The theme for National Women's History Month 2023 which ended yesterday, was “Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories.” The Recorder won a trifecta on March 29 by betting the “stories” by three women would engage its readers.

My Turn essays by Margo Fleck, Nancy Hazard and Ruth Charney certainly commanded my attention in this unsettling time in which I find myself living.

Nancy

I was in the passenger seat of an over-size van and Nancy Hazard was at the wheel on a trip to the biomass powered MacNeil Generating Station in Burlington, Vermont in the mid 2000s. As director of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, she was researching a proposal to build a 50-megawatt biomass power plant in Greenfield.

As a climate activist, Nancy’s focus took a U-turn from her primary work 16 years ago in advocating for renewable energy and using fewer fossil fuels. Her expanded focus was prompted by reading a book called “Bringing Nature Home” by Doug Tallamy. “The more I learned,” Nancy said, “the more I realized that supporting nature is as important as stopping our use of fossil fuels, the main cause of climate change — and it is fascinating! It is also something we can all do locally.”

In her March 29 My Turn essay, Nancy wrote “While I never became an anti-nuke or peace activist, I have become a climate and biodiversity crises activist because of my anxiety about the health of our planet and its ability to support us.”

Nancy is a member of Greening Greenfield and on the board of Greenfield’s Sustainable Greenfield Implementation Committee. Last Thursday, I attended a presentation by Peter Wingate, director of energy services with Community Action Pioneer Valley about free heat pumps and weatherization services available to income-eligible homeowners, renters and landlords that have income-eligible tenants. Nancy stage managed the event.

“While the climate and biodiversity crises often feel hopeless,” she wrote, “I dream of the day that countries decide to shift their focus from war to supporting life on earth. We can speak up for this dream, and we can personally ‘do our bit.’”

For me, Nancy Hazard personifies “think globally, act locally.”

Margo

In her My Turn essay entitled “Rediscovering serenity in harmony with nature,” Northfield writer Margot Fleck quotes writer Henry Beston who, 75 years ago, wrote, “What has come over our age is an alienation from Nature unexampled in human history. It has cost us our sense of reality and all but cost us our humanity.”

As is the case with so many prescient writers, artists and scientists, their gifts of comprehension of what is real is unseen by most of us. And is deliberately ignored by those in power who profit from this alienation from Nature and increasing peril to humankind.

Like Margo and unlike Nancy, I also harbor no shred of hope that the downward trajectory of our climate crisis will be stopped. In a brief introduction to her stunning poem “Apocalypse,” she quotes what her granddaughter said to her in 2018: “I know civilizations die, but I didn’t think I’d see it happen to my own!”

While I have yet to meet Margo in person, our writing has led us to an ongoing email dialogue. In her My Turn she wrote she was “thrilled” by the return of animals “as refugees, those whose habitats we are desecrating worldwide. All of us, animals all, offer each other that ‘rush of friendship.’ And that expressed empathy may just be the ounce of serenity we crave amid a looming apocalypse.”

I think the essential survival of biodiversity propels both Margo and Nancy.

Ruth

Last, but far from least, is Ruth Charney whom I have known for many years. I believe that I am among many readers who deeply value her frequent essays in the Recorder, and who find that her unambiguous honesty about what we all will encounter in our lifetimes cuts to the bone. And not without humor. Last Thursday’s column was one of those.

We have lots in common with respect to aging. I last spoke with Ruth and her husband a week-and-a-half ago while sitting in the waiting room of the MGH Cancer Center.

I’m running out of space. I just want to acknowledge one of Ruth’s sentences that echoes deeply within me; “In truth, we are moved and grateful that our family, a blended family, wants to be an effective team as we get old.”

I can’t imagine this time in my life without my family and friends standing by in the wings.

John Bos is living in Greenfield at the moment. When he leaves is not up to him. In the meantime, you can read “Connecting the Dots” every other Saturday in the Recorder. Comments and questions are always invited at john01370@gmail.com.

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