Macska Moksha Press -

My projects

March 5, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Scroll down for newest blog post

Macska Moksha Press
This site, which is my blog & bookstore.
Wildflowers of Joshua Tree Country—photography & nature literacy
A field guide of plants in the Mojave Desert and nearby locales, featuring animal associations, Native American ethnobotany & translations of scientific names. Non-commercial & educational. Centered on my own photography.
Radio Free Sunroot—podcasting (on hiatus but episodes still available)
“Voices for Nature & Peace”—”ecology, empire, justice, and consciousness” ~70 episodes, from April 2020 and May 2021. Featured guests like Margaret Kimberley, Dr. Susan Block, Bruce Levine, Ajamu Baraka, Margaret Killjoy, and a three-part series on the one-and-only Finisia Medrano.
YouTube: Radio Free Sunroot channel—featuring three “shows”
“Voices for Nature & Peace” podcast & “Kollibri’s Weekly Column” (both on hiatus), plus:
“Farmer K’s Diary”—videos of 2020 gardening efforts. Most likely show to be revived.

Supporting my work:

Medium—blogging
If you’re a member of Medium, follow my work there because I get $ based on member-reading time. Same content as here.
Patreon—members-only content
Six levels of support to choose from. Currently people are getting excerpts from a book-in-progress about so-called “invasive” plants that I’m working on with Nikki Hill.
Substack: “Speaking for the Trees (No Matter Where They’re From)”—both members only & free content
Content focused on plants and ecology. No posts about politics (except how it relates to the environment). Both free and members-only content (excerpts from the book-in-progress about “invasive” plants by Nikki Hill & me).

Fellow Foragers: Non-Native Plants Also Deserve Our Respect

November 9, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

St. Johnswort (Hypericum perforatum), as observed in Oregon’s Willamette Valley [Photo by author]

I’ve been wildcrafting medicinal herbs and foraging wild and feral foods for a little over twenty years in a variety of settings from wild to agricultural to urban, and in a number of regions including the moist, verdant Pacific Northwest, the oak-dotted, golden hills of California, and the arid, sagey Great Basin. I’ve processed my harvests by tincturing, sundrying, canning, wine-making and other ways. These herbs are my primary medicine cabinet, and this food helps sustain me year-round. I’m happy to see that a growing number of people are becoming engaged in these satisfying activities.

Foremost among the concerns of any forager or wildcrafter is plant ID. We need to know what we’re picking! Besides avoiding plants that are inedible or poisonous, we can tell (or can find out) when to harvest and how to process.

Next most important is the ethics of harvest, which is generally understood as how much to take so as not to harm the plant. People use rules like “no more than one third” though this is a case-by-case and season-by-season issue. That’s what it’s about when you see “sustainably wildcrafted” on tincture labels.

A third factor is seeking permission. This can mean inquiring with a landowner, as in “Hey can I pick those apples?” or “Want me to dig up your Dandelions for you?” On public land, there are rules about what and how much you’re allowed to take. Many people, especially herbalists, also suggest asking the plant permission, and that can take many forms, from ceremonial to intuitive.

Additionally, on the subject of permission, who are the other-than-human creatures who partake of these plants? Are we poaching from their share? How can we ask them permission? What can we offer? To this last question, the wildtenders say, “plant back!” which is still a new concept for many foragers though it should be central to the endeavor, but that’s a subject for another day (or see my book, The Failures of Farming & the Necessity of Wildtending).

There’s a lot of details to all this of course, but the basic guidelines are: “What is it?” “How much can I take?” (with “How do I give back?”) and “Who should I ask?”

Over the last few years an increasingly prominent aspect of plant ID has been whether the plant is native or not, and this is often mentioned right at the outset, just after the name. If the plant is not native, many foragers, herbalists or wildcrafters dismiss the above guidelines. The rationale is that since the plant “doesn’t belong,” it’s not important to have any concerns about it.

This attitude is problematic for a number of reasons and it’s time we move past it.

The Nebraskafication of the US

October 27, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

I was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, and I got out as soon as I could because I found it so wretched. But much to my dismay, the last few years have seen the rest of the United States become more like the place I fled.

It’s been said about Omaha that it’s “too Southern” to be a Northern city, but “too far north” to be a Southern city. That is, the culture and the politics of Omaha are too conservative for a Northern city, but geographically it’s just not in the South.

