Not much to say, except that after finger-pointing and denials, turns out that the US is responsible.
It is hard to imagine peace today.
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On Saturday, February 28, I spent the morning writing with poet friends. I did not read the news beforehand. I was taking a little break. And yet, I wrote about ups & downs; I picked up a brilliant children’s book entitled Rise and Fall, illustrated by the brilliant Peter Allen. When I arrived home from writing and walking, I read the book, made this sketch. The quote is from the introduction in the book.
It was fascinating to read about ancient, thriving civilizations that rose–and fell. Sometimes, historians have an idea of why they fell (often wars are involved, as well as disasters/disease)–other times, it remains a mystery to us.
And then my beloved came home and asked had I heard the news.
Sometimes, it feels as if relaxation or living life and NOT consuming news for a few hours might ’cause’ something bad to happen. Despite having that feeling initially, and getting sucked into a small spiral–I can take a breath, pray for peace, and take the action that I can take (calling those reps, again). We should not be in a war, and yet. Here we are.
Breathe into this reality, and respond.
A writing prompt to try: choose an object (or a living thing, I chose the plant)—study what you have selected. Breathe. Notice the colors, textures, form. What comes up for you, as you observe? Write down a word or phrase that comes to mind, and then write for five minutes. If you like to draw, add a sketch!
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I drew this one the morning after the state of the union address (2/25/26).
I’d gone to bed thinking about the Epstein files, about the rise of misogyny (not that it ever ‘went away’). Earlier that evening, while not watching the SOTU, my IG feed was overtaken by a gush of posts celebrating large families, many featuring older women having babies–(sometimes their 12th or 15th) and if that is your path and your choice, I’m all for it.
However, my days of childrearing are behind me. I follow climate news and mindfulness news and current events. I follow warriors for racial justice. Immigrant’s rights. World news. Some humor. Poetry. Plant-based cooking. Musicians. Queer activists. Philosophy. Gardening. Literature (basically every area of study currently on the chopping block at your local U).
There is no logical reason my feed was flooded with posts about the vital importance of staying home with my children. Even a post that seemed to be about a woman working in a corporate environment was slanted by an anxiety-tinged “you should be home, because only you can take care of your child” message. These posts came up immediately after I read about new findings in the Epstein files; they seemed to be…in reaction to that.
After reading about Meta’s practices, I know their algorithmic ways are rarely random.
Time to walk away from “my lover, the phone” and be here in the world, which we can create. Imagine a world of caring. Imagine a world you would like the children of tomorrow to wake to. Whether they are your own kin or not.
What kind of world would you like to leave behind? Imagine it. Write about it. Meditate about it. Change begins with a vision.
Tell me, what would you most like to leave behind?
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I watched a bit of good news a couple weeks back. You may have followed the progress of the Buddhist monks from Fort Worth, Texas, with their “Walk for Peace” spanning about 2,300 miles. Every day they held a ‘peace sharing talk’ at lunch, for anyone who wanted to listen. One of the talks really inspired me to adopt a new practice suggested by one of the monks. He suggested leaving your phone alone and not engaging with it until you make your bed, go to the bathroom, and write with pen on paper “today will be my peaceful day”.
Feeling very downhearted the morning I saw this clip, of the Venerable Monk Pannakara and his talk helped me reframe how I want to start my days.
Reflecting on his teachings, I realized peace is not a passive process. This is not an invitation to “check out” and numb ourselves. It is an invitation to feel and think and act from our hearts instead of in reaction to what our phones spark us to react to.
Try it. Peace may be a rare quality these days, but we all have the ability to create and spread peace.
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In May, 2025, the first session of Climate Meditation & Writing Workshop was held at Studio Kroner in downtown Cincinnati. It was part of All Else Pales 2, a month-long, multi-disciplinary exhibition exploring climate change, sustainability, and environmental justice.
From the seed of this opportunity, an ongoing group has emerged!
