Environmentalism

by

Some Thoughts on–Malaria?

I just got done reading The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria by Randall M. Packard, and published throguh Johns Hopkins University. It’s an incredibly fascinating read; while the writing occasionally gets into more academic territory, it’s still easily accessible by the layperson. I’m not any sort of medical student or health professional, but I do like to read about unusual things (I read a A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States by Stephen Mihm a couple of months ago and thoroughly enjoyed it).

Packard’s book on malaria captivated me for a number of reasons. I’m the kind of person who loves to read National Geographic cover to cover, so reading about the actual reproductive cycle of the parasites that cause malaria, including both the stages inside the mosquito and inside the human or other mammalian host, was interesting in and of itself. However, what really got me was how thoroughly the author described the economic, social and environmental conditions that historically led to malaria outbreaks as well as suppression/elimination, and how these patterns exist in malaria-ridden areas today. Essentially, malaria hits the poor the hardest, partly due to compromised immune systems from malnutrition, and partly because these people are the ones most likely to be exposed to malaria. Many people think of malaria as a tropical disease; however, it plagued the southern United States during the Civil War, and had a substantial presence in England for quite some time.

What really struck me with this book was the demonstration of how a problem can’t truly be solved with a single-focused attack. Packard made it very clear over and over again that simply throwing a bunch of chemicals–insecticides and suppressive medicines–has proven to be less effective and even counterproductive over the long run. Instead, he advocates a multilayered approach that not only takes individual regions’ needs and conditions into consideration, but looks at everything from the environment (standing water for mosquitos to lay eggs in) to economic issues (migrant workers moving in and out of malaria-plagued areas) to social status (the poor often have greater exposure to malaria and fewer resources to combat it with) and how neglecting any of these areas can sabotage efforts to control this disease.

This really got me thinking not only about public health issues and the problems in our own largely privatized health care system, but also about applying multilayered approaches to my own pet causes. Take environmentalism, for example. It’s easy for me to sit back and say “You should buy organic produce because it lessens the amount of chemical burden on the environment, and it’s better for you”. In some cases I’m preaching to the choir; a lot of people I know either buy organic, or are at least aware of and in agreement with the need to. However, in some places organic produce is a lot more expensive than conventional produce; I’m fortunate in that I’m in an area that’s very organic-friendly, so the prices aren’t that much more (and are often the same in the prime harvesting months).

Recession or not, there are a lot of people (including in the pagan/etc. community) who are living hand to mouth, or at least on a tight budget. Outside of that community, it’s the same. It would be foolish of me to go to someone who’s scraping by on food stamps and other social assistance, who may live in highly substandard housing, and say “Go buy some organic carrots for $2.99 a pound”. Chances are that person is going to be less concerned with chemical pesticides and fertilizers going into hir body, and more concerned with making sure hir body gets food, period. Add in that a lot of low-income neighborhoods don’t even have decent grocery stores, let alone easy access to organic produce, and I wouldn’t be doing much good.

However, let’s look at the promotion of organic produce from a multilayered perspective. Specifically, the most immediate problem we run into is money. People who aren’t making enough money usually aren’t interested in spending more than what they have to. At times when I was living on half a shoestring, I was interested in what was cheap, not necessarily what was organic or free range. Not having enough money can come down to several factors. Not having enough formal education can severely limit your job prospects, which can then limit your potential income. Inadequate transportation, either personal or public, can also contribute to limitations in employment. The same thing goes for the local job market–all the experience and qualifications in the world won’t do you any good when there aren’t any jobs to be had. Additionally, even when people have money, a lot of folks have no idea how to handle it. While knowing how to handle money, including even the simplest things like balancing a checkbook or knowing how to arrange a monthly budget, can go a long way in making one’s resources go farther.

A lot of the above issues then funnel into education. Some of it is access to formal education past high school, as well as convincing people to stay in high school and actually pay attention–assuming that the school is well funded enough to have the necessary materials to offer a decent education. College, of course, becomes a more expensive proposition each year, even for two year degrees and trade schools. On a more personal level, there are no formal instituted guidelines on how to handle money itself–we learn how to deal with money usually from family members, and if they don’t have a good relationship with money, chances are we won’t either. It’s no good having resources available–either formal education or financial know-how–if you have no idea why they’re important or what to do once you have them.

