Thoughts

The UW Foundation handles incoming donations, and invests them into a variety of stock. The divestment campaign is asking the UW Foundation to take their money out of stock in fossil fuels.  In 2013, the UW-Madison Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee hosted forums for the students and public to participate in a discussion on whether or not the university should divest form fossil fuels. The Senate Committee will be deciding whether or not the faculty will be supporting the University in a move toward divestment. Many professors on the committee are leading climate scientists. This letter was formed from a collaborative effort from a variety of orgs on campus that participate in the Fossil Free UW Coalition, a student movement which strives for a cleaner, greener, UW.  ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dear Members of the Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Divestment, We are writing to you to thank you for ...

In the entire history of humankind, yours is the single most important generation. We as a species have unknowingly and steadfastly marched in the direction of our own destruction since before the dawn of the industrial age. Recent science on climate change has made that abundantly clear.  If there is any room left to right the course of human history, it will be the unique span of your lifetime which will provide that pivotal moment. How strange; how terrible and beautiful that your generation faces such a challenge, and such a special responsibility: It is as if two arcs grew up out of the roots of history and have been bending through time toward one another; preparing to cross at precisely this moment. One arc is our budding understanding of our deeply interconnected role on this planet--how we fit into this complex dance of life-- and the other is our growing awareness that if we continue as we have, our time here will soon come to an end. One has to ask, why have things ...

                                                                                                                                      November 8 th , 2013 Members of the EPA panel, During a recent summer vacation I took a trip with my youngest son William, intending to see some of this beautiful country as we made our way toward Madison, Wisconsin. We loaded our car with binoculars, backpacks and peanut-butter and jelly, and left the Oregon coast intending to camp our way back. But the forest fires in Oregon and Northern Idaho blackened the sky overhead. After watching the fire-fighting helicopters swoop down to lower their hoses and suck water from t...

I just got back from a student faculty meeting on divestment, and unfortunately I was never called on to talk, but there were so many things I wanted to ask. For those of you that don't know, divestment refers to a movement asking universities and other large bodies to take their investments out of the top 200 fossil fuel companies. At the University of Wisconsin at Madison we are asking our foundation (which is worth 2.3 billion dollars) to take their investment out of fossil fuels (the numbers are not given to the public, but nationally a 3% investment in fossil fuels is assumed. For our university that amounts to 69 million dollars). Our foundation gets a variety of donations and then invests that money into a spread of stocks (risk aversion). As mentioned 3% of those stocks are likely in fossil fuel companies. Today the faculty had a forum on the issue, and whether or not they were going to stand as a body and support divestment or not. In particular, my respected teacher G...

I am an atheist. I am a scientific thinker. I do not believe in alternate endings or second chances. I believe the life we have here on this earth is a finite one. When I first came to be atheist, this scared me. Death scared me. The meaning of life scared me. In my fear I frantically grasped for some cold rational meaning to life. Why are we here? Easy, my brain would spit back, because those species whom were motivated to reproduce are still here. But what is the point? I would ask. Easy again, to reproduce. Jesus brain, fine then, what should I find enjoyable about life here? Easy again, all of the things you are prewired to find pleasurable, like eating, sleeping, and sex. From this frustrating loop of logic I came to the melancholy response that the meaning of life was simply to be happy. And one could achieve happiness by living a life our ancestors lived which promotes an increase in serotonin, ending in, voila, feelings of happiness. Now I don't completely disagree with m...

Sometimes I want to write a message. I want to write a message with the passion and vulgarity of the best rappers and spoken word artists. I gaze longingly as their flow frosts their tongues, and the words flake off around me like snow on Christmas. Not snow, but flakes reddened from the blood of the twisted and congealed tongues that have been kept voiceless so long. So that when they speak those drops of blood collect on the ground. Beauty in its drippings--its patterns, blood spattered from a crime scene. Evidence of injustice ignored. That cold chill of breath which creeps past lungs twisted by mouths to contort it into a lifetime worth of stories. That cold chill of breath that sat in the air one winter night as her cousin was shot. Blood splattered. Tongue tied. That cold chill of breath that recreates that night, hanging in the air--blood splattering like snow on Christmas. But that is not my story.

Trying to explain why feeling vulnerable is so hard for me. Explaining when I have to stray from my fierce independence and be vulnerable, it's incredibly difficult for me. And when I'm vulnerable and someone doesn't want to be there for me. I crumble, all of the walls of my defenses I've used to deal with people in my life crumble before me. "It's just that, I already have this feeling that I'm a burden" At first just the tightening of the throat happened, and the quiver of tears, but it hit me so suddenly and unexpectedly. Sometimes the faintest words seem so insignificant in your head but when you say them the immensity of their meaning floods over you.  I was embarrassed as my body started trembling and my stomach clenched with tears. "I'm sorry" I said as I shook my hands repeatedly and rapidly to try to relieve the intensity. I realized I kept shaking my hands this way, like someone drying their nails frantically, as if the moti...