It is hard to know what is safe.  It is difficult to determine what one must do to preserve oneself.  Which is better:  to plunge in or to seal off?  To engage or to disengage?  Each option carries its own hazards.  

and act calmly explores human systems and their fault lines in order to more deeply consider the implications of our interconnectedness on this shared planet.  The enormity of recent man-made disasters poses a question to all humanity:  what is there to do?  Some fashion their shorn hair into oil booms and ship them to the Gulf to protect the coastline from advancing oil.  Others pack themselves into buses and trucks and work in the spaces between the oil and the coast, between the tar and the sea birds.  Some address the fault lines from within the system, as educators or advocates.  Still others don protective suits and stay home, but do not necessarily stay safe.

At times it may seem as if we each do so little, but together, we have created this world— its beauty and its atrocity.  

“Please do not overreact, and act calmly.”  

-Japanese Chief Cabinet spokesman Yukio Edano  3.21.11