I discovered Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry 17 years ago, introduced to this self-proclaimed “wandering poet” by a young fellow poet who joined our nonprofit What Kids Can Do as a writer and editor in its early days. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, Naomi Shihab Nye began composing her first poetry at the age of six. During her …

In the small world of academic mathematicians, my family has the reputation of having the longest lineage of all: four generations of math PhD’s and professors. I am the exception. However, I grew up in this intimate world. For twenty years, my father was the chairman of the mathematics department at Princeton University (where Albert Einstein had an office down …

For several years now, I have followed the tidal wave of youth action around climate change, close at hand and across the globe, bringing it up in casual conversations whenever I can. Folks who know me probably aren’t surprised: I’ve spent a lifetime championing the voices and visions of young people, in good times and bad. In this blog post …

“No services next 81 miles,” the road sign warned.  “No exits, no water, little human life” it could have continued. In early August, Tony and I packed our Subaru, said goodbye to the Rogue Valley, and headed out on a 1,400-mile road trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where we were joining our Brooklyn and Denver-based families and grandkids for a …

If everybody had an oceanAcross the U. S. A.Then everybody’d be surfin’Like Californi-aYou’d seem ’em wearing their baggiesHuarache sandals tooA bushy bushy blonde hairdo.– “Surfin’ USA “ On a recent flight to Denver to visit our son and his young family, I did what I rarely do: I watched a movie. The documentary Long Promised Road about The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson was …

College? Where I come from that’s another planet,” said Chyna Rodriquez, a rising senior at Southern Oregon University here in Ashland. “There wasn’t a person in my world who’d gone to college. Jail, yes. College, no. The first time I heard the word ‘college’ was in elementary school. I raised my hand and asked the teacher ‘What’s that?’” We hear …

One’s sense of powerlessness these days can stretch wide and deep, from Washington to Uvalde, around the world and back. By comparison, the struggles of a small citizen’s group in Southern Oregon to hold a reckless farmer accountable seem tiny. For those of us caught in the fray, though, they have been consuming. When I moved from Brooklyn to Ashland …