Recently, Pew Research asked thousands of Americans where they find meaning in life. Instead of presenting group responses, they highlighted the wonderful responses and stories from the world of the individual person. It reminded me that: Everything of value and meaning is close to us. One step and one person won’t […]
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Book Review: GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT by Lily Brooks-Dalton
I loved GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT by Lily Brooks-Dalton – which surprised me, since this novel was billed as a post-apocalyptic story. I have read only a handful of such stories and warmed only slightly to them (The Age of Miracles, The Dog Stars, and Station Eleven). Why did I fall […]
Fast Facts on Hurricanes
The month of September is peak hurricane season. The Atlantic Hurricane season is June 1st through November 30th. So as Florence makes her way slowly down the Atlantic coast, it seemed a good time to compile some fast facts on hurricanes. A hurricane is a cyclonic tropical system that draws energy […]
Then The Giant Wasps Came
The odds were running high against the young Kohlrabi plants from the start. They were an impulse buy spurred on by my childhood memories of eating them raw and fresh peeled from my grandmother’s garden. I love Kohlrabi’s sweet cabbagey flavor. I’d never seen Kohlrabi for sale in our local […]
Forget Their Shoes — Ask and Listen!
The often quoted standard procedure for gaining empathy and understanding is to imagine ourselves in another person’s shoes. But recent research by Tal Eyal, Mary Steffel, & Nicholas Epley (2018) suggests that stepping into another’s shoes and taking their perspective isn’t enough. As psychologist Tal Eyal explained in a Quartz […]
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Book Review: THE REMOVES by Tatjana Soli
Wow. I could probably stop there, honestly, because that’s about all you need to know. But… I can’t do that because I loved this book too much not to talk about it. THE REMOVES by Tatjana Soli is an intense portrayal of yet another of America’s darkest periods of history. And […]
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Would Your Ideal Americans be — Honest, Kind, Strong, and Responsible?
These days, it is kind of hard not to believe the great American divide is all around us. As proof we are bombarded daily with endless examples of a society divided by class, race, gender, politics, finances… And not to dispute the many deep divisions that do exist, but — […]
Here’s To Your Liberty And Mine
While your liberty and mine can take many different forms, may we ever embrace and strive towards an ideal of liberty where all people have the right, the power, and the ability to choose… “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal […]
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FDR’s Words: ” Forests Are The Lungs Of Our Land “
The Dust Bowl was the worst drought in U.S. history, covering more than 75 percent of the country and affecting 27 states severely. The drought lasted nearly a decade, from 1930-1939. It’s impacts lasted decades longer. Topsoil from the drought lands were swept as far east as the Atlantic Ocean more […]
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Words To Live By: “Nature Brings Solace In All Troubles”
Within her diary, first published as THE SECRET ANNEX and later published as THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL, Anne Frank expresses her belief in the healing power of nature — “amidst the simple beauty of nature…will always be comfort for every sorrow… nature brings solace in all troubles”: “The […]
Pondering The Possibilities: Repeal of Whopper Neutrality
Have you heard of “Net Neutrality”? What about “Whopper Neutrality”? Back in December of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission voted to overturn regulations mandating net neutrality. Net Neutrality was one of those things that too many of us took for granted or never gave much thought about its function […]
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Book Review: THE FIRE BY NIGHT by Teresa Messineo
There is something about THE FIRE BY NIGHT by Teresa Messineo that packs a big punch. Perhaps it’s the reality of nurses who volunteered to serve during the war and who were put into the same horrific, life-threatening predicaments as soldiers, but who were never fully recognized for it? Perhaps […]
Words: “… The Doctrine Of The Manyness Of Reality”
We all agree that truth matters, but how do we become honest critics of truth? How do we create meaningful change without a full and honest view of the problem? How do we reach consensus for meaningful action if we are all wrapped up in resenting each other’s ignorance? As with […]
Movie: HIDDEN FIGURES
As soon as I saw the preview for HIDDEN FIGURES I was hooked. As a women, as a history lover, as a child of the sixties who grew up watching the race to the moon, the civil rights movement, and the race riots in my hometown of Chicago, I […]
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Lost & Found News: Galaxies, Whale Dung, Unicorns, & Wild Horses
Lost: Carl Sagan’s Billions; Earth’s Little Blue Orb Found: The Universe Has Two Trillion Galaxies Back in the 1980’s, Carl Sagan captured the publics imagination with his talk of the Universe’s Billions. Now, based on images collected over 20 years by the Hubble Space Telescope and the use of 3D imagining, Christopher […]
Words: “I Am Not Simply A Story-teller …”
One of my goals in starting BELOW THE SALT NEWS was to explore the power and possibilities of stories and storytellers to create change. Whether the story is based in fact or fantasy; whether it is told through art, invention, music, or words; whether it is couched in persuasion, humor, aggression […]
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Words: “… Her Birthright To Self-Sovereignty “
The road to full inclusion, participation, and opportunity for women still lies ahead — seemingly endless and unnecessarily winding. But, each step along the way needs to be recognized and celebrated. For it is the individual steps each woman takes towards ” her birthright to self-sovereignty ” that strengthens the steps of […]
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Movie: (DIS) HONESTY — The Truth About Lies
We all love a good story about the rise and fall of an unworthy person. It is the stuff of history, fiction and our daily news. Of course, the bigger the rise, the better the fall. Right? But what if the “unworthy person” was ourselves? What if, at some point in […]
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Book: FALLEN LAND by Taylor Brown
“big-in-heart debut novel… poetic and evocative” If you appreciate a sense of place and lush descriptions of the natural world (and, in this case, its devastating destruction by men in battle), FALLEN LAND by Taylor Brown is for you. I guarantee you won’t soon forget this slim-in-pages but big-in-heart debut novel. I was on the […]
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Book: ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR by Darragh McKeon
Wow. ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR by Darragh McKeon was an incredible read: lush, lyrical prose on a sentence-by-sentence level, with breathtaking imagery and description. The stories of the four main characters were introduced separately but woven together like a fine tapestry. I can’t say enough about this début […]
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Movie: UnBRANDED
From beginning to end, Unbranded is a wild ride. It is exactly what you would expect when you take a 3,000 mile journey from Mexico to Canada across the rugged public lands of the American west with four not-yet-ready-to-settle-down men in their 20’s and 16 newly adopted and trained wild horses. It […]
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Pondering Possibilities: Embracing Ridiculous
If “possibilities are endless,” where and how will we find them? And when should we stop looking? I wonder, because lately it feels as if too many of us stop looking for possibilities. We’ve settled for what is and handed over the search of what could be to the serious-minded. And we are now patiently waiting for […]
Words: “The Greatest Lessons You Teach Us…”
“Education” has almost become a byword for all that is wrong in the U.S. While most people agree our education system is broken, we can’t seem to agree on the “real” problems or what to do to fix them. So our current state of “schooling” limps on. But our youth know and […]
Pet Owners Against Daylight Saving Time — Unite!
In all the discussions about the pros and cons of Daylight Saving Time, I have yet to hear anyone address the most compelling reason of all for getting rid of Daylight Saving Time — our pets. In the U.S. alone, 62% of households are pet owners. It breaks down to something like 46 million households […]
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President Lincoln, Inventor and Proponent of Wind Power
In 1849, Abraham Lincoln conceived of and successfully patented a system of air chambers and bellows to lift boats over shoals and obstructions in a river. As a U.S. Congressman (House of Representatives 1847-1849), Lincoln was a frequent boat traveler between Washington D.C. to his home in Illinois and had seen the need for an […]