(Yes, I do seem to go on about this topic from time to time)

(Also make sure and scroll down for a new comic feature, called Neptune Road)

We know in our hearts that we have got to have all of the different people and animals and plants and different everything in order to survive, and for the world to be what it is, and for the world to function. We know it in our bones and in our souls.

We know that we need the person who went to med school or who knows how to fix plumbing, or who spent the time that we didn’t spend to getting a teaching credential that we don’t have, or who knows how to fix a power pole, or pick produce, or any infinite number of other people who are not us, plants that are not us, animals that are not us and are not each other, that this is the world and that we need it that way. We emerged from it. It lives in our cells and we live in it.

Back in the prehistoric times, it would have been a great advantage to have among your group the one who notices danger, the one who knows how to make food, the one who knows how to build, the one who hunts. All the different ways of thinking and being, all super important.

If we know this so deeply, why do we seem to rage so much against difference? Why do we attack and marginalize so hard? And, why do we make people feel like they have to defend their very existence when they are no threat to us?

I think that there exists a competing impulse, and this impulse is the desire for stuff to Go Away. That impulse was probably with us back in prehistory, too. Too much going on? Make it go away. Move your settlement. Get rid of threats. Simplify. Turn away.

We have these two parts of ourselves fighting within us all the time. Which maybe would be okay except that we have accelerated our environment to such a degree that we get out of whack almost hourly. And that Go Away impulse has a way of turning into bigotry, or conspiracy theory, or anger, all of which are easy to exploit. We get the infinite scroll and the algorithm. Just decide for me, make stuff Go Away… or seem like it.

The thing that balances us is care. Care simplifies, and care acknowledges at the same time. Care says I see you, and let me make this easier. Care looks ahead at what will be needed. It says, process less. Take the time, slow down. See a person or a plant or a place or a thing or a work of art. Notice.

Care pulls in, instead of pushing away. It fills time and space with meaning, instead of numbing us. So I hope you have a chance to take care with something, and that thing can in turn take care of you.

Neptune Road

Oh my gosh, it’s a new comic feature. It’s called Neptune Road, and it’s about (animal)people living on Neptune. Here is Page 1. I hope you enjoy it!

Things Of The Week

Here is an animation made by hand using a device called a pinscreen. Watch the short, and then watch this video on its making. Incredible, the care put into the machine itself, the work, the story, all of it. Beautiful.

I will never not be engrossed by cave art. That someone took the care to send this down to us through time is just sublime.

Books, Art, Cartoons

All Three Sloth and Manatee books are at Radiator Comics!!

Brainwaves cartoons collection 1: The Fountain of Stuff at BookShop

Brainwaves cartoons collection 2: Best of Brainwaves Volume Two: Mom, Dad, I'm a Cat at BookShop

License my cartoons: CartoonStock are terrific and I’ve been with them forever

Art Prints: Capybaras, Moose, Baphomet, more in the Print Shop at INPRNT who also are great and have cards too

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you be all the things you’re meant to be, may you do something slowly and carefully and really enjoy it, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy

“Wherever we go, we are friends” - Sloth and Manatee