Elephants at the breaking point in Zimbabwe

Posted on January 20, 2012 by

Government silent as more elephants are slaughtered (Zimbabwe)

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I want to share this latest post  from the listserv of elephant-related articles gathered by Melissa Groo. It is heartbreaking to hear these stories and to feel the suffering these endangered and magnificent sensitive animals are experiencing for the sake of human greed, status, and conspicuous consumption.
Can we envision a different story playing out between human and elephant–a sudden shift towards reverence and respect for these majestic and complex beings, as they fight for their survival, not only as individuals but as a species? Can we see ourselves in the elephant and take the time to learn about them and from their ability to avoid conflict, come to consensus in groups and be cooperative with one another? Is there something we can learn from such an intelligent, emotional, and complex mammal with sensitivities and social structure as complex as our own?
Human elephant conflict is a true war over resources, similar to the fighting between tribes, countries, and people raising their voices against injustice and unfairness, cruelty and greed. Similar to the war over natural resources like oil, minerals and fresh water. War with the weapons we now have – drones, nuclear bombs, chemicals, infectious diseases – are now capable of damaging ecosystems, people and other species on a scale never seen before.
Can we imagine new educational priorities for the young in our own species, and especially those in cultures where consumption is most environmentally damaging? Can we imagine an entirely different priority from the compartmentalized subjects we have now which are losing some of their relevance in a world in which an unstable climate wreaks potential havoc? Can we teach from the heart, with the heart, and through the heart, a human footprint on the planet that is peaceful and cooperative, respectful, creative and noble?
Elephants were once known for their peaceful nature, but have become increasingly violent, as one would expect under the terrible stresses of poaching, habitat loss, hunger and grief.

January 19, 2012

Chiredzi(ZimEye)Zimbabwe’s elephants continue to be butchered and this week, another elephant was found bleeding to its death, just as the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry remained quiet.

A number of healthy elephants were this week killed in Zimbabwe’s Chiredzi Conservation area which is now gradually being turned into a makeshift farming area by invaders.

Another elephant (pictured) was found shot in the Chiredzi River Conservancy and the herd chased with ‘something like 10 shots being fired’ according to witnesses.

The total number elephants wounded as a result of the shooting to date is not known.

Large trees are still being chopped down to make way for crops that do not do well in the Lowveld.

A Conservationist in the area told ZimEye:

After seeing the 44 wild elephants at our little dam on Saturday  14.1.12 morning and noon we heard 4 shots from our homestead on the western side of the dam at 3.30.

At 5pm we heard a further 5 shots towards our boundary with Oscro. All shots were fired within the safe area for the wild herd. Nowhere near the resettled areas.

Monday morning at 7am we heard another 5 shots within half an hour. Monday afternoon one young elephant cow carcass was found, probably shot 4 or 5 days earlier on the eastern side of the Mungwezi River on Oscro. One tusk had been removed and the tail.

Tuesday lunch time another adult, lactating cow was found between our boundary and the Oscro ZRP station, tusks removed.

Tuesday late afternoon another elephant probably a young bull, was found lying on his brisket, tusks removed.

Other shots were reported on previous days, but too far for us to hear. How many more are lying rotting in the bush, how many more are running around with bullet holes, how many calves have lost their mothers?

“Large areas that have been cleared over the years are slowly become desertified and destroyed. Maize wilting where it has been planted in CRC, some patches have been completely burnt by the sun.
This is a tragedy on large scale that is taking place, and no one who has been put in positions to protect our wildlife and environment doing anything positive to do something to stop this destruction. The wildlife is being terrorized and traumatised,” a witness told ZimEye.

Efforts to get a comment from the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry were fruitless at the time of writing but earlier communication sent to the ministry in October last year still has not been replied to.

Article at the following link:
http://www.zimeye.org/?p=44466
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Up Close and Personal – the Naturestage Bookshelf

Posted on December 21, 2011 by

I don’t know about you, but I am a bit of a voyeur when it comes to peoples’ bookshelves.

One of my friends has truly the most extraordinary collection of books of anyone I know, and I confess, I’ve photographed her books (with her permission). I thought maybe you’d be interested in some of the books lining my shelves, covering topics from fundraising in the arts, to empathy and compassion, economics, essays by naturalists, poetic writings on nature and animals, etc.

