Discovery Drafts

Processing Holocaust Trauma Through the Arts: Roundtable Discussion Available for Viewing

2026-03-23T10:27:00.001-04:00

Roundtable participants, left to right: Ed Edelson, Rabbi Eric Polokoff, Deborah Holman, Sandy Lee Carlson, Helene Stapinski, Bonnie Siegler, and Bernard Kaplan

The roundtable discussion “Processing Holocaust Trauma Through the Arts” at Faith Vicinanza’s Studios and Gallery on Saturday, March 21, from 2 to 4 p.m. filled the house and invited lively conversation. Sandy Lee Carlson, Woodbury poet laureate emerita and managing partner of Orenaug Mountain Publishing, moderated the conversation.

The roundtable included Southbury’s former first selectman Ed Edelson; Rabbi Eric Polokoff of B’nai Israel in Southbury; genealogist and author of Nothing Really Bad Will Happen Deborah Holman of Woodbury; Helene Stapinski of Brooklyn, New York, and Bonnie Siegler of Westport–coauthors of The American Way; and Bernard Kaplan of Queens, New York and Sherman, the librettist of the oratorio Remember Warsaw.

Orenaug Mountain Publishing is grateful to AM Coffee of Southbury for providing coffee for the event and to Faith Vicinanza for opening her gallery to us.

The roundtable was livestreamed, and the recording is available here.

The X-ray Power of Winter Light

2026-03-03T22:16:00.004-05:00

Winter photography creates the X-ray showing the work required to protect our trees and their carbon-storing, shade-presenting properties.

Simply, the vines reaching into the trees need to be cut. Then, the vines need to be pulled out of the ground. Removal of vines from trees can be a delicate process because it's important to ensure that branches are not harmed by the removal of invasive vines.

Once the vines are cut, there is a two-part next step process. First, pull out the vines from the ground. Second, carefully cut away the vines that have entwined themselves in the trees. The trees will thank you. There will be a flourishing.

Sandy and Bernie at the Sherman JCC: Poetry and Music for 'The Season of Winter's Retreat'

2026-02-25T13:36:00.000-05:00

I've had an amazing time collaborating with Bernie Kaplan on setting my poems to music and performing them at the Sherman Jewish Community Center. Bernie is an educator, composer, and poet, and he is wonderful to work with. We start at 7:17 on the video above.

With Respect for the People of Minneapolis

2026-01-29T22:08:00.005-05:00

Thank you, Bruce, for this beautiful song. Now, what are the brokers of power doing to return Liam Conejo Ramos home? Are we all too busy to notice this child is perishing in Trump custody?

December 29

2025-12-30T21:59:00.003-05:00

December 29

Late December is generous with darkness.

The hours of night roll into the hours of morning.

The body slows. The body sleeps. The body dreams

through the end of the counting months

that follow the harvest into January.

We honor the god of new beginnings,

the power to look forward and back,

to step onto a new path

into the unknown.

Right now, on December 29, at half past six,

there is no light, yet the geese fly.

I hear them call out to each other

in the rain of a warm interlude

at a lightless time.

This is the way. Let us go.

—Sandy Lee Carlson

Removing the Dreaded Multiflora Rose at Flanders

2025-12-02T22:14:00.000-05:00

It's one tree at a time, as far as I am concerned. A person who cares about the environment sets out to do some good by removing introduced (invasive) plants, and the result is that the trees that have evolved to be here and to support local flora and fauna survive because they have the air to breathe and the space to enjoy the nutrients the soil provides.

That's it in a nutshell. Kate from New Milford and I relieved the Botany Trail at Flanders of yards of bittersweet as well as burning bush and multiflora rose in early November.

We'll continue in December, when we gather with our pruners on December 6 to remove the invasive plants on the Botany Trail and around the Botany Pond. This is hard word, but it's good work, and it's essential to preserving the quality of life. Ultimately, removing invasives is about citizenship.

