Just over the border of Indiana, a toe into Michigan is the town of Michiana where oak trees dot the rolling hills, Lake Michigan laps at the cool shoreline, and a deep and peaceful silence hems-in the town. Chicago peeks, like silhouetted upright legos, over the horizon…so distant I couldn’t hear the familiar rattle of [...]
What a pleasure it is to witness creativity in all my friends. Just wanted to give a nod to the gods, goddesses, and muses that inspire their talents. When you read book jackets, author bios, artist statements, even articles about artists, there’s often a focus on the specific piece or project they’re promoting. People get [...]
Read my latest feature article, “Promise on the Prairie”, at Sierra Magazine online. I cover Chicago Boys and Girls Club teens from La Villita (South Lawndale) and a prairie restoration workday they did in 18F degree weather — that’s right, below freezing. Who says there’s no action in the prairie in wintertime? Enjoy!
-MGB
It is the long season of ripening. Time to harvest solitude in the bare branches of the trees. Sing wind! The squirrels are plump, making slow scrambles up the maple trees. I walked with my new friend, B., this morning through our town. We spoke of technology and nature while our dogs sniffed poetry in [...]
Today I’m ill, low chills and tired. And its one of those days when things are breaking down and work is hard to get done. No printer toner, computer glitches galore, and my own low biorhythms. A great sense of resistance has seemed to thwart my plans for the day to be productive. Sometimes, when [...]
It’s after Labor Day and it really feels like the end of summer here in Chicago — without it ever having felt like a real Chicago summer at all. Here’s what I mean: When I moved here from the Bay Area over ten years ago, it was August. The days were cook-an-egg-on-the-pavement hot, steaming, sticky [...]
The year was 1986. I was 16 the first time I saw Cory Aquino on television. She was leading a seemingly endless parade of prayerful, frightened, but determined people in Manila, calling for the dictator Ferdinand Marcos to step down. This event has been called “The People Power Revolution” and also “The Bloodless Revolution”. She [...]
I’ve added a couple of links to “Natural Heritage”, two films I saw recently and highly recommend. The first is Milking the Rhino which is a documentary about the “community conservation” practiced by the Massai and Himba communities in Kenya and Namibia. This film is tremendously thought-provoking. When I was doing research in Cebu a [...]
One of the things I love about being on assignment and covering conservation in Chicago is that I get to learn more about the prairies, savannas, riverways, and the conservationists working to save and restore them. These are often humble, tenacious people. They can be thorny, usually full of humor, ready to lobby local politicians, [...]
Home, prairie-muck dried
onto the seams of my field pants,
hiking boots splattered with mud,
hair in pleasant disarray.
The scent of freedom
still clings to me.
Just an hour before,
by watch-time,
by two-legged time,
by analog hands or digital face,
I stood in a place
14,000 years in-the-making,
a glacier’s passing,
strewn with dolomite and limestone
crumbling, soft-edged rocks,
and the whimsy of a universe
where lands stretch, wrinkle,
move [...]