What are some of your faves?

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Connecting Empathy to Action with Art as the Glue

Posted on December 1, 2011 by

illustration by Lief Parsons

Connecting the presidential pardon of a turkey on Thanksgiving to the need for a educational focus on empathy for other species, might seem a stretch. Then again, after reading much of David Livingtone Smith’s fascinating book, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, I’m not so sure.

It seems that, according to Livingstone Smith, humans in all cultures and throughout recorded history have prepared for war through dehumanizing their perceived enemy, often equating them with some type of animal or insect. As Smith points out in detail, recent examples of this abound in war reporting and in the language used by people involved in genocide. Inhumane treatment of prisoners of war seems closely tied with animal references – dogs, vermin, rats.  Jane Goodall has said that humans are the only animal capable of conscious cruelty, which makes this use of animal imagery to justify cruelty all the more ironic.

In a recent interview which I highly recommend reading, Goodall says “It simply doesn’t make sense that the most intellectually smart creature that has ever walked on planet Earth is destroying its only home, and destroying it so heedlessly. So how do we mend the damaged connection between brain and heart? Through the youth.”

Human activities are causing the sixth greatest extinction known on the planet. It seems as if there couldn’t be a more important moment in history to take action and stop such needless suffering and extermination of other species, whether willingly or unwittingly. Take, for example, the impending extinction of tuna due to overfishing and trawling in the oceans, the impending extinction of the Asian elephant in the wild, great apes and big cats on the decline, countless species that are less familiar to us but are dying from hunger, pollution and dwindling habitats. Although extinction is a part of the unfolding of life in its fluid and ever-shifting forms, it has never happened so quickly and pervasively due to human activities.

Goodall affirms the power of stories and of children’s hope and ability to change their parents but says that behavior change requires a multi-leveled approach. Most importantly, she emphasizes nurturing the hope that children naturally have about the world and giving them tools to implement their compassion. She also makes clear that she is not fighting for animal rights, per se, but for human responsibility. This is also my aim with Naturestage – to create connection and empathy that make audiences and students want to protect other species and ecosystems.

A recent column in The Stone, one of my favorite blogs on philosophy in the New York Times, discusses the link between the practice of pardoning a turkey on the eve of Thanksgiving and the “strange power vested in politicians to decide the earthly fates of death-row prisoners.” If we were more empathic and sensitized to the needs of other animals, might this not extend to how easily we could be manipulated into becoming dehumanizers of other humans?

David Brooks, regular op-ed contributor and author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, has also written a thought-provoking post on the new buzzword, empathy. In his October article, “Empathy versus action: Don’t just feel – lend a hand”, Brooks suggests that feeling empathy is not enough; that for empathy to be connected to positive social action, it must be connected to moral codes. As Brooks points out, peoples’ codes often conflict.

He writes “In the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards sometimes wept as they mowed down Jewish women and children, but they still did it. Subjects in the famous Milgram experiments felt anguish as they appeared to administer electric shocks to other research subjects, but they pressed on because some guy in a lab coat told them to.”

Guernica by Pablo Picasso, 1937 Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid

Examining one’s moral values and talking about social codes is a thorny path to pursue as an educator. Enter art, the great means of forming empathy and simultaneously questioning our individual moral codes. Some of the greatest art causes you to examine your own inner limits of where your feeling urges you to act and why you do or don’t follow through on that urge. Picasso’s Guernica depicts the horrors of war, but does it turn the viewers into peace activists? Do people understand it without knowing its context? The painting did indeed raise world attention to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Picasso scholar Becht-Jördens writes,

In his chef d’oevre, Picasso seems to be trying to define his role and his power as an artist in the face of political power and violence. But far from being a mere political painting, Guernica should be seen as Picasso’s comment on what art can actually contribute towards the self-assertion that liberates every human being and protects the individual against overwhelming forces such as political crime, war, and death.