If you have the time, join us on December 6 on the Botany Trail. We'll be there, and you will be welcome. Nature needs you.

More Work at Flanders Removing Invasives

2025-10-19T21:59:00.000-04:00

Here is bittersweet with its orange root.

Bittersweet is prolific and easily identifiable in the understory.

Can you find it here?

Color persists even as October fades into November.

Life will go on.

There is beauty in every phase of life.

As bittersweet fades, it becomes easy to find and to remove.

Liberating native plants means making food available to local wildlife.

This winterberry Holly is now free of invasive vines, and its fruit is now available to migrating birds.

Removing Multiflora Rose and Bittersweet on the Botany Trail at Flanders Nature Center & Land Trust

2025-10-12T20:50:00.001-04:00

Near the pond on the Botany Trail at 8 a.m. on 12 October

Near the pond on the Botany Trail at 10 a.m. on 12 October

On Sunday, I did some work on the invasives along the Botany Trail near the pond at Flanders Nature Center & Land Trust. There was a lot of multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora) there as well as bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus).

Multiflora rose has thorny, arching stems that can grow up to 13' tall. They can reach into shrubs and trees, and they often give the bittersweet an assist on its way into the canopy.

These were the challenges I encountered today. I learned the hard way to take on multiflora rose in steps. The first step is to cut the stems within reach so that reaching the canes at the base is manageable. (A few years ago, I tried to do too much too fast and poked myself in the face with a multiflora rose thorn. I wound up at the doctor's office to receive treatment for cellulitis. Today, I took my time.)

Getting rid of the berries is important because they do not provide nutrition to the birds who eat them, though the birds nevertheless manage to spread the seeds far and wide. Smothering the seeds presents this problem if you can't get to the plants before they produce fruit.

Once I pruned the multiflora rose to a manageable size, I was able to get the canes at their base and to pull them out en masse. Once the spring comes, it will be easy to monitor this area and remove new growth.

Next came the bittersweet, a vine that runs like cable under the surface and then making right turns here and there and turning upward into the shrubs and trees. Removing bittersweet requires pulling it up by the roots and down by cutting it so that pulling it down does not harm the host plant. Bittersweet will branch at sharp angles and then wrap around the host's branches. It will strange the branches like a boa constrictor, so cutting it in segments and unwrapping the tree is in the tree's best interest.

I was having a grand time in the quiet of a breezy Sunday morning and had the pleasure of talking to a young family about the work. The parents brought their beautiful little girl out for a walk, and I found myself thinking how the trees we volunteers have been freeing from the invasives may well grow up to be beautiful members of the overstory by the time she is my age.

That grand time continued until the multiflora rose exacted revenge from my lovely and soft LL Bean trail pants. Two thorns caught the fabric of my right leg and tore right-angle holes that made me very glad only my knee and thigh were exposed!

Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia)

The clearing away of invasives exposed a stretch of foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia). which attracts early bees and butterflies and the larval host for eastern commas, mourning cloaks, question marks. Next year, this native plant will have the opportunity to thrive.

Season of the Witch: Five Poems Set to Music

2025-10-05T20:10:00.004-04:00

Wearing an oversized brown corduroy witch dress, a witch hat, and my grandmother's jewelry (charm necklace, rings and bracelet), I am all set for the Season of the Witch!

Musician and retired educator Bernie Kaplan collaborated with me to set five of my poems to music. He played the dulcimer, flute, and two guitars, and it was amazing. The occasion for this collaboration was an event titled "Season of the Witch" hosted by Sam Cross and Cindy Davis at the Jewish Community Center of Sherman, Connecticut.

Our Vibrant World: Together in the Understory

2025-09-23T21:08:00.002-04:00

Spicebush on the Botany Trail at
Flanders Nature Center & Land Trust

Recently I had the opportunity to work at Flanders Nature Center in Woodbury, Connecticut, with 18 volunteers from Eversource. With several Flanders volunteers, we worked on removing invasives from the Botany Trail.

The day began with introductions, and the Eversource volunteers named their professional roles in the big project of delivering electricity to every home and business in the state. I realized then that delivering power to consumers requires people educated and trained in every discipline.

I had the opportunity to talk for a few minutes about the most aggressive invasive plants on the trail, and likely in the yards of the volunteers, and how to remove them. I encouraged everyone to take deep breaths and feel the peace and calm that come with this kind of work, citing Robin Wall Kimmerer as my source.

On the trial, everyone jumped right in. Some of the volunteers returned to their trucks to get axes and saws to remove the larger invasives. Everyone worked hard and with heart, and they made a visible difference.

The Botany Trail

Over the weekend, I returned with my family for a walk and fresh air. My husband and I and our pups walked the trail in the fading light of early autumn. Nevertheless, the vibrant yellow leaves of the spicebushes lit the way on both sides of the trail. The opened understory made the filtered sunlight more available to us. It was a beautiful and peaceful and amazing.

The work goes on. Farther along the trail, the burning bush is thick. This is the next step. A little at a time, we will get it done.

You Gave Me This Day

2025-09-03T20:28:00.000-04:00

You gave me this day

And the first shoes

Out of which grew

The sturdy legs that walk it.

You gave me this day:

The poem I breathe

Into the sunshine and grass,

The sky and clouds

Of eternal childhood.

Eternal mother

I take a step, breathe,

And thank you.

For my beautiful mom, Sandra Isbell Wiley Carlson, on the 84th anniversary of her birth.

Goldenrod: A Keystone Species that Colors Autumn with Joy

2025-09-03T20:21:00.002-04:00

Our patio garden with newly installed goldenrod and yarrow

Our garden includes a variety of pollinators, a birdbath, and a birdbath as well as a terracotta saucer that holds birdseed from time to time. (Note the hummingbird on the Adirondack chair.)

Our goldenrod had grown to about five feet tall over the summer. I nurtured this keystone wildflower. We were looking forward to the golden burst of blossoms to come. (See the lady cardinal having a rest on the bird box.)

However, somebody came along and yanked the goldenrod--without word or warning. The beautiful green array behind the birdbath and birdfeeder were gone.

Since the spring, I had been nurturing the goldenrod emerging in my patio garden. This wonderful keystone wildflower that supports many pollinators emerged from the soil despite the attempting crowding out of vinca vine, day lilies, lily of the valley, and bittersweet. I chipped away at the unwanted invasives all summer to protect this wonderful species.

Then, Friday of last week came, and some mysterious force ripped out my plants. This required them to come onto the patio and make their way around my birdbath to get to these flowers in a bed that is clearly a site of cultivation, not neglect.

We live in a vast condominium association spread across 1,000 acres--many of which are covered with mugwort, bittersweet, burning bush, and barberry. Yet someone came along and took from our garden a keystone pollinator without so much as knocking on the door.

This was a sad thing. So we went to the nursery and bought new plants to honor the old. We also bought yarrow, another native pollinator.

I am curious about what happened. I find it strange and uncomfortable that someone came onto our patio and into our garden to specifically remove plants that were part of our landscape.

I am also eager to share with whomever did this the value of plants that are often mistaken for ragweed or just weeds generally.

"The genus name, Solidago, is compounded from the Latin words solidus and ago, which together mean 'to make whole.' This references the plant's reputed healing properties," according to NC State.

I have tried to make the situation whole. In the spring, when new plants emerge from the seed bank, I will tag, fence, and protect them from their No. 1 predator, Homo sapiens.

Cutting

2025-08-24T21:53:00.001-04:00

Cutting

“Don’t ever be afraid to cut them back”–

Your only gardening advice to me,

Dad, that seasoned gardeners tell me is true,

Though it would seem counterintuitive

To promote life by diminishing it.

It would seem out of bounds, too, to play god,

To know better than the plant whose kind knows

It can live without me and always has.

