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Jun 25, 2022

"There must be limits, somewhere, to the human footprint on this earth." --Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver: The Urbicene

"Kin la Belle, the Congolese call their capital, and Ive looked for Kinshasas beauty. The Congo River, pulse of a planet, fifteen miles wide as it courses past? Abdims storks wheeling overhead, hippos lolling in the rapids below the caf where I had lunch under the gaze of giant orange-headed lizards? All beautiful, I thought, but was gently corrected. Beasts and crawling creatures dont really belong here. Kinshasas belle is human, and modern, the unquenchable, rowdy hustle in this city of 15 million souls. Never mind that its vast shantytowns are the only option for most new arrivals. They still come. Every year, Kinshasa absorbs 400,000 more people, roughly another Miami." Urban life has its upside-- but what happens when the cost is the loss of our connection to the natural world? Barbara Kingsolver shares more.