Is there anything more solarpunk than public libraries? Serving at the heart of communities, they’re a place where anyone regardless of income, ability, race, class, or gender can go to read books, listen to music, use the internet, learn things, hear story hour, get out of the weather for a while, and ask librarians for information on just about anything, including what organizations to turn to for additional support in your life or endeavor. In Episode 2 of Season 2 of Solarpunk Presents, Christina talks to Don Gardner, a librarian for many years for the Salinas Public Libraries in Monterey County, California. Hear about how people rescued the library after the city council tried to close it down to save money, about what libraries can do for you and your community, and about what you can do for your local library.
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Solarpunk Presents: Season Two
Solarpunk Presents explores the people and projects working on bringing us a better world today. In this podcast, hosts Ariel Kroon and Christina De La Rocha interview people who are doing work in the here and now that will help us get to a solarpunk future and talk to each other about the visions of a sustainable equitable future integral to solarpunk and about issues we’re curious about within the movement or genre of solarpunk.
Saviour Syndrome: thoughts-in-process
There seems to be a lot of silver-bullet thinking when it comes to the state of the world and any attempts to make it better: the idea that there can be one solution to all the problems of the Chthulhucene, or even that there can be a solution at all and that things will either get better or return to some sort of ideal state after that One True Solution ™ has been applied.
Stop: Shower Time!
This water timer on my shower wall was given to me by a friendly young volunteer at the Waterloo Region tent at my local farmer’s market this past summer. It’s a simple blue octagon bisected with a small hourglass; the top reads STOP IN TIME in white block letters, and the bottom features the Region’s brand image. It came with a rubber suction cup so I could stick it to the wall of my shower, able to view it easily when showering. It is my nemesis.
Surviving the Wilds of the Panhandle: an expression of queer futurity in (spite of) the present world
Earlier this summer, the curator of The Art Gallery at University of West Florida commissioned a text from me to accompany the ceramic art exhibit of Justin Quaid Grubb. Here’s the catalogue with my essay, in all its glory.
The new hawtness
Listening to the latest “What on Earth?” podcast episode from CBC and, among other things, they are discussing the heat dome that killed upwards of 600 people in British Columbia in summer 2021. The heat dome also extended east over Alberta, and amiskwaciwâskahikan (where I was living at the time) was in its grips for…
Podcast – Academics on Air
This spring, I was part of producing a podcast about a UAlberta campus radio show from 40 years ago. Check it out at https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/academics-on-air/
dread is a luxury emotion
and i am privileged af to feel it, but i don’t know that i’ve felt its sharp edge since before the accident. yes, with the pandemic came a certain generalized existential anxiety that the whole world shared in, and certainly the rise of crypto-fascism coupled with accelerating climate breakdown has been an ever-present fear these…
Deaths
This weekend I’m going to visit with family, and visit my Beppe’s grave for the first time since she passed away in March 2021.
Dark night of the soul
It’s Good Friday, so I feel this is an appropriate theme for the day. From the category description: “In religious circles, the phrase “dark night of the soul” indicates a stretch of time (not necessarily a single night; it can be much longer) when one is undergoing a crisis of faith and feeling utterly abandoned….