FINDING HOPE HAIKU IN THE TIME OF COVID

Reading with children Facetime is the next best thing When snuggling is out. Walking with Kathy To be outside where life is So spectacular. People delighted By an unexpected call I happened to make. Call from a cousin Who lives in Ontario Remembering me. Grateful for wellness And grocery delivery A home that I love. Making up stories Wednesdays are the send-out days Getting letters back. Balcony pansies Pandemic insensitive Blooming like crazy Media searching For good news to give us hope And give them hope too. Choosing not to clean Because I know there will be Time for it later. Choosing to clean now Because I know I will be Glad I did later. Thinking of places I’m glad not to be in now And those I still love. Sweet whiff of supper Slow cooking tantalizing While I watch Frasier Counting on science Admiring the leadership Of our officials Dreaming a future When this time will be the past That made us all wiser.

AUDACIOUS HOPERS HOPE FOR THINGS

Audacious hopers hope for things No practical person would dream of hoping for, Things we are certain can never happen Given the current circumstances. Audacious hopers drive us crazy Because they simply will not listen To our predictions about the future. Audacious hopers are in denial! There’s nothing quite so irritating As trying to protect audacious hopers From the disappointment we’re afraid they will face. Audacious hopers test our courage! BUT: Audacious hopers change the world And when they do we call them heroes. We buy magazines with articles about them And hire them to make motivational speeches. When audacious hopers tell their stories About the people they met on the journey, I’d rather be named as the one who supported Than mentioned as the barrier who had to be thwarted.

ON CHOOSING TO BE HOPEFUL

Some days I am hopeful, Others not so much. It’s the same world on any specific day Regardless of how hopeful I am, Only the possibilities for days ahead are different. Being hopeful is not wishing. Wishing is for Disneyland And birthday candles And the days when I buy a lottery ticket Just because I have money. Being hopeful is not goal setting. Goal setting is for sales teams And athletes And fund-raisers at the United Way. Hopeful is a way of feeling When I see the world, With certain possibilities, Of how good things could happen But not quite enough of the picture To lay out a detailed plan. On days when I am not hopeful There are still possibilities, Only I don’t see them So I think they are not there. And that is why, On any given day No matter what is happening It is better to be hopeful If I have a choice Which sometimes I do. And sometimes I don’t Which means I have to wait Until I do.

GRIEVING IN THE TIME OF COVID 19

The grief monster got me again this morning, caught me unaware and gave me the old one-two punch in the gut. “Get out!” I shouted. But I didn’t hear the words I’d said. The noise sounded more like a wolf howl to me, a wolf howl, or a moan of abject pain. Perhaps I should have expected it, the sudden appearance of this sleeping giant. A pessimist might have observed some warnings that a storm might be brewing underground. There had been, for example, a considerable reduction of crying over the past couple of months. But I am not a pessimist. This drying up might have been caused by the passage of time, time spent in the warm Mexican sand, the gradual thawing of chilly relationships, the sprouting of new healthy relationships, the shedding of some failed experiments, the formation of new habits, the revival of my storytelling hobby, new volunteer opportunities, better eating, long daily walks outdoors, daily internet contact with people I love. Even in a time of pandemic, any of these might have boosted my mental health. Or it might simply have been that the focus required to thrive during a COVID 19 pandemic can distract you from just about everything you are used to. So perhaps I can be forgiven for failing to expect the monster. It was just after 7:30 AM when the monster struck. I was sitting on the edge of my bed celebrating the sunshine snaking along the wall from the closet door to the place beside the mirror. I was thinking that my neighbour and I might get a hamburger and fries from a drive-through window today, the first restaurant food we’ve had in five weeks of obeying the call to “Stay Home!” The people on the radio were telling me about a star-studded concert that would be playing on all the TV networks all over the world. Among the other stars, John Legend would be singing. “Let’s go out on this song,” said the radio people. “John Legend: All Of Me.: What’s that they said? Let’s go out? I went out all right. In one brief second I went all the way back to the winter of 2014. It was Saturday morning, every Saturday morning. We were at the west End Seniors Association, David and I, attending dance classes sponsored by the Parkinson Association. We were seated, doing the warm-up exercises. The nurse, Sharleen Heavener was leading us. John Legend was singing All of Me. Beside David I was stretching. I was singing to the gentle rhythm. I was pretending that everything would be all right. John sang: The world is beating you down, I'm around through every mood. You're my downfall, you're my muse My worst distraction, my rhythm and blues I can't stop singing, it's ringing, in my head for you [Pre-Chorus:] My head's under water But I'm breathing fine You're crazy and I'm out of my mind [Chorus:] 'Cause all of me Loves all of you Love your curves and all your edges All your perfect imperfections Give your all to me I'll give my all to you You're my end and my beginning Even when I lose I'm winning David could still walk back then. He could still drive. We could still learn new dance steps together. But his voice had slowed, and his signature had changed so much that people started checking to confirm its authenticity. Somehow he had forgotten how to shift his weight gracefully from one foot to the other. It was plain to both of us that everything would definitely not be all right. Still, we concentrated on burying the future by making everything all right at that moment, the moment before she asked us to stand, the final seconds of sitting down. So what if the task of burying the future required an avalanche of pretending? We were up for it. We were listening to popular songs. It might be the end of the world as we knew it, but we were learning to dance.

