Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
The NOAA is shutting down cod fishing for six months, from Provincetown, Mass., up to the Canadian border, in an effort to reverse plummeting numbers of the iconic fish in the Gulf of Maine. Jeffery Bolster argues humans have depredated the Atlantic’s fish stocks for centuries, and the focus on short-term fixes only compounds the problem.
The story of a Pilgrim Thanksgiving was a fairy tale told by Lincoln to unite the Union. The Wampanoag version of the harvest festival with the English settlers is a day of mourning for a land taken away, a culture subverted and a people disappeared from epidemic and massacre.
This Mohegan story about the benevolent nature spirits, called the Makiawisug, illustrates the spiritual potency of the Native universe, and the healing necessary to face the invading Pilgrims and their fear of the Antichrist.
Emily Dickinson was a great poet whose life has remained a mystery. The time has come to dispel the myth of a quaint and helpless creature, disappointed in love, who gave up on life. Unafraid of her own passions and talent, she embraced the world around her, yet faced a debilitating illness and family intrigue.
Jack Kerouac wrote in 1950: “I wish to evoke that indescribable sad music of the night in America–for reasons which are never deeper than the music. Bop only begins to express that American music. It is the actual inner sound of a country.”