I discovered through my current interest in incorporating animation for The Elephant Project films, that a fellow artist, animator extraordinaire Ed Hooks, has coincidentally read and written about the same article by Brooks. He has this to say, and I agree completely. The most crucial element of the following is that humans can imagine what others are feeling based on what they see others doing. This naturally extends to how other animals behave. He writes,

…The way that empathy is triggered in acting – on stage and in animation – is through action. Emotion by itself is not actable and has zero theatrical value. Acting is doing. It is nice that you can make a character have the illusion of emotion, but that is not enough. The formula you want to remember is this: Thinking tends to lead to conclusions, and emotion tends to lead to action.” The audience sees what your character is doing and then, through empathy, relates to the emotion that led to that action.

Empathy is an innate trait in humans. It is necessary because we are social creatures that organize in groups in order to survive. If a person is unable to empathize, he is a sociopath. There is a lot of research showing that there is a specific section of the brain that is involved with empathy. In sociopaths – serial killers and such – that section is inactive. One of the characteristics of autism is an inability to empathize, which is why autistic children most often do not want to look you in the eye. They are unable to interpret the emotion they see in you, so it is more comfortable not to see it at all.

There are smart people who assert that an ability to empathize can be developed and strengthened, like strengthening a muscle. I disagree. Your ability to empathize is what it is, and it has been with you since birth. The real issue is not how to increase the ability to empathize, but to acknowledge the values that are behind the emotions we express, and the actions we take as a result. As David Brooks observes in that September 30th column, the presence of empathy is no assurance that a person will act responsibly or morally. A human is the only creature that can know something is wrong, and still do it.

To read his full blog entry…

One of the implications of Ed Hooks’ discussion of the use of action to evoke empathy with animated characters is that in real non-animated life, our actions do in fact influence how we feel. This is verified by Nick Cooney in his book, Change of Heart. He has been touring around the country speaking to activists of all stripes about how to really cause behavioral change in others and how we often think we believe in something, because it is how we have been accustomed to acting.

One of his insights that fuels my thinking about how music, theater and film can use their emotional and storytelling power to cause compassionate action is this: “people often learn what their beliefs are by looking at their own actions. We typically think things work the other way around…in our advocacy work we usually operate under the assumption that we first have to change people’s beliefs, which will in turn cause them to change their behavior…Behavior creates attitude: in part because we learn more about the issue, but also because we decide how we feel about an issue by looking at the things we say and do.” p. 61, Change of Heart.

In my multi-media presentation, Saving the Elephants, Saving Ourselves: The Role of Art in Social Change, I show examples of the numerous artists who are using their art forms to raise awareness for the human connection to elephants, and to their struggle for survival. Art here is crucial, not only in raising awareness, but in building empathy through action. Here is a photo from  the Human Elephant Foundation, based in South Africa, of children making an elephant sculpture which is then exhibited with flower petals.

My wish for The Elephant Project film set and curriculum is that through working with the material using an art form, through actually making art – whether in music, dance, video, poetry or theater – students can truly integrate the heart with the hands and the head and feel their kinship with the rest of the beings on the planet, motivating them more strongly than anything else to be global caretakers in whatever way they can.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right. – Jane Goodall

For more powerful quotes from Jane Goodall, a courageous voice for the non-human animals and for social justice, please visit this page.

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San Francisco Chronicle places Miranda Loud in good eco-artist company

Posted on July 22, 2011 by

In April I was interviewed by journalist Christina Farr about my work as an independent artist and my vision for strengthening cross-species empathy through the arts, which is the work of NatureStage. I am excited and grateful to share this very interesting article, “Can art save the planet? New eco-cultural movement has its roots in the peninsula.”

There are a few things that I feel need clarifying: my talks around the country are more about how we can become better global stewards and the power of arts in education than about animal cruelty specifically. My work is more about our relationship to other species as a whole, currently using the Asian elephant as a mirror to looking at ourselves more closely. I still work as a classical singer and organist (as well as pianist) in addition to my work as a filmmaker and public speaker.

An excerpt:

Miranda Loud spends her days touring the country to educate people about animal cruelty and the environment. The former classical pianist embraced visual arts after reading about climate change, and the impact of species lost. Her goal is to promote empathy training to teach respect for nature, and to introduce mandatory art programs in schools.

“Would we have quieter oceans?” she asked, voice faltering. “Would we turn off the lights in skyscrapers so birds wouldn’t circle them, dying of exhaustion in their millions? If we had empathy training and an early introduction to art we’d be trained to take other species into account.”