I personally found it to be narrow-minded and bigoted, with the threat of violence being a constant undertone. As someone who was struggling to understand and come to terms with my gender nonconformity and gay sexuality, the atmosphere was hostile. (For more on this saga, see my book, “Confessions of a Queer Catholic Nebraska Boy.”)

I haven’t lived there for three solid decades, and I’m willing to believe things have changed—during 2016’s post-election anti-Trump protests, I saw rainbow flags being carried in the photos of Central High’s student walk-out, which would’ve been unthinkable when I was that age in the ’80s—but nonetheless the shadows I sought to escape there have seemingly spread across the country.

I’m not just talking about specific cultural afflictions like racism, sexism, homophobia, and the rest, or particular political stances in favor of “Capitalism” and militarism and against “Socialism” and peace, but about the spirit with which they are held, which is, in a word: belligerence.

Nature as Process, Not Just Place

August 3, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Dandelion in an alleyway in Ft. Bragg, CA [Photo by author]

Here in our techno-industrialized culture, we often think of “nature” as a place. Those who live in urban and suburban settings tend to think of this place as somewhere else. So, nature is a mountain, a river or a forest and it is “out there,” without us in it, and we must go there to see it or to be in it.

What’s more, we tend to think of such places as permanent; that they are fixed in their shape, composition and behavior. If we go visit a spot, we expect it to be pretty much the same when we return, barring seasonal changes such as snow cover, water flow or leaf color, which we consider reliably predictable (or have until recently).

These perspectives—that nature is just a place and that on top of that it is a stable place (climate change notwithstanding)—are misleading. Our continued belief in them will lead us in dangerous directions as human-induced impacts on the planet intensify. If we don’t understand what is going on, we won’t understand how we’re affecting it, nor what we must do differently if we want to sustain habitable circumstances for ourselves.

Summer Solstice musings

June 20, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Scorzonera flowering at a farm in Paonia, Colorado [photo by the author]

Here in the northern hemisphere we are in the midst of the longest days and shortest nights of year. The farther north you live, the more pronounced the effect. I once took a night train through Norway at this time of year and it never got fully dark. In the seats ahead of me, young people playing guitars didn’t put down their instruments til morning’s brightness. The vibe was at once surreal and comforting, a dimness that never darkened but lit by the golden tones of the gentle strumming. A candlelit mood, I dare say.

Guest post: Botany as Archaeology

March 13, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

GUEST POST: This is Nikki Hill’s GoFundMe campaign for her “Lithium Lands Fellowship,” a month-long botanical survey she will be undertaking with young ecologists in places where lithium mining is proposed. The fellowship is being co-sponsored by Groundwork, the non-profit I will be working with this year in Paonia, Colorado. I encourage everyone who can to donate to this campaign.

For an in-depth description of a survey like this she did at Thacker Pass last year, see her article at The Esperanza Project: “Botany as archaeology, to save a sacred site from a lithium mine.”

Nikki Hill and Groundwork are seeking funding for a Lithium Lands Fellowship happening this April, 2023. This month-long immersion camp in far southeast Oregon is an endeavor in observation, documentation and storytelling centered on the ecological relationships and cultural heritage which are threatened by the proposed McDermitt Lithium Project.

The northern edge of the McDermitt Caldera has recently garnered attention for containing the largest lithium deposits in the US. The caldera lies within the vast sagebrush sea, which is one of the largest continuous landscape types in North America, but also one of the most at-risk, with only 5% receiving protection at the federal level. This sea connects all the peaks of the intermountain west in a mosaic of habitats and diverse floral communities.

Meaningful recognition of generational tribal caretaking, critical habitat zones and the ecological integrity sustained by their safekeeping are purposefully omitted from the promotion of these large mining projects. The goal of the Lithium Lands Fellowship is to provide baseline data and collaborative inspiration in support of further research and exploration of the living story of this place, as part of a larger effort to protect it.

Why I Quit Social Media

March 8, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Thumbs down on Facebook, Image by sue seecof

Image by sue seecof, Creative Commons license, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

This morning I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts. It wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. I’d been thinking about it for a months, and I scheduled the date a few weeks out so I could use the medium for a few more things—helping a friend find garden help, announcing a new website, inviting people to subscribe to my other projects.

