I recently attended a parks&recreation public input session for one reason only: to firmly state my conviction that mowing large swaths of grass down to a stub is a wasted opportunity to restore a fragment of much-needed habitat to insect populations. I allowed myself to feel free to utter such phrases as “at this late…
Victory is a measure of how the many care.
Ah, America. Our election came and went, and I just barely evaded a full fledged panic attack. Not as good as I’d hoped, nor as bad as I’d feared. I am sorry and disappointed that we the people seem so predictably split by “party,” while the very wealthy merrily and largely unchecked go about despoiling…
Our senses are overwhelmed by bombast, and ever awaiting humble, small showings of the eternal.
I was glad to see more people using rakes than leaf blowers today. The neighborhood retained the peace of autumnal air as it sounds with a soft scratch of leaves brushing one another in in their glorious, colorful, shifted forms. Our ears likely ache for the subtleties of sounds found constantly in the natural world….
Lessons of truth ring clearest among the true.
It is a consistent relief, to plan lessons for elementary school aged children, knowing that I am permitted to foreground morality as an influential element to literature. More precisely, I need not worry and fret over whether I personally appear to be supporting a moral take-away. I need not agonize over how not to reveal…
The heart is attuned,where so ever our hands are cast.
I cannot help but cast my wondering psyche forward to a week from now, and weigh the oddly similar possibilities of crushing despair or overwhelming pride. Irredeemable, or redeemed. Undeniable weight. This election marks a deep, profound reckoning. People in America: shall we together give ourselves a chance to mend the wrongs and heal the…
Reductive thinking is another name for the inescapable fact of our utter dependency.
As per usual, I accumulate small actions aimed toward a hoped-for restoration. Restoration of rivers, our Union, our true independence. In a public comment direct toward EPA head Andrew Wheeler: The intended beneficiaries of our Constitutional responsibility are clearly stated to include “our Posterity.” This means all future generations must be taken into account as…
Sometimes, being the titular boss requires acting in assertive accordance. (They are supposed to be working for us)
I make the effort to regularly write to my respective legislatures of House and Senate here in Michigan, as a fairly simple way to flex my responsibilities of citizenship in between election cycles. I maintain a gracious tone as a general rule, as my hope is to actually achieve some small measure of notice or…
Let’s not be fooled into distrusting one another, we who already share our reliance upon the living land.
Hope is a necessity, for all who look to try to live by caring about the griefs of the world. Love is what senses the possibility of goodness. Among the best of human traits, both love and hope eventually require the certainty of mattering. Of making a positive, observable difference. The functioning ecosystem is our…
We must protect our capacity to see one another among the many.
The other day in a gas station, I experienced an uncomfortably familiar deflation of hope and happiness upon reading the array of headlines at the newspaper stand. As is often the current events case, the distressing sense of the surreal was second only to the distressing sense that this is all starting to meet expectations,…
“Defining the terms” can be a worthy thought exercise in self-knowing.
As a lifelong admirer of alliteration who is also beholden to the prize of brevity, I strive for the proper naming of all /most matters. The range of the challenge to do so is vast – as appellations try to suit the single and the plural, the actual and the concept. As a PhD I…
Insight/Outfit of the Day 