It’s Oxford, 1399. Two visitors arrive traveling as poor women not as emissaries of the reclusive Mother Julian or nuns of the new Convent of the Holy Well. Sisters Lilies, a copyist, and Mary Jacob, a stargazer and herbalist, bring with them a divine Alchemy Scroll, a gift from Mother Julian. The scroll is to permanently reside in the newly built hall and protect those who resides there.
We love murder mysteries because the story catches in its net the biggest fish of all: the taboo against killing another human being and the unknown country of death. On the one hand, mysteries can be cozy in converting the fearsome subject of death itself as something that can be solved, a fiction that dissolves death into something essentially unnatural.
Our world is like a lakebed being filled with excess carbon dioxide. At first the lake filled very slowly, but as we industrialized it filled more quickly. Between England, Germany, and the United States the lake became one-quarter full by 1950. Since then the lake has again doubled in depth, much of it a result of the United States, but more recently from new countries like China and India. Within a few decades, our world will be drowning in one trillion tons of excess carbon dioxide.
I’ve been touring with one-man shows pretty much non-stop for eighteen years now. Mostly I do classical material: Shakespeare, Molière, a collection of the Greatest Speeches of all time. But in 2017, something happened which changed my life, and sent me off on a new track that I never anticipated.
This week we are celebrating Earth Day which takes place on April 22. Because of that, we thought it would be a perfect time to talk with Tree Fresno, a Community Benefit Organization serving Fresno, Tulare, Madera, and Kings Counties whose mission is to transform the San Joaquin Valley with trees, greenways, and beautiful landscapes.
We residents of the Central Valley enjoy a pretty nice climate. Granted, our summers can get pretty hot, but as Bill McEwen of the Fresno Bee puts it, “It’s a dry heat.”
On April 22, Central Valley residents will unite in a show of international solidarity and celebration of the scientific community by taking part in Fresno’s March for Science. The local March will be held in conjunction with hundreds of rallies around the globe and will bring attention to the validity of Climate Change and the danger that budget cuts to scientific research and political reviews of scientific findings pose to our society.
