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What Little She Had

It is one thing to be bad with money when you have it, and quite another to be bad with it when you don’t. My mother gave away what little she had, mostly because she had been taught that every poor person she met was the Lord in disguise, testing her love.

Sunken Treasures

Sylvia Earle On Why We Need To Protect The Oceans

We have measured a sharp decrease in oxygen in the ocean over the last fifty years. If the ocean has less oxygen, then less is going into the atmosphere as well. I don’t want to mess around with my oxygen-generating system. Ask any astronaut how important your oxygen-generating system is. Shouldn’t this be the highest priority of every man, woman, and child — to be able to breathe?

Sunbeams

This troubled planet is a place of the most violent contrasts. Those who receive the rewards are totally separate from those who shoulder the burdens. It is not a wise leadership.

Spock, Star Trek

Being Broke

The kindness of strangers, the vicissitudes of life, the merry-go-round at the mall

Calling Him Back From Layoff

I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause

An Embarrassment Of Riches

Les Leopold On Forty Years Of Runaway Inequality

Our economy does not work for all of us. It works for a small handful of elites who are extracting as much wealth from it as they can.

One Flight Up

One can die in cleanliness, or one can die in filth. I’m not talking about your soul. At the Prince Hotel — an old Bowery flophouse — the men paid a few dollars a night to live in stalls, four feet wide and six feet deep, with chicken-wire ceilings.