Tag: climate change

Activism, Brain Food

One Thing Several Ways

“Some people think I do ‘a lot of different things’ but I think that I am doing only one thing several different ways: I support folks, in groups, workshops, and individually, as they figure out what is theirs to do, and what is not, and how we can aim our labors and our gifts toward negotiating the peripeteia, the turning point that is upon us. We are living through a transformative and dangerous era. I see my work as trying to marshal courage, compassion and collective resources to alleviate inevitable suffering – and in my most idealistic moments, I can imagine we are seeding a new world.” — Martha Crawford

The first line of this paragraph really hit me in the solar plexus when I read it. I still don’t feel the urge to post things on Bluesky, but when I do stick my head in there every so often after following a link, I tend to see posts by Kate Schapira. Her work with the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth has been inspiring to me since I interviewed her way back in 2016 for my comic on sail cargo. She mentioned having learned some valuable skills in one of Martha’s cohorts, and after clicking through to Martha’s website I can see that they’re clearly singing from the same hymnal. It’s nice when people I admire are connected to other people who clearly get it.

Looking forward to digging through her offerings in the weeks to come (including this workshop called GROUP GROUP!!).

Blog

Gigawatts

When things get overwhelming—as they have been for the last, oh, six months or so—I default to logging phone numbers and quotes and book recommendations and ideas in my to-do list app rather than filing them in their appropriate places. This never goes well for me, since my to-do list then becomes an un-completeable heap of Weird Stuff that elicits instant anxiety every time I look at it until one day (today) I rush through it and delete or file everything that isn’t an actual Task.

One of those items, a mere two months old, was to mention that this graph made me emotional the same way seeing a bunch of drivers pull over for an ambulance in early 2021 made me emotional.

These days when I see exhortations to conserve power or water or any other communal resource, I’m alarmed by how cynical I’ve become. Maybe it’s living in a drought-blighted valley where the local country club maintains an emerald green golf course, knowing that however many penalties the water district imposes, the wealthy will just pay for more water. Or maybe it’s general pandemic-era weariness. I don’t know.

But we had a massive heatwave in early September, prompting the powers that be to send out a state-wide text encouraging people to reduce their power usage and avoid blackouts—and it worked! People were asked to make a sacrifice for the common good and they did! You can see it!

1.21 gigawatts. How about that.

Brain Food, Reading

Even You Leave

80 A PRIMER FOR FORGETTING THE EMPTY STUDIO. Said John Cage to the painter Philip Gus- ton, "When you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, you own ideas--all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you're lucky, even you leave."

Again, Sarah Manguso:

My goal now is to forget it all so that I’m clean for death. Just the vaguest memory of love, of participation in the great unity.

What does it mean to be a steward of something or someone in decline?

In caregiving or hospice work (and ecological thinking in the era of climate collapse), this is clearly the game, but I catch myself wondering how it translates to making a comic or writing an essay or any other generative act. How is this season of my life a form of cross-training?

Often I think of creation as an additive process—raising a child, building a city, weaving a carrier bag. But what if, rather than moving closer to the realization of a vision, the putting-down-on-paper-ness of it all degrades the original, unthinkable idea? (However I pronounced “Hermione” in my head as an eight-year-old, for example, vanished the moment I listened to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on audiobook.)

I say “degrades” and feel the jolt of negative connotation, but I don’t mean for this to be negative. There are many ways to think about caring for someone with less time left on this earth than I have. Some of them are negative, depressing, dispiriting. Some days I succumb to that helplessness. But there’s a richness to it, too, even if it doesn’t fit the cultural model we’ve inherited for worthwhile heroics. Again, Le Guin: “[…] the Hero does not look well in this bag.” I try to apply the grandiose posturing of meeting an impossible deadline to the work of caregiving and instead I come up against the fact of death again and again and again.

I think there’s still a part of me clinging to the idea that if I could only become [blugh] enough, I could bring my ideas into the world in a visual form that fully encapsulates what’s present in my mind. And yet: 100% of the time, the page I draw does not, cannot, match the one I envisioned when I sat down at the drawing board. And yet and YET: 100% of the time the physical manifestation of that vision eclipses what I’d imagined. Maybe not in the moment, because I’m stubborn and I’ll usually spend a day or two scowling at whatever’s ended up on the page, muttering about how I’m not mad I’m just disappointed, but once I’ve gone away and come back and seen the page contextualized in the greater stream of the narrative, it’s like someone’s shaken the Etch-a-Sketch. Blank slate. The vaguest memory of love.

Comics

New Comic: Sail Cargo Resurgence

Hey friends,

Fittingly, I’m writing this blog post from the deck of the Oliver Hazard Perry, a new tall ship in Rhode Island that I’m currently working aboard as a visiting artist. But that’s secondary to the following exciting news of the day: I’ve got a new comic up on The Nib!

SailCargoHeader

For the last few months I’ve been researching and illustrating this brief introduction to the modern world of sail cargo—a movement driven by environmentalism, optimism, and countless volunteer hours. There are a surprising number of operations around the world working to convert tall ships into viable cargo-carrying vessels—or build new ones from the ground up.

avontuur plan

It’s a trend I find deeply fascinating, and my only regret was not being able to fit more of my research into this introduction. The sailors working on these vessels are the embodiment of enthusiasm and dedication, and I really enjoyed talking with them during my research.

Of particular interest right now: Sailcargo Inc. are launching their Kickstarter to build a dedicated cargo vessel (Ceiba) from scratch in Costa Rica! Keep an eye on their website for details on the launch.

Fairtransport are also making great strides in building a coalition of sail cargo vessels around the world. Their website has a wealth of information, including vessel tracking and more. View all the ships in their network here.

Tres-Hombres-foto-Hajo-Olij-1
Brigantine Tres Hombres, Photo Credit Hajo Olij

Of course there are also efforts being made to implement modern sailing technology on existing container ships at a grander scale. To learn more about the DynaRig technology behind parts of that movement, check out this article. There’s some fascinating stuff afoot, and even though it’s moving slowly, progress is being made.

I’ll have more news after my week aboard the Perry, but until then, enjoy the comic!

Fair winds,

Lucy

Comics

New Comic: Greening Islam

I have a new comic up today in collaboration with writer Audrey Quinn, Symbolia Magazine, and Showtime’s Years of Living Dangerously TV series. It’s a big honor to be involved with this project, which strives to bring greater awareness to the challenges of climate change through comics journalism and media outreach. These are big, scary topics and I often find myself shying away from them because I feel too small and scared to make any sort of difference. Illustrating a story about someone who’s working to change that through an unexpected avenue was really powerful for me. I hope you enjoy it!