community – Emily van Lidth de Jeude

Dear Little Emily: The Best Little Rooster Who Ever Lived

A photo of a woman and rooster, seen from behind, sitting on a garden stair, both looking out at the lush green yard and peach-coloured roses. There is a driftwood stair-railing on the right side of the photo.

This story is also available in audio form, with pictures, on MakerTube.

Dear little Emily,

Today, when you’re almost ten, my little old self, you’re sitting in the dark sparkly sand by the waves lapping. Barnacled rocks poke up from the sand into your thighs, but you don’t care. You have Pappa’s sweater on over your swimsuit, and you’re fine. You hear Mum’s guitar up on the beach, and she mutters that her fingers are too cold to play, even though the fire is right in front of her. It’s September and the family has gone to the beach, maybe for the last time, this year. It gets dark so early right now that it feels almost like Christmas, even though it’s 8pm, and you haven’t gone home for dinner. The end of the box of Old Dutch crackles between Adrian and his friends as they sit around the fire. The aunties are chatting and you can’t hear what they’re saying, but Pappa’s laugh breaks the night for a moment. You’re waiting for the stars to come out, and your heart sings,

Oh watch the stars, see how they run!
Oh watch the stars, see how they run!

Mum stops playing her guitar with a definitive hand-thud on the wooden body, and announces it’s time to go home. It was supposed to be sunnier, today, or at least you thought it would be, when it was sunny this afternoon, and you dug up the potatoes in just your t-shirt and shorts. Your bare feet had carried half the garden in with you, Pappa said. Now you’re washing them in the course gravelly sand, and you don’t want to go home.

The stars run down, with the setting of the sun.
Oh watch the stars, see how they run!

Home is a glorious converted trailer, that Pappa renovates every few years to add a little more to your bedroom. Home is where the sun peeks up over the cedar trees to come flooding slowly over the veggie garden at ten, on autumn mornings, spreading yellow over the dewy grass and the starting-to-brown veggie tops that haven’t yet been harvested. Home is where Mum does canning projects with you; sometimes they’re delicious and sometimes nobody wants to eat the zucchini pickles. Remember that year when you slipped on the log of the lettuce bed and fell splat in front of the rooster and he jumped on your face, and you were bleeding? Well I’m fifty, now, and I still have the scar. Mum said it was because he was an Araucana, and they’re so vicious. You avoided him after that, and warned your friends away from him, too. I wish you knew about Splashy.

When you’re in your forties, your teenage daughter is going to ask to get chickens. Partly out of motherly encouragement, and partly with a giddy childish excitement, you’ll agree to your daughter’s plan, and buy twenty-nine fluffy little chicks, who will spend their first few weeks in a makeshift brooder in your daughter’s bedroom, while the whole family works to finish the best-chicken-coop-ever.

This will be your first experience of “chicken math”, as you’ll later learn to call it. Chicken math, apparently, is when you calculate that eight hens and a rooster would be perfect to keep your whole family in eggs for most of the year. Of course you’ll need twice that many chicks, since half might be roosters. So sixteen, then. Seventeen for good measure, just in case. And you’ll make sure to get some winter-hardy breeds in the mix, so you still get eggs when it’s cold. The mix. Since you want a mix of breeds (brown eggs, pink eggs, blue eggs, and green eggs!) you really should hedge your bets and get at least four of each type, so there might be at least two hens of each breed, after the initial rooster cull. And since you’re buying so many breeds, well… twenty-four isn’t such a bad number, right? It will be twelve after the cull. Approximately.

Breeders are also approximate. And generous. So somehow the number will blossom from twenty-four to twenty-nine by the time the adorable little peeping boxes of fluffballs arrive. Whatever. Chicken math. More meat in the freezer, you’ll say to yourself. And by autumn you’ll indeed have plenty of meat in the freezer, as well as thirteen hens and two roosters. Lester Clark because he’s big, and the Splash, because he’s so cute.

There will be two Ameraucana chicks in that brooder in your daughter’s bedroom, and you’ll spend extra time with them, because they’ll lay green eggs. One of them will turn out to be a mean little hen, and eventually die of some sort of undetermined internal ailment. The other will be a rooster. Despite being very close in genetic heritage to that rooster who gored your face in the garden when you were little, he’s not vicious. He loves you. You will eventually figure out that he’s infertile as hell, though unfortunately you won’t realize this until after Lester Clark pecks his right eye in, and after you kill that giant mean Lester and eat him even though his meat is tough.

You will realize Splashy’s place in the family one day after his pecked-in eyeball will have risen back into its socket, and there in the sunshine of the day will be a giant squawking fracas in the chicken coop. You’ll run into the coop to find Lester Clark just standing there like a giant oaf by the coop door, Splashy having an epic battle with a giant red-tailed hawk, and all the hens crowded with their faces pressed into the corner of their house. Godiva, the actual boss and Splashy’s faithful companion, will be leaning with her back against the other hens, wings spread open to cover them, screaming wildly in the direction of the hawk. In a moment of adrenaline-fuelled foolishness, you’ll grab the hawk off of Splashy and throw it out of the run. You’ll pick up your sweet bloodied rooster and nestle him into your arms. Godiva will release the hens to their business, and Lester Clark will have his neck slit and end up as stew.

A group of black and grey chickens foraging in a clover lawn, with the base of a cedar tree and fencing in the background. In the middle of the group, a white splash-patterned rooster named the Splash stands beside a brown hen named Godiva.

So there you’ll be with eighteen hens, and just infertile little Splashy to protect them all. (Yes I know, I said thirteen, but suddenly there will be more chicks, so… chicken math.) Splashy will originally be called ‘the Splash’ because he is a ‘splash’-patterned Ameraucana. You know, like you might call your neighbour ‘the buzz-cut guy’. But the hawk incident will reveal that this little scrappy black and white dude is in fact The Splash. Not just the only splash-patterned chicken in the flock, but also the feeder of delectable grubs to the hens, the protector of chicks and brooding hens, the announcer of sunshine in the morning, the afternoon, and the moon in the middle of the night, the hunter of rats even in the pitch black, and the faithful companion of Godiva, who is the boss of him, too. Splashy will be The man.

Splashy, despite incongruously being an Ameraucana, will be the only chicken ever in your life who actually wants to be picked up, and when nestled into your adult arms, will promptly fall asleep—always, and without fail. His little whitish eyelids will sink upwards to close, and he’ll murmel his beak like a little old man, contemplating. He’ll need to rest from his constant vigilance over his flock, and your arms are the only place he can do that, most of the time. He’ll become your little love. He’ll hop up on the box outside your bedroom window, crane his neck inside if the screens are off, and crow into your face until you get up, scratch his tiny little wattles, and tell him good morning. Then he’ll go back to stomping circles around the younger hens, herding any potentially-broody hens into nesting boxes, and having his head checked for mites by Godiva.

It’s always a special day when eggs hatch. You’ll know it’s time, because chickens’ hearing is much better than yours, little Em, and they’ll all be standing around craning their heads towards the nesting box for a few hours before the first chicks pip. As hatching days go on, the best brood hens will chase every other chicken away, besides Splashy and Godiva, the undisputed leaders of the flock. And they’ll come and go, eating some chick feed, rearranging some bedding, and often just standing silently, listening to the peeping from under their broody flock-mate.

After a few days, when the hen emerges with her brood, Splashy will stay nearby, standing sentinel between her chicks and any potentially-ill-intentioned other hens. He’ll support her and her chicks until they’ve grown big and independent, running freely all over the yard, digging up your veggies, and roosting in trees that the older chickens can no longer fly to. After a while, Splashy will start chasing away the little cockerels, until eventually you’ll move them to the bachelor pad, before slaughter day.

