Refuse Revisited

Posted on September 29, 2010 by zoeweil

My husband and I recently kayaked out to Long Island in Blue Hill Bay. This 4.7 mile long island is uninhabited by humans, and we had the beach to ourselves the night we spent there. After landing on the island, we decided to explore the interior. We found an old trail and several piles of [...]

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The Change of Seasons

Posted on September 27, 2010 by zoeweil

Over the past several days flickers have been gathering at our house. Dozens of them. I rarely see flickers, and then suddenly, they are everywhere, eating insects in the grass. The dragonflies are buzzing all over too, not just at the pond where they hatched and spent their first few weeks, but over the grass [...]

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William Deresiewicz: We Need a World of Thinkers and Visionaries

Posted on September 24, 2010 by zoeweil

The American Scholar printed a speech at West Point by William Deresiewicz, titled “Solitude and Leadership” — an interesting and seemingly oxymoronic pair of words. Speaking to some of the brightest, most hard-working future “leaders,” Deresiewicz made an impassioned plea for people who think for themselves, arguing that what we need most at this point [...]

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Environmental Responsibility — An Epic Pain in the Ass?

Posted on September 22, 2010 by zoeweil

I just read an excellent essay by J.B. MacKinnon, “In an Age of Eco-uncertainty,” reprinted in Utne Reader. MacKinnon begins: “Environmental responsibility, of late, is an increasingly epic-scale pain in the ass….” She goes on to say, “… every possible choice from diapers to cremation is overwhelmed by conflicting information about what’s better or worse [...]

Filed under: changemakers, Environmental Preservation, MOGO (Most Good), positive choices, responsibility | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Rubie, Elsie, and the Stick

Posted on September 20, 2010 by zoeweil

Most days, I walk my dogs, Ruby and Elsie, down to the ocean. Invariably, Elsie finds a stick to bring home, although stick is really a misnomer. Little Elsie is more likely to carry home a small tree than a stick, and Ruby and I anxiously check our backs because Elsie tears along the path [...]

Filed under: animal intelligence and emotion, gratitude, joy, language, learning | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

49 Rolls: Honoring Aging

Posted on September 17, 2010 by zoeweil

The eve of my 49th birthday, at the end of my Aikido class, I did 49 rolls. It’s a tradition in our and other dojos that on our birthdays we do as many rolls as years we’ve lived. It’s a bit counter-intuitive though. When my young friend Zak turned 16 this summer, he only had [...]

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A Plea for Critical Thinking

Posted on September 15, 2010 by zoeweil

A couple of months ago, I was watching a film with my colleagues that was largely aligned with our general worldviews, and I tried to the best of my ability to bring the same critical eye to this film as I would to one that was not aligned with my worldview. It took effort, obsessive [...]

Filed under: accurate information, critical thinking, mindfulness, perspective, politics, responsibility | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Seeing the World From Another Side: Aikido and MOGO

Posted on September 13, 2010 by zoeweil

Last night I was teaching our Aikido class because our sensei was away, and one of the students was talking about what he perceived as some others’ faulty views. Then he reworded what he’d said, reframing his point by saying that these others may simply have different views from his own. The first technique we [...]

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Meeting a 70-Year-Old Woman Finishing the Appalachian Trail

Posted on September 9, 2010 by zoeweil

Yesterday I hiked the last leg of the Appalachian Trail (AT) up Katahdin Mountain in Maine with my good friend and fellow humane educator, Freeman Wicklund. Freeman began the AT in Georgia in March and hiked more than 1,300 miles to Connecticut before a stress fracture in his foot laid him up for a month [...]

Filed under: heroes, mindfulness, MOGO (Most Good) | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Local Versus Global, Consumerism vs. Simplicity

Posted on September 6, 2010 by zoeweil

I was reading an article in the July/August issue of Ode Magazine titled, “If you’ve got it, spend it: How consumer spending can help create a fairer, richer, greener and more stable global economy.” The article is an edited excerpt from Philippe Legrain’s book Aftershock: Reshaping the World Economy After the Crisis. Unfortunately, it’s edited [...]

Filed under: consumerism, economy, globalization, MOGO (Most Good), systemic change, third side thinking | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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