Jan’s Blog Posts

Do coyotes need International Self-Care Day? As I watched a pack of coyotes frolic the last time I visited Arizona, I admired their frisky playfulness with one another. From a second-floor balcony, I watched them cavort and tumble over one another with complete abandon. It looked fun! Coyotes do not have to sign up for a class on improvisational yips, yelps, whines or howls. They are considered as extremely adaptable mammals (they eat almost anything) and are faster than humans, running 35-43 mph when chasing food (the fastest man runs 23.35 mph). Are coyotes also smarter than people? Every day is a self-care day for coyotes.

I have never had more than one occasional coyote in my own yard. My neighbor watched a coyote chasing a rabbit in my front yard. He labeled it his Serengeti experience. During winter, I found coyote tracks into my lilac thicket where a rabbit community nest exists. Another day I encountered a coyote in my back yard. We each stopped in our tracks. We stared at each other, as if to inquire, “What are you doing in MY yard?” I noticed Sir/Madam Coyote was well groomed.

Humans seem to require reminders about self-care for themselves as well as for others. Different entities have declared a National Self-Care day (created in 2010 for April 5^th,), and even National Self-Care Month (first recognized in 2017 for the month of September). However, International Self-Care Day is TODAY, July 24^th. The World Health Organization in 2011 chose the 24^th day to symbolize self-care “24 hours a day/7 days a week” with the U.S. Senate endorsing the July 24^th concept in 2014. This international version developed this year’s theme of “resilience, adaptability, and thriving in adversity” — all traits that coyotes seem to embody fully.

Human self-care means much more than a healthy diet with mindfulness and exercise practices. Some individuals are more challenged with self-care than others when institutional and interpersonal discrimination affects them 24/7. Civil Rights activist Audre Lorde explained: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

An article in the New Yorker describes commercialized “Self-Care Planners” and self-care temporary tattoos — shaped like Band-Aids with such messages as “This too shall pass,” and “I am enough.” On this International Self-Care Day, let’s consider how the U.S. might provide affordable healthcare that includes equitable services for mental health along with physical health.

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you,” quipped writer Anne Lamont. Time-out, taking pauses for playtime, is self-care, but we also need bigger and lasting Band-Aids.

FYI, coyotes are considered to be a good omen by many First Nation people. Coyotes are believed to be spirit animals. Aren’t all humans spirit animals too?

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

205. What actions will you take in your own self-care today?

206. Does this weekly blog offer you any ideas for supporting the self-care of yourself and others?            

Nora Prior, PhD Senior Research Associate, Psychology Department at Cornell University, studies songbirds. The Australian Zebra finch is monogamous. Dad finch works cooperatively in parent partnering. Birdbrain couples closely coordinate their parenting actions through communicating vocal harmonies.

Contrast this bird behavior with bee behavior. Male bees are lusty, but not trusty fellows (One Earth Film Fest).  A male bee jumps a female’s back and pins down her wings so that she cannot fly off. Initially, the young male “…jumps on anything, even bees of a different species. He improves with practice!” Drones (male bees), are about 10% of a bee colony and do no work; their life consists of eating honey and mating.

And humans? Current statistics are that 40% of the U.S. births occur to unmarried women. This is more than double the number in 1980 (18%). Reportedly, there are 13.6 million single parents raising 21 million children in the U.S. today; 80% of these single-parent caregivers are women. Where are the fathers?

The 7-10-23 Washington Post article, “Men are Lost. Here’s a Map Out of the Wilderness” by columnist Christine Emba, underscores the uncertain identity roles of men currently. Emba met and talked with men around the country. While many were taught a traditional male-as-provider role, the reality is that many feel left behind with declining male earnings and females appearing stronger in earning power. There are only 74 men finishing a college degree for every 100 women. However, the real “missing out” factor may be that young men today are missing positive male role models.

O.K. Here’s hope! Parenting precious-as-pearls babies is more all-encompassing than singing lullabies, although singing is an important ingredient — even singing to a babe in the womb. Many young mothers find themselves in circumstances without physical and/or emotional support.

