I watched the earth being poisoned today.
It was shocking, Stunning, One of those things I fully understood but still couldn’t wrap my head around. The lie that weeds are bad swallowed like a worm on a hook; the hook deeply penetrating and the idea of perfect green being reeled in. And yet even a fish is smart enough to know when it’s been caught and to fight! No, this was more like the proverbial frog in a kettle, Slowly Dying Unaware all along. The longterm result of people who blindly follow their blind leaders, “sheeple" incapable of questioning… Who am I kidding? No comparison to the animal kingdom is nearly sufficient, Because animals are smarter than this The truck pulled up to our neighbors across the road just as we were leaving. “I want to see this.” I said. “I want to see how bad it is.” I parked my car half a block away. I’m not sure what I thought I’d see. I'd dreamed about it the night before… something about a big war tank type vehicle, with giant fireman type hoses…. But this war was fought with something far less obvious, small, obscure, a backyard watering hose, appearing to spray out water - and yet i knew… not one, not two, not three, not four, not five… …. but EIGHT different chemicals were mixed into that poisonous cocktail! The man spraying was unprotected save the gloves on his hands, The chemical fumes his daily air, The liquid itself bathing his boots and jeans, no doubt soaking into his skin. Like a frog in a kettle… “I feel so. so sorry for him, mom” my 11 year old said in a hushed voice. “Me too baby, so, so sorry. He has no idea he’s poisoning himself.” And so we sat. We watched the earth being poisoned. We watched ourselves being poisoned knowing that we are a part of the earth. We felt oddly glad the pesticides weren’t blowing across the road onto our lawn - knowing full well they were ending up in our water table… knowing full well the same sort of chemicals could be coming out our tap since municipal water tests for so very few contaminants. We talked about the world we live in… ….one where up is down, an alternate reality where poisons are good and frankenfood is healthy and organic is for stupid hippies like me …. a world where anyone who deviates from White, patriarchal, systemic norms is ostracized, ridiculed, or even killed …a world where the best thing for children is NOT to follow their biological urge to do what humanity has done for millenia and to move and explore - but to sit still - and it's a diagnosable illness if they cannot; …a world where nobody knows what’s best for themselves and experts tell us what to do; experts whose desire to use standardized dosages results in simple antibiotics easily outsmarted by bacteria; And all this in a world where plants - some with over 100 active constituents each - plants that evolved *with* bacteria and consequently have eons of experience outwitting them, and can easily break through a double cell wall, and are easily able to conquer the most antibiotic resistant bacteria … Well… they’re just plants… Just weeds… Let’s poison and kill them! It won’t hurt us.
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Rebecca Grace AndrewsWelcome! I'm a college professor, herbalist, writer and photographer. Archives
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