I’ve just heard that John O’Donohue, the great Irish poet/philosopher that I have quoted here so often from his fabulous book on Beauty, The Invisible Embrace, died unexpectedly on January 3rd.
His friend David Whyte has written a beautiful memorial, including a poem he wrote for John.
My sorrow at this loss is beyond words.
Saturday I went on an adventure with my friend Joan Underwood, visiting native plant nurseries and hunting for buckeye seedpods on the side of the road. We were up in Tilden Park when we were distracted by a "Pottery Sale" sign…
Joan is a potter and we are both lovers of the craft, so we gaily (and only slightly guiltily) let ourselves be temporarily swayed from our tasks to follow the sign.
I’m so glad we did. We soon found ourselves admiring the ceramic art of James Newton, which was displayed attractively throughout his house. There was a great range of dinnerware and sculptural work being shown at very reasonable prices, including pit firings, raku, and this decorative technique using maple leaves. Tim – who is also a masseur and reiki practitioner – and Joan were soon deep in pot-tech conversation, so I continued to explore until I found the charming little studio where all this beauty was created, tucked away down a flight of stairs.
I fell in love with the studio immediately, imagining myself sitting at the wheel, peacefully throwing pots and looking out on the lovely koi pond and garden right outside. It looked like one could open the glass doors in summer and be right outside for some plein air potting.
After our little detour, Joan took me to Annie’s Annuals (now I understand why it’s famous around these parts), where I was able to find the perfects plants for the little garden that leads off my own downstairs office.
They have wonderful exhibition gardens and fully-grown examples of most species so you can really see what you’re getting, and the people who work there are very knowledgeable and friendly. If you’ve never been there and live anywhere in the bay area, I highly recommend visiting this incredible resource for plants – not only natives, and only some of them annuals, knowledge, and creative inspiration.
Our day’s adventure was a little longer than we’d anticipated, but just the psychic freedom of not having to answer to anyone else for time spent was worth it in itself. And the pleasure of finding new resources and kindred spirits was, as the MasterCard commercials say, "priceless".
So, the moral of this story is to follow whatever signs cross your path if they make your heart beat faster w
ith joy and anticipation. You just may end up with a butter-yellow bowl on your dinner table and an anagalis monelli in your garden…
After the soul-grounding performance of all-women percussion and voice ensemble Ojala, the 2nd day of Bioneers again starts with a pre-plenary welcome from Nina Simons and Kenny Ausabel.
This time the roles are reversed and Nina is the one addressing systemic change, publicly acknowledging each Beaming BIoneers satellite location, and Kenny Ausabel speaking emotionally and personally about Bioneer family member John Mohawk who died since the last gathering.
Paul Anastas
“Father of green chemistry” Paul Anastas gave an intelligent & cogent presentation about the central role that chemistry plays in absolutely everything. He argued that the power of chemistry gives both the ability to introduce new substances and responsibility for the consequences of those substances.
What was amazing to me was how simple a shift in perspective it would take to switch our current approach and move to a world powered by green chemistry. Why haven’t we been doing this all along? Anastas’ facts expose the myth that we can’t have all the advantages of our modern culture unless we poison ourselves. Instead, he explains, green chemistry can provide all the benefits we enjoy today PLUS deliver them sustainably and reliably, without harming our bodies or the environment. What are we waiting for?
Majora Carter
Sustainable South Bronx Executive Director Marjora Carter, who has worked so hard to beautify her own economically poor neighborhood, is herself a stunningly beautiful presence on the stage. Recalling Van Jones’ passion, her talk was an emotionally powerful description of the plight of “regional sacrifice zones” like the one in the South Bronx where she grew up. A location where prisons and broken prisons and garbage are two of America’s fastest growing industries because they are (seen as being) more profitable than investment in the community.
Carter says “Environmental justice is civil rights in the 21st Century” and advocates ‘Green for All’, insisting “You shouldn’t have to have a ton of green in order to be green – environmentalism is not just a niche thing for the super-wealthy.” She went on to tie the issue of poverty to the core of the green agenda with the development of “green collar” jobs; “Environmentalism should move our country out of poverty – we need to learn how to profit from equality.”
