From the Editor: April 2025

Jessica Hunter

My grandma Rosalie always said, "three snows on the daffodils." It was her way of tempering her own expectations of any kind of real spring before at least mid-May in Erie and belying her own impatience. And I've largely found this sage wisdom to be accurate — even though every fiber of my being wants to get out and start planting things in the dirt, I must hold back. We are due for at least one more snow on those daffodils.

As the state of the union continues to nose-dive, and as our newsfeed fills up with some fresh hell upon the hour, there are things, like the ecosystems of our own backyards, that we desperately need to focus on in order to ground ourselves. The current administration wants us to despair; they want us to feel overwhelmed; they want us to give up. Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget literally said, "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so."

The rage that we feel at thinking that our local environment could actually go back to some version of Bill Murray's 1977 parody "Lake Erie swill," as if that is a good thing for our economy, can absolutely feel overwhelming. The politicians attempting to roll back regulations that give citizens the right to clean air and water (you know, to, like, live on planet Earth) are the real villains, make no mistake. And absolutely no one wants this. Even the most loyal area Trump supporters cannot say that, in their heart of hearts, they prefer a lakefront with a chemical haze and unusable, polluted beaches. This month, Erie environmentalist and 2024 40 Under 40 honoree Jenny Tompkins unpacks what's happening with the EPA and how that will negatively affect our local waterways and way of life, and what we can do to combat it.

To attempt to avoid that aforementioned overwhelm, let's look to our own figurative backyards, shall we? What are we doing regionally to combat the current administration's war against a healthy planet? Within this issue, you'll find a story about an inner-city grassroots bike co-op, working to get affordable bikes into the hands of anyone who wants or needs one — simultaneously reducing our carbon footprint, recycling discarded bikes, and improving our cardiovascular health. You'll also find a story about a market that is radically local — featuring local and regional produce and products, as well as Erie's first licensed shared-use kitchen. You'll find a column about a nearby maple farm, and how you can take some of your food consumption needs into your own hands. You'll find a story about lesser known parks, hiking trails, and green spaces in the Erie area — for when you desperately need a moment away from your newsfeed.

And there's always your literal backyard (whatever that may look like) calling for you to care for it and nurture our own, personal, natural resources. Doing so allows for some amount of control over your environment as well as providing a necessary disconnect from that which aims to overwhelm and exhaust us. Just don't plant any tender shoots until after those daffodils suffer one more time. You can be sure to thank Grandma Rosalie later.