By Jessica Hobby Catto

President Obama talks the talk on energy conversion but it is time to start walking the walk. And I don't mean stroll. I mean training for a marathon. Time's a-wasting.

While the topic is not at the top of the list of everyone's preeminent worries, it...

"The times they are a-changing." Remember that song by Bob Dylan? Woodstock, violent protests, sex, drugs, and rock and roll? That was my generation more or less. This time there is a new change gaining ground, literally gaining ground because it is about farming, husbandry, and returning to kinder, gentler...

Manners. Well, what of them? After all, they are just some old-fashioned, lavender ladies tea cup stuff. Hardly the communication of choice for the macho, get-it-done set.

But think again about how important signals are in successful relationships, political, business, and personal. How we meet and greet people tells...

"Earth, we still have a problem." That is the transmission from the Aspen Environment Forum held over the last three days in Aspen, Colorado. Because we have had a change in administrations with a president who relishes science and believes in energy independence does not mean we can sit back,...

Is capitalism caput? The laissez-faire variety is badly wounded and on life support. Adam Smith and his brand of "let the good times roll" and "a rising tide lifts all boats" is in bad health. Just now the tide is out and we are stranded and frustrated. Beware these tides...

Apocalypse awaits us or so says the Book of Revelation and the Mayan calendar. Man has been fascinated by the end of days since the beginning of them.

But it is not the end of days we are sensing now; it is the end of systems. Seismic shifts are...

By Jessica Hobby Catto

The economic sky is falling and most of the Republicans have been huddled together playing keep away with the stimulus package. Senator McCain gloated that the President cannot call the vote bi-partisan if it gets 4 or 5 Republican votes. What kind of statement...

By Jessica Hobby Catto


Cold is traditional for inaugurals, but this one was different. It also was unusually wet, but not with rain or snow. More people than ever before jammed the mall and the streets, and those faces were, more often than not, wet...

How do you think of your planet, our earth?

a) As a big blue marble?
b) As a spinning globe on top of a desk?
c) A network of teaming cities, airports, trains and highways?
d) Or as mountains, oceans, and plains that nurture us spiritually as...

Clearly our country was in the mood for change, but the change that is being forced upon us is not necessarily what we had in mind. Systems failures lie on the ground in pieces all around us like broken Christmas tree decorations: energy, banking, insurance, medical, and automotive, to name...

By Jessica Hobby Catto

In St Luke's nativity story, 2:7, Jesus was born in a stable manger because there was no room at the inn. Well, some 2008 years later, we have a new twist on the legend. A similar lapse of hospitality has raised its petty, miserable head...

The spirit of Scrooge is alive and well. In a midnight raid on the nation's health, the Lame W. Duck administration, sneaks out regulations aimed at turning us back into a land of Dickensian smog and tattered children.

See if you can live with:

• EPA would not regulate a...

This financial fiasco has sent us scrambling, not just for the exit, but for definition of our condition. Think of our country as a giant scrabble board on which we are all trying desperately to find the winning word, a new word that ends in "ism." Wikipedia has a list...

Election night was the place in the story where the Prince walked into the palace and kissed Sleeping Beauty. We awoke from our spell of at least the last eight years, cast by the Bad Fairy Godmother. On November 4th, we arose from our uneasy slumber and rejoined our family...

Hard times demand special skills and special steadfastness. Even though we have those attributes in good measure, given a choice, most of us still would opt for soft times. But here we are in the middle of a financial, energy, and climate tumble with which only Alice in Wonderland could...

Plunging stocks have raised three things: fear of global depression; Democratic election expectations; and a cry for a world wide reassessment of capitalism. Greed, once again has become "the heavy thighed beast slouching toward Bethlehem."

The French President, Sarkozy, is quoted as saying, "Together we need to rebuild a capitalism...

Republicans of the old school, i.e., moderates, who believed in fiscal and foreign policy responsibility, the government staying out of personal issues, and religious modesty are in pain for their party. More than just a few.

My husband is one of those Republicans. He has company....

Palin postulates the proposition: Who does she really think she is? Does she think she was chosen by God to inherit the wind? Chosen to become President by McCain's death in office or, in defeat, his heir for 2012? Governor Palin accepted the nomination for the vice presidency without a...

A huge building detonates on the television screen. Do you feel a flash of sadness, along with awe at our ability to destroy faster than a speeding bullet? Well, watch a mountain explode down to rubble and see how your stomach constricts.

Emotion and impact are the hallmarks of...

Senator McCain put on his Superman suit, blew off Letterman for Couric, and flew to Washington in his red cloak to save the country from economic devastation. Trouble was, the legislation had already been mostly hammered out, and McCain is not part of the construction team. Ooops. Guess he will...