admin October 26th, 2007
(Jess, Small Planet Institute Editor and Tour Manager) A recent Identity Theory post brought my attention to this TomPaine.com article – titled ‘Green Yields Green’ by Frank O’Donnell. O’Donnell cites the prevailing wisdom that dealing with the threat of global warming in a meaningful way will wreak havoc upon the market, and then he argues that it ain’t necessarily so:
admin October 15th, 2007
(Jess) In a remarkable October 11th article, the New York Times tells the story of Pascasie Mukamurigo, a Tutsi woman, a weaver, and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. In the aftermath of the country’s devastating violence, Ms Mukamurigo – who lost her husband and a child in the attacks, and who was in hiding from Hutu militants for months – adopted 13 orphans. To help support them, she created a weaving group of surviving widows, all of whom had also adopted children orphaned by the genocide. And she invited Hutu women, members of the families who had committed the atrocities, to join the group as well. The baskets produced by the resultant, mixed-ethnicity group- beautiful, detailed, painstakingly created – were an “embodiment of reconciliation.” Today, the baskets are distributed by Macy’s, and the weavers have been lifted by their work out of poverty. Continue Reading »
jess October 2nd, 2007
(Jess) I was inspired by a 9.21 New York Times article on the continuing protests of Buddhist monks in Myanmar, who have been demonstrating for the past month against massive, governmentally-mandated increases in fuel prices. The ruling military junta has to date been unable to stop the protests.
According to David Steinberg, a Georgetown University Myanmar scholar, “The involvement of the monks is a significant escalation… It shows that the frustration has increased, a political frustration as well as an economic frustration.” Continue Reading »
jess September 19th, 2007
(Jess) There’s an entire chapter in Getting a Grip on the power of the words we use, and I was brought back strongly to it when I read that last Friday, Nebraska state Senator Ernie Chambers filed a lawsuit against God. According to KETV.com, “the lawsuit accuses God ‘of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent.’ It says God has caused ‘fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like.’” The suit “seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.”
"Getting a Grip is not an ordinary book: it's more like a new pair of glasses, allowing you to see everything around you with greater clarity. Suddenly the world is more comprehensible, more manageable, even more beautiful. You won't want to take them off." --Barbara Kingsolver More Praise