The creativity that went into clearing an illegal garbage dump and making it into a lovely waterfront park carries on in other Sustainable South Bronx projects to re-connect the community to the earth. Residential and commercial Green Roofs, along with an proposed Greenway that will provide healthy access to open space, are changing the landscape of their city.
Evon Peter
Something else amazing happened next. Twenty-eight young indigenous leaders came out onto the stage and silently formed a circle, blessing the space and showing gratitude with offerings of cornmeal and prayer bags. Then they sat, and after a hauntingly beautiful Hoopla song by two young native women, each one introduced themselves in their own tongue, saying their names and the land from which they had come.
Kriston Rothballer, former Bioneer program director and a young woman of Norwegian /German descent was there to introduce Evon Peter, National Director of Native Movement. She spoke last, speaking her gratitude at being included in this circle and introducing herself with both pride in her ancestry and heart-felt shame and remorse for what those ancestors had done to the ancestors of the native peoples sharing the stage.
Evon, who is himself half native Alaskan and half Jewish, began by welcoming us on behalf of his brothers and sisters, as a guest in their lands. He warned that he was not here to speak words that would please us, and honored each of those on the stage acknowledging the difficulty with which they stand before us. He acknowledged the people who had been brought here against their will and enslaved, and welcomed them as well. He acknowledged the lesbian, the gay and transgendered, saying they are doing the important work of being who they really are.
He said that without sprit we will not find the answer, that it’s of major importance for us to learn how to stop disrespecting the indigenous peoples, to learn what it is that needs to be learned from them, and let go of our ignorance. Just because we are wealthy, he warned, or intelligent, or have a big name does not mean we know more than others, or understand what needs to be understood now.
His closing remarks were “If you’re not ready to respect us in our home it’s time for you to go back to where you came from,” assuring us that he speaks those words with love in his heart, knowing we ARE ready.
Eve Enzler
After a break Nina introduced the influential and incredibly successfully author of the Vagina Monologues and VDay founder, Eve Ensler. Eve talked about the contradictions at the core of her work and her attempts to live in the middle of them with grace and balance, launching a movement that is at the same time fluid and concrete and has the qualities that can both spread easily and retain the integrity.
Eve gave a rousing speech about the gains we have achieved in stopping violence against women, and the horrors of how far we have to go, of how important women are to the very heart of life itself. One of my favorite lines was about how we had not yet elected or become the leaders who would make this or that change. The only point of having power is to give it away or inspire it in others, she says, encouraging us all to “leave the Father’s house”, the patriarchal model that we have all grown up within with an invigorating reading of her power-poem “I’m LEAVING my Father’s House!”
Edward Tick:
Psychologist and Executive Director of Mentor the Soul, Edward Tick believes the wounds of war are collective cultural wounds, and his work as a healer of the damage caused by violence and war is to help us find the spiritual courage to restore those wounds and end the violence together.
Tick assures us that post traumatic stress disorder, which is so much in the news right now, is not an individual mental disorder; it is a collective trauma from the brutalization of the world. He argues that the psychological trauma of war is worse than any of its other admittedly terrible effects. “It is impossible to perpetrate war in this day and life without becoming psychopathic,” he insists.
Our world is populated by the ghosts of war, Dr. Tick says, and they are possessing us all. PTSD, which can be described as Post Traumatic Soul Disorder, is a soul wound, a cry of the soul trapped in the underworld. It makes the whole world look like a war zone to the sufferer, and the soul shrinks in the face of it.
In the civil war PTSD was called “soldier’s heart” – we cannot expect to be pain-free as long as we are killing each other. But PTSD is also Post Terror Social Disorder – it is not normal, Tick continued, for us to “go shopping” when the world is at war. Further, PSTD is also an identity disorder. To cure it, we have to find the ‘who we are’ that includes the wound, and bring it back to our tribe, he says, since the cure is to be found in spirituality and community.
Traditionally, warriors are peace-makers and they become warriors through an initiatory process that takes them down to hell and then brings them through it, transforming them into beings who understand the world and what it takes to live within it. PSTD is an incomplete initiation, Tick explains, where the warriors are stuck in hell, and he insists we need to go down and meet them there – where he admits our hearts will also be broken – but we can come back from hell together. PTSD sounds a citizen call to action, to bring the warriors back into the tribal circle.
