• I follow the blog of author Christina Baldwin. This week she has an interesting post about how she, along with fellow author and naturalist Ann Linnea, were recently in the Pacific Northwest, hiking by the Columbia River Gorge near Portland, Oregon. She described the five mile hike around Multnomah Falls, and the events of that hike that led her to consider the question "can nature stitch together what religion and politics have torn apart?"

    How do you think the natural world can mend us as individuals, as local and global communities? This ties in with global warming - since it's such a big problem that will impact the entire human race. So I think Ms. Baldwin's question is an interesting one.