Our House Is On Fire: Climate Action Where I Stand

Barbara Cervone, April 19th 2022 POSTCARDS FROM THE ROGUE VALLEY

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

At the end of March, 2018, my husband and I moved from Brooklyn, New York to Ashland, Oregon after 50 years living in the Northeast and three days in Southern Oregon. It was a startling decision, one our family and friends couldn’t quite believe but admired. We discovered Ashland—and the surrounding Rogue Valley—on a cross-country road trip the summer before. We were hooked in a few hours, although the air was thick with smoke and the temperature sizzled.

I have never called myself a writer, but I’ve written all my life: reports, stories, articles, and books, mostly about powerful learning with public purpose by our country’s adolescents. My partners were teenagers marginalized by race, class, and language, and the adults that cared about them, and the audience was educators and policymakers nationwide.

If what I wrote didn’t secure publication, it was like a tree falling in the forest. I wrote for others, part of a lifelong campaign to spread progressive education.

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