Today, as I pluck the shriveled blossoms

From marigolds and admire their fullness,

I recall the splendor of your garden

And the pruners always within your reach.

We all do better when we are cared for.

I see now the cutting says “live; there is more.”

For George Oscar Carlson on the anniversary of his birth, August 24, 2025

The Gardens at Rogers Park Middle School in Danbury, Connecticut: Where Children Grow

2025-08-22T15:32:00.003-04:00

The outdoor classroom and the sun wheel are in front of the sun wheel.

The vegetable garden beds

More veggies

The bog is to the right of the blue seats

(DANBURY, CONN. – Aug. 14, 2025) Pull into the faculty parking lot at Rogers Park Middle School in Danbury, Connecticut, today, and you will be greeted by a variety of sunflowers nodding in the summer breeze–welcoming, easy-going guardians of the gardens that are part of eighth-grade science teacher Bernardo de Castro’s outdoor classroom.

Enter the world of the sunflowers, and you will encounter a vegetable garden of lettuce, corn, tomatoes, beans, kale, cucumbers, and Swiss chard along with milkweed and purslane (a nutritious “weed” that calls home any patch of soil that is otherwise unoccupied and is valued by the gardeners).

Beside the vegetable garden is the wildflower meadow, where evening primrose, goldenrod, and Jerusalem artichokes, among other native plants, are keeping the bees busy as the summer air fills with the hum of their labor. Step deeper into this world of thriving plants, and you’ll find a semicircle of blue-painted benches that rest atop logs. Here, the young gardeners and their teacher discuss the work of the day and why they are doing it. Here, they socialize and laugh and eat cheese bread, pão de queijo, a Brazilian roll made from yuca flour that is as light as it is wonderfully filling.

As the children gather early this summer morning, you will notice another garden behind them. This is a wetland garden, a home to pitcher plants doing battle with a willow that is outcompeting them for precious water. De Castro, standing on the sun wheel for which he and his students performed the calculations and installed, gives a few words of direction, and off the children go to weed and water and pull back the grass from their brick timepiece.

De Castro started the garden 12 years ago because, he said, he wanted to take his classes outside and to have them learn earth science from the natural world around them. He and his students beat back the invasive phragmites and the knotweed growing alongside the parking lot and installed their gardens. Since the beginning, the teacher and students have had the support of the administration, which also funded a greenhouse that students and teachers assembled with de Castro.

The garden has had a lasting impact on children and their families. If you had arrived early today, you would have noticed a mother and son waiting for de Castro, surveying the garden. You would have spotted a bag filled with cheese rolls in his hand. You would find out later that the boy attends a different school now but comes back because he likes to be there and enjoys the discoveries he makes–especially, today of the native dogbane leaf beetle that hops onto his hand. He and his mother will work hard to remove a few weeks’ accumulation of grass and weeds and to give the plants a good drink of water before the dry week ahead.

You would also meet a rising high school senior who comes back because she loves the garden, the people, and the memories she encounters there. It belongs to her, too. You’d hear some girls chatting about their summers and their plans for the afternoon. You’d see other children content to be quiet while they are tending the garden.

About half way through the two-hour work session, you’d hear de Castro tell the young gardeners to take a break and have some cheese bread. They will oblige him while he talks to a high school science teacher from the vo-tech school across town talk about how the garden began and developed.

Returning to the conversation about plants again, de Castro will remark that most of the time you wait and see what will happen when you garden. Gardeners are observers; the most careful observers become the wisest of teachers whose students continually return to learn, to do, and to be fed in ways that ensure growth as a part of the community.

Finding Home in the Woodbury Wilds

2025-08-21T21:38:00.001-04:00

I took a walk in Woodbury today where the native trees are just doing their thing--filling every empty space, whether it be on fertile ground or on rocks. I can think of no words that can say or do more than these images. Love your neighbors. Love your trees.

