Sharlene Leurig and I could not be more thrilled to share the news that our project, Wish You Were Here, was featured in the Spring 2021 issue of Orion Magazine. 

Sharlene opens the project with, “As I write this introduction, new fires are burning, this time in Southern California. More fires will come after them. With each, I hope you will take the time to mourn, to pay tribute, to distill your rage and despair into the far more powerful and sustaining emotion of love. - Sharlene Leurig, Austin, TX, December 2017”

Her words ring all the more true today. It is late February 2021. As I wrote the draft for this post, Texas froze for the fifth consecutive night. Millions of Texans were without power or water, melting snow and ice for drinking. It bears relevance that as Texans freeze in their beds it is the 11th month of the Coronavirus pandemic. Far more Americans have fallen to the virus than have citizens of any other country on Earth. A church bell in DC tolled tonight–once for every 1,000 Americans known to have died from covid-19. It rang a haunting 500 times. 

And yet, here we are, with a blue trifecta in our federal government, thus proving the power of the people when we come together. We have an Executive Branch that is listening to us again and so we better speak loudly. The more of us who speak the less we each have to say to be heard. The more of us who speak, the more it will be like singing. We are in the dawning of the age of the covid-19 vaccine. Many millions of folks have already received their shots.  

I hope that tonight Sharlene still has something to burn in her fireplace. We are grateful that her neighbor shared the trees from their yard, blown away now in beautiful, precious heat. I’m sure they will all miss the shade in summer, but their tiny corner survived the storm. For that I am also grateful.

For Wish You Were Here Sharlene and I invited some of the most visually-talented humans we know are thinking about climate change to lift their voices in a visual song, exalting beloved places and creatures to the people who may never know them. The collection is meant to presage their passing, to mourn them, to celebrate them while they remain... and, hopefully, to inspire changes of course in day-to-day living and in our policies and practices around fuel, energy, water, food, equity, community, and the other interlocking pieces of the climate upon which we depend for survival. 

We now invite you to contribute your own postcards to the collection – to write to the young people you know and to the elected officials whose actions will have strong effect on those young folks’ futures here on Earth. May your written words come with commitments to leaving our planetary home as habitable and welcoming to those who come after us as we humanly may.