MEMORIAL DAY IN THE SHALE FIELDS Families gather at the cemetery of the first Memorial Day to honor fallen soldiers. The carnival’s din white noise in the background. The Governor recollects the Preamble’s invocation, our more perfect union, America’s freedom, her might, the first woman to have lain an offering at the soldiers’ graves. On … More MEMORIAL DAY IN THE SHALE FIELDS (Revision of Memorial Day)
Memorial Day Families gather at the cemetery to honor fallen soldiers as the Governor recollects the Preamble’s invocation of a more perfect union, America’s freedom and her might. Out there in the periphery, the place my effete neighbors call Nowhere or Hicksville a child shudders in her mothers’ arms, nose bleeding and head pounding with … More Memorial Day
Today, I’ll be giving a Lightning Talk with Dr. Paul Shrivastava* at Penn State’s Energy Days. Our talk is on Energy Transition. My remarks are below. My name’s Peter Buckland and I’m the chair of the Ferguson Township board of supervisors. Ferguson Township is just a couple of miles to our west here, population of … More FERGUSON TOWNSHIP’S COMMITMENT TO ACT ON THE MORAL DUTY TO DO ENERGY SO MUCH BETTER
Today, the Pennsylvania Center for the Book released the video of Poems from Life, a celebration of the lives of men and women living at Juniper Village. Juniper is a senior living center near State College, Pennsylvania. For the second year, staff at the Pennsylvania’s Center for the Book worked with Juniper to partner poets … More Poems from Life and “A Man Who Came Home”: Videos of our readings
In 2014, I co-organized a Memorial Day protest against former Governor Tom Corbett’s opening of state parks to the natural gas industry. I wrote this piece for a conference I attended the following fall as a reflection on environmental protest as a form of public moral education. It’s wonky at points, but heartfelt nonetheless. Given … More Reflecting on our decision to protest Tom Corbett’s fracking moves on Memorial Day 2014
WALKING INTO WINTER TIDE* Salt mist enters my nose from the waves’ crests while Don croons over a dozen years of pulsing tides: “Don’t look back. You can never look back.” These tattered thoughts of little profit jeer at me that I’m a boat beating on against the current and glancing over my shoulder like … More WALKING INTO WINTER TIDE
A year ago, I put forward Ferguson Township’s resolution to act on climate change. Then in June 2017, we adopted Resolution 2017-14 (read the text here). We recognize that our well-being and the health of the interconnected web of being depends on the stability of the climate we’ve inherited. Its stability requires that we draw down … More Is there more to be done? Oh you bet. But in Ferguson, we’re acting on climate change.
POTD #11: Forest world is word New named man hears the howlers rising with the sun A canopy of silhouettes. River water splashes. Caiman stalks the capybara. Unblinking anaconda waits. New named man knows his brothers, wears their wares, models their gaits, for ancestry lives in the hallowed wold. The word for world is forest … More PotD #11: Forest world is word.
PotD #6: Cinders in the Gloaming Lightning splits the parched air, drier than since the ancients walked ridgelines cobbled by eons of wear. The conflagration bellows and rends the ancestors asunder. It thrusts worry into her nose, lungs, and belly. Terror spews from the mouths of the beasts on two legs, their children spitting cinder … More PotD #6: Cinders in the Gloaming
POTD #5: The Flood (revised) The flood strips soil, roils brown waters saturated with brine and invective. The flood yanks boulders, heaves and hews them. The flood rises, tears hemlocks, uproots rhodies and a stern sycamore that bursts the door. The flood pours through windows across the floor and sweeps away the heartwood, our bed … More POTD #5: The Flood (revised)
Peter Walks for Democracy 