For this month, I offer Micaela Amateau Amato’s recent presentation at Pennsylvania State University’s Cancer and the Environment Symposium. Amato is not only my mother, but my primary collaborator focusing on fossil-fuel addicted culture and counter-hegemonic, living-art practices. Amato’s presentation on Cancerous Collusions, is the…
I conclude my essay series for Mother Pelican 2022 with a confession. I have reached an impasse, a seemingly untraversable territory bordered by child-rearing landmines—a misstep may suck me into parental-failure quicksand. I thought I “did the right thing:”… READ MORE…
Howard Zinn distinguishes between a totalitarian state and democracy: “To go along with whatever your government does is not a characteristic of democracy.” The colossal scale of industrial technologies (Big Data, Big Telecom), fifth generation of wireless networks (5G), digital…
Cultural Biomimicry: An Evolutionary Guide to the Ecozoic through Epigenetics In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson shares: “There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature.” These cycles are not about eventually doing more through increased efficiency, but about equilibrium and relationship. This sense…
Monthly Essay Series Mother Pelican ~ A Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability Love & Waste: Igniting A Permaculture Paradigm Shift~ A Personal Story, Part I Love & Waste: Igniting A Permaculture Paradigm Shift~ A Personal Story, Part II Love…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: ”The future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.” — Rainer Maria Rilke For my Mother Pelican…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: Dedicated to Greg Jacobs aka SHKG Humpty Hump “April is the cruellest month, / breeding lilacs out of the dead land, / mixing memory and desire, /…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: “Realizing the potential of women is the single most important pathway to planetary regeneration.”—Paul Hawken Yes, but how? Many environmental activists claim that empowering women through education is key…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: For February’s Mother Pelican installment, we take a detour from our exploration of Big Tech and Big Telecom exploitation. Corporations market Valentine’s Day as yet again another…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: “Electricity is an element that is more intimate to us than the air we breathe.”—Abbé Nollet, 1746 “The relative divergence of my bodily senses….indicates that this body…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users:’ illegal drugs and software.” — Edward Tufte We can no longer ignore the intricate interconnections between manufactured consent…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: “Our house is on fire…I want you to panic.”—Greta Thunberg’s speech at the 2019 World Economic Forum The fires, dear Reader, have caught up with us. As…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: As activist-educators, we must scrutinize extractive-capitalist interrelationships among slowwashing (including stress reduction technology that actually increases cortisol production), greenwashing (including fraudulent “corporate social responsibility” – CSR) and whitewashing “a coordinated attempt to…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: “We fear that when we stop, even for a moment, the sheer enormity of our lives will overwhelm us. Our outspoken and unspoken fears, they speed up…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: The terrestrial has been exiled from the earth.—Sajay Samuel’s review of Zazu Dreams We woke in the Safeway parking lot, ash falling from the sky. The gated…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: “You cannot regulate an abomination. You have got to stop it.”— Wendell Berry Driving across the United States in our over-heating converted eco-art school bus tiny home—painted…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: The mold had not only seeped into the fibers of our clothes, sheets, pillows, it infiltrated the hinges of my eyeglass frames, the space between the bed…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: Following a determined, iridescent dung beetle, my previous four-part Mother Pelican series ended with: “And then we, too, shift our path…” I hadn’t realized how dramatically our lives…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: Creative-Waste Living as Biophilia Rob (Wild Menagerie), Zazu, and I integrate the utilitarian with the sacred. This is our tikkun—our particular task of repair. Our actions model…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: Practicing Non-Violence through Creative-Waste Living I had met Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, at Peaceweavers while Zazu and I were living at EcoVillage Ithaca. His book, Be…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: I have always attempted to live my ethics to the utmost. During my book launch for Viscous Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene, author Jill Nagle, introduced me…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: Migration In search of a home that could support my ardent values for my son’s education, Zazu and I had been living in off-grid intentional communities from…
Erotic in Context: The Gender and Sexuality Hub, ebook, eds., M. Soraya García-Sánchez, Cara Judea Alhadeff, and Joel Kuennen, Inter-Disciplinary Press, Salzburg, AU, pp. 1-33