Well, it was “fun” while it lasted! Sure, we tried to impose our will on the world and render the biosphere uninhabitable… But everyone makes mistakes now and then. Still, despite the judgment by Blue-Ribbon titans that we fell short of the mark (mainly because we had made so many marks that it was
Wrangling with the Final Frontier There was a time in my adult life that I wanted to be an astronomer, following the usual boyhood dalliances with aspiring to be an astronaut. From my earliest memories I was fascinated with the stars—but more so the concept of them than the studying thereof, which made the
{NB: Reposting this piece from 2011 in memory of my friend Klee Benally, who walked on from this world right before the calendar turned. Klee was an ardent defender of the people and the land, tirelessly dedicating himself to critical causes expressed through an incredible range of living arts and media. Some of the
{NB: This essay originally appeared in the Peace Chronicle among a collection of other writings on the theme of “re-enchantment” earlier this year — you should definitely check out the great array of material in the whole issue (PDF posted by the Peace & Justice Studies Association, which you should join!)} Rekindling Rootedness in
{NB: I wrote this article way back in 2009 for the now-defunct HuffPost contributor platform, following one of the early major climate demonstrations; with another round planned for next week, I realized that I keep trying to get this essential message across but can’t really do so any more clearly than I did in
On the Space Between Quantity and Quality The problem on my mind right now is hard to quantify—in fact, it’s about quantification itself. I recall attending a talk by DJ Spooky way back in 2020 showcasing his work around the notion of “Quantopia,” which looks at trends through the lens of a half century living
The consensus of climate science has given us about a decade to turn things around. That’s not a literal deadline or doomsday prophecy; this isn’t Y2K or an exact-date apocalypse, but a political and scientific statement. It means that we have roughly a decade (at current projections) to make some hard and necessary changes