Labor Day is reflexively regarded as the end of summer and with it the end of the gardening season. Not so fast, my fellow Americans! Summer will be with us for a few weeks yet, until the autumnal equinox on Friday, September 22. But the best is yet to come. While we harvest our lima […]
Recently, renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking announced that we should colonize the moon and Mars as soon as possible. He predicts humankind is destroying the Earth, including itself, and that even if we survived, Mother Earth runs out of milk, figuratively speaking, by 2117. He insists we must exit the planet before then. Hawking’s grim, […]
As we head toward the longest day, light fills the sky, allowing us to see greater horizons than that of our garden alone. Rejuvenation and reform are in the air. Specifically, Congress would do well to model health care on the principles of horticulture. Other than catastrophes, infectious agents or diseases caused by genes, sicknesses are due […]
Surrounding President Trump are more Slavic people or their descendants than ever before in our history. Two of his three wives, including his current, four of his five children, two daughters-in-law and a son-in-law are Slavic. Moreover, Mr. Trump has pan-Slavic parents-in-law. Almost his entire kin hail directly or indirectly from northern, eastern, western or […]
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 […]
