Blog

How we appear, quivering
On the book ‘Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot’ by Kyla Wazana Tompkins. We have ‘a wish to look directly at what is facing us,’ the oncoming blob, the mess we travel with and against.

GOP seeks to cut funding to U.S. hospitals supporting gender transition
Reporting by Jael Holzman asks if Democrats will allow it. If Democrats infight (‘bullying’ each other re: ‘cultural’ issues) and stop talking about the economy, they may lose even harder next time, says a pollster.

The anti-trans movement protested outside the U.S. Supreme Court
The Telegraph reports on a 17-year-old’s identity without asking them. Someday they may be ready to talk to sympathetic people who care about them, maybe including responsible journalists. It’s fine if they’re trans.

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.