Because

You can start anywhere, and there will still be stuff before that, just as pertinent to the story you want to tell. But you have to start somewhere, so a good recipe.

I’m supposed to have a game plan, a clear picture of where this is going, but honestly, the idea started in 2004, and if I don’t start I never will–so I’m just going to start.

We live in very interesting times. Can I quote William Blake so early without being judged pretentious? “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” And, oh yes, we are all the best and the worst.

What I envision is a bit of salve–healing the worst and encouraging the best in whoever it may. But it may not, and that is OK too. I just know that if I don’t write about the stuff I’m thinking I feel like I’m surviving, and if I do I feel like I’m in love.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

To outline the idea of Human Nation News, basic premises:

  • We’ve outgrown the us-them thing, and we need to think of all humans as part of the same group. We’re out here in space, on a planet we’ve nearly made uninhabitable for this number of people in the future, and we need to recognize we are one. Or not. But if we don’t and we continue on this path we’re on….it ain’t gonna be pretty.
  • Most of us know this at some level, but think we’re a minority, or that for one of a few reasons it’s impossible to change what has developed over centuries: it’s like turning the Titanic. But I believe we can turn on a dime, like schools of fishes or flocks of birds.
  • In fact, we are a majority.
  • I believe in the power of words, music, art, and the stories we tell to nourish the best in us, and also to feed the worst in us. We are given too much feed, and I intend to nourish.

Good night, and good luck.
(But as a professor I know says, make your own luck.)

In the Beginning

There was a recipe. A very good, plain recipe to nourish the body and mind.

Lentils, Monastery Style
(Adapted from Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappé)

2 Tbsp olive oil
2 large onions, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
½ teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon marjoram
3 cups seasoned stock
1 cup lentils, rinsed
Salt to taste (if using cooking sherry and/or store-bought stock, add salt at table if desired)
¼ cup fresh chopped flat (Italian) parsley
14oz can diced tomatoes
¼ cup dry sherry
⅔ cup grated Swiss cheese

Saute onions and carrots in olive oil until onions are translucent. Add herbs and stir, then add lentils and tomatoes, and cook 45 minutes or so, until lentils are tender. Add parsley and cook another 5 minutes. Add sherry at last minute. Serve in bowls, over a generous pinch of Swiss cheese, or put grated Swiss on top. Good with corn bread or a nice sourdough.