This then links into the allocation of public funding by the government. Since we have the War That Never Ends going on right now, a lot of money is getting shoved into defense. Imagine how much we could do for public education if we rerouted even a fraction of the defense budget towards public schooling and other education resources. Education starts at home, too–however, if your home life is punctuated by abuse, gang wars and shootings, rampant crime, and general social malaise, your education may have more to do with basic survival under environmental stress and pressure. And schools in such areas tend to be more poorly-funded, which certainly doesn’t help the situation any.

And this is just tracing environmentalism through economics, specifically the availability of money–and I’ve barely scratched the surface of that topic. Never mind widespread apathy, misinformation on all sides of the issue, lack of good solutions in some cases, and educating people about possibilities and what we can do. When you think about it, it’s amazing that things are as green as they are, relatively speaking!

I’m very glad that I read that book on malaria, because it really made me think. However, thinking isn’t enough. Thoughts need to be applied to perceptions, and perceptions need to inform our actions. I’m getting better at this process. For example, I have consciously changed a number of my habits to be more Earth-friendly. I never go to the store without reusable canvas shopping bags, and I’ve started tucking some clean used plastic bags for veggies and bulk items in there, too. I turn the water off when I lather my hands up with soap. I carefully consider a lot of my everyday purchases, from laundry detergent to kitchen implements to clothing, with things like transportation/shipping and origin of components in mind. And now I want to expand that awareness to include factors that weave into environmentalism. Healthier, happier people are more likely to be conscious of their actions, and may have less of an impact on the world around them. Additionally, social consciousness often links into ecological consciousness–a factory that responds positively to criticism about sweatshop labor may also do so with criticism of toxic emissions.

One of the big problems that progressives have is that we often have a habit of partitioning off our individual causes and try to make ours more “important” than others. This isn’t universal, of course, but sometimes it’s hard to work together when one person insists that women’s rights are the most important, while another argues that ending white slavery should take precedence, and never mind that person over there who’s screaming about the drowning polar bears. If we look at all of the issues–feminism, queer rights, first amendment rights, free vs. fair trade, environmentalism, public health, etc.–for long enough, we can find ties among all of them. That doesn’t mean that we can’t specialize; on the contrary, spreading ourselves to thin is as dangerous as turning a blind eye to others and only focusing on our pet causes.

But The Making of a Tropical Disease made me really realize just how intertwined all of the issues really are. Therioshamanism, as I’ve mentioned, is an ecologically centered paganism, focused especially (though not exclusively) on animals, physical and spiritual. It’s important for me to remember, though, that I can’t just limit myself to making donations to the Defenders of Wildlife and working magic to help eco-friendly bills pass. I also need to be aware of the pressures on the human beings who may be negatively affecting the fragile ecosystems. Many people involved in things like deforestation in the Amazon or poaching of African wildlife are people who are impoverished and just doing what they can to survive. They may not care so much that there will be no elephants or rain forests tomorrow, if there’s a chance they can eat today.

This will, of course, take more thought and consideration along the way. But on the more physical end of therioshamanism, this multilayered awareness has become more important and, in my opinion, more crucial. If this is to be an active spirituality, one that truly engaged the concerns that I have and that I am called to address and act upon, then I have to do more than offer lip service.

by

What Makes Me (You) Burn?

Fire is Action. But just as Fire is present in the candle flame as well as the inferno, so is it in the small changes as well as the large ones.

Despite Saturday being Live Like a Cat Day, I spent the day running errands. Of course, for me, that does count as being more relaxed than usual. I slept in til ten (I’m normally up at six during the week to get ready for my bus/train commute), then after breakfast I went out to hit the local Goodwill stores for some random kitchen implements and other things on the shopping list. A few hours later I came home with a pair of secondhand hand towels for my husband and me so we don’t have to use paper towels at work, a two dollar salad spinner (only missing a handle), a shirt and skirt (each one found at a different Goodwill), and a few other things that we needed around the house.

My quest was not complete, however. One of my most-wanted items for the day was a rolling pin. I have discovered the joys of making bread, and I want to make pizza dough, since right now I still rely on the overexpensive and preservative-laden Boboli crusts, which makes me sad 😦 . However, without a rolling pin, flattening the dough into the proper shape for the perfect pizza may be more of a challenge than I really want to try to tackle. That damned rolling pin became my Holy Grail for the day. You would think that an overstocked Goodwill with eighty billion Teflon-coated pots and pans, a sharp, poking sea of miscellaneous silverware, and more cups than the bra section at a Victoria’s Secret superstore, would have at least one solitary rolling pin.

Nope. I finally gave up, and headed to Fred Meyer to look for a replacement pair of Winter gloves for my husband*. Once the gloves had been procured, I went back to the kitchenware just to price their rolling pins. Lo and behold, the normally five dollar wooden rolling pin was on sale for four bucks. Normally, this would be the time when glorious light breaks through the glare of fluorescent lamps, and choirs of heavenly angels sing the praises of the successful quest. However, having become a more conscientious consumer, I took a close look at the label. “Made in Taiwan”. “Made of plantation wood”.

“Made in Taiwan” = “trans-Pacific shipping”, which = use of a ton of resources to get it from there to here. “Made of plantation wood” means that somewhere, probably in Asia, a rainforest or other sensitive ecosystem was decimated to make way for a monoculture for profit. I really, really don’t like supporting such things. By buying that rolling pin, I would be directly supporting an industry that burned huge quantities of fuel and created a proportionate amount of pollution just to get it (and a bunch of others) halfway around the world. I’d also be supporting poor use of the land somewhere on this planet.

I ended up buying the rolling pin, since it was the second to last one there. However, upon finding a pair of bread loaf pans of the type I was looking for (also on sale, and the very last two they had) I realized I hadn’t checked Goodwill for those while I was out. So I paid for my purchase, and headed back to the Goodwill-of-Many-Used-Kitchen-Implements, feeling guilty the whole time for my brand new purchase, and hoping I’d find good reasons to return the new items once I got to the thrift store.

Lo and behold, upon entering the aisles of Goodwill, I found a slightly used but quite usable pair of bread pans of the same dimensions of the ones I’d just bought. Taking this as a good sign, I crept up on the pile of wooden utensils. There, hidden between a banana hanger and some spoons, was a perfectly good wooden rolling pin. Elated, I took the pin and pans to the counter like I’d just won a trophy, and then headed back to Fred Meyer to return the new versions thereof. I even ended up saving a few bucks on the secondhand items despite the sale on the new ones.

So what the heck does a rolling pin have to do with Fire? (Other than the baking connections, of course.) Action, that’s what. Action, and passion, and awareness (Fire needs Air, after all, to exist). Therioshamanism is very much an eco-friendly path, and it is rooted in everyday reality as well as the spiritual realms. I came to the realization that one very positive aspect of Fire in my life is my drive to bring about positive change in my actions. The reason I opened this post with the Tale of the Quest for the Rolling Pin is that it illustrates my increased conscious action on a daily basis. In that moment I wasn’t just wishing I’d bought secondhand instead; I manifested it into my life, and made it real. So many times we think about what we’d like to do; putting those thoughts into action, making the change–that’s Fire.

I am passionate about eco-friendly choices in an urban lifestyle. Not everyone can afford to go completely sustainable; since at this point I’m limited to renting, and living in a city where the jobs are, I make changes where I can. However, it’s not always big, impressive changes, like buying a Prius or opting into 100% renewable energy through your local utility company. A lot of it is small changes on a daily basis–small changes that build up over time.

I’m still really struck by what I read in The Earth Path, not just in the Fire chapter, but touched on in several places. The natural balance of things requires both give and take. Take, for example, an apple core. We can only eat so much of it. However, the Earth can reabsorb all of it, even if it’s rotten. The energy and other resources in that apple core can then be integrated into something new. In the meantime, the flesh of the apple that we ate becomes a part of us.

The problem is that we cut off the return of resources to the Earth. Our waste–whether from our bodies or not–more often than not will end up in a landfill. Wasted food, sludge leftover from treatment of sewage, and other organics end up in a lined hole in the ground where they sit, cut off from the Earth from which they originated and to which they need to return. None of these organics need to end up there. Even sludge can be treated and turned into fertilizer (also lessening the use of chemical fertilizers).

Think of the Earth’s resources as money in a bank account. There may be a small bit of interest, but it’s generally not enough to keep up with our overspending. Humanity is an irresponsible teenager let loose in a mall with a credit card–every single day. Granted, we have to have some resources to ourselves–we need to have homes, and clothing, and other such things that we can’t send back into the Earth right away. But we throw away so much, and we take things we don’t really need.

