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. 

Solstice

Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC), taken November 7, 2023.

cooperation

“In fighting against resistance, we will become more focused on getting rid of the problem than on understanding what it is; by contrast, when working with resistance we want to suspend frustration at being blocked, and instead engage with the problem in its own right”. Richard Sennett (2013). Together. The Rituals, Pleasures & Politics of Cooperation. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

unselfing

"Observing something beautiful" is "an occasion for unselfing" and it "may well hold the key to our collective survival. Because it means that our role here on earth is not simply to maximize the advantage in our lives (...). It's to maximize (protect, regenerate) all life. We are here not just to make sure we as individuals survive, but to make sure that life survives. (...) We must attempt, with great urgency, to imagine a world that does not require Shadow Lands, that is not predicated on sacrificial people and sacrificial ecologies and sacrificial continents. More than imagine it, we must begin, at once, to build it." Naomi Klein (2023). Doppelganger. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Human rights

«(...) words and ideas underwent a radical currency devaluation, a crash connected, in ways we have barely begun to understand, to the torrent of words in which we are swimming (...). I appreciated Greta's "Blah, blah, blah" speeches because they precisely captured the pervasive feeling of speechlessness, far better than my own impotent and sullen silences in this period.» Naomi Klein (2023). Doppelganger. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

November

"(...) metamorphosis occurs when two or more unlike elements are joined (...). Here the craftsman has consciously to decide if the combination will best work like a compound, in which the whole becomes different than its parts, or like a mixture, in which the elements continue an independent coexistence." Richard Sennett (2009). The Craftsman. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Less machines

While reading about the «Workshop in Rotterdam: How to Build a Bike Generator», discovered the larger solution scenarios for human powered societies, that tackle much more then climate crises and fossil consumption. They present integrated solutions to increase biodiversity, reduce city concentration, production near place of consumption, better health, sustainable farming, better soils and food, more wellbeing. All of that with less machines and more human power, as envisioned in the Human Power Plant. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

October

"If we had 30 days to save the world, would we act before the 29th?" Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

September

"For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty; like a butterfly it seeks colour and basks in warmth." Virginia Wolf (1930) in The Essays of Virginia Wolf: volume IX. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Setembro

"Feeling the touch, discovering the colour, memorizing the smell. Weaving quietly different textures and tensions. Creating peace to guide action. Liberating the mind to shape possibilities." June 2021, What can we do with what we already have?...

Photos by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

September

"(...) she could remember nothing. For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography of history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie." Virginia Wolf (1929). A Room of One's Own. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

September

"The demand for urban nature-based solutions can be expected to rise exponentially, as greening cities is the best measure to address the accelerating urban heat island effect". European Investment Bank, Hudson, G., Hart, S., Verbeek, A. (2023). Investing in nature-based solutions – State-of-play and way forward for public and private financial measures in Europe.

Photo: Temperate part of, probably, the smallest garden in the city. Taken in august 2023 by Monica Pinheiro. Free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

September

"Space is transformed into place as it acquires definition and meaning." Yi-Fu Tuan (2005). Space and Place. The perspective of experience. Photo taken in July by Monica Pinheiro, free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

September

"Build a life that you don't need to escape from." "If true peace and clarity are what you seek in this life (...) know that you will find them nearby and not faraway". Ryan Holiday (2019). Stillness is Key.

 

Photo: Probably the smallest garden in the city: tropical part. Taken in august 2023 by Monica Pinheiro. Free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).