Medium Short: Reframus ad Infinitum

Weekly reminder that whenever I think I’m there, I know I’m not

Beautiful old buildings. Toxic runoff pathways. Cars favoured over tortured trees. (Photo by me | Montréal, June 2023)

Welcome to the latest Medium Short, a weekly accountability practice highlighting what I’m up to along the unmarked trail towards #IndustrialHealing. Reminder: all my Medium articles are linked for free here.

June 2023 has an uncanny texture to it. This uncanniness is not for me to resist. I’ll use a simple list for this week’s recap, lest I tumble into a cosmic wormhole and never hit publish.

• I’ve been disturbed by stories about the “wild” fires whose smoke I’ve been breathing in this week. I avoid mainstream “news” (since it’s neither new nor news, and it’s not flowing where I want to go). But even voices whom I deeply respect such as Paul Greenberg are putting things in terms that need reframing…

A Cuyahoga Moment

• … so I chimed in about what is not wild, and where we have alternatives in our relationship to forests, with this response to the esteemed author: https://blorrainesmith.medium.com/i-agree-it-has-been-alarming-living-in-montreal-and-literally-tasting-the-smoke-has-not-been-okay-212ca900c204. I was honoured to receive a response. Hopefully it’s a helpful thread in some small way.
• Then there’s Medium’s (and Twitter’s) founder Ev Williams’ virtue-signaling on the situation in the forests of Brazil that felt so poorly framed…

How you can help the Amazon Rainforest–today

• … that I bent my rule of thumb about ghosting the tech bro micro-bubble and responded there, too. One responder to my response apparently heard the opposite of what I said which is a reminder that we make all that we believe, and I am no exception. Frames within frames.
• Aside from heckling various unsuspecting Americans, I did a few productive things this week. I put…