It is 10:28 AM TEN YEARS LATER. All human sound hushes as a bell somberly wails in staccato. The next sound we hear? The thunder of Water Fall, roaring, unrelentlessly clearing and cleansing the decade death story of Ground Zero. Did you know the rescuers did not use that name for the downed towers and [...]
The Confluence Project is a 300-mile long public art installation spearheaded by artist/architect Maya Lin and Pacific Northwest tribes. They are joined by artists, architects, landscape designers, and civic groups to explore the crossroads of landscape, cultures, ecology and the region’s history. In seven communities along the Columbia River, the watery border between Oregon and [...]
The largest reclining Buddha in the world measures 300 feet long and 60 feet high and lives in the Union of Myanmar (known as Burma when the statue was carved). The Shwethalyaung Buddha has a relaxed look on his face and his feet casually rest one against the other. He is in a state [...]
According to the United Nations Environmental Program, to re-forest our planet to make up for the loss of trees in the last decade alone we need to plant 14 billion trees yearly for the next 10 years. With deforestation, floods and landslides increase, animals are displaced, and habitats are erased. Our planet’s very breath is [...]
Lakes, rivers, streams, tributaries, creeks, waterfalls, leaks, bogs, rivulets, estuary, arroyo, rapids, seepage, whirlpool, eddy, drip, tide, channel, fjord, canal, inlet, brook. Water is motion. Water is life itself. Water is shape-shifter – snow, ice, steam, humidity. Three-quarters of our planet is water; the vast majority of our corpus is water, indeed we may be [...]
Poet and place activist Kaia Sands poses this question as she leads our group on an interactive walk along the grounds of The Expo Center at the northern tip of Portland, Oregon. Before me I see 60 acres of asphalt and buildings stretching to the urban horizon; above me is the double arm of the [...]
It is 8 pm in Ypres, Belgium. All traffic is stopped near the Menin Gate as six members of the voluntary fire brigade raise their bugles. The fourth man from the left whets his upper lip. Without a mortal’s cue, they begin to play “The Last Post.” It is that familiar haunting warble that signals [...]