I got on Facebook in 2015 because I was going to start self-publishing books and people said if you’re going to do that you have to be on social media. You know, so you can get a following and hopefully go viral. Seven books and as many years later, I can say that this never worked as hoped. A following didn’t materialize, nothing went viral, and book sales were never impressive. Thousands of hours that I’ll never get back went into “content creation”—all the secondary and tertiary stuff that people are expected to do to “build a brand”: photos, memes, videos, a podcast, etc., etc. All to call attention to the real thing, the writing. These days, Tik Tok has upped the bar and you have to be a video personality too. <eye roll> Not interested.

Invasion Biology & Invasion Ideology: A theory and a dogma, at odds & overlapping

March 6, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

St. Johnswort (Hypericum perforatum), Mendocino county pasture, 2019. Photo by author.

St. Johnswort (Hypericum perforatum), as observed in a Mendocino County pasture, 2019. Photo by author.

(The following is a draft of the Introduction for the book-in-progress that Nikki Hill & I are working on, tentatively entitled, “Stop Blaming the Messengers: A critical look at ‘invasive plant’ theory and dogma.”)

The two of us are plant lovers. We love all plants, wild and domestic, ancient and ephemeral, native and introduced. We have dedicated years of our lives to propagating and protecting botanical life as farmers, wildtenders and advocates.

We are deeply saddened by civilization’s war against the earth: the pillaging of the forests for logging, the mountains for mining, the valleys for agriculture, the steppes for ranching, the rivers for irrigation and power, the oceans for over-fishing, and now the deserts for “green energy” infrastructure.

We have witnessed brutal clear-cuts, cow-trampled wild food gardens, and hellish open-pit mines. We have also slept under old growth Fir and Cedar, sown the seeds of Yampah and Biscuitroot, and hiked back country among Mesquite and Prickly Pear. The joys of fragrant foliage, vibrant flowers, juicy berries and starchy roots, ripe seeds, exuberant seedlings, and furrowed bark are unparalleled by anything from a factory.

Reckless Disregard for the Consequences of War

January 26, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Collage showing hourglass & nuclear explosion

Collage by the author from elements by Gianluca Miscione (“Sand clock Enschede”) & the National Nuclear Security Administration (“The BADGER explosion on April 18, 1953, as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole, at the Nevada Test Site”), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license retained from Miscione work.

“Opposing the horrible madness of war is not anti-European, its not anti-Ukrainian, its not pro-Russian. It’s common sense… I oppose all war. I want it stopped. I make no apology for that. And I’m not going to be scapegoated and labelled for it either.”
~Clare Daly, member of European Parliament (video)

We are living in a very dangerous moment. Tensions between the US and Russia are high. Lines of communication between the two countries are more frayed than during the Cold War. Militant rhetoric is steadily ratcheting up on both sides. In such a strained atmosphere, the risk of setting off a deadly nuclear exchange is all too real, even just by accident in a heat-of-the-moment misunderstanding.

If the situation goes nuclear, it won’t matter who started it. It will only matter that it wasn’t stopped before it got there.

We really need all hands on deck to pull humanity back from the brink. Arguably, nothing is more important right now. All other concerns—the environment, social justice, economic inequality—will be moot. Certainly, our insipid partisan bickering will be irrelevant if we’re bleeding out of every orifice, our hair is falling out, our skin is sloughing off, and we’re dying agonizing deaths from severe burns and radiation sickness, while rotting corpses pile up around us.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

Climate, Covid & Wishful Thinking

January 4, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

[Art by author from public domain elements]

The challenges presented by climate chaos and the Covid-19 pandemic have both elicited cultural responses that superficially appear to be opposed to one another, but that end up working hand-in-hand to bolster a status quo that’s intrinsically harmful to everyone. Both succeed by appealing to wishful thinking.

In the case of anthropogenic climate chaos, the two clusters are centered around denialism and what we could call technophilia or perhaps techno-hopium. Climate chaos results from industrial-scaled agricultural civilization, so seriously addressing it would any would entail significantly changing that system, and—if we’re going to be honest—ultimately phasing it out. Avoiding such change is the shared motivation of both parties, so Team Denial shrilly insists that climate chaos is not real, or if real is “natural” rather than “man-made,” so there’s nothing we have to change about how we live. Team Technophile smugly assures us that it is real, but that “green energy” (so-called “renewables” like solar, wind & hydro) will solve the problem, so… there’s nothing we have to change about how we live.

In both cases, it’s wishful thinking: the former insist there’s no problem to solve, and the latter that science alone can do it.

Two sides, same coin.

Navigation

Supporting my work: