Author: Daphne Cybele Van Schaick

Writer, compulsive reader, apple pie baker, complex cable knitter. Life with family plus two dogs, a stray cat, chickens, weeds, and bees.

Small Acts, Big Change

On By Daphne Cybele Van SchaickIn Opinion & Editorial5 Comments

The Optimism of Uncertainty, by Howard Zinn

“Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.

An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.

If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Howard Zinn, read more here.

If you couldn’t tell, I’ve been thinking about what I can accomplish to make this world just a little bit better, and the best way to do it.  I’m still brewing and percolating, so posting this as something I found very true, and looking for more inspiration.  Send some my way?

PS edited to add beginning and end of quote accidentally edited out in the first go-round.

Anticipation in Winter

On By Daphne Cybele Van SchaickIn The Birds & the Bees7 Comments

I’m waiting.  Waiting for chickens, waiting for spring crocus, waiting for signs of spring, which is a good four months away. Tonight, on the way back to the house from setting our trash bins out by the road for pick up in the morning, I stepped into the new shed that will be my chicken coop and breathed in the scent of fresh wooden boards.  I could close my eyes and smell spring in the scent of the newly cut wood. I took in the quiet, and the smell of pine and then I backed out and shut the door securely, closing it up against the freezing rain we are currently getting.  It’s dry and secure, and in a few months will be home to chickens, with their quiet rustles and fluff, their sharp eyes and definite chicken opinions.

I received a tracking alert for a package shipped from the company I ordered the chicks from, and I think its just the brooder and some supplies and not the chickens themselves (surely they would give me a call before shipping 25 chicks in the dead of winter, surely they won’t arrive until later in the spring…?) but I wonder if I might receive a call from the Post Office at 5:30 AM with baby chicks in the background.  I doubt it is likely, but I do wonder if it is a possibility.

I’ve read that it’s the anticipation of things, the preparation and the planning that can be just as good as the actuality of doing something new or arriving at something long awaited. This probably does apply in many cases, but I’d rather have spring and crocus and chickens now rather than four months down the road… At the same time, I’d like warmer weather a little closer before any baby chicks arrive. Crossing my fingers!

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