Ice, Heat, Rain, Drought
How can someone in the Inland Northwest not think about weather, the future of our valley, what the aquifer will look like in decades and the potential impacts of some scenario unfolding that is twice (or four times) more extreme/devastating than the windstorm event Spokane, Washington, experienced late last year?
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Those were the last few words of one of the most inspiring speeches I’ve ever encountered. Written and delivered by peace angel Arundhati Roy at the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, Brazil, January 27th, 2003, she inspired me to arise from lethargic insouciance and make some noise. I too have little doubt that another world is on her way, but what will she look like? Garden of Eden or nuclear wasteland? Will she be breathing freely or gasping for air? And if my words of anger are sh
Amidst a hand-wringing defence of the indefensible, The New Statesman propagated a common myth thus: “The European Union has indeed brought peace and prosperity to the people of Europe . . .”
Indeed, it never did. The institution that arguably brought peace and truly brought prosperity to Europe was the E.E.C. Colloquially, ‘it was a different type of animal,’ say, the cow in the barn as opposed to the wolf at the door (now which institution might that symbolize?).
“A” Is for “Asininity”
That’s a particular kind of stupidity.
All of us can be stupid at times. (Ever see that picture of Einstein with his tongue hanging out like an aardvark’s, clowning—one supposes—for the camera?)
It’s in our genes to be stupid at times. Looking back on the Vietnam War—which ultimately took his own son’s life—Secretary of Defense McNamara attributed his own stupidity to the “fog of war.”
I would rather call it “asininity.”
Thanks to tabloidization – a concept rapidly integrating into even quality mainstream media – you’ve probably heard that Donald Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2016.
Well, that prize has been thrown out to so many who didn’t qualify according to Alfred Nobel’s will – not even with a very liberal interpretation.
But there are two things you may not have seen which have very far-reaching implications and are much more newsworthy.
Court case against the Nobel Foundation
Steve Leone, editor of the Concord Monitor—the second largest newspaper in New Hampshire—makes me long for the good old days of old-fashioned communications. He actually, personally, answers his own phone.
I know this because when I called him I actually got right through, despite the media’s frenetic immersion in the week before the state’s presidential primary.
Back in November of 2015, on the 36th anniversary of the storming of the U.S.
A gray three year-old SUV blows a tire, skids into the break down lane, then flips over twice. Its four passengers are smothered in air bags. There is silence.
A driver who witnessed the entire incident from a hundred yards behind pulls over, checks out the situation, shrugs, then gets back on the highway and drives away. He is late for a speech he is scheduled to deliver on “Living Well is the Be All and End All.”
I’m learning one thing good,” she said. “Learnin’ it all the time, ever’ day. If you’re in trouble or hurt or need – go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.
— Ma Joad, from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath
