Climate action

 

After the Sunday service at the UU Fellowship of Durango, the costumed participants made a parade and danced to the Monster Mash...then had treats that would have been in a "trunk or treat" but the weather took it inside the fellowship hall.

From the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (their October newsletter):

Visit UUSC’s Action Hub As part of the UUSC community, you help advance a world where all people can live with dignity and self-determination. Your solidarity is an essential part of this work. Watch our short video to find out what solidarity looks like in practice. Then, put your values into action by visiting our Action Center to explore the latest campaigns, sign petitions, and connect with policymakers.

Advancing Climate Justice at COP31

Each year, UUSC sponsors a cohort of our grant partners to participate in the Conference of Parties (COP) — the United Nations annual climate conference — where their experiences and expertise can be represented at the global stage. Next month, UUSC and our partners are traveling to Antalya, Turkey to advocate for urgent action to limit warming to 1.5°C and put human rights at the center of climate decision-making. 

Learn more about our priorities for COP31.

Each of us can play an active role in moving our world closer toward justice.

Thank you for your commitment to human rights — in the U.S. and around the world.

-----------------------

UUSC’s History at COP

Each year, UUSC supports the attendance of representatives from our grassroots partners. We assist with funding, visa support, and strategic planning. Our collective typically includes Indigenous communities, faith-based organizations, and leaders from Pacific island nations.

Our advocacy centers on our FAIR framework:

• Fund Loss and Damage Initiatives: Advocating for wealthy nations to compensate communities for climate damages already suffered. The recently established Loss and Damage Fund represents a historic victory, though pledges fall short of actual community needs.
• Assess Progress Towards Climate Success: Supporting a rigorous process to honestly evaluate global progress toward limiting warming to 1.5°C.
• Increase Funding for Adaptation and Mitigation: Collaborate across nations to ensure that regions and locales worldwide have equitable access to funds for adapting to and mitigating the impacts of climate change.
• Raise Equity and Justice: Ensuring climate action addresses rather than perpetuates existing inequalities, with meaningful participation from climate-vulnerable groups.

Key Messages for COP31:

This COP has to be a point of inflection for the world community. The consistent demand of our partners has been to keep 1.5 alive, and we are now seeing the existential impacts that many have warned about. The negotiations over the last 10 years have shown a lack of political will, despite economic incentives (from the short to the long term) favoring renewable energy and sustainable solutions.

• 
  
• Abide by the ICJ Advisory Opinion by taking a human rights-based approach across all climate negotiations and prioritizing climate reparations
• Look to the examples set by frontline coalitions like Pacific Rising to create a model for intersectional, decolonial climate responses
• Prioritize the active participation and empowerment of frontline communities, especially women, youth, elderly people, people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people in decisions and policies that directly impact their lives
• Recognize Loss & Damage as the third pillar of climate action (alongside mitigation and adaptation)
• Ensure the Loss and Damage Fund has adequate financing and is operationalized though grants, not loans
• Make funding accessible and transparent to communities, not just states
• Respect traditional knowledge in climate governance and center the voices and leadership of indigenous peoples
• Center food system solutions based on peasant agroecology
• 
  

• 
  

Women voters!

 

“Some whose names are to be found all through the Social Register marched side by side with working mothers with babies in their arms. A large proportion of the marchers were young girls who would not be old enough to vote were they enfranchised. They made up in beauty what they lacked in years and were cheered all along the crowded Fifth Avenue sidewalks.” New York Evening World newspaper, 23 October 1915.

Organized by Dr. Anna Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, the largest political demonstration to its date in support of the right of women in the US to vote occurred on 23 October 1915. The demonstration consisted of a march of an estimated 25,000 people down 5th Avenue in New York City, New York. An editorial in the New York Times warned that if the suffragists ever accomplished their goal that “they would demand all the rights that implies. It is not possible to think of women as soldiers and sailors, police patrolmen, or firemen.” The three mile protest march from Washington Square to Fifth-Ninth Street (where the Apple Store now is on 5th Ave) was also noted as the largest parade to its date ever held in New York City and attracted tens of thousands of spectators along its route. The state of New York enfranchised women to vote in 1917 - three years prior to the ratification of the 19th Amendment. In 1919, Carrie Chapman Catt would call for an organization she named the League of Women Voters, and that organization would be formed in 1920 and exists to this date.