Slaughtering is not something you will ever enjoy, little Em. I know you’re semi proud, right now, that you can butcher a chicken or rabbit without help, but you don’t have to do the killing yet, now you’re only nine, and Pappa still kills the livestock for you. He’ll teach you, of course, eventually, to kill your own meat. But all of your life until you’re me, now, at fifty, it will still be hard to do. I think I turn off my heart to do it. Slowly. That’s why we have a bachelor pad, now. Practically, the separate run for roosters is a means to feed them their own high-protein feed, and keep them from fighting for a few weeks while they put on some meat before butchering. But it’s also the place I harden my heart against them. I distance myself as I bring them treats. I stop calling them “my love” or “sweetheart”, and I stop loving them.

When slaughter day comes, I take them to the cone, and get the job done, silent tears falling, but no big fuss. They’re just meat, now, as Mum says to you. We’ve learned to do this more humanely, now, settling the gigantic feather-monsters into a big aluminum cone, and gently guiding their heads to hang out the bottom, where I slit their necks until their blood runs straight into the bucket, below. They bleed out in less than a minute, kick their legs mindlessly as their muscles lose contact with their brains, and die. It’s a lot less traumatic than the way Pappa does it, holding them against the ground and chopping their heads off against a board, then holding their flapping, kicking bodies away from himself, as the blood spews. You’ll learn to do that too, of course, before discovering the cone. But the cone will be a relief. A small bit of mercy in a horrible job. But, as Mum and Pappa always say, if you want to eat meat, you need to accept that you’re eating an animal. You need to kill.

Splashy never went into the bachelor pad, of course. He walked around to look at the young boys in their new digs, but he never went in. I always wonder if he knows where they’re going, even though we take pains to never slaughter within view of the other chickens. It’s funny we call these choices “humane”, when humans are probably the least compassionate species ever to exist. Not true, Splashy would say, as he tilts his one good eye up at me and clucks. He loves me, and as of now, I know he thinks I’m compassionate. Or at least he did when I killed him.

For the past year, Splashy’s had some kind of neurological problem, we think. A few times, he ended up upside down on the ground, just looking around him, but unable to right himself. Like a June-beetle fallen on its back. The hens just stood around looking at him, until we found him and set him upright again, and he just walked away as if the day was fine, stomping his feet around his favourite hens, in circles.

But these last few weeks he’s been going to bed early, and then eventually he stopped sleeping on the roost, choosing instead to nest on the wood-chipped floor outside the nesting boxes. Again and again, we found him there, with Godiva standing guard over him. His legs seemed to get weaker and weaker. He tumbled down the ramp out of his house in the mornings, rolling onto the ground and then getting up to go outside like all was well. Falling off stairs and down hills just became his way of getting around. He still found insect snacks for his ladies. He still kept his good eye trained on the sky, watching for threats as the flock foraged. He still came over to see me when I checked on him. Until one day he could barely get up at all, so we took him inside for the day. The autumn sun came out, outside the house – the same house you live in now, little Em, and where I’m still raising chickens, now. That golden light tumbled through the foggy yard and onto the browning veggies; the celery tops curling against their weakening stalks, and the empty squash vines shrinking away into the dewdrop-lit grass.

I brought him in every day and cuddled with our Splashy. I called him “my sweetheart” and “my little love”, and he closed his eyes and leaned his beak against my cheek. Pappa came by and saw him sitting in his box in the living room. He said it was cruel to keep him alive like this, and I knew he was right. But I couldn’t bring myself to kill my Splash. Not this rooster. So again, we carried him out to the chicken house and put him to bed on the chips. Godiva came to stand by him again, and he pecked her, sending her away. He slept alone. The next day he couldn’t get up at all.

A closeup photo of a woman with brown hair tied back, in a red sweater, holding a white and black splash-patterned rooster in her arms. The rooster is resting his beak against her nose, and his eye is half closed.

That day was beautiful. The dew dried right off the whole yard and the sun warmed everything. The light was orange, almost like during a wildfire, but pinker, too, this time, like it was beckoning Splashy to join it. I laid him on the grass and brought him blackberries and other treats. He shared them with all the older hens, pecked the younger ones to keep them at bay, and Godiva never came back to him.

As the sun set, Splashy’s flock took themselves to bed without him, and he looked up at me with his one good eye. I knew it was time, but I didn’t know what to do. I asked our partner to bring me the sharp knife and a towel, and then I just sat there in the deepening evening with our brave little man on my lap. Our partner dug a hole next to the chicken run, where Splashy could always be close to his flock, and I said, “should I kill him at the side of the hole, on the ground, or in my lap?”

“I don’t know,” our partner replied. We were both empty of reason and joy.

I decided the hole was more practical, so I knelt down beside it, the knife in one hand, and my little white splash rooster in the crook of my other arm. I laid him down against the ground and he gave a huge flap, writhing his whole body as if to save himself. I was so alarmed and upset I jumped up, saying, “oh no!” And “I can’t do this!”

Then I sat back on the chair we’d been in for hours, letting Splashy settle back onto my lap. He looked straight in my eyes, and then rolled over on my lap, stretching his legs and breast out as far as he could. He stretched his neck out too, baring his throat to me, and waited. I held the sharpest knife against his throat, and in a rare and awful stroke of misluck, I failed to cut through his skin. Horrified, I gasped, and he just lay there, still waiting. With our partner’s help, I gathered my nerves and killed the most sensitive, beautiful, brave and clever chicken I ever knew. And we shed a million tears as we buried him there with a heap of autumn marigold flowers and yarrow leaves.

It was so dark by the time our Splashy was buried, that we stood in the damp evening, looking up together at the darkening sky, waiting for the stars to come out. Our partner put his arms around me and we just stood there, looking sometimes at the darkness at our feet; sometimes into the deep, deep blue. And in the safe arms of my partner, I sang,

Oh watch the stars, see how they run!
Oh watch the stars, see how they run!
Oh the stars run down, with the setting of the sun.
Oh watch the stars, see how they run!

The sun still came up the next day. Some small animal dug at the dirt over where Splashy was buried. We planted giant allium bulbs with him, and they’ll bloom next spring. At the time I’m writing to you, we’ve already introduced a new rooster to the flock, and he’s learning his boundaries from the hens. Godiva ignores him.

Little Emily, this life is full of so much pain and so much beauty. If a chicken can teach us about acceptance and love, then there is hope for our world, despite the sometimes bleak odds. The darkness falls and somebody still crows, the next morning.

Love, Emily

Dear Little Emily: Mickey O'Flaherty and the Dog Poop

A row of six children stands against a few shrubs and a wooden fence.

The audio version of this story is now also available on my MakerTube!
https://makertube.net/w/4ikHDR1cK3fhjeNB7cxSm8

~~*~~

Dear Little Emily,
When you grow up, you’re going to keep singing with Mum, at the folksong retreats. Mostly the old ballads and work-songs that you usually sing, with all the spirituals that tie your hearts up into warm packaged balls of hope. And also sometimes songs Mum’s written. Like this one:

Well I know your Darn Dog done been here,
Done been here, neighbour, done been here!
I know your Darn Dog done been here,
He done blessed my yard and gone.

Mum is really never going to stop writing parodies. This one is of “I Know My Good Lord Done Been Here”, and you’ll be mighty glad Daddy will be dead by the time she writes it, because he’d sure not appreciate the vain usage of his Lord’s name! Haha. Pretty sure you would have sung it to him if she was going to write it while he was alive. Sometimes you’ll be so embarrassed, though, and this is no exception, although by the time you sing this, you’ll be me—your adult self—and have learned that a little embarrassment is worth the reward of a great memory.

Good morning, Mr. Otis
I wonder where you’re bound
You look like you’re on a mission
And you’re walking on landscaped ground

Well I know your Darn Dog done been here,
Done been here, neighbour, done been here!
I know your Darn Dog done been here,
He done blessed my yard and gone.

One of Mum’s favourite memories to tell, is of Mickey O’Flaherty. Even his name seems to delight her, and the stories fall out of Mum all your life long. I know you know this already. You’re around ten. But it never stops—I promise.

