Embroidered strawberry next to the edge of a tattoo Stories/Secrets
Strawberry Birthmark
February 10, 2021 By Ranae Hanson

“Did your dad tell you about the strawberry birthmark?” my aunt asked. I was driving north with her on 35 in the summer of 1989, an occasional moth splattering plumply against the windshield. “What’s a strawberry birthmark?” I asked, glancing quizzically at Aunt Dorothy in the passenger seat. Her silver hair fanned out along the […]

Read more
1
Moving Toward Justice
Inside that poisoned strawberry
March 28, 2021 By Ranae Hanson

The story of the strawberry birthmark – and behind that the story of the poisoned berry – intrigued me when Aunt Dorothy told it and has fascinated people I’ve told it to since. But is there more? Is there something darker, something needing to reach awareness, something striving toward justice? I posted the story on […]

Read more
0
Climate Challenge
Dreaming toward the 49th Generation
February 15, 2021 By Ranae Hanson

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” -Percy Bysshe Shelley In the winters of my fortunate childhood, snow gleamed under bright sun. After stormy days, it blanketed the woods and splattered in clumps from fir tree boughs. On the snow surface, tracks marked out paths—generations of voles and moles and mice rising up in […]

Read more
0
Black Bear Blog
Offer of Food to the Wild Ones
August 16, 2021 By Ranae Hanson

I asked a class of Minneapolis College students to find and watch a wild animal (or at least to remember watching one who was wild) and then to write about that being. Many returned with writings about squirrels – not red squirrels, not ground squirrels, not flying squirrels. No. Grey squirrels. City squirrels. I hope […]

Read more
0
Moving Toward Justice
Unearned white privilege (a blog post for other white people)
September 16, 2020 By Ranae Hanson

Racial justice is essential to climate justice. Ecological activists wonder sometimes why we don’t revolt more strongly against impending climate disaster. It may be that our privilege as white people enables us to feel distant from the climate trauma already devastating many people of color, locally and globally. To look at the privileges that distance […]

Read more
0
Body Care
The Old People’s Friend
April 1, 2020 By Ranae Hanson

As she neared her 90th birthday, my mother began telling us that, in her youth, pneumonia had been called “the old people’s friend.” This friend took them, somewhat gently, over the hill. “I’ve lived long enough,” she’d say. “It’s time for me to go.” Though she had constant joint and nerve pain from a life […]

Read more
0
Body Care
Feeling for the ground beneath our feet
March 3, 2020 By Ranae Hanson

We are rocking in our body boats as we adapt to the realities (and unrealities) of COVID-19. In counterpoint, the natural world around us breaths more freely when we humans stop skittering about. Canals in Venice flow clear; the sky over Hunan clears; airplane and car noise decreases. Our hearts rush to those who are […]

Read more
0
Moving Toward Justice
Former Minneapolis College Student Hindolo Pokawa
February 4, 2021 By Ranae Hanson

Hindolo Pokawa, Earth Justice Leader in Sierra Leone Hindolo was once a student my class. I have learned a lot from him. Hear him in this interview. After earning a degree in Minnesota, Hindolo found he couldn’t get a job other than taxi driving. While in his taxi, he realized that he could return to […]

Read more
0
Moving Toward Justice
Friendship among women farmers crosses continents
February 26, 2021 By Ranae Hanson

A response to Tropic of Chaos Guest Post by Joan Felice and the Students at El Milagro Women farmers from Guatemalan mountain villages—many of them schoolgirls—watched Tropic of Chaos and came to know of women farmers from the Lake Chad region of the African continent. The girls, who attend a boarding school at a distance from […]

Read more
0