Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously approached his first 100 days as president in 1933 to attack the demons of the Great Depression: unemployment, poverty, healthcare, and reviving industry and agriculture. All new presidents since have had a 100 day gauntlet to confront and address the many ills that face them. Having run more than five 100-day […]
Pundits and commentators in New York City and Washington, D.C. think that when president-elect Trump declares he will “drain the swamp”, he’s either expressing racism (Ray Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Center) or wasting time since “it just rains and then there’s another swamp” (John Podhoretz of Commentary magazine). If these are examples of […]
E Pluribus Garden Today, the Fourth of July, you, me, and our 323,995,528 fellow Americans unite to honor and celebrate our nation’s 240th birthday. We bask in a happy blend of patriotism, love-thy-neighbor friendliness, and pre-electronic fun. Founding Father and future president John Adams anticipated the character of our jubilant annual observance: “It ought to […]
In today’s economic climate the urban garden is an endangered species. Real estate developers regard the open green spaces greedily, square foot by square foot, visions of co-ops dancing in their heads. In millennials’ magnet cities—Boston, San Francisco, Seattle—housing advocates view the garden plots warily— they take precious space where young families could grow instead. […]
One of the great marvels of our time is the rapid emergence of urban gardening. A casual stroll about a major city soon reveals signs that the urban jungle is morphing into a luxuriant urban Eden. Gardens, great and small, sprout on urban rooftops, root in repurposed warehouses, climb up walls, bloom on apartment terraces, […]
Recently Pope Francis proclaimed climate change a fact, stressing our moral duty to correct it. The Pontiff titled his encyclical “Laudato si’ ”, or “Be Praised”, a phrase taken from “Canticle of the Sun”, composed by the wandering naturalist and pioneering ecologist, St. Francis of Assisi. I agree we are experiencing manmade climate change. But […]
The winter has turned the corner— truly — our days are lengthening. The beginning of winter’s end is fast upon us — but don’t be too enthusiastic: the winter is, itself, a garden. You just don’t see it that way. Winter is not the cruelest season. It is the mother of the garden’s invention. The […]
What you will rarely encounter in the digital world of today is a sense of tradition. The change-over from daylight-saving time this weekend reminds me of a long-ago conversation with a business colleague from India. He found the notion of our biannual time shift both novel and disturbing. “You can’t do that,” he said. He […]
The sky grew darker, and when the clouds finally let loose, the water stood an inch deep on the level driveway and streamed into the window wells. Later, in the basement, among the ruined boxes of books and whatnot, I saw a little plastic bear, long forgotten, bobbing gently against the wall and floating on […]
For a long time, I used to go to bed early. That was when my daughter was little more than a toddler. At night, she asked to be told stories about animals. Sometimes she would fall asleep before I had begun; sometimes I would find myself speaking from my own dream. But other times the […]
