HumanKindMedia

Carpe Millennium: The Long Now Foundation putting things in perspective

At the Long Now Foundation museum in San Francisco there's a sign on a staff person's computer that says, "Carpe Millennium". For some of us on the planet, Carpe Diem is a tough one. Carpe Millennium, Seize the Millennium, puts every issue, every question, every intention into uncommon perspective.

The Long Now Foundation began as an e-mail from MIT PhD computer genius (paralell processing), Imagineer, inventor and thinker, Danny Hillis. He wrote to some friends,

"When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 2000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 2000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."

In 01996 (the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years) futurist Stuart Brand, musician Brian Eno, former Wired Magazine editor and author Kevin Kelly, and a long list of other amazing humans, joined Hillis to form the Long Now Foundation. In their words, the Foundation would provide "a counterpoint to today's 'faster/cheaper' mind set and promote 'slower/better' thinking...creatively fostering responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years." On New Year's Eve, 01999, this prototype (a much smaller version) heralded the second millennium by chiming twice.

I'd like to write an essay marveling at the Long Now, but Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon wrote this a few years ago, and I'll admit right now, there's no way to top it, unless maybe Michael Chabon does a follow-up piece when they install their 10,000 year clock in the Nevada desert.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Donna and I visited the Foundation's museum not far from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, wandering among the prototypes, browsing through the mind-expanding bookstore, and skirting around the researchers working on Long Now projects. It was a great outing, but not essential as there is almost more to savor on their site on-line.

There's more about the clock--for philosophers, engineers, and dreamers. The Foundation sponsors regular seminars by many interesting people and there's a treasure trove of blogs and essays pondering the possibilities of the future. On one of my recent re-visits I discovered this essay by Danny Hillis about working with Richard Feynman on thinking machines and learned why my space-ship can't go faster than the speed of light.

At LongBets you can read about long-term predictions and bets, or place your own Long Bet. Here, you'll get a sampling of bets and predictions spanning from 02003 until 02203. Though Ted Danson won the bet about whether the US would win the World Cup before the Red Sox won the series, the jury's still out on Warren Buffett's bet about the S&P or the bet that the US Constitution will be ammended to cede to a global government by 02025. Pilotless air travel by 02025? Will at least one human alive in 02000 be alive in 02150? It's a fascinating glimpse into possible futures by some of our brightest minds, and a reminder that everything changes.

I must say thinking about the Long Now and their projects has had an impact on me. I'm pondering small things like imagining some unknown being finding my plastic water bottle during an excavation in 10,000 years. I'm conscious of larger concerns about how my children will contribute to a developing evolution of humans, rather than how much money they can make after college. I'm reimagining my responsibility for electing stewards of a larger future during this election. I think of that clock ticking away back only a few hundred miles from where I grew up, and my imagination goes wild. I am at once excited about the possibilities, and remorseful that I won't be there. What a great job for a person of the future to be a caretaker of the clock! (Maybe I'll come back.)

Hillis had a conversation about the clock with Jonas Salk before he died. Salk asked him about the clock and what problem he was trying to solve, or what he was trying to preserve. I like his response because it mirrors what the whole Long Now Foundation mission evokes in me:

"OK, Jonas, OK, people of the future, here is a part of me that I want to preserve, and maybe the clock is my way of explaining it to you: I cannot imagine the future, but I care about it. I know I am a part of a story that starts long before I can remember and continues long beyond when anyone will remember me. I sense that I am alive at a time of important change, and I feel a responsibility to make sure that the change comes out well. I plant my acorns knowing that I will never live to harvest the oaks.

I have hope for the future."

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail chris (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.

Tuesday Links: Little blogger goes to the big media conference

Well, if you're still with me, thanks for your patience. We have proven that I can't write blogs and attend conferences at the same time.

Last week I was like Charlie at the Chocolate Factory of new media, having attended a Journalism That Matters conference put on by Media Giraffe at UMass and then the very amazing National Conference on Media Reform put on by freepress.org. Now I am suffering from an embarrassment of riches in the arena of people doing great things against what seems to be the impossibility of recapturing the media for the public.

