Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
In the Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, rampant industrial destruction is being stopped by people banding together to protect their communities, and the land. The Baram Dam proposal was just put on hold in response to a two year protest. But threats, and the corruption behind them, will continue.
Wild bison will be allowed to migrate out of Yellowstone National Park and stay in parts of Montana year-round under a move by Gov. Steve Bullock. The decision won’t end the slaughter of some bison that roam outside of the park, yet pushes against the collusion between cattle ranching interests and wildlife managers using the threat of brucellosis to justify private property and development rights over the spirit of the wild.
Discover the African Orthodox Church of St. John Coltrane, Founded on the Divine Music of A Love Supreme. Evicted in 2016 from its original Fillmore neighborhood in San Francisco from gentrification, it has moved to the Western Addition/NOPA, which once was once the epicenter of the city’s jazz scene.
Cuba may have been restricted politically and economically for the past 50 years, but its borders have remained open to wildlife for which Cuba’s undeveloped islands are an irresistible draw.
Christopher Ketcham writes on our continuing anthropogenic (human-caused) extinction, and the ineffectual and often misguided attempts at appeasement for the destroyers of wilderness and consumers of the Earth’s bounty. E.O. Wilson’s push for parks and wilderness connected by corridors: half for us, half for them, might just be the answer.
Alexis Slutzky tells the story of a September 2015 pilgrimage through California’s Owens Valley, called Walking Water. This first phase of a much longer journey began at Mono Lake and ended 180 miles south at Owens Dry Lake. For 100 years, Los Angeles has piped water from there over 300 miles further south to sustain the city, draining ancient lakes and groundwater, destroying natural water systems. In the fourth year of an historic drought, Walking Water seeks to create a new narrative regarding this life-giving resource, investigating our common and often conflicting needs, and learning how to live within our means.
Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 masterpiece “Under the Volcano,” about the fervid last hours of an alcoholic ex-diplomat in Mexico, is set to the drumbeat of coming internal and external conflict. Autobiographical and reflective of the expatriated trust-funder in a futile search for an artistic home, the perpetually inebriated master got lost along the road toward his own abyss, and died under suspicious circumstances, out-of-print.