The summer vacation season is coming to an end across the U.S. The summer season felt shorter, or maybe it was the wildfires, storms, and natural disasters taking place across Mother Earth that distracted or prevented us from enjoying it. Such intense heat scorched gardens and forests across the land, bringing hardship for many.
As summer winds down, kids are going back to school and starting or continuing academic schedules.
Returning to school reminds us of the dark history of Indian boarding schools when, by federal policy, Native American children as young as three years old were taken from their families and housed in dormitories of church-run boarding schools, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Operating under a philosophy of “kill the Indian, save the man,” the system used religion and military discipline to force assimilation into white society. It would be many years before some children were allowed to return home. Some never returned.
As we bid farewell to another month and enter the last month of summer across the northern hemisphere, we also enter the third year of extreme wildfires. Throughout North America, millions of acres of forests and fields are on fire, burning from Canada to Mexico. For the rest of us, we are dealing with restrictions to everyday life, due to the smoke and nano-particulates that have reached us in the northeast and shift with the wind. No one has been spared this year’s smoke season.
With 2026 now at the halfway point on the so-called modern calendar, current distractions from what’s really happening include the fireworks tents in every parking lot and every wide space along the highway and back road, selling explosives that terrorize our neighbors, pets and livestock. Nothing says, “Happy Anniversary!” like the blasts of mortar barrages all around to celebrate the founding of the United States.
We’re at the halfway point of 2026 as we enter the month of June. At some point in daily conversations, someone has remarked something along the lines of, ‘Where have the days gone, and so quickly!’ So far this year, we were bombarded almost daily with next to impossible-to-understand, or come to terms with, actions that defy all reason and common sense. Actions that threaten our rights as citizens and violate the very foundations, although not perfect, of human rights codified over the years in the country’s founding framework.
April has come and gone, and what a month it was. Aside from the usual springtime preparations for planting, cleaning up around our homes and communities from last fall’s leaves and branches, we take time to get re-acquainted and marvel at the power of nature’s revolving systems that still sustain us. In spite of the damage and degradation from an out-of-control system of extraction, consumption, toxic waste streams, and violence, Mother Earth still nurtures us.
