#4 The Plantspeak Papers

Imagine a group of plants getting together and figuring out how to communicate their displeasure with and to their human neighbors. What would they say? Listen in here to find out. They begin with this: "Dear Neighbor - The irony is not lost on the authors of this pamphlet that it is printed on the pulped remains of our kin. But as it is still a durable format for conveying information in your language, we have chosen it reluctantly. We may be anonymous to you as individuals, but our extended family feeds, fuels, clothes, heals, houses, beautifies, entertains, and allows you to live at all thanks to a long line of our ancestors and elders who preceded your ancestors by 460 million years."

Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27643983 to read this pamphlet.

Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Radical Pamphlets Here and Now, an audio production of the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College. For centuries, pamphlets were utilized to demand reform, equality, and justice. Sadly, it is the necessary work that must be taken up with every new generation. Our pamphlets are rooted in the local and written by teachers, farmers, students, artists, community caretakers, and neighbors. They offer common sense and practical advice to slow down and attend to the here and now wherever you are. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

The Plant Speak Papers, written anonymously and read by Elsa Marion, Lindsay Pontius, Matthew Schlein, Hazel Brakeley. Megan Brakeley.

SPEAKER_04 1:04

Francis Hall. Brittany Tepaws.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

And Craig Merovich. Dear neighbor, the irony is not lost on the authors of this pamphlet that it is printed on the pulped remains of our kin. But as it is still a durable format for conveying information in your language, we have chosen it reluctantly and are offering you this audio version as well. We may be anonymous to you as individuals, but our extended family feeds, fuels, clothes, heals, houses, beautifies, entertains, and allows you to live at all thanks to a long line of our ancestors and elders who preceded your ancestors by four hundred and sixty million years. If it helps, think of this number as a forty six thousand year cycle that has occurred ten thousand times. We oxygenated the atmosphere and creatively destabilized it to make a habitable paradise not just for us, but for other life forms, including big-brained, bipedal, fire-making, opposable thumb folks like you. Half a billion years is a pretty good run, but it didn't prepare us for the likes of our most precocious, arrogant, and destructive adolescent animal offspring. You enjoy the fruits of our labor with rarely an attribution or thanks, all the while consigning us to the lowest rungs of life as brainless nutrition machines. Vegetable souls, as one of your wise elders called us long ago, nor did it prepare us for how with so little common sense, you would cultivate a narrow few of our family to feed and adorn yourselves while naming the rest of us weeds. Despite these attacks and insults, it's hard to hate you. After all, you love some of us the flowers, the grasses, edible fruits and vegetables, and ancient groves of trees. And some of you are coming back around to recognizing our amazing talents in creative problem solving, community building, and communication. That's all well and good, but you only want to elevate us to your so-called level of intelligence and superiority. We believe rather that you need to become our students to learn and emulate the curricular three R's we live by roots down deep, relationships aplenty, and perennial rhythms. Here are a few ways to get started.

SPEAKER_07 4:05

Stop calling so many of us weeds and invasives. Together, our family is very good at what we do, and we have a long record of success employing strategies that provide us with what we need and with plenty of excellent leftovers for others. And yes, we do recognize and admire the gardeners and farmers among you who take such good care of some of us, though we sometimes feel a little envious of the attention you pay our annual friends. If only it didn't come with so much weeding and the eviction of so many of us who are not food or ornamentals for you.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Learn our names. You call by name nearly everything else in your lives, even cars, boats, and stuffed animals.

SPEAKER_05 4:54

Think of us as having stories, habits, personalities, and differences. We do. And that is because, like you, so many variables in our lives require us to make decisions that affect us as individuals. Even a few feet away from one another, we can sometimes look and behave very differently.

SPEAKER_06 5:15

Slow down. You're always in such a hurry, scurrying to meet endless deadlines and productivity goals. Don't be fooled. Our roots, leaves, stems, branches, and flowers are all in motion too, but with far more intention, grace, and deliberation than you seem to possess.

