“Almost All of the Land in the World is Claimed”

Necoclí is a small town on Columbia’s Caribbean coast, known mostly for, as one travel headline put it, “Crabs, coconuts and volcano swimming.” When Tom Heyden wrote that column in 2011, he could focus on how “the town’s charm relies on its surrounding natural beauty, which provides visitors with the opportunity to relax and soak up the sun.” His descriptions include gorging “yourself on sweet, juicy mangos,” crabbing, and walking to the local volcano, where you can jump “straight into the murky, muddy crater of the volcano. … The feeling is truly bizarre as you half-float, half-sink in the midst of this active volcano, toying with the squelchy, infirm floor beneath you.” (https://colombiareports.com/Necoclí-crabs-coconuts-and-volcano-swimming/ )

“No Choice But to Keep On Going”

It sounds idyllic and delightful, and I very much wished that this was all we could say about the lovely town of Necoclí. But I would guess that, if you have heard of Necoclí at all, it is not because of the juicy mangos or volcano swimming. Beyond sunny beaches perfect for napping in a hammock, the roads that take you there also take you as close as you can get to Panama, where refugees seeking asylum in the USA must cross a dangerous stretch of jungle known as the Darién Gap.  

Halloween, a Holiday of Acceptance and Possibility

    Today is my favorite American holiday. It might have something to do with Autumn, enjoying the dip in temperatures without the worry of an ice storm, the steam on a mug of hot tea on the patio in the early morning, the vibrant purple of the asters against the golds and reds of the changing Maple leaves, and the simmering pot of soup on the stove. Halloween itself is pure revelry in the human condition. We return to make believe and fantasy. We face human mortality, look the skeleton in its eye socket, and make friends (or at least shake hands) with our own impermanence. We know the world is full of scary monsters, and Halloween is when we get to openly, if not playfully, be honest about our anxieties and fears, whether inside or outside of ourselves. And it’s never more true than when it comes to our own selves. We open the lid on what we are, or what we might be, with fear, excitement, or both. 

Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Before I begin, a brief word about terminology may be useful. There is no universally agreed-upon phrase to refer to what we alternatively call domestic violence, intimate partner violence, gender-based violence, and family violence. Often, these phrases are based in a specific discipline and reflect that discipline’s approach. Moreover, definitions may categorize different kinds of violence, such as physical, sexual, emotional, financial, and social. There are also legal categories and definitions, such as battery, assault, and homicide. Then there is the question of who is included, since domestic violence can involve parents, children, lovers, ex-es, and extended family. Its affects can range from mild to severe, from temporary trauma to death. Whatever this violence is called, its effects are pervasive and destructive. And our personal and social well-being cannot be separated from bringing domestic violence to an end. 

"We Are Enough"

“How amazingly unlikely is your birth”

Attempts to calculate the improbability, or the inevitability, of any particular human life surface every so often. A decade ago, in 2011, Dr. Ali Binazir posted an entry on the Harvard weblog that became a bit of a rage. It was a thought experiment that assigned probabilities to key moments leading to your existence: your parents meeting, getting pregnant, getting pregnant with the particular egg and sperm that led to your particular genetic makeup, and, working backwards,  that happening with each set of your ancestors. His conclusion was that the probability of any one person existing is something like 1 in (10)x(2,685,000). For everyone who replied that the probability of existence for something that actually exists is 1, Dr. Binazir emphasized that –

“One is called to live nonviolently..."

    Twenty years ago, Holly and I were living in the woods. I had left my position at a university in 2000 because we wanted to live close to the land, and we had some friends with property where we could all learn together. We were young, and we were enthusiastic and optimistic, though not so much about society in general as confident in ourselves. We believed we could help change the world, with our bookshelves full of Foxfire anthologies, Back to Basics, The Encyclopedia of Country Living, and essays by folks like Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and Aldo Leopold. This wasn’t a complete leap of faith; all of us came from families where we grew up with some combination of gardening, camping, backpacking, building, or farming. We weren’t against technological innovations, but we were trying to be intentional about our lives and livelihoods. We wrote poetry, painted landscapes, and hosted literature-themed dinners. There were some hardships and frustrations, but, looking back, it was idyllic.

On September 11, 2001, we were working on the cabin. I was in the front yard, prepping lumber for a window repair. We got a call to turn on the news, that the US had been attacked. We spent the rest of the day listening to NPR on a little battery powered radio. The news did not slow down over the weeks and months ahead. Congress authorized US forces to be used in response to the 9/11 attacks on September 18. By October 7, the United States and United Kingdom invaded Afghanistan in an operation they named Enduring Freedom. 

A Shattered Vision: Residential Schools, Forced Assimilation, and Shifting our Collective Consciousness

          It’s not a secret that I love studying history; I believe it is a vital discipline for understanding and transforming the world. And as shocking and terrifying as human cruelty has been throughout recorded history, it’s also heartening to observe, time and time again, the movements opposing oppression that have always existed. This is also important to remember if you are tempted to excuse the complicity of people in the past by insisting that they were just products of their time. By studying history, we also become more aware of our own responsibilities and possibilities in the present.

A Legacy of Failure, Cruelty, and War

One of these important historical moments in US history, when there were multiple and large movements to either oppose or work for social justice, followed the American Civil War. Optimism that Reconstruction would bring about true and lasting healing and change in a nation ravaged and traumatized by the horrors of slavery and war, combined with optimism that there could be a change in the government’s policies regarding Native peoples. President Ulysses S. Grant and the events that took place in his administration are a good example of these trends.

Shedding Light on Residential Schools (Part 1)

          Last May, we learned that “the remains of 215 children” were found near Kamloops in southern British Columbia, victims of the system of residential boarding schools. In June, 751 more unmarked graves were “found near the former Marieval Indian Residential School” and, one week later, “the remains of an additional 182 people” were found near “the former St Eugene's Mission School.” In July, 160 “undocumented and unmarked graves" were discovered “near the former site of the Kuper Island Industrial School.”  (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57325653 ) These kinds of schools were sponsored by the governments of both Canada and the United States and on July 14 in the US, a solemn procession of hundreds of cars accompanied the “disinterred remains of nine Native American children who died more than a century ago while attending a government-run school in Pennsylvania” back “to Rosebud Sioux tribal lands in South Dakota”.  ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/07/15/native-american-childrens-remains-returned-home-army-cemetery/7977437002/ )