If you’re a teacher, student, and/ or parent, and you are reading this during your own Spring Break, I hope you’re getting some rest, and I encourage you to skip the rest of this essay and go outside. Sit in the sun if you can. Listen to the birds.
I looked at the growing rich/ poor gap, at throwaway labor, at our willingness to build and fill prisons, our reluctance to build and repair schools and libraries, and at our assault on the environment. In particular, I looked at global warming and the ways in which it’s likely to change things for us..: And our only way of cleaning up, adapting, and compensating for all this in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents is to use our brains and hands— the same tools we used to get ourselves into so much trouble.
-Octavia Butler, 1999 (“Reading Group Guide” for Parable of the Sower.)
“You can never hold back Spring.”
-Tom Waits
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