Culture

Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone – Sharing a New Post by George Lakey about Class War

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During one of George Lakey’s train-the-trainer for social activist workshops, people kept mentioning that some tactic or other was a “high-wire” concept for them. After around the third time I heard that, I finally asked “What does she mean by high-wire?” George reached behind him, pulled out a soap box, and explained “What if I told you that I wanted you to take this soap box and walk over to 16th and Mission, stand up on the box, and just start talking to everyone who passes by?” “That would make me very uncomfortable.” I responded.

Culture

Eliminating Feedback Loops at Our Peril

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Long as my recent entry about interdependence was, at one point it was even longer, because it included an entire additional section I had written about the role of feedback loops in supporting the interdependent web of life that we are part of, and about how modern life has been eliminating and masking feedback loops. The irony of cutting out a piece that was about eliminating feedback loops is only now becoming apparent to me. The word feedback, which originated in 1920 in the field of electronics, has expanded its meaning widely to refer to almost any mechanism by which information about the effect of an activity or process is returned and thereby can affect the activity or process. Such feedback loops are built into the way that natural systems work, and they affect all life forms at all levels. Natural selection, as one example, is based on continual feedback in the form of which individual organisms make it long enough to reproduce.

art

Lilacs That in the Dooryard Bloom Early

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There were lilacs blooming in my dooryard. But they are browning now, and they are almost gone; they were very early lilacs. It is strange to see them at the end of their lives now, since, usually, they are my markers of my birthday – late April, the time of spring coming back, the time of the thaw, the time when everything feels like home again, like live grass and new birds. I’ve chosen houses based on whether there were lilacs there. I’ve stayed in this house, as I wrangle with the bank over possible foreclosure, sometimes only with the hope of seeing another bloom of those trees from the windows of my own office.

Culture

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Rise of the Taikonauts

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In his 2011 State of the Union Address President Obama endorsed the view that American superiority in space was the result of Cold War competition and that “after investing in better research and education…we unleashed a wave innovation.” Perhaps, that is the inspiration for Obama’s assertion that in order to “strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people” Americans must replicate the levels of research and development achieved at the height of the “space race.”

art

I Would Plant My Apple Tree

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A few days ago the image of a green ribbon came across my facebook news feed. The text went like this:
The pink ribbons have always bugged me…the idea of putting the energy and effort of well-meaning citizens behind “the search for a cure for cancer” just irritates me, because let’s face it, we know what causes cancer, and therefore we can do better than cure it, we can prevent it! Maybe not 100%, but we can take it back to the modest rates that previous generations of human beings enjoyed…If you really want to make a difference in the war against cancer, forget about those ridiculous pink ribbons. Use the power of your wallet and your ballot to insist that the government step up and do its job in regulating the industrial agriculture sector. It makes sense that people are focusing on ribbons in the wake of all the controversy about the Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood.

art

Soup & Bread: The Church of The Hideout Cookbook

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Sometimes even an atheist needs a community soup kitchen. This winter, I will probably need one, and so will many many of my fellow Americans. This winter, when the thin veil of November leaves has finally come down in Chicago, the sand is banked on the beaches against the lake shore wind and the dark comes early, I will be happy for a bowl of soup and a place to eat it where I feel welcome. Like so many this year, for me the recession is grinding down hard, and the things that held me together are beginning to fray, just a little and at the edges, but still, the possibility of coming unraveled hangs over all endeavors while the nights get colder. Like the people occupying parks the whole country over, I am running out of faith in governments and institutions to provide a little grace and shelter while we all wait out the economic troubles we’ve got to endure.

Environment

Is Chuck Norris Right? The Fight Against Genetically Engineered Corn

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I am not someone who usually agrees with Chuck Norris, who is a staunch Christian conservative activist, in addition to being a martial arts star. Consequently, I was shocked when I came across his recent column on the American Family Association website and found that I agree with it 100%! “President Obama and the Children of the Corn” — with a title like that I had to check it out — begins as follows:
Want to know something almost as scary as an Obama re-election? Many news sources reported over the last couple months how Monsanto, the world’s biggest vegetable seed maker, will begin selling biotech or genetically engineered (GE) sweet corn this fall for U.S. consumers. Norris goes on to make three points.

Environment

Have You Been Eating Genetically Engineered Food?

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by Suzy Karasik
If you answered no, then you definitely need to review the information in this article. At the present time, there is no labeling requirement, so foods that have been altered at the molecular level are on your grocery shelves. Take soybeans for example: 94 percent of all U.S. grown soybeans are genetically engineered. GMO foods are an environmental peril waiting to happen and pose an irreversible threat to the gene pool of all living beings. Think about it.

Environment

Battle for the Bats

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The trip to see the bats didn’t go exactly as I’d planned it. To start, there was a bee sting at the first cave we went to, and my son and I sat in the parking lot with an ice pack on his arm until he was calm enough to go and join the tour. Then there was the fact that the place – a commercially run cave in Southern Indiana – wasn’t exactly what my son had in mind when I told him we’d be going spelunking, raised as he’d been on hours and hours of Planet Earth. Even when he was four, a cave with electric lights and paved walkways was so much less exciting than the footage of secret underground passages, squeezes, and glowing rooms of crystal from those documentaries. There was no comparison and he knew it.