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The thing that made me weep as I looked at the 1000 hours account and all the earnest moms following her is that we DO have a moral obligation with regard to our children and nature, but it isn’t tracking 1000 hours. It is making sure the natural world exists when they are grown. There was so little effort toward saving our natural world from climate change, habitat loss and the other horrors we are inflicting present in her “movement.”

For years, I have felt that we should all focus less on personal austerity and more on climate policy, but now I am reversing my feelings. The policy simply will not come in time. I think that is a reality we must now accept. If we live in blue states or cities, we should be lobbying aggressively at those levels. But also, I think it is time to turn in our hour trackers (not that most of us had them) and track our carbon footprints instead. The only way I can imagine to mitigate the horror of the climate crisis now is for every single blue voter to bear a personal burden that isn’t fair and we don’t deserve and live very, very small for awhile. Now we do need to follow all those zero waste guidelines, cancel our vacations, press our employers to let us work from home, fight our HOAs to fill our yards with messes of native plants, get involved in citizen science to record the losses around us, and build local communities to facilitate it. This is how we can fight for our children’s health—not some coloring sheet or a false sense of security because we spent 3 hours outside today. I am furious that this burden will fall on all the wrong people, but also I accept it because I don’t know what I will tell my son in 20 years if I don’t. What will those moms tell their children when the woods they once spent 1000 hours in burns to the ground?

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Nov 13·edited Nov 13

I’m honestly surprised this is the top comment here of all places, since it sounds like diet culture but make it environmentalism.

People don’t advocate for institutional action solely because of their moral obligation, it’s also the only changes that will have any meaningful impact. All of that extreme individual austerity you’re suggesting blue voters should take on won’t move the needle at all.

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Nov 12·edited Nov 12

My husband and I describe this sort of thing as "sneaky Jesus," where something seems relatively innocuous until you start looking under the surface and find a whole rat's nest of conservative Christian ideologies beneath it.

It began as a joke (anyone seen the show "Manifest"?), but it's become increasingly less funny over the past few years.

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“Sneaky Jesus” is perfect! Adding it to my vocabulary.

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I feel the same way about Kundalini yoga. I love the practice and I love the music. But damn, sneaky cult.

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My brain is still exploding from her idea that public school is like "exposing your kid to an R-rated movie" while she simultaneously seems a-okay with the crude, violent, and demeaning words and actions of the president-elect—not to mention his many, many references to a certain R-rated movie.

"Mommy, who's Hannibal Lecter?"

Make it make sense.

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author

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE

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I just said the other day to a baffled friend— who, like me, is in his 60s, so you’d think we’d all have figured this out by now, but here we are — “Don’t try to make it make sense, you’ll only hurt your brain.” I try not to waste my energy on it, but it’s hard to avoid.

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Yesterday in the official FB group, someone posted “Looking for ideas for help for activities for kids to do during a Klan rally I’m planning on attending.” It was a Black woman and she later said in the comments she never thought it would get approved. (Earlier there had been posts with similar wording but about Trump’s inauguration) People were giving it serious replies. She had since deleted the post and left the group. The curtain is well and truly pulled back.

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Nov 12Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Eating toast with butter and orange marmalade. And I hate to go out in the rain or really cold or really hot. So no 1000 hours in my house!

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Try putting a piece of nice sharp cheddar on your orange marmalade toast sometime. One of my favorite breakfasts

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For real, THIS is the advice we need!

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This is bringing me back to my Michael Pollan et al 100 mile diet orthorexia deep dive, which unfortunately also coincided with my kids being small. How to make grain free crackers with local ingredients only…

I would have fallen for 1000 hours hard. I was also following my individualistic environmentalist values at the time, and mostly biked or walked everywhere with my little ones. There was a lot of soggy, cold, miserable time outside as a result. With “healthy” snacks. I put so much pressure on myself to do the right thing for my kids and the environment. When really preserving some of my energy would probably have helped more.

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I have been thinking about this piece a lot over the past week. The 1000H group has had an explosion of veiled political content after one member posted specifically asking for clothing/gear recommendations for attending the inauguration. The post was so heavily political, masquerading as "outdoor content related," that it actually got deleted, which says something; and in protest of its removal, several other members began posting in solidarity, asking for recommendations for "being in DC in January, for several hours outside but just standing/sitting, not moving around to stay warm" etc. Lots of barely-coded displays of support in comments, etc.

A few commenters engage in the comments, asking like, why you would need specific dedicated recommendations for this situation (ie, you wouldn't) or even going as far as to comment on the absurdity of people who orient their lives around the outdoors supporting a politician who has explicitly dedicated himself to dismantling protections for the environment, for the parks system, etc. But mostly it's just dog whistles all the way down. Bleak and depressing.

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These are tough times… 😞 Thanks for the Feed Yourself mention. :)

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Thanks for updating and reposting this, Virginia. It’s really important to expose the health influencer to Christian nationalist pipeline that so many are unwittingly consuming content from these days.

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These posts always give me flashbacks to raising kids in Georgia in the early 2000s, trying my best to overcome no local family support while working and avoiding day care as much as possible, because, obviously it was the pit of despair (sarcasm! obvs I hope!). Also the pressure to feed them organic food with no sugar, etc, have them be outside all the time, breastfeed until they were 5, all the things. I wanted to do things the best I could, but it led to all kinds of "diet culture" for years. I would have definitely been counting the hours.