I facilitate our monthly meetings, which (generally) occur on the 2nd or 3rd Saturday of the month. This free (donation-optional) format includes a guided meditation and guided writing prompts. Both are suitable for any experience level in meditation or writing. Mainly: we build community, sit with whatever feelings arise, and then create together. Sharing what is written is optional–we all listen and support one another. This is a generative workshop! We write in community. Quite often, juicy writing emerges. But the main objective is the practice.
Together we cultivate open-heartedness, awareness, and build energy and/or find solace. The idea is to draw strength so we may all help shape the best present and future that we can, however that looks for each participant. These practices are a great support for anyone concerned about the world we all depend upon and share.
If you’re in the Cincinnati area and would like to be on the email invitation list for the group, contact me. I’ll give you a heads up for the next meeting. Would love to see you there sometime.
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Last time I flew Delta, the napkin that came with my little cup of coffee proclaimed the airline had been “Carbon neutral since 2020,” which might lead you to believe they are not emitting carbon; there’s a class action lawsuit pending now, which Delta is fighting.
The writer of today’s napkin blurb stayed in safe territory by touting that the napkin is made from recycled paper. Hopefully that much is true.
Flying adds greatly to the carbon footprints of already heavy-footed westerners like me. And yet, with a sprawling family in a sprawling country with little rail service, I choose to fly sometimes.
But I’d rather not comfort myself with greenwashed fantasies of carbon offsets.
As the plane descends below the clouds, I see curving streets and cul de sacs scarring the earth below, labyrinthine, eerily reminiscent of the patterns carved by ash borers, who are born to consume what sustains them.
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May this be a year of questioning and seeing and being and responding to what needs attention.
A year to nurture love, a year to take action.
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I’m pleased to announce the publication of my first poetry chapbook. I hope you’ll check it out on Amazon or (better yet) at the publisher’s website, to support small business! https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-invisible-suitcase-by-elaine-olund/
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(I wrote this piece a couple years ago. It is sadly not an isolated example of injustice when it comes to household violence against children and women in particular. I recently edited and read this essay at V-day at Women Writing for (a) Change, in Ohio, so I am publishing the edited version here.)Dear Judge McKeon,
A 40-year-old Montana father raped his 12-year-old daughter. Repeatedly.
You sentenced him to 60 days, of which he will serve 43. For good measure, he must pay $80 and “future medical care for his daughter.” You mean, I think, for his victim?
Forty-three days in jail for raping his 12-year-old daughter. Repeatedly.
Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky a little girl tries to sleep and will never sleep the same again.
There’s a call for your impeachment, but you’ve made your decision. Forty-three days and eighty bucks.
You mention it was a hard decision for you.
Yes, it would be hard for anyone with an ounce of humanity to come up with a sentence like that.
Yet, I’ve seen this happen over and over. Someone weaker smiles, flirts, rejects, or simply exists when a man’s anger boils over. Anger that makes him “powerless” to think. His rage is someone else’s fault. In this case, a twelve-year-old girl’s fault.
Deep down, Judge McKeon, you and a lot of others still believe females are property to use and abuse. I’m sure you’d swear that wasn’t true. But your actions reveal your real feelings.
Under Montana state law, your sentence to the rapist should have been steep:
“A person convicted of the offense of incest … shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of up to 100 years and fined an amount not to exceed $50,000…”
These things — things like incest, things like raping your own daughter — these things happen in the night, usually. Hand over mouth in the dark, whispered threats from a man who is supposed to love you and take care of you.
Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky a little girl tries to sleep and will never sleep the same again.
Maybe the little girl never really knew trust, even before. I can’t decide if possessing pure, innocent trust and losing it is better or worse than never having it at all. There seems no one she might trust, and you, too, failed her — utterly, miserably, unforgivably.
I bet you’d point out that her own mother asked for a reduced sentence, citing the rapist’s sons “need to know their father.” That her own grandmother said: “His children, especially his sons, will be devastated if their dad is no longer part of their lives.”
These are words, Judge that should have set off clanging alarm bells in your head.
Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky a little girl tries to sleep and will never sleep the same again.
She cannot sleep the way children should be able to sleep. Trauma has rewired her brain now, set her whole being to red-alert. To sleep well again will take years of love and therapy. To trust again may never happen. It’s a hard road to go alone. She is twelve years old. TWELVE.
Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky, a little girl is all alone. Her father raped her, repeatedly, and no one testified on her behalf. No one.
Friends of the rapist noted that the accused was employed and had a supportive community and thus was, in their opinions, apparently just the sort of child rapist that could be magically rehabilitated overnight.
I’d like to ask a question of the court. Why is there “leeway” in an incest case?
If he had raped his neighbor’s 12-year-old, would you be so casually lenient, Judge? If he had raped a 12-year-old related to you, would you have said he’d just made a “mistake?” Would you think him being in the lives of his sons was a good idea, a good reason to suspend his sentence? Would you think about what a sentence like this says to the world, or to this man’s sons? It says what he did to their sister was no big deal.
Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky a little girl is crying, and thinks no one hears her.
I wonder, Judge McKeon, how many others you have sentenced to life?
For that child faces a life sentence. A million signatures on a petition to impeach you is not enough. But I think impeaching you would be a start. A start towards a world where a little girl has the right to sleep deeply, trusting those around her to love her, and keep her safe in the night.
Follow up: Prosecutors in Montana did not appeal the controversial 43-day jail sentence for a man who admitted to raping his 12-year-old daughter.
And Judge McKeon retired with full benefits.
More info/news stories that informed my piece:
https://flatheadbeacon.com/2016/10/16/judge-gave-suspended-sentence-incest-speaks/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-john-mckeon-montana-no-prison-incest-rape-conviction-under-fire/
https://www.thecut.com/2016/10/judge-john-mckeon-defends-sentence-for-fathers-rape.html
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Power Outage, August 20, 2019
I like the sound of the cars, passing lonely on the rainy afternoon street, the way the sound of the rain rises up like a wave crashing, then falls softly to patter. I like the way the Catalpa dances, tossing her branches like girls toss long hair.
I wait for the power to surge back, for the refrigerator to chime in with the cicadas and crickets cued up by a pause in the rain, I wait for work to resume and life to go back online.
Far away, an alarm siren is hyperventilating, wailing up and down, hiccupping distress. Birds sing and then go silent as the rain begins and thunder rumbles again; chirping and trilling rise up as the sky dries.
The lights flicker on, and with them, low drone of machines waking and then gasping dark and dumb as the power drops out again. Nature rushes to fill the vacuum of quiet, thunder’s rolling again—or is it a dump truck, rumbling up Hamilton?
I like the feeling I have of being all alone, floating in a bubble of sounds that stream around me, under me, over me, as if I am bobbing in a warm river of thrum and strum, rattle and hum.
Across the street, Mary’s raspy voice floats, softened by the weather, “Hey,” she asks her next-door neighbor, “Hey, is your power off, too?” She sings the syllables. Fading rain pats the roof, gently, gently. The catalpa sways slowly now, back and forth, back and forth, steady, steady, like I swayed when I held my babies long ago.
I close my eyes, remembering the feeling of baby skin against my chest. Suddenly Mama’s right next to me, as if the storm has swept her into the house like a wind-sucked sparrow. Eyes closed, window open. Breeze tickling. We listen to the clouds lifting, to the birds calling. We take turns guessing Goldfinch or Cardinal, Robin or Wren, some silly game we began in 1992 and take up this August afternoon as if nothing’s changed, as if no time has passed, and nothing is ever lost.
This was the result of a two-part prompt. In a nutshell, part one is listening, eyes closed, for 6 minutes. Just breathing and listening, noticing whatever sounds are present. Part two was reading the poem “Aware” by Denise Levertov, then beginning a ten-minute fastwrite starting with “I liked the sound”. (one of the phrases from the poem). Any poem that focuses on sound or listening would work for this two-part prompt. Try it and see what happens.
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