The Muse Who Made Storefronts Bloom
"Joan Vorderbruggen's job title is cultural district artist coordinator, but she really is Joan the connector, Joan the problem-solver, Joan the nurturer, Joan the perfect balance of right-brain...
View ArticleHow Small Moments of Empathy Affect Your Life
"Greg Depow at the University of Toronto and his colleagues conducted a study on people's experience with empathy in their everyday lives, to find out how it affected their actions and well-being....
View ArticleA Few Early Moments
"In the early 1980s, as my attention was drawn more deeply toward the art world, I was disturbed to feel the lack of sustenance in the art often getting the most attention. One day a description I'd...
View ArticleKnepp Rewilded
Knepp Estate in Sussex, England has led the way in "rewilding" farms since the 1970s. Rewilding is also called conservation farming with the idea of allowing nature to take over. The caretakers have...
View ArticleThe Man in the Red Bandana
"On Sept. 11, 2001, one young man led several people down the stairs to safety after a plane hit the south tower of the World Trade Center. The people he helped only knew him as "the man in the red...
View ArticleNature is a Jazz Band, Not a Machine
"From genetic engineering to geoengineering, we treat nature as though its a machine. This view of nature has deep roots in Western thought, all the way to Descartes and Hobbs, but its a fundamental...
View ArticleWhat You Get Into Will Change You
"Sometimes in life you just dont know what youre getting into. Youre reminded of this, the day you kayak through an otherworldly stretch of sea caves in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. The...
View ArticleWorking to Welcome and Resettle Afghan Refugees
"We've had 5,300 people sign up to be volunteers. That's beyond a record for us. We typically work with about 350 volunteers a year. We have more people who want to volunteer than we have things for...
View ArticleWhat Buddhism Taught Me: A Sri Lankan Christian's Reflections
"Growing up Christian in predominantly Buddhist Sri Lanka, I learned early that there was much to be gained from the study of Buddhism. The teachings of the Buddha sometimes challenged my assumptions...
View ArticleI Am the Triangular Window in a Mud Hut
"I have overheard pale-skinned visitors to this refugee camp speak of windows as large as a cow and covered by glass that slides wide open. Those stories sound absurd. Such windows would be completely...
View ArticleInside the Fight to Save an Ancient Forest
The ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest are home to giant old-growth trees, and many secrets, which science is just beginning to understand. These forests are our best climate change allies,...
View ArticleBetween Grit and Grace
Preethi Srinivasan captained the under-19 Tamil Nadu women's cricket team to national championship in 1997, won a gold medal in swimming at national level, and was an internationally renowned student...
View ArticleDeath Doulas Provide End of Life Aid
"The word 'doula' comes from the Greek word meaning "woman who serves," though most people associate it with someone who helps during birth to usher in life. In recent years, however, more people have...
View ArticleWholeness, Timelessness & Unfolding Meaning
In this interview, conducted two years before his passing, influential physicist-philosopher David Bohm discusses his insight into "the essential unbroken wholeness of the universe: the timeless order...
View ArticlePrayer for Atheists
"Legend has it that the physicist Niels Bohr had a horseshoe hanging above his door. A colleague asked him why, to which he responded, "It's for luck." The colleague then asked him if he believed in...
View ArticleA Palestinian Woman Building Peace From the Bottom Up
Born in Jerusalem to respected Palestinian scholars and educators, Huda Abu Arquob's great-grandfather was one of the many Muslim Palestinians who took in and protected Jewish residents of Hebron...
View ArticleWhere I'm From...
Appalachian poet George Ella Lyon's poem, "Where I'm From," evokes the particular world of a particular childhood through a poem quilted from scraps and patches of memory... Memories of specific sights...
View ArticleWhat Makes A Good Life?
What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. As the director of a...
View ArticleA Case for the Porch
"Lately I've been trying to think like a porch. Trying to think between the natural and the human. Thinking how best to build during a climate crisis. I came across John Cage saying that progress in...
View ArticlePlace, Personhood & the Hippocampus
"'Place and a mind may interpenetrate till the nature of both is altered,' the Scottish mountaineer and poet Nan Shepherd wrote in her lyrical love letter to her native Highlands, echoing an ancient...
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