LEAG Community Circle Event for These Challenging Times

Dearest Earthlings,

I trust you have been loving yourselves and our precious Mother Earth as well as you can, given these challenging times! I have been extremely challenged with first a broken arm and then multiple tick bites led to anaplasmosis!!! BUT the good news is that I am feeling very well now and I hope you are, too.  Living Earth Action Group met continuously throughout the ridiculously hot summer, mostly in our gardens which cooled down by our meeting time of 5pm Fridays.  Meeting weekly now for over 8 years has been an incredible experience of bonding and creating true community amongst the core group members, ands spreading out from there, including all of you in our community of Grateful Earthlings, of course.

We have some exciting programs coming up in the next couple of months. The first is the extraordinary Betsy Damon who will speak to us of Water, on November 14th.

Betsy Damon, an internationally acclaimed artist and 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, has been called a

practical visionary and a humanist. Her work has been widely reviewed, exhibited, and taught. She’s

known for her performance works like The 7,000-Year-Old Woman (1976) and her ecological designs like The Living Water Garden (1998) in Chengdu, China, pictured below.

Betsy has directed many collaborative public performance events, most notably in Chengdu and in Lhasa, Tibet. Damon’s awards include the Guggenheim Foundation, Bush Foundation, Heinz Foundation, NEA, UN Habitat, Waterfront Center Top Honor, five awards from the ASLA, and others. 

For the past four decades, Damon’s work has focused on a central subject: water, which she reveals as the connective, creative, and collaborative medium behind all life. Her work traverses the complexities of water, from a molecular scale to the levels of ecosystems and societies. 

ARTIST’S STATEMENT by Betsy

Our world’s living systems are endlessly exciting and constantly humbling in their complexity. Through my art, I reveal biodiversity’s enormity and center water as the foundation to all life. In my journey to understand water, my partner is science and my driving purpose is curiosity. I look through the mist to examine the vast expanse of interconnected living systems that contains you and me.

Betsy Damon started a non-profit, Keepers of the Waters, to improve global water systems and educate people about water quality. The organization’s largest project to date is the Living Water Garden in the city of Chengdu, China, an ecological park that diverts polluted water from the Fu and Nan rivers into a wetland filtration system, from which it emerges clean enough to drink. The system doesn’t process enough water to change pollution levels in the massive river system, but it’s enough to make a point about what’s possible.

Betsy comes to us via our friend and hers whose essays you may have read in The Commons, Carolyn North of Putney. We are so fortunate to make this connection! To learn more about this extraordinary woman and her book, Water Talks, visit her website, wwwBetsyDamon.com. 

The forward to Water Talks is written by Betsy’s close friend, Jane Goodall.

Details to follow at a later date.

A Giantess Departs....

Her words challenging "convention" as brought to us by the folks at Real Organic:

“I don’t understand why industrial agriculture is called 'conventional'. Surely conventional is the small-scale family farming. That’s convention over thousands of years, but now we call it conventional to grow our food with chemical poisons and I see nothing conventional about that.

"It’s the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers that have so damaged the soil. As the soil becomes deader and deader, deeper and deeper, we lose all the biodiversity of the soil and that, in turn, is affecting our crops.

"Another example is the so-called industrial weeds, which are actually food for millions of different insects, which, in turn, are food for the birds. The insects are disappearing at a terrifying rate, including bees worldwide, and there, of course, we need them to fertilize our food crops. Birds are disappearing. The changes since I was born, 85 years ago, in the flora and fauna of the UK are shocking and that is all because of this so-called “conventional” farming.

“If we grow organic and we all start demanding organic food, that will mean a reduction of all those chemicals used in conventional agriculture. That means that, once again, we will be providing environments that are okay for insects and birds, and we shall start to see a recurrence of biodiversity.

“At the same time, it will mean much less illness and sickness for people, including children. It doesn’t make sense to eat food grown with poison. It’s not surprising there are all these childhood illnesses that nobody really understands and certainly, if you have been eating any of this poison that the food is grown with, you’re going to be more susceptible to the sicknesses that go around.

"The organic movement is really helping the environment but it’s also helping human health.”

—Jane Goodall

Home Page Event - Real Organic Project

AND AN EXCHANGE OF EMAILS IN MEMORIUM shared with us by the same folks:

Dear Caitlin,

When I heard of Jane Goodall's passing last week, I wrote three people right away. Emily Oakley, Joe Tatelbaum, and my mother. The first two are Real Organic champions who knew Jane quite well, and my mother, well, she knew me when I was young when all I wanted to be was Jane! Every girl needs great role models and for me (like so many young women) the idea of living in the forest and writing about your observations was too good to be true. She was the inspiration for why I stayed in school until I was 30 and pursued graduate research in biology. Today, as so many of us are still grieving the loss of our guiding light, Jane, I am sharing a few email exchanges in the hope that these stories will inspire us all in our commitment to work for a future where all of earth's species can thrive.

Linley Dixon's letter to Joe Tatelbaum:

Oh no! I've never cried for losing anyone famous before, but Jane Goodall's passing today is very hard. She was my hero. I know millions of people would agree that she is their hero too. For some reason I always thought I would get the chance to meet her. I have felt we are soul sisters, but I imagine so many women in the environmental movement feel that way about her.

I started to tell you at Churchtown about how much of an influence she has had on me. When I was young, I was actually quite obsessed with Dian Fossey who was also hired by Louis Leakey, but to study mountain gorillas instead of chimps. I always thought I would do research on the mountain gorillas too and even made it to see them in the Ugandan cloud forests in college. I took two primatology courses - one using Jane's observational methods and another taught by Birute Galdikas, who was also hired by Louis Leaky, but to study the Orangutans in Borneo.

Leakey hired three women - one to study each "great ape" in the wild. At the time, Leakey believed that women would make better observational field biologists because they tended to have more patience and were less likely to possess scientific biases.

After learning more about all three women I have developed a theory of activism. Each was given a rare opportunity to change the world through their work, but it was Jane who had the most influence in the end because of how she handled the opportunity. Dian was too confrontational and it resulted in her murder. Birute was too introverted and few know who she is to this day. But Jane inspired millions by tirelessly connecting to everyone she met and touching our hearts, convincing each and every one of us that our actions matter.

I'll be honest, some days the pull to leave activism and spend quiet days farming is still there. It's hard to leave the farm and family so often to get up on stage and speak about difficult topics. But when I have those thoughts, I channel Jane and think about how we really don't have the choice to opt out. Jane too preferred spending time in the woods with the chimps.

But, the Real Organic Project has given me an opportunity to be part of the future of the organic movement, and I don't really have the option to stay home and farm anymore. I have a responsibility to meet the challenge and give it my all. There's too much at stake! That is Jane's doing. I imagine she is an inspiration for so many to go out and tirelessly do what we do.

I just thought I would share my thoughts with someone who is also feeling incredibly sad today. Thank you for all you did to support her.

– Linley

Joe Tatelbaum next to Zephyr Teachout at The Real Organic Conference at Churchtown Dairy

Joe's response:

Thank you for reaching out. I’m quite a bit overwhelmed. I had lunch with Jane last week and we talked about the state of the world, the amount of work she felt she needed to do and about making plans for a trip to Miami in the winter and the opening of Jane’s Dream, in Tanzania, next fall. We reminisced. We talked about life. It was all so normal. It was all so present. Of course I knew that she was 91 but her passing always seemed so far off in the distance — there was just so much she wanted to do. And now … and now….

Your message is so lovely and fills me with pride at being part of this movement and joy at the feeling of camaraderie with people who are actively trying to “do something”.

Jane had so many positive influences on my life and on the lives of so many millions of others.

She touched people individually and she made the world better. She showed us all how to be better people and how to make the world better.

Every one of us makes a difference.”

She was the first person who documented animals making tools and learned how chimpanzees organized their societies. Yet, she was forever challenged by the contradiction that mankind is the planet’s most intellectually developed animal and, with all that, can still ruin its only home.