New Moms, a Chicago-based parenting support center for moms 24 years-old or younger, celebrates their 40-year anniversary this year. From lowly roots of handing out diapers to young moms from the trunk of Ellen Kogstad’s car, to moving into the impressive Transformation Center in the Austin neighborhood with 30 studio and 10 one-bedroom apartments to accommodate single moms needing housing, New Moms expanded into Oak Park, acquiring Parenthesis Family Center and creating housing for 18 additional families.

I recently participated in making candles with New Moms at Bright Endeavors where soy candles are made for individual or corporate gifts and Whole Foods’ distribution. The paid job-training site has young moms learning more than how to show up for work on time and pour hot wax efficiently. The candle factory hums with activity. Candle-making moms face a punch list of life-skill development: executive skills, organization, time management, planning and prioritization, goal directed persistence, working memory, task initiation, sustained attention, response inhibition, metacognition, emotional control, flexibility, and stress tolerance.

Every person needs a Hi-Ho-It’s-Off-to-Work-We-Go job where they learn this energizing skillset!    

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

203. What organizations for social betterment do you support?

204. How might you extend support to youthful parents?                 

Columbia University’s Sustaining Peace Project studies Mauritius, the most peaceful nation in Africa. Different ethnic and religious groups with populations of Hindus (52%), Christians (28%) and Muslims (16%) practice democracy. A simple sign reinforces acceptance: “One Island. Many Peoples. All Mauritians.” The ethic of respect is an everyday/everywhere practice, from how daily news is reported, how teachers support their students, and notably, how politicians relate. Peacefulness is not taken for granted but is cultivated nationally.

A diverse group of scholars – psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, astrophysicists, environmental scientists, political scientists, data scientists, communications experts – began meeting in 2014 to study cultures where peace was sustainable. They found non-warring social systems existing in the 5 Nordic countries who have lived peacefully with one another for 200+ years. Singapore, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Canada, Qatar, the Orang Asli of Malaysia, 10 Upper Xingu River basin communities of Brazil, the E.U. and Mauritius are further examples.

The scholars’ list of peace-promoting individual habits prescribes a model for healthy adulthood:

• Motives: Endorsing self-transcendent values, an attitude of openness, a cooperative orientation, and peace beliefs;
• Cognitions: Possessing strengths in moral reasoning, fluency of a language of peace, and embracing a global identity;
• Affect: Demonstrating levels of empathy and compassion, hopefulness and positivity, and a trusting mindset;
• Behavior: Exhibiting mindfulness and a willingness to compromise.

Moving to family and community, peace-promoting includes these variables:

• A shared identity as a peaceful family/community with peace-enhancing ceremonies;
• A belief in cooperative tasks, goals, and reward structures;
• High levels of education and literacy, including early access to tolerance and multiculturalism in education;
• An ability to promote superordinate identity groups as unified across differences;
• Leaders who model peaceful values such as egalitarian values and norms;
• Examples of peace language in media and a spirit of sharing a free flow of information.

As a point of interest, an astrophysicist set his mathematic genius to work during one weekend and made an algorithm of the peace variables. No worries, I am not going there in this blogpost, but just know that the interactions of the above characteristics change when a variable is “decreased.” Peace-promoting can encounter rocky shorelines.

Internationally we suffer from an Attention-to-peace Deficit Disorder in spite of the United Nations attempts to sustain a peaceful planet.

Perhaps the education piece of peace is where we might best focus efforts for world peace. As psychiatrist Erich Fromm (The Sane Society, 1955) asked: “Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?”

A song popularized by singer Vince Gill (and daughter Jenny) was written by husband-and-wife songwriters Jill Jackson Miller and Sy Miller (in 1955) with a message that still rings true today: “Let there be peace on earth, And let it begin with me. Let there be peace on earth, The peace that was meant to be….”   

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

201. What does peace-promoting mean in your own words?

202. What peaceful language can you use today?        

Confucius is attributed with these words: “To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.” Informed critical thinking seems to be in short supply these days. While I am unqualified to interpret constitutionality or precedents in the law, I do tend to think downstream as well as upstream. Supreme Court decisions last week have massive implications. The “majority” seems to cross a line.

