We left the humid air of Georgia,where summers hang heavy like wet sheets on a line,and headed west, following the slow unravelof asphalt and unfamiliar sky. Chattanooga met us firstwhere cliffs lean close to brick facades,and the river curls through streetslike it’s choosing to stay.Old stone, new glass,coffee shops tucked beside train tracks,

Our next installment in our Community Resilience series. #urbanplanning #planning #Development #conflict #resilience

Here is the first article about identifying conflict drivers in our series. Here, we examine conflict drivers within the US in the context of similar global conflicts.

Introducing Our Community Resilience Series At TRENDS Global, we believe that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of systems that allow communities to navigate hardship, rebuild tr...

We did not promise.We declared. Not a wish but a reckoning,not a hope but a hammerstrike—“All are created equal.”No caveats. No crown. We lit the hill with that fire,and the world turned to look.Not because we were perfect—but because we said it out loud.And meant to prove it. We staggered forward, barefoot, bloodied—

A Lesson for those who don't understand PEACE

They took the words and locked them away,Women, history, equity, diversity—sealed in silence, stamped with red,as if the world could be unwritten. They say a vanished word is a vanished truth,that if we do not speak of bridges burned,there will be no ash, no scars, no ghosts—only the echo of power unchallenged.

A Most Tremendous Proposal: Making America Rule-by-Decree Again It is a most unsettling reality that the American populace, once burdened by the cumbersome weight of legislative process, judicial oversight, and the nuisance of representative democracy, now finds itself gloriously liberated by the sheer expedience of executive orders. No longer must we endure the tedium of debate, compromise, or even basic scrutiny.

It comes sudden,a tide in the air,lifting the brittle leaves,rattling the windows,folding the sky over itselflike a sheet in unseen hands. You know this feeling—the shift, the coming undone.How many timeshave you stood at the edgeof what was certain,only to watch it split open,carried off in the reckless current?

Yo—hold up. Nah. This ain’t real.I swear there was food here. A whole-ass meal.I roll up slow, give the bowl a nudge,Nothing moves. Nothing budged. Did I eat? Can’t be true.Stomach’s talkin’, sayin…

Yo—hold up. Nah. This ain’t real.I swear there was food here. A whole-ass meal.I roll up slow, give the bowl a nudge,Nothing moves. Nothing budged. Did I eat? Can’t be true.Stomach’s talkin’, sayin’ who?Sayin’ what? Sayin’ where’s my snack?All I see is the bottom—shiny, black. Step back. Assess. This some kind of trick?I swear these humans move too quick.

Snow comes soft and light,like sifted sugar spilling from unseen hands,settling on branches and stubborn leaves,a peaceful canvas covering their brittle brown. The children tumble out,wide-eyed with wonder,small boots breakingthe fragile lattice of white.The last snow was only a memory—watched through panes,too distant to hold,but today—today is theirs. Birds alight far above the chill blanket,

The year is dying, but it does not die.Its ashes scatter into the roots of days to come,new shoots rising from the dark compostto touch a sky just begun. And in this turning, memory holdsthe beauty of all we have been:every fleeting now, caught like a glimmer of firelight,woven into the fabric of what remains. For now, we wait,winds weaving through the hollow stillness,carrying whispers of what has beenand the first notes of what will be.

We ascend, drawn to the mountain’s silence,its call sharp as winter’s breath.The summit gleams, distant and aloof,while the plain, soft-shouldered, waits below. The plain offers its expanse,a cradle of grasses bending in the wind,its rivers murmuring of belonging,but our eyes are on the heights. The mountain reaches, stone by stone,for the open arms of the earth.

To be human is to ache in the marrow, To carry pain like a secret we can’t let go We lash out when we are broken, Though the wound bleeds us Just the same We walk on the bones of ancient stars Their dust threading through our veins We are the light they left behind Both ephemeral and endless we shimmer…

YouTube video by Thomas Crone

I wake to the hum of a world I no longer trust—its rhythms foreign,its pulse unwelcoming.Who am I in this vast, indifferent tide?A mother, a scholar, a nameless achegnawing at the edges of what might have been. The clock ticks faster than thought,time a cruel overseer whipping the hours.Four children.A PhD.Rows of accomplishments stacked like unread books,

Streaks of gold, sharp as breath, Slash the canvas—raw and sudden, Where air turns molten, alive and wild,Like a whisper burning through silence. Beneath, earth is smudged in ochre bruises,The body pressed, its weight remembered.Cracks snake through sienna plains,Fractured, waiting—a shape in tension. Water spills from the edges,Thinned cobalt, soft and unruly.It pools and spreads like love forgotten,

Gray spreads thinly across a sad sky,a thick, unspeaking quilt of clouds,smothering the light with its quiet weight.Leaves, crumpled letters from trees,whisper their brittle secrets to the wind,and the air, heavy with a chill,presses against windows,frames that hold more than glass—our lives caught in panes,reflections blurred, futures unclear. Through the smudged transparency,

She moves silently,circling the table like a shadow with purpose.A soft bump against your leg—a nudge, a reminder—I’m here. Don’t forget me. Her eyebrows do the heavy lifting,arching, furrowing,communicating what words never could.You feel them soften you,like water wearing down stone.She knows.She always knows. Around her, the world bends,chairs shift, hands lower,

Time is a stone in the shallows,worn by waves unexpected.We think we are still,but the tide whispers:you are moving, even now. The dunes breathe beneath the sun,grains sliding like quiet hours.We wait for the sky to change,but it is the waitingthat changes us. Life slows in the liminal light,gray stretching thin between now…

 Now don’t you cry for Clare Nell.Her life was no gilded story—it was bare hands on rough wood,words sharp as the north wind,and laughter that left its mark like a knife on soft pine. In the nursing home, she didn’t fade.She scrawled herself across the days,a woman unbowed, cursing with gusto,I needed her more than she needed me.