by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

My garden sign by The Victory Garden of Tomorrow

Spiritual Touchstone

When it comes to religion, I am a mutt: a crossbreed of several different theologies and practices that resonate deeply with me.  One way I connect with my spirituality is through gardening — the cycles of birth, growth, and death in the garden are a lens through which I contemplate the seasons of my life.

As I prepared my garden for winter this year, I thought a lot about what a gigantic mess 2020 has been.  If it were a garden, it would be overrun with weeds, choking out the seedlings we planted with the best intentions.  For some of us, it would have been either too hot and dry, or too wet and cold.  Sometimes my worries about the pandemic, fire season, and our country’s contentious politics have felt like annoying garden pests: showing up when I least want them and refusing to go away until I apply heavy evasive maneuvers.  

That said, the garden has given me so much joy this year.  In a time when everything stays the same day after day, it is a dance of endless change.  In order to observe it, we have to slow down and really look, really experience our plants growing, worms tilling the rich soil, bees tending to each flower.  

Garden, ready for the winter

Our lives benefit from this moment-to-moment mindfulness as well.  When we are really present for what is happening, we are more aware of the moments of grace we may miss if we are not tuned in.  Yes, the pandemic has made showing up for life a lot harder — there is, inarguably, more anxiety, more sadness, more pain, more loss this year.  But given the human propensity to remember negative experiences more than positive ones, this tuning in can give us back the good parts of our lives by bringing our attention to them, no matter how small they are.

As I was pulling out the weeds and spent plants, I felt grateful for the air in my lungs and my body’s ability to tend to my garden.  After a long, hard pregnancy, a difficult birth, and a complex recovery, any movement feels like a miracle.  I put what I’d pulled out into the compost bin, and as I did, it occurred to me that winter is a great time for some spiritual composting.  

I think it’s healthy and maybe even necessary to compost what we no longer need, both physically and spiritually.  When we return what we’ve used but need to let go of to the compost pile, it can rest, and then as it is turned over and over, become something rich and fruitful that nourishes new growth.

What might go into our spiritual compost bin?  Things like long-held but no longer useful beliefs, lingering resentments, relationships that have become toxic, and anything else that weighs our soul down.  A lot of the time, when we let these things go, we find ourselves a lot lighter.  I often visualize a real compost bin and putting my worries and old ways of thinking deep inside.  When intrusive thoughts emerge, or I want to ruminate on an old memory I’m still hanging on to, I think about turning it over and over in my compost bin, and then imagine walking away.  It’s a conscious effort to not get sucked in to anxiety and rumination, but when I can let things sit on their own, I feel much better.

One of my many composting systems

This practice of letting go, of spiritually composting, has also meant that what comes out is much richer.  Processing trauma and examining what is and isn’t useful to us anymore can often provide a fertile ground for self-growth and reflection.  When I look at why I was holding on to something, I often find some small revelation about what I need in this current moment, and then I can tend to myself with care.

The next time you feel like 2020 is unsalvageable, give spiritual composting a try.  Make a list of the things you’d like to let go of, and then imagine burying them in deep soil to decompose and become the next stage of growth for you.  

What seeds will you plant in this fertile ground?

by Rev. Dr. Melinda V. McLain

Spiritual Touchstone

On Thursday, we will celebrate Thanksgiving. And I don’t know about you, but for me, I find myself practicing a form of white-knuckle gratitude. To be sure, I am painfully aware of how lucky I am to have a wonderful job, a beautiful home, and a loving spouse. For so very many people, those things are missing or are hanging on by a thread. And as a white person in a society deeply polarized by race, I have the luxury of choosing how I will respond to the insistent and righteous cries for justice happening right now. Unlike our siblings of color, I can focus on something else and not have to worry about my safety or the well-being of my immediate family. So I recognize that I don’t really have a right to feel anything other than grateful for all the privilege I have in my life. And yet . . .

I’m also profoundly aware that when I contracted the coronavirus at the end of October, my experience of being infected by this life-threatening virus unfolded as the very best case scenario. I never felt sick in any way and more importantly, every person I might have inadvertently infected — including my beloved wife, Colleen — has tested negative and never got sick. We’re also done with all the self-isolation and quarantine periods. But if I’m truthful, I’m more relieved than grateful. While it wasn’t physically challenging for me personally, the emotional impact of living with this virus and the possibility that I could have infected others who might become gravely ill was awful and terrifying.

