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9/26/2026 1:26:25 PM
Flickers Caring for Their Young
Human Rights Begin With a Livable Planet
I’ve always been told never to argue with a friend or relative about politics. Usually, I try to follow that advice. Recently, however, a friend and I had a heated discussion about something that surprised me. We weren’t really arguing about politics. We were arguing about priorities. She told me she couldn’t be as concerned about the environment when there are so many violations of human rights happening around the world. How, she asked, can we worry about forests and climate change when people are being imprisoned, tortured, displaced, and killed?
My friend got me thinking. She mentioned the recent shooting of a Venezuelan DoorDash delivery driver in Austin, Texas. On September 20, 2026, Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, 28, was shot during an encounter with immigration enforcement officers. He was wounded, hospitalized, and then transferred into federal custody. The circumstances surrounding the shooting remain under investigation.
Whatever the investigation ultimately determines, the image of a wounded man in handcuffs is disturbing. Human rights matter. But the more I thought about our argument, the more I realized that I don't believe we have to choose between human rights and the environment. They are the same conversation. Climate change can seem abstract when we talk about rising temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide. It becomes something very different when we see what it does to an individual human being.
In June 2024, 27-year-old Adam Willson died in his Tucson, Arizona, home during a period of extreme heat. Adam had a medical condition that made him particularly vulnerable to high temperatures, and his mother cared for him full-time. When their swamp cooler broke down, she couldn't afford to repair it. Nearly every day that June topped 100 degrees, with 14 days reaching at least 105. One morning, Debbie Willson went into her son's room to wake him for a doctor's appointment. He was dead. His death certificate listed "unknown natural causes," not heat. His mother believes the heat contributed to his death. An NPR investigation found that deaths like Adam's are frequently missed in official statistics because heat often isn't identified as a cause of death.
In western Alaska, the danger looked very different. In October 2025, Steven Anaver was inside his home in the Yup'ik village of Kwigillingok when floodwaters lifted the house from its foundation and carried it away with him still inside. Furniture floated around him. The walls shifted like the sides of a boat. The house drifted roughly a mile before coming to rest near the riverbank, where neighbors rescued him. Anaver later described himself as being inches from death. The storm displaced more than 2,000 people in western Alaska, and entire homes were swept away.
And this month, in the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, seven-year-old Lucy Allison Mike, her grandmother Elsie Begay, and family friend Dora Franklin were killed in a flash flood. They had been returning from shopping for Lucy's upcoming eighth birthday when their vehicle became stuck in mud and rapidly rising water swept them away.
Three stories. Three very different parts of the country. Three reminders that extreme weather isn't an abstract concept when you are the person caught in it. When one person is shot, we see the person.We see the blood. We see the handcuffs. We see the family grieving.
Climate-related suffering is different. A family loses its home in a flood. A community is evacuated. A person dies during a heat wave. Each tragedy can disappear into a statistic. But the people are real. One person, we understand. Millions of people become a concept. That may be why environmental suffering doesn't always generate the same emotional response as an individual act of violence.
The United Nations recognized the connection between the environment and human rights when it recognized access to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right in 2010. In 2022, the General Assembly recognized the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
These aren't simply environmental issues. They are human issues.
We don't have to choose—and we shouldn’t. This is where I think my friend and I were actually closer in our beliefs than we realized. She was looking at the individual. I was looking at the system. But both matter. I don't believe caring about the environment means caring less about people. I believe it means recognizing that we cannot separate human beings from the world that sustains us. This is one reason I wrote the Rightfully Mine series. I believe everyone deserves the basic conditions necessary to live a healthy and secure life. Protecting those conditions means protecting the world around us.
If we care about our neighbors, shouldn't we care about the conditions in which they live? If we care about children, shouldn't we care about the world we are leaving them? And if we care about human rights, shouldn't we care about the conditions that allow human beings to exercise those rights in the first place? Human rights begin with a livable planet.
I look forward to your comments below.
