Outside the Covers:Honoring Other GET SATISFIED StoriesSpring 2007 newsletter column

Each Simple Living America newsletter highlights one of the 400 diverse samples received about “the satisfaction of enough” that is not included inside the covers of our book due out later this year.

Featured writer this issue:
Tom Turnipseed

Escaping the hammering yammering of television’s incessant talking heads, who hype out-of-control war and weather, and blather on about Armageddon, I seek satisfaction and refuge on our backyard deck where the mating songs of birds and cicadas and the flickering of fireflies soothe my soul on sultry summer evenings. Last evening at twilight, I gazed upon my vegetable garden adorned with reddening tomatoes, butternut squash turning from green to orange, and bright yellow okra blossoms becoming green okra pods.

Suddenly, a bold little hummingbird darted up to within three feet of my face, hung still in midair and looked directly at me before deftly inserting its long, slender beak into several nectar laden flowers in a pot on our deck, then flitted away into the woods beyond our yard. Those woods appear just as they have for hundreds of years—long before European colonials first came. About twenty feet away, our rustic bird feeders hang from a large oak tree attracting a variety of colorful birds to watch. An appreciative cardinal flew up within 5 or 6 feet of me. A small squirrel scampered up on the deck, as if to say hello to me, before being chased away by our cat, Muck.

I know the birds and squirrels sense that I’m an ecologically kindred spirit who wants to share our common habitat. It sounds simple in our hectic high-tech culture but connecting with the natural world could be our last best hope to avert an eco-catastrophe caused by our pernicious propensity for greed and violence. The bane of our very existence is the more-you-have-the-better-you-are credo along with the worship of a God who says we should kick-ass to get it and dominate nature. ..

Twenty-three per cent of mammals, 12 per cent of all birds, a quarter of conifers, a third of amphibians and more than half of all palm trees are threatened with imminent extinction, according to the scientists’ estimate. The further extinction of between 15 and 37 per cent of all species by the end of the century could be caused by climate change alone. The scientists say, “Because biodiversity loss is essentially irreversible, it poses serious threats to sustainable development and the quality of life of future generations.”

Tom's column continued here....

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