In my two previous blogs, each of which lasted about a year, I found myself eventually running out of steam because it became clear to me that every time I sat down to write, I was doing nothing but complaining.  I would be spurred to write by something I’d seen or read or thought that upset me, and out of that anger or frustration would come a new post.

I want this blog to be different.  I’ve realized that focusing on the negative does not make things better, and can make things worse.  There is, of course, a time and place for criticism, and heaven knows there is a lot to criticize in our world today.  It’s not that I am going to be some kind of Stepford woman in this blog (ie, relentlessly upbeat, no matter what).  Rather, I am going to try, as much as possible, to shift my emphasis on to–as my tagline says–looking for positive change, and working to make it happen.  So if I do criticize (and I’m sure I will), it will be constructive, looking for alternatives, and pointing the way towards something better.

This blog will be personal and political, seeing the personal as political, and interrogating the politics of everyday life. Several themes will run through it, which I’ll identify in my Categories.  I am interested in the politics of gender, human rights advocacy, analyzing the media, education, parenting and mentoring young people, and above all, human civilization’s relationship to the natural world.  I believe that each of these areas of focus is in crisis right now, or at least in a time of profound transition: hence the title of this blog.

Is it purely incidental that the drumbeat of natural and manmade shocks is picking up speed as we move towards the fateful year 2012, identified so long ago by the Mayan seers as the great time of transition?  How fortunate we are that we cannot see the future, and so, like the dog who sleeps peacefully at my feet as I write, can simply enjoy each day as it comes, without awareness of any approaching cataclysm.

I am no Doomsday scenarist, I don’t believe in the “rapture” or some kind of Armageddon.  Neither am I a total empiricist, taking stock of the staggering statistics of climate change and predicting a Holocene extinction event.  But it has to be clear to anyone who has the courage to open their eyes and see that we are living in dangerously unstable times.  Transition times.  This blog will both chronicle our journey and try to provide some signposts towards safety as we move through the turbulent times ahead.

I invite and welcome your companionship.  Come now, let’s go.