Local place-bloggers, traditional journalists, policy makers, Senators, new media mavens and scholars all came together to represent thousands upon thousands of grass-roots and alternative media proponents around the US. Among revered reporters (Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, and Phil Donahue were speakers) and internet media experts were hip-hop bloggers serving marginalized youth, new media filmmakers, local youth radio supporters and on-line journalists and bloggers like me. We all shared a common intention: representing the voices of all the people--the raucous, cacaphonous, dissenting, diversified public the way that the American forefathers envisioned in the First Amendment--in media.

Though our constitution is faded, it's still a great set of guidelines for a thriving democracy. I love that so many people care so much to travel to a conference to learn more about how they can contribute to a free press remaining free, and how we can use stories to transform our society towards its full promise.

I heard later that Bill O'Reilly, a main face of Big Media, called our gathering "fringe left lunatics". I've never subscribed to labelling people right and left, blue and red, right and wrong, (or sane or lunatic for that matter) myself, but it's kind of fun to see how threatening a group of 3000+ who want to read and see news that's relevant, varied, and informative can be to the likes of O'Reilly.

In January I wrote a piece about what I was learning about the media and being the change in the media that I'd like to see. I hope we "new media" people can remember that all "media people" are people. I hope we can steer away from the pitfalls that have turned so many of us off to fear-driven, celebrity-filled infotainment as our primary media diet.

I hope we can remember that even mainstream media, for all its flaws, is filled with people like us who deserve respect even if we disagree with them. I hope we as readers and writers can choose against the pundits who are bent on right/wrong, left/right, red/blue, safe/threatened, with/against polarities in their reporting. I hope we demand of our media to hear more sides than one side, more stories about problems and people fixing them, less about what we should be afraid of or hate.

The conferences were filled with people just like you and me trying to make a difference in the world. It was fabulous. I have a long list of stories I hope to share over time if changing the media to change our world is as interesting to you as it is to me. In the meantime, watch this video now or save it for some quality viewing. It's a compelling explanation by Bill Moyers about "communitainment", why we should care about what's happening in the media, and what we should do about it.

Theme Tuesday: Friends we haven't met yet

New Plan: Theme Link Tuesday. When I was stuck last week, I let go of my fixation on themes for series of blog posts. Now, I can throw caution to the wind, and just write about anything, I told myself. Well, I could, but that much freedom might cause paralysis--too many choices every day. I've had about 8 different things rumbling around in my head for the several weeks after Pangea Day, that I've just wanted to share without creating a big essay. Oddly enough :--), they all seem to have a theme. So the new plan is themes on Tuesdays, where if you like the theme, you can follow the links.

I love the new abundance of stories and news with a different narrative than what I found troubling in the mainstream media. I picked the name HumanKind Media for this blog because I was dismayed at the amount of "us vs.them" and "right vs. wrong" stories in the media. I thought a "humankind" perspective helps tell a different story every time, whether it's a city council meeting someone's writing about or a national election, education or travelling to Mars.

In his decades of work as an anthropologist, Donald Brown has been researching and documenting human universals, the traits that every human on the planet has in common. In this talk on Pangea Day he talks about what he's learned during his years of studying humans.

In his list of human universals are weapons, and agression in males, but also disapproval of violence. He found we all form collective identities (I vote for HumanKind), we all look for mediation of conflict and all disapprove of stinginess. All humans share food. We all share the same facial expressions for the same emotions. Just tripping through the list is a reminder of how little difference there is from me and my 5 billion+ other fellow humans I haven't met. Also, good to remember when you're mad at your boss, disagreeing with someone's beliefs, or stuck in traffic.

Here are some of the wonderful, artistic, beautifully conceived places online you can visit to get a reminder of all those friends you haven't met. What's possible in a world where we look more to our similarities than our differences? Is there someone in your life to tell a different story about?

onBeing Listen to someone's story

one sentence Write your sentence, hit skip (unless you want to publish your sentence), and read the other sentences

6 Billion Others Pick your language first (you can skip the intro if you're in a hurry), wait for a load, and hear what some of the 6 Billion others have to say

We Feel Fine Click on the "Open We Feel Fine" at the top, let it load, then click the dots (or you can select "murmurs" on the left and see what happens.)

