Heavens and Earth Heavens brings to mind the vast sky and the millions of stars lighting the Earth at night. Greek mythology has the sky and the Earth mating and giving birth to the natural world, the ocean, terrible monsters, the gods and the cosmos. Greek philosophers expanded myths and studied the heavens as a home of the cosmos, including the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun. They said cosmos was order and beauty, which led them to speculation rich in understanding on the workings of the universe.  Polytheists worshipped the Earth. They looked at the sky and saw their gods in the stars. Monotheists placed their god in the heavens outside the cosmos: remote, unseen, and indifferent to life and the Earth. The monotheists triumphed. The sky-heavens no longer represented beauty and order. It was just there. The one-god believers furiously mechanized the sky and the Earth. Factories covered the landscape, their dark smoke fouling the sky. No longer did industrialized...

I would have no trouble defending myself and my loved ones: family and country. But under no circumstances would I employ corrupt practices to get ahead. What bothers me constantly is the not so innocent highway to riches. Can people and corporations earn their money honestly and without violence? By violence I don’t necessarily mean the use of weapons. I mean deception, lies, and the bribing of politicians.  In the case of large farmers and agribusiness firms, violence becomes the extensive use of deleterious pesticides. These chemicals enter drinking water and food. What is it that convinces some businessmen that hurting other countrymen or harming the natural world is fine? What about ethical standards of right and wrong, good and bad? If they break these unwritten rules and even written regulations and laws, can they sleep quietly at night? How do they justify doing harm?   Perhaps, they listen to economists who talk about this confusing thing they c...

CNN  performed a public service with its Climate Crisis Town Hall in late August 2019.  Democratic presidential candidates facing the climate change monster Democratic presidential candidates (Joe Biden (D-former vice president in the Obama administration), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-South Bend, IN), Beto O’ Rourke (D-former Congressman from Texas), Julian Castro (D-former Secretary of Housing, Obama administration) and Andrew Yang (D-businessman), spoke eloquently about the policies they would advocate and advance, should they become president.  They all expressed sincerity and some passion when they said this was a life-threatening crisis facing not merely the United States but the entire world. They promised climate change would be weaved into everything they would do in the White House. All candidates demonstrated som...

Fresco of Greek women dancers. Tomb of the Dancers, Ruvo di Puglia, 5th-4rth centuries BCE. Public Domain. Grexit Starting with the Trojan Wat in the thirteenth century BCE, the Greeks embarked on a gigantic Grexit that lasted for centuries. They migrated to other more prosperous lands.  The Greeks of Euboea were pioneers in this political movement: searching and finding better life outside of Greece. In the eighth century BCE, some of them abandoned the island of Euboea for another island in Italy. This was Ischia in the Gulf of Naples. They gave their new polis a strange name: Pithekousa. This is a name derived from the Greek word for monkey: Pithekos.  Three hundred years after the Euboeans established their prosperous monkey kingdom in Italy, by the fifth century BCE, the Greeks had made southern Italy into Great Greece ( Megale Hellada, Magna Graecia) and converted the Mediterranean into a Greek lake dotted with hundreds of poleis.  This cultural...