VOTING FOR EDMONTON'S MAYOR, SINGING ON THE TRAIN

I voted in the Edmonton municipal election yesterday. And even though I cannot see to read a ballot, my vote was cast in perfect privacy. I went to City Hall, sat down at the Automark voting machine, and listened as the machine read me the operating instructions. I selected a mayor from among six choices, a councillor from among 16, and a school trustee from among two. Then I put my ballot in the box, thanked the staff, told them how thrilled I was to be able to vote in privacy, boarded the LRT at Churchill Station and hummed, for the sheer joy of it, all the way to the university. More than any other level of government, our city has made voting easy for people who cannot use a print ballot. In future, we will only be voting once every four years instead of once every three years. This change will give our elected officials more time to work for us. I support this change, but I hate to give up even one chance to vote in such a delightfully inclusive manner.

FEEL THE VIBE!

Yesterday Lenora LeMay and I had a visit from the VIBE team. VIBE (Vermilion is Being Empowered) is one of the 38 mental health in schools capacity building initiatives led by Alberta Health Services Addiction and Mental Health in partnership with Alberta Education and funded by Alberta Health and Wellness. The team came to Hope House to show us what they have done with hope. Inspired by a 90-minute Telehealth seminar given by Lenora, they had designed 5 hope lessons for the Grade 5 health curriculum. Then, having attended a two-day hope workshop given by me at the Alberta College of Social Work 2012 conference, they designed 5 lessons for a high school curriculum. They brought gifts—a book of hope images designed by the kids, and the cuddliest hope-opotamus we’ve ever hugged. They came to show us their work and to ask if we had ideas of how they might add to it. They invited their funders to the celebration. All in all, it was hope work the way we like it—collaborative, creative and expansive.

starting

It’s the season for miracles. One trip outside treats you to the twitter and caw of a hundred—maybe a thousand birds. Each of these birds was once the liquid in an egg. And then, by warmth alone, a heartbeat began. Who would have the audacity to suggest that there might be no hope when life, so unaccountably resisting all odds and reason, persists, insists on beginning this way?

HOPE HEARD FROM A BIRD

Drawn by the song of a bird so sweet
That I could not help but envy his mate
I stepped out the door in the sun to greet the promise of a late March day.
Where geese were honking, crows were cawing, magpies magging, swparrows tweeting.
Robins nesting and ten thousand waxwings had come to our block
To feast for a pleasant hour.
So even though the forecast says, “SNOW!”
And I cannot pretend that I have not heard,
I’ll remember the birds saying,
“Spring’s the word.”

GETTING A JOB

A tip of the hope hat to Edmonton's last milkman on his final run; Barry Svederus retires Friday after 34 years, marking the end of an era
Sometimes you hear the most amazing stories about being hired against the odds. They give you hope when you despair at how difficult it can be to find work. How I wish I’d seen this story earlier this week, when I was searching for hopeful stories to tell at our hope and strengths group for people with chronic pain. People were saying it was unlikely that they could be hired, given some of their life conditions.
That conversation, quite naturally, led me to want to tell them a story about an unlikely hiring event. Of all the getting-hired stories I’ve heard, I do believe this one takes the cake.
‘A native of tiny Elnora, Svederus was working at a cannery in Wetaskiwin when he sought a job driving a milk truck in Edmonton.