Removing Invasives = Opening the Heart

2025-08-21T21:12:00.000-04:00

Today was my last Thursday before my return to the classroom to remove invasives from the Botany Trail at Flanders. I had blissful peace and quiet and solitude while I cut my way through the border of the trail to create a space to deposit the toxic debris of invasives. Before I got to the location where I worked, I studied other places where we have been. Of course, I noted the return of multiflora rose and Japanese barberry. There were also tender versions of oriental bittersweet poking through the soil.

Nevertheless, there was open space for the understory to breath and grow in the light of a cool summer morning as we reap the benefits of Hurricane Erin making her way along the eastern seaboard. The amount of spicebush and maple seedlings ready to absorbed the light and air and nutrients is as staggering as it is encouraging.

The work is not done and likely will never be done. What matters is that there are people ready and willing to show up and care for their planet where they stand. It's all we can do.

Removing Invasives = Loving Life

2025-08-09T21:59:00.003-04:00

Removing invasive plants is a slow and personal process for the gardener who owns the land where the invasives grow or who tends the land in trust for the community. We move one plant at a time, cutting or pulling, building piles of debris, and dragging them away for removal to some place where they can't pose a threat to the local biota. We gather as we cut so that fallen leaves cannot impair the pH of the soil or slip away and grow anew in cleared soil.

This is difficult and time-consuming work. Even if we set daily or weekly goals for removing invasives, we can look beyond those goals to all the other invasive plants and wonder if we will ever get ahead. We can wonder, as some volunteers do, if we'd be better of with machinery that could rip out the invasives or if we'd be better off using herbicides.

Considering the scale of the damage invasive plants have caused, these are more than fair questions. Working at Flanders Nature Trust and Land Preserve, my first thought is that our work can teach others about how to remove invasives from their land and what to look for in terms of plant diversity once they do. We need to teach others to train their eyes that they might better understand what they see.

My second thought is that herbicides have a role in controlling invasives, but using herbicides required us to have trained, ethical people using the poison in the most effective, least destructive to the natural environment way possible.

All of this is to say our actions must reflect a respect for the big picture--one we can't fully see and don't fully understand. So we need to stay humble as we take action, take note, and reflect. We are not clear-cutting invasives to make room for native plants; we are removing invasives from land where native plants are ready and willing to thrive. Our job is to clear the way. It's work. It's hard work. It's also the necessary work that connects us with others up and down the food web, so there is nothing better for us to do than this.

Rediscovering the Beauty of the Canopy and the Understory on the Botany Trail at Flanders Nature Center in Woodbury, Connecticut

2025-07-31T20:56:00.000-04:00

Before

After

Today was another big day on the Botany Trail at Flanders. Our work removing invasives--burning bush (Euonymus alatus), bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), and barberry (Berberis thunbergii) primarily--revealed another beautiful sugar maple and introduced us to a diverse understory of shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) spicebush (Lindera benzoin), red maple (Acer rubrum), and white oak (Quercus alba). In addition, we have encountered Solomon's seal (Polygonatum biflorum), trillium (Trillium grandiflorum), and Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora).

Removing these unwanted plants has created air and light around these plants. The absence of these noxious troublemakers means that we can see the meadows from the trail, and we can see the trunks of the magnificent trees that create the canopy that kept us dry while the rain fell and the thunder roared this morning.

We've uncovered human history, too. Stone walls and barbed wire suggest animal husbandry over generations of hard work moving stones and boulders. The magnificent trees that have taken root over and around the walls suggest a time when the farmers walked out of Woodbury and into the world of industry, perhaps, or of different trades that would make them money elsewhere. (I know that many of my Woodbury ancestors, who settled in the town after fighting in the Revolution, moved on to Waterbury to work in the brass industry or south to Stamford to work as carpenters and plumbers to support their families.)

