green pen

April 19, 2012
by Shiela RC
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Going back to the land

I have always been proud of being a farmer’s daughter. Pop, although a surveyor by profession, is still actively farming and has dedicated several decades of his life to the land, as his father had been. He once told us that he helped clear the land which he farms until now, with his father, when he was 8 to 10 years old.

So my fascination with farming is understandable. But apart from a one-time experience in the field, planting rice seedlings when I was seven, I never had any opportunity, nor will to work the land. I think the city got into me. We moved to San Mateo from Mindoro just before I turned 8 and it completely cut me off from the land (and the sea, but that’s another story). The nearest I got to the land is by playing on the nearby open fields after the rice has been harvested. Little by little I saw those fields turn into residential villages and we had to find another place to play and run and bike. Concrete grew wildly and land became a memory.

My classmates and I started frequenting Paraiso, then a high end cemetery where we had our small picnics and bike rides. In school, we didn’t have gardening, like we did in Sambat Simaron Elementary School in Sta Isabel, Calapan. We had a few potted plants in our apartment, and a dainty dish garden that was the centerpiece of our small living room, and that’s it.

It IS the city that took the land away from me. As I was growing, the city grew faster and took my full attention. The city had so many things to offer, stores growing into department stores and then supermalls that made me an impulsive shopper; streets that grew into highways and into super highways that turned eveything concrete, buildings that grew into skyscrapers that blocked out the stars at night. But as the city changed, or should I say deteriorated, I started to change too, but hopefully for the better.

Fast forward to the present. I feel the land calling me. There is almost a palbable desire to go back to the land. The clearest inner call is, I want a garden, but everything around me is concrete as I live in the heart of the city. How do I go back to the land when I don’t have an inch of it where I am?

My niece Issa harvesting cherry tomatoes.

I can't fight this feeling any longer, and yet I'm still afraid to let it flow. Photo from https://www.facebook.com/homesteading

My sister who lives in Saudi Arabia plants a garden every year. Yes, every year. She starts in October and harvests in February, by March, with the summer heat, almost everything starts to die. Her passion is almost devotional. She couldn’t wait for October to come again and plant her garden once more, a lush, beautiful vegetable garden in the desert city of Dhahran which her friends rave about.

I look at the pictures of her garden and feel a sudden pang of envy. If she can do it in the desert, maybe I can do it in tropical Cebu. I can almost feel her anticipation for October as I try to visualize my own. I even placed a picture in my Vision Book!

The prospect of a garden is both exciting and frightening at the same time. Imagine, having small container garden, waking up to its green beauty everyday, nurturing the plants, being rewarded by a tomato or two. Idyllic. On the other hand, I would have to actually touch the soil and might even encounter a worm or two. Even more frightening is trying so hard and failing, because I might not have the green thumb that Papa and Ate Roscel have. The horror!

This is the idea. Rina and Gingging of MISSION Cebu will help make this a reality. Photo by Debbie Kong.

Hoping for my garden to materialize is like going through a multi-layered lemniscate. I want it so much that I’m afraid to do it, afraid to take the leap, afraid to find out that I might not be a a green thumb after all. But there are imaginals who are prodding me on and co-imagining the garden with me. They are helping me make things happen, albeit little by little.

Rina collected and recycled containers into pots. Gingging made a garden plan and sent it to my email in the wee hours of the morning. If they have such dedication to my soon to be garden, then I would have to be as dedicated too. I would have to see it through

The land is calling me, it’s almost primeval. I will give in and the garden will materialize. If going back to the land means planting on pots in the middle of the city, then so be it. Green thumb or not, I’m going to try. After all, I am also a farmer’s daughter.

April 15, 2012
by Shiela RC
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Reposting Green Resolutions for 2012

Note: I’m happy to have found another blog post that got lost together with the hacked site. Slightly different from the original Green Pen post, this version appeared at Manila Times on January 22, 2012. Here is the newpaper article.

This is the online greeting we sent everybody as 2012 came in.

The good thing about the New Year is that it presents another opportunity to start over and try to do things better. For this year, I’m proposing several resolutions for our planet— three of which most of you are familiar with and might even be practicing. The last five are various ideas that make perfect sense with the first three. The 8Rs put together make for a great list of green resolutions for the New Year. I heard the 8Rs first from my good friend Rodne Rodino Galicha, district manager of The Climate Reality Project-Philippine Presenters, when he shared it to the Asia-Pacific Climate Change Leadership Congress last November.

