Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. James Baldwin wasn't thinking of climate when he wrote that, but if you think about it, isn't that the logic of climate policy efforts today? Isn't that the hope, the idea that drives our science – to win the publicContinue reading “James Baldwin on climate science”
Author Archives: Kit Stolz
PDO turns positive: what does this mean for West Coast?
It's crazy how warm the Pacific is these days. Yet another story from the hard-working Chris Mooney at the Washington Post points to "the blob" of warmth in the Pacific off California. Here's a map of sea surface temperature anomalies that gives an idea of that blob: It's been extraordinarily warm in the Pacific, and inContinue reading “PDO turns positive: what does this mean for West Coast?”
Ventura County: Highest pesticide use in California
Spectacular story for The Food and Environment Network, published in The Nation, by Liza Gross. For Ventura County and Oxnard, here's the nut of it: Use of many of these sixty-six pesticides has fallen statewide since 2007. But a handful of communities saw a dramatic increase. By 2012, the most recent year for which dataContinue reading “Ventura County: Highest pesticide use in California”
How good you are in bed: a woman’s perspective
Jessica Hagy has a crazy/great gift for simplification that often looks to me like wisdom. Something tells me she's right. But how could such a theory be tested?
Man, Nature, and Tree, in one brilliant image
From Ajim Sulaj, an Albanian artist/cartoonist living in Italy. Via Cartoon Movement.
California’s water demand: a look at the numbers
Nate Silver's datalab, aka 538, takes a fresh look at the numbers that show California's water demand. Leah Libresco digs up some real gems: California’s water problem won’t be solved by shorter showers or browner lawns. In Gov. Jerry Brown’s executive order setting California’s mandatory water reductions in cities and towns, he called for 25Continue reading “California’s water demand: a look at the numbers”
Understanding Tennessee: how he projected his “wound”
Writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Greg Barrios (who has written two plays about Tennessee Williams and Williams' two great loves, Frank Merlo and Pancho Rodriguez) interviews John Lahr, who just published last year an award-winning biography of Tennessee Williams called Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh. It's absolutely fascinating, "literary detection" as The Guardian says. What I likeContinue reading “Understanding Tennessee: how he projected his “wound””
Visiting with Emily Dickinson in a D.C. Museum
From Claudia Emerson, a poem about visiting with Emily Dickinson in a Washington D.C. museum. First Emerson describes a talk given about the reclusive Dickinson, and why that might be, and then: On display: one of her beloved nephew Gilbert's boyhood suits, velveteen, and beside it the contents of his morning's pocket—a bullet's spent casing,Continue reading “Visiting with Emily Dickinson in a D.C. Museum”
The sound and sights of the California drought
As noted here a week or so ago, Ronald Reagan's close friend and confidant George Shultz published an op-ed declaring that if Ronald Reagan was president today, he would take action to restrain climate change. Along similiar lines, this week Reagan's biographer Lou Cannon published a tough warning about drought and California that began withContinue reading “The sound and sights of the California drought”
Who would Jesus’s flock be today? Farmworkers
The Abundant Table is a small but mighty non-profit farm education outfit in Santa Paula, founded by a group of idealistic CSU – Channel Islands students a few years ago. One of them, the eloquent Erynn Smith, director of farm education, explained to me in an interview last year that they had been inspired byContinue reading “Who would Jesus’s flock be today? Farmworkers”
Kit Stolz 