Mum has a framed photo on her wall of herself and Uncle Jim, and a bunch of their friends standing in a line on their street in Mill Valley, where they grew up. Six kids. Uncle Jim is the weirdo on the right with his legs and eyes crossed. Mum is third in from the left, and just beside her sheepish grin, Mickey O’Flaherty’s ears stick out. He looks like he’s just about to say something. Maybe that’s my imagination. He apparently had a lot to say.

Mum likes to tell about the protest signs Mickey put up on his front lawn, declaring “My Mother won’t give me hot chocolate!” and other such things. Apparently Mickey used to have breakfasts at little Mum’s house in the mornings, before they went off to school with Katie and the other kids. He spent a lot of time at Mum’s house. Grandma looked after him, I guess, because his mother was single. I guess like Mum was single for a little while after she left Daddy, and you both lived in the apartment, and Pappa brought you groceries, before he became your Pappa. So I guess maybe you have Mickey’s sense of humour to thank for Mum’s silliness. And perhaps this song.

You know that poodle Mitzi
She’s easiest to find
She’s just like Hansel and Gretel
She keeps leavin’ her crumbs behind

Well I know your Darn Dog done been here,
Done been here, neighbour, done been here!
I know your Darn Dog done been here,
He done blessed my yard and gone.

So the best story goes like this: There was some rude neighbour—and that’s important—he wouldn’t have met the same fate if he hadn’t been rude to children. And on top of all that, his dog used to poop all over the neighbourhood. So (and Mum swears this was Mickey’s idea), she and Mickey did a community service and picked up all this neighbour’s dog’s poop, and gift-wrapped it beautifully. They tied it up with a string and put a neatly-written note on top, that said, “Your dog did this. Be proud!” Then they set it on the neighbour’s doorstep, rang the bell, and departed.

I used to walk out barefoot
When I was just a lass
I don’t walk barefoot anymore
Because there’s danger in the grass

And I know your Darn Dog done been here,
Done been here, neighbour, done been here!
I know your Darn Dog done been here,
He done blessed my yard and gone.

So when you’re all grown, little Emily, you’re going to make a big road-trip down the coast, with your own teenaged children, and you’ll stop in Mill Valley, on Meadow Road, to look at the house our mother grew up in. The house will look rather as she described it: A single-story home with a garage and a lawn. You can imagine little Mum on that lawn, spread out with Mickey and Katie and maybe Uncle Jim, all painting on scraps of cardboard, some kind of creative advocacy for their rights. Mum spent her whole life advocating for children’s rights, as a preschool teacher. Although by the time you’re grown she’ll be an infant development consultant, doing the same thing. Did their exploits inspire her?

Around about now, when you’re ten, Mum and Pappa want to get you a passport, but Daddy won’t allow it. He’s fighting for custody of you, and I know you’re scared. Scared that every time Mum and Pappa come back from that courtroom it will be to say goodbye; to send you off to Daddy’s house forever. I wish I could tell you right now, Mum would never let that happen. She may not have money for a lawyer, and she may just be a preschool teacher married to a bearded man with a woven tie who cringes at the sight of documents, but she knows how to speak up for herself and your rights, and she’ll find a lawyer at the last second; a friend who is a straight-standing, clean-shaven man in a crisp suit and who will walk into that courtroom and silence all those people trying to take you away from her. He’ll silence them just by walking in like he belongs there. He walks like a man who knows he’s worth something. Like maybe his mother was like your mother, and knew how to give children a voice. That friend will save your life that day, little Emily. But he’ll be there because Mum was brave enough to ask him. And maybe all of it because she and Mickey developed their voices as children, so they could speak up when others couldn’t.

Good morning to you, neighbour
And how do you do?
I’d ask you in for coffee
But you’d get dog shit on your shoe!

And I know your Darn Dog done been here,
Done been here, neighbour, done been here!
I know your Darn Dog done been here,
He done blessed my yard and gone.

Sing the songs, little Emily. No matter how embarrassing. You never know where they came from nor what importance they carry. Sing the songs with your friends, now, and with your children and their friends, later. You’re going to be a teacher, too, and an artist, and you, too, can give people a voice, even though right now when you’re ten you don’t feel you have one at all.

I think it’s the struggle we go through as children that gives us the courage and power to stand up for others, later on. I wonder what became of Mickey O’Flaherty. What will your fear of going to Daddy’s house do for you? Your fear of speaking up, and the danger of not speaking up? I mean – I’m almost fifty, now. I kind of know what you’re going to do with your life. But I think I’ll leave that to you to discover, as you go. Sometimes the joy is in the finding. Unless it’s poop you find, I guess.

Well I know your Darn Dog done been here,
Done been here, neighbour, done been here!
I know your Darn Dog done been here,
He done blessed my yard and gone.

Love, Emily

We Must Open Our Eyes and Choose to See

Painting by artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude, showing a mostly black sea of adult legs in pants and shoes, walking by. In the centre of the image is one lit person: A small child in a party dress and hat, fists clenched at her sides and her face looking stern and perhaps horrified. She looks out from the sea of passing legs with indignation. The title of this life-size painting is "Did you shuffle of the pavements just to let your betters pass." — **"Did you shuffle off the pavements just to let your betters pass?"**
*Oil and graphite on canvas. Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude*

Thijs’ face remained open and calm as he described his childhood memory of his Jewish neighbours being removed to whatever fate they met: “I remember the SS or Germans going upstairs, kicking them down the stairs, so they rolled right on our sidewalk, in front of our door.” I was interviewing him for an installation about the concept and feeling of ‘home’, and this was part of his response. I think that I, too, looked unphased by this story. We both have lived so long in a society that treats such traumatic experiences as passing news, and turns to chemicals, distraction, or denial to keep from dwelling on the horror.

But it IS horror. It’s horror every time a starving Palestinian child tries to get food and is blown to pieces, but still alive, briefly, to witness the cries of his mother. It’s horror every time a child holds the dead face of his parent, living only in terror, oblivious to what life will be like as an orphan of genocide, however short that life may be. It’s horror every time a girl, a child; a desperate woman is captured, owned, and brutalized to feed some sick person’s illness, and then silenced, for the good of the nation, or at least for the benefit of those profiting off the nation. It’s horror every single time a person of colour, an indigenous person, a woman, or a poor person is kidnapped by brutal masked agents of terror, hiding behind anonymity and the letters I, C, and E, or simply balaclavas. It’s horror while these people sit rotting in internment camps created with the intention of brutalizing their bodies, minds, and futures. It’s horror when a child is raised with such depravity that they applied for the jobs that mean brutalizing their fellow citizens; that they are willing to create more such depravity in hopes of rising above it, for the good of the nation. For the good of the family. It’s horror when we turn away, because it hurts so much to see, and blindly, through chosen ignorance, raise our own children to be unphased by the horrors that we condone, for the good of the family.

It’s easy to buy cheap milk eked out of tortured beasts on tortured stolen indigenous land because my children need calcium, to bubble their water with a machine made on stolen Palestinian land, and to turn their eyes away from the news, towards a screen filled with shiny ads. To turn my own eyes away from how those ads are harming them, because I need time to make their dinner, and it's easier. It’s easy to allow the fascist few to benefit from our choices, for the good of the family. For the good of the nation.

What family?! What nation?! What kind of monsters are we that we can look but refuse to see?! I hear a siren right now outside my window, and I’m scared because I know that siren means someone in my community is scared, too, right now.

I can’t turn away. I can’t be the person who allows these horrors to happen, while I avert my eyes. Neither can you. I know that, because you probably looked at the news, today. You’re reading this, right now. Not to numb yourself, not to bolster ignorance, but to SEE. You’re trying to see. You’re looking to bolster community by being willing to share the suffering of others.

We know we’re bound to each other as humans. We know each child stripped of dignity, health, safety, love and life by the greed of the tiny fascist few is a part of us. We know, even, that those greedy few are part of us, so like we need to weed them out of our society, we need to weed the tendency to greed and ignorance from our own psyches. We need to rise up as individuals to save the whole of us.