Loud’s current focus is to preserve Asian elephant populations, and she travels on a shoestring budget presenting her short films. Similarly to Chalmers, her original intent was to de-stigmatize insects, primarily bees, but she changed course after hearing about the atrocities committed in Thailand.

Loud said art prevents people from watching to their comfort level or attention span. They must sit, and take it all in. After screenings of her films, she is often approached by well-wishers saying, “You have lit a fire under my apathy!”

Loud cannot quantify the effect of her work in helping elephants, but said she remains optimistic. “It’s hard to know what impact you’ve had as an artist, but half the people who watch my presentations are usually in tears,” she said. “And that’s got to count for something.”  Read the full article…

drawing by Ana Caras for NatureStage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Kingston, NY – Artists with Affordable Space to Create

Posted on August 7, 2011 by

Every few weeks I feel the urge to hit the road and seek out other artists, visit new locales, and get away from the ever-present work of having my office-in-home. NatureStage ultimately benefits from these occasional physical flights of fancy which always  spawn new networks of people who inspire me, who are excited by the work of NatureStage, and who refill my well with their ideas, artwork, courage and sense of humor.

Within a span of four days, I managed to visit a farm sanctuary, take a boat ride down the Hudson, visit the Vanderbilt “summer cottage” with a tour guide who should be in theater (maybe he is), make new friends with people at the B and B in Kingston, hear Strauss in the Frank Gehry concert hall at Bard College, learn a new, albeit take-no-prisoners card game, play through some beautiful Chopin Mazurkas I’d never seen before, catch up on sleep, rediscover an old children’s book about the emperor and the nightingale which I hadn’t seen since I was six, visit the Kingston colorful farmer’s market, talk to Peter at the B & B about the ins and outs of editing for radio, and forget about the debt ceiling debacle for at least 24 hours.

One of the motivations for this recent trip to the Hudson River Valley in NY was to see my old friend from Manhattan who is a wonderful baritone and in residence at Bard College for much of the summer. The google searching started…Bed and breakfasts near Bard…When I saw the listing for a Bed and Breakfast in a renovated church, hosted by an abstract expressionist painter and a composer and pianist, I knew my search was over. The deal was sealed when they mentioned that they liked to cook omelettes in the morning with herbs from the garden and, “was I ok with dogs?”

But, where exactly IS Kingston?

It turns out that Kingston is a short ferry ride away from the train station in Rhinebeck on the opposite side of the Hudson, and a mere 20 minutes by car from Bard College. It is a remarkably diverse town which has yet to be gentrified, and probably never will be, according to my host (infrastructure challenges). The town is home to many artists who have done time in New York City and want space and quality of life that is more affordable. Apparently there are several churches in Kingston which artists have renovated into live/work spaces. I look forward to my next visit, hopefully this fall…Thank you Julie and Peter!

To see some of Julie’s work, you can visit her site at www.juliehedrick.com

Peter’s radio show of composers talking shop is on http://www.wgxc.org/schedule/75

And for more information on other artists in Kingston:

http://www.artalongthehudson.com/kingston.html

The following photos are all taken with my new lens which I am getting used to, a 50 mm 1.8. Music is by my friend Jed Parish.

Kingston, NY Trip

Kingston, NY Trip

This movie requires Adobe Flash for playback.
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Park Dreams Trailer Fresh off the Press

Posted on August 13, 2011 by

Park Dreams Trailer from Miranda Loud on Vimeo.

A trailer describing the Park Dreams project, a NatureStage initiative seeking funding which involves asking people in different parks around the U.S. about their visions for a better society and covering the following topics: arts education, environmental stewardship, our relationship with other species, building more trusting neighborhoods, among others.
Produced and edited by Miranda Loud with music by Scott Joplin (The Strenuous Life) performed by Miranda Loud. Photographs by Erika Sidor, Ami Wang, Ana Caras with permission from all the participants to use their words and images to further the project which will be a podcast. Learn more at http://naturestage.org/projects/park-dreams/

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Re: New York Times – Silencing the Messenger, Polar Bears and Melting Sea Ice

Posted on August 16, 2011 by

Re: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/opinion/a-polarizing-polar-bear-investigation.html

It is the power of a free press which can help keep the sense of morality and justice afloat in a world in which denial and diminishing sea ice are often found in the same sentence. Thank you Op-Ed for a clear opinion on Continue reading →

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An Ocean-side Conversation with Humane Educator Zoe Weil

Posted on September 26, 2011 by

Founder of the Institute for Humane Education, Zoe Weil

August. Blue Hill, Maine.

