A newsletter, from Tim Falls (#four)

Earth Day 2021 🌍

Apr 23, 2021

Happy Earth Day!

In adulthood, a lot of holidays — Easter and Valentine's Day, for example — have lost the luster that I saw in them as a kid. Not due to a lack of sweet tooth (still have that!), but a consequence of becoming aware of the underpinnings of such holidays: commercialism, materialism, and consumption for corporate gain. 🤮

Earth Day, however, is an exception. In fact, the glow of Earth Day, Earth Week, and Earth Month has perennially shined brighter in my eyes. 🤩

Nowadays, adult-Tim is as excited on Earth Day morning as child-Tim was on Easter morning, when he woke to search for a basket of candy accompanied by either a pair of socks or a cool t-shirt, which was hidden somewhere in our midst. Hell, I was more stoked about Earth Day today than I was about 4/20 two days ago. 😂

Earth Day Every Day

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the occasion has been about environmental activism, action, and community. EarthWeek1970.org offers a thorough history of the movement’s roots, and Earthday.org shows you what they're up to today, this month, and throughout the year between Earth Days.

For me, Earth Day is also about honoring and celebrating Mother Earth.

At this time last year, I undertook a project and called it Earth Day Every Day. Each day, from April 23 to May 19, I picked a particular aspect of nature (e.g., ants, fungi, sagebrush), researched and reflected on it, and shared my findings and reflections through a written journal entry and a video. The project even inspired community members to submit their own Earth Day Every Day celebrations.

As part of your Earth Day 2021 celebration, I invite you to check out all the journal entries and videos from Earth Day Every Day 2020, and consider your own Earth Day Every Day celebration — you can do it any day of the year and share it with the rest of us, if you feel compelled.

Mo’ action, mo’ progress

When I feel into Earth Day 2021, action and progress are the vibes I get.

Just this morning all of this happened:

Joe Biden hosted a virtual climate summit of nations and committed the US to cutting our emissions in half by 2030 — an aggressive and achievable goal that scientists say is necessary.
Greta Thunberg testified to the US House of Representatives and told them that the government’s practice of subsidizing fossil fuel companies with our taxes is a “disgrace”.
The US House passed a bill to grant statehood to Washington, DC. If (and that’s a big “if”) this passes the Senate and is ultimately approved, we could have a majority of Congress who are willing to act on the climate crisis, opening new possibilities for climate policy.

Personally, my pursuit of a career in climate is moving along. I'm preparing for the next steps in my entrepreneurial journey, as I further explore opportunities to address the water crisis. More on this in the Tim-Bits™️ below, but the short story is: I’m excitedly diving deeper.💧

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🤠 Howdy from the Falls

Updates from our family’s neck of the woods.

Last week, we moseyed along from New Mexico as the snakes emerged from their winter slumber; this week we're nesting in Sonoma County California. Here at sea level and closer to cities, the night skies are decorated by fewer sparkly stars, and morning skies are sunny less often. But evenings here are soundtracked by a choir of frogs, and days start with mystically misty mornings that dissolve around midday into sun-drenched afternoons. Sitting on our back deck with Finn the other day, we acknowledged how easy it is to simply sit and be, with the songs of the birds and the warmth of the sun as our company and entertainment.

📔 Field Notes

Highlights from projects I’m working on at home and at the [home] office.

💼 Last month I mentioned my participation in X Genesis. Since then, I completed the four-week discovery phase of the program...and I think I may have discovered something! I'm preparing to present my findings and related hypotheses to a panel of advisors next Tuesday, April 27. Following that, I'll receive feedback and input from the panel and determine whether or not I will carry my discovery into the validation phase of the program.

If you're curious, here's a glimpse into the discovery process:

I'm focused on gray water (aka, greywater) — that is, the water that's left over and typically discarded after we wash our dishes, launder our clothes in the washing machine, take a shower, or wash our hands. With water shortages looming, there’s opportunity to reuse gray water, save money, conserve water supplies, and mitigate drought.
If this piques your interest, I'd love to share more about my ideas and get your thoughts, feedback, input, etc.

🎓 Next week, I begin a cohort-based online course in which I'll be learning "no code" — a category of technological tools (software, apps) and a practice of using them to build things for the internet without writing code. I believe the skills I’ll develop in this course will unlock new possibilities of digital creativity, which will in turn support my creative endeavors in the physical world (like building a new gray water-focused venture, perhaps).

✅ Climate action together

I’ll only invite you to take action that I’m taking, too.

✅ Become an Earth Day member with me!

Want to be an Earth Ally but can't afford it? Reply to this email, and I'll gift you an Earth Ally membership for a year. 🎁

✅ Support Moses Arineitwe (aka the pangolin man) and help him save pangolins in Uganda.

✅ Support the Kuril Islands Research & Conservation Initiative, which you can learn more about in this inspiring and beautiful documentary.

*A note about donations: asks from activism groups are often asks for monetary donations. Clearly, this isn’t for everyone - particularly those without philanthropic budgets. Remember: it’s ok to not donate; and if you do, $1 is meaningful. Also, I’ll try to highlight non-monetary climate action options as much as possible.

🤝 Aspiring to allyship

Efforts I’m making to be an ally to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). I invite others to join me in solidarity.

🗓️ April 28: tune into On Environmental Racism, Climate Change, and Pathways to Justice with Gopal Dayaneni and Carla Maria Pérez (of Movement Generation), hosted by the California Institute of Integrative Studies.

Sometimes we just need to sit quietly and listen actively. If we listen to Gopal and Carla’s voices in this session, we’ll hear:

“a powerful conversation exploring the connections between environmental racism and climate change and what we can do as individuals and communities to address and heal from the harms of both.”

🧘 Meditative moments

Ways to welcome a moment of calm to our days.

I recently heard Dr. Katherine Wilkinson speak. In her talk she acknowledged how poetry contrasts with the content we typically consume throughout our days — news, facts, figures, etc. And she suggested that taking in a poem amid all the other stuff can allow our brains to shift into a different mode. This idea resonated with me, and I thought it might with you, too. So, here’s a poem for Earth Day:

To be of use

By Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

[I found this poem in All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis — an anthology by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Dr Katherine Wilkinson.]

⏯️ Now playing

Film, podcasts, music, and other stuff I personally recommend.

🎶 No More Pipeline Blues (On this Land Where We Belong) — special release for Earth Day 2021, from an amazing cast of talented people, including several Indigenous Women Artists. It's a touching song and beautiful video. If you purchase a copy on Bandcamp, all proceeds go to Honor the Earth and the Water Protector movement.

🎥 Cries of Our Ancestors — an independent film about the coexistence and relationship between humans and chimpanzees, centered in Guinea. We found this touching film through the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, which I also recommend.

📗 The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming — a book by Eric Holthaus that invites readers to envision the beautiful future that’s possible if we change our ways, while recognizing the grim future that’s guaranteed if we stay on our current track.

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That’s all for our April 2021 edition of the newsletter.

I hope you all have a lovely Earth Day…Every Day.

Yours truly,

✌️💚

Tim Falls

A newsletter, from Tim Falls