We have to speak out now on behalf of our community and on behalf of the land and say they're the same thing and say No, we are not rolling over and No, this is not a corporate enterprise. This is democracy in the fullest sense and we must have regard and reverence and those are the cornerstones of a just society.

What is the most important thing one learns in school? Self-esteem, support, and friendship.

The question I'm constantly asking myself is: what are we afraid of? I think it's important for us to follow that line of fear, because that is ultimately our line of growth.

There is something very sensual about a letter. The physical contact of pen to paper, the time set aside to focus thoughts, the folding of the paper into the envelope, licking it closed, addressing it, a chosen stamp, and then the release of the letter to the mailbox - are all acts of tenderness.

When Emily Dickinson writes, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” she reminds us, as the birds do, of the liberation and pragmatism of belief.

The time had come to protest with the heart, that to deny one's genealogy with the earth was to commit treason against one's soul.

I truly believe that to stay home, to learn the names of things, to realize who we live among . . . then I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home . . . If we are not rooted deeply in place, making that commitment to dig in and stay put . . . then I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions. Then we enter a place of true desolation.