Culture
NO HISTORY ALLOWED
“Stories of the Nakba still harrow us and live in us, giving us hope of return. Palestinian Nakba survivors have not forgotten their homeland 73 years on.” “Our village resisted the Jewish militias with what little we had. But the well-armed Zionist gangs were singling out unarmed civilians and butchering them in hundreds.” - Omar Abedelal, 82, was only 9 years old when he, along with his family members and neighbors, was displaced from his village, Burayr.
Every year on May 15th, millions of Palestinians around the world commemorate the Nakba, the ...
Funding Public Libraries Crucial to Diverse, Free Society
I am writing this letter in support of, not only maintaining, but increasing, the 2024 budget for the Marathon County Public Library. It seems strange that the budget of such a valued community resource should be threatened. We live in a complicated age where diversity of people and ideas should be celebrated, not condemned.
The public library system makes all kinds of books and ideas available to everyone. Public libraries are one of the safe places where people of all backgrounds, economic class, race, gender and ideology can gather and quietly go about their ...
HO CHUNK POW WOW
We are so fortunate to have an event that promotes culture in our area. This was a celebration of Indigenous People's Day. Our Rights of Nature group had a table at the event to help educate on the dangers of sulfide mining. There has never been a sulfide mine that does not pollute. Here in Marathon County, we are grateful for the help of the Ho Chunk who provided a resolution against mining to the Marathon County Board in 2022. A grand day of celebrating, feasting, and dancing.
Anniversary of the Crandon Mine
It will be an honor to attend the 20th anniversary event of the Crandon Mine. Although this is the twenty-year anniversary of the end, the battle of the Crandon Mine itself started decades earlier when I was still in high school.
Even though I was barely old enough to be an activist at that time, something stuck within me hearing those words Crandon Mine every day on the radio news.
Last year those words took hold when I learned at our Earth Day rallies of the potential for drilling at the Reef Deposit in Marathon County where I live. Gathering forces with those who ...
RIGHTS OF NATURE WISCONSIN
Since we kicked off the Rights of Nature Wisconsin effort in late 2022, our group has made some significant progress! Milwaukee County recently passed a resolution for Rights of Nature and there will be a signing ceremony later in October. We continue to look for other communities around the state that would be interested in Rights of Nature ordinances. We can all be part of building this movement and restoring our proper relationship with the natural world. We invite you to join us.
We envision a world where the inherent rights of nature are respected and protected, ...
Ayn Rand, Narcissism and Democracy
Ayn Rand (Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum) was an influential fiction writer. Her best sellers were “The Fountainhead” (1943) and “Atlas Shrugged” (1957). She was a Russian who reacted to the crushing uniformity under communism in Russia. She also saw the same dangers in the right-wing fascism of Hitler’s Nazism in Germany. The protagonists in her novels found freedom through the expression of their individualism.
Determined to forge their own way, they not only rejected the conformity of totalitarian regimes, but also, the values of living in a community. If one is ...
Rights of Nature
Since we kicked off the Rights of Nature Wisconsin effort in late 2022, we have made some significant progress. When you join the call (link below), you can see our video, the website and other materials, hear about local resolutions and more. More importantly, you will learn what comes next and how we can all be part of building this movement and restoring our proper relationship with the natural world.
What exactly is Rights of Nature?
We envision a world where the inherent rights of nature are respected and protected, and where the natural world is ...
Don’t Tread on Me….Big Business!
Down the road whereon our home sits a neighbor flies the flag with a coiled rattlesnake and the words Don't tread on me written above it. I'm sure you've seen one like it. This is a flag with a history reaching to the mid eighteenth century. Back then the original colonies were pretty loosely connected and were facing off against the French and their Native American allies in what historians call the French and Indian War.
My neighbor's flag evolved from a political cartoon image that Benjamin Franklin first published in 1754. It depicted a snake chopped up into ...
Commonwealth Spirituality
Here in northern Wisconsin, on Tuesday night, August 15, 2023, the Lincoln County Board of Supervisors defeated, by a vote of 13-9, a resolution calling for a county-wide referendum on the funding of the county-owned nursing home, Pine Crest. Over one hundred people—many of them elderly, some in wheelchairs—were in attendance in the big room where supervisors meet. Over half-a-dozen citizens spoke, all in favor of the resolution, including one man who pointed out that a ten-year $8 per month price tag (the property tax increase) offered an astonishingly inexpensive ...