Arriving for his interview at the former home of the City Dairy, a building off Jasper Avenue that had a towering milk bottle on its roof, he was hired,
even though he applied in his bare feet.

As a joke that day, friends had filled his only pair of dress shoes with ballbearing grease.

"I think they hired me out of pity," Svederus says.

"They figured I was so poor I didn't own a pair of shoes."’

OCCUPYING EDMONTON

I stood on the edge of Churchill Square
Where a crowd had gathered to “occupy Edmonton”
A crowd of aged and babies,
Of centres and lefts and lefts of centre,
Earlier tallied at thirty,
Swelled to maybe a thousand.

The crowd was cheerful and peaceful,
Holding signs about global warming,
Being fair and ending poverty.
“Save our billionaire,” read one sign.
“Pay five hundred million in taxes.”

Though the media said it was nothing
Since the crowd lacked a crystal clear focus.
Here were a thousand citizens
Who truly believe that things can be different
Just saying no to powerlessness,
Just saying no to apathy.

And hope rose up inside me
For are not apathy and powerlessness
The things that keep the many down
Making all the influence available
To be placed in the hands of the few?

CHANGE OF PLAN

Me: “What do you think of our new lady Premier?”. I admit that I was baiting him. Him: “Oh, I guess we’ll see how she makes out. I voted for her, you know.” Me: “really?” Him: “Yes. I always said I’d never want a woman there. But health and education are important, and that’s what she was talking about. I didn’t vote for her on the first ballot, but I did the second time around.” Just one more thing to remember when I get to thinking that people don’t change.

SOLSTACE

On the first day of summer we sat on the veranda,
Watching the robbin on her nest and sipping a beer.
And after deconstructing the day’s most boring meetings,
And reliving the thunderstorms, and lamenting things that didn’t go as planned,
What else was there to do but give ourselves completely
To unbridled celebration of a perfect June evening
In the company of flowers on the world’s most exquisite veranda?

A TIP OF THE HOPE HAT TO TODD BABIAK *YEG

If you ever wanted to start a ball rolling but didn’t know how to start, turn to Todd Babiak’s article on beautifying our city. He gives us a living example of how an idea at a meeting can cause you to notice something that could be improved, how one phone call can lead to an interest in creating something beautiful, and how people can work together to fan the contagion of inspiration into possibility. He believes our city can look better. Apparently, he’s not alone. Have you noticed how not being alone so often leads to getting things done?
Downtown by design is within reach; Give us your ideas on 'beauty interventions

2 HOPEFUL STORIES ABOUT LIFE BEYOND ADDICTION

What can bring on hopelessness more quickly than the experience of trying to help someone who has an addiction? Says Harold, a man with firsthand knowledge of how it feels, ”Because of the nature of addictions I can become hopeless. A lot of people in my world have been through the process many times. In a sense, they know what they need to do. It is extremely frustrating to see them not do it.”

Are there powerful stories that can keep us hoping when the situation appears to be beyond repair? For Harold, and myself, and all the others who need to hear hopeful stories WHEN their hope is threatened by addictions, I recommend two books:

Playing With Fire, The Highs And Lows of Theo Fleury by Theo Fleury, and

When All You Have Is Hope by Frank O’Dea

What do Theo Fleury and Frank O’dea have in common? Plenty, it seems. Both had have highly successful careers. Fleury is a hockey star. O’Dea is the co-founder of Second Cup, the coffee chain that claims to have begun our transition to the life of buying good coffee at coffee shops. Both felt distant from their parents in childhood. Both were sexually molested as teen-agers. Both were beset by addictions. Both sank to a very low low. Both reached out for the love and support of generous, patient people. Both found a life beyond addiction and both have something to say about hope.
Beyond their similarities lie their differences. Each has his own story. Fleury had his addiction and his career success at the same time. O’Dea had to come in off the streets of Toronto before he could embark on a career. Fleury’s drinking lasted much longer than O’Dea’s.
There are differences in the way things were reconciled for each of them. In later life, Fleury asked for and received an apology from his parents. O’Dea’s mother said on her deathbed that she would never forgive him for the hurt he had caused his family.
Both books are implicitly hopeful though there is not much direct mention of hope in either. That said, each of these remarkable men has a hope gem to offer us. Fleury says: “It is important for me to share my experiences in order to create strength and hope for others. No matter how far down you go, it is never too late to
come back.” O’Dea says, “When you wallow in remorse over yesterday, or quake in fear about tomorrow, then you lose hope.”
I believe the world has many people who, like Fleury and O’Dea, have gone forward into a life governed by forces other than addiction. It is hard to find them because we don’t hear much about them. We hear about these two, not because they are doing well, but because they are famous for other things. Using that fame to command our attention, they are able to share with us their addiction experience and triumph. For this we must thank them because we need hopeful stories.
And, by the way, they both have a few more things in common. How do these men carry themselves toward a hopeful future? Both of them reach out to loved-ones and cherished friends, and both work hard to support charities.

