Blog

The ‘But why do trans…?’ questions often just ask about being human
Of course humans will disagree with and disappoint each other. So where are we going together? What’s the ultimate goal of all our values, judgments, opinions, discernments? What’s the end game we’re playing? Where are we going with all this change?

Then they came for the taxpayers
Not the tax evaders. The taxpayers. There is nothing we can do to earn our place in this system. The system is unfair, and it will come for everyone in due course.

Why was Palestinian student leader Mahmoud Khalil detained?
The meaning of ‘shalom’ I know is ‘peace.’ A political arrest isn’t peaceful. President Trump aims to take away freedoms to speak against injustice. He’s testing his power to defund Columbia University and arrest its students.

Climate change, predicted (three decades ago)
Returning to an environmental classic: ‘The Ages of Gaia’ by James Lovelock. We don’t yet know what it will be like when the forests are gone. But we should live in a way that prevents this outcome. We must support our own survival.

The Industrial Revolution: All of it has to change again
Trains represent where we’ve been & where we‘ll go next. Steel, aluminum, concrete; fossil fuels; electric light; transportation, communication, refrigeration, medicine. Do we know what we have to change?

Tadpoles teach us in Kern’s ‘Real Sugar’
Stories for those who feel ‘fragile about frogs’. We can grieve “all the frogs that aren’t.” Some of our stories going forward, though, have to be about the frogs that are. Which will those be?

How we’re here now: Poems of California
Poems in ‘Rift Zone’ and ‘Last West’. We know in our bones what being is. Because we are. ‘To be’ is to exist in a place, to grow, to break off, to feel how this ties us to past and future.

We know who’s responsible for orange sky
We need to hold them accountable. It’s Exx-smog and Shell-smoke. The big orange cats must be held accountable, and there’s more than one. Each of us has a role to play.

Designing a town people can get around? Repeat this exercise.
Anna Zivarts reminds us how we can take an hour to try harder. Sometimes we lack empathy for each other’s transportation needs and preferences. We have no idea because we haven’t stopped to try.