. . . though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater. —Haldir of Lothlorien, The Fellowship of the Rings I’ve had a large helping of grief the last five years...
Park University hosted the 2018 MiddleMoot in Kansas City, the first in the metro area and the second after a moot in Waterloo, Iowa, in 2017. I was fortunate enough to be allowed, and even...
I bought What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton right after it came out, but I didn’t read it until the end of 2017. It seemed like a fitting way to evaluate 2017 and usher in 2018, I guess...
Recently I bought a facial cleanser in plastic packaging. I didn’t want the packaging, but I did want the exfoliating cleanser. I had been using a bamboo washcloth to clean and exfoliate my...
“Environmental restoration” sounds serious, doesn’t it? And difficult! But it doesn’t have to be. I fervently believe every American can do something to heal...
When our guide Sudhir mentioned the “aha” moment, our cynical brains said, Oh, yeah? We arrived at about 10 am, late enough for most of the smog to have burned off. The air was terribly...
Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesia, which Todd and I visited in October 2015, was permeated by smoke. Parts of Indonesia get hazy every fall as farmers burn their fields (an ancient practice...
At the last minute I emailed Emma Healey of Money Can Buy Me Happiness to see if we could meet while Todd and I were visiting Christchurch. I knew her from the Blog Brilliantly group on Facebook, but...
Xtreme Zero Waste in the small community of Raglan, on the central west coast of the North Island, was one of three places I knew I had to visit in New Zealand. It is a community organization similar...
A Pegalic Trip for Seabirds I’m not sure how long I’ve dreamed of seeing an albatross. Probably not since I first read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” but still a good long...
Street papers were invisible to me until I noticed homeless people in the Denver area selling the Voice. I began to investigate and found that papers written for—and also by—the homeless had sprouted...
For years I’ve been volunteering with environmental organizations, so it was natural for me to want to focus on environmental restoration during my trip with Todd around the Pacific. Back in...
All farmers markets are meant to build community, but R&B’s Mo’ Betta Green Marketplace does so to the best beat. Not that music is a stranger at such events, but it tends to be folk...
Two weeks from today, Todd and I will arrive in Sydney! And the Monday after that, I will do my first restoration project abroad, in a park in Sydney with a group called Conservation Volunteers. They...
Taking up 13.5 acres on the eastern outskirts of Kansas City, Urbavore is one of the largest urban farms in the United States. Bringing you a shot of the entire farm would have required hiring a...
From the moment I walked through the gate at Ekar Farm and joined the small group at the arbor, I felt comfortable. Executive Director Aaron Ney welcomed me, and after a few more volunteers of all...
I love environmental restoration the way some people love sports or their pets, and on this site I will write about restoration wherever I happen to find it. Why do I care? I believe restoration of...
I’ve been volunteering for Groundwork Denver for a couple of years now. Once I’d had enough of trail restoration in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and decided to help restore...
I was inspired by this quote, especially the part I set in boldface. It’s taken from a report in Cultural Survival magazine (December 2014) about the People’s Climate March in Manhattan...
Ever since I first heard of Tulips on Troost a few years ago, I’ve thought the nonprofit exemplified the kind of restoration that builds community, and I wanted to find out more about it. My reasons...
During her keynote speech at the Grow Food Symposium, Oakland farmer Novella Carpenter made a joke about living next to vegans while raising “edible pets.” It was one of many laugh-out...
For years now I’ve been doing some kind of volunteer work for the environment. I began by doing office work for the Nature Conservancy in the 1990s, but that was too much like my day job. Since...
Todd and I recently went to Louisiana for a second surgery on his left ear. As always, I was amazed by the amount of trash along the highways and was determined to keep my trash off the side of the...
Denver Urban Homesteading, situated at the corner of Santa Fe and Second Avenue, is a liminal space with industrial buildings to the west and the Baker neighborhood with its old brick bungalows to...
On our way back from Kansas City to Denver, we stopped at the Day’s Inn in Hays, Kansas. The next morning I ventured out into a frigid park just behind the hotel strip to look for birds, but...