PEAK EXPERIENCE

You may have read about the exaltation of peak experiences, but I ask you, how often do you meet somebody who just had one? I don’t think I ever had, not until yesterday.
He came in, carrying the fatigue of a ten-hour workday, but you wouldn’t have known it. In fact, I was glad that the room had a ceiling for it seemed we might need a barrier to keep him with us if he simply floated upwards on a current of joy.
Here was a man who had driven a Cadillac. Never mind that it was not his own Cadillac. That wasn’t the point. He sat inside it. He breathed it in. He and the Cadillac bonded. He started it. He actually drove it.
A marvelous car it was, shiny, black and new, with every possible convenience. The seats were equipped with massage capability, and the temperature could be set precisely for the driver and separately for the passenger. You could reach across and feel upon your arm the change from 18 degrees to 22, as if a wall were there to mark the space. What person in his place would not have paused to savour the moment? And yet, when he dallied among the luxuries, reluctant to end the experience one second earlier than necessary, his colleagues came to ask if he needed help getting started, and then stopped to join in his celebration. They had, they said, just witnessed a vision of true ecstasy. So compelling was the story of it all that I had to drop everything just to hear it.
It was Abraham Maslow who first wrote of peak experience. "Peak experiences are sudden feelings of intense happiness and well-being, possibly the awareness of an "ultimate
truth" and the unity of all things ... the experience fills the individual with wonder and awe....he feels at one with the world, and is pleased with
it ...."
So here am I, yesterday’s onlooker, wondering which is better--to have a peak experience, or to witness one?

