Action at Different Scales

Yesterday, I sat in a faculty meeting concerning the fate of our first year seminar (it lost) while fighting the urge to jump up and point out that it was 94 degrees outside, demolishing the previous record for October 2 in our coastal town, which will surely be threatened in coming decades by rising seas.

I went home and sat outside my house in the remnants of the day’s heat. I read the day’s news out of Washington, pondering what looks like the collapse of the American experiment in democracy, and scrolled social media posts about the explosion in medieval studies, with senior scholars (white and privileged) ignoring or outright denying the need for changes in how we teach and talk about our discipline given its roots in British imperial expansionism and its current appeal to white supremacists.

I heard squealing. Two squirrels were fighting, and when I got up to investigate, the larger squirrel fled, leaving the smaller one nearly unconscious.

My partner wrapped the little guy in a piece of old towel and deposited her / him in the crotch of a tree to recover. When we investigated an hour or so later, she looked brighter of eye, but frightened by flashlight-wielding humans. By morning she was gone. The scrap of towel was undisturbed, and we hoped she had scurried away under her own power, rather than being taken by a hunter seeking weakened prey, or a scavenger.

In the face of what looks like impending global catastrophe on both climatological and political grounds, it seems ridiculous to worry about squirrels or professors fighting for territory. It seems pointless to plant a few flowers to support the local monarch butterfly population when global systems appear to be on the verge of collapse.

But I think it’s precisely because catastrophe seems so imminent that it’s important to keep attending to the small things. Being able to hold in mind and heart the fate of the smallest beings keeps me from getting lost in the whirlwind of terrifying global events. Helps keep me from losing faith in the possibilities for positive change. Maybe, too, it keeps me human.

I didn’t get a photo of the little squirrel. But here’s a chipmunk that visited my back yard a few weeks ago. Stay grounded, y’all.