The RēMind, No. 023: Happy Earth Day!
The RēMind, No. 023: Happy Earth Day!
Updates from Rē / @empowerwithnature Instagram Campaign / New Course / LOVE Garden Wakes Up / Retreat Openings / Earth Day Reading Recommendations / Food Systems and Climate Change / and more!
Thank you so much to everyone who participated in yesterday’s instagram Earth Day campaign with @empowerwithnature and @abdbaskonsolosluguistanbul! We loved seeing how you celebrate and honor our planet Earth! Every year, Earth Day inspires new energy and action in the environmental movement and attracts millions more to the cause. We need to keep the momentum going, and practice being more mindful stewards of our planet and environment.
Sometimes this practice begins with more mindful reading. So, in honor of Earth Day, we highlight some Earth Day-related news and showcase some of our favorite books. We also share how Rē is honoring our planet today and tomorrow: from our permaculture garden, new course offerings, and retreat updates!
Keep reading for more!
Updates from Rē:
The LOVE Garden is waking up!
Our garden beds are topped with municipal mulch (a triple win for regenerating, recycling, and healing broken nutrient cycles) to keep in moisture, encourage mycelium, and stop oxidation of the soil from the elements.
Our natural living zinnia fence line has been composted/solarized from last season. Many interesting bird types and bees and HUGE garden spiders just love this “thicket” when she blooms.
It has been six years since co-founder Ashlei Laing first started nurturing and guiding this plot using permaculture principles, indigenous knowledge, and a whole lot of love! Our garden design captures and cycles sunlight, water, wind, heat, micro-nutrients and organisms in the soil! Feel free to connect with us or visit to learn more about our garden!
Blossom Into Spring: A Revitalizing Retreat
May 13-15, 2022 in Fayetteville, Tennessee
Thana Nu of Nourish Me Wellness, Caitlin Smith of Within Wellness, and Ashlei Laing of Rē : The Regenerative School will be facilitating an incredible weekend, holding space, and helping us bloom. We will use Ayurvedic dietary and herbal techniques to clear and open physiological and psychological channels in the body and mind. Consider our invitation and lean into a beautiful, practice to clear the accumulated energies that no longer serve us.
All are welcome! No experience needed, only open minds. Join us!
LIMITED full weekend, day pass, and SCHOLARSHIP registration available! For more information and registration details, click here or visit our Facebook event page.
RēMembering the Origins of Climate Change
New Short Course Coming Soon!
According to educator and theologian Parker Palmer, "the opposite of to remember isn't to forget, it's to dis-member." Course facilitator Sara Jolena Walcott applies this framework to our fragmented, short-term understanding of climate change. In this new, three-part course, participants will trace the roots of climate change back 500 years to its roots in colonialism, racism, and theology. Along the way participants in the course will also delve into their own family histories to make sense of the deep history of how we have arrived at today's climate crisis and how we can instead choose to build a more regenerative future. Click here to learn more about this upcoming course! Stay tuned for more details!
Book Recommendations for Earth Day
The Overstory by Richard Powers
This novel explores humanity and forest ecology, linking humans to trees: economically, politically and even socially. It’s an epic story and a great read. To buy the book used, click here.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
This book uplifts Indigenous wisdom as an alternative and complementary approach to Western mainstream scientific methodologies on botany and ecology. Braiding Sweetgrass is equal parts poetry and science. We cannot recommend this opus enough. To buy the book used, click here.
For more recommendations on what to read, watch, and listen: check out NPR’s most recent Earth Day list.
Things to Know About Earth Day and How To Get Involved
By Olivia Lai for Earth.Org, April 22, 2022
Earth is home to nearly 7 billion people, 300,000 plant species, and about 10 million animal species. Ecosystems around the world provide precious services and resources to sustain all life on Earth, yet humanity continues to take them for granted. Our activities and climate change is threatening the planet, and we need to do everything we can to conserve and protect our home. Earth Day reminds us of the biggest environmental issues and drivers of them.
Discover five interesting facts about Earth Day and how we can all do our part to help and support the environment here.
5 Ways the UN Is Working To Repair the Damage to Our Planet and Combat Climate Change
By UN News, April 22, 2022
There are thousands of people and organizations already on the ground and making a difference to protect our Earth. UN News highlighted five exciting ecosystem restoration projects yesterday:
Converting coal mines into carbon sinks
Restoring ecosystem connectivity
Transplanting ‘survivor’ coral fragments
Restoring watersheds affected by the climate crisis in the Andes
Restoring carbon absorbing seagrass
Click here to read more about these incredible initiatives.
