Category Archives: Commentary

Watershed Events

3/13/1997 – 3:46 pm

I’m traveling again and this week I’m in Vancouver, British Columbia. Because Vancouver is so clean, cosmopolitan and politely Canadian, I always get a bit giddy when I visit. Nineteen ninety-seven may be a watershed year for Vancouver. As the Chinese government prepares to take possession of Hong Kong in July, many Hong Kong citizens […]

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The Indicator Classes

3/6/1997 – 3:44 pm

It was in the 1970s, in an essay by Kurt Vonnegut, that I first encountered the metaphor of the canary in the coal mine. In the intervening two decades, its status, for me at least, has slipped from metaphor to cliche. The edges are all worn down and it slides too easily through our conversations […]

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Blue Revolution

2/27/1997 – 3:43 pm

So, you say you want a revolution? Well, you know, we all want to change the world. Somewhere along Madison Avenue, someone got the idea that “revolution” is a marketable idea. This event must have occurred in the early 1960s, when the chemical manufacturers were trying to convince the world that it would be a […]

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What Goes Around, Comes Around

2/20/1997 – 3:42 pm

One of the things I dislike about being an environmentalist is that environmentalists really can’t improve anything. A clean, free-flowing river is a natural phenomenon, we can’t improve on it. Far from that, we are bold if we imagine returning a polluted river to its natural state. The best we can hope for that river […]

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Flying Obruni

2/13/1997 – 3:40 pm

Do you fly in your dreams? I do. One minute I’m walking along and a force as potent as life itself lifts me and carries me through the air. I sail over trees and houses, a breeze on my face. I always awake happy from these dreams; I’m nearly convinced that I’ve been out flying. […]

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To the Ends of the Earth

2/6/1997 – 3:38 pm

There was an amazing story in the Seattle paper a few weeks ago, about the Trillium Lumber Company of Bellingham, Washington and its plan to cut down trees on Tierra del Fuego – the island at the southern tip of South America. You might think this article was an expose – a logging company that […]

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Words to Live By

1/30/1997 – 3:37 pm

How would you like to live a longer, healthier life? I’ve got a little exercise that can help you do just that. You don’t have to diet, you don’t have to exercise and there’s nothing to buy. Just repeat the following words out loud: uterus, penis, menstruation, testicle, tampon, breast. You didn’t do it, did […]

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