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Here is a link to the Wilderness Society - www.wilderness.or one of the premier organizations focusing on public lands. These are not the only groups doing important work on federal policy and international agreements. The Sierra Club - www.sierraclub.or , Greenpeace - www.reenpeace.or, the Union of Concerned Scientists - www.ucsusa.or, and Bill McKibben's global climate action group, 350.or - www.350.or, are also on the front line. We'll need the whole team in Washington over the next four years. Second, we need to understand that any forward progress over the next four years will not come from Washington. Instead, it will occur at the state and local levels. Fortunately, in South Carolina many environmental causes have bipartisan support. This is especially true for land conservation. We have escaped the intense polarization that has characterized the federal debate. This is not to say that we have an environmental majority in Columbia. But the challenge is not as much one of partisanship as it is of generally building a broader coalition for conservation. Now, (finally), I'll indulge my own inner hedgehog. I think underlying the Trump phenomenon is the increasing detachment people have from their own communities. Instead, immersed in a vast sea of electronic media, they are confronted with a steady stream of ideologically loaded global abstractions. Thus detached, they become vulnerable to the sort of simplistic, partisan signaling that characterized this presidential campaign. The solution, I think, is to reconnect locally — to engage in local initiatives. (Think Growood Carolina... ) It is on this scale, one that humans are evolutionarily designed to understand, that practical, tangible community goals (establishing a functional public bus system ... protecting farmland ... improving neighborhood schools) trump (so to speak) ideology and party. I'll admit "localism" is no panacea. There's plenty of rancor over local issues, but the path to progress is clearer, and individuals can have a much greater impact. And I'm not suggesting giving up on the national scene. But I think federal policies are more comprehensible when we view them through the perspective of our experiences in our own communities. So thus armed, let's go forth this week and change our world for the better! Dana