It’s not just a matter of the big things, either. It’s the little things, as I’ve mentioned before. The ends of celery stalks and carrots. A part of a carton of milk that goes bad. The hair in our combs and brushes. All of these are things that could quite safely be put back into the Earth, but which we’ve been conditioned to toss it in the trash instead. And the more people do that with each year, the more slowly the Earth is able to refertilize itself. I’m sure at least some readers have encountered land that is too overfarmed and no longer has the necessary nutrients to produce crops–so chemical fertilizers are dumped on them, and then the fertilizers run off into the water, poisoning what lives in it or drinks it. If composting were popular on a large scale, we’d need a lot fewer chemicals.

It’s also reducing how much we take. The reason I’m so type-A about buying things secondhand is that I know that for every secondhand item I buy, that’s one less new item that will have to be produced–and one less discard in the landfill. I’ll even buy things I’m pretty sure other people won’t buy, like the salad spinner without a handle, or the hand towels embroidered with someone else’s initials. The more fuel we leave for the Fiery cycle of Change and Renewal, the better off everyone will be.

And that is part of the Fire that burns inside of me. It’s that need to make changes, to be more aware of and closer to that sacred cycle. Ever since The Earth Path brought me into greater awareness at the beginning of this month, the internal fire has burned higher, and I recognize that I have had a connection to Fire all along–I just didn’t always know it for what it was.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll ignore its other roles in my life, of course. None of the elements is a one-trick pony. And what Fire is to me, isn’t necessarily what it is to other people. So when you read about my experiences with Fire, or Earth, or Air, or next month’s work with Water, don’t just observe my experiences. Think about your own. Think about both the concrete and the abstract; both are important.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue with my last week in my Fire month, and work to create as healthy a bond as I can. I won’t lose Fire, of course, but the six months are meant to set a solid foundation in the elements.

* Caveat emptor–never try to replace your Winter gloves any time in the actual season of Winter. Try July, or August if you want sales. Goodwill had picnic baskets and sandals out, and somehow Fred Meyer had managed to stash away a tiny rack of gloves on sale that hadn’t gotten swept away in the “Never sell things when you need them” merchandising.

by

Walking the Talk However Far We Can

First off, quick note–I think I’ve mentioned a ritual I did in preparing a chicken a few weeks back. At any rate, I wrote an article about the process, and you can see it at Culinary Adventures of an Urban Shaman, via Key64.net. While I don’t hunt or fish for meat (though I’d like to), I do believe it’s important to honor the animals (and plants, etc.) who become our food and preserve our life. The article details the ritual I developed for honoring the spirit of a fre range chicken I prepared for supper one evening.

This ritual is a part of my recent efforts to boost the amount of environmentally friendly actions I take, both mundane and spiritual/magical. Therioshamanism, as I am developing it, is very much an Earth-centered path. When I work with deities, for example, I don’t simply see them as abstract beings, separate from the natural phenomena they “represent”. My patron Goddess, Artemis, with whom I will have been working for a full decade this February, is very much associated with the wilderness and the animals therein, as well as the Moon. To me, that means not only honoring her, but also doing what I can to preserve the wilderness, the animals, and to clear the sky so the Moon may be seen without the haze of pollution. Granted, Artemis is also the Huntress–which means she’s no vegan. (Then again, neither am I.) Between her, and the Animal Father who is also, of course, strongly associated with the wilderness and the creatures in it, you can see where a lot of my emphasis is.

It makes no sense to me, therefore, to turn a blind eye to the degradation of what these deities hold sacred. However, I do not live in ancient Greece, or paleolithic France. I am an urban American in the 21st century, and therefore my relationship to the environment is different from people in other cultures and times. To me, it’s not enough to celebrate Nature, when all around me it’s being destroyed through our actions. Where is the honor in that? If I talk about how amazing and wonderful Nature is for giving me life, and then ignore my impact on the land, water and air, then I’m not walking my talk.