Art is always for sale through my website. If interested in Flickers Caring for their Young, click https://www.eichingerfineart.com/workszoom/2694223/flickers-caring-for-young#/
References:
Press release. (2025) “Thirst as a weapon”: Unexperts condemn Israel’s deliberate dehydration and starvation of the Palestinian People. United Nations Human Rights Commission, Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/thirst-weapon-un-experts-condemn-israels-deliberate-dehydration-and
Moore, S. ( 2026 website) Water as a Weapon, The Water Center, University of Pennsylvania . Retrieved from https://watercenter.sas.upenn.edu/
Website. (2025) Public Health Situation Analysis-occupied Palestinian territory. World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/public-health-situation-analysis---occupied-palestinian-territory-September
The Human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment: resolution/ adopted by the General assembly 2022. United Nations Digital Library. Retrieved from https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3983329?ln=en.html&utm_source=chatgpt.com&v=pdf
Website. ( 2025) UNHCR report reveals extreme weather driving repeated displacement among conflict-affected communities. UNHCR The UN Refugee Agency. Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/us/news/press-releases/unhcr-report-reveals-extreme-weather-driving-repeated-displacement-among?utm_source=chatgpt.com
9/18/2026 5:02:09 PM
Flying High:
Microscopic COVID viruses in 2019, impacted the lives of millions worldwide.
Small Things, Big Impact
We often think our lives are changed by major events—a graduation, a wedding, the birth of a child, the loss of someone we love. Yet when I look back, it isn't the dramatic milestones that shaped me most. It is the small moments, almost invisible at the time, that quietly redirected my life.
I remember when my one-year-old son finally learned how to navigate the six carpeted steps leading to our living room. Instead of tumbling down headfirst, he discovered that if he turned around and backed down, he could descend safely. It may have been only six stairs, but to him it was a monumental achievement. He climbed up and down them more than two dozen times before we finally pulled him away.
To an adult, mastering six steps hardly seems noteworthy. To my son, those stairs represented freedom. Suddenly, a whole new part of the house belonged to him. For me, it meant keeping a much closer eye on an adventurous toddler. Looking back, I realize those six little steps also taught me something: life's biggest transformations often begin with the smallest victories.
Many of my own turning points began just as quietly. I first became aware of prejudice while planning my eleventh birthday party. My mother told me I could invite every girl in my sixth-grade class except one—I'll call her Janine. She was the only Black girl in our predominantly white suburban classroom. Janine and I were playground friends, and I wanted her to celebrate with us.
My mother explained that Janine's birthday fell on the same day as mine, so she was probably having her own party. Even at eleven, I sensed that wasn't the real reason. I remember feeling confused, disappointed, and deeply uncomfortable. I had imagined a birthday cake with both our names on it. Instead, that simple conversation became one of the clearest memories of my childhood. It also became one of the most influential. That brief exchange awakened a lifelong sensitivity to racism and bigotry. I worried that Janine might feel rejected. Perhaps she did. We remained playground friends, but she never visited my home.
Years later, while I was in college, I encountered a quotation by Anatole France that quietly changed me once again: "Even a little dog is the center of his own universe.” Those few words transformed the way I viewed other people. I began to understand that every person experiences life through a unique collection of memories, joys, disappointments, and struggles. Just as no two fingerprints are identical, no two people interpret the world in exactly the same way. Over time, those countless experiences shape our personalities, our beliefs, and our values. That simple quotation made me slower to judge and more curious to understand.
My life also changed through the gentle influence of the people closest to me. Before the women's movement became part of everyday conversation, many girls grew up expecting to marry, raise children, and build a home. That was my dream as well. I planned to be the best wife and mother I could be, leaving the wider world largely to my husband.
Instead, my husbands gradually expanded my world. They introduced me to science, the arts, and travel. They encouraged my curiosity and supported me as I developed a career of my own. More importantly, they demonstrated the value of embracing the unknown instead of fearing it. None of those lessons arrived with fanfare. They came through countless conversations, shared experiences, and quiet encouragement. Looking back, I can see how those small influences accumulated until I became a stronger, more independent woman.
