Trump is the first celebrity president, a tribute to the American state of mind as we we forgo the rational standards of a 20th century worldview and wander off into the landscape of instant opinions the give irrational voices to our ancient ongoing disparities. As this gap between the safety of our assumptions and the chaos of reality...well, maybe it's just a function of getting older, and just my way of dealing with that. But I don't think so. I was a designer and a builder throughout my working life, drawn naturally to interacting with individuals and families, drawing out dreams and their limitations to create a place to call home, I like problems with no one right answer. I believe in the capacity of each of us -individually and together- to forge solutions to these kinds of challenges. It has been the wind at my back for many years, taking me from a early fascination with science fiction through an ongoing interest in other cultures and points of view, into an innate connection with building and the use of space, as well child development and the vagaries of public education. Along the way, I have volunteered in the Peace Corp (back when they'd take anybody with an interest )))), travelled some, backpacked, bought a home and raised a family, lost a home to a wild fire, spent time -as a coach and then regional director- in a kids education program that offered a refreshing alternative to conventional education, suffered economic suffocation in the bubble blown by the financial industry. lived on the street, took early retirement, became an expat. To my mind, this presidency has galvanized the idea of cultural evolution as the key to our progress as a species. We might be able to survive without it, but we will never utilize our full potential as tool makers and builders. With that in mind, I celebrate science -the hard heart of the empirical method and the fuzzy boundaries at the fringes, poking around in the fertile humus of the human mind.