Underlines

• ILI Director Lucinda Garthwaite

  There are headlines, and there are underlines. The headlines are what I see if all I have time for is a skim through the news. If I take the time to look further though, it’s clear that there are a lot of stories beneath those headlines; those are the underlines.

  Underlining is what I do when I read a good book, running a pencil under a line of well-wrought prose, a compelling idea, a thought or scene or perspective that pops out and makes me see differently.  What I’ve been noticing lately are stories in the news, usually quite far below the headlines, that have the same effect. Specifically, they move my focus from worry and despair, and make me see hope.

  We’re enjoying an unusually warm fall where I live. Usually by this time, a hard frost has driven me from my desk in a panic by now, to pull in the squash, cover the last of the lettuce, cut bouquets of Hydrangeas to preserve their beauty for a week or so after the growing plant has wilted in the cold.  Not this year. This year I’ve taken my lunch breaks in the warm sun much farther into the fall than I ever have, and it’s been lovely.

  And still, it’s not – right. It’s too warm for October, too late for the peepers to still be in the trees. I know their calls are signals of climate change. I know the one rose still growing behind my house is linked to temperatures that, somewhere else in the world, are driving people from their homes and livelihoods, igniting fires and water wars.  My worry is so deep I can hardly speak it. What in the world can stop this? And the erosion of critical shoreline? And the pile-up of persistent  plastic leaching into what water is left?

  The headlines affirm my disquiet, but the underlines call me from my despair.

  Here’s one:  “A Recipe for Fighting Climate Change and Feeding the World,” reveals to me a new kind of wheat, called Kernza, developed by the nonprofit Land Institute.  I learn that unlike other grains, Kernza is a perennial that, “forms deep roots that store carbon in the soil and prevent erosion. It can be planted alongside other crops to reduce the need for fertilizer and provide habitat for wildlife.  . . . it can mimic the way a natural ecosystem works — potentially transforming farming from a cause of environmental degradation into a solution to the planet’s biggest crises.”

  Another underline, “The Seas Are Rising. Could Oysters Help?” introduces me to a landscape architect leading an effort to build, “a necklace of sloped rock formations and “reef streets” to be submerged in Raritan Bay, where they would attenuate the energy of waves crashing into the South Shore of Staten Island and serve as habitats for oysters, lobsters, and juvenile fish.”

  Reading on, I learn that this effort is part of “an emerging approach to climate resilience that argues we should be building with nature, not just in nature” called green infrastructure, which refers to “strategically deploying wetlands, dunes, mangrove forests, and reefs to reduce threats of catastrophic flooding and coastal erosion, while also revitalizing the land.” The writer concludes that this approach, “could be our second chance.”

  I remember a story I read last year that stayed with me, the underline is, “Engineered ‘Super Enzyme’ Breaks Down Plastic.”  This new enzyme, I learned, goes after the “nearly ubiquitous PET plastic which is found in everything from water bottles to carpets, [breaking it down] into molecules that other bacteria are capable of dealing with.” This innovation could deeply reduce our dependence on fossil fuels to make containers, and eat up the mounds of plastic that keep me up at night with worry.

  Now I’m sitting in the odd October sunshine still deeply concerned and alert, but my despair has lifted. I am less discouraged. It feels like it’s possible that the world will go on, even that it may go on more equitably, less violently, than before.  That possibility invites my participation in making it so.

  But what about systemic racism, violence driven by all kinds of greed, fear and bigotry?  What about deep and pernicious social inequity? What about poverty and the millions of people un-homed? Are there underlines there too?

  Of course there are.

  In the midst of the million words of news filtered down to headlines every day by mostly well-meaning editors just doing their jobs, there are stories that promise profound systemic change. They compel me to stop long enough to pull out my metaphorical pencil. They require me to retrieve hope and stay in the work.  These are the underlines.

  The effort to find them is well worth the time it takes.  Underlines offer opportunities for turning away from energy-stealing despair.  They introduce me to the people who are asking the questions that lead to innovations in the ways human beings walk on the earth that really could change the world.  Theirs is the company I want to keep; theirs is the work the ILI was founded to join.

  * links to all articles referenced here can be found in this weeks issue of Intersections: The ILI Newsletter