Little did I know that my quick trip to the Blue Hill library to do some emailing would lead me to one of my mentors in humane education, Zoe Weil. Two women were sitting at the study table and we started talking. One of them mentioned that there was a center for the sorts of things I was writing about just up the street in Surry and she knew the founder. I sent Zoe an email and two days later we were face to face, sitting on the rocky beach with the waves of Penobscot Bay rolling up to our toes and Zoe’s two dogs galloping over the boulders in search of sticks.

Zoe is full of energy and ideas, as one might expect from a ground-breaker in calling for humane education to be a cornerstone within our current education systems. Here is an overview of our hour-long conversation. Continue reading →

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Talking whales, chimpanzees, elephants and zoos with Charles Siebert

Posted on October 2, 2011 by

Charles Siebert

Charles Siebert looks like a movie star, and based on the impersonations he did in our conversation, he probably could be one, but he’s chosen to be a writer, a novelist and non-fiction writer, as well as a journalist. He’s a prize-winner in all these areas. It’s unusual to find a man writing about empathy, and especially about the plight of animals and giving credence to their inner life in major newspapers and magazines. This is just one of the reasons I sought him out. His article in the New York Times magazine back in 2005, An Elephant Crack-up?, moved me to tears and left an indelible mark on my conscience, in fact, such a profound one, that I swerved off of the well-worn channel of solely being a professional musician into a hybrid zone which became NatureStage. 

Siebert’s most recent article on elephants appeared in the September 2011 issue of the National Geographic. For a list of Siebert’s writings, please see the end of the interview.

Here are excerpts from our conversation in a Brooklyn cafe in early September 2011.

CS  (speaking about a television series in production)…so, we were going to start with the Janice Carter story. Janice Carter being the one who took Lucy from Oklahoma after her parents were done raising her as a human. The first act of hubris was bookended by the second which was ”oh, let’s let her be a wild chimp now” and poor unsuspecting  suburban oklahoman Janice Carter agrees to help Lucy make the transition to the wild and goes with her to the Gambia and first Senegal. Well, you know the story, it’s all in Wachula Woods Accord

ML  You’ll have to remind me ’cause I read it about a year ago and I’ve seen Project Nim six months ago and…

CS  It ends up just as you might expect, totally tragically. Lucy has no experience. Some of the other chimps at least knew other chimps. By other chimps, I mean other chimps in this transition center. Lucy had only known human beings. The only chimps she had ever seen were in National Geographic…so it was impossible for her and she just refused. And Janice, who was supposed to stay for two weeks to help with the transition, two weeks became two months, which became two years, and lo and behold, she’s still there. She’s never come back. But at one point she lived for eight years on this island with Lucy in the middle of the gambia river. And through much of that time, had a cage built for her to live in so that Lucy would be forced to go out and be a chimp. Now how’s that for a total inversion of the whole dynamic? A human being living by herself in the wilderness in a cage to force a chimp to be a chimp?

ML That is the quintessential irony, and also how we find ourselves trying to find our own wildness.

CS Exactly. And Janice became more wild than Lucy. That’s the crazy thing. This suburban Oklahoman girl became like a wild child. I mean, she was climbing trees and eating ants trying to get Lucy to climb trees and eat ants. So anyway, the whole thing, to cut to the chase, just ended completely tragically because Lucy started to seem to be able to fend for herself and was learning to go off and eat…and Janice finally decided it was time to leave.  So she leaves the island and would come back periodically, and every time she did come back Lucy would be on the shore of the island to meet her and this time she showed up and no Lucy and she had this really bad feeling.  She went back to their old campsite and Lucy was found with no hands, no feet, just her skeleton. There’s been all sorts of speculation as to what happened, but one of the scenarios that the press has fallen in love with is that Lucy, always the first to approach humans, approached, unwittingly, poachers who just served her up. But no one knows what really happened, but obviously it could have gone no other way but tragically, given the circumstances. But the weird thing is, Janice stayed on and she’s been there for thirty-three years on end. We still talk and she’s very hard to get to know, as you might imagine. A woman who’s just retreated from civilization as we know it. But she’s very sweet, and I sort of won her good graces.  She agreed to be part of this documentary that Christopher and I wanted to do, but long story short, when we heard that Marsh was working on Project Nim…

