2020-10-14, Hello, world (of subscribers)

Howdy folk. Let me start this by expressing my gratitude that you're reading it, and that you've subscribed to it, if you have. If you haven’t: (If you're getting this and don't remember signing up for it: you're an active donor to my Liberapay or Patreon so I transferred you.)

Second, please forgive any issues these newsletters might have early on - I've never used Substack before, and I'm sure I'll click the wrong button at least once!

Third, I'm inviting and encouraging y'all to interact: please respond to these newsletters if you'd like. (There might also be discussion features as part of Substack, I haven't explored yet.)

But I really want this to be a place of communication: organized around these newsletters, sure, but I'd like us to develop these topics as a conversation.

Now, what can y'all expect from these newsletters? I plan on sending out two: one for paid subscribers each Wednesday, and another for free subscribers on Friday.

(A note about paid and free: I'm quite willing to gift a paid subscription to someone, especially people I know, friends-of-friends, and folk who aren't white or white-aligned. If that's you, reach out and let me know!)

Alright: that's the preliminary information about the newsletter out of the way. What is it I want to share this week?

Well, first off: I was in a bad way of thinking last week. The difficulty was that I felt - and feel - as though I cannot actually do any work that does not enrich the settler-colony in which I live. As I wrote in my journal, "people explicitly tell me that modeling my behavior helps them relax after a hard day's Collaboration"

I spent the week sulking and ruminating over this problem and its many facets. I'll spare y'all the long rambling road and skip to sharing the two conclusions I reached:

1) The actions of land stewardship matter in their own way, even if they are co-opted by or enriching the kyriarchy.

2) Since I live in an environment that is hostile to growth, I need to make seeds.

Now, I'm still figuring out what "seeds" are, but given my background tinkering with words and computers, "stories and software" seemed the self-evident answer.

That's made me really want to take my writing from being an incidental thing that happens because I'm using computers, and that made me decide that I should try my hand at putting out a consistent newsletter, among other things. I'm not ready to share those other things, yet, but, here's the first newsletter!

I don't really have anything more to share at this point, so let me close with some updates about my local weather and gardening! I'd love to hear back from any of y'all about your own weather or other efforts!

Where I am has been experiencing the last rainfall of Hurricane Delta. Yesterday we got about 2 inches of rain, according to the weather station!

It's hard not to let any day's weather feel indicative of a collapsing climate. I read recently a New York Times piece that said climate scientists were trying to petition against some official body to designate the the Arctic no longer has a climate, due to the rapidity of weather pattern change in the region.

It made me wonder if that is true for other places, and simply impossible to have recognized due to political pressures?

I've also been moving plants around, now that I've realized that produce crates lined with landscaping fabric make pretty good planters. The area is finally starting to look nice! (Assuming I figure out how, there should be some photos of the garden below here.)