Author Description

We are all participants in this human experiment. How are we participating? What are we experiencing? How are we experiencing it? Who are we telling? Rather than a specific THEME for this year's journal, I want our last issue to explore the world how everyone else is seeing the world. We are seeking reviews of our human centered planet, on a five-star scale. Let me explain what I mean. In April of 2021, John Green published his latest book The Anthropocene Reviewed, where he “review[s] different facets of the human centered planet on a five-star scale.” And before it was a book, it was a podcast of the same name. It sounds simple, but it is far from. We live in a complicated time, where humans continue to have greater and longer-lasting affects on the planet. Both small and large. What it comes down to this: “fall in love with the world” (p. 7, as John puts it). Even with all the dark and scary and sad and horrifying and abysmal suffering in the world, there is beauty and joy. It doesn’t mean we “... ignore or overlook the suffering...”. The way John describes it, “... to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry, to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens, and tears well up in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling.... We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”