I know this all sounds very big-picture. Very abstract. We want something actionable. We want to reject the rise of greed, hate, and fascism. But how? I’m working on that. I can’t say how it will look for you, but I can, at least, describe what I’m doing, and hope it helps inspire you to make whatever choices make sense in your life.

Ending Reliance on Fascist Corporations

Those photos of Trump surrounded by the tech billionaires whose private jet flights we fund with our digital existence were very enlightening, to me. I can no longer pretend a single one of them is good. Not even if they tout vaccines for impoverished populations or free transit. They’re a huge piece of the fascist landscape, and I can’t be supporting them. Obviously, it’s difficult to just quit these giants in a world that they’ve carefully arranged to be mandatory opt-in. In fact, we pay for the right to use these systems that we’ve been convinced we can’t live without!

Well, I’ve been dumping the tech giants at a steady pace for about six months, now, and I’m here to tell you it’s not only less daunting than I feared; it’s liberating!! It feels wonderful!! So here’s a list of the great alternatives I’ve found. And of course there are many more! Luckily, we live in a whole world full of caring, creative individuals, working in community to build a better world.

*NOTE: Rebel Tech Alliance, one of the groups building this better world, recently contacted me regarding this article, so point me to their amazing resource for this exact information! Do check it out; they've compiled a very useful list of options! https://www.rebeltechalliance.org/stopusingbigtech.html

…and here are my choices:

Facebook/Instagram/Twitter ⟶ Mastodon
Mastodon, with it’s cute little Elephant logo, is wonderful for connecting to like-minded community. A bit of an adjustment in terms of how posting works, but not difficult, by any means. Yes, it’s part of a whole landscape of options, but you don’t even need to understand that to use and enjoy it!

WhatsApp ⟶ Signal
For some reason I had the idea that Signal was for right-wing people. (?) Once I joined, I discovered that wasn’t true at all. It’s just for people. Some might be right-wing, but I wouldn’t know, just like you wouldn’t know that about your phone contacts list. It is, after all, just an app you can use for free video, phonecalling, and messaging, that uses your contacts list. But it’s an app that’s not stealing and selling your data. And yes it’s free.

News sources ⟶ Al Jazeera and local sources
Obviously, this depends on where you are. But Al Jazeera definitely has a more open view of world events than any mainstream North American news sources I’ve looked at. And I augment my news intake by subscribing to local and indigenous sources that have more to say about my specific local interests.

Blogger/Website ⟶ Autistici/Noblogs
Yeah!! I haven’t moved my domain name over yet, but I was honoured to be accepted by the good people who create and maintain Autistici. I’m slowly transferring all my previous content to my site there, and will redirect my domain name when I’m ready. This (moving all my content) is definitely the most daunting task I’ve undertaken, but it’s worth it, not to be chained to Google/Blogger.

Web/Chrome ⟶ Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla is an amazing group of people fighting very hard to maintain fair and open internet. They make Thunderbird, which is a great email reader/system (I’ve been using it for decades), and Firefox, which is possibly the best, safest, most versatile web browser out there. Yes, it’s WAY better than Chrome!! Mozilla’s browsers are free, but you can donate if you want to. Of course the US fascist regime has cut their funding, so now is a great time to donate to such things!!

Gmail ⟶ Autistici
I got a free email account with Autisici too, and use Mozilla Thunderbird to access it.

Spotify ⟶ Bandcamp
I never used Spotify to begin with because the musicians I know were losing out to it from the beginning. But Bandcamp is where many of them publish, so that's what I use, or (for big-name musicians) I buy directly from their websites. Also, Bandcamp makes an expressed point of banning AI. Right on!!

YouTube ⟶ MakerTube
Part of the PeerTube system, MakerTube allows creatives to upload very similarly to YouTube, but without the ads, constant AI spam, and data domination. And free, too, of course! I’m also slowly migrating my content to my new MakerTube account: https://makertube.net/c/emilyartist/videos
(For video-watching, PeerTube definitely doesn't have the amount or variety of content that YouTube has, yet, but it's increasing every day! And it's real, unlike the AI dumping-ground that YouTube has become.)

Google ⟶ Ecosia
On both phone and laptop, I search with Ecosia. I’ve installed it as the default search engine on my Firefox browser. While Google uses ads to raise their already astronomical profits and fund fascism, Ecosia provides the same search, but uses the ad revenue to fund reforestation. I am, however, increasingly irritated by Ecosia's deep dies to AI, and the increasingly useless search results. I may end up switching to something like Duck Duck Go.

Windows ⟶ Linux Ubuntu
This was the scariest change for me, but it turned out to be both simple and amazing!! Not only are there incredibly robust and useful (free, open-source, decentralized) alternatives for every single application I previously bought or subscribed to, but the platform itself is only slightly different from the platforms we’re used to. Also: There’s an amazing community of Linux users ready to help me when I have a question!

Next I plan to replace the Android on my phone with Ubuntu touch, which will apparently relate seamlessly with my laptop, and be free (from costs, data insecurity, AND fascism!) I’m also going to get a fully repairable Fairphone.

Here are some of the apps I use, on Ubuntu. They're also available for use on Windows. Every single one of these is actually better than what it replaced for me. And free.

Word/Spreadsheet/pdf Processor ⟶ LibreOffice
Image Editor ⟶ GIMP
Video Editor ⟶ Kdenlive
Audio Editor ⟶ Audacity
Video Player ⟶ VLC (plays all kinds of things that popular players can’t)

There was one program I couldn’t get an alternative for, which is Blurb’s BookWright app. This worried me, because I do use it frequently. But it turns out there’s an easy fix for this issue! I installed Wine from the Ubuntu store, which emulates Windows, and thusly runs BookWright for me, effortlessly. That’s what’s going on in the background. What I see is just the BookWright app logo on my desktop, and it runs like there’s no background at all. 🙂

Freedom and Human Rights

At some point I realized that in almost every country, it’s illegal to live without buying or renting space on the planet. Sure, there are organizations trying to help those who can’t afford the luxury of shelter, but their goal is still to get people earning enough money to rent space. Eating is the same. You must make enough money to pay someone else to produce food, because growing it, while not always illegal, is at least only available to those who pay for space to grow it. As corporations like Nestle commandeer water resources, and municipalities begin taxing citizens for water-use, but not corporations for draining aquifers, many are now also unable to afford water. We always have to pay for our right to live. And who makes that money? Those depraved billionaires, of course. The only way to keep the basic human rights of taking up space, eating and drinking, is to exercise those rights.

I’ve noticed, personally, that when I go into the city, I feel like I need to pay for food or entertainment, if I want to sit down. To buy a cookie if I want to use a toilet. Cities offer parks and benches, of course, but I feel like there’s a growing expectation that if we’re using the spaces, we should be paying someone. The right to simply rest should not belong to the wealthy.

So taking up space is part of exercising our rights. Drink from the creek. Begin to care where it’s coming from, and who’s polluting it. Sit on the sidewalk and learn to see your neighbours. Encourage them to sit on the sidewalk, too. Plant food crops in disregarded soil. We have the right to live a good life on this earth, with the gifts this earth gives to all animals. Live it.

Activism

I’ve been severely limited by disability these last few years, and haven’t attended a single protest. Luckily, protests are not the only way to act against tyranny! They may not even be the most effective way! My auntie reminded me of this when she sent me this poem, yesterday. With a dizzying array of health problems like strokes and pneumonias that have put most of her career as a poet, performer, educator and author on hold, she still managed to write this poem, record it, and send it out. So I took one minute out of my morning and shared it on my MakerTube and Mastodon! We can ALWAYS do something.

Maybe the something looks like growing our own food, and sharing the bounty with neighbours. Maybe it looks like writing to people in position to make political or corporate change. Maybe we can make change by choosing how and where we spend our money, or earn it. Maybe we reject industries and products we know to be harmful. My son messaged me yesterday to say he sadly forgot to ask for oat-milk in his cappuccino. Why? I asked him. His answer was that the dairy industry is terrible. We didn’t talk about the coffee industry, but it’s a small thing to request oat milk instead of dairy. Maybe coffee is next. We make a journey by taking one step at a time, and every step matters.