A ‘Silent Victim’: How Nature Becomes a Casualty of War
By Emily Anthes for The New York Times, April 13, 2022
Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, the world’s attention has been focused on the nation’s heavily shelled cities. But Ukraine, in an ecological transition zone, is also home to vibrant wetlands and forests and a large swath of virgin steppe. Russian troops have already entered, or conducted military operations in, more than one-third of the nation’s protected natural areas, Mr. Krasnolutskyi said: “Their ecosystems and species have become vulnerable.”
Research on past conflicts suggests that the war in Ukraine could have a profound environmental impact. Click here to continue reading.
An ‘Emerging Crisis’: The Climate Is Changing Too Fast for Plants and Animals To Adapt
By Diana Kruzman for Grist, February 18, 2022
Monarch butterflies have delayed their annual migration by 6 days per decade due to warmer-than-normal temperatures, potentially impacting their access to food sources along the way. In the Arctic, spring vegetation is sprouting up to 2 weeks earlier than normal, meaning caribou calves are born too late to eat it, decimating populations of the endangered species. Certain fish species have shifted their egg laying forward by as many as 10 days per decade, and some plankton species are reaching peak abundance as many as 50 days earlier per decade.
A new UN report highlights how warming temperatures are upending nature's life cycles — with devastating impacts on agriculture and biodiversity. To continue reading, click here.
How a California Disaster Inspired the First Earth Day
By Soumya Karlamangla for The New York Times, April 22, 2022
Americans in the 1960s were becoming increasingly aware of the ways their behavior could be harming the natural world. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” published in 1962, detailed how pesticides hurt the environment. The polluted Cuyahoga River in Cleveland kept catching fire. The California condor faced extinction. Panic was brewing about a global overpopulation crisis. But it was a massive oil spill in 1969 off the coast of Santa Barbara that ultimately served as a catalyst for Earth Day.
Click here to read more about the history behind one of the most widely celebrated international secular holiday.
Our Food System Isn't Ready for The Climate Crisis
By Nina Lakhani, Alvin Chang, Rita Liu, and Andrew Witherspoon for the Guardian, April 14, 2022
The climate breakdown is already threatening many of our favorite foods. In Asia, rice fields are being flooded with saltwater; cyclones have wiped out vanilla crops in Madagascar; in Central America higher temperatures ripen coffee too quickly; drought in sub–Saharan Africa is withering chickpea crops; and rising ocean acidity is killing oysters and scallops in American waters. All our food systems – agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture – are buckling under the stress of rising temperatures, wildfires, droughts, and floods.
The world's farms produce only a handful of mass-produced varieties of bananas, avocados, coffee and other foods – leaving them more vulnerable to the climate breakdown. To read this interactive and informative feature on the importance of diversity, click here.
The Climate Expert Who Delivered News No One Wanted to Hear
By Elizabeth Kolbert for The New Yorker, June 22, 2009
James Hansen dotes on his grandchildren—in many hours of conversation with me, just about the only time that he spoke with unalloyed enthusiasm was when he discussed planting trees with them this spring—and he claims they are the major reason for his activism. “I decided that I didn’t want my grandchildren to say, ‘Opa understood what was happening, but he didn’t make it clear,’ ” he explained.
This profile on James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, explores the history of climate science, the evolution or climate predictions, as well as hope and fear. Click here to continue reading.
On Earth Day, Climate Activists Rally Against Fossil Fuels
By Reuters, April 22, 2022
In Europe, activists in Berlin, Warsaw, Brussels and elsewhere held rallies outside German government and embassy buildings, where they handed out red-stained notes of Russia’s rouble currency to symbolise blood, saying Russian money was fuelling both climate change and the bloody invasion of Ukraine.
Click here to read about the protests held across Europe to end Russian oil and gas imports.
Make Everyday Earth Day in Tennessee
Known for its natural beauty, unique culture and southern hospitality, Tennessee strives to be at the forefront of sustainability efforts to preserve its wonder and charm for future generations to come. In honor of Earth Day, Tennessee Tourism created a roundup of clean, green and sustainable ways to eat, explore, lodge and travel across the state.
Click here to read this curated list of Earth Day celebrations and Earth-conscious businesses across Tennessee.
We would love to hear how you are celebrating Earth Day this year! Comment below and let us know.
As always, we at Rē are grateful for your attention and support. If you liked this newsletter, consider donating at https://regenerativeschool.org/redonate/
Thank you and see you soon!