Blog »

Blog 52. Aging in America—a systems question?

Posted on by

Last week, I reviewed Julian Barnes’ story of an aging, retired man named Tony Webster.  Webster lives alone, remembers regrettable events of his youth, suffers remorse when he encounters the living and ghostly persons of his past, and still does not find a way to heal the hurts or to generate meaning in his life.  Perhaps, as his former girlfriend says, he “just doesn’t get it.”

Does today’s youth-oriented culture—a functioning system—regard older people as irrelevant, as those who no longer “get it?”  Continue reading →

Blog 49. A refuge for what?

Posted on by

Of all the newsletters that cross my desk, the one that tugs my heart comes from the Friends of the San Luis Valley National Wildlife Refuges.  That heart-tug pulls back to my youth there, hunting rabbits and ducks on that land when it was wetlands and grassland, long before it was a nearly-dry refuge pumping groundwater to maintain some of its habitat.  Continue reading →

Blog 47. The elephant in the room

Posted on by

Of the economically developed countries of the world, the U.S. has the most dysfunctional society—that is, we have depression despite material goods, materialism without community, more teen and single parents, less trust, more impoverishment, higher infant mortality, more drugs, obesity, school bullying and school shootings. Continue reading →

Blog 45. The flow of information and misinformation

Posted on by

The big headline above a 26 column-inch editorial says,

Climate change threat is overblown.

This is in the newspaper of the most science-centered town of the nation?  Well, some accounts claim Los Alamos has more science Ph.D.s per unit population than anywhere else. Continue reading →