Here are the 8Rs for green living:

Reuse. Avoid anything disposable. However, some disposables could have a longer lease in life with reuse. For instance, restaurants make food to go with throwaway containers, which can actually be reused. By reusing things, we keep more ‘stuff’ from entering the system, which almost always end up in dumps. Before throwing something away, ask yourself, can this be reused? You will be doing the planet, and your wallet, a lot of good.

Reduce. Are you cooking too much for the size of your family? Are you shopping for things that you don’t really need? Are you generating waste that could be reduced? Less is more. By reducing what you use and lessening the waste that you generate, you have less impact on the environment.
Check out wonderful waste reduction tips on the net that can be immediately practiced at home and in the office.

Recycle. If you cannot reuse something, ask yourself if it can be used for another purpose? By recycling, we are using less energy needed to manufacture various products, thus we are helping mitigate climate change. Through recycling, less raw materials are used and less pollution is generated.

Repair. Filipinos are great at this. I know, because my parents still have the two electric fans we had since I was eight or nine years old, and believe me, that was a long, long time ago. Those fans conked out probably twice, and my parents had them repaired. By repairing our stuff, we get a lot of savings as we prolong the service life of our appliances and other things.

Rethink. New Year is the best time to reflect on our impact to the planet. Evaluate your lifestyle. What should be changed? What should you do to be a better earth citizen? You’ll be surprised at your answers if you seriously take on this exercise.

Refuse. Say no to things you don’t need. I have been blessed to have generous sisters who shower me with gifts. Sometimes it’s hard to tell them I will have no use for their new gift, but I guess they are starting to see how simple (probably even Spartan to their standards!) my lifestyle is. I always appreciate new gifts I could really use and even decent hand-me-downs from my sisters who have impeccable taste. They keep me stylish while I refuse more trips to the mall.

Rain-forest. Are you aware of the country’s National Greening Program? The target is to plant 1.5 billion trees by 2016.

Although some issues mar the NGP, you can always have a local initiative for greening. But make sure to plant only endemic and indigenous trees instead of exotic ones. And remember it is not enough to just plant trees. The new concept is tree growing, where you actually visit the trees again to make sure they are thriving well.

Reconnect. Our indigenous brothers and sisters show us what we have lost— our connection with nature and the entire family of creation. Modern living has brought about an aversion to nature or biophobia. Richard Louv notes that the younger generations have “nature deficit disorder.” One way this can be addressed is by well-planned nature trips that should be done regularly, whether once a week, once a month, or once a year. It should be pleasant enough to look forward to, especially for those who are not the adventurous types. Better to start them young, as children who grow up without any connection to the environment could hardly be expected to value or care for it when they grow up.

Reconnecting with nature is not as simple as reading books about loving nature. Nothing compares with actually communing with the environment. An hour on Facebook or in front of the TV cannot be as memorable as a nature walk, birding or spelunking. Reconnecting with nature is rejuvenating, even a spiritual experience!

By the way, my last date with nature was last November, I better plan for the next one. What do you think of these green resolutions? Are you doing the 8Rs this year?

—–

Shiela R. Castillo is a co-founder of the Movement of Imaginals for a Sustainable Society through Initiatives, Organizing, and Networking (MISSION) and is a trained presenter for Nobel Laureate and former US Vice President Al Gore’s The Climate Reality Project (TCRP). She blogs as Green Pen at http://shielarcastillo.net.

April 5, 2012
by Shiela RC
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Reposting “Facebook, occupy or invoke the law?”

Note: This is probably the only one left of all my blog posts lost in the two-time hacking of green pen. I happened to work on this offline and it’s the only reason why I have a copy of it in my documents folder. I’m reposting it as a remembrance of the many blog posts I lost.

MISSION Baguio joined the rally to save the trees from SM, January 2012. Photo taken by Tet Mora-Uy.

From the very start, I was witness to the virtual unfolding of the protest in Baguio to save the trees at Luneta Hill. One of my favorite Facebook friends, Dr. Michael Bengwayan posted something about SM Baguio’s plan to expand the mall and cut/ball some 180 trees in the process. The post came in the middle of the night, in the silence of my own blog writing cum facebook activism moments.

The posts started coming in more often, a campaign was starting to take shape. Later on, an online petition was created which I signed and shared with friends.

