Image by Alisdare Hickson via Flickr
Updated: October 11, 2023
by Wim Laven
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
October 10, 2023
Turn on any mainstream news media and you are guaranteed to see grizzly details of violence transpiring in Israel and Palestine. Interviews with survivors and witnesses describing horrors; observers asking important question like “how could this happen?” and “why didn’t we stop it?” Sooner or later the politics, the leaders, and the responses become central to the story.
Image by Tanya Hart via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
March 29, 2023
Recently, I’ve been listening to The Lost Birds: An Extinction Elegy, by American composer Christopher Tin. [Video below] It is an arrangement based on the poems of Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Christina Rossetti. It is sung beautifully by Voces8 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Tin composed this marvelous arrangement as a memorial to various bird species that have been driven to extinction by habit loss, pollution and encroachment. The pieces soar and dive in a powerful rollercoaster of emotion, especially when one has been a student of extinction for as long as I have.
Image by Multnomah County Library via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
March 11, 2023
With the recent spate of vicious attacks on drag performers and drag shows, I’ve been thinking a lot about a brilliant quote by the late Ram Dass: “Treat everyone you meet as if they were God in drag.” And I think it gets to the heart of this manufactured controversy.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
January 24, 2023
Over this past weekend I went to see the new Avatar movie. I had seen the first one and, although it had flaws, I saw the overall message as compelling. Fair warning, here is a small spoiler: Simply put, the plot is one where humans in the future, with the help of gargantuan and lethal military might, attempt to colonize a planet called Pandora. It is another solar system many light years from earth, and it possesses many extraordinary and rare minerals and resources, as well as incredible biodiversity and Indigenous societies. In the sequel, the humans of earth have returned, and their goal is nothing less than total colonization of the planet for the purpose of resettlement. Earth, as one cold hearted military general says, is dying.
Image by Wally Gobetz via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Previously published on Jan. 15, 2022
January 17, 2023
When I was in college, I had the privilege of doing an internship in Los Angeles that was connected to a vibrant inner-city church. While I was there, I was introduced to some of the most radical leftist politics I’ve ever known. It was in this setting that I saw vibrant programs for the working class and for youth being implemented by Black churches. It is also where I learned about Liberation Theology, a Christian movement that was transforming communities all over Latin America at the time as a direct challenge to capitalism and American imperialism.
Image by Geoff Livingston via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
November 1, 2022
Whatever one thinks of the politics of Nancy Pelosi, American Democratic Speaker of the House, the violence perpetrated against her husband was nothing short of terrifying, and for many reasons. No spin can erase the fact that this was political violence. And it is becoming normalized in a country that has been rapidly unraveling for several years.
Image by Itmost via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
September 28, 2022
“And those who expected lightning and thunder, are disappointed. And those who expected signs and archangel’s trumps do not believe it is happening now. As long as the sun and the moon are above, as long as the bumblebee visits a rose, as long as rosy infants are born, no one believes it is happening now…” — from “A Song at the End of the World,” Czesalw Milosz, Warsaw 1944
Image by Marco Fieber via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
August 23, 2022
It has become impossible not to notice the trend. Whether it is banning the word “gay,” or banning books that contain topics related to human sexuality, or the Supreme Court decision to overturn a woman’s federal right to an abortion, the war on human sexuality and those who are sexually divergent is ramping up on multiple fronts. Even I’ve been a target of this war. Because of my outspoken advocacy for LGBTQ+ youth, I have been labeled a “groomer” by a few figures on the far right.
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
July 26, 2022
What is it about this photograph that is so intriguing? This is the Carina Nebula taken by the James Webb Telescope (NASA). We are looking at a nursery of stars, many far bigger than our own sun. And we are also looking back in time. Deep time. Yet there’s something intimate about it, even though there aren’t any pareidolic references for us to easily latch on to.
Image by Stephen Melkisethian via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
July 5, 2022
A father hid his young son in a dumpster as he searched for the rest of his family amid rapid gun fire…
Image by risingthermals via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 25, 2022
The overturning of the landmark Roe v Wade case providing federal protection for a woman’s right to choose is both appalling and enraging. Now, several conservative states have already begun outlawing abortion rights. It is undeniable that women’s rights have taken an enormous blow, and the effect will have repercussions around the world.
Image by Glendale United Methodist Church – Nashville via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 23, 2022
If you’ve never traveled around the state of Texas, you won’t really get an accurate picture of this odd land of extremes. The cities, especially Austin and Houston, are islands of relative sanity surrounded by a sea of crazy. All this considered, the unveiling of the Texas GOP’s platform should come as no surprise. They have merely tapped into the paranoid, hyper-nationalist, fascist zeitgeist so prevalent among a large swath of its white, Christian population.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 15, 2022
As we observe Pride Month, we should remind ourselves that the original Pride Parade was a riot, not a celebration of conformity to society. There were no permits issued to the people who marched down those streets in New York City. There were no corporate, bank or military floats participating. And it was mocked by mainstream press like the New York Times.
Image by Marcela via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 2, 2022
I’ve heard that some of the parents in Uvalde are planning to have open caskets at the funerals for their little ones. I cannot imagine the kind of agony these families are going through. And also for the families and loved ones of the teachers who were killed, and one husband dying of a heart attack from grief only days later, leaving four children.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
May 17, 2022
I will be honest about something. Since the cold-blooded execution of Palestinian, veteran journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh by an Israeli sniper I have felt rather nonplussed. A rarity for me. But it does happen.
Dandelion Salad 