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A Review of Rumi’s Gift: Pointing at the Meaning Within Experience Itself

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By Igor Goldkind

I open the envelope to look inside. A teal-colored box wrapped in transparent plastic peers back up at me. My knife’s edge slits open the plastic so that I can pull the surface away.

I hear the crinkle of the paper as I crumple and cast it aside to reveal the gloss surface of the laminated cardboard box as wide as my hands.

It is a beautiful box cover decorated by Arabic glyph patterns of abstract petals from half seen flowers. Behind the title is a woman, eyes closed with a smile of repose upon her lips.   [Read more…]

A Review of ‘The Gene: An Intimate History’ By Siddhartha Mukherjee

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By Chelsea Pelayo

This week I have been reading The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee. I recommend this book to anyone who thought the history taught in science classes was tedious and irrelevant — because admittedly the way it is often taught is tedious and irrelevant. Mukherjee does an amazing job of telling a compelling story of the race to decipher the mysterious inner workings of heredity. It turns the technical world of genetics and biology into a melodrama that emotionally invests you in its path to discovery.   [Read more…]

Looking for Home | National Poetry Month

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By Carol Buckley

People are places wandering by,
nonchalantly Copenhagen or Mars.
Some are undiscovered but known.
You are soft and holy,
a landscape of peonies and violets;
I am a salty beach straddled by
two continents:
Doubt and Self-doubt.   [Read more…]

SanDiego350 Educates Southwest High School Students on Urgency of Climate Action

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SanDiego350’s Presentation Team has been busy spreading the word about climate change throughout communities in the San Diego area. Team volunteers Beverly Harju, Ron Schneider, and Nancy Cottingham spent April 11 with students in Michelle Roberts’ Biology classes at Southwest High School. Michelle is a SanDiego350 member and is dedicated to teaching the next generation about the serious issues facing our planet and the concrete steps they can take toward building solutions.   [Read more…]

A Forgotten Massacre in Baghdad

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By Kilian Colin

I was few years old. I only remember snapshots of the war on Iraq in 1991.

I remember my parents and other families in the shelter rushing out of the shelter after hearing another shelter was bombed by a U.S. airstrike. People were crying and yelling while fleeing for their life. When we left the shelter that night, the sky looked like there was a firework show with a strong bombing sounds.

As a child, I smiled while watching the fireworks and wished it will continue forever. It really wasn’t a fireworks show; it was the U.S. airstrike and the Iraqi defense shooting each other like in a Star Wars movie. I didn’t understand what was going on until a few years later.   [Read more…]

Joy to the Fishes | National Poetry Month

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By Steve Kowit

I hiked out to the end of Sunset Cliffs
& climbed to the breakwater,
sneakers strung over my shoulder
& a small collection of Zen poems
in my fist.
A minnow
that had sloshed out of someone’s bait bucket,
& that I came within an inch of stepping on,
convulsed in agony.

  [Read more…]

Game Night | National Poetry Month

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By Fran Finley

Some days I feel as if
We are some
Warring game board
Stored in the round
Stored as the earth
When not in use
Until the giant gods
Of the universe
Make ready their game
As we are flattened out
And with the roll of the dice
Our numbers begin to fall   [Read more…]

Last Days in Ocean Beach: Reckoning with the Anthropocene

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By Jennifer Cost

I have spent a lot of time in the past thirty years kayaking, hiking, and backpacking in the western United States–in Alaska, the Sierra Nevada, the Lost Coast, the Wind River Range, the Bob Marshall Wilderness, the Beartooth/Absarokas, the Grand Canyon, the Anza Borrego Desert, and the San Juan part of the Colorado Rockies.

On every backpacking trip for the past twenty years, I have walked through or around larger and larger areas of charred forest, and from most mountaintop views, rust brown swaths of dead conifers cut through the healthier dark green forest of the surrounding mountains.

In the backcountry, I routinely scan the sky for foreboding plumes of smoke, and once a year find myself walking through a smoky haze, wondering if this hike would be my last.  I have always walked out. But for millions more of the world’s species, there is no escape from fire, drought, dying oceans, and epic deluges.   [Read more…]

Uncle Sam Says ‘So Long, Suckers! I Quit!’

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Leonard Eiger / The Loose Nukes

In the greatest White House personnel shakeup in history, Uncle Sam gave notice that he is retiring.

Sam, who has been on the job since 1813, said that he has finally had enough, saying, “I’m tired of being the spokesman for warmongering, racist, oil-hungry scum!”

In an unprecedented and surprise appearance before The White House Press Corps this morning, Sam appeared visibly shaken by recent events. He ranted for ten minutes about what has happened to our country and “what a damn mess Trump has made of it.”

He also referred to Friday’s missile strikes against Syria as “the last straw.” The Congress has become a complete joke; they’ve handed the President a blank check for war and just about anything else he wants. And don’t get me started on Bolton!”   [Read more…]

Eleanor’s Gift | National Poetry Month

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By Gail Shatsky

I am relaxing into meditation
Listening to the teacher telling us to breathe
Trying to quiet the chatter in my mind
Trying to find the witness to my thinking

Hearing a commotion, looking up to see

Eleanor is fainting
The white curls of her head falling gently
Onto her neighbor’s shoulder   [Read more…]

Swimming with SeaWorld’s Captive Dolphins

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By Nicole Hussey

Some years ago, I took a boyfriend to SeaWorld in San Diego. He had few wants in life and swimming with dolphins was on his bucket list, so I booked us an extravagant SeaWorld experience and we drove down from Los Angeles.

Keep in mind, this was before the release of Blackfish. It was back when everyone felt the way about SeaWorld that they do about zoos; you hate that the animals are trapped in these small spaces but you justify pushing aside that sick feeling because it’s a “learning and conservation center” or because you just really want to see those spectacular creatures up close regardless of their cages.

I had swam with wild dolphins a number of times and spent most of my life in the ocean so I was excited to watch my boyfriend experience the magic these animals had consistently shared with me. He was nervous.   [Read more…]

Pillar of Delay / The Beauty is in the Making | National Poetry Month

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By Sadé Graves

We dripped from the hands of the Creator
Wonderstruck by the possibilities
Beaded there together, a bright and motley crew
The rapture of our ignorance obscured the inevitable   [Read more…]

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