Blog

Do we choose to be who we are?
And what, by the way, is choice? If you can’t snap your fingers to change, how do you change? What do we ask people to do when we ask them to change? Why should anyone change?

Green birds are birds
I point this out because you asked. Look at these bird friends. Both are green. They’re both birds! Neither is confused. Neither is upset. And your mind will really be blown when you realize—

Yes, Virginia, there are brainworms
And some conspiracy theorists do have them. Yes, Virginia, there are brainworms. They exist as certainly as transphobia exists and abounds attempting to morally mandate trans people out of existence.

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.