As a spiritual leader, I believe that choosing to live a life of unfettered gratitude is a noble way to deepen and develop our souls. Cultivating gratitude can also heal us from both the petty and profound traumas and wounds that we have experienced. And more and more scientific research shows that gratitude is a milestone in our development as a species and, in my own view, is essential to creating strong and healthy communities. Gratitude, as the Roman philosopher Cicero once wrote, is the “parent of all virtues”.

So what can we do when gratitude doesn’t come easily? The first factor in choosing gratitude is to look for the good in our lives in the world and then to realize that the gifts and benefits we have do not come from our own labors. We cannot do good by ourselves, nor can we recognize what is good and worth being grateful for without seeing our relationship to others. Robert Emmons, a scientific expert on gratitude writes more about this in an intriguing essay written for the Greater Good Institute at U.C. Berkeley.

If Emmons is right, perhaps the reason that feeling grateful feels a bit forced this year is because the now-surging pandemic, coupled with an unbelievably toxic political climate, has made most of us feel socially isolated and disconnected from one another. This is not theoretical or just emotional — it is real and it is hard for almost everyone. So if you too are feeling not exactly grateful, or perhaps not even one bit grateful this year, please know that you’re not alone: I see you, I am you.

What then to do to be more grateful? If you’re of a spiritual bent, you may find that your connection to a higher power that you may call God or a thousand other names such as Divine Love or Holy One helps. Or, if you aren’t sure about whether there is some force beyond the natural world, most spiritual practice — especially in community — does serve to help us live better, fuller, more grateful lives. If you don’t currently have such a community, please consider yourself warmly invited to join The Good Table UCC in our weekly interfaith meditation group on Thursdays at 6p or our Sunday Gathering at 12n. Both are free and easy to access via Zoom or phone. Send an email to me to receive credentials for either gathering or to just connect one on one.

May this Thanksgiving, however you celebrate it, be a blessing to you and may we all find ways to get reconnected to one another, so that we may remember that when we work together for good, “nothing is impossible”.

Liv Wisely

Hi! I’m Liv Wisely, for The Good Table. And I have a very special lady with me. Could you introduce yourself please?

Ok, my name is Cheryl Land. I am 18 years old. I'm from St. Petersburg Florida, and I am your significant other. 

Cheryl Land

Can you describe your religious beliefs for us?

I am a Roman Catholic on paper, practicing as much as I can. 

I was not a cradle Catholic; I was raised in a Protestant church until my mother re-converted us to Catholicism. I was baptized in second grade, and we’ve been Catholic ever since. After figuring out I was not straight, and learning about the way the church treated gay people — not necessarily homophobic but restrictive — I had a lapse in the faith, but  after hearing lots of progressive Christians talk about their faith and their practice, it gave me incentive to do my own research and make a better educated decision to return to the faith. And I did!

And for the reference of the reader, I am a product of United Church Of Christ, I’m currently studying Judaism. I also dabble in the occult; all around spiritual but not always religious.

Now, at the time of reading, how long have we been together? 

On the 20th it’ll be five months. 

Knock on wood. 

Knock on wood. 

Superstitions are both things our religions have but also kind of condemn.  Jinxes aren’t things Christians sanction but I’ll STILL KNOCK ON WOOD. I may not believe it, but I don’t mess with it. 

Well, it hasn’t failed us yet… knock on wood. 

Knock on wood! STOP SAYING THAT!

Haha, okay okay. So, you and I are a queer couple of faith who met online during COVID. Throughout this time, we’ve had a lot to pray about because we care about social issues. How have we handled mutual grieving or spiritual worries together in the past? And how do we do that in a respectful way? 

Well, I definitely pray for you, and I pray for your family. Every mass on Sunday I say the Hail Mary Prayer for both my parents, my brother, and for you. So you have that with you. If you pray for me, I appreciate it — I take it as a firm compliment. 

Likewise! I pray for you. A lot of my prayer has to do with overcoming hurdles of my own so I can better help others. I actually got the concept from a Christian, let me be your hands, your feet, your heart, your mouth, etc. Kind of like: help me help others, which is helping you, which is helping me, which is helping others, haha.

It’s also because I don't know if I'm the one who can always help you; I don't know if you’ll go to me. If I ask God to be kinder, you might not even need that from me, so I ask the powers that be to soothe your anxiety and make you feel less alone. It's not that I believe god is someone that works for me. 

Me neither. I’ll ask you this: What do you think has made us work, spiritually? What is our advice for an “interfaith” relationship? That’s a fun one. We’ve had our ups and downs, suspension of disbelief.

I feel like the best you can do is listen. You don’t have to let them convince you they’re right; it’s not an argument. Talk about your faith a lot, learn about how specifically you practice and think. It’s important to reach common ground on your values, and you can do that while being interfaith. We have had our ups and downs — I have held beliefs you originally thought to be bonkers, and beliefs I take for granted. 

I think that's where the mutual respect and awareness of your own faith come in. The more confident you can be and the more flexible you can be with your own beliefs, the more you can ask yourself why you do or DON'T believe something.  That said, do you think our faith has brought us closer together or further apart?

Definitely closer together. I know so much more about Judaism than I knew months ago, and I'm so happy I do, because I want to learn. I enjoy learning about other cultures and other faiths. 

Being with someone you can learn from. Someone outside your comfort zone you have to keep up with, stimulating your mind. I believe we’ve both intellectual people, both very philosophical people, and we love talking about deep things. And it doesn’t exhaust us. It was scary at first, because there are lots of critics of Catholicism. I had to kind of get over my shock. You didn’t hate me for being Christian and didn’t just give Christianity a pass because you love me. 

Well, I’ve been lucky enough to have grown up with some pretty amazing Christians. Not only that, but amazing people who happen to be Christians. I hope we break the stereotype of both the faiths we’re involved in as being closed minded, because in many ways you’ve opened my mind.

And so have you.

I love you!

I love you too! 

by Bonnie Hariton

From The Garden

After the smoke-filled and excessively hot days of August through mid-October, we are ready for cooler days and brisk nights. We are ready for real rain, not the dry lightening kind, just the dripping wet kind. And, with no threat of frost anytime soon, we are ready for a fall planting in the garden beds. Here in Pinole, California, we are harvesting the last of our tomatoes by making batches of shakshuka. The beans, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, and zucchinis have run their course, along with the dahlias. Now it is time to prepare some of those same raised beds to grow a mild-weather, second crop.

We consider sunlight and soil when deciding what to plant and where to plant. But when to plant is also important. A farmer in El Sobrante gave me a copy of her invaluable Planting Guide. It lists about fifty plants and has a column for each month of the year. November is a good time to plant onion sets, garlic cloves, and seeds of arugula, fenugreek, broccoli, fava beans, lettuce, parsley, spinach, and winter wheat! From these, we chose what we’d like to eat, what we’ve had success with in the past, and what we’ll try just for fun.

We grow edibles in half-wine barrels and in raised beds. Dan constructed our raised beds of redwood and they are 8 feet or 10 feet long by 4 feet wide by 12 inches deep. All of these have ½ inch hardware cloth metal mesh stapled to the bottom to deter gophers. We set aside three beds for perennials: asparagus, artichokes, and strawberries. With other beds, we practice a mini-version of crop rotation, simplified as “root, fruit, green, bean.” So where we planted root vegetables such as carrots, kohlrabi, and beets in the spring, now we’ll leave in the re- emerging Japanese eggplant (fruit) and plant seeds of lettuce, parsley, and spinach (green).

Here are twelve steps to preparing the bed from one season to the next.

1. Remove spent leaves above ground but leave the roots to decay on their own, unless they are very large.

2. Remove support structures such as cucumber or tomato trellises.

3. Loosen the soil not by turning it over, but by putting in a pitchfork and rocking it back and forth a bit.

4. Since the soil level in the bed has probably gone down a few inches, add one or two cubic feet of high-quality, locally sourced soil to the bed.

5. Add a generous portion of earthworm castings or use your own home-made compost, or a combination.

6. Add a light layer of coconut coir on top, which retains moisture and helps seeds to sprout.

7. Water the bed well.

8. Plant your seeds! Follow package or online directions on spacing for a row or for a square foot. Plant your seedlings! When I plant seedlings, I’ll add sprinkle of mycorrhiza,
   which helps roots to grow.

9. Cover the entire bed with something to keep out birds and cats. Bird mesh does a good job. Dan puts 4’ tall rebar posts, topped with tennis balls (for safety), into the ground at each corner of the bed. He ties string near the top from post to post, and we drape the mesh over. That way seedlings are protected until they are stronger. Be careful not to leave any gaps!