Rediscovering woodland ephemerals as well as the seedlings trying to claim their space in the light and the fallen trees giving back to the soil nutrients and moisture as they decompose is a reminder that life is cyclical and every phase of life we experience can contribute to the well-being and continuation of the whole. There is a place for everything in every moment, and finding ourselves in that landscape is a source of peace and of inspiration.

If you find what I am about to say corny or ridiculous, I challenge you to join me for a couple of rounds of serving nature by removing invasive plants. I believe--know in my heart--the trees know we are there for them. Discovering all the maple seedlings emerging around their mother today, all I could think was that this is what hope looks like.

A fallen tree returns to the source

Succession

Cleared of invasive plants, this area will fill up

with the air and light the native saplings need to thrive.

We can now glimpse the meadow through the cleared area. We can also marvel at the lichens growing on the rock that was formerly concealed by the over-reaching burning bush.

The Wings That Fly Us Home

2025-07-29T22:30:00.000-04:00

I fell in love with John Denver when I was a little girl and he was a chart-topping musician whose art touched country, pop, and folk. He sang poetry that spoke to my heart because it was about connecting with the natural world. There I was as a little girl growing up in the disco era who spent her summer days in the backyard gardens and her summer nights listening to the insistent insects how defined my dad's bug zapper.

John Denver's lyrics assured me my vision of life--an experience of being part of a large, mysterious, interconnected web of wonder--were grounded in reality.

In elementary school, my music teacher also loved John Denver's music, and she had us singing his tunes. At the end of those years, she had us singing songs from Denver's I Want to Live album. She invested us in poetry about what it means to be alive, what it means to be fellow traveler on Earth. I bought that album with my saved-up allowance money.

In the quiet place of my bedroom, I would play my John Denver albums, and I would commit his lyrics to memory. I remember unwrapping those albums and then listening to the songs and reading along with the album notes. Over and over again, he gave me heart.

At that time, my friends where listening to Journey, Foreigner, Yes, Donna Summer, Chicago. Whatever. They were listening to the cool stuff while I was gluing my ear to every word of the poet.

This was a time when my mom and dad took me out on Long Island Sound to explore the islands and to come to know the wonders of the ocean. The combination taught me to love the natural world, to know that love makes the world, and to believe in the wonder of nature.

John Denver assured me through his music that my heart would have its home.

Sugar Maple on the Botany Trail at Flanders Nature Center, July 24, 2025

2025-07-25T20:18:00.005-04:00

A sugar maple on the Botany Trail at Flanders Nature Center in Woodbury, Connecticut

Removing invasives from the Botany Trail at Flanders in Woodbury, Connecticut, on Thursday, July 25, was exciting. We removed a thicket of burning bush and discovered the trunk of this magnificent sugar maple right beside the trail. The experience for me is that I am under the canopy, enjoying the shade, but the leaves are so distant that the canopy seems abstract. When we pulled away winged euronymous, there was this magnificent plated heart and evidence of sapsucker activity. Then, we noticed the roots wrapped around the stones, an experience that altered my sense of time and what it means to grow toward the light.

Sugar Maple on the Botany Trail at Flanders Nature Center

July 24, 2025

These rocks tell the stories of Earth’s first days

Waves of minerals, heated, alive,

Then held in place for all time, bouldered breath,

Silent story-tellers cold to our touch,

Monuments to time moved by men’s hands

Drawing lines through wild places, harnessing

Earth’s gifts by keeping animals away

From dark wild wolves, bears, and the unknown.

What flocks, what crops, what harvests

Made life for nameless, missing farmers

Whose bones now feed this soil as second growth

Makes Earth the storykeeper, the light-drinker.

Over the stones, a sugar maple sends it roots,

Reaching lightward, mighty keeper of ancient truths.

--Sandy Lee Carlson

Below, Between, and Beyond the Invasives on the Botany Trail

2025-07-15T16:44:00.001-04:00

What you can see in these photos are tree trunks and young members of the understory--a lot of spicebush, young hickory, maples, viburnum, ferns, and moss gracefully returning fallen trees to their original elements. Enlarge the photos, and you might see trillium gone to seed, Jackin-the-pulpit, Solomon's seal, false Solomon's seal, and various species of grapevine. These photos cover the area cleared of invasives from the entrance to the Botany Trail at Flanders and to the left about 100 feet.