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail chris (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.

Feeling Stuck: 3 things a coach might tell me

You may have noticed, I'm a little stuck. It's been over a week since my last post (and I usually have a rule against that). In fact, I notice I have several rules about blogging, which may be why I'm stuck right now. I don't know what you do when you're in this state, but I have a tendency to spend a lot of time pondering WHY I'm stuck.

I have my reasons. First I had a rule when I started about "themes." We started with blogs about ending poverty, then helping women, peace, and making a world fit for children. Then, sustainable living. Part of me could keep writing about sustainability forever. It's like peace. Once you pull on the string, you realize it's connected to everything else.

But, another part of me is having trouble deciding which of all the millions of other topics and ideas out there that are changing the world and trying to fit them into themes and connections, and threads, and what, I wonder do you, my audience, want to see?...You see, here I go spinning again.

If I had a coach right now... but wait, I am a coach. I think it's a common misconception that coaches, counselors, psychologists, and other life helpers can get themselves out of sticky spots more easily. I'm a human (a member of a global citizenry, remember) and for some reason, I can't help but get stuck sometimes, even though I should know what to do.

If I were my coach right now, I'd move me off of the "why, "what if", "oh, no" merry-go-round and I'd focus on 3 things:

1. Tell the truth about "what is". When in a breakdown, the first step is to notice you're in a breakdown. For me "what is" would look something like this: I really want to keep telling stories about all the cool organizations, people, and ideas that are changing the world and I feel overwhelmed at the writing, the publicizing, the trying to build community, and the possibility of failure, (which as a coach, I don't really believe in, but am still programmed to worry about), and I don't know what to do next. Whew. What a relief to get that out!

2. Ask what can be done now? Once I get this far, I'm usually okay again. There's always something that can be done now. The impossible takes a little longer, but it's still just a series of steps. For today, what can be done now is already done. I have stopped wondering why I was stuck and just wrote about being stuck. Also, one of the "things that can be done now" in any stuck place is to LET GO. This is my favorite possibility in the "what can be done now" category. Today, I am officially letting go of the themes.

3. Look for support, ask for help!. Asking for help is usually the step most of us don't like to take in the 3-part breakdown fix. But, sometimes just thinking about who could help, asking one person do to something small, or even asking the universe to come in and straighten things out can have a magical ability to help me take a few steps. Sometimes just having someone listen (or read, in my case) is enough.

But since you're here, if you'd like to help me, there are a few things I would ask for. Drop me a note in the comments or e-mail me and let me know: Do you know a story that would be perfect for 10 % more media about possibility? Would you like to suggest or write a story as a guest? What would you like to see more of (now that we're letting go of themes, we can go nuts)? I admit that I have the "small blog" envy of the big blogs who get lots of comments every day. I'm sure someday I won't be able to handle all the comments, but in the meantime just write and say "Hi". Please.

On the HumanKind action front, if you know anyone in Chicago, I'm still working on ways to work out my Wish for Will and welcome your ideas. And, soon, I hope you regular readers will help design HumanKind Challenge #4, for a BigCarrot submission. Okay, now I feel more excited than stuck.

WE FEEL FINE!
And, now that I'm feeling a little more free and excited, and a little less bound by self-imposed constraints, I can tell you about something cool that happened when I posted this blog. Jonathan Harris, artist/genius and speaker at Pangea Day, with Sepandar Kamvar, has been capturing feelings on the web since 2005 at We Feel Fine. So if you had been watching within a few hours of publication of this post, my feelings of stuck-ness, overwhelm, envy, free, and excited showed up on little dots and murmurs on We Feel Fine. Check it out.

After a minute or two watching the Madness or reading the Murmurs, I feel like I'm okay again. I was just having some feelings ;-). You can read more about We feel Fine here. I loved Jonathan's short explanation of We Feel Fine at Pangea Day here.