I feel a deep affinity with Baguio, well, come to think of it, I feel a deep affinity to the entire universe, but then Baguio is easier to understand. It is easily one’s favorite Philippine city, being this tropical country’s summer capital. I’ve been there many times and have had fond memories with family and friends. I have also done my first climate change presentation series there with the help of MISSION Baguio, a very successful one, I might add.

It is no wonder that I followed the issue of saving the Baguio trees closely and FB’d about it often. There was no feeling of disconnection from the intensifying campaign. Since I have become a netizen, I have muttered many thanks to the Lord for creating the internet, which, aside from making my life easier as a communicator and writing professional and connecting me with family and friends from afar, it provided a venue for me to take on a meaningful online presence instead of just being there. The net allowed me to take part in protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline, objecting about the SOPA and PIPA, participating in Occupy discussions and protecting a sustainability center from being closed down. I have become a non-local activist. I found a tiny place in my wide web world. And it felt like making a difference.

A lot of people frown on the idea of engaging in laptop advocacy. But after having been part of the rah-rah activism that in the end felt empty and shallow, I have started to appreciate engaging the battle in various fronts. Indeed, there are many ways to peel a pomelo (couldn’t bear the thought of doing something heinous to a cat). As advocates, activists, cultural creatives and imaginals, every opportunity to engage the issue meaningfully is valid, whether virtual or otherwise.

Facebook and occupy are both verbs. I will just as easily participate in an occupation, if physically possible, as I would in an online campaign. I could also take part in a legal process, attaching my name and signature to a petition, taking part in actual lobby work, or dive deep into more tedious and protracted transformative means such as communicating, teaching, training, engaging and back again, depending on my location and circumstance.

Others would opt to use their art or whatever skill they have, giving time, money and effort to something they believe in. However, some people would argue that it’s enough being a good person on one’s own, but in my humble opinion, being just a good person in the context of self is nothing. The context should be always family, community, society, cosmos. We are only as good as what we are to others, be they people or trees. So we engage in a conversation with self and assess which of the many local and global concerns resonate with our being so that what we do becomes meaningful in the context of where we are physically, emotionally and/or spiritually.

Our highly networked and ever evolving world has proven that each one can find a place to be part of societal change, in minute or far-reaching ways, whether you consider yourself a radical or not. It could be as simple as donating $5.00 to support climate change education, or organizing grand rallies like Dr. Bengwayan did in Baguio today.

The present state of affairs has left us no excuse from being part of the global revolution that is unfolding. Indeed, it is imperative if we want a better world, we do not have a right to demand it if we do not work for it.

Tonight, before I sleep, I will ask myself: “Did I do my part today?”

April 3, 2012
by Shiela RC
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Green Pen is Back!

One thing about Green Pen is that it never runs out of ink, it has a sustainable supply from a well called hope. Two hacking incidents are not enough to stop me and I will keep on blogging for as long as I can. I am now trying to put this blog together again, trying to approximate the look that it had before. It will take some time I know, but it doesn’t matter.

Sadly, I don’t have any more copies of my old blog posts, as I work directly online when blogging. I work hard on my blog posts, researching, finding appropriate pictures and putting the links to important sources. I was heartbroken when I found that all my posts could no longer be retrieved. Attachment could be debilitating, losing something you have worked so hard for could be paralyzing, albeit momentarily. But then I realized it’s just the perfect excuse to keep on blogging more, so I choose to keep on creating new things, to keep on writing.

There are a lot of things to look forward to this month! Today I’m officially 42! Doesn’t feel like it though. I still feel 41 and 42 will take some getting used to.

April 10 MISSION Cebu will be taking a month-long yoga beginners course. I’m excited to attend the classes since it has been a while that I haven’t practiced asanas. Now is the perfect time as Dad is training to be a yoga teacher!

April 14 will be a climate presentation for MISSION Cebu and Movement for Livable Cebu. I’ve been wanting to conduct a climate presentation for MISSION Cebu since last year and I even made a couple of schedules early this year, but they were not meant to happen, so I’m looking forward to April 14 and hopefully we will be able to forge a partnership of a climate change caravan in Cebu and neighboring cities.

April 23 to 24 is Capacitating Climate Change Communicators and Educators in Little Flower Convent, Baguio City. I’m looking forward to it since it will be the first communicators’ workshop I am conducting.

I might even work on a DAP project in between. We’ll see. This is exciting!