Finding Higher Ground

While much of the global warming conversation rightly focuses on reducing our carbon footprint, the reality is that even if we were to immediately cease emissions, we would still face climate change into the next millennium. In Finding Higher Ground, Amy Seidl takes the uniquely positive—yet realistic—position that humans and animals can adapt and persist despite these changes. Drawing on an emerging body of scientific research, Seidl brings us stories of adaptation from the natural world and from human communities. She offers examples of how plants, insects, birds, and mammals are already adapting both behaviorally and genetically. While some species will be unable to adapt to new conditions quickly enough to survive, Seidl argues that those that do can show us how to increase our own capacity for resilience if we work to change our collective behavior. In looking at climate change as an opportunity to establish new cultural norms, Seidl inspires readers to move beyond loss and offers a refreshing call to evolve.

Many feminists love a utopia—the idea of restarting humanity from scratch or transforming human nature in order to achieve a prescribed future based on feminist visions. Some scholars argue that feminist utopian fiction can be used as a template for creating such a future. However, Sally L. Kitch argues that associating feminist thought with utopianism is a mistake. Drawing on the history of utopian thought, as well as on her own research on utopian communities, Kitch defines utopian thinking, explores the pitfalls of pursuing social change based on utopian ideas, and argues for a "higher ground" —a contrasting approach she calls realism. Replacing utopianism with realism helps to eliminate self-defeating notions in feminist theory, such as false generalization, idealization, and unnecessary dichotomies. Realistic thought, however, allows feminist theory to respond to changing circumstances, acknowledge sameness as well as difference, value the past and the present, and respect ideological give-and-take. An important critique of feminist thought, Kitch concludes with a clear, exciting vision for a feminist future without utopia.

Place is not only a metaphor for the self; it can be the self objectified, including the self of years ago. So writes Catharine Savage Brosman, who explores the places of her own life in Finding Higher Ground. The tour, for the reader, is one of delight and wonder. Brosman's places range from the West Texas desert of her girlhood to a chilly flat in the north of England; from the flooded streets of New Orleans to the sublimities of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Even as her meditations reflect on her connections to these places and the ways they have shaped her life, they also examine the broader connections between individual and community, culture and society, experience and memory. Her voice is unique - combining a poet's sensitivity to nuances of setting and behavior with salty good sense, passionate engagement in the world of letters, sly wit, and a rugged independence of character inherited from generations of her Western ancestors. Whether sipping wine in a Parisian cafe, partying with the jet set in Aspen, or contemplating the arid desert West that she loves so deeply, Brosman inhabits these settings, and many others, with a sense of adventure and discovery. To read these essays is to enjoy the company of a lively, thoughtful, original mind. Brosman's ""higher ground"" is that place we all seek - where we can find and express our own best selves.

This book is dedicated to the thousands of lives gone too soon and families left picking up the pieces. Thank you to all the medical professionals, front-line workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic. You have helped to keep us moving forward in uncertain times. Focusing on our priorities and learning to surrender and seek the good in all, despite the challenges, social unrest and turbulent times. This book seeks to honor each generation and contributions that we all have individually to make this world a better and safer place by including excerpts from my intimate and personal journal entries during the Pandemic which occurred in 2019 and currently in 2021. This book seeks to inspire and reflect on our blessings and serves as a blueprint for the next generation of individuals who inspire to take action toward following their dreams in starting a business, maintaining it and working in mutual aide with other community entities to make our society better. As the founder of an organization I seek to promote tools, strategies and concrete skills to starting your own business and ways to maintain its longevity.

A riveting memoir of one woman's immersion into fundamentalist faith, and her decision twenty years later to leave it all behind. Beautifully written and powerfully told, this memoir is a fascinating look at the nature of faith, and the inspiring story of one woman's struggle to find her place in the world. Originally published as This Dark World, this book has been adapted into the screenplay Higher Ground, now a film directed by and starring Vera Farmiga. Carolyn Briggs grew up with modest means in the Iowa Heartland. Pregnant at seventeen and married to her musician boyfriend, by the age of eighteen she found herself with little hope for the future. Until an unexpected encounter with the Divine. Soon she had immersed herself into a close-knit and patriarchal New Testament church. But as Carolyn began to realize that her religion left little room for what she wanted out of life-as a mother, as a wife, as an intellectually curious woman-cracks began to appear in her all-encompassing sense of faith, and slowly she began to question the religion that had given her hope.