Kaitlynn nearly through first grade and brother Jordan arrives. And each day it seems that there is more to be concerned about with the hopes that they will be able to grow up and live out their lives in a world endowed with peacefulness and on an earth still rich with natural beauty.

We don't need to look beyond the ever-growing levels of nastiness to discover why young people seem unafraid of dying by their own hands. We give them virtual worlds inside plastic boxes, worlds seemingly within their control, but, nonetheless, worlds that are not going to give them food and shelter and love and kindness, worlds that have no hugs.

We give them realities of wars and killings and ruination of land that seem untouchable and unstoppable.

The Indians of North America look to the seventh generation, and so today in the newspaper, Indian Country Today, I read a woman's letter to her great-great-great-great grandson, speaking of these times and the troubles we know and the degradation of our environment that we try to stop or prevent, the sacred places that we try to protect.

This month there are quite a few pieces in Seeker that relate to the protection of the earth and its inhabitants. They came as if knowing of my concern.

I hope that people awaken, if they haven't already, and become strong voices on behalf of environmental justice and a surcease of the world's wars. I know inertia is easy. I know that I wonder if speaking out will bring retribution on my family, if the new American "thought police" (a.k.a, the Dept. of Justice/FBI) will come and take this computer to see what it holds of "anti-American" writings. I know that I am utterly sickened by the anti-environmental and the anti-human actions being taken week after week by this President and his administration. I know that I am not alone in my thinking, and that gives hope, small though it is.

My granddaughter curls up against me and reads her book aloud, with wonderful expression in her reading. Her little brother wakens and mouths the air until my daughter picks him up.

For these two, for all the children in this world, I live with a degree of faith in innate goodness, deeply hoping that love for this earth and compassion for each other will be the successors to our current hate and fear.

Cherie