marigold mag gen 2

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Generation 2 of Marigold Magazine.

Over the life of this project collecting and observing marigolds, from hybrids to crop wild relatives and everybody in between, I have found that the marigold’s most enduring quality is its wildness. Plant domestication began about 10,000 years ago bringing about arguably the single greatest change in the lives of Neolithic humans. Domestication resulted in changes to the physiology of plants and animals. A deep and lasting relationship, far larger than simply a partnership, came into existence. Something more like a loose network than a hierarchy was developed among plants and people and continues to exist in much the same way today. This relational world is open to daily discovery by the curious, the observant, and the humble.

Domestication occurs on a spectrum. There are wild plants, there are domesticated ones that require humans to manage their surroundings for them to survive, and there are many many more in between. Incipient domesticates are the ones that are still linked up with their wild ancestors and are navigating changing human biotic and abiotic systems, flirting with dependency. There are marigolds and human companions across the entire spectrum.

Mesoamericans domesticated marigolds at least 700 years ago. They also domesticated many of the key food crops we rely on for deliciousness and calories today: tomatoes, chiles, avocados, chocolate, maize, squash and beans to list a few. The crops of today often look different from their wild ancestors. They are grown in very different conditions, often controlled to the degree possible for pest and environmental pressure. the oldest depiction of a marigold however (found in Book 11 of the Florentine Codex) still looks nearly exactly like the one that is widely cultivated today.

Marigolds figured out how to rein in their faculties and make the most of their wildness— wildness that gives them resilience, The ability to push through climate disaster and colonial intervention, to spread, drop, travel across borders and seas and build their way into our spiritualities.

As I write this the United States government is experiencing a rapid shift to authoritarianism. Several career staff at agencies that keep the wheels of the country turning are being fired. Among the programs that stand to be destaffed are the projects of the United States Department of Agriculture including the Germplasm Resources Information Network and other repositories keeping alive invaluable genetic material including landraces and crop wild relatives. Seed saving has always been a form of resistance but it is more political today than ever. At the same time as this loss of public information, thousands of community, labor, and faith leaders have been protesting violent immigration raids across California, where the Marigold Society is headquartered. These operations—carried out by ICE, CBP, DHS, and the FBI—have led to the arrest of over 200 individuals across Southern California. Parents have been separated from their children, workers arrested at their worksites, and communities terrorized. The current administration has escalated its aggressive immigration enforcement by deploying the California National Guard and U.S. Marines and using militarized tactics against civilians. The federal government has also denied immigrants basic due process, including access to legal representation and access for members of Congress to inspect detention centers—a clear violation of the law.

One thing remains inalienable. The flow of genetic material across the spectrum of domestication has not stopped, and likely it will never stop. Every single crop on Earth is the product of a Native person cultivating it and passing it through thousands of years of human survival and yet plant genetics as a field has only earnestly been frontloading the human geography of plant genetic evolution for the last 20 or so years. Many of our systems are in collapse. We are also at numerous beginnings, and with so much more information than ever before. Our ancestors were not to be tamed. Communication with those epigenetic markers allows us to remain in control of our destinies in and out of empire but requires daily communion with the facts of life. Shattering problems are all around us, and yet we have the same abilities of those who came before us, to sink our teeth into the earth and hold fast to the place where we are sown, navigating threats and building defenses into our bones.

I welcome you into the wide communication channel that is the marigold. Here are works created by those who have found themselves there, in conversation with the things about them they are yet learning. In no particular order, they are

Adrianna Alejo Sorondo-Karianna Ford- Alina Belen- JosÉ G Gonzalez- Elexis Padrón- Anchal Bibra- Dayanita Ramesh- Annie Robinson- Eric Villalobos

Eric Villalobos, Strange Breed. Graphic designs for the marigold Society. plants and chairs

Karianna Ford (The Waxwing Studio).

Mariam and Marigolds

Made with the sunshine in Alaska, Denaina/Sugpiak lands. June 2024

Mariam and Marigolds Is a reminder to anyone feeling weary by the news cycle and disheartened by the inability to make connections and impactful change within their communities that our commitments to ourselves and each other are a devotional practice. The dream work, the spiritual work is as integral to life on earth as food and water. Marigolds are evocative of life and death cycles and so is hope. We lose it, we find it again. We grieve, we find relief. When we pass on into the spirit world, our loved ones dream and pray for our spirit, our future as a good ancestor or as a marigold on earth.  Mariam reminds us that we can devote ourselves to the future in our day to day lives too. 

Elexis Padrón. Marigolds, Intaglio print, 2015, somewhere on the California Coast

I am still acutely aware of how quickly one can cross the line from life to death.  The world reminds me every day, on every level--personal, community, national, global. What am I supposed to do with all this death? It becomes heavy when it carries the legacy of violence, as it often does in these times. I talk about it with my loved ones (usually as bewildered as I), and my therapist, I write in my journal, I make art, I mourn, I burn things at my altar (candle wicks, copal, herbs), I close my eyes, I plant seeds (literal and metaphorical), I inhale deeply the scent of soil, of sea salt, of incense, of marigolds--fresh and dried. I do my best to honor the memories, to make sure the stories will not be forgotten. This is the role I know how to fulfill.

Alina Belen, From Their cempasúchil Diary. 2024. Mixed Media Collage

Ponte Suchil by José G González

Growing up me decían “ponte trucha”
Y “camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente”
Pero more and more nowadays
lo que tengo en la mente
Es
Ponte súchil

Como cempasuchil

Mira, keep both eyes open
Pero también the third one
As you step through the magical realism
Of being more than mortal
And embrace the portal
Que te ofrecen estas florecitas

So ponte suchil

Y sí tiras placa
Let it be in the form of a little spellcasting
for broadcasting
Con los ancestors
Que te dicen ponte las pilas
Y mira
Ponte súchil porque es útil
To know about decolonizing
Pero to do it es otro pedo

So lean into the lesson
And listen to the power of the flower

To taproot your way
Into a little prophetic dreaming
And weaving
Aligned
Across place and time
That's not a line
Pero más un caracol

Y está florecita
Color de sol
Marigold

Offers you this: Be the ofrenda you wish to see in the world

Ponte súchil

Dayanita Ramesh, Oil on Canvas. 2024

Anchal Bibra. mixed media paper collage.

I made This during a time of deep grief, trying to find my footing after two years of severe depression post-divorce. It’s about the winding ways we can shed our skins and find liberation. 

Adrianna Alejo Sorondo. Left: Untitled Right: Lucky Finger Olmeca Blues
Adrianna works in textile, clay, and paint. this is her first time exploring digital drawing

- for Magnolia, and the future way of the world, by Annie Robinson

I dreamt marigolds can make gasoline
And somewhere in Polk county
A museum holds the history of marigold’s many uses for a collaborative community-
Big drums of golden petals dripping to create fuel for a trade economy.

Somehow it’s true.
In the long ago, and a future we beckon near.
Somewhere this is possible -
When we’ve forgotten our drives to be extraordinary or on top.
When we’ve released the fear of not enough to go around.

I told you about it, the dream.
And we laughed because so many people remember you as Marigold instead of my spicy flower, Magnolia.
We lay out naked in the seldom winter sunlight
Charge our batteries,
Slow down our rhythms,
After a dip in frigid water.

Let’s make a fire together.
Let’s embrace winter and the quiet.
Let’s gather with no expectations,
And remember other ways of moving through the world.

- for Magnolia, and the future way of the world

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