Timothy Weiskel

I am very grateful for my AFS experiences at NHS. Since then I have continued to work in other cultures -- mostly in West Africa. For the last ten years I have been teaching anthropology and history online with an emphasis on environmental ethics, global climate change and environmental justice issues. Now working with students to try to envision a sustainable future and implement the changes that will be required in our culture if we expect to survive for into the 21st century and beyond.

Life is kept gloriously rich by my wife's work in the arts as Executive Director of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras. She has family in Italy who we try to visit whenever we can. Our only hope is art. Kids understand this and bring it home to each of us. You can't help but be inspired by the kids.

I look forward to seeing old friends in the reunion days ahead and well afterwards, as old acquaintances become renewed.

Weeks

No

In front of Building 2 on the NHS campus

I suppose, like everyone else, I've been trying to cope with the contradictions of late capitalism. Or, more specifically, I've been trying to keep the human community alive for the next few centuries, at least -- studying climate change for human survival:
http://wp.me/p2iDSG-6aL

I'm afraid there is not a lot of room for optimism here. Bob Reich, one of my friends from Rhodes Scholar days in Oxford and later Clinton's Secretary of Labor, asserted quite forcefully in an interview on the BBC's Newshour this past Tuesday that "Capitalism is at something of a crisis point. There is a serious question being raised about whether this form of capitalism can survive much longer or whether we need to make some very important adjustments."
( http://ecoethics.net/2013-ENVRE120/Audio/20140527-BBC-Robert-Reich.mp3 )

Just who is the "we" who "need to make..." these adjustments is not clear. Nor is it clear what "adjustments" are any longer possible. It may well be too late. The world's most sober scientists have warned that "we" have already passed the point of no return in destabilizing key Earth system functions. The Antarctic flow of key glaciers is now understood to be irreversible and their collapse inevitable. Among other things, this will lead inexorably to the inundation of the world's post-Columbian coastal cities, the collapse of rice farming in estuaries in much of Asia and the generation environmental refugees on a scale that will overwhelm even the most highly armed military states.

We only have one Earth. We did not create it. We cannot control it. We must not destroy it. We only get one chance. Sadly, we are not doing well....

Fortunately, my wife Catherine's work as Executive Director of the Boston Youth Symphonies continues to provide great meaning and deep enjoyment for us both. You can't help but love them all...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWNTeQoy...GjrHTkv-dbJk_dwEpKtA
and I am so proud to watch my wife make it all possible.
http://www.bysoweb.org/pages/1688_catherine_weiskel.cfm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5_t6aVhYFg
http://www.bysoweb.org/

I expect that I will keep reflecting on these things at http://EcoJustice.TV and through the courses I teach at Harvard as well as the weekly broadcasts of the CCRA on Cambridge Community Television ( https://www.cctvcambridge.org/user/ccra ).

Students are nice and that is a source of joy. Further, we live in the People's Republic of Cambridge, and that is rewarding in itself, but I fear it will be little consolation as our changing world progressively unwinds, becomes more violent, and political leadership everywhere turns to the right as it labors hard to manipulate an increasingly confused public and exploit the weakest amongst us.

In the meantime, as I remind my students, we have much to be grateful for and to celebrate.


We will labor on in these struggles along with all those we hold near and dear, with all the joy and through all the tears, because no feeling person can remain dry-eyed or idle for long.....

Fiftieth