Here is what Jonathan and Spandar say about their cool project: "We Feel Fine is an artwork authored by everyone. It will grow and change as we grow and change, reflecting what's on our blogs, what's in our hearts, what's in our minds. We hope it makes the world seem a little smaller, and we hope it helps people see beauty in the everyday ups and downs of life."

Ups and downs--I can relate to that. Thanks for listening.

Post Pangea Day review: A reminder of what media can aspire to

As a champion for more media to heal the world, I am enthralled with Jehane Noujaim. Daughter of two worlds, filmmaker, and dreamer, Jehane, with the TED community, pulled off a TED wish from 3 years ago. Her wish for a "day of film where the world comes together and that that day would echo out into the future" --to create greater mutual respect and understanding amongst the people of the world--came true last Saturday, May 10. What a wish!

If you didn't get to see Pangea Day, you're in luck. As part of their incredible vision and generosity, everything's posted on the website for anyone and everyone to get a generous slice of true media for possibilities. I watched parts with my 18-year old and I think the few short bits he got were more than he'd ever gotten in social studies, economics or psychology classes so far.

What I loved about the Pangea Day talks and films was--everything. But if I had to pick and make a recommendation for you start, I'd say start at the beginning. The four-hour production, spanning all the continents, was a beautifully orchestrated set of stories within a story, commencing with Cosmologist, Carolyn Porco's stunning description of us inhabitants of planet earth and her sharing of Carl Sagan's moving Pale Blue Dot -- and continuing on through a palette of films.The program covered all our shared experiences: love, laughter, tears, strife and reconciliation on a planet where the sentient species (us) all share more traits in common than differences.

Let's pretend you live in a world where you receive a gazillion bits of information a day and, like bits of confetti, that information rains down on you and sticks, affecting how you see yourself in the world, how you see others, and how you see the world. We've written a little about changing your media diet and here Jehane and friends have offered us a feast of media designed specifically for healing the world. I hope you'll add Pangea Day to the part of your media diet you want to stick.

I hope you'll go on a Pangea Day diet for a few weeks and let it work on you as it has on those of us who've been watching. Watch the highlights, or if you can, watch the whole thing (with some breaks). I hope all of us who watch will be a part of Jehane's wish for "the echoing out" that comes from meeting each other in a new way on this small planet.

As one of the speakers said, "Films can't change the world, but the people who watch them--the people who are moved and transformed by them--can."

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail chris (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.

Pangea Day: stories told by the world for the world

What could be better for changing the world than meeting each other through stories? Hooray! Saturday's Pangea Day! Finally. A chance for all you global citizens to connect courtesy of a TED wish. Participate somehow!

See when it's happening where you are, find a venue near you, call some friends over to watch on the internet , or take your phone with you and watch. They've left no room for excuses for not meeting the world on May 10. Hope you can partake. I'll be watching from home between birthday preparations for the 15-year old. If you're watching from home, too, let me know and we can make it a HumanKind party, celebrating wonderful media for connecting us global citizens.

Post #101 - 4 things I learned in April about impermanence

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. --Nelson Mandela

I'm back. And as I try to think of a jaunty way to write about this past month of travels, I realize its not just geographical travels that have been working on me. It's the question of sustainability which was deeper than I imagined, and the ever-present reminder that time is long and short and what I do with it is what matters. It's this occasion of post #101. It's my 9-month anniversary of blogging at HumanKind Media (now without my buddy Liz who is recovering and moving on to work in her field of journalism). It's the impending graduation of my oldest son, and the rapidly-approaching end of the spring irises (already).

If I had to distill these recent experiences: travelling to a theme park with kids rapidly becoming adults, my road trip across New Mexico, feeling for and missing Liz, writing about Annie and going to a "Journalism that Matters" conference, I would say the theme is impermanence.

