Featured Selections
From the Archives
Beyond Good And Evil
Marshall Rosenberg On Creating A Nonviolent World
Nonviolent Communication focuses on what’s alive in us and what would make life more wonderful. What’s alive in us are our needs, and I’m talking about the universal needs, the ones all living creatures have. Our feelings are simply a manifestation of what is happening with our needs. If our needs are being fulfilled, we feel pleasure. If our needs are not being fulfilled, we feel pain.
February 2003
Drug Experiences
Dogwood blooms scattered along the path looking like unreal party decorations; wonderfully visible auras of soft neon; hearing the one note that we and all we sense are merely harmonics of
July 1979August 2006
I didn’t want to cry, so the sadness stayed in my body. Then, instead of feeling sad, I felt anxious, like a bird trapped inside a house whose windows are boarded up.
August 2006Pedestrian Dreams
On The Virtues Of Walking
I’m a native New Yorker. I was born in Greenwich Village and raised in Brooklyn. I don’t live in New York now, but I still work there, and I consider it my goddamned right to go anywhere I want in the city. I’ve got to watch out — if a place looks dangerous, or people look dangerous, then I’m going to steer clear. But not on principle.
August 1992The Morel Of The Story
The year I moved to Montana, a man shot another man for picking huckleberries in “his” huckleberry patch. He claimed he thought the picker was a grizzly bear. I didn’t know which to fear more: grizzlies or men with guns. A city girl, I was used to people getting shot — just not over huckleberries.
February 2004
The Birds Of Silicon Valley
My job was to write computer training programs. But sometimes my mind wandered, and I turned to look out the window at the people in the parking lot, the cars on the street, and, especially from my sixth-floor cubicle, the birds that soared in the gulf of air between me and the ground.
November 1993Thought To Exist In The Wild
Awakening From The Nightmare Of Zoos
The bear takes seven steps, her claws clicking on concrete. She dips her head, turns, and walks toward the front of the cage. Another dip, another turn, another three steps. When she gets back to where she started, she begins all over. This is what’s left of her life.
November 2007
Living For Swans
As we pass under the Roosevelt Arch into the park, beneath the words “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People,” I say under my breath, “I am safe now. I am at home base. No one can find me here.” A friend has a saying that once seemed outrageous and cowardly, but is now my motto: “There is no problem so big you can’t run away from it.”
February 1996A Weakened World Cannot Forgive Us
An Interview With Kathleen Dean Moore
When the earth is whole, it is resilient. But when it is damaged too severely, its power to heal itself seeps away. If we continue to turn against the land, pour chemical fertilizers onto worn-out fields, sanitize wastewater with poisons, dam rivers, burn oil, and bear more children, then there may be no chance of healing. A weakened world cannot forgive us.
March 2001
