At a community input meeting, I met a young journalist from the local university who recently emailed me, and invited me to share my thoughts for an article she is working on about land development and new construction through a lens of environmental impacts. Now, THAT is a topic to kick my mind into…
Tag: OOTD
Speech can help to simplify that which overwhelms.
It is heartening how frequently the Green New Deal resolution is featuring into mass news media conversations. Despite a tendency for news outlets to court a questionable sense of balance and objectivity and therefore inevitably focus on the extent to which the prospect is a political winner or not, the fact that the resolution is…
Our definition of progress could reorient us to a vision of life.
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…
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…
“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…
The more we lock away, the greater the cost our humanity pays.
New music can satisfy even those among us who harbor suspicions about the power of consumerism to sully mass-market artistic creations. I’m specifically thinking of “This is America” by Childish Gambino/Donald Glover, the video for which exemplifies the intensity of living with eyes so open to self and world that those observing cannot resist being…
Our instructions for Democracy strive to link justice with mercy.
The Declaration of Independence is a pro-immigrant document. Among the complaints against the royal monarchy: “He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.” As we…
It’s likely time to decide which would actually be missed more: birdsong or a digitized ping?
Just when I was ready to admit the defeat of my free will, I have happily come to realize the stealth manner in which my smartphone addictions have exponentially decreased! I had been intending for some time to rid myself of the attachment, only to find myself once again devoting hours to this screen, despite…
Every individual action marks the culmination of choices made by the masses.
Each time I throw something in the garbage, particularly plastic wrappings, my heart sinks with dismay and guilt. So I wrote poem about it: aching reproach of silenced heart as hands release another piece of refuse newly named into eternity contained by plastic bags cinched so nothing disintegrates to grow the weighted piles with…
Insight/Outfit of the Day 