Before lunch I went back to the Web2.0 room and took a tour of Wiser Earth, where I was surprised to find that beyond the fabulous directory that founder Paul Hawken had spoken about in his Bioneers plenary session last year, it has evolved into a social networking site. I must admit I was a little dismayed to see yet another one, when to my mind the work they are doing in connecting the network is so much more unique and compelling than jumping into an already crowded arena. I’d prefer to see them extend the same directory service to the social networking sites that are already out there.
After lunch I attended my choices of the two blocks of afternoon sessions.
Mainstreaming Hope through Popular Media
This panel was chaired by KPFA’s Free Forum host Terence McNally, who opened the table for his colleagues.
Educator and Filmmaker Jeremy Kagan showed a variety of clips from his work in both documentary and mainstream media and addressed the question that critical Media Studies students always ask – “How does media effect the public?” Citing three segments of the ‘public’ – the ‘enemy’, the ‘undecided’ and the ‘choir’ – Kagan says we imagine we should be focusing on the undecided, but studies show that putting our attention on galvanizing the choir can be a far more powerful strategy.
He brought up a number of additional points that effect this question, including four phases of awareness:
We know that those who control the media have an advantage in terms of influence, he continued, but what happens once we have control? The adrenaline rush of fear or excitement in contemporary media holds attention, but it does not necessary evoke action. He mentioned soap operas plots in Mexico and India that have taken on social issues as being potential vehicles for social change.
Kagan addressed the concept of the ‘mirrored nuant’ or identification with the hero or heroine, and how important this makes the question of how you leave the audience at the end of the film. Is it with a conventional “happy ending” or is a sense of “this issue is not solved, and now it’s your responsibility” more effective?
In conclusion, he mentioned redundancy – the value and drawbacks of hearing about issues over and over – and brought up the very important phenomenon of secondary dialogue, where a film is effective not because someone saw the movie and was directly effected by it themselves, but because of the conversation it engendered in the public afterwards.
Tree Media’s Leila Connors, who co-produced & co-wrote The Eleventh Hour, described life in the middle of a film release. She talked about the intention behind their film, which was to create change and action on the ground, and the challenge they’ve had in getting it out there so it can start fulfilling its intention.
After the film was finished and had gone through a number of initial showings, they sold The 11th Hour to Warner Independent Pictures where it will be released around the world between now and July 2008. Lila talked about the frustration of sitting on top of a film that everyone wants to see but no one knows how, and the grassroots campaign they are launching in response.
Leila’s sister and Tree Media colleague Nadia Connors spoke about the stages they’ve gone through in getting people behind this film project. She found that the journey to get there was difficult for many people, and yet for others it changed their world. Since their intention with the film was to create a cultural shift in consciousness – through hope and love rather than fear and hatred – having people “get it” was of utmost importance to them.
But cultural change can take time, Nadia reminds us, and the world of film is more often a quick flick-through, part of the culture of greed and speed that robs us of time to really sit with an idea and allow the story to filter through.
TV Producer, screenwriter and storytelling guru Paul Lussier wants to see climate change narratives embedded in media stories, but says this has proved to be remarkably complicated. We know that sex, power and violence sells, and MAYBE eco sells… but how well does it sell? Is eco selling the same as eco solving?
(He showed an amusing little video to illustrate his point, which I have tried to find for you on YouTube, to no avail. Sorry!)
The secret to successful media, Lussier confides, is speaking to the ‘id’ – which so far we have we all assumed is stimulated by sex, money, and power. But Lussier says the truth is more that the id is moved by what really matters to us – the challenges and fears and visions that move us all. To back up this insight, he has committed his company’s programming to airing positive stories that make a difference.
To start off the Q&A, Terence McNally asks the rest of the panel about the traditional method of using sex, violence and tension as the “sell” – “Where is the ‘hook’ for the new narrative?” he challenges.
