Earth element

We've gone around the circle now, air, fire, water and now earth.
It's very much part of my life as a potter.  How do you use earth in your life?

Clay in my studio arrives in these boxes from Highwater Clay, then I play with it and either it becomes a form that is fired a couple of times, or it goes back to being clay like the slip drying on a plaster slab on the right.  Then I use the clay reconstituted from that slip to make another mug or bowl or figure of something.

Other forms of earth are definitely part of our lives.  Gravity.

No kidding.  The universe of everything might be considered earth.  The wonders of the way stars travel through space and interact in galaxies.  That all atoms are reused over and over in different things...I always love hearing that we are made of star stuff.  The miracles of natural laws.

Earth the planet we live upon is in trouble.  You already knew I'd mention that, didn't you?

So what are you doing about it?

I won't go any further, just remind you who is in charge of your life.  mmm, not me.


OK, the other thing about earth to mention of course is that non-renewable resources are going to be gone someday soon.  These are minerals, fossil fuels, and the things that our culture is standing upon.  No doomsday naysayer me...no way.  I just say, start living in a renewable way.

This week, in my life, I'm cutting down my paper products use, which aren't non-renewable, but they do cost non-renewable resources to process.  I just went through the clothes about to be recycled to GoodWill, and took all the old 100% cotton tee shirts out and cut them up to have washable rags. When I was growing up, my depression-survival parents had a rag bag.  Now paper towels will be used even less around the house.  ( I cut up the tee-shirts so I'd know which things were rags when I washed them with my tee-shirts I still am wearing...not much difference for some that I love to wear to sleep in.)

I admit I've failed with my compost heap.  Gardening for me hasn't worked too well this year.  But I started growing things, and I keep looking at those green tomatoes and smiling.  Maybe they will turn red next week?  The earth has blessed me with her bounty with a zillion green tomatoes.

Do you know of at least three activist movements against earth destruction?  Why not?

Here's the link to Wendell Berry's Manifesto: The Wild Farmer Liberation Front.

I don't have those links to activist movements since my computer died last week, taking my new Environment "favorites" folder with it.  But I've found more and more since I started considering everything that's happening.  So the new Environment folder is already growing.