ML Speaking of which, I really think you should go to the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Have you been to one of these?

CS No

ML If you can find a reason to come, my sense is that it’s an incredible opportunity to network with…you’d be a superstar

CS I don’t know about that. I’d just like to go to Jackson Hole. I’ve always wanted to.  Sounds like it would make a good story, covering it

ML I’m sure

CS When I was writing essays for Harper’s Magazine years ago I did a series of cover essays for them and one was about t.v. nature shows and how we’ve always framed nature. It actually got me on a very funny radio show with Sir David Attenborough. So, he was coming from England, someone else from Australia, and me from Brooklyn. It made for the oddest conversation. He started out not liking me. I think he thought I was way cynical, but in the end, we ended up agreeing with each other on a lot of fronts. He was always one of my favorites ’cause, you know his famous transitions, where he’d be like in Patagonia and climbing some mountain and then going (british accent) there is of course, you know, only one other creature with exactly these characteristics and it is…” and boom, he falls through some trap door, and the next thing you know he’s somewhere like New Guinea and then it would be “the New Guinea lemur!”

I just love that he kept falling through those nature trap doors. Nature as opera…

ML I just think if you’re trying to make a movie, you should just go to the source because theoretically there will be lots of funders there and there will be photographers and videographers and cinematographers

CS there will be all kinds

ML plus, just as a writer as you said, you could be observing too

CS Yeah, one foot out the door. Yeah, even at Sundance, I was amazed ’cause I helped sort of present as a favor the movie One Lucky Elephant

ML Oh I haven’t seen that yet

CS Yeah, they contacted me because they had read some of my elephant stuff and they asked if I would come out to the LA film festival and lead a Q&A after that, and so I did that and that was quite fun. Then I did one here in New York at the film forum. I hadn’t seen those guys for months, and sure enough I go to Sundance and they’re the first people I run into and they were there to see Project Nim and also to screen One Lucky Elephant which even though it’s not perfect, is a very affecting movie, especially on that frontier of elephants in captivity and the quandaries it gives rise to

ML Is that about Flora?

CS Yeah, the circus elephant

ML who basically didn’t want to go to the sanctuary because she missed her owner. Did she eventually get used to it?

CS Yeah, she had some real issues. She became quite obstreperous after Continue reading →

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A discussion with Documentary Filmmaker Randall Wood, Finalist for Worm Hunters

Posted on October 11, 2011 by

Randall Wood speaking about Worm Hunters at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in October 2011

Randall Wood is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and cinematographer based in Brisbane, Australia.  I caught up with him near the start of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival sitting outside in front of the Grand Tetons in full fall glory. We talked about protecting journalists in the documentary process, his latest film Worm Hunters, Laurie Anderson and the power of words, and the power of music in shaping a film. He was first trained as a classical pianist and composer. He started by talking about his current film in process called The Grammar of Happiness. You can see the trailer for this film here.

RW This is a great project for the Smithsonian Channel and ABC in Australia and Arte in France. It’s a film about language and a debate that’s occurring at the moment internationally about grammar theory.

ML What is the debate?

RW Well, the debate has been raging for about five years and it’s between Chomsky and his followers, of which there are many, who believe in a universal grammar, and Dan Everett and a number of other people who say his theories are flawed because of Dan’s findings with the Pirahã people in the Amazon. He says their language is so completely different that it flies in the face of Chomsky’s theory. That’s the baseline but the story itself is of a missionary who went up the Amazon to convert a tribe to Jesus and instead got converted by them after many years of working with them, to atheism, after trying over many years to convert the Bible into their language. So he became an atheist and left his missionary work and became an academic and quite well-respected. He wrote a book called Don’t Sleep. There are Snakes.

