Family, friends, nature, books, writing, a good pen and journal, freedom of thought, culture, and peaceful co-relations - these are the things that occupy my mind, my heart, my time...
About a decade ago I put together seven book reviews of a group of novels with related themes. Seven Stories was never published except on this blog.
The book that inspired me to begin this project is The Loon Feather, Iola Fuller, published in 1940. Here is the pdf of that synopsis. The author shares a great love of the land and the original people. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings reviewed it as a book “of the rarest beauty”.
I believe the authors in the Seven Stories collection bring readers a certain kind of wisdom we sorely need now. Start with The Loon Feather located on Mackinac Island in the Great Lakes.
Update: In a discussion about the making of the film Lincoln, Doris Kearns Godwin, Tony Kushner, and Steven Spielberg identify their favorite scenes in the movie, Steven talks about the ability to accept a great idea from the “other side”: this illustrates the point of this post!
God rolls the dice, shuffles the deck for endless possibilities, knowing not how anyone of us creatures of Earth may respond – ignore, expire, excel. But, rolling and dealing endless possibilities is the key to God’s success.
Trees know this for through God each tree grows thousands of seeds in all shapes and configurations but in the end it releases them to the wind, to hitch a ride on the fur of a passing creature or fall into the fast moving stream nearby. Will a seed find rich soil? Will it be nourished to survive? Will it fall upon concrete? Or be gobbled up, later to be excreted with a wrapping of fertilizer?
With all the possibilities, each with its potential outcomes, some seedlings will grow. And, IF there is enough sunlight and just the right amount of moisture and warmth, it will grow into a mighty tree and someday throw its own possibilities into the winds of the future.
The Creator exerts patience and rationality: a kind of detachment that allows all possibilities to emerge.
That’s where we come in. Will we respond or ignore an opportunity, or more often, doubt ourselves? God observes. We might get another “hand” or not. I think the Creator must love the folks who take a chance knowing they might fail. Because that’s what the Gambler must do: keep rolling the dice, keep open all the possibilities for a winning hand! Indeed, all great things require it.
Therefore, let us consider all the possibilities rather than spend our time criticizing ideas, even despising the source of them; let us work broadly and earnestly to solve our common problems: climate change, war, peaceful relations. etc. by keeping many ideas and strategies in play.
What if together we just might play a winning hand?
The Crystal Beads is an award-winning new children’s book written by Pat Gould-Black. She is a successful author. This is her first book “for children” but folks, this book is a cautionary tale for all of us today in America where we are facing fascist forces moving through our political structures and sanctioning ideas in our public schools.
Here is an interesting podcast with Pat on David Edward’s Frequency 99 podcast. David is also an author. Take time to listen then order the book and share it with your family and friends. Pat provides an adult reader guide. She is a psychotherapist who counsels veterans experiencing PTSD. Please get a copy, and also suggest to your local library to add this book to their children’s and adult book collection.
Artists like Pat are powerful voices calling to us to be vigilant and to think for ourselves in a time when we are deluged by media. Turn it off. Read the book. Think. And Act!
by Pat Black-Gould
Here is another author who was engaged by the American government in the rise of fascism in our country to write a fictional story about the pernicious ways in which fascism takes hold of a community: John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down.
The Cardinal News – recent article with numerous links to learn more about how climate funding may or may not positively impact the economy, and who is likely to come out ahead. This publication serves Southwest and Southside Virginia communities, and is a bellwether for all American communities wondering how climate funding will play out locally. Trends in other states are reviewed and links provided. The article is written by the editor of Cardinal News, Dwayne Yancey, who illustrates how to write a balanced article.
Go here to read another Cardinal News article about Joe Manchin and the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Editor Yancey supposes there may not be support to pass a Manchin “deal”.
Return to this blog. I will be following the money trail as it becomes available to states and cities, and whether in fact people who can benefit the most will be able to take advantage of the bill’s climate mitigation investments.
Join Third Act to take action toward a rapid and equitable transition to a clean energy economy.
Heather Cox Richardson: Listen to the very very end. We all must become vocal with our families and neighbors — in the way that democracy was formed and has been more or less sustained until the forces of authoritarianism began a kind of rot in the foundation of the American republic. We are poised now on the edge of collapse of all we have lived and died for and love with all our hearts: the belief in the equality of all persons and a government of laws by which we agree to abide, no matter WHO WE ARE.
Read the Tea Leaves of our unfolding fate: either a democracy that prevails even through the assault of despots and misinformation campaigns, or the loss of the great experiment of ideas and ideals that have made our system of governing so rare and necessary in this world.
Then, here is a quintessential discussion about democracy, John Adams and the model he and our founders set for us as citizens, about how we teach (or don’t teach) history, and how McCullough thinks America will pull through this turbulent time.
David McCullough is a national treasure. Thank God he left behind his wonderful books. Check them out and read now to help us all return to the recognition that government is US, not some other person or even our representatives. This is OUR SHOW. But the audience has been missing for too long. Let’s reach for our stars and keep this democracy for our children and generations to come. And, by doing the best thing possible: talk to each other about what you believe and want. And do so with respect and a listening ear. We could be on the same page: not the same issues, but the principles by which we govern ourselves, guarded at all cost.
Bill McKibben presents a new approach to galvanizing action by wisdom keepers (Elders) to gather experienced Americans to steer leaders toward a more sustainable world: https://thirdact.org/.
Listen to Bill McKibben below to learn more about how Third Act! is focused on Voting Rights, divesting big banks from investing in fossil fuel companies, and the principles that guide members of Third Act!
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a botanist who explains her knowledge of an indigenous worldview about plants with that of the western worldview. In that process, Kimmerer embeds whole Earth teaching along with botanical science. Here in this beautiful essay, ” Corn tastes better on the honor system” published in Emergence Magazine, is one of the author’s best teaching contrasting indigenous ways of knowing with western perspectives about the Earth. At this time in American history, it feels like a return to sanity. Listen.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
The last few days’ reading Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography have reaped insights into the time of the nation’s early days when colonists and then citizens were laying the foundation of what we would become.
Here is what Franklin observed from reading history in 1731; these are on page 76 in The Touchstone Edition of Simon and Schuster published in 2004.
“That the great affairs of the world, the wars, revolutions, etc., are carried on and affected by parties;
That the view of these parties is their present general interest, or what they take to be such.
That the different views of these difference parties occasion all confusion.
That while a party is carrying on a general design, each man has his particular private interest in view.
That as soon as a party had gain’d its general point, each member becomes intent upon his particular interest; which, thwarting others, breaks that party into divisions, and occasions more confusion.
That few in public affairs act from a mere view of the good of their country, whatever they may pretend; and, tho’ their actings bring real good to their country, yet men primarily considered that their own and their country’s interest was united, and did not act from a principle of benevolence.
That fewer still, in public affairs, act with a view to the good of mankind.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a botanist who explains her knowledge of an indigenous worldview about plants with that of the western worldview. In that process, Kimmerer embeds whole Earth teaching along with botanical science. Here in this beautiful essay, 
Susan Feathers 