Nadia points out that there are already successful narratives that don’t depend on the old model to attract our attention – citing Into the Wild as a recent example- and Lila followed with the hope we will evolve beyond the current paradigm to where we can just simply watch something because it is beautiful. As we continue to spiritually evolve our stories will change to reflect our new level of consciousness, she says; we have to keep pushing against the idea that tension is the only thing to galvanize our attention.
Jeremy says he disagrees with the entire premise – Buddha’s story has tension and drama, he argues, the question is whether we can raise consciousness using the same dramatic techniques.
Opening up the conversation, the audience also had some informative contributions to make, including the announcement of an Environmental Film Festival in Nevada City, CA.
One audience member pointed to The End of Suburbia – a grassroots documentary film-making success:
The follow up Escape from Suburbia was less successful, in part because solutions are harder to sell than problems, given the drama & challenge that these problems hold.
Lila and Nadia responded by admitting that’s one reason why they put both together in one film, and Paul added that the real key is in making it personal – get the identification going to create a relationship, he says, and the audience engagement will carry you through.
My last session of the day was a panel called Women Re-Imaging the World.
The panel was presented as a series of questions from the chairwoman Akaya Windwood of the Rockwood Leadership Program, to the Panel, consisting of author Alice Walker, Buddhist activist Joanna Macy, Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers, and Jungian psychiatrist Jean Shinoda Bolen, and Sarah Crowell, Executive Director of Destiny Arts.
Why women?
(Joanna) Because the era of the patriarchy is ending.
(Alice) It’s time we showed what we can do.
(Sarah) We’re out of balance, partly because the patriarchal system has held the power, and it’s time to bring us back into balance.
(Nina) We are all wounded by the loss of the feminine, so one of the greatest gifts we can bring to the world is its restoration … and as women we have a certain leg-up on what they looks and feels like.
Referencing Mary Oliver’s famous poem about letting the soft warm animal of our bodies love what they love – What is the rightful relationship between women and our animal bodies?
(Joanna) A terrible thing has happened in our culture – the cut across our base chakra that allows us to use our brains to learn how to shatter flesh. We’ve lost our erotic connection to life, and need to regain it – fast – to relieve ourselves of the terrible loneliness that occurs when we cut ourselves off from our own bodies and the rest of life. Praise be to our bodies that will make us sane again.
(Alice) I think Mary Oliver is right to say we should let our bodies love what they love, because when we do that we break every possible law, and it’s very energizing!
(Sarah) The young women I teach dance to are exposed to a lot of sexuality through the media, some of which I think is good because it means sex isn’t hidden. I get to tell them, “Sex is good” AND it’s yours! When you shake that booty, shake it for you. Own your body; don’t give the power away.
(Nina) We all live within a culture that makes us think our minds are so smart… part of re-imagining the world is knowing that we have everything that we need – and part of that is in our bodies and in our hearts.
(Alice) For me lately the journey has been getting closer to the other animals. I’ve been feeling really married to my dog and my cat, and I’ve learned from them what it is to really be in my body and feel the sun on my face, feeling myself as just another of the animals on the planet.
What’s your wisdom about setting limits and boundaries within a framework of inclusion that creates a space for other?
(Joanna) It’s an important question – our world is threatened with extinction because we don’t have clear limits. Perhaps women are better at this – I’m proud to see how women have set limits to how we treat the earth.
(Alice) I think it’s good to set limits and am astounded at how hard it is to do that sometimes, to say “no, not now”. We have to really work to build the strength in ourselves to hold that boundary. We’re in for a rough ride and will have to make some tough decisions about what we’re about and who we want to be with.
(Jean) Women’s natural form is to gather in circle and discuss what needs to be done, together; to have sisters at your back. The more we do it the easier it is for others to do it, too.
(Sarah) The no and the yes are each as fierce as the other. She has us stand up for a quick yes / no boundary setting exercise that gets us moving our bodies and exercising our vocal chords a bit …
(Nina) This question of boundaries has me going… I’m much more comfortable with a sense of boundary-less-ness but learning to cultivate boundaries within what I’m categorizing as a healthy masculinity. Finding the balance between how much we need to be connecting with each other through empathic connection, and what it means to cultivate limits in ourselves, and feel the ‘anger in our feet’, the “no”, or what needs to take a stand inside.
