Climate — Listening to know for sure

I have a friend in South Dakota who lives in a town that flooded last month.  It was near completely under water.  I have another friend who lives in Akiak, Alaska who told me about the tundra taking on a smell, thawing for the first time in his life or in the lives of his ancestors who have lived there for many thousand years.  Then there was the photo my dad managed to… Read More

Common Courtesy

It’s sunny in Portland OR and already in the 60’s at 12:24 p.m. on Saturday.  People are out everywhere and I’m walking west, nearing the center of the Steel Bridge, one of the ten bridges spanning the Willamette River and operated by the Port of Portland.  The water level is very high – highest since the flood of 1996.  As I walk onto the Steel Bridge, I’m guessing the bridge operators are… Read More

“I’m not done yet.”

My friend Murry is in a protracted conversation with esophageal cancer.  He knows all too well that his condition didn’t come from nowhere. The president spoke yesterday to matters in the Middle East – to the changes signified with the public uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.  He spoke to Israel and Palestine– to that protracted conversation.  We all know that none of that came from nowhere. Today I took a photo of… Read More

“Lead,” She Said.

If we’re ever going to begin to grapple with the problems we have collectively,we’re going to have to move back the veil and deal with each other on a more human level. Wilma Mankiller (1945 – 2010) Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Today I sat with two Elders in my community – two Grandmothers.  Both of these designations, elder and grandmother, carry ambiguous valence in a culture (mine) so taken with… Read More

Libya, a First Draft, and Pondering Truth

Back in the 2000, my friend Amy Schutzer published a novel she titled Undertow http://www.calyxpress.org/books.html.  She considered another title:  What Version of the Truth Do We Tell? I’ve just finished the first draft of 100 Voices:  Americans Talk about Change. Really!  The first draft toward publication in September, 2011.  That’s amazing enough, but the reason I mention it here has to do with truth.  It has to do with the incredible candor… Read More

Intersections

Walking south on NE 28th Ave. under my new umbrella (the other one blew out in yesterday’s storm), I came to the corner at Flanders St.  A man in full raingear – the heavy orange plastic stuff – stood on tiptoes behind an enormous canvass sign.  The sign was as orange as the man.  Although a square, it was situated as a diamond to warn oncoming traffic of the roadwork ahead. The… Read More

Gratitude and Coherence

“Often I can hardly hear what another says because of the internal noise that goes on in the judging of them.” David Brandon Zen and the art of helping. I’m reading about rhetoric – about the way words are used both to make sense of and to form our realities.  I could be reading a novel or watching a movie.  It is after all, the Thanksgiving holiday.  Still, I’m captivated by the… Read More

Working Change

“We have an amazing work ethic in this country. We’re not all working in the same direction, and that’s normal to some point.  You’re not supposed to always be working in harmony, but I hope the work ethic and the sense of shared humanity in that continue.” Lena This morning in the New York Times, Paul Krugman, an esteemed if controversial economist, forecast again the third Great Depression for the U.S. economy… Read More

Oil Spills, Financial Crises and the EX:Change Voices Who Will Inherit It All

This morning I had tea in a coffee shop in the Oakhurst neighborhood of Decatur, GA.  Yep, back in Georgia.  In fact, as I type, I’m sitting in front of the courthouse in the photo atop the February 27, 2009 blog entry from the EX:Change Road Trip (EX:C blog, The Heart of Dixie).  Family lives here.  I’m visiting.  Thus tea in Oakhurst. I sat at the table with a grandmother, two moms… Read More

Sustainability and Joy

3-10-2009 11th & E, NW Washington, DC A small pastel bouquet of balloons – green, pink, yellow, white – just floated toward the sky between the Hotel Harrington and the ESPN Building. I can’t tell where they came from, and now can no longer see where they’ve gone. Pastel balloons don’t really fit here. Compared with the communities I’ve visited across the South, more people here are wearing black and walking quickly…. Read More