{"id":12706,"date":"2025-03-24T13:43:45","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T18:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/c21\/?p=12706"},"modified":"2025-03-24T13:43:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T18:43:47","slug":"slow-digest-a-world-of-gifts-not-commodities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/c21\/slow-digest-a-world-of-gifts-not-commodities\/","title":{"rendered":"Slow Digest: A World of Gifts, Not Commodities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week\u2019s edition of <\/em>Slow Digest was written by Katie Waddell, C21 Managing Director, and researched by C21 Graduate Fellow Carson Pittman<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The valley
edge by edge
bare field by field
I walked through it through you

rain by rain
cold by cold
root absence
and the purposeful cold

Eye opened
slow
but what is slow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Jean Valentine, \u201cThe Valley\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, seven picnic tables emblazoned with seven poems were installed in seven national parks. The project, entitled “You Are Here: Poetry in Parks,” was a collaboration between the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and the Poetry Society of America. The poems, including Jean Valentine\u2019s, \u201cThe Valley,\u201d\u00a0were selected by Ada Lim\u00f3n, 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. \u201cYou Are Here\u201d is both a poetry anthology and a site-specific art project. Lim\u00f3n chose each poem for its resonance with a specific landscape: \u201cThe Valley\u201d\u00a0for Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, for example, June Jordan\u2019s \u201cEcology,\u201d about a marsh hawk, for Everglades National Park, and a poem about a mountain that appears to float as an ode Mount Rainier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the outset of the project Lim\u00f3n remarked,<\/em> \u201cNever has it been more urgent to feel a sense of reciprocity with our environment, and poetry\u2019s alchemical mix of attention, silence, and rhythm gives us a reciprocal way of experiencing nature\u2014of communing with the natural world through breath and presence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Urgency is a funny thing in the 2020s. It\u2019s quick and slippery. To attend to an urgent need now is to try to catch an eel with bare hands. And with the recent reductions in force across the federal government at the behest of the current administration, it’s unclear whether poetry, parks, or public infrastructure will continue to be supported as a public good at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America\u2019s <\/em>National Park Service (NPS) was established on August 25, 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act into law, creating a federal bureau within the Department of Interior. It was the beginning of something new: a unified system, 35 national parks and monuments brought together under one agency. Before this, America\u2019s protected lands existed in a kind of limbo\u2014scattered, vulnerable. The Organic Act gave the NPS a mission: to conserve natural and historic objects while ensuring that people could experience them without diminishing them for the future. Over a century later, the NPS manages more than 400 sites across 84 million acres in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories. It employs over 20,000 people, all working to safeguard the country\u2019s natural and cultural heritage. (National Park Service<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cuts to NPS and other federal agencies won\u2019t just mean fewer picnic tables with poetry. The picture painted by a recent Sierra Club-produced article<\/a> depicts overflowing toilets and missing hikers. An uptick in animal attacks, permanent closures, and vanishing tourism dollars could follow, to say nothing of the devastation to thousands of workers with specialized skills who can\u2019t easily slot into a job in the private sector (per DOGE\u2019s wishes<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let\u2019s renounce, for a moment, this American habit of framing success or failure in business terms and adopt a more poetic sensibility. What do we lose when lose access to national parks? According to the poems selected for \u201cYou Are Here,\u201d we lose\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026the \u201cblack shambling bear ruffling its wild back\u201d (Clifton<\/a>),<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201ca powerful shuffling of feathers\u201d (Jordan<\/a>),<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cwhat the trees do\u2026whenever we\u2019re not looking (Oliver<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And \u201cthis Earth whispering to our feet\u201d (Alarc\u00f3n<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sense of impending loss has perhaps been most elegantly articulated by those with the most to lose. When Brian Gibbs, an NPS Education Park Ranger with the National Park Service, was terminated on February 14th, 2025, he expressed his grief in a social media post that was subsequently shared over 230,000 times:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian Gibbs’s Facebook Post<\/strong><\/div>
I am absolutely heartbroken and completely devastated to have lost my dream job of an Education Park Ranger with the National Park Service this Valentine\u2019s Day.