The solution to so many of the world’s problems seems to be thoughtfulness. Awareness. Like when I talked about drinking from a stream, to allow us to take stock of who’s polluting that stream, we need to go through our lives with our eyes open, so that we are compelled to make the changes necessary to live well.

The people who profit off of our ignorance pay big money to maintain that ignorance. But we still have the power to open our eyes. To witness and make choices. When Thijs watched his Jewish neighbours rolled out onto the street he didn’t look away. In fact, eighty-odd years later, he’s still telling the story. Still using his traumatic experience of witnessing genocide to educate; to help all of us to open our eyes.

We’re all witnessing genocide, today. We’re all witnessing a rise of fascism that is stunning in its similarity to what Thijs and many of our elders experienced less than a hundred years ago. It’s up to each of us to not turn away. To not accept. To not condone. To not support fascism.

I know it's not so simple. We're funnelled into supporting fascism with every breath we take. But this is war, now. We're dying from our apathy, and the only thing that will save us is taking responsibility for the change. Nobody else is going to do it for us. As Sinéad O'Connor sang in "Drink Before the War", "Somebody cut out your eyes, you refuse to see". They can force us all they want, but the choice to see or not to see is still ours.

It’s up to each of us to build the world that feeds the many instead of the few. It’s up to each of us to look at our own hands and be sure they’re doing work we’re proud of. It’s up to each of us to open our eyes and become aware of the consequences of every action we take, and only take actions we’re proud of. For the good of the family. For the good of all people, and the future and ecology that feeds us, we must open our eyes and choose to see.

An abstract oil painting in red, orange, yellow, green brilliant blue, dark blue and black. It is reminiscent of explosions and fire in the night, with many crossing lines, a bit like a landscape. Named after Sinead O'Connor's song, Drink Before the War. — **"Drink Before the War"**
Oil and graphite on canvas. Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude

Labelling Weeds: Art for Public Engagement

Close-up photo of artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude, with brown hair in buns and a red and black lumber jacket, printing the words "broadleaf plantain" on a rock with chalk. There are small plantain plants growing out from under the rock.

This has become one of my favourite things to do. Every year I go out and label the weeds and trees in the place with the highest foot-traffic on our island.

Photo of the back of artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude, with brown hair in buns and a red and black lumber jacket, printing the words "arbutus tree" on a concrete block wall, and a red arrow pointing up to the base of a large arbutus tree that is growing ontop of the wall.

I hope people see these and begin to notice a bit of the world around them in ways they may not have, before. I hope people also go home and find the same weeds, there. Sure, it's the simplest kind of art.

Close-up photo of artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude, with brown hair in buns and a red and black lumber jacket, sitting on the pavement next to a rock wall with a small plant growing out at the bottom. She he printing the words "prickly lettuce" in chalk, on the pavement.

I'm just chalking rocks, walls, and sidewalks with plant names! But I really feel it might be one of the most impactful works I've done.

Close-up photo of artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude, with brown hair in buns and a red and black lumber jacket, printing the words "bracken fern" ontop of a small concrete block wall. There are bracken ferns growing on the other side of the wall from where Emily is standing.

And yes, if you're wondering, I do have municipal permission to do this! So the credit for this also goes to open-minded officials and other citizens who can appreciate the benefits of art and education in our communities. 🙂

A photo of a sidewalk with the words "red alder tree with invasive clematis vine", written in chalk on the pavement. Beside the pavement is dry grass, then blackberry bushes, then above those red alder trees filled with invasive clematis vines, flowering white.

It’s Our Job, as Artists, to Imagine Hopeful Futures

A photo of the artist's hand holding a pencil, drawing a portrait of two boys laughing joyfully.

As artists, we have the power, ability, and honour of building our future civilization. Some of us may be doing so intentionally; many not. But whether we're aware of it or not, we are responsible.

Sci-fi is often touted as predicting the future. But does it? Writers and other artists imagine plausible eventualities based on current directions and capabilities… and then they often happen. Maybe the artists are soothsayers, or more likely we're just creative… and humans have evolved by being resourceful. If we're given a wild idea, we take great pleasure in making the seemingly impossible happen. So maybe artists are visionaries. That's not a pat on the back. Most of us want to be seen as visionaries, I suspect, but it's a huge responsibility.

What are we putting out into the world? Books, movies, and other art that may very well have been intended to warn us away from a dystopian future might instead be creating it; putting the ideas for such dystopia into our minds so that our resourceful society will create it. I'm not talking about some evil genius who sits in their dark basement playing apocalypse video games and then thinks, "ooooh I could destroy the world… bwahahahahaaaa!" I'm talking about all of us becoming gradually more and more accustomed to seeing and hearing about such dystopian events so that as they happen, we don't stand up and stop them.

What are artists supposed to do? Become blind Pollyannas and make fluff? Cotton candy dreams with no real plot and no intrigue? No, of course not. Nobody would look, at all. People like to look at what terrifies us. And art needs to deal with our problems, too; not just look the other way. I'm totally not immune to creating work that deals with humanity's pain and failings. But I also feel that we need to be creating work that posits hopeful futures. We need to be imagining the world we want to see, instead of the one we're afraid of.

And luckily, we have nature to look at, for inspiration. Nature is resourceful and opportunistic and ruthless. And extremely beautiful. The whole of nature evolves because of these things, and humans are definitely part of that whole. Nature limits itself simply because it's impossible to keep living if one devours all one's resources at once. I keep an ecosystem-integrated food forest around my home, which teaches me this every year. This year we're having quite an infestation of flea beetles. In previous years it was cabbage moths and one year–spectacularly–it was mourning cloak butterflies. But each of these infestations either destroys it's own habitat and thereby starves itself out, or attracts some kind of predator that eats it alive. Nature limits greed. So, despite my current paltry pea crop, due to the flea beetle infestation, I'll still have food, because my garden is diverse, and next year I don't expect to have such an issue with flea beetles. They've destroyed so many of their resources and attracted so many predators that they can't be such a problem, next year. Humans are in the process of self-limiting, as well, painful though it is for us as individuals.

Contrast my garden flea beetle situation to a garden where all that's planted is peas (because: monocrop=money). The flea beetles now threaten the entire garden, as opposed to just the peas and the odd brassica or tomato, here and there. So now all we see as farmers is the flea beetle problem. And we blast them all to hell with pesticides. Now we have peas, and we make money, but we're poisoning ourselves and the land, and most of the other species that live on it. So in a couple of years of this practice, we've devastated our ability to grow peas, or perhaps anything at all on that piece of land, because we no longer have the diversity of life needed to sustain… life.

It doesn't take much vision to see that that way of farming (or living, or envisioning our human future) is hopeless. It takes a little more vision to imagine and create a hopeful future.

As an artist, I'd like to be one who plants more diversity, in preparation for new ways of living, instead of just imagining bleak futures for us to tumble numbly into. Humanity might indeed extinguish itself by imagining negative futures. But the life of this planet will go on. Yes, it will be utterly changed, because human folly is powerful, and we're destroying life at an ever-increasing rate. But some kind of collection of species (likely including some humans) will carry on beyond our rather short-lived civilization, and will develop its own rich community of life when it settles into the cradle that this planet offers. This new collection of species will imagine itself and grow into what it imagines. And, like my garden, the more diverse this new ecosystem is, the more resilient it will be.

I love to feel the responsibility of such a future. Let's imagine!

I Made a Dead Rooster Prop!

Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude wearing a burgundy sweater and yellow plastic apron, holding up a skinned chicken by its hind legs. In her left hand she's holding a sharp knife, slowly working the pelt off of the wings. — *Skinning the rooster.*

It happened like this. Just after we discussed the stage floor I was painting, the director cycled back to my house and knocked on the door again. "Emily?" He called into my house. "Emily, I forgot to ask. Could you make us a rooster prop? It's to look like it's been killed by a fox. Although that may or may not have actually happened."

