Paula Whyman is the author of the new memoir Bad Naturalist and the award-winning short story collection You May See a Stranger. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Scholar, and numerous literary journals. In Bad Naturalist, Paula shares her often humorous and deeply honest journey of ecological restoration on 200 wild acres in the Virginia mountains […]
Today I found myself thinking a lot about the values that are embodied in sustainability. I think the definition of “sustainable” varies from person to person, and to some people, believing in sustainability means being naive or unrealistically optimistic – that we humans could never get to a world that is just, because we’re just too corrupted and selfish. But […]
Exercise 18 of Leadership Step By Step was to have another 10 conversations with a goal of making people feel understood. Again, a script was provided and the short version is: The idea with this script is that you ask someone about their passion, then give them the space to delve into their passion and really explore what it is […]
One of the small things I take joy from is being privileged enough to be able to live in a first-world country with a strong currency that can do amazing good for a relatively small (to me) amount of money. One of the ways I do that is to used Kiva.org, which I’ve done for years. Kiva is a nonprofit, […]
Tamara Dean is an award-winning essayist whose work explores the intersection of nature, community, and resilience. In Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless (University of Minnesota Press, April 22, 2025), she reflects on her move to a Wisconsin farm and the lessons learned through living close to the land. Through twelve vivid essays, Dean blends science, history, and […]
This week, while mommy had a hair appointment, I spent a couple hours with our son at the nearby shopping mall. We had 2 hours to burn, with nothing in particular to do. And me not being particularly interested in shopping, I decided to just let my 2-year-old explore and wander the mall. One of the first things he discovered […]
For exercise 17 of Leadership Step By Step, I had to have 10 conversations using a script designed to encourage meaningful connection with others. In short, the conversation goes as follows: I found the formula to be simple and yet very effective! Asking someone about what they enjoy doing is great, but often the conversation just ends there with a […]
Today I filled out an online pledge to “use things until I can’t” for one year. It was a super easy pledge for me to make, because that’s pretty much what I do already. The implication was that you should use things for as long as you can before buying a new one, because you maximize the use out of […]
Exercise 16 of Leadership Step By Step was probably the most challenging one I’ve had so far. For this exercise, I had to do the exact same thing as in exercise 15, but now with something more difficult. Going through The Model and The Method itself was easy enough, but I found the actual new behaviors to be really difficult, […]
Just a heads up – This week I was feeling both thoughtful and a little bleak and gloomy, so I wanted to take all of those thoughts out of my head and put them somewhere. So they ended up here. My apologies if it’s a little dark, but I think as someone who is generally optimistic about the future, sometimes […]