What lies under your despair, and what wisdom can you offer us from that place?
(Joanna) By honoring our despair and not trying to personalize or pathologize it, it can be a gateway to our full vitality and connection with all humanity. Under our despair is our heart, our sorrow over losses that are unrecoverable. On the other side of our pain for the world is a love so great you would never guess its vastness, but to get there you have to stop being afraid of hurting because they come from the same source and are like two sides of the same coin.
(Nina) Under my despair is yearning… it’s frightening to really let myself feel how big the love is. Because of my fears of investing in that, it’s scary to really show how much I care and admit how much I want it, but it’s also what keeps me doing what I’m doing.
(Joanna) It is dangerous – for the status quo, for business as usual.
(Alice) What’s on the other side of my despair is ecstasy – to be here in the now. Not in the future, or the past, but right now. It is such a gift. The despair is that thick covering of ice. When I allow myself to experience eternity – which is in the moment – when I rest enough to give that back to myself, then I know its all ok. Mother has all the time there is and she’ll melt this ice ball many times. She’s left me here to be a witness to her beauty and her grace, and that’s the ecstasy I feel.
(Jean) The reason for my optimism is that there has never been a generation like this – all the men and women effected by the women’s movement who are still young enough to make a difference. We have a sort of synchronistic grace on our sides. This is a seminal time, a great time to be alive.
What are the practical things you would suggest to help us in re-imagining the world?
(Sarah) Showing up every day as open as you can – open and raw – I experience what I call ‘the trembling’ as often as I can. That and “being real” with my kids.
(Jean) Doing my assignment – which is to listen to the opportunities that come my way and answering these three questions in response to their invitation… Is it meaningful to me? Will it be fun? Is it motivated by love? So my answer is ‘gather the women; save the world’. Simple, really.
(Alice) Sometimes it’s hard to know where you will serve next. For example, all those speeches to try and stop the war … I still do that but at some point I realized we have to make a shift in our children’s consciousness about war. M any of them think it’s a game, so I personally felt I had to move from making speeches to writing a children’s book about war.
So, my answer is ‘hard work’; at this point it’s all about service and finding the joy of that.
(Nina) I pay exquisite attention internally to see what makes my flame glow brighter. I’ve learned there is ecstasy in service to that. There is immense power in connecting our inner work (what you most love) to what is most needed in the world. Now is the time.
(Joanna) I would only add – take a moment to build the larger context into your world view. I’ve just returned form 30 days in the wilderness with 60 people where we did take that time. Our sense of time is fragmented and driven and hurried, so we were slowing down to fourth time, as they say in Buddhism, to a time beyond our lifetime. That was extremely liberating, not to be attached to the results of your action, to just act because it is what you must do, what is right to do. And … it makes us act our age. To experience the grace and beauty of our true age.
Then we moved to questions from the Audience:
How do you listen to your inner self in order to make the right decisions?
(Alice) I pay a lot of attention to my dreams and protect my dreamspace from conversation, TV, etc. before bed that would disturb us. This ability to dream was given to us in ancient times, as a guide for our lives; it is our heritage.
What of the pull to give birth to new life?
(Joanna) Don’t let anyone else make up your mind but remember that in this time of the great turning we need children that are loved. You can have your own or you can adopt; we need all the beings who want to enter this world and enjoy the fruits of your activism.
What do we do to support a re-emerging of the feminine?
(Alice) Be feminine, and stop calling yourselves “guys”
(Nina) Head into my fear, and love myself.
How do we raise our daughters while being activists and taking care of ourselves as well?
(Jean) You can’t do everything at once. There is always a priority – what you know in your bones is your sacred work, whatever it is. You can’t listen to the ‘shoulds’ from outside; it comes down to individual choice, but who makes the choice is what makes all the difference.
Someone shared that they feel they need to tell everyone about what’s happening in the world…
(Joanna) It’s not about telling anyone anything, but doing what you can to bring forward their listening to their own voices… we all know what is happening.
What is the best thing we can give our children?
(Alice) Once we have it, the truth.
What about all the wisdom coming out of young women?
