By Jim Selman | Bio
I was listening to a lecture today on the philosopher Martin Heidegger. He is pretty difficult to understand at the best of times, even though I have been a student of his thinking for many years. The lecture today spoke of the distinction he made between ‘tradition’, which he felt was a bad thing, and ‘heritage’, which he thought was a good thing. In fact, he felt heritage was essential to understanding the true nature of ‘Being’.
I won’t pretend to grasp it all
By Rick Fullerton | Bio
Recently, I have been focusing more and more of my attention on
global warming and, in turn, on understanding my own reactions and responses to
what’s happening. The results so far have been both fascinating and
challenging.
One aspect of the global warming conversation involves the role
of the media in reporting scientific evidence and projections regarding the
effects of carbon dioxide in heating the planet. In particular, I have learned
about the disproportionate
By Shae Hadden | Bio
I was in an interesting conversation recently about how we can interact with people who hold different beliefs than ours. The question posed was, “How can one be with someone whose beliefs are the antithesis of our own?” An important inquiry to engage in, considering that a clash of beliefs is at the heart of most conflict and strife between people.
Responses from the group varied from escape (“We can’t be with them at all, so we leave”) and avoidance (“We can’t
By Kevin Brown | Bio
Recently, I came across an article from the New York Times entitled "Invisible Immigrants, Old and Left With ‘Nobody to Talk To’", concerning elderly immigrants in the United States and the loneliness and isolation that many of them experience, especially those who speak little or no English.
The article references Mr. Devendra Singh, a
By Sharon Knoll | Bio
I think an essential part of literacy today is literacy with food growing. I was raised on farms and in urban gardens (although we didn’t have the word ‘urban’ at that time). Translated: Mom and Dad were raised in Kansas and settled in the big city of Denver after WWII. Our vacations consisted of driving to Kansas and helping bring in the harvest. I got to stay until the end of summer.During those summers, we just ate great food and I weeded a lot and helped Gram butcher chickens. The dirt was always great because my Dad or Granddad or Grandma were always throwing some kind of poop on something. Meanwhile, the cows were in the fields doing what they do best—eating and pooping. I got to understand very early on that ‘real’ dirt gives us great food.
Dirt is everything. One of my top ten heroes (I have a distinct list for heroines)
By Sharon Knoll | Bio
Cooking with my daughter, Krista, is bliss. We were making Crabby Crabcakes, an incredible recipe from Mark Bittman at the NY Times. They were 99% crab with a little bit of stuff we purchased at the Queen Anne Farmers Market to hold them together: brand new potatoes baked with olive oil and rosemary, and sautéed summer squash and caramelized onions with herbs. (Can you stand it? Are you ready to rush out and cook and enjoy the wonderful tastes of fresh grown
By Jim Selman | Bio
This week is the 40th anniversary of Woodstock.
Can you believe it? It seems not so long ago that we were all about “peace,
love and music”—a generation that was going to change the world. And in many
ways we did! In CBS’s Sunday Morning
retrospective on Woodstock, the theme came through that the ‘spirit’ of that
memorable event lives on in our children at outdoor
By Kevin Brown | Bio
I had the pleasure of spending last weekend in San Francisco. It has been over 5 years since I last visited the city, and so I was looking forward to experiencing all that it and its people have to offer. From a tourist perspective, my expectations were met in terms of sightseeing, enjoying the variety of restaurants, and taking in some of the museums and art galleries. On this trip, however, my eye turned to the needy, the homeless, and the many people on the street who appeared
By Jim Selman | Bio
Perhaps the most pervasive and omnipresent aspect of being alive is our moods. We are always in one mood or another. Moods are either positive or negative and they ‘color’ our experience of living, affect how we relate to others and our circumstances, and have extraordinary power to open or close possibilities. If we examine this phenomenon, we can see that our moods are portable—we take them with us wherever we go. I can be angry at home and find that mood affecting me at work or even on the golf course.Moods are also contagious. Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone is in a good mood and then the boss or someone enters the room in a different, perhaps negative, mood and it isn’t long before everyone has ‘caught’ the new mood?
Moods constitute the contexts in which we normally live and experience our lives. But most importantly, they are almost always involuntary—they happen to us. We rarely choose what mood we will be in, especially when we get our ‘buttons
The Pope’s Love in Truth, his third letter to the bishops of the world, is written in the context of the current global economic crisis. The Pope views the current crisis as an opportunity for us to discern and to create a new vision for our future. In his latest encyclical, he doesn’t focus on specific systems of economics or reconstructing the global economy. Instead, he reminds us that our markets are shaped by our culture, and that it is up to us to focus on the common good