Thanks to FB post by Jim Welch

------------------

We must do democracy. That goes far beyond simply casting your vote. We must all actively champion the causes that ensure the common good.

 -Martin Luther King III, human rights advocate (b. 23 Oct 1957)

Inanna, or Ishtar, or ?

 Another goddess...

another full moon.

From Debra She Who Seeks...

A three dimensional sculpture made by Sacred Source (India) and painted silver by Debra, photo by Debra.

The Burney Relief now in the British Museum.

Sacred Source sells their sculpture as bare clay titled Lillith.

------------------

Quoted from: Girl God Books on FaceBook

Based in Norway

 

"Archaeologists agree that agriculture was originally developed by women, along with pottery, weaving, and Neolithic religion, which most likely centred around ritual dance. Women have long been the keepers of both horticultural knowledge and ritual dance, which are connected in multiple ways. On a practical level, flat round threshing grounds make ideal floors for circular dance, while metaphorically, the threshing floor represents the generous womb of Mother Earth, and of human mothers by extension.

The dance circle itself serves as a vessel of symbolic rebirth, as it recreates the womb or lap or embrace of the Great Mother, and offers abundant unconditional love to all those who join the dance. The connection to Mother Earth is reiterated over and over in the dance songs, as well as in the dance steps: the most common dance pattern traces the motif of the Tree of Life, which has been a key symbol of the Mother Goddess since ancient times. I believe this is because visible patterns of veins in the human placenta branch out from the ‘trunk’ of the umbilical cord into a tree shape, which midwives around the world independently name the Tree of Life. In this way, the Tree symbolises the life-giving sustenance of the Divine Mother which we receive when we dance.

Circle dance traditions survive best today in southern and eastern Europe – the same area where egalitarian matriarchal civilisations flourished for thousands of years. This region, named Old Europe by archaeologist and archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas, was the cradle of sophisticated societies which honoured the Goddess, celebrated nature, made beautiful art, shared resources, and lived in partnership. These peaceful egalitarian matriarchies formed the foundation of human culture from approximately 7000-4000 BCE, and longer in some places, for instance until 1450 BCE in Crete."

-Laura Shannon, excerpt from her paper, "Women’s Ritual Dances to Heal Somatic Trauma" - featured in Spells for Survivors: Returning to the Holy Her

---------------

I'm interested in history...ancient history...as it depicts a time when civilizations existed with  completely different foundational aspects to those of today.

The goddesses might not just be mythological stories; they were in all probability central to the lives of culture as Gimbutas posits. Her work is based on findings in archaeological sites where no defensive structures were found. No community dikes or defensive walls. No weapons. A culture where peace was expected, lived in daily lives, where neighbors weren't a threat.

When I learned of the ancient systems of these cultures in the 1990s, it changed my entire sense of feminism. Goddesses were central to civilization at one time, before patriarchy took over. So I started reclaiming the divine feminine in my life. 

This easily melded with the need for our world to address the issues of climate change. Our survival as a civilization depends upon removing reliance upon fossil fuels. This is the big picture. In 200 or 500 years, it's highly unlikely that plastics will still be around, nor cars and trucks and planes running on fossil fuels. (Whether or not humanity is stil around is another philosophical question)

Then think forward as far as we think back to the ancient times. Ha! What will remain from our poor culture when it's buried beneath the soils?

Nope, can't buy my vote this way!

So the law stopped the president from political advertising on TV using government money to get votes. 

Lots of people did receive a $90 deposit... who's grateful?

This is the next step. 

Elders, wake up and smell the poop! Of course we want our grandchildren to have great little bank accounts.

But do not let a politician sway your votes by again using the government to advertise for his party!

This is ILLEGAL! I'm sure of it.

I got this email yesterday morning...from the actual Social Security site...or perhaps a very good fake. 

Social Security Administration <Information@update.ssa.gov>

Last year, President Donald J. Trump signed into law the Working Families Tax Cuts, which included a historic tax cut for America’s seniors. That law also created Trump Accounts, individual investment accounts for America’s children designed to grow with the U.S. economy and build long-term savings.

Today, nearly 70 million Trump Accounts are open for all American children. Parents and legal guardians simply need to claim their child’s Trump Account through the official Trump Accounts app, available to download for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Once activated, the account can receive funds from family, friends, and employers, as well as gifts from generous donors. Tens of millions of accounts already have money contributed by donors in them, just waiting to be claimed.