The Buddhists and others consider impermanence to be one of the big categories of suffering, and I certainly can take up the banner for that one from my travels in April. But as usual, a way out of suffering is to accept what is--nothing lasts forever, in this case--rejoice, and enjoy the flip side of what change has to offer. Here are four things I've been thinking about:

1. This time of my life, this time in our culture, this era of humans, even the life of this planet is a blip. The scale of time of the petrified forest and 25,000 years of humans at Acoma, Arizona, and our many billion-year old universe reminded me of that. In addition to experiencing the deep time of that landscape I also discovered my new favorite TED talk about what's beyond our corporeal sense of space and time. Jill Bolte Taylor's very personal exploration of the brain is the most e-mailed TED talk of all time. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out.

2. Learning to hold "what is" and await "what unfolds" can usually be a difficult experience that's full of gifts. Most of my pain and suffering around change resides in the trying to hold on to what I know or push away what I don't. Randy Pausch, the Last Lecture professor, is my most recent example of being with what is and watching what enfolds. If you haven't seen it (not the same as reading the book) please take some time out of your busy schedule to see someone who masters impermanence and rides the waves of its unfolding.

3. If you let go of something having to be the way you envision it, the real possibilities move into the space.
My latest example of this was the "unconference" format for the Journalism that Matters conference. Here's a great description PBS MediaShift's author Mark Glaser. For me, it was exciting to explore possibilities with journalists, technologists, professors, entrepreneurs, and fellow humans, all in service of telling good stories and contributing to a better world. Many amazing things will be germinating from these sessions and I hope to write about some of them. It was also an affirmation that if you create a space for possibility--it comes flooding in. Good news on the heal the world front.

4.The good news is that everything changes. If you didn't like the last president, this year's Oscar winner, what your kid wanted for dinner every night when he was 4, or the weather--it's ok, because it will change.
The bad news is that everything changes. I'm trying not to be dramatic about this but this last trip might have been the last time boys climbed the fort on the island at Disneyland together. But, there are oh, so many cool adventures ahead of us and our "newly grown" children.

On the future of journalism and creating a useful narrative for our society, I have not yet figured out the good and bad news, but I did meet many people who are in the same question this past week--many creative, intelligent, inspiring people who live to tell the stories we all should be so lucky to get to read or hear. Though much is changing in the journalism world, there was less "hand-wringing" and more highly committed, energetic people looking for new ways to create meaningful content in new ways.

I have been altered by my travels and experiences in April. At the NewTools 2008 journalism conference, I was classified as a "new media blogger". Ironically, one of the seasoned news guys kept calling me "Hope" instead of Chris. (Better than Polyanna, I guess.) I'm excited to explore many of the ideas, groups, and people I met as the possibilities unfold. Classified as a human, I'm happy to continue to hold "what's possible?" as my torch into the future. And, with my new reminders about how time is short, and people are good and infinitely resourceful, I plan to make use of my possibilities as long as I can.

About that Stuff, 5 things you can do to help spread the ripples

A week or two before I met with Annie Leonard, creator of the Story of Stuff and global activist for GAIA, the Global Alliance of Incinerator Alternatives, I became excruciatingly aware of all the "stuff" in my house that is destined for the bin, sooner or later. To my chagrin, I suddenly became conscious of slightly stuffed closets, reproducing junk drawers, and my, oh, my, my shower. After reading her recent blogs about a particularly offensive packaging campaign for a new product, I counted several plastic bottles in my shower and was shocked and slightly ashamed that I had let it get so out-of-hand. I could remember back to a time where one bar of soap and some shampoo was it.

When I blurted out a confession about this, she was gracious. First she gave me a great tip about checking the toxicity of my products at Skin Deep, the cosmetics safety database. Then, she let me off the hook--slightly, by explaining, "It's not your fault, it's the system."

The system in question is the Story of Stuff (surely you've watched the whole thing by now). It's system that Anne's been studying for 20+ years (where stuff comes from and where it goes) put into a clever, entertaining, but serious examination of the materials economy.

Now, 5 months since its debut and 2.5+ million viewings on-line, the Story is rippling out, being translated into many languages, inspiring songs and parodies, and engaging people. For a while, there was even a YouTube video by a Russian in a swingset praising the Story and vowing to be an eco-warrior. (Sadly, it was gone when we looked for it.)

