Refuge

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”                                                 ~ Wayne Gretzky My mail, email and Facebook feed are deluged this season with fundraising requests from a variety of environmental and social groups showing endangered species and abused animals that need my money to be saved. Obviously, […]

Let The Sunshine In

I don’t get many phone calls, but for the third time in two days, I just received another sales call from some solar company. I support solar power and had actually looked into getting it for our house at one time. I went through the calculations and talked to a salesperson. But we live in […]

Fake News: Fact or Fiction?

“Science fiction’s appeal lies in combination of the rational, the believable, with the miraculous. It is an appeal to the sense of wonder.”                                                  – David Hartwell per Wikipedia I’m a sci-fi fan and have been aware that there are two types of sci-fi: hard science fiction and speculative fiction. According to Wikipedia, it seems that […]

Idle Lands, Idle Hands

Idle hands are the devil’s workshop                                                 ~ Proverbs 16:27  The pandemic seems to have exacerbated a whole raft of social and economic problems. Personally, as a retiree, I find myself limited in the things I normally would do, such as shopping, travel, eating out, visiting friends, and even my volunteer activities. I can’t imagine being […]

Better Cities

At the same time that we’re solving for climate change, we’re going to be building cities for three billion people … If we don’t get that right, I’m not sure all the climate solutions in the world will save mankind, because so much depends on how we shape our cities: not just environmental impacts, but […]

Gardening for Victory

This garden has taught us that if we have the courage to plant a seed … We never know what might grow.                                                 ~ Michelle Obama While much of the reporting about the Trump Administration shows major danger to the country, journalism about the damage Melania did to the White House Rose Garden and the […]

Grains of Sand (No ifs ands or butts)

To see a world in a grain of sandAnd a heaven in a wild flower,Hold infinity in the palm of your handAnd eternity in an hour.                                                 ~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence When I was young, my mother was not a tidy person. She claimed to have started smoking when she was twelve, and chain-smoked […]

In Our Nature

“They say I’m old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!”                                                 ~ The Lorax by Dr. Seuss When I first started a garden, I rented a rototiller to break up the stiff soil, made neat rows and added fertilizer with every seed. It worked out reasonably well, but […]