I’m aching now, in a way that feels deeply personal.

I so admire Dave and what he has done. He personifies someone who has seen something wrong and then gone out to fix it— no matter the odds, the system, the money stacked against what you all are trying to do.

I was very happy to get to spend some time with you at the conference and seeing your commitment and then reading your email gives me confidence that the Real Organic Project will do something great to bring about positive change to the world.

Her death has been very challenging for me, as it has been for so many others. She has been a bright, beautiful, warm and guiding light. Now we will need to see and feel and be led by that light, but without her physical presence.

Your story below about you “having no choice” reflects Jane’s story too. Traveling the world as she did was not her first choice but, as she said, that’s what she was here to do. She would have been happy to stay in Gombe and do her research.

It is personal for me, but Jane’s passing is personal for millions. So many people had a relationship with her through seeing her speak, reading her books or watching her movies, sharing her dreams. The outpouring of personal stories is wondrous. She touched so many people.

Over the last few days I’ve cried and grieved. I’ve watched some of Jane’s videos, looked at old photos of some of our events together and been reminded of what a wonderful being and amazing presence she was. I have smiled a lot too.

And today I woke up and it occurred to me there’s a lot of work to do. The millions of children involved in roots and shoots programs, Jane’s research in Gombe, the Jane Goodall Institutes, Jane’s Dream, her inspiration center in Tanzania, and so many ideas and ideals that she worked for all need follow-up and attention. Jane inspired millions, now it’s time to pick up her torch and to encourage people to manifest positive impacts on people, on other animals and on our environment.

As Jane recently said, “My work is needed now more than ever.”

If we’re really to honor our friend, it has to be by continuing the work. She will stay in our hearts, her dream will be our dream and she will live on through the good deeds of the millions of people that loved her.

Can’t say we’ll stop grieving but we can turn that grief into positive action.

Thanks again,

Joe Tatelbaum

Greatwonder Farms

PS: I highly recommend the movie Jane. It’s her story, up and close and deeply personal and wondrous. Watching that is a great way to celebrate her life.

Emily's reply to Linley after learning of Jane's death:

 "There's such a mixture of gratitude, grief, inspiration, and longing in my heart over this news. We stayed in touch all of these 30+ years since we first met, and there's this tugging at my heart for those days in high school full of passion and frantic hope.

"She took the time to uplift me at critical points in my life, and she has been the measure by which I gauge my own small efforts for this world. It seems that without her here, it's only that much more important that we each believe the power of our individual and daily actions, that we not become lost in the enormity of the problems, that we are present in our choices, however complicated they sometimes are.

"Hers was absolutely a life lived to its fullest. What a gift to us all."

– Emily Oakley

Three Springs Farm, Oklahoma

Other News & A Poem In Closing

LEAG Core Founding Member Michael Daley sent us the following: (Thanks, Michael!)

Here's good news about former NOAA workers reclaiming Science for the People

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/climate-scientists-protest-trump-censorship-government-websites/

New EarthSpirit group in Putney

I have been attending meetings since august of a new group in Putney whose intention is to meet weekly to raise the frequency of the planet, thereby furthering and strengthening our evolution. What a tight turn we humans are making! Individually and collectively, I figure we need all the help we can get. This new group (no official name has been chosen) meets on Tuesday evenings around. 6:30, outside. We meet for an hour, sometimes to pray, sometimes to sing, always to honor the Earth and all of Nature. If you are interested in joining, contact me, Caitlin, pcadair@sover.net. If you do not hear back from me (my email has been rather undependable lately) please telephone me at 802-387-5779.

I will finish this newsletter, beloveds, with a poem by Rosemerry Trommer:

I NEED YOUR AUTUMN

Scatter your petals.

Wither down, uproot.

Become something hollow

for my breath to play.

An empty cruet

full of moonbeams.

The golden bellows

of a gourd.

Let the season subtract you.

What is Not

makes a dragonfly wing

more useful.

So frail it holds

all my starlight.

I need your Autumn

for my Spring.

Stop trying to write

your name on water.

Just be the water.