10. Keep the seeds moist by watering every day until they germinate, usually 10 to 14 days.

11. When the seedlings start to crowd each other, thin them by snipping off weaker seedlings at the soil level. This can be hard - just do it! The plants you have left will have more room to grow.

12. Visit your garden daily.

A newly prepared bed is a beautiful sight. A bed with sprouts emerging is a wondrous sight. A bed with fruits and vegetables forming is a marvelous sight. A bed overflowing with bounty so that you have plenty for yourselves and plenty to give away is a blessed sight! So go forth and plant.

If life these days is overwhelming, start small. Start with cat grass! Fill a 6 inch diameter pot with soil, sow some cat grass seeds, place indoors or outdoors in the sun, and sprinkle with water daily. In a few short days, this tiny garden will bring you - and your cats - joy. And pray for rain: the nice, wet kind.

---

In the Kitchen

Shakshuka with Poached Eggs

I have adapted this recipe, given to me by my friend and neighbor Deirdre Davis, chef extraordinaire, who runs Pinoli Farmhouse Kitchen. She adapted it from an Ottolenghi recipe in his book, Jerusalem (2012). Ottolenghi says that shakshuka is a popular breakfast or lunch fare in Israel. Served with some good crusty bread, it makes a delicious and hardy meal. I can vouch for that!

INGREDIENTS (for 6 servings)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon harissa or gochujang (spicy chili pepper paste)
1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds, toasted and ground
1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds, toasted and ground
3-4 cloves garlic, about 1 tablespoon, finely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 medium white onion, in ¼ inch slices
2 large red bell peppers, in ¼ inch by 2 inch slices
5 cups heirloom tomatoes, chopped
6 whole eggs
1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese
several fresh basil leaves

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Toast the cumin and coriander seeds together in a small, heavy, dry frying pan (without oil) over medium heat until they darken slightly, about 1 minute. Grind with a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder.

2. Chop the garlic. Chop the red peppers and the onion. Chop the tomatoes.

3. Heat the olive oil. Add the harissa or gochujang and stir. Add the spices and garlic andcook until just fragrant.

4. Follow with the tomato paste and the salt. Cook for a few more minutes.

5. Add the onions and bell peppers. Stir and cook over medium heat for about 6-8 minutes till softened.

6. Add the tomatoes and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook uncovered for another 10 minutes until the sauce thickens to your liking. Some people like the sauce thicker, others like it more soupy. Taste for seasoning.

7. Make 6 little dips in the sauce. Gently break an egg into each dip.

8. Simmer gently for 8-10 minutes, covered, until the whites are just set and the yolks are as runny or as firm as you prefer.

9. To serve, put some of the sauce and an egg into a bowl. Sprinkle with feta cheese and a few fresh basil leaves.

by Liv Wisely, special contributor to The Good Table at Home

I have a significant object, which is actually two objects, one inside the other, that sits in a place of honor in my home. It is a tiny rubber dinosaur in an official medical biohazard bag. Immediately, so many questions. What fiendish crimes did this little fellow commit? Is he radioactive, is he toxic? What horrors could have been carried out by this small green triceratops, the most docile of herbivores in the animal kingdom, its stubby legs outstretched in a permanent trot? Why has he been thus imprisoned, and does he deserve freedom, or is he condemned like Kronos in a Ziplock Tartarus for the good of humanity?  

Liv Wisely’s beloved triceratops

You can’t look at it and not think ‘there’s a story here’. And there is one – and it’s one of the most wonderful stories I know: the story of how I got to keep my mom.

Now, this tale is just the most recent chapter of this little creature’s life. Once upon a time, he was crafted in some factory in China, unaware of his destiny to cross my path. He changed many hands and crossed an ocean to come to rest at the China Bazaar on Grant Avenue, where I saw it and my squeal of unrestrained joy entwined our fates. It was love at first sight. 50 cents and he was mine to own. I’ve always been a kitschy person, and small, strange accouterments have always brought me joy. Growing up, it was proposed that I could be on the autism spectrum, and though it was never settled upon, I do have a fondness for security objects.

Little did I know in 5 years time, how secure that little fella would make me feel. Over time, my tiny plastic dinosaur collection grew and flourished. I loved the novelty of dinosaurs made from plastic, which is made from fossil fuels, which, in turn, is made from dinosaurs. Through my entire orthodontic process with braces, I collected a dino every appointment. It gave me something to look forward to in the hours of tightening and prodding and pulling and poking.  I bought a rubber squeaky stegosaurus in china, I bought a vintage orange T-Rex at an estate sale and a collection of various colored stegosaurus miniature sponges. I even had a wind up silver velociraptor tinker toy that doubles as a pencil sharpener.

But through it all, my triceratops remained the dearest in my heart. I kept him in my purse on commutes and long trips, I could always take him out and walk him around in unfamiliar terrain, and feel a little less alone. But it came to pass, that on the day I felt most alone I had ever felt, I gave him away.

On Labor Day, 2020, we took my mother to the emergency room for head pains. An hour later, we got a call from the doctor, announcing they had found a 5 cm tumor in her brain. I was inconsolable. I thought I had lost my mom in an instant. COVID and schoolwork and depression was nothing compared to this. We were told she was going to be immediately taken to Redwood City, 40 miles from us, for emergency 4-hour brain surgery. We had one day to see her, and there was no way of knowing if we’d ever see her again.

Yeah, woah. 

I remember rifling through my belongings, mumbling mi shebeirach. What can I give? What can I do? What have I instilled with love and light and luck that I can pass onto her? In a rush, I snatched what I could, but it was what was already in my purse that fit the bill. As she was loaded into the ambulance, lights blaring, siren wailing, I folded my rubber triceratops into her hand. I am told she held triceratops in her fist while they sawed through her skull and made the incisions. It has seen the fluorescent lights, and bore witness to the inside of my mom’s cranium. It was lost on the operating floor, but someone went back and got it for her transfer because she was so distressed.

When my mom came home, going through her suitcase, she pressed the dinosaur back into my hand, individually wrapped because of COVID regulations, in its standard-issue baggie. It sits on my dinosaur collection display shelf now, in its rightful place on honor, as a hero.

As my mom has now starts 6 weeks of chemo and radiation, I hope my collection of dinosaurs, and memories with my mom, continue to grow and flourish. 

Wendy and Liv Wisely

Special contributor, Liv Wisely is a 2020 graduate of El Cerrito High School and now a freshman at San Francisco State University. Liv’s mom, Wendy Wisely, is the Vice-Moderator (officer) of The Good Table United Church of Christ church council.

In order to give our Marketing Manager Kelly Knight some maternity leave, we did a double-issue of The Good Table News for Sept/Oct. Check it out!

We do have a few tasty tidbits to share as we find our way into the Fall.

Our Project Manager Colleen Rodger has now submitted a full packet to Contra Costa Environmental Health including nearly 200 pages of spec sheets and 30 pages of architectural drawings. And now we wait . . . But while we wait, our contractor, Robert Malone of Baywood Building and Design is applying for a temporary power pole and getting ready to begin construction once we have our permit.

We continue to have small, socially-distant, masked workdays on the last Saturday of each month to do demo, gardening, and cleanup for construction. This past Saturday Andrew Chahrour and Gavin Raders from Planting Justice finally took down a dead tree at the Valley View end of the building. These varietals are supposedly a slow-growing hardwood used in Japan for temple poles. Two of the three trees in the group will hopefully perk up with regular water and care. The one removed last Saturday has a remarkably straight trunk that we hope to use in a garden shrine to honor the Adachi family, the original developers of this property. A bit of the history of the site is included in our GoFundMe video for the project. Take a look and lend us a hand by raising funds for the project as you are able.

Our marketing manager, Kelly Knight is now on maternity leave after giving birth to Orion Adam Milner on September 19th. Congratulations to Kelly and all her family!

While Kelly is on leave, it’s a delight to introduce our new contributor, Liv Wisely. Liv grew up in Mira Vista UCC, now The Good Table UCC, where her mother serves on the church council. A 2020 graduate of El Cerrito High School, Liv is now attending San Francisco State University online. Liv is a wonderful writer and, as you’ll see in this post, a cartoonist too! While this cartoon is particular to 2020 graduates, it is good advice for anyone who is now working from home with new “co-workers” who are family too. (hint: switch to full screen to catch all the details of this cartoon)

In the Kitchen

Desserts don’t have to be fussy or take a long time to be absolutely delicious. This easy cake uses the best of fall fruit for a treat that is light and just as appropriate for after dinner or a sweet afternoon snack with a cup of tea.

Photo Credit: bake from scratch

Pear-Almond Cake
Recipe from bake from scratch magazine

Serves 6

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup (227 grams) unsalted butter, softened

• 1½ cups (300 grams) granulated sugar

• 3 large eggs

• 2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose flour

• ¼ teaspoon (0.75 gram) kosher salt

• ⅓ cup whole milk

• ½ teaspoon almond extract

• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1 large red pear, cored and cut into 12 thin slices

• ½ cup (57 grams) sliced almonds

• Garnish: confectioners’ sugar

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a 9-inch cast-iron skillet with baking spray with flour.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and granulated sugar at medium speed until fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes, stopping to scrape sides of bowl. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together flour and salt. Gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture, beating just until combined after each addition. Beat in extracts. Spoon batter into prepared pan. Place pears cut side down in a pinwheel fashion over batter.

4. Bake until lightly browned, 25 to 30 minutes. Sprinkle with almonds, and bake until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, 10 to 15 minutes more. Let cool in pan for 15 minutes. Dust with confectioners’ sugar, and serve warm.

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Photo Credit: Glenn Beltz

California has been on fire for the last three weeks, and now, so is Oregon.  During a year where we’ve all been staying home (hopefully) as much as possible to avoid contracting COVID-19, having fires fill the air with smoke has been especially hard on our resilience and mental health.  With just COVID, you could exercise outside, open windows, and there was just more space and literal breathing room available.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had moments of profound grief and helplessness the past few weeks.  It’s not been easy, especially since I’m currently pregnant, with the birth of my second child imminent.  But one thing that helps me during these times is activism.  Being able to do something, no matter how small, really makes a difference to my mental health.  With this in mind, I’ve compiled some resources so we can all start to make an impact to stop such massive wildfires in the future.

First of all, a note: wildfires are a part of California’s natural ecosystem.  I grew up in Southern California, and we had a regular fire season, and managed it pretty well.  However, according to my research, there are three major factors contributing to the firestorms and massive wildfire growth we’ve been seeing in recent years:

1. Climate Change

2. More People Moving Into the Wildland-Urban Interface

3. Forestry Management Practices

Climate change is creating hotter, drier weather for longer, and changing existing weather patterns, leading to hotter, faster spreading fires.  That’s an observable pattern that climate scientists have been trying to alert us to for years.

It’s hard to know why many more people have moved into the Wildland-Urban Interface, the transition zone between wildlands (forests, grasslands and scrublands) and human development, but many have — there are 25 million more people living in these zones in 2010 than in 1990.  It’s dangerous to those homeowners, as their homes border the areas most likely to burn.  Plus, many wildfires are caused by humans, so not an ideal wildfire safety situation all-around.

Forestry management took a strong fire suppression tack for a very long time, with their spokesperson, Smokey Bear touting “Only you can prevent forest fires.”  This made the general populace believe that forest fires are always bad, when in fact, they’re an essential part of good forest management.  The result is “a tinderbox of unharvested timber, dead trees, and thick underbrush.”  Basically, decades of fuel load that is now up in flames.

So, given all this, what do we do?

To get the biggest results in the shortest amount of time, we need to turn our activism towards management of California’s fuel load, and advocate for better forestry management practices.  Selective harvesting, thinning treatments, brush removal, and pruning are practices used to thin out wildland close to the urban interface, typically.  For broader swaths of land that have bigger fuel loads, prescribed burning is an effective way to clear out heavy vegetation, prepare new seed beds, and prevent the fuel load from getting too high.  

The idea of controlled fires often meets with resistance, but these fires really do have an important place in forestry management.  Done during winter, with firefighters setting and controlling them, they are safe and efficient, and can prevent the massive fires like the Creek Fire currently burning uncontrolled in the high sierras, growing by tens of thousands of acres per day.

In my research on how to advocate for better forestry practices, the best advice I found is to reach out to a specific landowner (at the lowest level of the organization possible - for example, an individual State Park vs CA State Parks as a whole) directly, and ask to be added to that agency/offices project mailing list for fuels reduction/prescribed burning projects. Oftentimes, if you ask to talk to a “Fuels Specialist” or someone who is “managing the fuels program” you can talk to those people directly.

