Earth Day, among other things on very vegan raspberries--and still not being a vegan

Happy Earth Day.with some lilacs blooning nearby!

Lilacs on the way to
one of my bus stops

This week's prompt for Witness Wednesdays at FCNL is a quote from John Woolman.

"The produce of the earth is a gift from our gracious creator to the inhabitants, and to impoverish the earth now to support outward greatness appears to be an injury to the succeeding age." John Woolman, 1777

RantWoman appreciates this quote EVEN THOUGH RantWoman lately has been meditating about how spending TWO YEARS meandering through John Woolman's journal is not particularly anywhere near growing the skills and wisdom to cultivate solutions to today's earthcare conflicts. In fact, it maybe borders on idolatry. 

(RantWoman: Chill. CHILL. The quote is enough for today.)

This month's theme for reflection from the No Arks project is an invitation to consider going vegan.

RantWoman is still not a vegan. From time to time she has and thoroughly enjoys entirely vegan individual meals, but RantWoman is not a vegan. Today's meditation arose while considering fresh raspberries (from Mexico--urk) and decidedly nonvegan yogurt.

RantWoman is trying to be mindful about:

--Raspberries are not in season locally. Imported out of season ones RantWoman bought are actually cheaper than the locally produced in season ones. RantWoman wonders whether the people producing those raspberries have enough to eat before selling to the export market. Should RantWoman consider buying the cheap ones now and putting the money she saves over the local ones into some kind of financial instrument to go back to growers who originally produce the fruit?

--Or should RantWoman also meditate / fret about crop and food supply issues north of the border?

Western Megadrought affects crops and food supply

On the generational themes, one of RantWoman's favorite great uncles was a civil engineer on the Hoover Dam project. RantWoman does not remember during festive dam-themed holiday slide shows whether anything about groundwater or rainfall cycles ever came up.

--RantWoman would not mind some easy table to look up water usage and carbon emissions for different crops travelling to the US from different locations 

And RantWoman is still not a vegan, but RantWoman wants Friends to consider ways to work forward about minimizing climate impact via food witness.

--RantWoman was delighted to hear some reference to care of the environment mentioned in passing in Spanish during some kind of report back at the most recent FWCC section of the Americas virtual gathering.

--RantWoman is glad to hear of and to cheerlead for young people doing cool stuff such as Young Quaker Voices at Quaker Voice in WA. Lord knows RantWoman is not going to get it all done by herself.

RantWoman believes earthcare also means taking care of people and where they live. With that in mind, a map of healthcare disparities in WA:

WA Department of Health Healthcare Disparities Map

RantWoman will now take a break from blogging in order to send an email of legislative encouragement. RantWoman is into battling white supremacy, supporting cleaner transportation, and promoting racial equity by ....paying a lot of attention to transportation meetings..and trying to figure out how to grow some herbs even though the bare balcony police will frown on efforts that involve a magnificent south-facing balcony..