Columbia University president, Lee Bollinger, is a lawyer. He holds the longest tenure as president in the Ivy League (21 years). Previously, he held the presidency role at University of Michigan. His book, A Legacy of Discrimination: The Essential Constitutionality of Affirmative Action (with co-author Geoffrey Stone), warns of dangers of overturning a 2003 Gruttere v. Bollinger Supreme Court decision (upholding affirmative action in promoting diversity in education and ultimately, the general society). Bollinger labels the current ruling “tragic.”

Racial discrimination in the U.S. is problematic on many fronts. Bollinger’s expertise in running major U.S. universities with an effort to promote fairness in the student selection processes has been overlooked by this latest Supreme Court decision. How many of the justices studied his book?  

In an interview with S. Mitra Kalita (4-11-23), Bollinger was worried about how the current members of the Supreme Court would rule on affirmative action. Here is his thinking: “Is it constitutional and consistent with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for selective universities and colleges to consider race and ethnicity as a factor in accepting students? If the effective answer will be no, if that is the outcome, it will reverse a half-century of efforts by higher education to try to become more diverse, and it will have profound effects on society…

I was a defendant in the Michigan case. That was the first time a majority of the Supreme Court, five to four, ruled in favor of higher education taking race into account as a factor in admissions for educational purposes…the court solidly declared that principle under the 14th Amendment. However, the opponents of affirmative action are dogged…[Professor]Geoff Stone and I wrote this book because we felt that not only is affirmative action constitutional, it has been extremely successful in helping to realize the ideals of Brown v. Board of Education…certainly the greatest decision of the Supreme Court in our entire history. It was a unanimous decision by a court with Republican-and-Democrat-appointed justices.”

In a second Supreme Court decision last week, student loan forgiveness was rebuffed. Notably, the individuals holding the most student loans are Black women. As a point of interest, the 3 justices who believed in affirming “affirmative” education and helping with college debt were all women. Were they better informed on long-term issues?

Former justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said: “The right to swing your arm ends just where the other man’s nose begins.” Happy Independence Day!

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

199. When has a precedent mattered in your life?

200. Does anyone in your family struggle with student loans?      

My community library has a book sale every summer. People donate books that they no longer want. A volunteer army attacks bags and boxes of books piling up in sections of the library; they sort books into categories for ease of purchase. You drive to the library loading dock for a big stash of giveaways. No less than 5 individuals (of every decade past age 10) swarmed my last truckload. The ensuing sale draws a huge crowd. One can enlarge their home library for very little money. 

Meanwhile, individuals transform their former book stacks and bookshelves for a variety of reasons: making space for new books (wink), using cleared-out space for something totally new, or needing to reduce “stuff” from a family’s estate hand-me-down books.

As an author I have mixed feelings about all of this. What if the precious books that I donate to the book sale are not purchased? Where do they go? Several years ago I was told that there are simply too many books left over from the sale; they go to the equivalent of book cemeteries. I was aghast. Knowing how much time, deliberation, and energy it takes to write a book, I could not imagine this fate.

Another part of my mind put a philosophical and transformative spin on the life span of a book. What if each book had served its purpose at a particular time in a culture? With paper coming from trees, and trees rising out of the dusty earth, was the return of paper to a landfill just another example of “dust to dust?” After all, my college paperback copy of War and Peace by Russian Leo Tolstoy was on the tattered (and quite dusty) side already. I confess that I never read every fictional war portion. Today we ponder horrors of a current Russian war.

Tolstoy penned these 1867 lines, as if written today: “He recalled his mother’s last letter. ‘What would she feel,’ he wondered, ‘if she saw me here now, on this field, with cannon aimed at me?’” We can answer this, whether we gave birth or not. Clearly, we are a people in need of transformation.

While War and Peace immigrated to the library book sale, I held back another college-era book, psychiatrist Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society (1955). Fromm is described on the back cover as “…counter[ing] the profound pessimism for our future that Freud expressed in his Civilization and its Discontents” (another donation). I am struck by this Fromm quote: “The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.”

Again, Tolstoy’s deliberations are timeless: “There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth…” and “If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”

Transformation is primarily an inside job.

 Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

197. What books from college resonate with you?

198. How do you decide to let go of a book?               

Juneteenth is a remembrance acknowledging the 1865 emancipation of enslaved African Americans in Texas — 3 years after slavery was abolished in the U.S. While the intent of Juneteenth was to dismantle systemic racism, it has not received general recognition among white folks. President Biden highlighted a history lesson in pronouncing Juneteenth a federal holiday June 17, 2020. Perhaps George Floyd’s life cut short in Minneapolis a month prior can be accredited with the impetus for Juneteenth’s national recognition, along with the 100^th anniversary of the Tulsa (Oklahoma) Race Massacre (also not covered in many history books).

Unfortunately, many Black and Brown cut-short lives have not merited as much notice as George Floyd’s murder by police. In a stinging report of Minneapolis police injustice this past week, Attorney General Merrick Garland laid bare the disturbing facts about racial profiling and police violence.

Lest one is tempted to berate Texas, Oklahoma, or Minnesota for ultra-racist behavior, the NAACP has issued a travel advisory to Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ individuals regarding Florida where it may be especially dangerous for them. Louisiana is another state where the NAACP is considering similar travel warnings.

Trauma from racial and gender injustice seemingly has no bounds. Complicating holiday festivities this weekend, gunfire took down a peaceful Juneteenth gathering in Willowbrook, Illinois, just as Father’s Day arrived. One person died, two individuals were cast into critical conditions, and 20 others were wounded.

What happened to everyone’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Are we teaching democracy in our public schools? I wonder about the children of those who assaulted democracy on January 6^th. What messages did they take away from a parent’s violent behavior to subvert democracy? Too many innocent lives exist in a near-constant state of peril.

And yet, there are pearls.

Journalist Victor Luckerson’s 2023 publication, Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street, chronicles the race massacre in Oklahoma on June 1, 1921, and the community’s rise from literal ashes. Tulsa’s unfortunate legacy includes stories of white rioters burning nearly every Black business to the ground and destroying 1200 homes; most concerning, an estimated 300 individuals lost their lives. This once flourishing Black community struggled to rebuild, but encountered rejected insurance claims, property theft, and a later highway which removed shops and homes without fires. Still, rebuilding took place.

One descendant of a founding family of Black Wall Street, Regina Goodwin, became a state representative. In her State Senate run for office in 2015, Goodwin announced, “Some women get lost in the fire and some…are built from the fire.”

While we mourn the lives lost to injustice everywhere, we also celebrate the resilience that reigns in the form of post-traumatic growth.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

195. How might you advance the cause of inclusive education — recognizing everyone’s history?

196. In what ways do you affirm the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for ALL?

“It is the hour of pearl — the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.” This quote from Cannery Row is one of John Steinbeck’s most famous lines. You will make your own interpretation of its meaning, but I find it especially relevant to our world today. We could use a pause, a time-out to examine where we are heading ourselves.

An equally poignant but less-known quote from Cannery Row (published in 1945), delineates dilemmas that remain in American culture almost 80 years later: “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.”   

Steinbeck’s Cannery Row did not dwell on the lives of factory workers or managers who narrow their interactions by sheltering-in-place in offices; instead, the novel shed light on people who occupy life’s stage at the end of the workday, often with little shelter in the nighttime. And guess what? Cannery Row, as a film, was banned in New York; it was considered “socialist.”  Eleanor Roosevelt is given credit for intervening and supporting the filmmaker.

We still have individuals existing on the edges of mainstream society. We still ban works of art.   

The good news? There are proactive organizations working on America’s deep-seated inequities. Illinois ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Response Collaborative recently featured IL Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton in a webinar. Stratton spoke on Illinois’ 5^th annual Trauma-informed Awareness Day. She described the impetus to create trauma-informed and healing-centered systems change. As a first step the IL General Assembly passed Senate Bill 646: “Task Force to Create a Healing-Centered Illinois.”

Stratton outlined a healing-centered future. Addressing people’s traumas and meeting basic needs are steppingstones. For example, individuals who have served prison time come out feeling “still imprisoned” because they cannot find employment. Healing-beyond-harm restorative justice needs to be highlighted in our justice system. Food insecurity must be addressed.

