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Latest — May 9, 2025

Why Your Actions Matter, Even When They Don't Feel Impactful

Oak trees are ecological grand slams. They support 897 kinds of caterpillars; and a single - one! - clutch of chickadees needs 7,000 of those protein-packed caterpillars to fly the nest. Then, those caterpillar-fortified chickadees go forth to reduce our insect population, spread seeds, and pollinate the heck outta

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What To Do Now

A common scene: Between work meetings, an unassuming chap takes a quick scan of the headlines. His brow furrows. His shoulders slump. His heart is now sinking like the Titanic. And this mere mortal, so dismayed that today's headlines are in fact worse than yesterday's, does

What's As Contagious As Fear

On a quiet spring morning, the man in well-worn flannel eases himself down to sit on his front stoop. At his feet, there is a large cat. The news today is all tectonic plates shifting, shattering. But here is this gentle pair in a shaft of April light. The man

Two Things We Can Do to Strengthen Democracy Today

A few insights to set the mood: "The only recognizable feature of hope is action." Grace Paley, short story writer. "What if the mightiest word is love?" Elizabeth Alexander, a poet who once taught at the University of Chicago, where she met a community organizer who

How to Find Comfort in a Discomforting Season

When my Mum was diagnosed with cancer, lentil soup showed up on her porch. Friends picked her bouquets from their gardens, baked her bread from their sourdough starter, sent letters quoting Rumi and Wendell Berry, which she perched on her windowsills. And my mother whose spine was straight and fierce

For When We Don't Know What to Pay Attention To

When the mail comes, it's easily clear what's junk and what's to be read. The window washing flyers and hearing aid discounts (a mailing list I somehow got added to when I turned 21) go into recycling. The handwritten notes, the health insurance notifications

How Good Policy Will Be Made This Year

Hello Dear Reader, I'm getting over an old-fashioned spring head cold, so reposting a favorite from the archives. Until next week! Caitie How Good Policy Will Be Made This Year The first sunrise of 2000, I was on a ferry off the coast of Maine and a guy

Where the Saviors Are

"K-I-D!" Coach Murphy bellowed from the pool deck at swim meets when I would ask him how our team was doing. "Don't WASTE my time with that. Go swim your heart out and get me a BETTER score." So I'd refasten my

A Few Essential Words to Understand this Moment

If there's one thing politicians love it's getting elected. And if there are two things politicians love they are getting elected and then talking about what they're doing in elected office with words that make zero sense to the people who elected them. Words

How to Go On Offense When the Powerful Want Us On Defense

"This will be our reply to violence," wrote New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein after President Kennedy was assassinated, "to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before." The night before, Mr. Bernstein had led the Philharmonic in Mahler’s Second Symphony, known