After two twenty-year marriages to wonderful men ended, I wondered whether I could continue growing on my own. I had learned from them how to live fully, but now I had to prove it to myself. Traveling alone, driving long distances, striking up conversations with strangers, speaking honestly, and standing up for causes I believed in did not come naturally. Each challenge seemed small by itself, but together they slowly built confidence. Growth, I discovered, isn't usually one giant leap. More often, it is a series of tiny acts of courage.
For the past thirty years, I have shared my life with someone whose interests differ from mine in many ways. Yet he, too, has quietly changed me. His love of the natural world deepened my own appreciation for forests, wildlife, and wild places—an influence that now finds its way into the novels I write.
When I look back over my life, I don't see a handful of dramatic turning points. I see hundreds of seemingly ordinary moments: a toddler mastering six stairs, an uncomfortable conversation with my mother, a quotation in a college classroom, words of encouragement from those I loved, small risks that gradually became larger ones. Individually, none of them seemed life-changing. Together, they became the stepping stones that led me to the person I am today.
What I write is true of the political world as well. Consider John Kennedy’s death and the World Trade Center’s collapse. One moment in time had world shattering consequences forevery one alive at the time.
Perhaps the same is true for you. Take a few minutes to look back over your own life. What small conversation, chance meeting, book, teacher, disappointment, or act of kindness quietly changed your direction? We often overlook these moments because they seem so ordinary. But when we connect them, we begin to see that our lives are shaped less by life's grand events than by the countless small experiences that, little by little, become who we are. My thanks to the people who shaped my life and made me stronger.
I look forward to your comments below.
Art is always for sale and can be purchased through my website. Go to https://www.eichingerfineart.com/workszoom/3589866/flying-high#/
The second book in The Rightfully Mine Series, Antheia in the Thorns, is a Manhattan Gold Award winner. It follows The Water Factor, an International Firefly Award winner. Both books are filled with clips from my life, the people I met, the events I witnessed. Antheia in the Thorns was inspired by an event that occurred forty years ago. My husband and I were leaving a state park and passed men dumping barrels of sludge into a pond. Instead of stopping or at least calling the police, we raced from the scene, afraid of being caught. Perhaps Jen Russo’s journey is what I wished I had done instead of running away like a coward.
Books can be purchased by clicking AMAZON.
9/11/2026 7:38:08 PM
SURF'S UP
Between the Waves
Life is a restless sea.
We rise with the waves,
lifted toward the sky,
believing, for a moment,
we might stay there.
Then the wave breaks.
We tumble into darkness,
caught in the undertow,
reaching for something solid
beneath our feet.
Love lifts us.
Loss pulls us under.
Hope carries us toward the crest.
Fear waits in the trough.
We rise.
We fall.
The sea gives nothing
that it does not take away.
Nothing stays.
Nothing holds.
Yet again we rise,
and still we reach
for the next wave.
Perhaps that is what it means
to be human—
not to find still water,
but to live between the waves,
to be carried upward,
pulled below,
to again find our way
back to the surface.
Uncertainty Between the Waves
These thoughts held me captive this week. A man I hired off an ad to fix a badly damaged car for a woman without resources did a magnificent job. He was proud of his work, as were we. The cost was half of what it would have been in an automotive repair shop. The man was between jobs, looking for a more stable situation. I gladly paid the last $1,500 in cash when he returned the car to its owner. As he left, he placed the envelope on his dash and set off to buy parts for another vehicle. The afternoon was warm, and while on the highway he opened the window for fresh air. Within seconds, the envelope flew out the window. And though he stopped and searched as best he could on the fast-moving, busy road, it was nowhere in sight. His moment of high turned into fear and self-loathing. He wondered if life was worth continuing.
His experience reminded me that instability isn't a flaw in life. It is the nature of life itself-a theme discussed by philosophers through the ages. We are never standing in the same place because, like the sea, everything around us is always changing. Our struggle isn't that life is unstable, but that we expect it to be stable. When it isn't, we blame all sorts of things, focus on the downside, and fall into depression.
