I stepped into action in the political realm in 2004 -- a bit blindly -- because the catastrophe of the Bush administration finally pushed me over the edge to act on the distress I'd felt for years over our culture's direction.   I began by doorbelling and event organizing and moved into blogging and volunteering with Institute for Washington's Future (forwashington.org).  The Institute works on community-based renewable energy and other local enterprise projects in Washington communities and is focused on sustainability that rests on four foundations: economic justice, environmental protection, development rooted in local communities, and multiculturalism. 

A thread that runs through much of our political, economic, environmental and social disruption -- including climate change -- is that we have lost touch with our physical reality.   Because we think we can dictate and even deny physical reality; our politics and our social and consuming behavior is not grounded in what is real.  As I've heard somewhere, reality is that which does not go away when you ignore it.   Anyway, I wish for my 13-year old son to have a better, more balanced, more compassionate world -- run by people (that's all of us) who are willing to try to understand the world as it is and to act accordingly.