SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES

“A coot chick enters the world as a small, dusky ball of down with a neon-red bill and a brilliant orange-yellow ruff,” writes Ilene Klein. “Within hours of breaking free of its speckled egg, it paddles alongside its attentive parents. For the first few weeks, the young chick shelters among reeds and tall grasses, where both adults gently offer it small bites of plants and aquatic prey.” Read more about how coots help keep our waterways healthy. 

Let your hat do the talking! Bluedot Living’s organic baseball cap is embroidered with one of 13 planet-positive phrases — like “energy efficient” and “regenerative” — so you can wear your values out loud. Made from 100% organic cotton with a brass slider, it’s designed for everyday comfort, durability, and better impact all around.

“If you can’t take love to the stars, then what are we doing? Why would we even go? That’s why we send humans instead of robots sometimes. That’s why we have that first-hand witness. And so they’re going to go through a whole range [of emotions], just like we have, watching them. And I think that’s the whole point — that we can share that experience.”

Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator, in an interview, talking about Artemis II

• Glacier Tourism Is on Thin Ice

• Mindfulness in Your Garden

• Coots Are Cute, But They’re Also Caretakers

• Inside Awe: Bean & Bear Nature Jewelry

• At Home on Earth: Babies in the Wild and Necking Giraffes

• Artificial Intelligence, For Better or Worse

• Podcast: Madame Gandhi’s Music Fights Climate Change

• Do Fish Sing?

• From Top to Bottom: Broccoli

• How to Hike With Care

FEATURED STORIES

BIG IDEAS AND LOCAL CHANGEMAKERS

May 3 is National Garden Meditation Day. Connect to all your senses and engage with nature with this garden mindfulness exercise.

Bluedot Kitchen

The kitchen is where some of our biggest waste adds up — but it’s also where small changes go a long way. Our plastic-free kitchen collection features everyday essentials made from durable, low-impact materials like stainless steel, glass, and natural fibers — easy swaps for things you already use. From food storage to cleaning tools, these are simple upgrades designed to reduce waste without sacrificing function.

We launched At Home on Earth, our photo-based feature series, to share the breathtaking work of Yasmin Namini, who travels the world finding the beauty in wildlife and nature. We think the more you can be awe-struck at the world around us, the more likely you are to want to protect it. Among our favorite At Home on Earth pieces are this Return to Zimanga collection, which includes a video of giraffes necking (not as romantic as it sounds). We also love the Lemurs of Madagascar, and this Babies in the Wild gallery. 

For just $5/month, you can become a Bluedot Living member — investing in a healthier planet while unlocking real, everyday benefits for yourself. You'll enjoy 10% off every purchase from Bluedot Living Collection, our editor-curated marketplace of planet-friendly brands and products and you'll receive additional member-only store discounts each month. Many members recoup the cost of membership in just a handful of purchases from our store. From there, the savings continue — making sustainable living more accessible, affordable, and impactful.

Daily Dot: Is Awe the Key to Climate Action?

Illustration by Elissa Turnbull

Dear Reader,

Dot agrees with Willow Defebaugh, the editor-in-chief of Atmos, who suggests that making the awe that’s so abundant in our natural world more available to people could change how we view ourselves in this world and, therefore, how far we’ll go to protect it. (Studies show that even photos of our incredible natural world can evoke feelings of awe. Case in point: these spectacular photographs of America’s “champion trees.”) Read more here. 

BUY LESS/BUY BETTER: 
Bean & Bear Nature Jewelry

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Be a wildlife crossing guard! If you see a turtle or family of ducks trying to cross the road, pull over and (if it is safe to do so) stand guard to stop traffic as they make their way to the other side. Check out these tips for helping a turtle cross the road.

The Keep-This Handbook

Some of the most spectacular sights come at the end of a good hiking trail. To make sure trails stay open for everyone to enjoy, it’s important to follow trail etiquette rules. The Los Padres Forest Association shares these important rules for hiking with care. 

Just Say Awe

My toes and fingers were numb and I was beginning to regret leaving a warm bed long before sunrise for a so-far unrewarded search for Yellowstone National Park’s famously elusive wolves. Yellowstone teems with bison and elk, but wolves are often more rumor than real-life. Yet just hearing their howls gave me chills. The promise, however unlikely, of actually seeing one in the wild, no matter the bitter cold, spurred me on.

And as the sun sent its first rays over the mountain, we spotted them through a powerful scope. One white, one grey, and one black, stretched out on staggered ledges as if posing for a Wish You Were Here… postcard.

I was gobsmacked. Struck dumb for an hour after. Even years later, I remain transfixed by the memory. I had experienced a quintessential awe moment.

Most of us can recall moments in our lives when we were, truly, awed. When superlatives failed us and we could only gape in wonder. When we felt small yet integral to the larger world around us.

Awe had been largely ignored by science until around 2003, when Dacher Keltner, a Berkeley psychology professor, wondered if awe — an emotion that’s experienced across culture, geography, and time — could have an evolutionary purpose.

Jennifer Stellar, a student of Keltner’s and now a professor of psychology, discovered that positive emotions such as awe might also be correlated with better physical health. Chronically stressed people have a high level of proinflammatory cytokines that have been linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression, she says. Not only did Stellar’s research reveal that experiencing positive emotions was correlated with lower levels of these proinflammatory cytokines, it also showed that awe, more than all of the other positive emotions combined, had the most impact.  

There are two crucial components necessary to create awe, say researchers: The first is perceptual vastness, the feeling that what we’re seeing or experiencing is large in number or size or complexity or ability or even social, like fame, authority, or power.

The second is what researchers call “a need for accommodation” — but that’s more simply explained as our brains going “whoa…” Awe inspires us to change the way we think about something or the way we view the world.

My wolves, as I now call them, offered me that “whoa.” Suddenly my frozen feet didn’t matter. Instead I felt a part of something large and meaningful and breathtaking and truly awesome.

We appreciate the opportunity to bring you awe-inspiring stories. If you’d like to support our efforts by becoming a Bluedot member, we’d be awfully grateful. 

Enjoy the weekend, and we’ll see you next week.

– Leslie Garrett (and Emily Cain, Jamie Kageleiry, and Robin Jones)

Editors

Write us at editor@bluedotliving.com

Leslie Garrett has been covering climate stories for close to two decades.  She makes her home in Canada, west of Toronto. She’s still figuring out her favorite spot but it’s definitely near the water.

Jamie Kageleiry, a longtime magazine and newspaper editor from Martha’s Vineyard, says her favorite spot on earth is out on a kayak there, looking at birds.

Robin Jones is a Southern California native who served as an editor at Westways magazine for more than a decade. She lives in Long Beach and teaches journalism at Cal State Long Beach.

Emily Cain is a recent graduate of Cal State Long Beach, where she wrote and edited for the university’s award-winning magazine, DIG.

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