In our morose and combative world it’s such a struggle to consume the minimum amount of news to keep a sense of reality. It’s very easy to slip out of this challenge and thereby decay into fodder for all things evil.
One very difficult task is to contrast social with political issues. Yes, Roe-v-Wade seems more vulnerable than ever, but it stands and it stands while freedom of sexual orientation, gender and pay equality actually move forward progressively. Who’s among the top 3 or 4 democratic candidates right now?
A perfect example of how this struggle is global can be found with feminist Stella Nyanzi in Uganda.
Change is on the way but it’s a long way ‘comin.
More and more we can foreshadow global futures by following South African politics. Read my many previous blogs comparing the impeached Jacob Zuma with the yet to be ousted Donald Trump and the established political parties and their fiery challengers.
Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe claim to have 250,000 elephants – which is a bit high – and their Heads of State 
So even scientists have been coopted, now. Today in Paris most all of the most famous scientists in the world issued an 1800-page much anticipated report detailing what the rapid loss of biodiversity is doing to us:
Populism is not some lonesome social condition. Populism controls democracy, and populism brings down and sets up autocratic regimes. It’s not conservative or progressive, capitalist or communist. It’s not necessarily based on truth. It’s knee-jerk support for – or against – individuals wielding power. Why? How is it harnessed?
I regularly answer pollsters who call uninvited the exact opposite of what I believe. This isn’t because I advocate lying. In fact whenever a pollster as has happened asks if I’m certain, or telling the truth, I own up to my facade. Rather, it’s to participate in how inaccurate polling is.
Americans, please pay attention to the May 8 South African national election. Your future’s being told.
This week’s 
Elections, 0. Popular Uprisings, 3 (or more). Are we experiencing a new Arab Spring? Or better, a new Human Spring?
Never have I felt so ashamed despite a life filled with dangers unchallenged and compromises poorly made. Right now I’m sitting in the van Galder bus to Rockford having just returned from several months on safari, writing my mea culpa at O’Hare’s Terminal 5 before it, too, seems too ordinary.
Money can’t buy everything. By all accounts the four young Americans who were killed Sunday in a helicopter crash in Kenya were 
The Botswana elephant story is out of hand. Elephants Without Borders (
Hours ago a Botswana government 
A 19-year old who beheads an older man, then