Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT July 15th 2026

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Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt (p 9-10) from Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto, posted below.

Our prompt was: “what happens when time slows down.”

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“Island at the Center of the World” by Russell Shorto (p 9-10)

All that said, what originally captivated me about the Dutch documents — that they offered a way to reimagine New York City as a wilderness—stayed alive throughout my research. More than anything, then, this book invites you to do the impossible: to strip from your mental image of Manhattan Island all associations of power, concrete, and glass; to put time into full reverse, unfill the massive landfills, and undo the extensive leveling programs that flattened the hills and filled the gullies. To witness the return of waterfalls, to watch freshwater ponds form in place of asphalt intersections; to let buildings vanish and watch stands of pin oak, sweetgum, basswood, and hawthorne take their place. To imagine the return of salt marshes, mudflats, grasslands, of leopard frogs, grebes, cormorants, and bitterns; to discover newly pure estuaries encrusting themselves with scallops, lamp mussels, oysters, quahogs, and clams. To see maple-ringed meadows become numbered with deer and the higher elevations ruled by wolves. 

And then to stop the time machine, let it hover a moment on the south-most tip of an island poised between the Atlantic Ocean and the civilization of Europe on one side and a virgin continent on the other; to let that moment swell, hearing the screech of gulls and the slap of waves and imagining these same sounds, waves and birds, waves and birds, with regular interruptions by wracking storms, unchanged for dozens of centuries.

And then let time start forward once again as something comes into view on the horizon. Sails.

Credit: Russell Shorto

5 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT July 15th 2026”

  1. riotrywriter's avatar riotrywriter

    when time slows

    the noise quiets

    the distance narrows

    clarity

    presence

    witness the details and contours

    the strings now visible

    the puppeteers of our

    ticks and tocks 

    the digital clock

    of capital

    with their talons

    on the levers

    omnipresent but sinister 

    quantifying our work

    while severing 

    our humanity

    time transformed 

    into a commodity

    evident in the pause

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • michele348's avatar michele348

      Causes me to pause and ponder the value of each of our single moments before they somehow are stolen from us, never to be returned. A very moving piece!

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  2. Pam Poe's avatar Pam Poe

    What Happens When Time Slows Down?

    Maybe time can slow down for good reasons or terrible ones. I’ve become aware in the past few years of how time can slow down when a shock arrives. Often these days, it seems to be news of the passing of a friend, family member or colleague. But other kinds of traumatic news can also bring about this slowing of time to a crawl — or a sudden pause.

    In our current era, we learn of the passing of a loved one or friend via electronic media. It might be a post on a social media platform, where one suddenly encounters a familiar face next to an obituary. It can also be a text or email on our phones or laptops. No one in this era is likely to arrive on your doorstep with the such news, the heavy footsteps or the telegram of old.

    Perhaps this is for the best. I cannot imagine the particular sound of those footsteps in military gear that once might have announced the passing of a loved one in a war zone, or a tragic accident announced by the impersonal arrival of the police. So if we must endure this kind of slowing of time from tragedy, better that it arrives in the way we can most easily absorb it, whatever way forward that might be.

    Liked by 1 person

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    • michele348's avatar michele348

      Pam…maybe it can be good thing that we have these high tech methods to giving or receiving bad news. It gives us time to pause, to close our eyes and ears before we continue on. And maybe that bit of extra time gives our hearts time to take a breath before we proceed. In any form, bad news generally stops us in our tracks.

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  3. michele348's avatar michele348

    What happens when time slows down~~~

    I stop my day of mundane chores, settle into my lawn chair, close my eyes, and imagine a perfect world.

    I remember my community as the way it once looked… rolling farmlands, bales of hay stacked in orderly rows, cows munching on meadow grass.

    White-tailed deer and red fox prowling the countryside as day meets dusk. A bald eagle flying overhead and a wood thrush singing its luscious melody bring joy to my heart.

    But then, I snap out of that dreamworld and stare at the present reality…a rural community that has turned into a roadmap of warehouses and data centers.

    Tractor-trailers racing down country roads meant only for family cars and an occasional farm tractor moving from one plot of land to another.

    The constant drone of generators operating 24-7, cooling down enormous buildings housing computers that feed the insatiable appetite of AI.

    And my mind spins, and my heart aches.

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