FINDING HOPE IN IBM'S PLANS FOR WATSON

“It gives me the creeps,” I said to Mark. Less than an hour had passed since I’d witnessed the crushing defeat of the best-ever Jeopardy champions by an IBM computer named Watson. I don’t know what kind of reaction I expected, a little appreciation for my empathy with the human race perhaps. Seeing none, I continued, “I don’t like to see humans being vanquished by computers.”
“Really Mother,” Mark soothed. “Be realistic. The computer doesn’t know anything not taught to it by humans. It’s just that it can search faster.” It was a short conversation, decidedly unsatisfying. Mark might have spent longer debating the issue had he not been rushing to get things done. He and Tracey were packing for their trip to Hawaii. They were taking a laptop—a travel necessity these days.
I didn’t bother reminding him that we used to take him to Hawaii with only the clothes he could carry in his tiny red backpack. He only needed shorts after all. It was back in the days when you could travel without Internet access. Even I have to admit that travelling in 2011 without Internet access is probably less convenient than carrying a laptop. So I let Mark get on with the packing. But it still gives me the creeps.
David and I took a course on how to use the Internet. It was back in the dark ages, possibly 1995, back in the days when our computer didn’t seem to know much at all. It could only manage word processing for us grown-ups, and thrill Mark with the challenge of on-line games using a dial-up modem. We expected more.
After the course was finished, and the Internet successfully connected at home, I told David’s father what we had learned. “There’s email,” I said. “We’ve got an address now and any time we want we can write to other people who have addresses on their computers.”
“Who will you write to?” he asked reasonably. In these matters he was a reasonable man.
“Nobody,” I said. “We don’t know anybody with an address. Maybe you’ll get one and we can write to you.”
“Maybe,” he said, looking doubtfully in the direction of his own computer. His computer was a modern machine equipped with software to keep track of the family tree. Right next to it sat the telephone on which he called us at regular intervals between our weekly visits. Phone calls were free. Letter writing was not part of our usual communication paradigm. I could see he was not sold on email.
I had the feeling I was letting him down—that some expectation lay within him, unfulfilled. Wanting to make amends, I plunged in further. “And then there’s the Internet,” I gushed. “It’s like a huge worldwide library where you can search for anything.” Even as I said it my spirits were lifting. Here was a man who adored libraries.
“Oh,” he said, brightening. “Are there books on the Internet?”
“No,” I admitted, and then added, not wanting to be too definite, “Not that I’ve found anyway.”
“Can you search on the Internet for branches on the family tree?” he asked.
Now here was something I hadn’t tried. It seemed a reasonable enough request, given his passion for the family tree, and the fact that a family tree is a straightforward collection of data. So I gathered up the wisdom I’d gained in the class and asked our computer to find some branches on a family tree. And then, when it clearly could not meet this request, I lowered my standards and asked it to find just about anything I could think of. Eventually it found the website of our Internet service provider. That, it said, was about all it knew at this point.
Sadly I reported my findings to David’s father. He accepted the news with a sigh of resignation. Like me, he had high hopes for machines, but he was also realistic.
This was the man who, some 20 years earlier, had introduced me to a thoroughly modern instrument, the hand-held calculator. It was a squarish, paperless thing, a little too big for a pocket, more suitable in size to a man-purse. $175.00 ‘he’d paid for it, an alarming sum, yet a bargain in some ways. Why does he need it, I’d wondered. He was, after all, an expert teacher of mathematics. But he said it would be a great help, faster than paper and pen.
Today is Friday, my day alone at home. What have I done? Well, I’ve answered an email request from a student. I’ve downloaded two audio books by Edna Ferber. Searching the web I have located a video version of a song our choir will soon be singing, and stumbled upon several references to my name in the family tree. If I wanted to take the time, I could probably locate a tech museum that displays those ancient handheld calculators that were so big and awkward they couldn’t even fit into a shirt pocket.
David’s father had one reservation about his new calculator, a nagging worry about the future students who would live and die by the calculator, never learning enough math so as to be able to judge whether the calculator’s reckonings were right or wrong. They would be, he said, enslaved by this machine, victimized by their own entry errors, seduced into a false sense of knowing what was accurate. The calculator, he repeated, should be used for speed. It could do math faster than a human.
I thought of all this while watching Watson play Jeopardy on TV. As usual, the game had three players. But this was a game with a difference. Only two of the players were human, Ken and Brad, the two most successful players in the game’s long history. The third player was a computer, or rather, a family of networked computers named Watson.
Designed specifically by IBM for this purpose, there seemed no limit to the things Watson could do. He could speak as clearly and as eloquently as many of Jeopardy’s best geeks and nerds. He could choose categories, he could ring in when he thought he had the answer, he could select an amount to bet on the Daily Double, he could even make wrong guesses. But one fact trumped everything. They played two full games, and it didn’t take a mathematician to see that there really was no competition. Watson could beat the best men who ever played Jeopardy.
This morning, in a search for something that would replace my creeps with optimism, I reminded myself to remind Mark and tracey to send us some email from Hawaii. Then I went onto the Internet and read about IBM’s plans for Watson. He will help doctors make accurate diagnoses. In the space of a heartbeat he will find all the medical information available about treatment. Apparently he will even be able to cut through the gobbledygook that pads the spaces between the important facts published in professional journals. Watson will be put to good use in the service of humanity. There’s hope in that.
And, one more thing. Unlike the handheld calculator which, after 40 years, is still the recipient of many invitations to assist with math, Watson won’t likely be invited back to play another round of Jeopardy. The reasons for this are entirely human. Jeopardy is supposed to be fun. The game is simply not fun when he plays. He’s too fast.

