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8 Principles of Relational Practice

Spiritually grounded practical respect for extant landscape ecologies, including wounded lands. The spiritual dimension involves acting with loving kindness toward the land and all our co-inhabitants, especially more-than-human beings. Acts of service to these beings include:

deepening soil horizons (removing rocks and adding tilth)

actively repairing damage to "marginalized" lands

protecting our native seeds and rootstocks while continuing to nurture their adaptability in a climatically chaotic world.

A preference for perennial and annual polycultures and avoidance of monocrop systems --- the principal of agromimicry. Wild plants and relatives of cultivars have many valued qualities as spiritual companions, as sources of medicinal substances, or as promoters of soil biodynamic qualities. These plants are not weeds.

Established patternsof multi-crop rotations with long-duration fallows. Concepts of green manure (nitrogen fixing plants), frijol tapado, re-wilding, intercropping, and minimum tillage. These rotational cycles are often linked to ceremonial and community life event calendars.

Intercropping with biodynamic and allelopathic companion plants including decorative flowers to attract pollinators and beneficial insects. Diversity as the key to resilience in agroecosystems. This practice centers around the three sisters, plus the hundreds of companion plants present in traditional Indigenous polyculture milpas. Intercropping can occur with various spatial strategies:

linear rows

circular mounds

more random field dispersals

classification (ethnopedology) and systemic care (ethnodaphology) of soil. Understand soil types of your given bioregion and the native plants these favor. We must work to support the emergence of appropriate place-based material and spiritual practices that include ethical instructions for healing the land and people. Support elder knowledge and pass on to future generations. Soil classification as dynamic rather than static.

Preparation and application of biodynamic soil treatments (such as quauhtlalli). Especially vital in the reparation of damaged landscapes.

Cognitive maps of frost, infiltration, and saturation topographies. Each bioregion has qualities unique to the watershed --- the biota, landforms, local cultures, and environmental histories which run deeper than the exploits of settler colonial empires that remapped Native territories in acts of violent enclosure and displacement. As we remap our lands, we can imagine various types of "storied landscapes," such as soils or areas susceptible to frost; areas where sub-irrigation water returns to in-stream flows or creates springs; or areas prone to the formation of marshy or wetland conditions. These maps will connect us to awareness of the niche-abiding patterns of co-inhabitation while nurturing habitat for wild plants with spiritual and medicinal qualities.

"Resilient co-habitation," an Indigenous analogue of adaptive management. From the vantage point of Original Instructions, the biosphere itself provides the rules. Because these rules are subject to change, we require a constant set of adaptive practices in response to changes in the coupling of social and ecological systems.

Adapted from Devon G. Peña, "On Intimacy with Soils" Chapter 12 of Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States, Mihesuah and Hoover

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Aquarius Season

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Response to Sam Altman on the A.I. Revolution, Trillionaires and the Future of Political Power with Ezra Klein

I think this podcast raises a lot of the important societal questions that arise from the creation of AI. I agree with Klein and Altman that in order to adequately address the issues posed by AI, we will need to fundamentally change policy surrounding wealth and power distribution. I also think the implications discussed for healthcare, computer science, and work at large were fascinating and terrifying. If Altman is right, and I think he is at least to some degree, we are on the cusp of a revolution that will change our ways of life.

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Response to Paragraph from Apple CEO Tim Cook to take 40% pay cut this year by Patrick McGee

"The percentage of stock units granted to Cook in his 2023 pay package linked to Apple’s performance made up 75 percent of his overall equity award, up from 50 percent the year before, as some shareholders wanted Cook’s incentives more closely aligned with future growth...

In recent years Cook’s net worth has ballooned to $1.7 billion, according to Forbes, thanks to his largely stock-based compensation as Apple shares had soared. His actual total pay in 2022 reached $99.4 million, and $98.8 million in 2021, a 500 percent increase from the $14.8 million he received the prior year."

I think the use of statistics in this paragraph highlights the important aspects of this topic, helping the reader to contextualize with numbers and percentages. I like how the author explained the importance of the shifting percentage of stock units in Cook's equity award as an incentive for him to increasingly align with Apple's growth as a company. It disgusts me how much money this man is making, and even though it feels like a drop in the bucket to me, I'm glad that it is decreasing.

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"Decolonial food activists reject any destructive agriculture that brutalizes the diversity of animals, plants, habitats, and ecosystems. Instead, out decoloniality embraces Indigenous agroecological and permaculture practices that contribute to native bio-cultural diversity, ecosystem resilience, and equity and coevalness across species, human groups, and generations."

Devon G. Peña, Mexican-Origin Foods, Foodways, and Social Movements: Decolonial Perspectives, a reading for NAS 123

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"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

Strength to Love 1963, Martin Luther King Jr.

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"If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell."

Why America May Go to Hell, Martin Luther King Jr.

