Toward a World that Works for Everyone
March 7, 2021 ‘The poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of disaster. Peace, not only the absence of war.’ But peace…can’t be imagined before it is made… ~Making Peace, Denise Levertov Miraculously, I just had a completely normal conversation with an old friend. I’m still marveling. How […]
February 27, 2021 There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel […]
February 26, 2021 I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. ~ Theodore Roethke, The Waking I’m very fond of the notion that we already know everything. That we can just open up some […]
February 25, 2021 My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring… ~Christina Rossetti I have an Armageddon closet, and no, it isn’t filled with guns. It has five-pound bags of flour, canned beans, soup. Salsa, canned fruit, bags of lentils, oatmeal and […]
February 24, 2021 For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. ~ William E. Stafford In my view, the only real upside to our enforced […]
February 22, 2021 If pain for peace prepares…~Emily Dickinson In my opinion, I shouldn’t have pain. Or at least, I shouldn’t have pain anymore. I’m speaking of physical pain. The ouch kind. As in, take a step, OUCH. Repeat repeat repeat. That walking pain gets old after a month, a year, several years. I can’t […]
February 20, 2021 Once upon a time, when the world was awash in common sense, courage, and camaraderie, there was pleasure to be had in the ordinary interactions of our lives. A routine trip to Costco could bring joy. “Oh, look! It’s nearly Spring, there are mystery-color iris bulbs in bulk. There are early Easter […]
February 19, 2021 Oh, the minefields we tread these days. I’m fresh back from a prickly coffee date with a very old friend, someone I’ve known nearly half my 60-something life. It actually wasn’t prickly until he brought up the V word. I had determined beforehand that I would not breathe a word about V, […]
Bill Gates and Neo-Feudalism: A Closer Look at Farmer Bill Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., February 18, 2021, The Defender (https://tinyurl.com/1j3th95g) Bill Gates has quietly made himself the largest owner of farmland in the United States. For a man obsessed with monopoly control, the opportunity to also dominate food production must seem irresistible. “Gates has a […]
February 14, 2021 I’ve never considered myself particularly to be a Patriot. Sure, singing the Star-Spangled Banner or God Bless America can bring a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat. But a Patriot with a capital P? Not on my radar. Until now. The other day I was thinking the usual […]
