Today asks a lot from those of us who have been around for more than a few generations. Gendered — is a word. Liberal and conservative ideologies are targets for more hatred and violence than ever before. Our economies allow for cryptocurrencies, placing our agreement to exchange three dimensional goods for metaphorical value on shifting sands or in invisible ink. Education can happen through a tablet; not the kind you swallow. Helpers — safety and legal — can be bad. Home can be a truck, a cube, or it can be something whose price tags soared so high during Covid that we know they have to crash. Families break up and re-gather as if they are recyclables. And this is all because humans mix things up. Is it all good? All bad? Of course not. Let’s explore. From the outside in.

Helen Batchelder is an historian, vocalist, and writer, whose inspiration comes from nature, science, and art.