I was astounded! And thrilled!! "Of COURSE I can!!" I knew the play was pretty serious — Dancing at Lughnasadh. So this prop was a serious prop. Well… as serious as a pretend killed rooster can be, I guess. I was deeply honoured that the director thought I'd be up for the task.

There is no way I can easily make a fabric rooster puppet that looks real, and dead. So the first thing to do was to find a rooster that was headed for a pot, anyway. I was given this guy. He was sadly doomed, after his owners had searched for a home, to no avail. So on the appointed day, I picked him up, thanked him for his donation to my freezer and the arts, and butchered him. He made meat, bone broth, liver pate for me to eat, and a pair of feet and a beautiful feathered pelt for the prop. I tried saving his beak, too, but didn't like how small and dark it was, and decided that this rooster prop was going to need a yellow beak.

Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude, sitting on a porch, leaning against vegetable planter boxes full of clover, onions, and spinach, while working a whole rooster hide on her lap. The rooster's drying feet are sitting beside her on the porch. — *Working the hide.*

I've plucked and slaughtered a LOT of chickens in my life, and plenty of rabbits, too, whose skin comes off so easily, like peeling off a knee-sock from a foot. Rooster skin–with feathers, wings, and tail attached, is not like that!! It took some careful consideration to get it done properly, bones removed (all but the Pope's nose and the wing-tips), and with all the feathers still in tact.

I worked a long time to get the skin clean, and then I tried to dry him. I've never done taxidermy before, and it turns out a bird is not the easiest thing to start with. Then it turns out I also have no experience. Oh wait–I said that already. But it turned out to be a problem!! And this bird was fatty. I managed to dry his feet OK, but ended up removing the wings and tail feathers, as well as the ruff and saddle feathers. Ugh. All that work keeping his skin together, just to take him apart in the end!!!

Anyway, I made him a body out of old terrycloth and felt, and a bit of armature wire for a basic spine and rib structure; broken sate skewers sewn into the wings, too. I first made his wattle out of felt, but it looked awful, so ended up making a more floppy one of red velvet with rocks inside for that floppy weight a rooster's long wattle can have. He has rocks in his head, too, so it can dangle down, limply. Appropriately for a dead guy. If you know, you know. The wings had to dangle, too, when he's turned upside down and hung by a foot.

Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude, seated at her sewing machine, wearing an Alice In Chains t-shirt, sewing a rooster head out of white terrycloth and red felt. — *Sewing the rooster's head out of terrycloth and felt.*

Another part of dead roosters–especially those that may have been killed by a fox–is the protrusion of some guts. You know if you've cleaned a rooster, you reach in and grab the gizzard, and then the liver and intestines come out along with it. I didn't make this guy a gizzard, but I did make him some intestines and a liver. And I filled the intestines with lentils to make them dangle properly. Well, I hope he enjoyed his meal.

On a table is a spread of rooster-puppet parts: Two dried rooster feet, a stuffed neck and head made of fabrics, a yet-unstuffed body made of white terrycloth, two real rooster wings, a heap of intestines made of pink cotton and stuffed with dry lentils, and a liver made of burgundy fabric. Also on the table are thread, scissors, yarn, glue, feathers, wooden skewers, and a cup of tea. — *Various rooster parts in progress, waiting to come together.*

Then I had to sew on his feet and wing parts, and many many many feathers, both real and made of felt. I also painted his face and beak. Way better.

Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude sits on a couch surrounded by brightly-coloured pillows, holding the nearly-complete rooster puppet on her lap. She tenderly holds his head in her left hand, while sewing tiny white felt feathers onto his face with her right hand. Beside her on the couch is a small pile pieces waiting to be attached: white felt feathers in two sizes, and red felt wattles. — *Sewing his hundreds of tiny white felt feathers on!*

So… Here's my dead rooster prop! I hope you like him. I put up a video on my MakerTube if you'd like to see the finished puppet:

https://makertube.net/w/cB27cL8EMFQXF27GkXXC4g

The Medicine Forest my Parents Gave Me: how exploring and knowing our place in the ecosystem builds resilience

A young long-haired boy in a red turtleneck and jeans stands with a bucket and a handfull of greens held to his mouth, in a grassy forest. He's in front of a huge wall of roots -- an upturned tree -- that is six times taller than he is. — *Taliesin picking berries in front of a root tower.*

Once I lost my son in the forest. We were heading home through ferns taller than his three-year-old self, he carrying a harvest of licorice ferns and I carrying his baby sister and some oyster mushrooms. He followed along behind me, and when I turned around, he was gone. I called repeatedly. I retraced my steps. I gripped by baby girl to my chest and started running, panicking, and– there he was, nestled into a sword fern, chewing on a piece of licorice fern root. He looked up blandly at my stricken face and said "I'm just havin' some licorice root." His trance-like state may have been induced by the well-known calming medicine of licorice fern, or it may have been just his joyful state of mind after a couple of hours spent wandering the forest with his mother and sister.

My kids and I spent part of most days of their childhood out in the forest, exploring. That's what I did as a mother because it's what I knew to do from my own childhood, spent here in this same little west coast paradise. When my head hurts, I go outside. Maybe I chew an alder leaf like the wild aspirin that it is; maybe I just lift my face to the fresh air, sun or rain. When my heart hurts, I lie in the moss and let it soak up my tears. Licorice fern soothes me; so does the feeling of bark, or the creek water between my toes. When I'm hungry, I eat beans off the vine on my porch, or berries and other treats from the woods; when I'm hungry for adventure I go exploring in my medicine forest. I made up that word. Medicine Forest. It's like a permaculture food forest, but with emphasis on its healing power. My parents didn't purposely give me a medicine forest, but they did give it to me, and I'm passing it on to my children. Let me explain.

A young girl in a blue sweater and mittens stands in the snow among a whole bunch of chickens, some standing wooden wagon wheels, and various small coops and garden fences. — *That's me with our chickens in the early 1980's, rabbit hutches on the right, and winter-covered veggie garden, behind.*

I grew up in a pretty typical single family house – a modified double-wide mobile home, actually – on a five-acre piece of land that my parents purchased in 1980. This land was forest when they bought it. We used to come up here and have a picnic on the slope they hoped would one day be their building site. They let my brother and me free-range all over this place, climbing trees, damming creeks, digging great big holes and picking and using whatever plants we felt like, as they slowly cleared the land and built up what is now a developed property. We raised chickens, meat rabbits, and pigs (but only once because the experience was too heartbreaking for all of us to repeat). My parents grew food crops and allowed us to plant our own experimental gardens, while also insisting that we should help with the family food operations. My brother and I were never forced to kill or butcher animals, but because our parents nurtured our curiosity, we both knew how to clean a rabbit or chicken by the time we were twelve, and by the time we were fifteen we could cook a good family meal from the foods we'd grown or wildcrafted. We didn't even know the word wildcraft, though. We were just "picking nettles", or "finding a mushroom."

A white-haired woman and a young long-haired boy stand among ferns and nettles and wild berry plants, picking nettles and putting them into a shopping bag and a wicker basket. — *My son helping my mother pick nettles in the late 2000's.*

Living in and with the forest our parents were busy turning into a home was just "life". We could pick indigenous trailing blackberries from the hillside, invasive Himalayan blackberries from the place Pappa was trying to get them out of the creek, or cultivated boysenberries from Mum's garden. Same difference. They all make good pie, if you don't eat them all before getting them home. And whether they make it home or not, your belly is full with the food, your heart is full of the joy, and your mind is full of knowing every detail of your home. That's a medicine forest. It's a place where everything is living and growing together — humans included. It's a place you've grown so connected to that just living there heals you from the inside out.

