Where is your heart? Apparently, for many Americans today, it is not at home. The old saying, “Home is where the heart is,” retains little meaning these days. The heart seems located at our next destination. When the COVID-19 disease went pandemic, one of the first things I noticed was how crazy people were becoming … More Home is Where the Home Is
I hear a lot of talk these days of “returning to normal,” after “this coronavirus thing blows over,”—as if nothing else has changed. We will not return to normal; what we thought of as normal is gone, if it ever existed. Nor will we arrive at some “new normal,” either bad or good. Change is … More No New Normal Now
Relative deprivation is a peculiarity of human perception and fact. The COVID-19 pandemic has hurt many people in many ways. As public health researchers study the virus and learn more about its behavior, they have learned that it attacks humans in many ways. However, it has become clear that in the US, Blacks, Latinos, Native … More Relative Deprivation in Black and White
Having grown up in Southern California, the Pacific coast of Mexico has a familiar comfort for me – and it’s warm in the winter. You can actually get out in the surf in January in La Peñita, a small fishing village of about 20,000 people halfway between Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta. I spent the summer … More Not On the Road Again: Missing the Run to La Peñita
How do humans communicate, emote, interact, and bond (or not) in the “Age of Digital Devises,” and what’s next? What, if anything, will be required of us in our “digital freedom”? Often, it seems, the dog trains the master as much as the master trains the dog. Who is in control? Whenever we become involved … More Interaction Effects: Human and Digital
Little old airports near small towns have a story to tell. I have been flying since 1976. For most of that time, I flew mostly in the Southern California area, to and from small and medium sized airports surrounded near or in cities. In 2010, I flew from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, … More Community: Some Fragments Remain
In some ways, Northern New Mexico may be ahead of other regions in building local community resilience and adapting to increasingly difficult environmental conditions. Santa Fe sports a reputation for one of the lowest per capita water usage rates in the nation. On the other hand, its recycling program is dismally inadequate. Over-dependence on a … More Local Community Resilience to Reduce Climate Disruption
A recent “dust-up” in Santa Fe, New Mexico, between the school district and the police department ought to be an important “teachable moment.” But the opportunity to resolve institutional overreach and get back to basics is likely being ignored. It all started when a highly respected middle-school teacher Marcy Slaughter allegedly threw a paperback book … More A Teachable Moment: Criminalizing Everyone
Martin Luther King referred several times to the need for “a revolution of values,” in his speech, “Beyond Viet Nam,” April 4th, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York, a year before he was assassinated,. I listened again as it was replayed on Martin Luther King Day, 2014, forty-seven years later. That speech had been … More “A Revolution of Values” is What It Will Take to Humanize the Coming Great Transformation
The economics profession provides the ideology, the corporations fund the politicians and their lobbyists write the legislation, the congress formalizes the legal cover and the stacked courts confirm it, the Federal Reserve provides the “fractional reserve” lending authority, and the Wall Street “Masters of the Universe” direct capital to drive the endless-growth economy that is … More What It Will Take: Living in a World We Made But Never Expected to See, Part III
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 