2022 was a good year for me, and I hope it was for you too. In the next few weeks I’ll post about some of the things that made my year. Portugal My wife (Leda) and I met up with my sister Elise and her husband Gary in Portugal in late May for one of…… Continue reading A good 2022, part 1
Overstory/understory // Downcuts
To cross the suburban death moat (aka Good Luck (sucker) Road) into Greenbelt Park, I walked far enough along the road that the drivers and I could see each other and take enough precautions to avoid (for them) excessive deceleration or unsightly dents on their hoods or (for me) severe injury/death. In less than a…… Continue reading Overstory/understory // Downcuts
Greenbelt Park at my doorstep
Early last week I drove up to Greenbelt (National*) Park to take a walk. It’s close to the house where Leda and I live in East Riverdale, MD, when I’m not back in Champaign during the school year. The park spreads out over 1100 acres of woods and streams between us and Greenbelt, the most…… Continue reading Greenbelt Park at my doorstep
Notes from the factory floor
My own name for central Illinois is “the factory floor of U.S. industrial agriculture.” Before moving here in 2018, I’d only ever flown over or driven through this region and never gave much thought to what people had to do to the land before all this food would just spring forth. The story I probably…… Continue reading Notes from the factory floor
White privilege on vacation
What a beautiful spot we found for a quick getaway from what we expected to be a hot and muggy early August in the DC area: an AirBnB in Hardy County, WV, about two and a half hours away from Leda’s and my house in East Riverdale, MD. Surrounded by woods up a steep dirt…… Continue reading White privilege on vacation
On Joni Mitchell, restlessness, & blooming where I’m planted
I love Joni Mitchell’s music for so many reasons, but the songs that capture me the most are the ones that express her restlessness and her longing for stability. She released an entire album about it, Hejira, in 1976. If you made me pick one of her recordings for a desert-island exile, it would be…… Continue reading On Joni Mitchell, restlessness, & blooming where I’m planted
We pay too much attention to migration.
In 2016, I was in the middle of a project at the Urban Institute for the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation when the election results came in. The foundation had asked Urban to provide the context for its next strategic plan, charting and projecting the past and possible future trends in the population and economies of the…… Continue reading We pay too much attention to migration.
How far do you live from Mom?
Having spent a large part of my adulthood (15 years) in Rhode Island and Upstate New York, and coming from New Mexico, and living now mostly in central Illinois, I’ve reached the conclusion that people miss the friends, family, and businesses that move away and notice the newcomers a lot more than they pay attention…… Continue reading How far do you live from Mom?
Migrate, mutate, adapt, or die
A series, probably When I was in my late teens or early 20s I saw somewhere a sticker with the slogan: Migrate, Mutate, Adapt, or Die. It summed it all up for me. The first three options are survival mechanisms, for individuals and especially for species. The last is the “or else” statement. I can…… Continue reading Migrate, mutate, adapt, or die