Mentor of the Highest Order – A Precious Elder has Passed

  An hour ago, this text message from my dear friend, Charles Hudson: Roy has passed. In immediate loving memory, I am reposting this blog from October 10, 2014. Before you read this, though, I want you to know this man is one of the very few about whom no one can exaggerate upon his death. Roy Sampsel is truly a Great Tribal Leader. Daily, he touched the world and its people… Read More

My Nephew’s Body will be Buried Today

“It will always be important to have a community of people who support each other and work together for the struggle.  Yes, for the struggle for all people.” Bruce McQuakay Saturday Memorial Day weekend, 2017 Seven years ago, on Fathers’ Day, Bruce McQuakay and I saw one another at the annual Delta Park pow wow. Bruce, who described himself as Tlingit and Apache, was not a father yet – that was still… Read More

An Elephant on Fire

From time to time, a bad habit bursts into flame. Most bad habits are, by definition, world views and behaviors that don’t necessarily play well. But, for the most part, they stay at a level low enough to be ignored. Chewing on fingernails, for example. Interrupting is another one. Some of these bad habits arise from social agreements about the worth of people that just aren’t fair – that erase dignity. And… Read More

Death, a Rainbow & Ethical Journalism

Yesterday, my little sister, Nancy Jones, posted another of her brilliant and honest posts as a frequent contributor to Daily Kos.  Her writing was centered on her friend Zot Lynn Szurgot. On September 7, Zot, one of my sister’s nearest and dearest friends was killed on a Georgia highway when a semi ran a stop and plowed into her car. She was just through another good day on site for completing a solar… Read More

Heeding Lessons from a Small Business

Last week I sat with the staff and management of a mountain town cafe – a group I’ve had the chance to work with as they have moved into the big center of transition. Without knowing it, this small organization and the people who sustain it are inspiring models of what showing up to change looks like. For 14 years, the Cafe Regis has served the community of Red Lodge, Montana as… Read More

On Robots and Listening

  As ever, change is afoot. Autumn is heading for winter, for example. Starbucks is well into shifting its holiday paperware (the plain red paper cups a significant and publicized offense to a few “Christmas-only” types). Oceans are heating up, children are growing taller and Artificial Intelligence is animating robots to replace workers around the globe. There’s much more – and too much of it troubling. But you know that. So, this… 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

Standing in Wildfire

Yesterday, my husband Gary and I began a drive to Montana.  We live there parts of the year.  Just outside a really small community tucked into muscular folds of the Intermountain West.  With water and trees, with big mammals like Elk, Moose and Bear – with Eagles and Hawks, and this past spring, with a mama hummingbird nested just outside our window. It was early when we left Portland – the place… Read More

Cycles – Variation on an Easter Blog

Last week I had the great opportunity to be in Yellowstone – the first National Park in the world.  Yellowstone stands out for loads of reasons – but recently I’ve learned another feature of its distinction.  The park makes up over 20% of the largest generally intact ecosystem in our planet’s temperate zone. All of these are fun facts.  But the realities that support them have gained particular significance to me from working alongside… Read More

50 Years after Bloody Sunday – Where is Elderhood?

  ANSWER:  It’s in every one of us. Really. Even in the headliners criticized by the vast and varied media.  Overt or latent, Elderhood ™ is in you and it’s in me.  It’s in Obama.  It’s in Boehner.  It’s in Netanyahu. And, most surely, Elderhood ™ is in John Lewis and each of the original Selma foot soldiers gathered today to remember Bloody Sunday – the horror they survived 50 years ago… Read More