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Speedier spring

July 11, 2012Ashden DirectoryApril 4, Associate Editor, Atlanta Georgia, Climate Change, Daffodils, Eastern Seaboard, Features Interviews, Fort Kent, Gutman, Interviews News, Metaphors, Miles Per Hour, Northernmost Point, Paideia School, Robert Butler, Route 1, Six Ways, sustainability, Twitter, Warm Spring

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‘Progress of Spring’ final report

Kellie Gutman writes:

The Â fourth and fifth grade class at the Paideia SchoolÂ in Atlanta, Georgia, has completed their year-long project documenting the progress of spring, as defined by the first blooming daffodil reported along the length of Route 1, from Florida to Maine. Â Their results confirm the general impression that this was a very warm spring on the eastern seaboard. Â At the northernmost point, Fort Kent, Maine, daffodils were spotted on April 4, 2012 – nearly a month earlier than last year, and the earliest in the twenty-two years that the class has been keeping records. Â The rate that spring advanced, 1570 miles in 93 days, was approximately 17 miles a day, or .7 miles per hour, which is about average.

Taking a book for a walk

July 9, 2012Ashden DirectoryBook Of Revelations, Buttermere, Divine Comedy, Friend Charles, German Poetry, Heddon, Hucks, Interviews News, John Keats, Nan Shepherd, Night Cap, North Wales, Oilskin, Peripatetic, Rebecca Solnit, Robert Butler, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Twitter, Werner Herzog, Writing Group

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Wallace Heim writes, with thanks to Dee Heddon

What book would you take for a walk…?

In 1794, John Hucks and Samuel Taylor Coleridge walked to North Wales. Hucks carried with him the poems of Thomas Churchyard.

In 1802, Coleridge walked through Cumberland, carrying with him ‘a shirt, a cravat, two pairs of stockings, tea, sugar, pens and paper, his night-cap, and a book of German poetry wrapped in green oilskin.’ He apparently read the Book of Revelations in Buttermere.

In 1818, John Keats travelled the Lake District and up to Scotland with his friend Charles Brown. Keats’ carried Dante’s Divine Comedy, Brown the works of John Milton.

In 2012, during August and September, Dee Heddon and Misha Myers are joining the Sideways Festival, walking from the west to the east of Belgium. For the length of the walk, they will carry a walking library – rucksacks filled with books that are good to take on a walk. The library will support a peripatetic reading and writing group.

Dee and Misha are in the process of building the library. So far, they will be carrying Werner Herzog’s Of Walking in Ice, Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost and more.

They welcome suggestions of books to take on a walk, including details of books taken on a walk by illustrious walkers/writers.

Email suggestions to Dee Heddon.

Eden and the overburden

June 25, 2012Ashden DirectoryBenevolence, Climate Change, Earthly Treasure, Eden Project, Education Projects, Francis Bacon, Game One, Miners, Normalizing, Novum Organum, Open Cast Mining, Open Pit, Phrasing, Public Image, Rio Tinto, Robert Butler, Robert Newman, Supporting Education, Surface Layer, Twitter

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Wallace Heim writes:Â

The partnership between the Eden Project and Rio Tinto has been billed as supporting education projects about sustainability and research into post-mining regeneration. This was a working partnership, not merely a “social license to operate” – the creating of a benevolent public image for corporations such as BP, Shell, Rio Tinto, through their association with cultural institutions, and now the Olympics.

One of the education projects of this partnership is a pop-up childrenâ€™s book, Earthly Treasure, full of pictures of dazzling jewels and brightly coloured pages showing how modern life can only exist through minerals that must be mined.

Thereâ€™s a page showing a huge open pit mine, a sombre, near-monochrome dug-out bowl. You can slide trucks to take away the “surface layer” and “pull down the tab and blast away the top layer of earth, called the overburden”.

