I’m Back Despite Or Because Of Absurd Times

I know many of you missed new episodes of my podcast NatureMatchCuts (Abre numa nova janela), but before the next episode with my comeback, I can say : the forced break has benefitted the project! Forced, because I had lost my star Bilbo and had to retrieve a changed concept. Forced, because private hullabaloo demanded too much of me.

And then came that world situation when reality makes even professional writers look pale: I can hardly invent such absurd stuff in my darkest imagination. Well, I’m a realist, and also (still) an optimist, in Peter Ustinov’s sense. I don’t want to become overwhelmed by gloom & doom scrolling because doomism paralyses. And that’s exactly what the evil guys want.

Do you notice it? I sound like I'm drawing a comic. A skill I often wish I had these days, because all too often I don't find the words. What I see seems like a second-rate James Bond plot, except that James is bogged down somewhere over his martinis and not around when you need him. Meanwhile, the villains multiply.

How can you write about nature and conduct interviews with bacteria or bats in times like these? Isn't that childish? What can you talk about while the world is burning in every corner?

Then there was one trigger: Trump wrote an order with “forbidden words”. The National Science Foundation is now scouring thousands of research projects for dozens of words that could violate those orders. Unity In Diversity - the official motto of the European Union: “diversity” is on that NSF list of flagged words (Abre numa nova janela). “Cultural heritage”: on that list!

I hope nobody laughs at Mr Newspeak any more. Because what's happening here is dark fascism (Abre numa nova janela). This is how people (especially women, POC, and trans people), minorities, and important topics are made invisible before something worse happens. It's a way of eradicating knowledge and influencing education. Language creates realities. And it’s against Human Rights and all the achievements of which we in Europe are rightly proud. Pay attention, something similar can happen to us if we don’t protect our democracies.

Unfortunately, it also affects us in Europe. One of my podcasts’s main topics, and indeed of my voluntary work, is cultural heritage. This is one of the most important anchor points of Homo sapiens. If we were fungi, our mycelium would be closely linked to cultural heritage and nature. How much will my work be silenced now, by Google, and for my listeners in the USA?

That was the moment when I became grumpy. And then angry. Very angry. That was the moment when defiance and resistance made me creative again. Now more than ever: I'll tell you about my work in an Alsatian cultural heritage centre (Abre numa nova janela). Because there I continue to look for traces of how people translated their relationship with nature into cultural traditions and techniques. So exciting, because we can learn a lot for the present. Ideas such as circular economy, respectful treatment of biodiversity, living with nature calendars - all cultural heritage!

I will continue to interview animals and plants, because it feels damn good to change your perspective. Because my listeners have fun with it - and we need fun. And as a journalist, it feels doubly good for me when bacteria living on cow dung play the leading role instead of the same old politicians’ faces.

So here's to a new one! Renitently in love with nature. Optimistic that the good guys are more: they just have to get off their ‘backsides’! Free of newspeak. I like to continue to offer you NatureMatchCuts as a podcast and now also with a blog / newsletter. The new episode is in preparation, I'm working on it. Pssst … I do research on moss.

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