DerykStauder

Occupying Wallstreet in NYC in the financial district at Zuccoti Park which OWS renamed "Freedom Park" Photo by Jean Stimmell 10/8/11 To regain unity as a people, we must decrease inequality I recently wrote in the Concord Monitor about the human cost of growing inequality in N.H., quoting a Pittsfield high school student testifying to the legislature �every year, we�re set up to lose more and more, and at some point, there�s just going to be nothing left.� That quote hit me right in the gut, along with a recent piece from The Guardian about birds �falling out of the sky,� part of a mass die-off. The birds are dying from starvation, plummeting to the earth in mid-flight, �literally just feathers and bones,� ? 1 due to a combination of climate change and forest fires.   Like children in poor towns in N.H., they, too, have nothing left. In both cases, the root cause is callous indifference by the power elite of our country, more concerned with profits than the welfare of our ...

  Roots along the Suncook River CC Jean Stimmell � A root is always a discovery. We dream it more than we see it. It surprises us when we discover it:.. The root is the mysterious tree, it is the subterranean, inverted tree. For the root, the darkest earth � like the pond, but without the pond � is also a mirror, a strange opaque mirror that doubles every aerial reality with a subterranean image. By this reverie, the philosopher writing these pages tells clearly in what a superabundance of dark metaphors he may be involved while dreaming of roots...  For me, the tree is an integrating object. It is normally a work of art. Thus, when I managed to confer upon the tree�s aerial psychology the complementary concern with roots, a new life suffused the dreamer in me... To live like a tree! What growth! What depth! What uprightness! What truth! Immediately, within us, we feel the roots working, we feel that the past is not dead, that we have something to do today in our dark, subterr...

  Beautiful, hard-working Pittsfield Jean Stimmell �2013 Ray Duckler recently wrote a disturbing column in the Concord Monitor about Pittsfield, one of NH�s property-poor towns, struggling to provide an adequate education for their kids. He quotes one of Pittsfield�s high school students, who addressed the Senate last summer: �every year, we�re set up to lose more and more, and at some point, there�s just going to be nothing left.� I have many fond memories from attending Pittsfield High School many years ago and received, at that time, an education good enough to get into Columbia. But, over the years, our educational system has become increasingly unequal, hamstringing property-poor towns, increasingly unable to raise enough money to provide quality education, despite paying sky-high property taxes. While it is gratifying that our nation is finally facing up to a history of gross discrimination in many areas like race, gender, and religion, no one talks about class: Class remains...