Articles by: Mike Ferner

 Our deeply subconscious magical thinking

 Our deeply subconscious magical thinking

Last month our park system sponsored a lecture by a renowned ornithologist, describing the international attention our part of the Lake Erie shoreline gets during spring bird migration. One thing he explained was that large birds like ducks and eagles travel typically by day, navigating by land features, whereas songbirds and warblers fly at night and navigate off the stars.[Read More…]

by 30/04/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Protecting Lake Erie

Protecting Lake Erie

My city sits on the western edge of a body of water that has figured large in the nation’s history, Lake Erie. My wife and I are fortunate to live in the part of Toledo where the lake is literally our front yard. Grade school history classes, consisting mostly of memorizing wars and generals, taught that in the first battle[Read More…]

by 23/08/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Hold On To That Fear

Hold On To That Fear

Dear Congresspersons and Senators, This letter is about that nauseating, trembling fear you felt when that hate exploded at you on January 6. Please don’t forget it. Journal about it before it fades. Tolerate the nightmares. Keep pen and paper on your nightstand to record what woke you from screaming fits. Don’t block it out. Don’t let it go. If[Read More…]

by 15/01/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Love In A Dangerous Time

Love In A Dangerous Time

A profusion of anonymous axioms and memes floods social media these days but one remains my very favorite: “It’s like we’ve all been sent to our room to think about what we did.”  My friends, if there ever was a nation that needed a “time out” for that purpose, it’s ours. With nearly every minute of round-the-clock news cycles dedicated[Read More…]

by 07/04/2020 Comments are Disabled World
“Culture of Violence?” You Betcha Mr. Trump, But it’s Not the Video Games

“Culture of Violence?” You Betcha Mr. Trump, But it’s Not the Video Games

On the day after America’s weekend shooting rampage that killed 31 people and wounded dozens more in El Paso and Dayton, president Trump told the nation in a 10-minute address, what he sees as the causes of and cures for gun violence in the U.S. As causes, he mentioned: “Racism, bigotry and white supremacy” adding, “These sinister ideologies must be[Read More…]

by 08/08/2019 Comments are Disabled World
Another Empire’s Boot Stomps On Ireland

Another Empire’s Boot Stomps On Ireland

Can a pair of U.S. military veterans and the Irish peace movement topple a key outpost of the American Empire entrenched on the Emerald Isle? That’s the question a new mini-documentary explores about former Marine Ken Mayers and former Army paratrooper, Tarak Kauff as they begin a third month of activist exile in Ireland following a peaceful act of civil[Read More…]

by 25/05/2019 2 comments World
Lake Waits For People To Wake

Lake Waits For People To Wake

A rare, hybrid environmental campaign is underway to save a great lake – in fact, a Great Lake – Erie.   That grand body of water, declared dead in the late 1960’s experienced a textbook turnaround by the mid-80’s, but is once again in critical condition every summer. Just as citizens of a previous generation finally held polluters accountable, they’re beginning[Read More…]

by 13/05/2019 1 comment Environmental Protection
Armistice Day ended the War to End Wars; the Treaty of Versailles gave us War Without End

Armistice Day ended the War to End Wars; the Treaty of Versailles gave us War Without End

 Historians debate to what extent the Treaty of Versailles was responsible for Hitler’s march to World War II, but there can be little doubt that the treaty ending the “War to End All Wars” continues to be a major factor in our ongoing “War Without End.” On November, 11, 1918, Europe laid exhausted and nearly bled dry. Just months before[Read More…]

by 26/10/2018 Comments are Disabled World
Fireworks behind statue of liberty

The Fourth of July Like You’ve Never Seen It Before!

This year, sit back with your favorite beverage or herb, prop up your feet and open your head to consider Independence Day in a whole new way.   A historically critical article about the American Revolution would typically discuss how the democratic promises of the Declaration were left hanging at war’s end, followed by a decidedly undemocratic constitution six years[Read More…]

by 30/06/2017 1 comment World
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