At Social Security, we are informing families about how they can activate their child’s Trump Account—many accounts with money already in them. We are also communicating with parents of newborns about the one-time $1,000 contribution from the U.S. Treasury, available to children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028.

Trump Accounts are one of the most significant investments in the next generation of Americans in our nation’s history, by giving every American child a stake in our country’s success and a strong financial foundation for the future.

To learn more about Trump Accounts, visit TrumpAccounts.gov.

Download the App Last year, President Donald J. Trump signed into law the Working Families Tax Cuts, which included a historic tax cut for America’s seniors. That law also created Trump Accounts, individual investment accounts for America’s children designed to grow with the U.S. economy and build long-term savings. Today, nearly 70 million Trump Accounts are open for all American children. Parents and legal guardians simply need to claim their child’s Trump Account through the official Trump Accounts app, available to download for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play. Once activated, the account can receive funds from family, friends, and employers, as well as gifts from generous donors. Tens of millions of accounts already have money contributed by donors in them, just waiting to be claimed. At Social Security, we are informing families about how they can activate their child’s Trump Account—many accounts with money already in them. We are also communicating with parents of newborns about the one-time $1,000 contribution from the U.S. Treasury, available to children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028. Trump Accounts are one of the most significant investments in the next generation of Americans in our nation’s history, by giving every American child a stake in our country’s success and a strong financial foundation for the future. To learn more about Trump Accounts, visit TrumpAccounts.gov. Download the App   Go Digital! Join the millions and discover your benefits. Create a personal my Social Security account Manage Subscriptions  |  Unsubscribe All  |  Help

The colors of the holiday (Halloween/Samhain)

 

Thanks to fellow blogger!

Box Elder Bugs...not this many, but I've got a swarm of them inside the screen/window glass. Ugh. I want to open windows, but don't want them flying into the apartment. I've had them about a week...and hope their season of living in the walls on the 4th floor of a concrete building is almost over.

No, I can't spray with insecticide, since I can't breath those chemicals.

With rain instead of sun they have disappeared, for now.

-------------------------

Night shot of Cortez with Sleeping  Ute Mountain in the distance. 

-----------------

Would love help identifying the bird at the top of the phone pole...black with a white ring around his neck, and some pink/orange on his underbelly, but a white chest.

He was acting like a woodpecker by pecking at the wood of the phone  pole.

Sorry, - iPhone at 5x magnification, then cropped. 

--------------------

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed. I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

ADRIENNE RICH

Hopefulness

 

Pumpkin creation at the Bronx Zoo! This baby elephant was carved by Andy and Sue Beatrice

-------------------------

My granddaughter Audrey (on left) ran a half marathon in Columbus OH this last weekend...I'm so proud of her for her first try, and she finished!

Audrey is a fifth grade teacher, thus the sign about the Principal!

We are quite proud of her accomplishment!

------------------------------

Some views in my neighborhood on Sunday...

--------------------

Hello BARBARA ROGERS,

Thank you for voting! Your 2026 General Election mail ballot has been counted by La Plata Elections.

--------------------

The willingness to consider possibility requires a tolerance of uncertainty.

RACHEL NAOMI REMEN

Cute kittens and politics!

Some political notes from Jess Craven's Extra! Extra! post on Chop Wood, Carry Water for this week. (The environmental concerns mentioned there will be shared in another post of mine.)

On Saturday, across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., we came together across nearly 3,000 events for No Kings: Vote Early – the largest single-day early voting activation in American history.

In a win for democracy, a judge ruled the Trump administration must stop buying and airing taxpayer-funded ads featuring Trump for the midterms.

Hundreds of North Carolina A&T students marched an hour each way to early voting, because their on-campus polling site had been removed by the election board.

The Chicks brought James Talarico out on stage during one of their concerts this week! Oh, also the “Friday Night Lights” cast made a video for him.

The number of Nashvillians casting a ballot on the first day of early voting has risen nearly 1400% compared to the last midterm election in 2022.

Bernie Sanders and Angie Nixon spent the weekend holding rallies with massive crowds all over Florida.

As voters start casting their ballots, many of the seats the GOP hoped to flip are trending blue in spite of the White House push to rig the maps.

A GOP ad buyer mixed up Portlands, buying ads for Senator Collins in Oregon instead of Maine.

