In this patch, I'm working towards a mix of violets (Viola sororia), nimblewill (Muhlenbergia schreberi), white avens (Geum canadense), and yellow woodsorrel (Oxalis stricta). There's also clover, chickweed, mock strawberry and others I'm weeding out. The shrub is an elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) which should get 10 feet wide. The top right corner is a mix of Philadelphia fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus) and orange coneflower (Rudbeckia fulgida).

This is an urban area in the North American Eastern Temperate Forests. My yard is the lowest point of the street next to the storm drain, a "rain garden" for the block. Here, the violets thrive from deep shade to full sun. They are the host plant for fritillary butterflies.

Another good reason for killing your lawn is that once you've done so, you can turn your yard into a literal classroom in order to study things like plant identification and the ecology of the native habitat that once stood where your house is.

In some ways, planting native plant gardens (which can sometimes include non-native, non-invasive species of plants) are small acts habitat restoration in miniature, sure.

Equally (if not more) rewarding however is the ability to learn about the plants that together compose your native ecosystem by growing them right in front of you. Grow them throughout their entire life cycle - observe what pollinates them, what disperses the fruits and seeds, what eats them. The rewards from this kind of sh*t can't be overstated.

We have erected a monument to commemorate the funeral of a species. It symbolizes our sorrow. We grieve because no living man will see again the onrushing phalanx of victorious birds, sweeping a path for spring across the March skies, chasing the defeated winter from all the woods and prairies of Wisconsin.

Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons. Trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a decade hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.

Gardeners often don’t realize gardens make for great firefly habitat, helping to replace lost natural habitat. The common firefly — the Big Dipper firefly (Photinus pyralis) — readily takes to an organic habitat. The trick is to make your garden as inviting as possible for fireflies to take up residence.

Fireflies spend up to 95% of their lives in larval stages. They live in soil/mud/leaf litter and spend from 1-2 years growing until finally pupating to become adults. This entire time they eat anything they can find. As adults, they only live 2-4 weeks. Females that have mated successfully need a place to lay eggs. They will lay eggs in many spots, but gardens offer an oasis with a source of soil moisture good for larval development.

This is a Texas based organization, but many of the plants (or their close cousins) are found across the continent.

Institution: UCLA

Lecturer: Professor Courtenay Raia

University Course Code: HIST 2D

Subject: #history #science #religion #magic #antiquity #modernity

Year: 2009

Description: Professor Courtenay Raia lectures on science and religion as historical phenomena that have evolved over time. Examines the earlier mind-set before 1700 when into science fitted elements that came eventually to be seen as magical. The course also question how Western cosmologies became "disenchanted." Magical tradition transformed into modern mysticisms is also examined as well as the political implications of these movements. Includes discussion concerning science in totalitarian settings as well as "big science" during the Cold War.

In the early twentieth century, two panics emerged in the United States. The Black Scare was rooted in white Americans’ fear of Black Nationalism and dread at what social, economic, and political equality of Black people might entail. The Red Scare, sparked by communist uprisings abroad and subversion at home, established anticapitalism as a force capable of infiltrating and disrupting the American order. In Black Scare / Red Scare, Charisse Burden-Stelly meticulously outlines the conjoined nature of these state-sanctioned panics, revealing how they unfolded together as the United States pursued capitalist domination. Antiradical repression, she shows, is inseparable from anti-Black oppression, and vice versa.

Beginning her account in 1917—the year of the Bolshevik Revolution, the East St. Louis Race Riot, and the Espionage Act—Burden-Stelly traces the long duration of these intertwined and mutually reinforcing phenomena. She theorizes two bases of the Black Scare / Red Scare: US Capitalist Racist Society, a racially hierarchical political economy built on exploitative labor relationships, and Wall Street Imperialism, the violent processes by which businesses and the US government structured domestic and foreign policies to consolidate capital and racial domination. In opposition, Radical Blackness embodied the government’s fear of both Black insurrection and Red instigation. The state’s actions and rhetoric therefore characterized Black anticapitalists as foreign, alien, and undesirable. This reactionary response led to an ideology that Burden-Stelly calls True Americanism, the belief that the best things about America were absolutely not Red and not Black, which were interchangeable threats.