(Nina) Reciprocal mentorship, where we who are older can reflect the beauty and wisdom of the younger women back to them.
My daughter loses hope sometimes. How can I help her?
(Joanna) Tell her not to be afraid of losing her hope. Tell her she can’t feel what’s on the other side without that.
(Alice) Remind her of the last time she lost her socks – losing hope is not the end.
Akaya ends the session with a final question for everyone on the panel to respond to-
What about gratitude?
(Jean) There were bright yellow aspens where I just was in Wyoming, and they are like pillars of light, of life. Hold on to what matters and when it becomes form, let it go. Every time you see something beautiful and think “ah” – that’s gratitude!
(Nina) Experiencing women with extraordinary capacity, courage and compassion that can love themselves back into health has been the most joyful thing I know.
(Sarah) This moment. I’m looking at the faces of people here who are great! Gratitude is pouring out like a waterfall in me for this very moment. Thank you!
(Alice) I actually do live in that place of amazement. We are so lucky – every day I wake up, amazed to wake up! It all seems so incredibly magical, and we are so incredibly lucky. Just to exist – to see this, to smell it, and wonder at it. How did this happen!?
(Joanna) I too am feeling the depth of this moment. Every question you’ve asked, everything that has come up here has had to do with your love for this earth. I don’t know when it’s ever happened before, but it’s happening now.
Thirteen Grandmothers from indigenous communities in the Americas,
Nepal, Tibet, Africa, and Japan came on stage to open the Bioneers
conference this morning, each one sharing a blessing in her own language – for the earth,
its creatures and all of humanity, including the 13,000 individuals
gathered here in San Rafael or viewing the program by satellite feed.
In her opening talk, Nina Simons expressed the commitment she has personally made to address her own embedded racism and encouraged us all to stay awake throughout this gathering and challenge our assumptions, reminding us that in order to be the “carriers of a new story that will help seed the restoration of a loving world”, we will all need to make some changes.
Kenny Ausebel’s introduction to the plenary sessions focused on hope and systemic solutions that prove evolution favors the resilient, those who are able to adapt and change.
Jay Harman
Australian Jay Harman is the impressive CEO of bay area alternative energy firm Pax Scientific, which looks to Nature for energy solutions. Harman used an extraordinarily beautiful video to illustrate how the spiral is nature’s key to smarter energy design while three of is scientists showcased models of this spiral applied in fans, boats, and items designed for the water treatment and industrial mixing industries.
Judy Baca
Award-winning Mestizo muralist and public artist Judy Baca, whose work chronicles the political landscaping of California, was next. “It all started with a river”, she said, reminiscing about the ‘hardening of the arteries’, or concretization of the Los Angeles river that happened during her childhood.
This act of violence against the community eventually resulted in a half mile of artistry – a mural illustrating the history of the community it had disrupted. The project, led by Baca, was created collaboratively over a period of several years by young people within the effected communities. This mural, which lines both sides of the concrete river, is now recognized and celebrated as a site of public memory. That history is not yet finished, with youth groups now planning a “green bridge” across the river made of channel waste material and lit by solar panels.
Destiny Arts – the fabulous youth art troupe from Oakland who premiered at Bioneers last year – were back for a brief performance, and their beautifully choreographed dance moves were even more impressive this year.
Judy Wicks
The next plenary session featured Judy Wicks, social food activist and owner of the famous White Dog Café in Philadelphia, who talked about how ‘beautiful’ business can be. “Business is about relationships” she said, “my business is the way I express my love for the world”.
Spectacularly successful, Wicks made a conscious decision to remain small and expand in relationship and community activism rather than pursue ever-greater economic gains, and her innovative approach extends from her restaurant’s almost unique labor practices and benefit packages to cruelty-free organic food sources, sustainable waste management, extensive local, national and international activism and community celebrations.
What an incredible inspiration to see what a woman can do with a restaurant and the heart and mind to make it much, much more than that.
John Abrams
Green architect and founder of the employee-owned residential design and building firm South Mountain Company, John Abrams was next with another story of hope and transformation. He and a few friends started by building homes in Vermont for $500 each before eventually returning to his home town in Martha’s Vineyard where he continued building homes for not much more – ‘subsidizing homes for the rich’, as one of his friends described it.
