A Library of Sustainability Resources
A library of sustainability resources to support nutrition professionals
The ICDA - International Confederation of Dietetic Associations' Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) web-based toolkit has been the foundation of my learning journey in sustainable food systems and sustainable dietary patterns. I often share resources on Planetary Health and Food (with special attention to Nutrition Care) on LinkedIn and you’re welcome to follow me there, if interested.
Great Blue Heron
A juvenile Great Blue Heron stalking its prey (three-spined stickleback) at Lost Lagoon, the 23rd of September, 2023.
“As the sun rises on the struggles of the day…”
Nick Cave’s response to questions about ChatGPT and song-writing advice is absolutely brilliant. I had to preserve Issue #248 of the Red Hand Files as soon as I finished reading it. The final paragraph speaks to my heart and gives me insight as to why I continue to pick up the camera and struggle with the art and craft of photography, why I strive to learn how to design and nurture a garden that respects natural processes and boundaries, and why I fear a world with AI.
Dear Leon and Charlie,
In the story of the creation, God makes the world, and everything in it, in six days. On the seventh day he rests. The day of rest is significant because it suggests that the creation required a certain effort on God's part, that some form of artistic struggle had taken place. This struggle is the validating impulse that gives God's world its intrinsic meaning. The world becomes more than just an object full of other objects, rather it is imbued with the vital spirit, the pneuma, of its creator.
ChatGPT rejects any notions of creative struggle, that our endeavours animate and nurture our lives giving them depth and meaning. It rejects that there is a collective, essential and unconscious human spirit underpinning our existence, connecting us all through our mutual striving.
ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary. That 'songwriter 'you were talking to, Leon, who is using ChatGPT to write 'his' lyrics because it is 'faster and easier ,'is participating in this erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself and, to put it politely, should fucking desist if he wants to continue calling himself a songwriter.
ChatGPT’s intent is to eliminate the process of creation and its attendant challenges, viewing it as nothing more than a time-wasting inconvenience that stands in the way of the commodity itself. Why strive?, it contends. Why bother with the artistic process and its accompanying trials? Why shouldn’t we make it 'faster and easier?'
When the God of the Bible looked upon what He had created, He did so with a sense of accomplishment and saw that 'it was good'. 'It was good 'because it required something of His own self, and His struggle imbued creation with a moral imperative, in short love. Charlie, even though the creative act requires considerable effort, in the end you will be contributing to the vast network of love that supports human existence. There are all sorts of temptations in this world that will eat away at your creative spirit, but none more fiendish than that boundless machine of artistic demoralisation, ChatGPT.
As humans, we so often feel helpless in our own smallness, yet still we find the resilience to do and make beautiful things, and this is where the meaning of life resides. Nature reminds us of this constantly. The world is often cast as a purely malignant place, but still the joy of creation exerts itself, and as the sun rises upon the struggle of the day, the Great Crested Grebe dances upon the water. It is our striving that becomes the very essence of meaning. This impulse – the creative dance – that is now being so cynically undermined, must be defended at all costs, and just as we would fight any existential evil, we should fight it tooth and nail, for we are fighting for the very soul of the world.
Love, Nick
“Creativity needs time to gently unfurl”
Willow Catkins
A CREATIVE MEDITATION FOR SPRING EQUINOX
by Anna Brones
Solstices and equinox offer the opportunity to check in with ourselves—they ask us to reflect, reframe, refocus, recommit.
At winter solstice, we reminded ourselves that just like we need a slower, softer season, our creative work needs a break too. A season of rest and regeneration.
As we step into a new season and enter into spring, we are waking back up. We feel a bit more energy, a bit more spark. We come out of hibernation and start to look outwards.
We might be a little groggy at first. Rubbing the residual winter sleep out of our eyes, taking some hesitant initial steps. This shift can be a little uncomfortable and jarring when it collides with the demands of our modern-day work culture. We are asked to function at an intense pace, an almost incessant productivity, an “on” mode that’s often out of sync with how we feel and what we need.
But we can’t be in that “on” and producing all the time, and we can’t go from “off” mode to “on” mode in an instant. We are seasonal and cyclical beings. So is our creativity. If we’ve been a little dormant in the past couple of months, we need time to wake back up. Our return has to be gradual.
Creativity, art, and ideas, they all need time to marinate and come to fruition. Just like the plants around us, we need time to unfurl. The ferns don’t shoot up overnight, nor do the trilliums. They slowly come into being. They take their time, all at their own pace.
Like the plants, we too need the space and time to fully grow into the new versions of our creative selves, refreshed and energized and ready for what’s next. Creativity refuses to be rushed. It wants to be nurtured.
Spring is a time for incremental change. Small projects that build, gradual steps forward. One foot in front of the other.
There is a lightness too, in the physical and often the emotional. Think about the term “a spring in your step.” Spring is a season, but also a way of carrying ourselves, a physicality. Things slowly begin to feel new and fresh, there’s space for awe and wonder at the promise of budding branches and sprouting seeds. There’s joy at seeing green again, feeling the first warmth of sun on your face, at watching everything around us wake back up.
This is a time to pay attention so that we can listen to those inklings of ideas that have been marinating during our quieter, slower winter days. In these early spring days can start to make the connections that give us a framework for bringing them into the world.
What does this season mean for you creatively?
What does your creative unfurling look like?
What are your gradual steps?
How are you opening yourself up to joy and play?
How can you give yourself permission to move at the pace that you need to move at?
How do you open back up?
For anyone who is feeling behind, rushed, a little flat, or simply that there is too much on the plate: give yourself some grace, be kind. I need this reminder too. After all, we’re easing back in. These things take time.
Today, we welcome spring, and we acknowledge that—like the blooms and the branches, the trilliums and the ferns—we too need to gently unfurl.
Living Resistance
Book love for a new release, well worth reading:
“In an era in which ‘activism’ and ‘resistance’ are tokenized hot topics, I want to restore these ideas as a basic human calling, one that each of us lives into every day we fight for love… . No matter who you are or what you ‘do’ in the world, you have a role to play in finding, understanding, and sharing sacredness, and your acts of extraordinary resistance are the truths that hold us all together.”
~ Kaitlin Cutice
In Living Resistance, Kaitlin Curtice shares her vision of the four overlapping realms of resistance that comprise our lives and creates a “space for us to examine the journey together.”
Ever since I received an advance reader copy (ARC) several weeks ago, this powerful, new book has been by my side, on my mind and working its way deeper into my heart. I know I'll be returning to its pages again and again for timeless wisdom on how to care for ourselves, each other, and our precious Earth.
You can read my full review on goodreads here: Living Resistance.