happy new year

marking time, making plans, reflecting on the dying year (i almost wrote dyeing). 

when a year has been bigger than ever before, 

a watershed, 

as this one has for me, 

i hardly know where to begin. 

but this i do know:

 all of the friends and budding friendships (and in some cases old friends reconnected) 

that have happened as a result of internet technology 

have been sustaining 

in a way that utterly amazes me. 

i am grateful for these relationships, 

each of them,

each of YOU 

because i think these are patches of beauty in a broken world, 

proof 

if you will, of the goodness of the human spirit. 

and when these patches are sewn together or pulped together 

the resulting fabric or piece of paper are whole things. 

useful, full of potential, 

beautiful. 

my very good wishes to you all. for health, or for suffering well, if that is your job.

happy, i say, new year.

broken/beauty

i wonder sometimes about how broken our planet is, how terribly injured. i grew up near love canal, only 10 miles away or so, and as a young married woman chose to move away partially because home was polluted. terribly so. i lived in dallas, then louisville, then ended up in star lake, a tiny hamlet in the adirondacks. just down the road was benson mines, an iron ore strip mine, abandoned, with huge slag piles all around. there was plenty of ugliness around those heaps of reddish rocks. and more than ugliness. a few years later i moved to this old farmhouse, around 30 miles away. and have had the privilege of finding a home that is moderately safe. i now live not so far from some pretty toxic spots, an alcoa plant, a gm plant, a corning plant. most obvious are dairy farms that spread huge amounts of liquid manure.

and yet i live in a rich ecosystem, a place that sustains me emotionally, physically. i am very lucky, here i could grow most of my food (if i so choose) to live well. there is wild food, too, and the human population is low. (with the social problems of such places of isolation). it is beautiful with a harsh northern beauty that is not for everyone. this landscape of foothills to the ancient adirondacks is suited to me. i have found home.

Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.--Terry Tempest Williams