Donna Herrick

“In what's usually referred to as "the Columbian Exchange" -one of history's great misnomers, given the genocide that followed - Europe took so much of value from the Indigenous people of what became known as North and South America that it was able to rule most of the world until the mid-twentieth century.”
― Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book

“...that, I suppose, was the part of politics that would always give me the most pleasure: the part that couldn't be diagrammed, that defied planning or analytics. The way in which, when it works, a campaign - and by extension a democracy - proved to be a chorus rather than a solo act.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“We might pity hunter-gatherers for their stuck simplicity, but we would err. They held extensive knowledge, knew deep secrets of their lands and creatures. And they experienced rich and rewarding lives; we know so because when they were threatened, they fought to hold on to them, to the death. Sadly, this remains true as the final tribal peoples get overwhelmed by miners, loggers, ranchers, and planters who value money above humanity, which is perhaps the most salient characteristic of our culture.”
― Carl Safina, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace

“Our lives change. What was valued, necessary to us last year, imperceptibly loses its urgency, becomes discarded. People you had thought you loved, occupations that engaged your eager attention, where are they now? Correspondence on a cause once vital is laid aside to be read another day. Across the room at an exhibit you see a face dear to you as your face was dear to him a year ago. You give each other a nod of casual friendliness. If you are near enough you greet each other with a pricking, a stir in memory of happiness, of quarrels. You may smile at each other ruefully, make a date for lunch, but the hot animating flame has died. We move on to new work, new loves. And if there are vacuums, if at times the hear cries out, we busy ourselves investing our energies elsewhere.

It isn't until years later that you learn each project, each relationship, long or short, has left its mark, changed obliquely your understanding of yourself or others.”
― Erma J. Fisk, A Cape Cod Journal