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"Our kitchen overlooks the path, and so for years I have been watching people come and go as I put the kettle on. There was the teenage boy I caught weeping into his scarf one morning, as he struggled to put one foot in front of the other, but who, many months later, strode down the path, arm in arm with a beautiful young woman. There was an older man too. We think his name was Ian. He had the odd, goofy countenance of a toddler and, every spring, would pick all the daffodils from our garden, stuffing them down his pants like gold coins. Then there was the man (they are almost always men) who used to walk very purposefully down the path every morning at 7am on the dot. He carried The Sun newspaper under one arm and an old leather satchel in the other. For the longest time I thought he was a hospital worker. ‘Oh no,’ a neighbour told me shaking their head. ‘He’s a lifer. He’s been doing that walk for years.’"

The Self Care Delusion by Farrah Storr

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Podcasts I want to listen to more:

We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle

Dear Hank & John (I will never get enough of this)

Pick Me Up, I'm Scared

Radiolab

Sluts and Scholars by Nicoletta Heidegger

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Writing Professionalism Update:

This week I started my first 2 units of writing internship, as required for the Professional Writing minor. This is one of the "new, scary commitments" I alluded to in my previous Reflections and Goals post. I think I'm finding it intimidating to be writing in a more self directed way. Which leads me to my second point.

I really really REALLY need to be writing consistently (outside of academic contexts). I've been struggling with how to work in less structured, self directed writing time in my life. Without a prompt from a teacher or professor - and even with prompts from the internet - I find it hard to get anything on the page. I hope that this commonplace book can be a space for me to write short form long into the future.

Though I've had multiple professional writing experiences, I still hesitate to call myself a writer. I think for me to feel more confident in my identity as a writer, I need to find a way to write consistently without other's prompting.

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I took this photo during a camping trip in Mendocino's Hendy Woods State Park over winter break. I highly recommend laying head to the base of a redwood to get a view like the one above the next time you are around some --- nothing else quite gives you the same appreciation for their size as the tallest species of tree in the world. Looking up at the canopy I was struck with their size, lifespan, strength, beauty, and protection.

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How And Why To Keep A “Commonplace Book” by Ryan Holiday Response

Before this article, I had never heard of a commonplace book, but the commonplace book is the solution to all of my woes! Just kidding. But I have been deeply desiring a way to keep track of interesting quotes, ideas, and snippets of my life. Having the concept of "Commonplace Book" land in my lap like this - and being forced to get it started - is an absolute joy. I liked how both on the class Canvas page as well as in the readings for this week there were multiple suggested ways to host the commonplace book, including Substack, Tumblr, Pinterest, and a physical book. So far, I'm happy with my decision :)

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Reflection on Paragraph from California’s next senator could get tougher on Silicon Valley giants by Cristiano Lima

"If [a tech critical senator] is elected, it could mark a shift for California’s delegation in Washington, whose members have at times resisted sweeping proposals targeting homegrown companies."

I think that this paragraph is effective in easily and clearly communicating the essence of the article. I would also like to note that the text was bolded in the original article, drawing attention visually to what the author wants the readers to take away. My only potential desire for this sentence is to include more information about what the proposals targeted, but the author included a link, and I think the addition of that information to the sentence directly would have made it too long.

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Reflections and Goals

Winter Quarter week 1: complete! And, am I glad it's over.

The necessity under the quarter system to hit the ground running has left me exhausted. It doesn't help that I am attempting more units this quarter than ever before, including some new, scary commitments. Of course, this leaves me relieved and excited to prepare for my courses at a more leisurely pace over the long weekend.

I didn't have goals coming into this week, but I am proud of the time and energy I dedicated to getting off on the right start to the quarter: getting all important course dates in my calendar, finalizing my schedule, ordering all my books, and other boring logistical life stuff.

This week, my self care has seriously been slacking---I never went to the grocery store after returning from winter break and got 6.5 hours of sleep a night. To help turn the tides on this a bit for next week, my goals are:

Be in bed by 11 every night

Daily yoga

Prepare a new meal

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"Most Indigenous languages include words that translate to ‘person’ or ‘human being,’ but these are typically coupled or nested within the epistemic tenet that to be human, to become a person, one must be in relation to others. Interconnection is being"

Devon G. Peña, Mexican-Origin Foods, Foodways, and Social Movements, a reading for NAS 123

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"As long as we allow capitalism to miscast ecosystems as the stage for the unfolding of human drama, as long as we fail to enforce respect for the Earth's life-support systems with their own rules and transformative agency, and as long as we fail to recognize the intrinsic value of ecosystems independent of the economic vale capital wishes to inscribe via a universal 'social hieroglyphic,' then radical moves beyond the institutions that colonize and commoditize all life, and all organisms, will remain elusive. We need a complete transformation of the 'coupling' of social and ecological subsystems rather than reformism tweaking at the edges of selected sectors of the agri-food system."

Devon G. Peña, Mexican-Origin Foods, Foodways, and Social Movements, a reading for NAS 123