Granted, we each have to come to our own balance. I still drive a car, though I use public transit to get to and from work, even though driving might be faster. I’m omnivorous, and meat takes a certain amount of land and other resources to produce, though I try to go for local, free-range meat when I can, and have been eating more poultry, smaller animals that require fewer resources to raise. I know not everyone can afford to buy organic. However, we can buy with an eye towards reducing packaging, recycle whatever we have the facilities for, make small investments such as a few canvas bags for groceries (guaranteed not to rip no matter how wet they get or how many canned goods you stuff in there!), and other such things. Being an environmentally-friendly pagan (or non-pagan, for that matter) isn’t about worrying about what you can’t do right now–it’s about what you can do, and being aware of the choices you make with regards to the resources and opportunities available to you at any given time.

For me, walking my talk means changing my everyday lifestyle, no matter where I live. I made my own bread for the first time this weekend, so I could have a little more control over what ingredients I used, and what went into my body. The clove of garlic that bravely put forth a bright green shoot was saved from the pizza sauce and is now in its own pot of dirt, growing happily, the start of what I hope will be an excellent garden someday. I want to buy a secondhand hand towel so I don’t have to dry my hands with paper towels at work. I can’t buy solar, can’t buy a hybrid, can’t raise rabbits or chickens for food–but I can do these things, and help make others aware of what they can do, inspire people to take a conscious look at the choices they have before them. And in the end, that’s enough, I think, to do what I can, and look forward to what may be later on as circumstances change.

by

On Being a Pagan Omnivore

In case you don’t regularly wander the essay section of Witchvox, I have an article up there this week:

On Being a Pagan Omnivore

Here, I discuss the spirituality of eating meat. I’ve seen a lot of discussion on how vegetarianism/veganism can be spiritually fulfilling; however, how can those of us who prefer or even need meat in our diets go about it in a spiritually conscious way? Click the link to find out more.

by

Composting as a Spiritual Act

I just got back in from taking the kitchen scraps to the compost bin in the back yard. We’ve had the bin out there for a couple of months now. There’s no real compost yet, but that’s mainly because I started it so late in the year. Still, things are breaking down some, and I’m sure once spring hits and it starts to warm up we’ll see more decay. For now, the pile seems to have a few resident moths, and that’s about it.

People have this idea that compost bins are smelly, probably because garbage is smelly. However, it all depends on what you put in the bin. If you don’t put meat scraps, fats, and other such things in there, you’re fine. And of course, don’t put any animal waste in there–who wants that going ultimately into their garden? Unless you maintain one pile for edible plants, and one for decorative–but even then, animal waste will smell. So we limit the scraps to vegetable matter, paper towels (we always buy the ones made of recycled paper and bleached without chlorine), hair, and eggshells. There’s no smell, and other than a bit of mold nothing really scary in the decaying process.

This is my first compost bin, and I’m rather proud of it. I went and got one of these for thirty-five bucks–took me less than five minutes to assemble. However, I could just as easily have used a stack of four worn-out car tires held in place with posts. Or, if we didn’t have access to a yard, I could have taken two big plastic bins and made a cheap and easy worm bin–that’d be great to go with some indoor container gardening. (One way or another, next year, I WILL garden!)

Composting is a spiritual process for me. Sure, it’s Earthy, and involves things decaying. But mine is a nature religion, thanks. I know some pagans cringe when the term “nature religion” is applied to what they do. Fair enough–if your gods have been abstracted away from the natural forces that birthed them, then I’m not going to try to force you into a compost-bin-shaped-pigeonhole. But for me, Artemis isn’t just the abstract concept of the Hunt and the Moon and liberty–she’s also the reality of blood and death, and the moonlight trying to shine amidst blinding artificial light and air pollution. The totems aren’t just aspects of my psyche–they’re embodied in every living animal out there, from the moth in the compost bin to the kitties snoozing at my feet. And I seek greater awareness of the physical reality of my spirituality.

I am constantly amazed to see the transformation that occurs in the compost bin. The ends of carrots and celery, this past summer’s dead tomato vines, are all transformed from brightly-colored things to somewhat of a mush and mixture of browns and greys (and don’t forget the pale green mold). Maybe this isn’t lead into gold, but it’s an alchemy all on its own. Unfortunately, humanity seems to do its damnedest to interfere with that magical process. Yard Work As Viewed From Heaven may be a humor piece, but it has a message.