The Greek Philosopher Heraclitus is famous for the idea that everything is in flux. The world isn't fixed; it is continually changing. His philosophy is often associated with the saying, "No one steps in the same river twice." The river-and the person stepping into it-are different from one moment to the next. We are nearly standing in the same, but like the sea, we are always changing.
Impermanence is central to Buddhist philosophy. Instead of promising certainty, it teaches us how to live with uncertainty skillfully. By recognizing impermanence, letting go of attachment to fixed outcomes, and embracing life's ever-changing flow, one can cultivate peace in an unpredictable world. Rather than seeing uncertainty as a problem to solve, Buddhism reframes it as a profound truth to be realized. The wise do not fear uncertainty; they walk the Middle Way, finding liberation in the freedom of not knowing.
Stoicism goes further, saying that instability is unavoidable, but our response to it is not. The Stoics, particularly Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, emphasized the distinction between what we can control and what we cannot. The world will throw us onto the peaks and into the troughs. We cannot control the waves, but we can work on how we meet them. While Heraclitus tells us the world continuously changes; the Stoics ask how we should live in a changing world.
Nietzsche took the idea in a more challenging direction. He rejected the belief that life should be comfortable, orderly, or free from struggle. He saw suffering, change, conflict, and uncertainty as part of becoming who we are. His idea of amor fati-"love of fate"-suggests embracing what happens rather than merely wishing circumstances were different. This leads to a powerful question. What if we stopped asking life to become stable and learned to love the waves? What if they make us wiser?
Existentialist philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus recognize that no foundation is guaranteed beneath us. Each of us must make make choices and create meaning despite uncertainty. Camus especially emphasizes the absurdity and uncertainty of our existence. As I wrote last week, our lives on Earth are a mystery. We don't get guarantees, yet we have to live anyway. There are ways to manage the stress that comes with uncertainty.
Contemporary thinkers John Kay and Mervyn King wrote Radical Uncertainty. They distinguish risk, which can sometimes be calculated, from radical uncertainty, where we simply don't know what the future will bring. The world is so complex that scientists and economists can only give us insights. They can not tell us what to do. The final decision is ours. We aren't merely riding waves whose height we can predict. Sometimes we don't even know what wave is coming.
It feels to me like the world and our country in particular are riding waves that rise and ebb with increasing frequency. It has become harder to measure the risks and even harder to know how to manage them. Yet, there are ways you can take to reduce stress, ways to reframe that help mediate anxiety and depression. Get in touch with your feelings, then widen your view through meditation and activities that connect you to humanity.
References:
Kay, J. King & M. ( 2020) Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Number. WW. Norton& Company LTD. London. ISBN 978-1-324-00477-6
Website (2026)The Buddhist Concept of Uncertainty: An In-Depth Exploration. Deep Dharma; Retrieved from https://www.deepdharma.org/the-buddhist-concept-of-uncertainty-an-in-depth-exploration/
Website ( 2026) Embrace the uncertainty. Daily Stoic. Retrieved from https://dailystoic.com/embrace-the-uncertainty/
Website (2024) Existential uncertainty: how it affects your mind - and what you can do about it. https://theconversation.com/existential-uncertainty-how-it-affects-your-mind-and-what-you-can-do-about-it-241197
Pollak,S. The Only Thing Certain is Uncertainty. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-art-now/202111/the-only-thing-certain-is-uncertainty
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Art is always for sale. The Blame Game is available for purchase at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-art-now/202111/the-only-thing-certain-is-uncertainty
Questions? Contact me at [email protected]
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Though change is a constant, we navigate through it, working towards and outcome that is tolerable. My books demonstrate different way, people navigate through life to overcome adversity. BOOKS BY MARILYNNE EICHINGER CAN BE PURCHASED THROUGH AMAZON. PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW.
