Deeper Listening | Nov 2025

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Neil Zusman. Deeper Listening | Nov 2025: Family — slowed observational study. (9:00) HD video; 4K master available on request.

Neil Zusman. Out Walking | Nov 2025: Family — realtime source. (3:03) HD video; 4K master available on request.

Out Walking | Nov 2025: Family

8 minutes read time.

November begins with Rosie’s memorial.

Did you see that? It’s hard to imagine. She was such a part of our life. She always wanted to have a family.

The moon and clouds resonate with such sadness.

Mix restaurant closes.

A flashing light becomes a tree.

Dandelion hair.

Wind rustling the reeds.

Iron balls at night.

Hank Roberts looks down.

Sign at The Jewelbox: What do you call a dog magician? A labracadabrador.

Color Center — Owego, etc. Luncheon reunion.

Dave Jones looks at his phone and he dissolves into the ripples on the inlet.

Around town, out to the lake as usual.

Carl Sagan appears in the local paper:

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage ★ Collected PBS Science Series on Archive.org

The bark of a tree turns into a high-voltage line.

Seed pods and dandelions in the wind.

Rust and reframing. I am standing in cables.

Spinning globes and windmills.

Thanksgiving.

Billy and Marci dance to “Our Love Is Here to Stay.”

“The movies that we know.”

Synth session in my studio.

“Radio is the playground of coincidence”
— S. Vowell

Artwork embedded into the sidewalk outside WSKG in Ithaca.

November carries public grief and cosmic scale along the same path. Rosie’s memorial, the closing of Mix, the moon behind clouds, the lake, the reeds, the paper, the studio, the sidewalk, the old friends, the jokes, the dancing — none of these cancel one another out. They gather.

In the realtime source, the month moves from memorial to town to lake to reunion to Thanksgiving to studio. In the slowed version, these moments begin to resonate across distance. A phone becomes inlet ripples. Tree bark becomes a high-voltage line. A flashing light becomes a tree. Seed pods, dandelions, spinning globes, windmills, and cables all become ways of seeing transmission.

Carl Sagan’s apple pie opens the scale outward. To begin from scratch, you must invent the universe. November seems to understand this. Grief is local, but it is never only local. A restaurant closes. A friend is remembered. A dog joke passes through the room. Someone dances. Someone plays. Someone looks down. The lake keeps receiving the sky.

November does not separate sadness from coincidence. It lets them walk together.

I sign my name at the end with golden triangles.

The merit of this bird’s strain is in its freedom from all plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, “There is one of us well, at any rate,”–and with a sudden gush return to my senses.
Henry David Thoreau. Walking. As published in Atlantic Monthly, 1862.

If a waterbody is classified as WOTUS, specific Clean Water Act programs apply to it, meaning landowners, developers, or industries must acquire federal permits before dredging, filling, or discharging pollutants into them. Most recently, the definition of WOTUS (Water Bodies of the United States) was significantly narrowed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA.

EPA / Lee Zeldin

EPA frames November as a month of delivery, travel, cleanup, regulatory clarity, and measurable accomplishment. The agency presents Zeldin’s fifty-state tour, WOTUS reform, Tijuana River sewage updates, uranium mine-waste cleanup, and oil-and-gas deadline relief as evidence that environmental protection can move faster when paired with regulatory certainty and economic growth.

Emphasis

Zeldin visiting all 50 states and hearing directly from communities
Three hundred claimed environmental wins under the Trump EPA
WOTUS clarity for farmers, ranchers, landowners, and businesses
Tijuana River sewage crisis progress and public updates
Uranium mine-waste cleanup on Navajo Nation land
Extended compliance deadlines for oil and gas operators

Key rhetoric

“Fix everything”
“Environmental wins”
“Common-sense definition”
“Regulatory certainty”
“Cooperative federalism”
“Realistic timelines”

Foregrounded

EPA foregrounds motion and administrative control: travel, listening, milestones, cleanup starts, public updates, statutory obligations, state and tribal authority, and rule changes presented as practical protections for water, land, energy production, and local economies.

Minimized or absent

The climate context of oil-and-gas relief, the ecological consequences of narrowing Clean Water Act jurisdiction, the international meaning of U.S. climate absence, and the possibility that “certainty” for regulated industries may reduce protection for wetlands, waterways, and future publics.

Guardian / Dharna Noor

Guardian reporting frames November through COP30 and public reckoning: the Trump administration stays away from global climate negotiations, state and local leaders attempt to represent U.S. climate action, scientists and vulnerable nations warn of escalating risk, and climate journalism itself becomes part of the accountability story.

Emphasis

No high-level U.S. federal presence at COP30
State and local U.S. leaders filling a diplomatic vacuum
Just-transition finance failures for workers and communities
Warnings about fossil-fuel dependence and climate tipping points
Criticism of Trump’s anti-climate rhetoric from U.S. leaders
Major U.S. broadcasters’ absence from COP30 coverage

Key rhetoric

Absence
Resist
Rebuke
Expose
Transition
Account

Foregrounded

Guardian coverage foregrounds what official domestic accomplishment language leaves out: international climate obligations, climate finance, fossil-fuel influence, media responsibility, vulnerable nations, and the role of states, cities, workers, and activists when federal climate leadership is withdrawn.

Minimized or absent

EPA’s vocabulary of wins, clarity, certainty, and speed is not treated as a complete public record. It is placed beside climate diplomacy, global accountability, and the question of what happens when the United States claims domestic environmental progress while absenting itself from international climate responsibility.

The deeper contrast

EPA presents November as a month of visible governance: Zeldin travels, the agency counts wins, WOTUS is narrowed into a “clear” rule, cleanup proceeds, wastewater projects are tracked, and oil-and-gas operators receive more time. The Guardian frames the same month as a crisis of public presence: who shows up for climate negotiations, who is missing, who pays for transition, who speaks for vulnerable communities, and who records the climate story when official power steps away.