{"id":38035,"date":"2025-12-23T11:52:55","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T11:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/?p=38035"},"modified":"2025-12-23T11:52:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T11:52:59","slug":"building-hope-after-winter-solstice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/?p=38035","title":{"rendered":"Building hope after winter solstice!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As we start the first longer days of earth&#8217;s annual cycle, I think important to build and share hope &#8230; for each of us, our community and our planet. Good planets are hard to find, they say &#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ray Bradbury&#8217;s reminder is perfect, &#8220;Action is hope. There is no hope without action.&#8221;\u00a0&#8230; Greta Thunberg has said &#8220;Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the easiest acts to build positive change is to spend every dollar with intent. Know the business you are supporting, the impact of the product&#8217;s creation and destruction, and above all, why you are giving that dollar to somebody else. Small cottage \/ garage grown businesses are my favorite (<a href=\"https:\/\/garagegrowngear.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Garage Grown Gear<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I call it voting with your pocketbook&#8230; and you can do it <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">every<\/span> day, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">multiple<\/span> times a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A small business owner, who I greatly admire, recently <a href=\"https:\/\/coalitionsnow.substack.com\/p\/exhausted-and-disheartened\">posted<\/a> on the state of cottage small businesses in the outdoor recreation sector. At first read, it&#8217;s pretty depressing how hard small businesses have to work to compete against corporate monopolistic giants. But, she actually gives us actions to take to help build hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong>&nbsp;Make a list of the small businesses you want to see thrive and keep their doors open in 2026 and beyond.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>2.&nbsp;<\/strong>Find a way to financially support them if you haven\u2019t already this holiday season. Can you pick up a $10 gift card, send business their way, or dedicate your next purchase to their shop?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>3.<\/strong>&nbsp;Get creative. There is no return to \u201cnormal.\u201d This moment demands that we do things differently. It won\u2019t be easy, and it might sting a little, but together we can build a sustainable, equitable future. We have to believe in it, and we have to work at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coalitionsnow.substack.com\/p\/exhausted-and-disheartened\">https:\/\/coalitionsnow.substack.com\/p\/exhausted-and-disheartened<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t have to be in outdoor recreation; it could be your local grocer, clothing, pub, etc &#8230; spend your $ with intent to help us all build hope. Good planets are hard to find &#8230; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-attachment-id=\"38037\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/?attachment_id=38037\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/goatbells.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?fit=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1536,1024\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"image\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/goatbells.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/goatbells.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-38037\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/goatbells.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/goatbells.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/goatbells.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/goatbells.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?w=1536&amp;ssl=1 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we start the first longer days of earth&#8217;s annual cycle, I think important to build and share hope &#8230; for each of us, our community and our planet. Good planets are hard to find, they say &#8230; Ray Bradbury&#8217;s reminder is perfect, &#8220;Action is hope. There is no hope without action.&#8221;\u00a0&#8230; Greta Thunberg has&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[71,70],"class_list":["post-38035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-garage-grown-gear","tag-hope"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/goatbells.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/PC110454.jpg?fit=2048%2C1536&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38035"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38042,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38035\/revisions\/38042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}