Who are you? What are you here for?

I’ve run across a poem. I want to set it up for you. Some of you know I’ve been giving lots of consideration to the stage of development that follows Adulthood. To Elderhood. In part, it’s a selfish inquiry – what with watching my very own toes cross the line into that kind of age. But Elderhood has become much bigger with investigation. So big, it seems vital to every life no… Read More

Bring Your Best or Forfeit Your Country

In the January/February 1996 Harvard Business Review, 21 years ago, economist Paul Krugman ran out the ways countries are not businesses. The ways successful business people cannot automatically apply their skill sets to steering a nation and its economy. At the same time, he admitted that economists could not, without considerable extra expertise, run successful businesses. Krugman writes, “Let me begin with two examples of economic issues that I have found business executives… Read More

#NoDAPL – A Closer View from a Young Anishinaabe Woman

  More helpful words from another clear thinker. This time, a young woman. Kayla DeVault is an Anishinaabe, enrolled Shawnee. She lives on the Navajo nation where she is studying Diné studies at Diné College and working as a civil engineer for the Navajo Nation Division of Transportation. She is also a youth ambassador for Generation Indigenous who has attended meetings at the White House. Several weeks ago, she spoke before the leadership… Read More

A Protest Vote Decades in the Making

“White people elected Trump.” Over these last 10 days, these words are showing up everywhere. Mostly because they’re true. And white progressives actually helped. Among most white people I know who think of themselves as social progressives and who, like I, have had loads of access to privilege – aka education, careers, financial literacy, problems of identity that way outnumber problems of monetary survival – reactions to the election of Donald Trump… Read More

ONWARD

  Whether an economic concoction or general energetic weirdness – or both – or neither – life has a way of throwing curve balls that, at their most random and intense, can knock any of us way off our game. So what’s up? Some of the more esoteric among us are in remarkable agreement that might be summarized: The energy is super intense these past months, and really weird. My prescient mentor,… Read More

Slow Down. Learn. Wake Up and Do What ONLY YOU Can Do to Save the World.

Brussels is in lockdown following explosions that killed dozens last night. ISIS is claiming responsibility. This morning, The Dallas Morning News reported on a Frisco, TX football coach who resigned in January after threatening black and Latino athletes: “You see that rope over there, you see that tree back there? I’m going to hang you in that tree. I’m going to hang you by your toes.” And throughout the day, the most hostile presidential race in my… Read More

Report from Afghanistan

Guest Blog:  Zaher Wahab, Ph,D, zwahab@auaf.edu.af NOTE:  This just in from my mentor, friend and colleague, Zaher Wahab.  This is Zaher’s second guest blog to this site.  He continues as the director of the graduate program in Education with American University of Afghanistan (AUAF).  While still a professor in the graduate school at Lewis & Clark College, Zaher gave years of service to the Ministry of Education in Afghanistan.  That led him, upon retirement,… Read More

Rebuilding Native Nations – A non-Native Perspective

  For the past 10 years, I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with Tribal Leadership — elected and traditional leaders of Native American Tribes in the U.S. and Canada.  This work has provided more opportunities to learn than I could  have imagined or even anticipated as a woman raised non-Indian in the U.S. The way I was raised to make sense of the world has lots of overlap with the way… Read More

Children at the Border

A few updates from Scott: 7.July – Thanks Mary. I am going to be here two more weeks. It is quieter here so far today. The plane load left and the numbers are down from yesterday. I met Caesar this morning, he is by himself, 11 years old and was brought over by a coyote from Mexico. I have an app on my iPhone that helps me communicate with the kids. Since it is… Read More

High Summer & Highways – Solar Power in Action

  It’s hot.  It’s summer. Weather in the world has been, as we all know, weird.  Some people continue to spin this weirdness as normal, of no concern — circumstances that require no response on the part of the humans who live it. My friends Jon Waterhouse and Mary Marshall spend a good deal of time with indigenous people who live climactic weirdness.  The Elders among them have been noting alarming changes… Read More