Join the ACEs Response Collaborative online audience Q & A (offline):

• What is one word that comes to mind when you think of a healing-centered state? Online: Hope, empathy, compassion, peace, justice, acceptance…
• What would it take? Online: Dropping stigmas, having a family voice, cross-sector communication, education, funding…
• What is happening in your community? Online: Youth harm-reduction, youth prevention education, integration of community efforts, child advocacy for physical and sexual abuse, online restorative justice programs, coaching through a trauma-informed lens, training organizations about trauma…
• If you could make ONE thing happen overnight…Online: Free mental health services for every individual, train parents in universal programming, remove punitive charges for drug-related issues, universal healthcare….

Keep in mind, health has the word “heal” in it.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

193.What composes a healing-centered state in your opinion?

194. What are your personal steppingstones for a healing-centered life?  

Have you ever noticed the intense action on peony buds?  My budding peonies are covered with workaholic ants. To be honest, I don’t know how many hours a single ant puts in – yes, they all look alike – but ants certainly are busy at dawn and keep working until dusk. Do some ants work harder than others? Do ants have work shifts? Yes, dear reader, I ask a lot of questions. It is because I am forever curious.

With the help of Ryan Pankau, University of Illinois Extension Horticulture Educator, I can share a few answers about this topic:

• Ants have an interdependent relationship with peonies.
• Peonies provide food for the foraging ants – a sweet and sticky coating on their sepals, the greenery covering the flower bud. 
• A scout ant leaves a pheromone map for others in the ant colony to also locate this food source.
• The benefit to peonies is that ants defend their commissary! Ant active duty includes removal of other insects who may damage the flower bud.

We often do not recognize (or misinterpret) interdependence in human culture. This brings to my mind the banning of books in several states. While there are different interpretations of what a comprehensive education for children might look like, removing certain books from school libraries and classrooms certainly does not deliver an interdependent (i.e., survival) education. True learning takes a comprehensive understanding of historical legacies as well as current issues. Book-banishing stems from peoples’ fears.   

According to PEN America, a 2022 poll suggests that over 70% of parents believe that book banning is wrong. The PEN Charter was formed in 1948 and is committed to challenging disinformation because it threatens democracy. One of their recent reports highlights our current mis/disinformation and polarization of issues in our country: Communicating During Contentious Times. This interdependent topic applies to school classrooms as well as school board meetings. However, nonviolent communication skills seem lacking in some settings.

I recently called my only remaining aunt on the phone. She had shared some email details about her parents’ (my maternal grandparents’) interdependent love story on the occasion of the 102^nd anniversary date of their marriage. Grandpa told his beloved that he would choose the month of their marriage – June – and she could choose the day. Grandma, apparently without missing a beat, said June 1st. While a century ago it was an era when men often were the deciders in a marriage, this tidbit of collaboration is fascinating. It does take two to tango (in their own ways) for any relationship.

Peony pearls seem to communicate to their ants, “You have my back! Dance on! Let me feed you.” If peonies and ants have interdependence figured out, what’s the problem with people?

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

191. Where do you see interdependence working well in our culture? 192. When are times that you are challenged by interdependence?  

As May’s Mental Health Awareness Month comes to a close, can we say that the U.S. is more “aware” of the precious bodymind health of all citizens? It has been another challenging month with an average of about one mass killing weekly and little movement in the halls of government to address meaningful gun control measures.

On this Memorial Day there is plenty of grief welling up in our collective atmosphere. The evening news brings graphic pictures and heartbreaking stories from Ukraine; mass killing is likely a daily occurrence in this unfortunate war. Among surviving soldiers, how many will join the considerable ranks of veterans from other wars in battling dissociation and PTSD? Combat armor may save one’s physical life but it cannot protect one’s mental health.

Some believe that protective armoring is needed after death. Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang was buried in 210 BCE among a massive troop of clay warriors closely lined up to protect him for eternity. The buried clay army of 7000 soldiers with terracotta chariots, horses, and wagons standing “at the ready” is an impressive picture book about the desire for protection.