ML How would you summarize Chomsky’s theory?

RW Ah. Put me on the spot! Basically talking about a universal grammar saying that we are, as humans, born with the ability to speak with recursion.

ML What’s recursion?

RW Recursion is Continue reading →

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Chicago Ideas Week Part I – Social Entrepreneurship Forum

Posted on October 11, 2011 by

“An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.” – Buddha

I landed in Chicago for a week of idea-sharing – participating in the Chicago Ideas Week, interviewing people in Millennium Park for the Park Dreams project for NatureStage, and presenting a version of my talk, Saving the Elephants, Saving Ourselves; The Role of Art in Social Change at the Humanist Sociology Conference in Evanston (Daring to Be Dangerous: A Sociology for Our Troubled Times).

Here is the first installment from Chicago Ideas Week with a synopsis of a few of the talks at the morning session on Social Entrepreneurship which included a tremendously inspiring group of social innovators: David Bornstein: Founder, Dowser; Emma Clippinger: Co-Founder and Executive Director, Gardens for Health International; Robert Fogarty: Founder, Dear World; Dave Gilboa: Co-Founder and Co-DEO, Warby Parker; Scott Harrison: Founder & CEO, charity: water; Leila Janah: Founder & CEO, Samasource; Jeff Nelson: Co-Founder & Executive Director, Urban Students Empowered.

October 10, 2011

The President and CEO of Better World Books, David Murphy, began the session by defining social entrepreneurship as a way to solve social problems on a large scale. When he created his company, he said he wanted it to be disruptive, scaleable, and a game-changer. He conceived of an online bookstore “with a soul” that would donate a portion of all book sales towards non-profit literacy partners worldwide. He pointed out the ongoing need for this type of business model and described the state of literacy in the world today. Almost 1 billion people are illiterate and 2/3 are women. Better World Books is founded on the idea that literacy is fundamental to breaking poverty and the dependency cycle which comes from illiteracy.

Murphy made a strong point of saying that social entrepreneurship is not “kumbaya”. SE is a vital way to harness the potential of business to solve social and environmental challenges at home and around the world. He pointed out that 70% of non-profit funding comes from the private sector and that this must change in order to solve the large-scale challenges we face.

David Bornstein, of Dowser - advocate for

The next speaker at the forum was David Bornstein, the founder of Dowser, which specializes in solution journalism. He described how he started off as a daily reporter wanting to help the world self-correct with his writing. He pointed out that one of the main reasons attempts to solve social issues are stymied is that “we’ve been asking bureaucracies to write poems.” He says that for problems to be solved at a large scale, it takes an extreme level of caring, similar to the way a mother cares for her child.

Bornstein then pointed out the staggering Continue reading →

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Chicago Ideas Week Part II – Photographer Forum Transcript

Posted on October 12, 2011 by

Photographer Jim Richardson speaking at Chicago Ideas Week 2011

Chicago Ideas Week hosted four award-winning photographers, giving them a platform to talk about their work and share some of their spectacular photographs from the National Geographic, Chicago Tribune, and others. I transcribed much of what they said, although without the images to accompany their words it obviously has much less impact. What struck me about all four was their focus on relationships, whether between human and non-human animal, people of different cultures, men and women, people and the earth. Their images are stunning. I encourage you to check out each of their websites and google them to see more of their photographs. A picture says a thousand words.

Jim Richardson: Everyone is a photographer and it’s the language we speak. Out in Kansas, my wife and I have a gallery and every so often people come through and they walk down the wall and they see all the images I”ve taken from around the country and I can see one of two questions coming. The first one is easy to answer – do you actually go to the places you photograph? Honest to God, that is the question. And I go, yes, that’s the way it works. We actually go there.

The second question is more difficult because they say “what’s your favorite thing to photograph?” They mean do you do sports, weddings, nature, wildlife, culture? I often puzzle about that because I do all these things. I do what is necessary to tell the story and particularly I like unsung stories. I like stories no one else would pay attention to if I didn’t. The stories are the leverage by which I take the photography and hopefully do something that in some remote way might move somebody and provide that fulcrum point to help leverage the pictures into action and impact.

