Thoughts

Her name was Ashley Atkinson. She held with her the experience of compassion, hardship, and hope of communities in the worst of economic times as she paced in front of the classroom. She had seen families with no access to healthy food. She had shaken the hands of those that worked tirelessly to bring not only food to their communities, but hope and celebration too. She passed her eyes along the classroom as she explained the severity of agricultural uncertainty the future held. She let lose the burdens of her mind; the scarcity of future water, the uncertainty of climate change and drought. “Only one percent of the United States population farms” she said, “and of that one percent, forty percent is fifty five and older”. She looked to us with a half humorous, half melancholy smile and asked “am I scaring you guys yet?” The head of the horticultural department at the college was sitting in the middle of the classroom. She raised her hand and it peaked into the air above the crowd. He...

Original Story:  Muhammad Ali's advice to his daughters...Powerful! An incident transpired when Muhammad Ali’s daughters arrived at his home wearing clothes that were quite revealing. Here is the story as told by one of his daughters: “When we finally arri ved, the chauffeur escorted my younger sister, Laila, and me up to my father’s suite. As usual, he was hiding behind the door waiting to scare us. We exchanged many hugs and kisses as we could possibly give in one day. My father took a good look at us. Then he sat me down on his lap and said something that I will never forget. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Hana, everything that God made valuable in the world is covered and hard to get to. Where do you find diamonds? Deep down in the ground, covered and protected. Where do you find pearls? Deep down at the bottom of the ocean, covered up and protected in a beautiful shell. Where do you find gold? Way down in the mine, covered over with layers and layers of rock. Y...

This is a short post, it was just a scary comment so I figured I would share. During my urban agriculture capstone class, the heads of various departments sat in. After having a discussion of the future of agriculture, and the uncertainty of the future, the head of the horticulture department at UW Madison admitted "last summer we were told to throw out our books on agriculture, we had literally never seen anything like it before" Take that combined with the fact that only 1% of the population now farms and 40% of farmers are over 55, and knowledge of farming is being lost at an alarming rate. If we are to deal with the problems of drought and climate change, we're going to have to capture that precious knowledge before it disappears forever.

Religion and science must necessarily be seen as two separate entities, for science seeks to understand the technical aspects of the world and religion seeks to understand meaning, it is only when one errs by attempting to be justified by the other that, for me, it loses credibility. Religion will continue to surpass science in giving woman and man meaning of life, and science will continue to surpass religion in cold calculability. It is fallacious for one to attempt to justify religion or science using the other’s presuppositions. (Science’s presuppositions are that the scientific process is a valid and reliable way of understanding the world. Religion’s presuppositions are that life has meaning and there is a way in which one can attain that meaning best) this isn’t to say however that the two paths cannot sometimes unintentionally collide, as happens often with quantum physics and astronomy, but rather that the very process of science or religion loses its core meaning when i...

Found this back from high school spanish, when I was in the middle of anxiety. Kind of interesting. My spanish could very well be horrific prewarning.  Emociones Emociones Como unas entidades Separadas, Que duermen en mi cuerpo. No me parecen Que son una parte de mí. En vez, Les susurran a mí De lejos. Escucho sus palabras de sabiduría por mi corazón. Es como una aurora borealis rico con color Encima de mí. Estas emociones, luces lleno de color, recorren por mi cuerpo  pintando emociones para mi. Un pintura de sabiduría. 

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lax9jfHilT1qbci7r.gif r= .374 Mean temp degrees F 1991-2001=62.85 Mean temp degrees F 2001-2011=69.94 Median temp degrees F 1991-2001=60.4 Median Temp degrees F 2001-2011=70.2 http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3gjitwRe81qfw2dno1_250.gif

I'd love feedback if anyone is up for giving it. Good or bad. Like a pot boiled, The convection starts to shake Which twitches and rumbles through my hands. Emotions long suffocated, grasping their way With new found energy to the surface The pots convection threatens the emotions downward Suffocating them. Hoping, They will return from the abyss from which they grew But this only causes more energy as it shakes and trembles through Until Little bursts of steam escape, and condense along the edges Rolling past my cheeks The released latent heat cools  The pot calms, And I’m only left with the bittersweet symphony; A memoir of these emotions I seldom admit are so near to my soul