9/4/2026 3:26:41 PM
THE GREATEST OF MYSTERIES
Where do we come from? What are we?
Where are we going?
Life is a riddle and a mystery.
Mystery, mystery.
The congregation I belong to occasionally sings this song as a round during services. Whenever we do it, the lyrics start me wondering about the universe and my place in it. The questions are as old as humanity itself. Where did we come from? Why are we here? What are we? Where are we going? Does what we do—and the way we live—matter in the greater scheme of things?
For thousands of years, human beings could see only a tiny portion of the universe with their own eyes. They watched the sun cross the sky, the moon change shape, and the stars appear each night. They could not know that the stars were distant suns or that many of those stars were orbited by planets of their own. Today, astronomers have confirmed thousands of planets beyond our solar system, and the Milky Way is thought to contain billions of planets. Yet we still have no evidence that life exists anywhere beyond Earth.
The mystery has changed, but it has not disappeared. Where did we come from? It is a question humans have always struggled with because we seem to have an almost irresistible desire for certainty. Creation myths may have helped people make sense of a world they could not explain. Archaeological discoveries give us glimpses into ancient civilizations and the ways they understood their existence. The details differ enormously, but many creation stories ask the same fundamental questions that science asks today: How did the world begin? What existed before it? And how did we come to be part of it?
The ancient world: In ancient Mesopotamia, the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish begins with primordial waters. The freshwater god Apsu and the saltwater goddess Tiamat give rise to other gods. Eventually, conflict erupts, and the storm god Marduk defeats Tiamat. He divides her body to form the heavens and the earth. Humanity is later created from clay mixed with the blood of a defeated god, with humans given the task of serving the gods.
The story is striking not because it resembles modern cosmology, but because it reflects an ancient attempt to explain how order emerged from chaos.
Hindu traditions offer a very different vision. Rather than describing a single creation followed by a single ending, many Hindu cosmological traditions envision an immense cycle of creation, preservation, destruction, and renewal. Brahma is associated with creation, Vishnu with preservation, and Shiva with destruction and transformation. The universe passes through enormous cycles of time rather than moving along a single, irreversible timeline. One of the most fascinating ideas in Hindu cosmology is that this universe is not necessarily the first—or the last. Creation and destruction are part of a continuing cosmic cycle. That concept has influenced Hindu thought about life, death, and reincarnation, although it would be an oversimplification to say that one creation story alone explains practices such as vegetarianism.
Raven and the creation of the world: The creation stories of Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest are many and varied, and they should not be treated as though all tribes share a single mythology. One story that has always fascinated me comes from the Haida tradition.
Raven is a powerful and complicated figure—trickster, transformer, and creator. In one well-known story, Raven discovers the first humans inside a giant clamshell on a beach and coaxes them out into the world. The story was famously interpreted by Haida artist Bill Reid in his sculpture The Raven and the First Men. Other Northwest Coast traditions tell stories of Raven bringing light into a world that was once dark. In Tlingit tradition, for example, Raven releases the sun, moon, and stars that have been kept hidden away.
I include the Raven story for another reason. My partner, a totem-pole and mask carver and I used to tell this particular story when we performed at public gatherings. For me, it is more than an ancient creation myth. It is part of a living cultural tradition that I have had the privilege of encountering personally.
The Abrahamic traditions: The creation stories of Judaism and Christianity are found in the Book of Genesis. In Genesis, over seven days, God creates the heavens and the earth, separates light from darkness, creates the land and seas, vegetation, celestial bodies, animals, and finally human beings. The first humans, Adam and Eve, live in the Garden of Eden until they eat from the forbidden tree and are expelled. Islam also teaches that God created the heavens and the earth six days, but the Islamic creation account as found in the Qur'an varies slightly from the Genesis narrative. There is no day of rest. Creation occurred during six distinct cosmic phases or stages of development. The Qur'an states that time is relative to God and that a 'day" can equal 50,000 years or more. He chose to unfold the universe slowly to establish the laws of nature, cause and effect, and to serve as a lesson in patience for humankind.
