Never Nude Shorts & a Dog Day's Summer Mixtape
I've got just the mixtape for your next bbq because land sovereignty is hotter than Beyonce's forthcoming album and the actual temperatures outside rn.
Welcome back to The Link, a bi-weekly newsletter making the connection between “regenerative farming,” and you—city slickers, country mice, and everyone living in the in between—every other Sunday.
Sirius, also known as the “dog star,” is the most luminous bulb in the night sky. Its name comes from the Greek word “Σείριος,” meaning ‘lit’, ‘glowing’, or ‘scorching’. In ancient Egypt, the heliacal rising of Sirius marked the flooding of the Nile. The Greeks coined the term, “dog days of summer” after Sirius to mark the balmy, sultry, short shorts weather. Hellenistic astrology even associated it with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck. Welcome to Leo szn, babies (minus the bad luck)…
I’ve always thought August got the short end of the stick because of the whole “dog days” association, but then again, stars rise as we just learned on my quick Magic School Bus tidbit. And since I’m in the space of TL;DR as much as anyone else with summer lethargy, today’s newsletter is simple and packed with a luminous gift: a mixtape.
Wait, what? I know, you’re still on ooo mode (I hope you are on a beach right now near/and or close to someone wearing a banana hammock or Tobias Funke never nude shorts), so I’ll make this quick: land access is an entire topic that we will get to explore together that deeply impacts your individual life and our collectives lives alike (I’ll touch on this in a few different ways in upcoming months).
So here’s a Mister Softee sized dose of luminosity to energize you: The next gen of farmer’s greatest hurdle is land access (just ask the Young Farmers of America). Even the USDA is freaking out about us losing 2,000 acres of farmland/day nationally, and at the rate it’s going, another 18.4 million acres will be lost by 2040. Nearly half will occur on the nation’s most resilient and productive farmland. But 98% percent of white land owners currently control between 95-98% of the farmland that we do have in the US and nearly 100% in the northeast. Yuck.
Luckily, musical stars Erica Dawn Lyle of Bikini Kill and Vice Cooler care deeply about land access, equity, and land stewardship and agree that it pairs well with great music at your next outdoor bbq or even if you’re just porky pigging it on your couch. So support this rad new mixtape featuring geniuses like Kim Gordon and The Linda Lindas. Proceeds go to Northeast Farmers of Color Landtrust (NEFOC), an Indigenous and POC-led grassroots organization that seeks to connect POC farmers to land to grow healthy foods and medicines. In their own words, they plan to “accomplish this by acquiring and returning land to Indigenous nations and respectfully connecting Black, Asian, and Latinx and other POC farmers and land stewards to land while centering and respecting Indigenous sovereignty.”
What would Sirius do? I think as a star, it’s likely already downloaded the mixtape/is jamming to it in a nighttime pool somewhere in the constellations above (that hopefully won’t cause a future flood in the heavens below).
Oh hey! You’re still reading this? If you have future topics, smart humans, or concepts you’d like to see featured, respond to this newsletter or drop me a line and say hey: Helen@HelenHollyman.com.
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Gorgeous, brilliant writing. Thank you.