Initially discovered by farmers who were digging a well in 1974, an additional 200 terracotta figures were unearthed in 2020. These amazingly intact clay soldiers each have unique features; different stances, facial features, helmets or weapons distinguish their warrior personalities. But how did ancient people care for their mental health?

I am a huge fan of petroglyphs, not because I can interpret them, but because I admire these early “writers” who published their “stories” on rocks. My guess for the above Hawaiian petroglyph is that it tells the story of family in some sense. Is it one parent giving birth to several children? Or is it intergenerational? Is this an early version of LinkedIn? You will make your own interpretation, but there is some belonging connection among the figures. Is their purpose to stay close to one another for protection? 

Feeling safe and protected is key for one’s mental health. Too many individuals in the U.S. feel like they have a target on their back.

American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön writes with wisdom (When Things Fall Apart — Heart Advice for Difficult Times): “When we protect ourselves so we won’t feel pain, that protection becomes like armor…We do everything we can think of not to feel anything threatening…[however] breathe in pain…[to] penetrate that armor…With the in-breath the armor begins to fall apart, and we find that we can breathe deeply and relax. A kindness and a tenderness begin to emerge. We don’t have to tense up as if our whole life were being spent in the dentist’s chair.”

Together, we must find ways to integrate inner peace within day-to-day activities to function as our best selves. Let’s arm ourselves with wisdom.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

189. What words of wisdom speak to you about mental health awareness?

190. How might we learn lessons from the ancient ones?

If you ever doubted the interdependent web of all existence, the orange daylight sun in Chicago — after wildfires went on a rampage in Canada — was an eerie reminder that what affects one part of the planet affects us all. This interdependence is apparent everywhere. In giving garden tours recently in Lurie Garden in Chicago’s Millennium Park, I met people from Peru, Australia, and a botanist from Switzerland. Discussing shared international interests in plants is one step toward a peaceful planet.

Meanwhile in Lurie Garden, a bushy-tailed red fox nurtures 6 kits in the romper rooms of several tree surrounds along a garden sidewalk. With many mouths to feed, the garden is agitated with activity under the foliage past twilight. Bunnies and birds beware! The Fox clan is a relentless and voracious hunting party, yet very affectionate with their cute kits.           

Consider baby fox facts:

• Fox kits have such acute hearing that they can hear mouse squeaks from 100 meters. They detect rodents when they dig underground.
• Scent also is keen. Baby fox odor is comparable to skunk spray! It is fox fragrance for identification, marking territory, and later mating. 
• This acute sense of smell detects threats, communicates within the fox family, as well as finds fox food favorites (mice and birds).

Food-finding is interdependent and a balancing act for all critters, including humankind. One suggestion for families to better feed themselves comes from Cara Rockwell, a professor at Florida International University. After her initial Peace Corps volunteer work in agroforesty in Paraguay, she is dedicated to natural resource management research. She studies “food forests.”

In her own yard in Miami, Rockwell created a “forest” of 10 edible species in a six-square-foot patch. She grows taro in the ground, spinach above ground, and has passion fruit vines climb a trellis: a mulberry tree, a star fruit, and a dwarf mango flutter overhead. She claims that her food forest is more resilient with its tight planting in the high temperatures and long dry spells of Floridian summers.  

Elaine Fiore is another Florida food forest enthusiast. She helped create 24 food forests for schools in Broward County. School children are taught microclimate knowledge. Some kids enhance their “forest” with toy dinosaurs. In one enterprising garden, iguana families devoured a third of the garden, especially the young sweet potato vines. Beware of iguanas! Fiore’s future plans include using any produce in school cafeterias for better nutrition for kids. This has amazing possibilities.

Primatologist Jane Goddall advises, “Only if we understand, will we care.”

In my backyard forest I watched a foraging robin tip-toe closer to me while I was seated in soil, digging up chickweed from overtaking my stepping-stones. When I did not seem threatening, Robin kept hopping a few inches closer until we were 2 feet apart. Interdependently, s/he seemed to ask, “Where’s the worm?”

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

187. What bit of land do you have access to for food-forest produce? 188. How might our planet feed people better with interdependence in mind?