Take fertilizer, for example. Nature provides its own fertilizer. When something dies, it feeds the living. Taking dead trees out of the forest weakens the soil, the tree could provide numerous nutrients to small animals and plants and bacteria. Ultimately, the dead tree would enrich the soil. But instead the soil suffers, having fed the tree but not receiving the nutrients back through decay. And, to bring things closer to home for a lot of us, when we cut the grass and bag the clippings, we’re taking away the natural fertilizer in that grass. You know where that fertilizer is going? Into the landfill. And do you know what happens to grass in a landfill? Absolutely nothing. It doesn’t matter how biodegradable something is–if it goes into a landfill, it’s not breaking down. There’s nothing to break it down. I remember as a kid I watched a 20/20 episode where the reporter went to a landfill and excavated through several years’ of trash. He found a carrot that was almost perfect, other than being shrivelled and dirty.

Decay does take a certain mixture of factors. In my compost pile, for example, I need to balance the “greens” (carrot ends and celery leaves) with “browns” (dead leaves, paper towels). A lot of people make the mistake of not having enough browns, which makes the decay go slower. Additionally, I turn over the compost whenever I add more to the pile to help all the compost get air, which promotes decay as well. I don’t think that landfill is getting nearly enough air.

By composting, I’m returning some of what has been taken from the Earth and putting it back into the cycle, instead of the dead zone of a landfill. Rather than throwing away perfectly good, nearly free, fertilizer for the garden, I toss it into the compost bin and let it do its thing. It’s quicker than going to the store, and it keeps me locked into the cycles of Nature, instead of letting myself be drawn away from those cycles, pretending that they don’t actually affect me, numbed by the out of sight, out of mind of the landfill.

Much is made, in neopaganism, of the Wheel of the Year, and the mythology surrounding it. Sure, it’s important to pay attention to the Solar and Lunar cycles–but I think more is made of the symbolism and the abstract mythology surrounding those cycles, than the cycles themselves. It’s easy to get caught up in celebration in the living room with your coven or family or other group. But then, when everyone’s gone home, we can go back to our everyday lives, complaining about the weather and going to work far away from home and surviving trips to the crowded grocery store. The Sun God has been born, we know the sun will come back soon, and eventually we’ll switch back off of daylight savings time (and lose an hour of sleep).

Composting brings me into a cycle that hasn’t been so abstracted. There’s nothing glamorous about that pile of decaying matter in the bin. Nor are worms and moths particularly flashy. We have the Horned God, but we don’t have the Slimy God With Multitudinous Setae. Composting makes the processes of fertility very apparent to me in a way that the Sabbats and Esbats never did when I followed a more generic, Wiccan-inspired neopagan path. In that bin is death turning into the fuel for life. Next year, that compost can be mixed in with the Earth and feed tomato plants and mint and gods know what all else. It can feed the plants that become food for me. In that bin is nutrition cycling through one stage to the next. The compost is life.

This is why I’m so diligent about filling up the bucket of kitchen scraps. Every leftover scrap from making salad goes in there. Every paper towel that isn’t soaked in cleaning chemicals gets tossed in, and the hair from our brushes. Last night I poured the last of the milk on a bowl of cereal–unfortunately, the milk was spoiled (nothing says “Mmmmmmm!” like fluffy milk!). I drained the milk into the sink, and tossed the cereal into the bucket. Crumbs from the bottom of a bag of herb-flavored popcorn, every last bit of eggshell from breakfast–it all goes in there. Every bit of nutrition and energy that I can salvage gets poured back into that sacred cycle.

It’s not just a matter of waste not, want not, though that is a factor, too. It’s the fact that I have participated too much in breaking the alchemical cycle of decay, in taking the gifts of the Earth and locking them away in the landfill, away from where they could do any good. Some things can’t be composted–cardboard, for instance–but it can be recycled, and that in itself is a cycle that mirrors the natural cycle of decay.

As a species we’ve grown too detached from the cycles of Nature. We may still be ruled by them to an extent as mammals, but we tell ourselves we’re different. Composting reminds me that I am still very much a part of those sacred cycles, and that I have a very real connection to them even when I pretend otherwise. But I choose to engage in them again, to contribute to them and participate in them. I still haven’t figured out what I’ll do to celebrate the Equinoxes and Solstices, but I do feel comfort in at least one cyclical celebration–the humble, yet exceptionally important, joy of composting.