As we enter a new year, CEC is significantly expanding our staff and programming to meet the increasing demands of the climate crisis. To accommodate this growth, we are moving around the corner to 1219 State St., where CEC will once again have street level presence in the center of the community.

“The award comes during CEC’s 50th anniversary year, underscoring that our work is more critical to the community than ever.”

This will not be a lyrical post, but rather a stuttering gasp of grief and impotent rage after witnessing – as we all did this week – the cries of an unarmed man for the most basic human right: the right to breathe.

Lately, with our collective navigational instruments on the blink, dials spinning uselessly, I awake from sleep and find myself curled into the shape of a question mark, as if to reflect back all the unknowns of this time.

Like a heat map, the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to areas of strain, places where we need to pay greater attention. One of the most noticeable of these is the food system.

Recently it’s felt like we’ve been living in a near-constant state of emergency. In fact I have on my nightstand a book of that title – Living in the Long Emergency, which I have yet to read. The truth is that the joint crises of a global pandemic, a deeply flawed economic system, structural racism, fraying political institutions, and growing climate chaos don't leave me with a lot of enthusiasm for this as a bedtime story.

After months of pandemic-induced disruption at so many levels, I find it liberating to realize that the times we are in may just be demanding that we let go of where we wish we were, set a new course, and burn our old maps for fuel.

Here we are, weeks and months into an unprecedented global exploration into isolation due to COVID-19. And once again, the most poignant takeaway of this new territory may very well be our keen rediscovery of how our lives depend on one another.