ON SEEING AND READING

This morning, in the waiting room at the Cancer Institute I suddenly remembered the first time Lawrence and I went out for dinner. We were unlikely dinner dates thrown together by fate, mother and son hungry at suppertime. He was a teen-ager with a driver’s license. I was an ineligible driver with car keys. Everyone else in the family was—somewhere else. It was back in the days when I used to cook for him. Not surprisingly, it was I who suggested going out.
“Where would we go?” he asked. Scepticism hung heavy on the air.
“Wherever you like,” I said brightly.
“MacDonald’s,” he said.
“Anywhere except MacDonald’s,” I said. I had, after all, been thinking of going out for an actual dinner. Surely he didn’t want MacDonald’s! We could walk there.
“Oh Mother!” He gave one of those sighs that conveys everything without saying anything. “It has to be somewhere where we can order,” he said.
And now I understood what he was thinking. Considering our particular blend of disabilities, we were an impractical match for a dinner menu—a mother who would be able to read if she could only see, and a son who could see but not read. He was imagining the two of us staring blankly at a menu, neither with a clue as to what was on it. He was wondering what we’d say to the waitress, what kind of food we might get if he simply pointed at random to some item, hoping it was a burger.
Given the amount of creativity it might have taken to overcome this difficulty, I did think it probably would have been easier to stay home. But once you’ve imagined yourself out for dinner, it’s hard to let that go. So we went to Boston Pizza and managed well enough, or so we must have, because I don’t recall any memorable trauma.
These days we never go out for dinner, though we occasionally go somewhere together. Today our destination was the Cancer Institute, a stupefying jumble of scurrying professionals, snaking hallways, directional signs and forms requiring due diligence. Going out to dinner at any restaurant would have been a better choice. But this was not a menu with choices. Cancer institutes carry a lot of weight. If they tell you to go there on October 1, you go there on October 1, even if you have to go with your less-than-completely-helpful mother.
There are really two problems that arise when you cannot read. The first is that you cannot read, a condition that makes it difficult to know where to go, what to do, and what you might be giving written permission for in a busy hospital. The second problem lies in the explanation of it to others. For a blind person it’s easy enough. You show your cane and let them take it from there. If that doesn’t get you what you need, you swallow hard and say, “I’m blind. I’ll need you to read this.” Negligent as it may sometimes be, our culture, in general, is kind to the blind. But if you are not blind, and you are holding a set of car keys, and maybe you are even guiding a blind person, well, the situation isn’t quite so straightforward. Outside the professional realm, a variety of words are used to describe young men who function without the benefit of reading. They’re not fitting for a HOPE LADY Blog. I won’t mention them here. But even when nobody mentions them, they echo in the heads of those who are presented with English forms that might as well be in German or Italian for all the sense they make.
I wished I hadn’t gone with him. I wished somebody else was there in my place, somebody who could be a better help. I am a loving mother. Guided by the instinct of a protective hen, I would happily have sent him to the washroom while I whispered a request to the receptionist. “Please help my son read this form. It’s not his fault that he can’t read it.”
But he did not need the washroom, and he did not need me to explain it. I sat in the waiting room, waiting. He boldly told the lady she would have to read the form for him. He didn’t give her a reason, and she didn’t ask for one. You’d think that reading forms was the thing she was expecting to do.
Given the way things turned out, so much better than I expected, you surely can’t blame me for wondering if we should go out for lunch.

WARMER

Nothing makes you warmer than a random day of hotness
A surprise in late September
When the sun comes out with gusto and the wind goes on vacation
When your coat goes into hiding while your toes are glad of sandals
And the heat balloons inside you through your skin and bones and tissues
Warming all the places that have wanted to be warmed

Nothing makes you warmer than a random day of hotness
A surprise in late September
Except cuddling somebody
Or chasing after a toddler,
Or blowing into the day’s first cup of coffee
Or eating hot and sour soup,
Or maybe—and this is where the hope comes in,
Maybe a really warm day in early October?

NEXT YEAR IN THE SUMMER

I’ll spend more time in the yard next summer
Tending the flowers
Lounging on the veranda
Unless, by chance...

May is busy or June is cold
Or thunderstorms blow in when I am available,
Or too many loved-ones decide to get married,
Or I am chosen to present in Los Angeles
Or the State of Delaware offers a contract
Or all of these things happen
Or something completely different happens,
In which case...

I’ll plan to spend more time in the yard the following year.

CAN WE DO IT?

A young environmental advocate attended my hopeful storytelling workshop at the NSN conference in Los Angeles. For her it was a question of how to keep hope alive for people trying to combat climate change in a world where so many people don’t want to hear the warnings. We had come to L.A. from Philadelphia where we had visited Elfreth’s Alley
Elfreth’s Alley is a street of houses that have been continuously occupied for nearly 300 years! And It makes me wonder if we might be under-estimating our human potential. Three hundred years ago we already knew how to build structures that would be fit for habitation in the 21st century. Given all that we have learned since then, can it really be beyond our grasp to create a sustainable world?