So, figure out where your closest State Park is, and who is managing the fuels program, and either try to talk to that person about their strategy for fuel management/controlled burns in the winter, or failing that, get on their mailing list so you can reach out when they release details about the project.

In addition, here’s a few websites where you can find out about upcoming projects/opportunities for comment and engagement:

Forest Service, Schedule of Proposed Actions - https://www.fs.fed.us/sopa/

Bureau of Land Management, National NEPA Register - https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/home

National Park Service, Planning, Environment, and Public Comment Site - https://parkplanning.nps.gov/

CalFIRE - pretty difficult to figure out how to comment on anything. I’d recommend checking out the Governor’s priority project list and seeing if there are any projects going on near you, there may be a point of contact identified - https://www.fire.ca.gov/about-us/45-day-report/

CA Air Resources Board - these folks have tremendous power in determining when “burn windows” are allowed - https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/board-meetings

The Nature Conservancy - they are one of the biggest nonprofits doing prescribed burning projects and prescribed burning advocacy. Recent article about the 2020 CA wildfire season and a bill they are supporting: https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/california/stories-in-california/californias-wildfire-future/

Also worth noting: The Nature Conservancy does a ton of training to bring diverse people into the prescribed burning workforce (which is predominantly white/male) through TREX (training exchange) programs. So that’s a point in their favor as well.

In conclusion, we may not be able to stop forest fires, but there are many things we can do as individuals and a community to mitigate how large and destructive they become.  Fuel management is a big part of this, and I hope you’ll join me in reaching out to local officials to advocate for better fuel management (and if needed, prescribed burns) in your area.  It’s too late for this year, I’m afraid, but let’s keep this top of mind this winter so that next year may not be as devastating.

Wildfire with Deer, Source: Project LM

SF skyline, on a clear day, and then seen through fire smoke

Spiritual Touchstone

By Rev. Melinda McLain, Pastor for The Good Table UCC

As we continue to contend with wildfires in California and dreadful air quality locally, many beloveds are in the midst of a horrible hurricane season, including our regular Good Table UCC attendee, Dr. Lila Anderson who lives between Houston and Galveston, Texas.

Lila and I lived in the same residential college when we were students at Rice University in Houston back in the early 1980’s. She was a Gulf Coast local and “knew the drill” for hurricanes, but when hurricane Alicia hit Houston in 1983, it was my first experience with that sort of storm.

Growing up in the Texas panhandle in “tornado alley”, I was no stranger to violent weather, but the thunderstorms that spawn tornados tend to develop quickly and the damage happens rapidly, and then you clean up. The same is true for earthquakes: they happen without warning, last for a very short period of time, and then you clean up.

Hurricanes, on the other hand, develop slowly at some distance, and so there is an interminable waiting period when meteorologists try and predict where the storm will make landfall and with what force so that coastal residents can prepare to ride out the storm and/or evacuate. If you’ve been following the tracks of hurricanes Marco and Laura through the Gulf of Mexico the past few days, you no doubt have heard meteorologists talk about the “cone of uncertainty” as they show an elongated balloon shape on the map outlining the probable path of a given storm.

This hurricane tracking tool has since been applied to project management processes (especially in software development) in order to manage expectations for a client, while taking into account the rapidly changing business environment.

Right now, our project to create The Good Table has been reducing the cone of uncertainty and increasing the cone of probability that we will actually begin construction by the end of the year, and perhaps even in October! This is very good news, indeed, although we still have to work through the uncertainties of getting a building permit in September.

At the same time, living through these catastrophic wildfires and super smoky air is an exercise in living with the cone of uncertainty every day — everything from not knowing if our homes will survive to wondering if we can do something as simple as walk the dog, given the wind direction and air quality index numbers.

Personally, I don’t enjoy living in so much uncertainty and chaos and I think most folks find it stressful. Plus, as our climate continues to rapidly change, we will experience more wildfires, extended droughts, and strong hurricanes extending the cone of uncertainty for disaster-free living for longer periods each year.

Fortunately, we are not simply at the mercy of mathematical models to manage our ability to thrive in chaos. We can, through spiritual practices such as meditation and prayer, learn to calm down and be at peace, even in the midst of raging storms and fires. We can also become more resilient by being connected to one another in community through civic groups, faith communities, or through projects like The Good Table.

What helps you thrive in times of uncertainty? How do you stay connected to your neighbors and community? What are you doing to improve our community’s resiliency? Would you like to learn more? Click here.