a little mulch under the cardboard, a layer of cardboard, more mulch, and straw. The latter needs frequent replenishing. Throwing refuse- leaf litter etc- is a good idea too. Last year I added kelp meal, gypsum, natural amendments, worm castings, etc around too. Minimal work. Seriously, supporting nature and letting her processes work for you is the way. My bee and butterfly population exploded almost right away. I previously only saw wasps.
Yeah for cardboard! I live in fear that one of these days the merchants who now give it away will recognise it as the precious resource it is and start charging.
My county has public bins to recycle cardboard so if I don’t have enough, I just go there (5 minutes away) and pull out what others leave. People look at me quizzically. The biggest pain is getting rid of the tape but I got lazy and let nature do it. After a while, it dries up and peels off by itself.
Actually at many stores they won’t let you take it because they get paid to recycle it
Oh, the irony! The most well intentioned measure can have unintended negative consequences.
I should’ve explicitly said compost- not just mulch- but compost below and above the cardboard.
So awesome! 🤩 do you mind me asking where you’re located?
I’m doing the cardboard smothering + compost method for veggies
I am in the Black Hills of SD. I moved up from the southern hills, which were big time clay. Now in the central hills and its more loamy silt with an area that’s really sandy.
We are on vacation so I have been reading less than normal, and I feel happier. There is a fine line between gathering knowledge and information and busying ourselves learning it all and doing nothing with it. I don’t write a Substack, I dont have friends nearby that are anywhere near the same wavelength as I am - in fact I’ve been an outlier for so long it’s just what I’m used to now. So I’m not really *doing* anything other than riling myself up. So I’ll be reading less and less - one of my faves is Coffee & Covid because It gives a good roundup of all the news, and I usually read RTE and The Good Citizen and I like your approach here as well. Time to find ways to live in the real world again!
Agree with you, there is too much going on to keep up with it all at the moment. Is this overload deliberate? Or is this just the randomness and chaos of our time? Or is it a bit of both?
When short on resources or overwhelmed with various constraints, remember to triage or prioritize.
1) Which are the most significant or risky events/topics?
2) Which are the most likely/common?
3) Are any likely/common also significantly risky?
It's always best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. You cannot rely on bandaids for bullet wounds.
But disasters and emergencies are rare(ish), so don't forget the more common day to day things either.
If all you have are airway adjuncts and tourniquets and then find yourself presented with blisters and stubbed toes. You may seem almost as useless too.
Yes. It is proving impossible to keep up. Manley Hopkins would be decrying the wasted hours and powers. So, to the gardens!
I would highly recommend checking out Keith St Jean's "Canadian Permaculture Legacy" on youtube if you're all going to get into food gardening. He has a great food forest of his own and has documented it from the beginning. Then there are people like Charles Dowding and Huw Richards with more conventional veg bed gardens, but incorporating permaculture/no dig. Also the Weedy Gardener for a visual feast. Permaculture guru, Geoff Lawton, for hardcore info. Common denominator - soil health.
Also, if you haven't read Louis Bromfield yet, now is the time. Because we are all, here in these Substack havens, in the category that he termed "tetched" - and that is glorious, indeed!
To the gardens indeed! Gardens are my sanity and my answer to everything…
Very nice piece, btw.
Love that updated NPC meme haha. I used an earlier version of that in a piece about Ukraine. We should start a poll to see what the next media-driven focus will be -> "Bidan"/Harris -> "pandemic" -> Ukraine -> Roe v. Wade -> ???
It's too early for the next pandemic; but that's coming of course. The groundwork is being laid by the WHO and Fauci already.
Honestly, I don't believe much these days. I figure if I'm getting riled up, who is pushing the narrative? This might make you feel a bit better: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/tinfoil-cattery-if-i-wanted-to-empower
Also, so sad that you moved to US from NZ. I've always wanted to go to NZ but lately was not so sure! Trust the universe is the best I can say.
I linked to that piece above 😛
Hi Monica, like you I'm a permanent resident in NZ (living here since 1984). Now that I can leave and return, I will be able to visit my dear sister who is ill in Ireland and asking her little sister to come and visit.
💕
🙏
My thinking, or rather what I'm able to deduce so far is that the plants burning down are no accidents, that COVID is entirely a scheme in order for us non-psycophaths to play along.
Agreed. And the psychopaths know us so well that their propaganda is just too effective. Here in NZ, we were bombarded for years with we Kiwis being in "the Team of Five Million" who all were expected to "be kind" and to "Unite Against Covid-19" by getting your jabs "to protect others". Psychopaths always take advantage of regular peeps' altruistic tendencies and the commonly known, human psychological desire to feel part of the larger group -- to "belong," to have allies.