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The days after the winter solstice, when the once-receding sun has turned and begun its walk back towards the people of the North, have for ages been marked by holidays and rising hopes.1 Now, as we go through the Great Recession, with a battered middle class and government under the sway of big corporations, we […]

Mobile Bay native Brinkley Hutchings flew over the water and saw the crude oil heading for her home. On May 13th, the 22nd day of the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, gave an interview and downplayed it.1 “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The […]

Rep. Roskam (R-IL) shakes his Etch-A-Sketch as Pres. Obama looks on. from C-SPAN “[The American people] … have rendered a judgment about what we have attempted to do so far,” said Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at the president’s big health care meeting last week.30+31 “[P]ut that on the shelf and … start over with a […]

From Climbing Mountains to Building Schools K2 from air, West Face (Guilhem Vellut) Greg Mortenson is an American, who grew up near Mount Kilimanjaro, where his father started a teaching hospital and his mother started a school.20+21 From that background, Mortenson became a nurse, and an avid mountain climber — but later switched to become […]

Haplocanthosaurus, where it belongs. Cleveland Museum of Natural History Since U.S. states abandoned their old laws that curb corporate power, many corporations have become dinosaurs — huge beasts that have outlived their time, but that keep on stomping through the world.1 One type of dinosaur is the big oil company, whose products feed disastrous global […]