Monthly Archives: June 2025

Kindness or cruelty?

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White woman on left of phot with tan baseball cap and rust shirt, just visible at hands, holding a phone facing pebbled shoreline with horseshoe crabs in the water mating, and huge boulders on the other side.

The other day, Margy and I went to Maquoit Bay to see horseshoe crabs that had come to shore to mate. Margy especially loves horseshoe crabs and has learned a great deal about them. It was shortly after high tide, and we noticed that a few of the crabs had wandered behind and between big boulders placed on the site, in a way that they were trapped. (Much worse than what can be seen in the photo above.) As the tide continued to go out, it was likely that they would be stuck high and dry. So we very carefully lifted them out by the sides of their shells, (never lift them by their spikey tails!) and placed them in the water where they were free to move where they wanted.

To us, it felt like a simple act of kindness for a fellow creature on this planet. We see someone in a vulnerable position, and do our best to be a helper.

I have been astonished and horrified by the cruelty I’ve witnessed (as reported via social media) of people in positions of power in our government. Separating families as they come out from immigration courts. Detaining a young child with leukemia. Sending migrants to horrible prisons in countries to which they have no connection. Terrorizing people as they garden, or shop, or go to work, while wearing masks and refusing identification. Detaining a pregnant woman and offering no medical care. Such is the state of DHS and ICE activity in our country. Cruelty seems to be the point.

I am thinking also of the people in Gaza, who are still being starved and bombed, and shot by IDF soldiers even as they line up to try to get food. Some soldiers even admitted that they were ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid. I feel so helpless to stop the harm, to stop the genocide.

It seems there is no end to cruelty. It has been troubling me greatly. And I wonder why? Why be as cruel as a human can be to fellow human beings? Don’t all religious and ethical traditions lift up our common human bonds and encourage us to love our neighbor, and love the stranger in our midst? What does it do to the human beings behind the masks or the guns to act with violence and cruelty every day?

Are the people in charge in our country trying to instigate retaliatory violence to justify further oppression? Is it some oligarchic strategy of conquest? Is it a way to convince themselves that some human beings are not really human beings? Are they truly this cruel and this evil? And then, how can they convince ordinary people to follow along? Ordinary people who might value kindness over cruelty.

All I can do is to keep speaking out about it, to share the daily reports of the people who have been detained or killed, to see their names, to weep. I recently decided to do one more thing, to purchase a keffiyeh from Palestine. This traditional scarf was worn as a headdress or face covering, and in recent years has come to symbolize the Palestinian yearning for freedom. For those of us who are not Palestinian, it symbolizes solidarity. For me, I am moved by the fact that it was made by Palestinians in the West Bank, touched by their hands, their hopes. And now it is touched by my hands, my hopes for them. I feel that spiritual and physical connection. I wear it for the children being starved in Gaza, for the families being bombed in their tents or apartments. I wear it for all the helpers who do whatever they can to help, in the midst of so much cruelty. I wear it as a symbol of connection between human beings,

Myke, a white woman with reddish gray hair, wearing a black and white Palestinian keffiyeh wrapped over her shoulders.

On June 14, Margy and I couldn’t go to one of the thousands of No Kings rallies to protest the usurping of power that this regime is attempting. (This is life with chronic illness…) So we decided to sit in our own driveway with a sign, and bear witness in our neighborhood. During that hour and a half, we had about 20 positive responses from people driving by or walking by. A few people looked away but no one was angry or negative. Because we were out there, we also learned that a few neighbors had gone downtown to the rally as well. This photo was taken by Margy… it is her empty chair on the right. So we were two of the millions who protested that day!

Big cardboard sign saying "no Kings" held by Myke, seated, wearing keffiyeh, resting on second chair.

I hope that if I keep speaking up, it will inspire others to speak up as well. I think of the Ella Baker quote in the song by Sweet Honey in the Rock: “I want to be one in the number as we stand against tyranny.” Never let their cruelty cause us to lose our kindness. Never let their cruelty cause us to lose our sense of human connection.

Robin survivor?

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This morning there was more excitement concerning the sole surviving baby robin. It had walked out from the nest onto the nearby beam, even into the next section of beam. So it was alive! But the parents went back and forth calling several times. I was watching through the glass of the back door, hoping that they would find it and feed it. Then, finally, one of the parents brought the baby a big mouthful of worms–and just as it got them it its mouth, it fell down to the deck below. There it sat, seemingly stunned for a long time. I kept watch, not wanting it to be gotten by some predator, but also not knowing what to do. I even put in a call to Avian Haven, but it was before business hours. (8:30 a.m.) I wondered if it was injured.

Finally, I went outside, and went near to it, and it started to walk away. It seemed able to walk, but it never flapped its wings like it was trying to fly. Too young I think. Only 9 days old. So I gently picked it up and put it back up into the nest. And it seemed like that might work, and the parents came back and forth, and fed it up on the ledge, where it had once again walked on to. The parents were both very solicitous and sometimes called to the chick, and sometimes scolded at me. When Avian Haven called back (after I had put it back in the nest) they suggested that if the parents were still attending to the chick, it was best to leave it with them, and not take it away.

However, would you believe it? It once again fell or jumped from the beam and landed on the deck again. It was lying on its side but then righted itself quickly and literally walked over to our glass door and looked up at me. As if to say, “help, here I am on the deck again.” So fierce its little face!

Margy was here by now, and we knew a grocery delivery would be coming soon to the back porch, so there was that pressure. So finally I went out on the deck with a shoebox, thinking to put it in that for safety, but it quickly walked away along the wall and jumped off the deck (about 2 1/2 feet down maybe) and was in a little side corner near the steps with no way out. I thought I’d try to get it to jump in the box–but by now it was acting more lively. When my hand came over its head, though, it opened its beak as if I might feed it. I was able to shoo it toward the open box, but once in the box it did not like that at all, so I quickly brought it over to the other side of the porch steps and set it onto a patch of ground cover plants. Then it decided to walk under the deck, out of my sight.

The whole morning I was never sure what to do, to leave everything alone, or to help, and in what way. I don’t know why the parents kept calling to the chick. It reminded me of when they were trying to get their previous set of chicks to fledge, but this one was obviously too young to fly. I wondered if whatever trauma had happened the night before, that left two chicks dead, and one missing, might have freaked them out so they wanted to get their chick away from that nest. Or maybe they were giving protective warnings to whatever might have disturbed the nest before. (For example, the chipmunk that frequents the area.) As a human neighbor, is my presence helpful or harmful?

The parents have come back now and are calling repeatedly, but at least one of them was down on the ground, so maybe they’ve figured out that the chick is underneath the deck. I hope so. It is too dark under there for me to see. So I may never know the fate of the chick. But I do take comfort in how fierce it was in those last moments of our interaction. It probably only needs a few more days to grow before it would be ready to fly.

Heartbreak among the robins

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Something got at our baby robins… of the four in the nest, we just found three on the deck floor, two were dead, and one still alive–I gently put that one back in the nest, but not sure if it is really okay or how it might survive, we hope the parents will come back for it. They were calling loudly, but not around now. We don’t know what happened. One had disappeared entirely. So heartbreaking… We wondered if it might have been a chipmunk.

This is not the way I hoped to mark the Solstice. How fragile all of life is right now.

Garden Blue

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My favorite color in the garden is this blue/purple of the Siberian iris. They’ve multiplied in the roadside garden bed, and blossomed all along the way. And now they are gone. So we had maybe a week to enjoy their beauty. I feel the time rushing by with all these spring and early summer flowers. Nothing goes on and on. With photos we try to capture the moment and make it last a little longer, but nothing really lasts in that way. If we don’t pay attention to the moment, we miss it.

It is easy for me to get caught up in what needs to be done, the projects, the planting and watering, the weeding, the holistic sprays for the orchard. But probably what is most important is to walk around the yard noticing the flowers and plants and critters, noticing the birds and frogs and tadpoles. When we came to this yard, our hope was to nurture our relationship with the land, with all of the wisdom it had to teach us, with all of the tending that it asked of us. It was the tangible finding our way home that my spirit was hungry for.

We’ve been tending this particular small place for about nine years, and we feel such a bond with it. In these times of wars and rumors of wars, walking through the yard restores my soul. What must it be like to live for generations in a place? I can only begin to imagine. One of the crimes of the destruction of Gaza, along with the horrific killing of human beings, is the destruction of the land, the olive trees, the plants, the gardens. All those homes. It makes me weep.

I walk around the garden in the mornings, and I pray. I give thanks for another day of living. Not just my life, but the life all around me, of which I am a part. I am happy to see that the spiderwort plants are blooming, another in that shade of blue/purple. This seems to be the very favorite flower of the bees, and it lasts for a long time, with multiple little buds on each stalk, taking their turn to shine. It is the very diversity and multiplicity of the plants that bring abundance to life in the garden.

Balance in the Garden

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Raised bed with wooden sides, on left are pea plants on string and bamboo, middle is broccoli seedlings surrounded by pine cones, wire fencing around edge.

This earth love is a balancing act. We love critters in the yard, after all, they live here too, and have the right to be here. They bring so much joy to us. But we want to grow food too. The last time we bought organic broccoli at Hannafords, it was $8 for one crown. These twelve broccoli plants in this raised bed will be very valuable food for us. I’ve also planted cucumber seeds here. So we try to use gentle methods to discourage the critters from eating the plants we want for our food.

Margy saw a groundhog poke its head up out of a hole in the grass, over near the fence. There was a burrow underneath where a spruce tree fell before, and after it was removed there was still a mound of old roots and dirt. Groundhogs can be the worst for eating garden food, despite how cute they are. At times, we’ve used human pee to mark a line around the beds. Last year, we covered that bed with an old screen tent to protect the kale–and it did. All of it is a kind of communication, with respect.

This year, I am trying out a new method for deterring critters from the garden bed–putting pine cones in between the plants as mulch. (I saw it on Facebook.) Apparently many critters do not like the prickly feel of the pine cones under their feet–and these pine cones are very prickly. They come from our pitch pine, and we have tons of them everywhere. Margy had a bag full of them in the garage, so I used those first, and then started twisting them off fallen branches under the pitch pine. I had to wear gloves to do it, that’s how prickly they are. I’m putting them in the hugel mound as well.

We’ll see how it works.

In the meantime, in critter news, a few days ago we saw a mother turkey walk through the yard with about ten baby turkeys. Ducks stop in to take a dip in the pond. The frogs hang out there, and the tadpoles are getting big. They like to linger under the lily pads. The robin has four new eggs she is incubating. The chipmunks fill up on sunflower seeds at the bird feeder, but are also eating the maple seeds that blew all over the yard.

And sometimes, beauty emerges in unlikely ways–this is a dandelion after the rain washed away all the fluffy seeds. A perfect star.

a white star shape of a dandelion plant, surround by angular green iris leaves.