A young girl with long hair, shirt, pants, and bare feet, sits among the upper branches of a maple tree, her arms woven through the branches, holding a book she is reading. — *My daughter reading in a tree she knows every inch of.*

Somehow through my own teaching and parenting over the years I have come to recognize that, just like the best learning happens when we're inspired by connections to our own experience, the best living happens when we're connected to everything around us. Think of it this way: you care much more about your own backyard than someone else's. You have a lot more interest in your own little potted plant than in the weed at the edge of the pavement, or some tree in a forest far away. So somebody teaching you about a baobab tree might have a bit of a tough job keeping your interest. But what if that tree was yours? My friend went to Africa and really got to know baobab trees – and they became hers. When we connect personally with things, they matter, and mattering strengthens our neural pathways. That's great for learning, but how does this have to do with my medicine forest? Well, this place matters to me. It matters so much that I've spent about thirty years of my life exploring here, both as a child and now with my own now-grown children. I know exactly which part of which slope of which creek has the best clay for sculpting, and which part will still have a pool of water and some desperately-hungry trout in August. I know where the elusive white slugs live. I know how berries' flavours change with the weather and with the time of day. This deep understanding of my little wilderness is my connection, and it's why this place is my medicine.

On top of being important to my own health, my experience of exploring this place has made me resourceful and resilient. We all learn more from observing the people around us than from being taught conventionally, and I learned from watching my parents develop this land; their need to be resourceful when we had no electricity, no toilet, or no income. I learned from watching them not just survive here, but keep working even in the face of failure to find joy and wellness in whatever this land and life had to offer. The moss is not my weeping pillow because I'm an idyllic child from a book about fairies; it's my pillow because sometimes I was just plain too sad, as a child, and the moss was what I found to comfort me. My kids didn't harvest nettles for brownie points or allowance; they donned gloves and harvested them just because that's what we do for Easter. They got stung and they complained to me, but they also delighted in testing their brawn by picking them bare-fingered or by eating them raw. They were building resilience, just like I once did. This year they both came home for Easter and actually wanted to go nettle picking. They want to reconnect to and eat food from their own ecology. We're in this ecosystem for better and worse and every day that falls in between. Like the plants, we'll thrive or die as part of this, so we're doing our best to thrive.

Two teenagers sit at a table, cutting burdock root into small pieces and laying them on dehydrator trays, for drying. — *My kids at fifteen and eighteen processing wild burdock root for tea.*

The business of gardening and developing the physical ecosystem is nowhere near as idyllic as I imagine it sounds. There are brutal realities in nature that hurt like hell. Our crops fail, our chickens get sick and I have to put them down; sometimes we fight and resent each other's impact in the ecosystem. Sometimes money is short, time runs out, and family or world tragedy makes us doubt we can succeed. But experiencing these things, feeling them and accepting them is part of the whole picture. My medicine forest is the ecological basket that holds our family, and the love and knowledge we cultivate here, among the weeds and the crops and the chickens, the weather and the water and our own bodies living. When I leave this place, my medicine forest is carried in the knowledge of my body and mind, to nourish and grow with other ecosystems. It's a conscious choice I make to see my surroundings and live in health with them, as a part of them.

In a monoculture garden, one invasion of a particularly voracious insect can wipe out a whole crop, with nothing remaining to re-seed. The earth itself becomes a barren place, unable to nurture new-fallen seeds without significant help from humans. In a food forest, insects may devour a plant here or there, but the diversity of the community will discourage any one plant or insect from taking over, and thus ensure that enough remains to keep the community thriving. The dead plants along with the dead insects and the droppings of all those who foraged in the forest will feed the earth, ensuring that all the fallen seeds have at least a chance to grow. In fact, the richness of the soil even means the earth will hold more water, making everything thrive more easily.

My parents have asked me how I came to know all these things, and I said "from you", because it was their willingness to let me explore that gave me the gift of knowing my ecosystem. It was their willingness to let me grow my own experimental gardens, and now to rent us a piece of their land and still let me grow my own experimental gardens that gave me the gift of my medicine forest. Sometimes they don't like the look of my unkempt yard, my son's experimental tree fort project, or the weed piles I leave laying around. But they let me and their grandchildren keep living and exploring here, because they're watching the growth of our medicine forest. And sometimes – just once in a long while – we discover things we can teach them, too. Explorative parenting is like that. It's looking at the whole family as a forest instead of one plant seeding another. Our family is like a forest of possibility, where everybody lives in community, exploring and discovering and balancing and sharing, as we all put our roots further and further down, and our branches further and further to the sky.

See my Outdoor Explorations video on this topic, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWMYS6qTOE

How Women Create the World We Want to See

Black and white painting of a woman smiling, eyes and long straight hair cast down over a classical guitar that she is playing. — *Acrylic portrait of my mother, Lyn van Lidth de Jeude, with her guitar.*

My hands held on strong to the red plastic hand-grips of my BMX. No handlebar tassels for me, but I could get to where I was going when I needed to, and today I was rolling home, dragging the toes of my runners along the sharp shale of our driveway.

I could hear Mum’s voice and guitar getting slowly louder as I went. The door of our green and white metal-clad trailer stood open to the wind and the May bird-song, and the familiar sounds of my mother drifted out onto the afternoon. As I dumped my bike against the dog-house and stepped up the porch to the sounds I knew so well, her words filled my mind:

Everybody thinks my head's full of nothin’
Wants to put his special stuff in
Fill the space with candy wrappers
Keep out sex and revolution
But there's no hole in my head
Too bad*

I was mildly alarmed. Not so much because Mum was obviously singing about a gunshot to the head—horrific bloody murder was typical of the traditional ballads we sang together—but because she said 'sex'! Who wants to think about that anyway! I stood there with my mouth open, and Mum looked up from her guitar, her small hands pausing in mid-air formation, as if holding the song until I’d greeted her

“Hi.”

She smiled the beautiful upside-down rainbow of a smile that pulls the pointy sides of her lips up toward her cheeks. “Hi honey!” She called across our mustard-yellow carpet to the tiles where my runners held me fast to the floor. “Have you packed your bag for the folk retreat?”

“I hope you’re not singing that there.” I said without hesitation.

Mum’s pointy smile went flat and her eyes seemed to darken. “I hope I am!” She declared. “This is a Malvina Reynolds song! Not exactly folk, but definitely important to sing. You could sing it with me.”

She must be joking. I’d never sing that word. Too bad!

“It’s about being a woman,” Mum continued, totally oblivious, apparently, to my disgust.

Her hands began to sink, now, and I knew she was going to explain something. I didn’t want to hear it. But she did, anyway. Mum told me that Malvina Reynolds was born even before Grandma. That she wrote a song about ticky-tacky houses, just like the one Mum grew up in, in Mill Valley, where she knew how to find the bathroom in any of her friends’ homes because they were all exactly the same. Mum said Malvina knew what mattered in the world. She supposedly told her husband to drive their car so she could write the ticky-tacky song, because she knew when she needed to make her voice heard. Mum said Malvina was not afraid to speak and do the things that mattered, and I shouldn’t be, either.

Mum says a lot of things that Pappa and Daddy say are ‘wishful thinking’. But she never gives up.

Mum looked into my eyes, then, and then down at her hands as they began to pluck the strings again. I took off my runners as she began to play.

Call me a dupe of this and the other
Call me a puppet on a string, they
They don't know my head's full of me
And that I have my own special thing

I thought about how Mum still makes the dinner while Pappa eats his peanuts and watches the news. I didn’t have a whole lot of respect for her, as a feminist. She eyed me as I walked by, and interjected into her song: “You know women weren’t even allowed to have a credit card until the year before you were born.” Then she smiled and continued:

And there's no hole in my head
Too bad

Mum’s face looked so proud when she sang this song. Even though she said the word ‘sex.’ She said she’s not afraid of it. She said it was still legal, in some places, at that time, for husbands to rape their wives. Mum told me that she and Pappa had to sue Daddy for infidelity because even though they’d been separated for years, he refused to sue her for it, and without one of them suing the other, they weren’t allowed to have a divorce. And that’s just stupid. But Mum said things are changing. And every change matters.

I have lived since early childhood
Figuring out what's going on, I
I know what hurts, I know what's easy
When to stand and when to run
And there's no hole in my head
Too bad

It’s been a long, long time since that day I first heard No Hole in My Head, played on my mother’s Washburn guitar and sung by her beautiful voice. But I can still hear it. Even though Mum died last year, and the months without her voice are piling up on the story of my life like the layers of plough-mud that eventually bury the whitest snow.