Georgians came to the polls in droves on the first day of early voting, breaking the midterm election early voting record with more than 188,600 ballots cast, an increase of more than 53,000 voters over the 2022 midterm election.

Mike Rounds, a Senate Republican running for re-election in ruby-red South Dakota, has joined a growing number of candidates putting distance between themselves and Trump by scrubbing mentions of the president from his website.

Senator Chris Murphy has promised to investigate Meta’s suppression of the No Kings account on Saturday.

Don Bolduc (R), the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in 2022, is leading a group of GOP figures and prominent independents backing Democratic Senate candidate Chris Pappas in New Hampshire.

James Talarico announced he raised $64 million last quarter, with 97% of his contributions being $100 or less. Sen. Ossoff announced raising more than $33 million last quarter. Just like Talarico, 97% of these donations were $100 or less. NC’s Roy Cooper said his campaign raised $19.5 million last quarter. More than 95% of his donations were $100 or less. Talk about people power!

In a major ruling, a federal judge struck down the Trump administration’s nationwide voter roll campaign, delivering a damaging blow to the DOJ’s effort to obtain states’ unredacted voter rolls.

Political funding groups associated with Trump abandoned a pair of endangered Republican incumbents, GOP Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. in New Jersey, all but conceding their races are lost.

A Georgia appeals court allowed Gwinnett County's pro-voting policy permitting voters to hand-deliver mail-in ballots at early voting sites without drop boxes to stand before the midterms.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sent $1 million to Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed to boost his chances in Michigan’s Senate race.

Rep. Angie Craig campaigned for Peggy Flangan this weekend after losing to her in a bruising Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

According to a new poll, 80% of voters want either complete and total upheaval or substantial change in how the country is run.

Cook shifted eleven more House races toward Democrats. All of them were in Midwestern red states.

Democrats are running up lopsided majorities of the early votes as Americans head to the polls and mail in their ballots, carving out a clear majority of the votes cast so far.

Nearly 2 in 3 Americans say Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself — and most of the increase over the past year has come from people who lean Republican.

A new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll finds President Trump’s approval at 34%, while 66% disapprove — a new low in this poll.

According to a Texas political insider, Texas Republicans are “freaking out” about the midterms.

A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against New York City over city policies that limit the extent to which local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

In North Carolina, Democratic early vote turnout is up 66% from the same point in 2022. Wow!

Abdul el-Sayed gave a master class in defanging (and humiliating) a troll today. A Christian Nationalist named Tommy—a paid plant sent by Michigan Republicans—went to an Abdul el-Sayed Town Hall to try to create a viral “gotcha” moment. Instead, El-Sayed schooled him brilliantly and the moment went viral because it made Tommy look like an idiot. (Seriously. Watch the video.) https://substack.com/@jesscraven101/note/c-363851562?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=160ms

------------

The No Kings Facebook page posted this:

No Kings

d͏s͏n͏o͏e͏t͏p͏o͏S͏r͏7͏1͏8͏7͏1͏ ͏2͏c͏t͏f͏a͏:͏g͏0͏2͏ ͏a͏M͏0͏l͏g͏i͏r͏8͏7͏t͏t͏ ͏P͏m͏c͏ ͏t͏b͏4͏O͏8͏c͏1͏e͏o͏2͏l͏m͏1͏m͏5͏m͏2͏9͏ ·

Meta Suspended a No Kings account during a Historic Day of Action.

The account was restored, but organizers were locked out for hours. This is why we can’t rely on corporate social media platforms to connect us.

Meta claimed that an automated system mistakenly suspended the account due to high activity.

Don't let Meta decide what you see.

Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are all owned by Meta.

Building communities exclusively on these platforms leaves us vulnerable.

We encourage everyone to follow us on platforms outside of Meta.

Our ability to organize shouldn't depend on decisions of billionaires.

--------

The League of Women Voters posted this:

League of Women Voters of the US

 

Today, our partner, No Kings Coalition, reported that Meta took down its Instagram account during the coalition’s nationwide #NoKingsVoteEarly day of action. It took hours for access to be restored, which was only due to the massive outcry on social media.

Fort Myers, FL

------------------

More photos as I see them...lots of people are sharing them to another newsletter I receive daily: 

roberthubbell@substack DOT com

------------------

-----------------

When we are open to beauty, it is more likely to appear to us. When we share that gift by pointing it out to others, we find we have even more of it to celebrate.

Trebbe Johnson