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The Red Road

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Mathew Polowitz

It’s always refreshing to meet people who have the tenacity to do what most only talk about. Back in February, I spent two weeks building a school in rural Cambodia with a group called The Red Road Foundation. They bring that quote to mind – you know, the one you hear all the time and probably disregard – about being the change you want to see happen. As far as I could tell, they’ve become that change. And for those few weeks, they allowed 20-something other volunteers to become it, too.

The concept: An ‘earthship’ school, built out of sustainable and recycled materials. Something of an educational sanctuary for one targeted community nearly an hour outside of Kampot. There, youth and adults alike will be taught a variety of subjects – in both Khmer and English – which extend beyond the classroom, onto the adjoining farm, and into the realm of personal and communal development. Read More

Thoughts on a Crashing Plane from a Plane That Is Hopefully Not Crashing

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Mathew Polowitz

It seems the more I fly, the more I fear the possibility of a death by plane crash. I see it ever more clearly. The booming groan of an engine failing mid-flight, a sudden jerk turned into weightlessness as our 80-ton death chamber plummets towards it’s fate below.

It is only a toy! A toy charged with holding the lives of too many, one that can at any point be plucked from it’s trajectory and sentenced to a fall through eternal nothingness down yonder.

And it is a game! We play at it ferociously, tinkering to find better ways, faster ways, ways that are sleeker and more clever than all of those dated, inferior ways of the past. Ways that reach the sky in their ingenuity and dance circles around those that never dared to dream big. But who is smarter now? Who more clever than the ones flailing gracelessly towards earth, returning to the place from which they leaped with so much irreverence? Read More