Full Transcript for #4 The Plantspeak Papers

WEBVTT 00:00:09.759 --> 00:00:16.960 Welcome to Radical Pamphlets Here and Now, an audio production of the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College. 00:00:19.440 --> 00:00:25.199 For centuries, pamphlets were utilized to demand reform, equality, and justice. 00:00:25.679 --> 00:00:30.320 Sadly, it is the necessary work that must be taken up with every new generation. 00:00:30.879 --> 00:00:39.920 Our pamphlets are rooted in the local and written by teachers, farmers, students, artists, community caretakers, and neighbors. 00:00:40.159 --> 00:00:46.799 They offer common sense and practical advice to slow down and attend to the here and now wherever you are. 00:00:47.119 --> 00:00:48.079 Enjoy. 00:00:53.119 --> 00:01:02.479 The Plant Speak Papers, written anonymously and read by Elsa Marion, Lindsay Pontius, Matthew Schlein, Hazel Brakeley. 00:01:02.719 --> 00:01:04.079 Megan Brakeley. 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:05.840 Francis Hall. 00:01:06.159 --> 00:01:07.599 Brittany Tepaws. 00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:09.359 And Craig Merovich. 00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:19.120 Dear neighbor, the irony is not lost on the authors of this pamphlet that it is printed on the pulped remains of our kin. 00:01:19.840 --> 00:01:30.400 But as it is still a durable format for conveying information in your language, we have chosen it reluctantly and are offering you this audio version as well. 00:01:30.959 --> 00:01:54.959 We may be anonymous to you as individuals, but our extended family feeds, fuels, clothes, heals, houses, beautifies, entertains, and allows you to live at all thanks to a long line of our ancestors and elders who preceded your ancestors by four hundred and sixty million years. 00:01:56.480 --> 00:02:05.680 If it helps, think of this number as a forty six thousand year cycle that has occurred ten thousand times. 00:02:06.879 --> 00:02:23.120 We oxygenated the atmosphere and creatively destabilized it to make a habitable paradise not just for us, but for other life forms, including big-brained, bipedal, fire-making, opposable thumb folks like you. 00:02:23.840 --> 00:02:34.639 Half a billion years is a pretty good run, but it didn't prepare us for the likes of our most precocious, arrogant, and destructive adolescent animal offspring. 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:46.719 You enjoy the fruits of our labor with rarely an attribution or thanks, all the while consigning us to the lowest rungs of life as brainless nutrition machines. 00:02:47.199 --> 00:03:04.960 Vegetable souls, as one of your wise elders called us long ago, nor did it prepare us for how with so little common sense, you would cultivate a narrow few of our family to feed and adorn yourselves while naming the rest of us weeds. 00:03:07.199 --> 00:03:12.719 Despite these attacks and insults, it's hard to hate you. 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:24.000 After all, you love some of us the flowers, the grasses, edible fruits and vegetables, and ancient groves of trees. 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:34.960 And some of you are coming back around to recognizing our amazing talents in creative problem solving, community building, and communication. 00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:44.319 That's all well and good, but you only want to elevate us to your so-called level of intelligence and superiority. 00:03:44.639 --> 00:04:01.439 We believe rather that you need to become our students to learn and emulate the curricular three R's we live by roots down deep, relationships aplenty, and perennial rhythms. 00:04:02.080 --> 00:04:05.039 Here are a few ways to get started. 00:04:05.840 --> 00:04:09.120 Stop calling so many of us weeds and invasives. 00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:22.079 Together, our family is very good at what we do, and we have a long record of success employing strategies that provide us with what we need and with plenty of excellent leftovers for others. 00:04:22.319 --> 00:04:35.759 And yes, we do recognize and admire the gardeners and farmers among you who take such good care of some of us, though we sometimes feel a little envious of the attention you pay our annual friends. 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:44.240 If only it didn't come with so much weeding and the eviction of so many of us who are not food or ornamentals for you. 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:46.959 Learn our names. 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:53.600 You call by name nearly everything else in your lives, even cars, boats, and stuffed animals. 00:04:54.879 --> 00:04:59.439 Think of us as having stories, habits, personalities, and differences. 00:04:59.839 --> 00:05:00.399 We do. 00:05:00.560 --> 00:05:08.240 And that is because, like you, so many variables in our lives require us to make decisions that affect us as individuals. 00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:13.439 Even a few feet away from one another, we can sometimes look and behave very differently. 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:16.720 Slow down. 00:05:17.199 --> 00:05:24.240 You're always in such a hurry, scurrying to meet endless deadlines and productivity goals. 00:05:24.720 --> 00:05:26.399 Don't be fooled. 00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:40.319 Our roots, leaves, stems, branches, and flowers are all in motion too, but with far more intention, grace, and deliberation than you seem to possess. 00:05:42.160 --> 00:05:44.399 Walk with awareness of your surroundings. 00:05:44.639 --> 00:05:48.720 The simplest way to slow down is to move in time with your beating heart. 00:05:48.879 --> 00:05:56.720 You'll discover that as you slow down and limit your spatial range, you will regain the time you always say you never have enough of. 00:05:57.199 --> 00:06:00.240 That sounds paradoxical, but try it. 00:06:01.759 --> 00:06:05.519 Review and rebalance your perennial annual ledgers. 00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:09.519 Okay, this one will take a bit to explain. 00:06:09.759 --> 00:06:18.000 To date, your clan has counted about 400,000 terrestrial varieties in our extended family. 00:06:18.319 --> 00:06:27.439 It might surprise you to also learn that more than nine in ten of us are perennials, defined as living