He wasn’t making much money, but that apparent failure was part of Abrams’ initial impetus to invest in the idea of an employee-owned workplace.
That, and the inherent injustice and unsustainability of our current economic model fueled Abrams’ new economic vision and eventually led him to distribute the money and power in his business to all his employees. This model not only galvanized Abrams’ business into a spectacular success story, but inspired a positive business model which can transform the way we work.
Van Jones
Fabulous as the morning line up had been up to that point, social justice luminary Van Jones, co-founder and Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center, was the uncontested star of the day. Charismatic, generous and entertaining, Jones talked about how environmentalism has been the ‘nice (“white”) face’ that can open the door for long-needed social change, change that the harsher black face of social injustice has been unable to shift.
As the environmental movement moves from the margins to the center of mainstream culture, Van Jones challenges us with a question about who we are going to take with us, and who is going to be left behind.
Using his increasingly famous Fourth Quadrant slideshow (“the presentation Al Gore would do if he were black”), he walked us through an overview of the environmental movement up to now and show us a possible future. In a line from the Grey phase of problems on the left of the page to the Green of solutions on the right, we cross the unseen line of race, class, and gender. This line is often invisible, but when we include it, it creates a grid of four quadrants.
In the top left, in the quadrant of Rich and Grey, we have the problems of species loss, which is of course true, while in the lower left we have problems of human loss and degradation, no less true.
In the upper right quadrant, of Rich and Green, we have wonderful solutions – Priuses, solar panels, and Whole Foods (Whole Paycheck for anyone outside of Marin, Jones quips :-). Ultimately this area consists of business opportunities for rich people and consumer choices for the affluent. This is a good thing, too, Jones says. We WANT people to be investing in this area, and making better choices, but what about those who can’t afford a Hybrid, who are struggling to find rent – is there a place for them in the Environmental movement? In the lower right quadrant is where we begin to deliver the health and work benefits of the Environmental movement with Green-Collar jobs like the People’s Grocery, in Oakland, or the Solar Richmond project.
The moral challenge of the Environmental movement, Van Jones contends, is to bring the green economy to those who most need the advantages it can bring, the youth of color that would otherwise be jail fodder. “You save money, that young person’s life and the soul of this country”, he declares passionately; “in the green economy we don’t have any throw-away resources, throw-away people or throw-away neighborhoods.”
After lunch I attended my first afternoon session, HotFrog Presents: Writing the Revolution.
The session was led by Laurie Lane-Zucker, co-founder of Orion magazine, former publisher and editor of Mother Jones Mark Dowie, and authors Eddie Yuen and Rebecca Solnit.
Lane-Zucker began by recounting a meeting with Paul Hawken after last year’s Bioneers where he proposed starting an online magazine that would complement Hawken’s work in Blessed Unrest.
Trying to think of a name for the magazine, for a metaphor that would do justice to the power and scope of Paul’s idea, Laurie Lane-Zucker went on a vision quest into ‘dreamtime’ with some friends. In dreamtime, they went down to the water and took off their clothes, because “you have to be naked for this work”, he explains, and they dived way, way down deep to the place where the earth’s plates are separated and they crawled inside… found themselves a table, lit some cigars and started to think. Gaia … ? (not urgent enough) … The Lemming … ? (urgent enough, but a little suicidal). And then someone surfaced the idea of the frog who sits in the water, even as it begins to boil around him … That was it! Hot Frog!
They needed an image to illustrate the metaphor, because that’s just how it is, so Laurie called an old friend, who happened to be a branding genius, and tasked him to come up with an image that was as beautiful and powerful as the concept they’d revealed. They were looking for an image of a frog that is active, spiritual, totemic; a frog that represents metamorphosis.
With the context set, Lane-Zucker shared his vision for HotFrog as “storying the movement” – giving the power to tell the story to the people, yes, but without forgetting the Writer, who he says was born to tell a particular kind of story. With that he introduced the first of the writers presenting in the session, Rebecca Solnit.
