22 November 2024 Since the Trump election, the zeitgeist in my media-sphere* — call it the liberal media if you have to – is all about taking-a-long-hard-look-at-ourselves-as-a-nation. There is the very real dread and the democratic soul-searching and the data-mining and poll-questioning, and the finger-pointing and the circular firing squads and the group therapy sessions,Continue reading “Observance: Letter to a MAGA Friend”
Author Archives: Jeff Conant
Observances
November 1 2024: Let’s see what we can see Driving through the Massachusetts woods, six-year old Raisa recognizes location by a rainbow-painted mailbox, a sharp bend in the road, a river crossing. Recently, she astonished me with such a noticing, able to detect that we were nearing home as we sped past a yellow bog.Continue reading “Observances”
How Land Speculation Drives Environmental and Human Rights Violations in Brazil’s Cerrado
[Note: Based on my work with Friends of the Earth, where I/we have been publishing and promoting research reports by the Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos, I was recently invited to write this short analysis for the Washington Brazil Office, “an independent institution which specializes in thinking about Brazil and supporting actions thatContinue reading “How Land Speculation Drives Environmental and Human Rights Violations in Brazil’s Cerrado”
My Books of 2023
In keeping with the end of year tradition, here, just a week or so overdue, is the list of books I read or listened to, cover to cover, in 2023… “Let us put it into context. This was the beginning of the Old Wild West Days. In most ways it was a retrogression. The lawlessnessContinue reading “My Books of 2023”
A Sunday Morning at Home During Israel’s Assault on Gaza
Words won’t save us. All the Holy Lands are up in flame. Yesterday, a dozen trees came down around my house, the bones of their bodies – cherry and black birch, white pine, white birch – lie on the cold earth, twisted and silent. All the birds are flung from their nests. I paid theContinue reading “A Sunday Morning at Home During Israel’s Assault on Gaza”
New York Can Tackle Deforestation and Jumpstart A Historic Path To Climate Justice
First published, Oct 06, 2023 in Common Dreams When confronting the climate emergency, rampant consumption of fossil fuels is top of mind—and rightly so—as tens of thousands of activists recently reminded us in the streets of New York City. But the second leading driver of the climate crisis is the rapid destruction of our planet’s forests. GlobalContinue reading “New York Can Tackle Deforestation and Jumpstart A Historic Path To Climate Justice”
Undone: 14 Poems of London
Pre-face: What makes poetry the most liberating of the literary arts is, you can do anything you want, without reason, though ideally with some rhythm or even, god forbid, some rhyme. I spent an eerily balmy September weekend walking the streets of London and, inspired by some works at the Tate Modern – a vastContinue reading “Undone: 14 Poems of London”
Lot’s Relation
(Note: the following post is not your typical blog post, but a longish work of fiction in the genre you might call “speculative genoeology”. Enjoy. And, if you read it, please send feedback.) *** Lot’s Relation Being the Account of an Olde Settler in the Colony of New England & of His Travails Among theContinue reading “Lot’s Relation”
2022: My Year in Books
A few years ago I began keeping a list of the books I’d read each year, and posting it on social media in the event that others would find it handy, as I find inspiration in the booklists of friends and colleagues. This year, as December rain comes down on my little house in theContinue reading “2022: My Year in Books”
Sowing the Seeds of a Tropical Village Economy in the Mountains of Sumatra
The village of Air Pahlawan in Sumatra, Indonesia sits amid steep jungled hills two hours’ ride by motorbike up long slopes from the sprawling shore of the Indian Ocean. Home to several dozen families, some whose roots are here and others whose parents or grandparents migrated from West Java in search of fertile land, theContinue reading “Sowing the Seeds of a Tropical Village Economy in the Mountains of Sumatra“
The Watering Hole :: Jeff Conant 