Soul-making is like any other imaginative activity. It requires crafting, just as does politics, agriculture, the arts, love relations, war, or the winning of any natural resource. What is given won’t get us through; something must be made of it. From The Dream and the Underworld, by James Hillman, a deeply informed exploration of theContinue reading “Soul-making is a crafting, said James Hillman”
Author Archives: Kit Stolz
The twenty-first century martyr
Extraordinary times deserve extraordinary writing. Elizabeth Breunig rises to the occasion, speaking of the two heroic young men, Riley Howell and Kendrick Castiloo, who died attacking school shooters, saving lives, living up to their moment. From the Washington Post: You can determine the excesses of an era by its martyrs. Essential to the story ofContinue reading “The twenty-first century martyr”
Flee or stay and defend? Rethinking evacuation from wildfire
News from around the Ojai Valley Thomas Fire dilemma: Stay or go? Residents, fire officials rethink evacuations Published: Friday, 22 March 2019 08:48 Photo provided by CAPS Media Firefighters try to save a house during the Thomas Fire. Kit Stolz, special to the Ojai Valley News On the night of Dec. 4, 2017, fueledContinue reading “Flee or stay and defend? Rethinking evacuation from wildfire”
“a very strange argument” for global warming
From David Wallace-Wells’ just published The Uninhabitable Earth: “Over the last few years, as the planet’s own environmental rhythms have seemed to grow more fatalistic, skeptics have found themselves arguing not that climate change isn’t happening, since extreme weather has made that undeniable, but that its causes are unclear — suggesting that the changes weContinue reading ““a very strange argument” for global warming”
“a permanent loss of normal”: CA climate today
A couple of years ago I worked hard on a story about a hugely important study from Daniel Swain et al on the all-too-likely re-occurence of the Great California Flood. For personal reasons nothing came of my story, but eventually the news did break in a big (Los Angeles Times) and accessible (Science Friday) sortContinue reading ““a permanent loss of normal”: CA climate today”
Precipitous insect decline: collapse of nature?
This week a Dutch cartoonist with beauty dramatized a horrifying new study warning of “the collapse of nature.” Yes, that statement seems extreme, but the art contextualizes it as form of suicide. Or even worse, as a form of ecocide-suicide. First our species exterminates the insects, and then their decline unravels nature. The study, freely available fromContinue reading “Precipitous insect decline: collapse of nature?”
Sisyphus and climate activism: the surprising truth
In December, the scientist who — probably more than any other individual — brought ocean acidification to the attention of the world, Ken Caldeira, gave a named lecture to the huge science conference known as the AGU (officially, the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union). He spoke on the legacy of Carl Sagan, andContinue reading “Sisyphus and climate activism: the surprising truth”
“Radical Distraction” by Saul Bellow
From Saul Bellow, in an essay from 1975, published in Critical Inquiry: “We are in a state of radical distraction,” he writes in “A World Too Much with Us,” an essay for the journal Critical Inquiry, in 1975, the same year Humboldt’s Gift appears. “I don’t see how we can be blind to the politicalContinue reading ““Radical Distraction” by Saul Bellow”
Performative Cruelty in the Presidency
The best essay on our very stable genius from last year, it is clear to me now, came from The Atlantic and Adam Serwer: The Cruelty is the Point. Let me quote the “nut graph” as they say in journalism, the simplest possible outline of the argument to be made in the piece. The crueltyContinue reading “Performative Cruelty in the Presidency”
Don’t Push Me Because I’m Close to the Edge: 2019
A generation ago Grandmaster Flash had a huge hit with The Message, with a chorus that went like this: Don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge I’m trying not to lose my head It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder How I keep from going under That was 1982, twenty-seven years ago,Continue reading “Don’t Push Me Because I’m Close to the Edge: 2019”
Kit Stolz 