A world born from eggs: The creation story in Finland's national epic, The Kalevala, could hardly be more different. Ilmatar, a spirit or maiden associated with the air, descends into the primordial waters. A water bird, often identified as a duck or goldeneye, mistakes her raised knee for a piece of land and builds a nest there. It lays seven eggs—six golden and one of iron. When the heat of the nesting eggs becomes unbearable, Ilmatar moves, and the eggs fall into the sea and break apart. Their fragments become the earth, sky, sun, and moon.
It is a beautiful image: the universe emerging from the broken pieces of eggs. And perhaps that is part of what creation myths do so well. They take something unimaginably large and mysterious and give it a form the human mind can grasp. Despite their differences, these traditions share a profound conviction: the universe is not meaningless. It has an origin, and human beings have a place within a larger order.
The mystery remains: Every culture seems to have wrestled with the same fundamental questions. Today, scientists are approaching those questions from a very different direction. Telescopes allow us to look billions of years into the past. We know that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and we have compelling evidence that it has been expanding from an extremely hot, dense early state. But the Big Bang theory does not provide a simple answer to the question, "What happened before?” In fact, scientists do not yet know whether that is even a meaningful question in the way we normally understand it. Our current theories can take us astonishingly close to the beginning, but they do not tell us what caused the initial expansion or what, if anything, preceded it. NASA notes that scientists are still unsure what came before cosmic inflation or what powered it.
The mysteries do not stop there. How did the first living organisms arise from nonliving matter? Why did life emerge on Earth? Is life common throughout the universe, or are we extraordinarily rare? We have discovered thousands of planets beyond our solar system, but so far Earth remains the only place where life is known to exist. And then there is perhaps the most intimate mystery of all: How did matter become conscious? We can look outward through increasingly powerful telescopes. We can look backward through the fossil record and the geological history of our planet. We can examine cells, genes, atoms, and galaxies. Yet after all we have learned, we still cannot answer the simplest questions with certainty; Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Does what we do matter?
Perhaps science will answer some of these questions. Perhaps new discoveries will reveal mysteries we cannot yet imagine. Or perhaps the mystery itself is part of what it means to be human.
Where do we come from? What are we?
Where are we going?
Life is a riddle and a mystery.
Mystery, mystery.
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I look forward to knowing what you think about the universe and your place in it. Comment below.
Art is always for sale through my website. https://www.eichingerfineart.com/workszoom/6655778/the-greatest-of-mysteries#/
Questions? Contact me at [email protected]
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Resources:
Website (2026) Creation Myths Indept.Timeless Myths. https://www.creationmyths.org/#myths
Website (2026) Hindu Creation Story. Holy Cross College. Retrieved from https://college.holycross.edu/projects/himalayan_cultures/2006_plans/sswift/Hinducreationstory.htm
Website. Creation story as told by Charlie Depoe in 1900. Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington. Retrieved from https://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/
Website. Spirits of the West Coast Gallery. Retrieved by https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/en-au/blogs/news/the-many-stories-of-raven
Website (2026) Creation, cosmogaphy, and cosmology. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Finno-Ugric-religion/Mythology#ref533361
Website (2026) Can We Find Life? NASA Retrieved from https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanets/can-we-find-life/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Website (2026) Big Bang. NASA. Retrieved from https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/science-behind-the-discoveries/hubble-big-bang/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Website (2026) Early Universe. NASA. Retrieved from https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/early-universe/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
The breakdown of the six periods comes directly from the Qur'an.
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Why would a God create such a beautiful planet that puts people on it who pollute and deplete its resources? It doesn't make sense. To read about the impact of greed on the lives of ordinary people delve into the Rightfully Mine Series. My books bring to life what happens when people don’t act honestly with compassion, creating a world of suspicion and crime. Is that how you want to live. Like my characters, you can do something about it. Would you like me to give a book talk to your group? Book topics cover water, air and ocean pollution, logging, youth homelessness, and science museums?
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