I want to start out our presentation today with how pictures tell stories Continue reading →

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Chicago Ideas Week – Heroes Forum with Bill Strickland, Phil Zimbardo and Jerry Mitchell

Posted on October 14, 2011 by

I came to the forum on Heroes at the Museum of Contemporary Art because I needed a dose of inspiration and energy from people who take action on their beliefs. Each of the speakers brought the audience to their feet with their presentations about their work. I transcribed part of the forum knowing that even though the video would be available in a few weeks it would be valuable to be able to refer in print to the powerful words from a few of these speakers. The images they showed were a large part of the impact of their talks, but here, at least, are a few of the words of wisdom they shared with us.

Phil Zimbardo – psychologist, founder of the Heroic Imagination Project

(excerpt) Heroes make personal sacrifices for the good of others. What I’ve been doing is creating a program that tries to train, coach and produce heroes. In california I have a hero factory. Heroic action is behavior that is:

  • engaged in voluntarily
  • conducted in service to one or more people or the community as a whole;
  • involves a risk to physical comfort, social stature, or quality of life;
  • iniated without the expectation of material gain; and
  • is learned, taught, modeled, not inborn

Heroes become special by doing that heroic act. We believe heroism can be trained, coached, taught, especially with the next generation.  Each of us has the power to influence unknown numbers of people.  When we do the opposite we can become a model for evil.  We should be aware of the ripple effect we have. The important thing is to speak up.

Bill Strickland - President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation and its subsidiaries, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild (MCG), and Bidwell Training Center (BTC).

Strickland is nationally recognized as a visionary leader who authentically delivers educational and cultural opportunities to students and adults within an organizational culture that fosters innovation, creativity, responsibility and integrity. Continue reading →

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Filmmaking with Social Impact – strategies for funding and partnering

Posted on November 5, 2011 by

I was recently reading a blog post by one of my favorite filmmakers, Patrick Shen, who founded Transcendental Media. His post has links to other sites which socially-conscious-driven filmmakers would find incredibly useful. Instead of writing much today, I will simply pass you on to this informative and thought-provoking post

http://www.filmcourage.com/content/making-your-film-matter-introduction-social-action-campaigns

I followed a few of the links and found three others which Continue reading →

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Music and Image in Malick’s The Tree of Life

Posted on February 23, 2012 by

Reblogged from naturestage:

I may be going out on a limb here, but this baroque harpsichord piece, Les Barricades Mistérieuses (which I recorded for the above sequence), and which features twice in Terrance Malick’s masterpiece, The Tree of Life, represents by its title, the heart of the film’s multi-layered message. The film, which is deeply personal and strives for universality, has struck a nerve or a chord, causing some people to walk out midway, dismiss it as corny or overreaching, and others, like myself, to see it several …

In honor of this film’s nomination for an Oscar, I am reposting this review which has been by far, the most read post of all. Enjoy!
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Naturestage in the Press – essay by Charles Siebert

Posted on December 6, 2011 by

I am so honored to be featured by one of my favorite journalists, Charles Siebert, for Liberty Mutual’s Responsbility Project website. To read the article….

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Of Spindle Cells and Whales…

Posted on November 23, 2011 by

This wonderful animation is part of a new consciousness in which many artists are devoting their skills to the human/animal bond. Thank you Jim Cummings of Acoustic Ecology (and board member of NatureStage) for passing this on!

On the eve of Thanksgiving, I’m feeling especially thankful for the gift of time to read, to create, to have meaningful discussions with people. I feel thankful to have enough to eat, to be literate, to have the cultural city of Boston at my doorstep and to be able follow my passion with naturestage. Thank you for reading this blog and for doing your part to stay informed, heart-centered and empathic.

In light of NatureStage’s mission, I thought many of you would find this article on “playing God with endangered species” particularly fascinating and thought-provoking. Make sure you read the comments!

http://responsibility-project.libertymutual.com/blog/save-the-pandas-who-decides-#fbid=gx8lWsAiNji

Posted in arts, empathy, favorite animal-related animations, film, humane education, naturestage, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , ,

The value of blogging when you’re job searching

Posted on November 23, 2011 by

The value of blogging when you’re job searching.

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