Not many folks would consider Barbara Kingsolver a Marylander, but since she was born in Annapolis, I'll claim her as one of us. Kingsolver, who grew up in Kentucky and now lives in Virginia, turns 54 today. (Thanks to Garrison Keillor's wonderful The Writer's Almanac for the tip.)

Her writing includes best-sellers such as The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. But her wise words come in many forms. Around this time last year, she gave Duke's commencement address (here is a transcript and video) and her words were sobering: We have created a mess of the earth and our society, and it will be up to the younger generation to turn things around. Excerpts:

"And so we find ourselves in the chapter of history I would entitle: Isolation and Efficiency, and How They Came Around to Bite Us in the Backside. ... We’re a world at war, ravaged by disagreements, a bizarrely globalized people in which the extravagant excesses of one culture wash up as famine or flood on the shores of another. Even the architecture of our planet is collapsing under the weight of our efficient productivity. ... That will be central question of your adult life: to escape the wild rumpus of carbon-fuel dependency, in the nick of time. ...

"As you leave here, remember what you loved most in this place. ... I mean the way you lived, in close and continuous contact. This is an ancient human social construct that once was common in this land. ... Community is our native state. You play hardest for a hometown crowd. You become your best self. You know joy. ... This could be your key to a new order: you don’t need so much stuff to fill your life, when you have people in it."