These plants are visible because the invasive plants have been chopped away. As Ross and I worked under the rain-splattered canopy last week, we cut away burning bush. Burning bush, also called winged euonymous, spreads aggressively through both seeds and suckering. It will rapidly crowd out native plants. Getting rid of the plants before they form seeds in September and October improves the chances of reducing its spread.

The cleared area revealed Japanese barberry, multiflora rose, and bittersweet. By far, the Japanese barberry was the most pervasive plant covering the ground and sprawling by layering. This happens when the spreading branches touch ground and root. This method of reproduction allows the plant to cover a lot of ground and deny air and light to the native understory. It's good to get the barberry out before it drops its leaves because the leaves make the soil more basic, increasing nitrogen levels and possibly negatively affecting native plants.

Barberry has prickers and can be a nuisance, but tracing the branches back to the main root makes it easier to pull out. We cut away a lot of plants at the base. In the fall, we can use the root wrench to finish the job.

Multiflora rose and winged euonymous are often fellow-travelers with burning bush and barberry. So they were on the Botany Trail. I have learned the hard way with multiflora rose to cut back some of the radial branches so that it is less dangers to me and to the leaves on the surrounding trees when I cut the canes at the base. We removed several bunches of multiflora rose and bittersweet as we cleaned up the area where we worked on Thursday, July 10, in the morning.

It's a very moving experience to step back and look into the woods, to see the variety of trees providing the canopy, to wonder at their height, to notice the snags doing their part to provide habitat to smaller wildlife, and to hear the birds sing in the rain.

Multiflora rose and bittersweet are often fellow-travelers with winged Euronymous and

Supporting Native Plants on the Botany Trail at Flanders Nature Center

2025-07-03T23:29:00.002-04:00

Here are just a few of the native wildflowers--ginger, lupine, Canada mayflower, and trillium--we uncovered at Flanders Nature Center yesterday, July 2, while removing invasive plants from the Botany Trail. The Canada mayflower and trillium have formed seeds, assuring us that life goes on. Indeed, with air and light, life goes on.

Working on the Botany Trail, it's tempting to want to cover as much ground as possible--removing invasives along the trail itself to show progress. However, that's not how it goes when you're out there among the native trees and shrubs who will thrive with the right amount of air and light and the absence of competition from soil nutrients.

Rather, marking progress means identifying the native trees or shrubs that are being overwhelmed by Japanese barberry, Japanese bittersweet, burning bush, or multiflora rose. Seeing that tree or shrub and then removing the invasives around it is the act of restoring the understory. Restoring the understory is an act of hope.

Asking volunteers to support efforts to restore the environment, it makes more sense to ask an individual who cares about the plant to clear the area around a specific tree or stand of trees than to go on a marathon to clear a certain number of yards. By doing so, we ask the volunteer to connect with the trees under threat and to make them safe. By doing so, we get to know our mother. This is how we thrive.

We Will Be Free at Last

2025-07-02T13:44:00.004-04:00

We Will Be Free at Last

By Sandy Lee Carlson

for Justice Southbury

on its fifth anniversary

and the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder

We have

Come on bended knee

Bent the knee

Taken a knee

Fallen on our knees

In a supplication,

A request that you see:

Our need

Our humility

Our hope

Our humanity

But you have

Taken a knee

To the neck

Of another man

Taken the breath

Of another man

I can’t breathe, he said.

