This year going back to school is personal. For years now I’ve made note when the yellow school buses begin going up and down the streets in early September. Seeing them would trigger fond and not-so-fond memories of school … years of wearing loafers and pleated skirts, of knee-high socks not staying up, of avoiding Danny – the neighborhood bully – at the bus stop, of sitting in the coveted back seats of the bus. I won’t be riding the yellow bus this year but I will be sharing the experience the students in the buses will be having. I’m going back to school! …

Today, I was reminded of a quotation about peace by Mary Baker Eddy. It’s in a book I hadn’t read in a couple years, Inspiration for Life’s Relationships …

Dear friends,
This is an odd time. Maya Angelou’s poem, Amazing Peace, describes it well.  Read recently at the tree lighting at the White House, her poem acknowledges the challenges we are facing as a people engaged in war, recovering from floods and earthquakes, wrestling with outmoded models of commerce and inequality, and struggling to [...]

It all happened so naturally as it is wont to do when women are together … creativity emerging, a plan evolving, an outcome that nurtures others. We were at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on a glorious July summer day looking at the exhibit, “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend.” Ten of us were eating turkey wraps and nectarines at a picnic following the tour. We had been moved and inspired by the quilts these women from Gee’s Bend, Alabama had made. From modest material magnificent creations of beauty and practicality were born. We marveled in the sense of community and joy these women expressed. Someone suggested we try making our own quilt. …

I remember Earth Day as a kid. It was a big deal at school and I remember participating in the first one — I think it was in 1970. My Dad was pretty jazzed too, he was an avid ornithologist and taught natural science to elementary and middle school students.

But I wouldn’t call myself a lifelong environmentalist. Somewhere along the “figuring out what I want to be when I grown up” track, the issues of caring for the environment fell by the wayside as I pursued other interests. Yes, I recycle and don’t litter and reuse grocery and plastic bags, but I didn’t think about sustainable environmental issues until more recently.

What a representation of the human imagination! Just what would the early settlers think of Manhattan Island now?

I arrived in lower Manhattan on the Chinatown Bus from Boston on a hot day at the end of May. We were dropped off on Canal Street in sight of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. The woman I adopted as my traveling companion is an architect from Jerusalem.