Appalachia's Front Porch Network Is A Lifeline
"On any day in Appalachia, you can find gifts in front of houses, left on porches for the people inside: mushrooms just foraged, cookies freshly baked. The porch is an extension of the home in Appalachia--not only a gathering spot for conversation, but a traditional sharing place. If you want to exchange tools, plants, or hand-me-downs with your neighbor: you put them on the porch. In times of str... posted on May 16 2020, 5,234 reads

The Value of Being Uncomfortable
"'Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist without the things they like most for a few months at least,' Georgia O'Keeffe, impoverished and solitary in the desert, wrote in considering limitation, creativity, and setting priorities as she was about to revolutionize art while the world was crumbling into its first global war. There are echoes of Stoicism, of Buddhism, of... posted on May 15 2020, 8,661 reads

Health for All: The Journey of Dr. Abhay Bhang
In 1986, when Dr Abhay and Dr Rani Bang decided to adopt Gadchiroli, a tribal village in Maharashtra, India as their home and workplace, the district was infamous for Naxalism, abject poverty, poor infrastructure and abysmal health services. Today, nearly 30 years later the Bangs' model of home-based newborn and child care is now being practiced across India and even in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan... posted on May 14 2020, 5,697 reads

Views on a Pandemic
"I write to you now from my home in Seattle, former ground zero of the U.S. coronavirus epidemic, on the fifty-fifth day of our isolation. I write to you nine months pregnant, from the attic bedroom where I fatten on dates meant to hasten the child's arrival, perhaps upon this very bed. It is a rather Victorian confinement, subplot of the quarantine that is pregnancy itself. Friends and acquaintan... posted on May 13 2020, 4,244 reads

Gathering Gratefully in the Time of Coronavirus
"The hardships we face may feel amplified by our increasing need to stay home, isolating ourselves from others in service of the common good. Discovering ways to foster ease, belonging, kindness, and well-being under these circumstances may feel challenging, yet opportunities for nourishment can find their way into our worlds. The gifts of technology can offer us meaningful connection and support ... posted on May 12 2020, 7,150 reads

Greg Tehven: Business, Local Community and Love
"I think we have to love our sense of place, and champion the heck out of it", says Greg Tehven, who is turning the world of economic development on its head, and inviting people to build the communities they want to live in. Confronted with the business failings of his beloved hometown of Fargo, North Dakota, he asked himself what the community could offer to the public that would help get it bac... posted on May 11 2020, 3,403 reads

SUPERHERO: A Music Video for Our Times
In times of global crises, it becomes increasingly clear that our lives are sustained by millions of gestures, big and small made by everyday people who simply show up to do their little bit, day after day in service of the greater good. This newly released music video 'Superhero' is an ode to everyone in our world who lives like "we are the ones we have been waiting for."... posted on May 10 2020, 5,413 reads

Diana Beresford-Kroeger: The Call of the Trees
Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a world-recognized botanist, medical biochemist and author (and now filmmaker). She is known for her extraordinary ability to translate scientific complexities of nature for the general public with both precision and poetry. "If you speak for the trees, you speak for all of nature", says Beresford-Kroeger, one of the world's leading expert on trees. She has studied the e... posted on May 09 2020, 7,531 reads

Going Into the Hospital: COVID 19 (Poem)
"When I walk out the door these days
For a shift in the hospital
Two small people cry at the door
My daughter and son.
4 and 1 1/2
Tears fall
big drops against their full brown cheeks"
So begins this moving poem by Sriram Shamasunder, a physician and father who is leading a HEAL Initiative medical team serving on the ground in Navajo Nation.... posted on May 08 2020, 8,464 reads

COVID Era Shows Gandhi's Ideal of Practical Idealism is Possible
A new society can be developed from the inspiring ways people around the world are responding to this unprecedented disaster, and this is what we should be planning right now in the spirit of Gandhi's 'practical idealism.' Read more from Gandhian scholar Michael Nagler.... posted on May 07 2020, 8,014 reads