The news about Trump's ascendancy continues to be dire and those of us feeling the pain are curling into mental fetal positions. I have only the hope that the battle to save our natural treasures will go through courts of law long enough to restore more compassionate leadership. Expect lots of lawsuits and counter lawsuits. The scale of what's coming is daunting. But when I look in my back yard, my neighborhood, my community, the challenges are parsed into components I can tackle. Spending more time connecting with friends and reaching out to make new friends; creating native habitat for local plants, birds and animals; volunteering with and/or donating to local organizations that provide essential health and social services; selecting a key cause or two and really putting your shoulder to those wheels. Pick a place - any place you really care about - and dedicate yourself to protecting that place. Even if it's just your backyard. It's a start toward creating the wo
It's important to stay true to reality in these strange times, and to act in a principled way even when it seems that everyone in authority is not. I have some wonderful role models for doing this - most recently the wonderful Dan Rather. If you haven't already, I highly recommend following his posts on Facebook for some very insightful and courageous writing. The whole carnival of madness we see in daily reports of who Trump has chosen for cabinet posts can be extremely anxiety-provoking. I watched my sister, usually stoic and unflappable, quietly insist that a dinner table conversation not veer onto that topic because it sends her to such a difficult place. It was hard to see someone I consider a real "rock" tear up with such genuine distress. I imagine this is happening for many of us. This sh*tshow reminds me of a conversation I had with a trailblazer on the nutrition front, Dr. Michael Klaper , when I first started eating vegan and also wanted to cut