Access to my government email was denied mid-afternoon and my position was ripped out from out under my feet after my shift was over at 3:45pm on a cold snowy Friday. Additionally, before I could fully print off my government records , I was also locked out of my electronic personal file that contained my secure professional records.
Please know and share this truth widely:
I am a father, a loving husband, and dedicated civil servant.
I am an oath of office to defend and protect the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.
I am a work evaluation that reads \u201cexceeds expectations.”
I am the “fat on the bone.”
I am being trimmed as a consequence of the popular vote
I am a United States flag raiser and folder
I am my son’s “Junior Ranger” idol
I am of the place where I first told my spouse I loved her
I am a college kid\u2019s dream job
I am the smiling face that greets you at the front door
I am your family vacation planner
I am a voice for 19 American Indian cultures
I am the protector of 2500 year old American Indian burial and ceremonial mounds
I am the defender of your public lands and waters
I am the motivation to make it up the hill
I am a generational cycle breaker
I am the toilet scrubber and soap dispenser
I am the open trail hiked by people from all walks of life
I am the highlight of your child\u2019s school day
I am the band aid for a skinned knee
I am the lesson that showed your children that we live in a world of gifts- not commodities, that gratitude and reciprocity are the doorway to true abundance, not power, money, or fear.
I am the one who taught your kid the thrush\u2019s song and the hawk\u2019s cry.
I am the wildflower that brought your student joy
I am the one who told your child that they belong on this planet. That their unique gifts and existence matters.
I am an invocation for peace
I am gone from the office
I am the resistance
But mostly I’m just tired.
I am tired from weeks of being bullied and censored by billionaires
I am tired of waking up every morning at 2am wondering how I am going to provide for my family if I lose my job
I am tired of wiping away my wife\u2019s tears and reassuring her that things will be ok for us and our growing little family that she’s carrying.
Things are not ok. I am not ok. (This is the second time in under five years a dream job I worked has been eliminated. Now I may need to uproot my FAMILY again.)
Stay present, don’t avert your gaze.
Until our paths cross down the trail,
Fare thee well.
<\/div>
Ranger Brian<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A month has passed since the federal government downsized the NPS. At the time of this writing, a different agency<\/a> is currently facing the executive woodchipper\u2014one loss soon eclipsed by yet another<\/a>. It\u2019s hard to keep up. The calls to action are so numerous, and so urgent, it can feel overwhelming (which is, by the way, a well-documented feature<\/a>, not a bug). Yes, you should call and write your representatives. Yes, you should petition and protest. But, in the spirit of slow knowing<\/a>, I\u2019m going to advocate for one additional approach: put into practice the thing you are fighting to keep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to save our national parks, go to the national parks. Or any park. If you want poetry to be supported at any level, go to readings, buy first editions, and, above all, take time to read poetry. If you already do this, amazing, keep going. If you don\u2019t, but want to, now is the time. The surest way to avoid burnout and buoy yourself for the long fight ahead is to continuously and deeply enjoy the thing you are fighting for. There are so many reasons for this. Joy fosters resilience (democracy is an endurance sport). Immediacy\u2014fresh memories of the thing you cherish\u2014clarify a sense of purpose and hasten resolve. Also, think of the agencies at risk right now\u2014what do they support? Subsidized access to education, books, arts and culture, nature, and recreation, among other things. Their existence frames your access to uncommodified <\/em>enjoyment of life as a right. They offer alternatives to the endless cycles of production and consumption upon which our economy (and fetishization of capitalist ideology) depends. They remind us, to echo Ben Gibbs’ sentiment, that we live in a world of gifts, not commodities; that gratitude and reciprocity are the doorway to true abundance, and not power, money, or fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C21 has some events coming up that offer, as gifts, opportunities for reading, writing, and attending to the natural world. All free and open to the public. We hope you’ll join us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What Winter Did to Us: A Nature & Poetry Walk <\/h3>\n\n\n\n