Articles from the bimonthly e-zine
Discouraging, appalling, dreadful—leaving me full of dread: the 2016 election results struck me down, as they did many others. I had spent some time preparing for the outcome, however, with my darkest day arriving a week before November 8 when I read two news articles in sequence. The first named a dozen or more elites…
It seems that Trump will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, will promote greater fossil-fuel dependency, and weaken environmental regulation. ~Herman Greene, Center for Ecozoic Societies We are now beginning a new, difficult, and dangerous period of social history for the people of the United States of America, for the entire human family, and for…
For over twenty-five years I have been predicting that the human species has a twenty percent chance of surviving fifty or one hundred more years. While it doesn’t sound like it, I am an eternal optimist. But our species is attacking everything on this planet that we are dependent on. We are changing the air,…
The elections hit me hard. I have never been directly affected by war or a major catastrophe such as an earthquake, the direct hit of a tornado, major flood or drought, a tsunami or a major volcanic eruption that buries cities and darkens the skies. I’ve never lived under a dictatorship or endured torture or…
What happened? What happened is that ninety seven million eligible voters underestimated the danger and did not exercise the most basic right and duty of democracy. Some may call it a mortal sin of omission. How have things changed? We have not even seen the beginning of it yet: regression on all fronts and for…
The election of Donald Trump is very puzzling and troubling, both nationally and internationally. His failings as a leader, businessman, husband and person are legion. He has never held elective office, has never served in the armed service, is contemptuous of the law and international treaties, insults anyone who disagrees with him, and is ill-…
Since the election most of the “what now?” articles I have read seem to be stuck in the old paradigm: Go on policy defense in DC backed by street action, build the party, and win next time with a better message and a better candidate. This is a failure of imagination that greatly underestimates what…
There are a few beings I love so very deeply that even the thought of them being harmed, suffering, or lost is totally unbearable to me. I instantly feel my heart ready to sob without restraint. One of those beings is Earth. My feelings upon first readings of the new administration’s attitudes and objectives regarding…
I. Let’s go to the mat To wrestle and to meditate Peace in the struggle. II. Take consolation In love, music, trees, the sea. The spirit rises. III. As I plant spring bulbs, Tears drench my face and the earth. Beauty might save us.
This man is a loose cannon barreling about the deck in stormy times and predictions can easily be way off the mark. As San Francisco Chronicle architecture critic John King wrote departing from his usual mainly esthetics-based criticism of infrastructure design in our region, we are facing “a future where all bets are off.” With…
I live in a red part of the biggest, bluest state, California. My representative in the US House is on Donald Trump’s transition team. A few kindred spirits gathered at my house on the first Sunday after the election, November 13, to celebrate the full moon, as usual, but this gathering felt like a funeral….
There is a dearth of meaning in American life rooted in the lack of a story, a story that truly liberates the human from limited forms of identity, from seeing ourselves as mere consumers, or even as mere Americans (or any of the sub-identities within our nationalist identity).… Americans tend to equate freedom with individualism…
We do not know if a Trump administration will be globally catastrophic, or tend to revert to the neoliberal mean, or move in surprising directions. It is business as usual that has already set us on the path toward global ecological catastrophe: billions of poor, wars without end, and an ever expanding national security…
Part I Mama left us girl eggs with instructions: Paddle your way across the sand to the sea. I did that, mama! Swim out as far as you can, as fast as you can. Farther. Faster. Slip away from the ones that try to hurt you. I did that, mama! When you have eggs, come…
The United States Environmental Protection Agency will be decimated on January 20, 2017. There will likely be an agency still in existence with the name, but it will do nothing to stand in the way of the fossil fuel interests that have just taken over the United States federal government. It will for all practical purposes…
Though a journalouse and a wordsmutter myself, I, Padrollian Bassoonius, have read and listed to too many analusters about the Downhill Tromp insistering they know what the man is triumphing to say. Taking himcondon at his warps to be the chump of the working mad, I deciphered to cut to the cheese and call up…
December 2016, Mariana Islands. I was at my neighborhood store getting their 13-year-old who just came from China to speak English, and I’d shared all the pedagogical tricks I knew. She can retain words and speak the language, like naming the goods on display at her store, and pronounce all the words she can read….
Commentators like Timothy Snyder* miss the mark when claiming that a Trump presidency will equate with totalitarianism. We should beware, of course, that there will be assaults on some human rights, the wage gap will continue to expand, and current environmental regulations will be replaced. But the Trump era, like the neoliberal era, will be…