April

Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) April 13, 2024.

April

 Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) April 13, 2024.

April

"When you tape into the arts to foster a meditative state, the places in your brain responsible for judgment and personal criticism are quieted in your prefrontal cortex, and you can assess a more generous, perspective-taking point of view." Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross (2023). Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. Obra de Cruz-Filipe. Exposição Modo de Ver na Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. 

sugar and oxygen

"Carbon dioxide plus water combined in the presence of light and chlorophyl in the beautiful membrane-bound machinery of life yields sugar and oxygen." Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

March

O tempo oferece palcos onde vamos esculpindo vidas. A nossa e a de outros seres que se entrelaçam na nossa. O tempo, esse grande escultor, de Marguerite Yourcenar. No das plantas e no meu, recomeça um novo ciclo. Juntas, vamos esculpindo o tempo. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

March

How can we go on living our lives when people of war keep annihilating lives around the world? How can we devise a prosperous future for anyone or any country, when we can´t even guaranty the basic conditions of peace, shelter and food for life to happen? How can we allow that money and precious resources are allocated to destruction, instead of construction? What does our silence reveal in the face of all the monstrosities going on? How can we not enrage with the ineptitude of all the institutions that where supposed to avoid the suffering worldwide? When did we get so numbed that we can pretend that's not our problem? What does it take us to realize that if someone is left to destroy others they can destroy us? How can we keep on participating in the web of life if the ones in power are destroying our chances of future? When is enough enough? How much longer for the day when we all decide united, regardless of our nationalities and places of birth, that there is no place for war? No place for machines of war. No place for economies of war. No place for men of war. Maybe it's time. May we build a prosperous future for all and not for some, fostering prosperity for all and displacing greed. Rebuilding what was destroyed, healing wounded and land so we can heal ourselves. May the war be over! 

War is Over poster in English, image: CC BY-NC 2.0 by Yoko Ono official.

February

"What if we could fashion a restoration plan that grew from understanding multiple meanings of land? Land as sustainer. Land as identity. Land as grocery store and pharmacy. Land as connection to our ancestors. Land as moral obligation. Land as sacred. Land as self. (..) Land as home." Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. 

Weaving roots to a better world. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

February

"Beauty is not only formal, and lies not only in the superficial qualities that are appealing to the eye or ear, it lies in patterns of meaning, in evocations of values, and its connection to the life the reader is living and the world she wants to see." Rebecca Solnit (2022). Orwell's Roses. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

February

"We know that loving a person has agency and power - we know it can change everything. Yet we act as if loving the land is an internal affair that has no energy outside the confines of our head and heart." Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Photo by Monica Pinheiro. Free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

February

“Imperfect they may be, but I believe they are a beginning of a reweaving of the bond between people and the land. (…) I can take the buried stone from my heart and plant it here, restoring land, restoring culture, restoring myself.” Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

January

"Time as objective reality has never made much sense to me. It's what happens that matters. (...) If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. (...) And we think of it as simply time, as if it where a thing, as if we understood it. Maybe there is no such thing as time; there are only moments, each with its own story." Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC), taken January 21, 2024.

January

“If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.” Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. 

One month into winter (January 27), this black locust tree shows Spring time. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC), taken January 27, 2024.