What inspires me most is that she's reaching schools and kids, and they're responding. In Woodside, California, when she visited, they asked for "tips" on what they could do. Her answer, "It's complicated." They responded with a parody video, and soon after that, students at Mendocino High school did their own amazing video, "What You Can Do.". Coming up soon is her follow-on podcast with the Woodside Priory students. About their request for "recommended actions", she provides a thoughtful explanation in her blog, "Why I'm Not Offering 10 Simple Steps to Get Involved."

When I asked Annie if she thought we could change the system, she said she had hope. "This is all propped up on cheap oil. The question is, are we going to resist, resist, resist for 50 years, or are we going to be proactive now?" She mentions Bill McKibben's book, Deep Economy. McKibben explores communities around the world who are creating sustainable living practices together. In his book, she tells me, he talks about decoupling "more" and "growth" from "better." Annie says wryly, "More is not better. We're not having fun, we're stressed, exhausted, debt-ridden, and filled with toxicity. We've got to separate our self esteem and self-worth from stuff."

I think the story of the Story of Stuff is just beginning. I'm hopeful that its simple message will permeate more and more arenas where the sustainability message has yet to inspire and move people. Here are some ideas I've got for creating your own ripples to help our big shift to sustainability:

1. Watch the Story, end to end. Share the Story of Stuff--show your families and friends to inspire those 10% changes for sustainability at home. Tell your friends, teachers you know, local groups and organizations. Spread the word, examine the possibilities, together.

2. Exchange your stuff, recycle your stuff, give your stuff to someone who could use it. (Annie says the most burnable consumer goods in incinerators are also the most recyclable items.) Check out Freecycle for an event near you, or hold a give-away garage sale.

3. I know it's a bumper-sticker, but seriously, think globally about our beautiful planet and and a balance of resources for all the remarkable beings on it; then, act locally--right there where you are around the people you're with. Take on a little 10% change in your consumption. Buy local food (instead of produce shipped by truck from 3,000 miles away.) Start a garden, or better yet, a community or school garden. Stop buying something you don't need. Visit your dump and recycling centers in person to see where your stuff goes. Make it a field trip.

4. Speak up, with your voice and your pocketbook. One of the most poignant moments for me when I met Annie was her genuine concern and disappointment at the response to that egregiously wasteful, stuff-laden packaging/marketing scheme of the new men's shaving gel, NXT. She even had a nightmare about it. There's a good ending to the story though. I hope you'll read it here and here, but the point is that we should never estimate the power of our voices and our purchases (or refusal to purchase) to change the possibilities in the Story of Stuff.

5. Annie's says in her blog "Why I'm Not Offering 10 Simple Steps to Get Involved," "Find any place in the system where you can intervene and follow your passion. " We can all find a way to help. Her most simple suggestions are buy less and buy less toxic stuff.

Peace blogger gets mugged

There's no other way to say it, because that's what happened. I got mugged. Even though I'm a peace blogger, I don't feel particularly forgiving of my mugger, or understanding of his situation. I don't even know what his situation is, since after pushing me down a flight of stairs and grabbing my bag he just looked through it, dropped it, and walked away.

But of course, after getting my broken wrist set and talking to the cops, I started to think. About his life and mine. About the reasons I'm so interested in peace and the reasons he felt it was okay to hurt someone. It made me think that all stories of violence exist in a context that's not obvious at first, whether you're talking about a mugging or a war. And that all our small interactions with each other, and especially with kids, affect the development of that context and the choices we make later in life.

Here at HumanKind Media we don't talk much about war, suicide bombings, or murders. We figure you can get all that somewhere else. We're trying to give you something good to take with you into your daily interactions, in the hope that those stories will help you act more often out of hope and a shared intention for peace. But we don't want violence to be ignored, either. Today I'm telling you my small story. It shows that yes, there is violence in the world, but I hope it also shows that I still think there is always more good in the world, more hope. And that we can all help make more.