Now that seems completely ridiculous, and I have so much compassion for my younger self. And others who might be sucked in by this mess.

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Nov 12Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

In reading this, I’m now realizing that a friend was doing this even though I would never describe her as outdoorsy nor Christian. It felt off to me at the time like it wasn’t an ideology coming directly from her or her husband. I don’t think that they’re doing it anymore, her kids go to public school and she worked hard to get Dems elected. So there is hope!

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Thank you for this follow up piece!

I am so full of rage right now.

I've mentioned this before but I'd love you to write a diet culture piece on the Weston A. Price Foundation (who also have promoted Joel Salatin's work) its adjacent diet -GAPs that claims to heal autism, schizophrenia and ADHD. There is an influencer who lives near me- Kate Pope, https://www.instagram.com/wildnutritionist/ Wild Nutritionist, who now has 90k followers whose only nutrition training is a she was a private chef but she claims her $300 feeding babies class will heal your baby forever of eczema who promotes the work of WAPF. I would imagine too she's going to be a homeschool mom because how do you eat when you are on a diet that only allows grass fed meat and no processed grains etc etc etc..... And her work feels so adjacent to 1000 Hours Outside which featured Katy Bowman's work- fellow PNW, and darling of the barefoot/minimalist shoe movement, as well as people like author of the poorly researched book on the postpartum time, Kimberly Ann Johnson (who Pope has collaborated with), and former birth worker.... and I feel like all of them abut up to the Free Birth Society (who in turn have so many like herbalist adjacent people who promote their own form of diet culture right with MLM/affiliate style you can heal yourself classes but have no idea how to rally their supporters for universal healthcare). Almost all of them profiting off science illiteracy and THE NATURE FALLACY!!!! And I suspect are all closeted TRUMPERS!!! How could they not be with the now MAHA movement I am waiting for them all to promote- cue vomit emotion. BUT NONE OF THESE PEOPLE ARE SPEAKING UP FOR FARM WORKERS!!! nor talking about the very real issue of Trump's tariffs on farmers, or systemic racism in farming and the history of 40 acres etc etc etc

I know because I am former organic farmhand, I helped run my local WAPF chapter where we got together to share sauerkraut and liver pate; I have drank my share of raw milk (and milked cows for a while), home birthed my babies, dressed them in wool etc etc and didn't vaccinate my first until he was almost ten. I still believe in home birth and organic food and cooking from scratch BUT I know them to exist in a context of access and privileges within a very oppressive political climate. I also went back to school got out from under my rock... and I started listening more to bipoc and queer and trans and fat and disabled friends/family/writers etc and just connecting things... noting how so much of the PNW new age/farmy/herbalist world I was in was rooted in a deep self hatred in a sense- the cult of aspiration/cult of perfection as well as the RAMPANT ORTHOREXIA THAT SURROUNDED me. I AM SO TIRED of it. And yet the more social systems are gutted the more American Individualism seems to spawn. B

ANYWAYS thank you also to my ADHD brain that has gone down these lanes of IG way too many times and is connecting way too many dots. I just want white ladies on the internet to stop lying and to be held accountable for once and just call a spade a spade- fess up to their thinly veiled diet culture and racism and their damn monotheism that wants to stomp out anything not able bodied and white.

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Oh WAPF, I was so entranced by this like a decade ago.

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I volunteer for a preschool at a New England conservation area that is outdoors the whole time— 3-4hours a morning outside classroom for 3 to 6 kids. It’s hard work for the kids and not for everyone. Parents have a seasonal clothing share to enable everyone to be dressed.

Honestly I can barely manage my morning once a week and my kids were outside endlessly because we bike commuted when they were small. It’s stressful keeping everyone warm enough even with good hand me downs. Being outside is not cheap!

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I was homeschooled until 6th grade, so between my sister and I, we were probably involved in the homeschool culture from 1995-2006? I definitely feel like the "1000 hours" thing is revamped from maybe previous homeschool stuff. It feels very familiar. We did a lot of homeschool programs with highly varying groups of people, and there was usually a group that thought basically any TV besides veggie tales was the work of the devil.

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Am i allowed to say I love Veggie Tales? The silly songs are classics.

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Oh I LOVE veggie tales. Veggie tales is the tits. Saying Spongebob and/or all TV is devil worship? FOH.

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I appreciate reading this post right now, because I am currently reading Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (as are other parents at our elementary school - it keeps getting brought up) and his discussion of the negative effects of the loss of the "play based childhood" is really getting to me. He doesn't say the play has to occur outside or anything, but the reality I find is that when my child is home, the iPad is very tempting for her, and when I'm home, my cell phone is very tempting for me. I don't need to look at it 5 times per hour and yet I find myself "just checking" if I received any text messages. I'm am therefore feeling the pressure for both of us to "get outside and play" and for me to organize this play to occur with other kids (because that's also part of Haidt's discussion). And we do both love being outdoors, camping is something we do once a month, usually with other families (and I'm the one that takes the burden of planning all this), and we genuinely enjoy it. But not feeling the pressure to be outside more each day is currently very hard!

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I recommend listening to the recent episode of If Books Could Kill on The Anxious Generation.

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This! Spoilers, The Anxious Generation is yet another “millennials are destroying maple syrup golf towels” the-kids-are-not-okay hand-wringing screed against the modern world.

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“maple syrup golf towels”

😂😂😂 what is this even

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I love Joel Salatin's work in Mother Earth News, but he is not someone I want in the federal government. Ick.

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