SPEAKER_04 5:42

Walk with awareness of your surroundings. The simplest way to slow down is to move in time with your beating heart. You'll discover that as you slow down and limit your spatial range, you will regain the time you always say you never have enough of. That sounds paradoxical, but try it.

SPEAKER_03 6:01

Review and rebalance your perennial annual ledgers. Okay, this one will take a bit to explain. To date, your clan has counted about 400,000 terrestrial varieties in our extended family.

SPEAKER_08 6:18

It might surprise you to also learn that more than nine in ten of us are perennials, defined as living more than two years.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

The rest?

SPEAKER_05 6:28

Six percent, by some recent estimates, are annuals and biennials.

SPEAKER_08 6:33

We all play our parts and get along well enough.

SPEAKER_05 6:36

We certainly have different metabolisms and life cycles.

SPEAKER_08 6:40

We perennials have ways of holding our ground, adapting, getting along, and waiting it out for another day, another year, another millennium.

SPEAKER_05 6:52

Our annual cousins, on the other hand, must move quickly to produce large seeds and flashy flowers. But they seem well contented with their single seasoned lifespans, knowing their beauty is unsurpassable, and that they are critical first responders and caregivers for the rest of their family when our homes are disturbed and laid bare.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

We can't say the same thing about most of you, at least in more recent times. For the last 12,000 years, your so-called civilizations have featured fractionally few varieties of the annuals in our family for the majority of your food. You've covered the planet with them while eradicating the rest of us, annuals and perennials alike, through ploughing, weeding, poisoning, and nutrient and water starvation to make room for your cultivated gardens, crops, and livestock.

SPEAKER_05 7:47

Worse, you have adopted annual lifestyles and calendars that maximize productivity and monocultures at ever faster speeds. Your children attend schools that mimic your farm fields and growing seasons, with same-age classrooms sitting in rows while being graded and rigorously selected for the best and brightest varieties, with annual harvesting.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

Or graduating, as you call it, to pursue a career, a word that means to run in a circle as fast as one can.

SPEAKER_08 8:23

You even create unrealistic stories of endless personal reincarnations or eternal heavenly rewards after death. But if we perennials have taught you anything, it is that nothing lives forever. Even in the 80,000-year-old quaking aspen tree and root system you've named Pando in a place called Utah.

SPEAKER_05 8:51

We gratefully acknowledge your now desperate attempts to repair the damage you've caused to our planetary home. But frankly, they're doing nothing substantial to slow the rundown of the living, breathing commons you treat like your personal bank account, supermarket, and trash bin as you race around in circles.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

An ever smaller few of you are hoarding as much as you can while the ever-increasing many of you starve, wander, grieve, and rage.

SPEAKER_08 9:23

We've seen this surplus scarcity behavior in your kind before, but never at such a large scale, or with such ferocity.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

No one likes to be on the receiving end of an intervention, but we offer it in the spirit of urgency, compassion, and neighborliness. You don't have to go it alone. Some of your kind are still living the old ways and can help. And there are new efforts to grow perennial food systems, perspectives, and lifestyles. We'll be here no matter what you choose to do, whatever the outcome, and probably long after you're gone. We can't expect you to change overnight. But don't wait. Imagine perenniality. Practice perenniality, celebrate perenniality. Feel the perennial beat. You're a natural at it. You really are, even if you haven't had much opportunity of late. If you slow down long enough to sit and walk among us and your other non-human family as humble listeners, who knows what might happen. And if it helps, because we know you like to put little phrases on your clothes, hats, and billboards, go plant yourself.

SPEAKER_05 10:59

Go plant yourself. Go plant yourself.

SPEAKER_03 11:03

Go plant yourself.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Go plant yourself.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

Go.

SPEAKER_06 11:09

Plant yourself. Go plant yourself. Go plant yourself.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Go plant yourself. Please.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

To learn more about the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College, visit NewPerennials.org, where you can download free versions of all of our books, pamphlets, and educational materials. Special thanks to audio engineer Johnny Melli and to our authors and readers. Music composed and performed by Caitlin Miss Adams. Introductory narration by Caitlin Miss Adams. You can contact us at newPerennials at middlebury.edu. Thanks for listening.