The first law of ecology is that title above, at least as written in Barry Commoner's 1971  The Closing Circle:  Nature, Man and Technology .   A  further searc h indicated that the adage is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, who died in 1519.  But there is very little to support this contention. From German  philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1769: In nature everything is connected, everything is interwoven, everything changes with everything, everything merges from one into another . Close, but what about U.S. jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who wrote: If the world is a subject for rational thought it is all of one piece; the same laws are found everywhere, and   everything is connected with everything else;   and if this is so, there is nothing mean, and nothing in which may not be seen the universal law. And there is an environmental inspiration from U.S. naturalist John Muir in 1869: When we try to pick out anything by itself, we fi...

Dear President Joe Biden: First of all, I do want to congratulate you for saving Democracy and restoring faith in the presidency.   You have been honest and mostly effective.   The $1.9 trillion stimulus package will be wonderful for the needy and a boost for our economy. Your rejoining the Paris Agreement was right, and the path you have chosen to restore the environment is sensible.   You are careful about foreign policy, but that is not a serious issue today, so your caution is understandable.  You can do only so much at once. On the COVID-19 Pandemic, you understand why we still need to wear masks and the pace of augmenting the availability of vaccines is sound. However, your policies on what we should do now is many times confused.  Seems that there is too much of an abundance of caution, and adjustments dribble out too slowly.  Sometimes you should consider decisiveness.  The American people can be a lot more supportive than you th...