It’s spring, again. It’s almost May. I’m almost fifty years old, and women’s rights—the ones our mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers fought and sang and laboured for—are being stripped from us, one by one, day by day, while we look the other way.

It’s not that we’re stupid or blind; some of us have just forgotten how important the work was for our mothers, and how beautiful. We’ve become distracted, almost as if it was somebody’s plan, by the necessities of working double jobs while raising kids in a society that is ever-harder to survive in. We’ve become distracted by the ticky-tacky houses that became the norm; by the products and the must-haves and the must-do’s and fear of not measuring up or out or small enough. We forgot to look away from the people who told us we can’t, and to write our own world that’s different, and hopeful and strong. We forgot that wishful thinking is exactly what dreams are made of, and that dreams are pathways to growth. Revolution. Societal evolution.

We forgot that we’re at the wheel.
We forgot that we are powerful.

In my little memory-video of Mum on the couch with her guitar that sings only for her hands, her voice carries on:

So please stop shouting in my ear, there's
Something I want to listen to, there's
A kind of birdsong up somewhere, there's
Feet walking the way I mean to go
And there's no hole in my head
Too bad

Mum loved birds. She knew all their voices and their migration and nesting habits. She created a garden where an incredible diversity of species could coexist and thrive, because she knew diversity was important in any system. Mum created a world where birds were welcome, safe, and thriving. She did the same for children, and anybody else whose circumstances made them feel weak or othered. She lifted people, and made them strong, with hopes they would lift others. Mum understood that others—especially those who are different from us—are an essential part of the whole, and she lifted their stories and voices. She loved adding harmonies and accompaniment to others’ songs. Mum worked to build the world she wanted to see, and she asked me to follow her lead, but she also followed mine.

I sang No Hole in My Head with my daughter and my son; I sang it at the folk retreat, too—even the word ‘sex’, because I don’t want to be held down by a word or an idea or a threat. I wrote my own songs and I drive my own car. I painted butterflies on my car, to make it beautiful but also to remind me that every small change leads to greater change, in the long run. I keep voting Green, even though they never win, and last year, for the first time, I elected a green candidate in my provincial riding. I will vote Green, again, because it’s right. Because I keep believing that we can build our dream. Together, we can build the world where all of us, and our ecology, matter.

Mum knew that grass-roots revolution isn’t a job for a leader or anybody with power; it’s a job for us all. The whole of us. No matter who gets elected, we have to keep working to fight for our rights and build our future. We have to make choices in every moment to follow the feet that are walking where we mean to go; to be the masses who are, inevitably, making the change. We have to stand up and speak out and not just break down the barriers we face, but turn to what’s beautiful and create the world we want to live in. We won’t all agree about how that world will look, but that’s exactly why it’s a job for all of us. If we all do what feels right, and we talk and listen and love, we will, as a whole, get to somewhere good.

It was hard work that our mothers did, building this world we’ve inherited. But it was also beautiful. Community is beautiful. Now it’s our own and our daughters' privilege to not bend to the world that crushes us; to not try to work within a system that holds us down, but to step out, sing loudly, and build this world, our way. Because there’s no hole in our head. Too bad.

Women in Wartime: Yes We Can

A drawing of a young woman, seen from behind, pulling away to the right from a hand on the left, and yelling towards the left, as if escaping and fending off another person, just off the panel. Artist is Emily van Lidth de Jeude. — *Woman Story: Untitled 7 Artist: Emily van Lidth de Jeude*

I once installed a show called Woman Story here in my home community. The core of Woman Story is a series of 24 portraits of bald, naked women drawn with graphite, crayon and acrylic wash onto reclaimed panels from my own home. They're actively expressing a complex array of experiences that inform woman-ness, but anonymously, because each of our stories might belong to any one of us.

At some point, a local I know distantly ‒ a retired judge and art collector ‒ came in to the gallery and sat down on the bench near the door. He stayed for about forty minutes. I eventually went to sit with him, and asked him what he thought of the show.

"Oh, I'm not here for the show." He answered. "I'm waiting for my ride."

"Ah. I see." What was I supposed to say next?

But he continued. "Is this your work?" He asked, bluntly.

"Yes."

"Well it's awful. An insult to women."

A reclaimed raw wood panel with a drawing of a powerful woman holding standing, facing to the right, holding a silhouetted hand up to the viewer in an act of defiance. Artist is Emily van Lidth de Jeude. — *Woman Story: Untitled 18 Artist: Emily van Lidth de Jeude*

I was completely shocked, but also curious, and asked, "Why do you feel that way?"

"They're bald," he answered, point blank. "Why would you be so disrespectful to women?"

"I drew them without hair in order to make them anonymous; to remove an identifier, and so their hairstyle doesn't speak to any potential prejudice or assumptions we make about people's hairstyle choices. But also to make their stories about everywoman."

He never once looked at me while he spoke. "They look like the bodies that came out of Buchenwald," he said. And then he was silent. And soon afterwards, his ride came.

Obviously, I could see his point. And, despite feeling regretful about possibly triggering trauma in people (my family definitely also carries trauma from WWII), I feel like maybe it's not a bad thing to have made this connection in my work. Because in war, women are also casualties. Women are also contributing to and leading both the offensive and the underground support systems. Women did come out of Buchenwald, dead. And women are found in shallow graves, abandoned vehicles, hospitals and landfills all over this world. It truly is awful, and I guess that's why I feel it needs to be told.

Here we are on the brink (or over the brink?) of WWIII, at the same time as we're experiencing a rise in femicide, exploitation, abuse and violence against women. It's not a coincidence. In our greed-based apathy we have allowed a very small handful of men to own and control our world. Most obviously, that's not acceptable! And what do strong women do when a situation is not acceptable? We make change. Women all over the world are protecting the vulnerable and building systems for survival, protection, and recovery, even as the war is only getting started.

Generally speaking, women are fully half of the world's population that knows from a deep generational place what exploitation, vulnerability and violence looks like ‒ and how to both survive and heal it. We're working throughout our communities, already, to build peace and resilience; to educate, support, and empower. Even to empower the women who foolishly allowed their fear to make them hate. We're working to bring and keep people together.

A reclaimed raw wood panel with a drawing of a powerful shouting woman, visible only from her breasts up, and with her arms raised in the air. There is a rectangular hole where her mouth should be, which used to be a hole for an electrical outlet in the wall this panel came from. Artist is Emily van Lidth de Jeude. — *Woman Story: Untitled 16 Artist: Emily van Lidth de Jeude*

We cannot rest. As born survivors, it's our strength and duty to not become bald bodies in concentration camps, mass graves, or landfills; to make sure our sisters, brothers, and children are also safe. To de-escalate fear and reactionary hatred before it harms us. A lot of us are already experienced with this. The rest of us can learn. We have to deal with our own crap and become our best selves, in order to show up for our world. And we have to start now.

There's work to do! I'm not talking about just directly protecting and defending, although there's a need for that, as well. I'm talking about building the world we need, so that it displaces the world of hate and greed that is being fed right now. And there are infinite ways we can do this. Some of us are out putting our bodies and voices on the line; putting ourselves in danger to inform and advocate. Some are donating money, time or skills to organizations that amplify our voices and work. Some of us are building networks and repositories for the protection of people, environment, information, culture, and as a whole, the future of our world. Some are educating and supporting our communities, so that we can have and maintain peace. And all of us, no matter what our lives look like or how limited we feel, can make conscious choices in every act we make to defy and devalue hatred, to promote love and peace, and to pull away from systems, corporations and ideologies that promote hatred.

Even when we feel weak, we can be strong. We are all challenged; women and men, too. That doesn't mean we're beaten. A challenge is, by definition, an opportunity to overcome. That's not just where we're at right now; it's who we are.

We are strong. We are capable. We are determined. We can do this.