I’ve done my share of protesting in life. In 1969, I joined a half million protesters in Washington, D.C. in the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam - and was sprayed with tear gas. At a similar rally in New York City’s Bryant Park I saw fellow demonstrators clubbed by police and witnessed its rapid transformation from peaceful protest to street violence.

Most of us know that plastic debris is an environmental problem we need to solve. According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags a year, which require 12 million barrels of oil to make. The American Progressive Bag Alliance, which represents the plastics industry, estimates that only 15% of those bags get recycled properly. And the California Coastal Commission calculates that roughly 80 percent of all marine debris is plastic, which never

We’re becoming a nation of activists. The first sign was the historic Women’s March which brought millions of women and many men into the streets the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. “I’ve never been political before,” was the common refrain, heard widely from sign carriers.

The general reaction to Treasurer Beth Pearce’s suggestion that the state cover about a quarter of the massive costs of cleaning up Vermont’s waterways with a de facto increase in the property tax was a collective WHAT???

Recently I heard a woman defend her support of our new president by declaring in an interview that jobs “trump everything.” It reminded me that long before President Donald Trump entered politics, I often used the word trump, with a lower case “t,” to mean override, as in “love trumps all,” or “my love for French fries trumps my New Year’s resolution to eat healthy foods.”

If current political events have taught us anything, it’s how vulnerable we all are to misinformation and innuendo. And if 80% of us don’t trust our own government, we must then ask how many Americans even understand how their government works or their own role in a vibrant democracy. Three quarters of Americans can’t name the three branches of government and one third can’t name even one branch. An electorate that condemns its own government without understanding its functions and purpose can

Vermonters have historically been considered taciturn. And this reminds me of the story of the old Vermonter who was said to have come in from chores one morning and was so moved by the presence of his wife that he blurted out. “I love you so much that sometimes I can hardly resist the urge to come right out and say so.”

Given the debate about acceptance and tolerance, religious and otherwise, I’ve been reminded of how the Nazis required Jews to wear yellow stars on their clothing as emblems of their identity. And I’ve briefly imagined wearing a yellow star of my own, made with the Islamic image of a star and crescent moon embroidered in the center instead of Juden , the German word for Jew.

The earth was shaking, and I was crouching under a desk on the third floor of a building in San Francisco, when I gained some insight into the way my mind works. This was the big quake of 1989, and as the building rattled, my mind produced an image: the building collapsing, with me in it, but me rising up and getting to my feet, unhurt, amid the rubble.

In one of the most beloved of Dr. Seuss stories, a cranky woodland creature called The Lorax fights against the deforestation of his Truffula Tree home, saying, 'I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.' And if the new administration follows through on its plans for the Environmental Protection Agency, we may soon wish we had a lot more Loraxes around.