Innovation never travels a predictable road, but there are patterns. If there were a sure-fire method for innovating, we would long ago have cured the diseases and built space colonies. In fact, the innovative process is messy. It’s frustrating and exhilarating. And much advice on the subject seems to contradict itself. […]
Often we can’t see the forest for the trees. But sometimes we might just need to see the tree differently. I was recently talking with some folks at Interfaith Power & Light, an organization that works with faith groups on climate change. They were telling me about their work with Buddhist monks who […]
This weekend I went to a farmers market and got my first Arkansas peaches for the season. With one delicious and long anticipated bite I took part in the still rapidly growing food movement. Farmers markets continue to multiply — from 350 in the seventies to more than 7,000 today. And movement vocabulary is keeping […]
I was recently in a conversation where this piece I wrote years ago came up. It was first published in World Ark, a magazine I started in the early nineties. I said I’d re-share it. No longer small, Eliot is taller than me, so this is becoming more his world than mine. Since […]
If we’re going to creatively solve the world’s challenges, we’ve got to ramp up our curiosity and seek inspiration from the greats who went before. Artist and social activist Ben Shahn was once asked by a student to name a quality art school. His response, “A good art school is one that […]
I learned from Frances Moore Lappé about a cool agricultural effort in Chicago. A group is turning an old meat packing plant into a vertical farm — plus. The building is being converted by volunteers into a home for raising vegetables, tilapia, mushrooms and for a host of other enterprises: a beer brewery, a kombucha […]
God bless you, Bart Knols. To bring attention to an important cause, you’re willing to address a global audience in your boxers. Why did he do it? To spread the word on some innovative ways to fight malaria. While many parts of the world have pretty much eliminated the danger of malaria, primarily through draining breeding grounds, […]
In Writing to Change the World, Mary Pipher tells of visiting the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., to see a special exhibit on Anne Frank. The exhibit included the cover of and pages from her diary as well as film clips of a neighbor who brought food and a rare clip […]
North Korea recently celebrated the 100th birthday of Kim Il Sung. I was privileged to see some of the monuments to his greatness when I was there in 1999 for an international nonprofit. We had gone to coordinate a shipment of breeding goats that were hand picked in France and flown in by plane. We […]
I was excited to read in this morning’s paper that one of my heroes will be awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Bill Foege is not well known like others named: Bob Dylan, Madeleine Albright, John Glenn, Toni Morrison. But he has arguably helped save more lives than any living person. I […]
