This weekend’s event for Homecoming Farm in Amityville, NY (http://homecomingearth.org/), a CSA on the land of the Dominican sisters, focused on our inter-connectivity with nature and the debate of oil mining for our immediate needs versus awareness of its broader impacts. Speaker Margaret Swedish, author of “Living Beyond the End of the World: A Spirituality of Hope” and the blog http://www.ecologicalhope.org/category/blog/ showed profoundly moving photos and videos from her travels to Alberta Canada where boreal forests are being clear-cut for the mining of sand containing bentonite that can be converted into fuel oil. In her interviews of locals, she discovered that people are generally split on whether or not they support the mining since it has been a large boon to the economy but they, including some native tribes, also see beautiful areas of their homeland being destroyed and the work itself is dismal.

The mood was lifted to a more hopeful one by an incredible performance by the Peace Poets, a group of young Bronx men that “spits” positive messages about peace, caring for family, and personal responsibility, in an artistic form of rap. See https://www.facebook.com/ThePeacePoets.