Story of Stuff: Annie's story

Annie Leonard told me she found her life's purpose standing in the middle of Fresh Kills landfill (one of two man-made structures visible from space--the second is the Great Wall of China) on Staten Island, amidst a sea in every direction of couches, refrigerators, books and banana peels.

In this blog when we began our series on sustainability, we first introduced Annie and her Story of Stuff, the clever and entertaining 20-minute film about our stuff, a short month after it premiered. For Earth Day, it seems natural to return to the sustainability message of the Story of Stuff.

Meeting Annie reminded me of why I wanted to tell stories about people who just start something and stay with it, somehow knowing it will make a difference. They inspire me to keep taking one step at a time toward what I care about. Though it's only four months and 2.5 million views ("Some of those are repeat visits by my mother," she says) since the December launch of Story of Stuff, the real story, the story of Annie the activist, researcher, educator, and mom, started when she was 6.

"MacDonald's came to our school to tell us about the new McDonald's opening in our town. They told us how much they cared about the environment, and I was so excited I did what all the other kids did. I went home and said, 'We've got to go to McDonald's.' I walked in, and in the middle of the store was a big planter with plastic flowers. I was sooo disappointed in them."

Child of "a mother with a strong moral compass" and product of an environmental education in the Northwest, Annie traces her curiosity about where stuff comes from and where it goes to the family's annual camping trip. "I looked out the window as we were driving (that was back before I-pods and DVD's in the backseat). Each year it took longer to get to the forest, and where there once was forest were strip malls."

Certain that she wanted to do something for those forests, Ann set off to New York where she studied city and regional planning. You can read more of what she's done here. What she told me was that, while she was doing graduate work in New York, she would walk from 110th to 116th every day. In the morning the curb would be piled with trash as high as she is tall, all the way down those six blocks. She started to dig around in it and found cardboard, paper, boxes--her trees! At night the piles would be gone. From Fresh Kills and beyond, she decided she would work to prevent waste, fight landfills and incineration. Her idea, and many others', were that if waste began to be harder for corporations to get rid of, "they'll stop."

But they didn't stop. What no one counted on was (the word, "sleazy" was used here) that, as the regulation increased on corporations' waste, they began shipping the waste to third-world countries. She joined Greenpeace and began to work on the UN campaign to stop shipping waste to foreign countries. "Everyone (at Greenpeace) had a piece of the work--lobbyists, researchers. Mine was sampling and documenting the waste sent to other countries--all over the world." Here's where she rattled off story after story of incinerator waste being sent to Haiti as fertilizer, PCB's shipped to a farmer's land in South Africa, of an Indian hospital with an incinerator where demonstrators posted a banner, "Cancer caused and cured here," and of a load of hazardous waste she mixed with fertilizer she tracked down to a Bangladeshi farmer. (The lowest moment she ever experienced was when the farmer asked for reassurance that her country would "fix this".)

She's got a million stories, and deep friendships around the globe--with those who explored with her "the factories where our stuff is made and the dumps where our stuff is dumped." When her daughter went through "her princess phase", she drew beautiful pictures of the prince and the princess, with the dump in the background. After 10+ years her daughter's school started asking for full attendance and she had to figure out how to keep "investigating garbage" but with less travel. It was then she began working for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).

For 10 years, Annie's been telling the story of our stuff, fighting incinerators around the globe, and working to create awareness internationally and at home. After years of requests for a filmed version of her talk, the Tides Foundation approached her to do the Story of Stuff. Enter the creative geniuses at Free Range Studios and the rest is...or will be history.

What I love about Annie and her story is that she's just a person (ok, a very smart, cool person) who followed her curiosity and her passion step by step, to a place that will bring about awareness and change that we'll all benefit from. I predict that in a few years we'll look back on Annie and sustainability the way we look at Jeffrey Sachs and poverty or Paul Farmer and healthcare. I can't wait to see what happens.

In the next post, you'll hear the unfolding story of the Story of Stuff (as told to me by Annie). Amazing things are happening. So, if you haven't watched it yet, here's your chance. It's pretty cool. Stay tuned.

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