So you leaned harder,

Pouring the rage

Of your age

Out of your body

Pouring out the life of another body

Onto the hard ground

No more sound

No more life

Heart stopped and soul gone

Or so you’d have thought

But here is what you caught

Under your bended knee:

With cruelty you thought you bought us–

We the people

We the five-fifths human

We who see our freedom as self-evident–

You thought you bought us

A one-way ticket to the past

Before the Great Society promises of 1965

Before one King dared to dream of an America

Where freedom would ring

Across the countryside

Where children would play together

Where children would hold hands

Where being judged

By the content of our character

Not the color of our skin

Meant we would all have to stand up

As we grew up

To take our neighbor’s hand

To take a stand

And stand and stand

Free as the air we breathe

Holding the self-evident truth

In our clasped hands

That all men and all women

Are created equal

And we will stand tall

And we will walk the walk

Until justice rolls down

Like a mighty river

And each of us

Is free at last

Free at last

Thanking God almighty

We are free at last

Cliff Walking, Wicklow

2025-07-02T13:42:00.003-04:00

Wicklow Town, County Wicklow, Ireland

Cliff Walking, Wicklow

Skyward, seeking the sun, making light green

With cooling ferns as tall as a tall man.

In time, heather and gorse, tough and fragrant,

Purple and gold, royal life of summer.

Above, laughing gulls and terns descend,

Cloud children, light as sun and air and rain,

Singing sky songs to the sea, the ferns, the flowers

While boulder brown harbor seals born of earth and water

Bark and bubble the surface, hill watching

While the new baby suckles his mother, laughing.

Floating, I am a dust mote on this hill

Where Earth and heaven dream, time stands still.

To Escape the Famine

2025-07-01T22:31:00.003-04:00

"The Famine Memorial"
by Rowan Gillespie in Dublin, Ireland.

To Escape the Famine

“To escape the famine, they would have to survive the journey.”

You can’t look in their eyes.

They wouldn’t see you, anyway.

Starving isolates.

Slow death is solitary.

The soul tastes failure.

The body walks away,

Silent, dreamless, empty-armed

Meager human cargo,

Leaving sweet grassy hills

Where wander sheep and cattle

For a dark ship’s hold,

Leaving fields of grain,

Rich gardens full of plump vegetation,

For a voyage through hell.

Epic failure reeked

To the heavens with money

Harvested from land

Rid of its people:

Systemic ethnic cleansing

Blighted Ireland.

Potatoes rotted

Everywhere in Europe,

Yet peasants survived.

The occupying forces

In Ireland rallied God’s cause,

Called the blight a sign

That land must be cleared.

Die, endure prison, or leave.

And the world stood by.

Human cargo–ballast–

Remaindered hungry souls

Boarded coffin ships.

Humanity streamed

Westward, claimed America

On mere crumbs of chance.

A hateful world watches

Hungry people work and dream

And build a new land.

One and one-half million

Out of three million Irish,

Gone.

The EPIC placard

On the Dublin city bus

Pictures a potato:

“This is not who we are”

The placard says. The hurt burns.

It is who the Irish are.

World travelers ride the bus

With local people at home

Where the Irish fought back.

Poets and teachers,

Trade unionists, and middle-class Prods

Who would keep their home.

How could they do it,

If India could not,

Asked Kevin, newly arrived

From India.

An economics degree

Packed with his introduction

And British accent.

They were teachers and poets;

They knew how to love.

Poets and teachers.

How could the Irish

Do what India could not?

We are not potatoes.

Kevin thinks his

Question is rhetorical

As he introduces himself

So as not to be alone, I suppose.

The Collins Barracks Courtyard,

A space embraced by strong walls

That house a museum,

And here is thunderstruck

Kevin. Across the river,

Another British barracks

Is also a museum.

Across the road there,

A prison

Where died the 13 poets,

Teachers, and trade unionists

Who won Ireland’s freedom–

Martyrs to the well-dreamed

Confluence of beauty and freedom

And their songs.

At Kilmainham Gaol,

And beside the Jeanie Johnston,

Heartache cast in bronze:

Monuments to horror,

And dignity’s power to prevail

Over meanness, hate.

How could they do it?

Again, the question.

They are not potatoes.