Black Scare / Red Scare illuminates the anticommunist nature of the US and its governance, but also shines a light on a misunderstood tradition of struggle for Black liberation. Burden-Stelly highlights the Black anticapitalist organizers working within and alongside the international communist movement and analyzes the ways the Black Scare/Red Scare reverberates through ongoing suppression of Black radical activism today. Drawing on a range of administrative, legal, and archival sources, Burden-Stelly incorporates emancipatory ideas from several disciplines to uncover novel insights into Black political minorities and their legacy.

“Burden-Stelly is not content with simply contributing to existing scholarship. She shakes things up. And Black Scare / Red Scare hits with volcanic force, sweeping away the prevailing tendency to underestimate the Black Marxist threat to racial capitalism and the embedded anti-Blackness driving state repression. Burden-Stelly details precisely how the ‘political economy of capitalist racism’ played a decisive role in the super-exploitation and subjugation of the Black working class, resulting in a protracted war on Black radical movements. A powerful, pathbreaking work that not only reorients the long history of anticommunism on Black liberation but moves the theory of racial capitalism to an entirely new level.” Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Charisse Burden-Stelly is a critical Black Studies scholar of political theory, political economy, and intellectual history. Her research pursues two complementary lines of inquiry. The first interrogates the transnational entanglements of U.S. capitalist racism, anticommunism, and antiblack racial oppression. Her second area of focus examines twentieth-century Black anticapitalist intellectual thought, theory, and praxis. She is the co-author, with Dr. Gerald Horne, of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History, and her single-authored book titled Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States is forthcoming in November 2023. She is also the co-editor, with Dr. Jodi Dean, of Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writings (Verso, 2022).

Erica Caines is a poet, writer and organizer in Baltimore and the DMV. She is an organizing committee member of the anti war coalition, the Black Alliance For Peace as well as an outreach member of the Black centered Ujima People’s Progress Party. Caines founded Liberation Through Reading in 2017 as a way to provide Black children with books that represent them and created the extension, a book club entitled Liberation Through Reading BC, to strengthen political education online and in our communities.

Apply for Food Empowerment Project’s 2024 Scholarship Contest!

Be a part of Food Empowerment Project’s (F.E.P. ‘s) second annual writing or illustration scholarship contest! F.E.P. was established to help liberate, and empower human and non-human animals facing injustice and to spread the importance of eating our ethics. This contest is open to all youth to share the importance of fostering compassion to save non-human animals and to create a kinder world.

Opening February 12, 2024 and ending April 25, 2024 at 11:59 PM, U.S. Pacific Time. Winners are announced in the Summer!

Overview

Animal exploitation causes the suffering and death of billions of animals every year. From animal abuse in uncaring homes, environmental destruction that harms wildlife habitats, and the animal agriculture industry as a whole, animal exploitation happens in many forms. These examples, amongst many others, reflect a lack of compassion our society has for animals and their well being, no animal should have to experience abhorrent acts of violence towards their life. F.E.P. focuses on encouraging people from all generations to take pride in being vegan for the animals and showing compassion. Compassion is more than an act, it is also the way we think and can be essential to saving the lives of animals.

This F.E.P. scholarship contest is your opportunity to express the importance of fostering compassion for non-human animals to create a kinder world!

F.E.P. Scholarship Contest Eligibility

• Contestants must be 11 years old to 24 years old at the time of submission. You do not have to be a student to participate.
• Contestants must be residing in the U.S. or U.S. territories.
• Contest writing submission must be in Spanish or English.
• Contest submission must be original and unpublished work.

Image description:

In the background, a rusty blade sign affixed to a brick building juts out against the blue sky. In the foreground, a wire sculputre of a smiling sloth clings to an empty sign frame with three paws, the fourth paw holds a wire flag depicting the artist's name in cursive, "Reed."

Reed Bmore