Photo by Mary Strachen Scriver Last week I attended a memorial for Chuck Jonkel at the Roxy Theater in Missoula, Montana. Charles Joseph Jonkel died over one year ago on April 12, 2016, aged 86, much diminished from his physical and intellectual prime. Of relevance here, Chuck was a mentor, pioneer, innovator, naturalist, scientist, educator, activist, and inspiration. Like all of us, he was also a complicated flawed human being. But I suspect that people are ultimately reckoned by their net effect in the world, necessarily filtered through how we construct others through displaced anxieties and related needs to fabricate virtual demons or veritable saints. There is rarely much in between wo
Photo by Roger Hayden Bears are up and about again, a living announcement of spring. With their miraculous ability to hibernate, bears have always symbolized transformation and renewal (link). A mother bear seemingly dies in winter, interred in the earth, only to re-emerge with new life in the spring. The process is a mystery which scientists do not yet fully understand -- as perhaps it should be. Transformation is a central issue, because our society, as well as perhaps the rest of life on Earth, needs us to abandon our technocratic despotism --which leaves everybody but an elite, empowered few largely excluded from decisions that affect us all. Apropos of transformation, we have seen a so