Solnit spoke about the original meaning of revolution as ‘coming around’, cycling’, rather than the ‘great change’ that it has come to mean in our time, and of her view of a ‘revolution‘ that speaks a language of creativity rather than conflict, to tell the stories that are needed now to combat despair & discouragement.
Eddie Yuen picked up her narrative by distinguishing between “lumpers” and “splitters”. The movement of movements, for example, where diversity is a strength, is a “lumper’. But there are times when it is helpful to clarify who is NOT in the movement of movements, in the case of green-washing, for example. He hastened to add that social movements are not reduce-able to the organizations which at times claim to represent them. Movements do not have organizations, he continued, they have the ability to disrupt organizations, and power.
As a writer and wordsmith, Mark Dowie expressed concern with the categorization of Hawken’s database on Wiser Earth as a “movement”. In Dowie’s eyes these groups are making big changes, but they are not yet a movement, rather the grassroots beginnings of movements. He admits that to connect and network them is crucial work, but says we are kidding ourselves if we think that a database in itself is a movement. What creates a movement is a mission, he goes on to say, and there are a lot of different missions represented in those groups. Later, in answer to the question of what would make it a movement, he says “a common enemy”, or the recognition that they were all against the same thing.
I couldn’t keep my hand down at this point, because to my mind we are present at the birth of a new and different kind of movement, a movement of movements, whose very essence is an acceptance of diversity and cannot possibly be defined under one unified “mission” in the old sense. I also believe that groups can unify around a positive goal with diverse manifestations, rather than a common enemy, which again seems like an old model. I love Orion, so I will withhold judgment until I have seen hotfrog, but the conversation with Dowie, who will be the managing editor, did not give me confidence that he understands the new emergent model very well.
In my second session of the afternoon, Sam Bower, founder of GreenMuseum.org (whose business cards are printed on leaves) chaired a panel called EcoArt Strategies: Towards a Culture of Sustainability.
Starting by sharing the genesis of the green museum as an online resource for art that would not have otherwise been accessible, Bower gave us a brief overview of some of the diversity of environmental art forms that have emerged from the 60s through today.
Before introducing the first artist on his panel, Sam explained that the work of the Green Museum revolves around a series of assumptions – that art is a tool; collaboration makes projects that are more effective and longer lasting than individual work; and sharing information about art can influence and lead to new works.
With that he gave the floor to Susan Leibovitz Steinman of WEAD (Women’s Environmental Artist’s Directory), who took us through a project she did in Sonoma County on wild apples.
Next up were Canadian artist Nancy Bleck and her native colleague Hereditary Chief Bill Williams of the Skwxwu7mesh Nation. Tomales’ place-specific work is in bringing the Long House of his culture – teachings with an elder trained to speak what needed to be said – out onto the land.
Nancy spoke about looking at the land through indigenous eyes and the protocols that must be honored in order to “be” with them in a respectful way.
Daniel McCormick’s “erosion control” sculptures provide a public art experience in unlikely places. He works in West Marin, using materials from local watersheds, contoured in ways that work with the streambeds they came from in order to benefit it in some way; trap and reduce silt build-up, for example.
Co-founder of the online journal LAND, Anne-Katrin Spiess gave an overview of her ways of working, which include getting lost and driving until she comes to places she describes as ‘nothing’, and described a few of her projects including The Thinking Box, a semi-transparent space where one sits in contemplation and basically does ‘nothing’ in glorious outdoor spaces, Rock Bed, Tree Bed: Homage to Julia Butterfly Hill, and her latest which was a well-chronicled cross-country bicycle trip.
The questions were a little disappointing to me, having to do with whether or not art is ‘useful’ like a tool that is made in response to issue or if it is art as individual expression. That also seemed to me to be an old dichotomy without much real relevance.
On my way to dinner I got a wonderfully useful tour of Google Earth with a couple of new ideas about how to apply it for my clients. Afterwards we were entertained by the Urban Apache and the B Boys. Here’s a little clip I managed to catch on my cell phone:
After Urban Apache, we were all graced by the sound of soulful poet Jahan Khalighi, who is one of my favorite performance artists. He is so deep and beautiful. This one was dedicated to his grandmother, who though he didn’t mention it, is the legendary choreographer and dancer Anna Halprin.
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