The “overburden”. The infinitely complex soil that makes life possible is merely a weight, a waste to remove to get to the riches below. The phrasing harks back to Francis Bacon who wrote in his Novum Organum in 1620 that miners were the new class of man who would interrogate and alter nature. Nature could be “forced out of her natural state and squeezed and molded”.

But now, the soil holds no more secrets. Itâ€™s only the burdensome surface layer.

This normalizing of open cast mining and mountain top removal is given to children as if a game, one more gem to absorb in their education. Many reasons may lie behind using that phrasing, but the license it condones is not merely cultural benevolence.

h/t: Robert Newman in the Guardian

Edinburgh’s greener Fringe

June 20, 2012Ashden Directory, FringeAssociate Editor, Bevy, Climate Change, Consumerism, Ecological Themes, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, Features Interviews, Interviews News, Japanese Earthquake, Macbeth, Nuclear Leak, Oil Spill, Remarkable Number, Robert Butler, Sensibilities, Silent Prayer, Six Ways, Theatre Pieces, Twitter, Urban Architecture

Fukushima – A Silent Prayer of Poetry

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Wallace Heim writes:

Among the bevy of shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe about Hitler, adolescence, Macbeth and stage spiritualists, there is a remarkable number of dance and physical theatre pieces with ecological themes. Consumerism and happiness, oil and politics, the Japanese earthquake, undercover policing, urban architecture and fear of the woods are among the ideas and sensibilities these shows are expressing.

Theatre shows number highly this year, too, with around 70 that have ecological themes varying from the strongly activist to the bucolic. Shows about animals, food and an apocalypse always feature. This year, there are three shows walking to Edinburgh; shows about abattoirs, about the Deepwater oil spill and the Fukushima nuclear leak; and shows about a swamp, plastics, population and the price of milk.

Indie-theatre take on Deepwater spill

June 12, 2012Ashden DirectoryClimate Change, Corporate Malfeasance, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, Fighter Jets, Fuel Tanks, Horizon Oil, Indie Music, Interviews News, Lavery, Low Budget, Music Event, Oil Spill, Phantom Fighter, Photo Encyclopedia, Plotline, Robert Butler, Senior Lecturer, Theatrical Experience, Twitter, Young Actors

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photo: Encyclopedia Britannica online

Wallace Heim writes:Â

During April and May, The Way of Water, Caridad Svichâ€™s play about the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill toured over fifty venues in North America and Brazil, and in Berlin, Aberystwyth, Glasgow and London. The play toured not as a production but as script-in-hand readings by actors in each place.

The play, marking the two-year anniversary of the spill, traveled quickly, more like an indie-music event than a theatre tour. This new kind of theatrical experience is low-budget, international, tied in with social media and carbon-light.

The play deals with the toxic effects of the spill on four people, on their health, livelihoods and sense of community. The playâ€™s impetus is towards taking action against corporate malfeasance, a revision of the plotline of An Enemy of the People.

Seeing the reading in Aberystwyth, Carl Lavery, Senior Lecturer in Drama, blogged ‘Ten Thoughts on The Way of Water‘. Here are three:

When I think of The Way of Water, I think of its linguistic rhythms and poetic beats – its politics of voice.

When I think of The Way of Water, I think of 4 young actors in Wales finding its meanings, walking its lines, tracing its shapes.

When I think of The Way of Water, I think of my Dad who died from a lifetime of exposure to the toxic fuel tanks of Phantom fighter jets.

The right environment

June 5, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Climate Change, Ecology, Extinction, Features Interviews, Flowers, Fringe, Interviews News, Jonathan, Jonathan Brown, Last Of The Curlews, Lunch, Metaphors, Playwright, Reflection, Robert Butler, Six Ways, sustainability, Timeline, Triptych, Twitter

from The Last Lunch

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Wallace Heim writes:

The Best New Play Award, offered collaboratively by New Writing South and the Brighton Fringe, is an award that has nothing to do with ecology. But this yearâ€™s award was given to two productions that have something to do with ecology.Playwright Jonathan Brown won for his play about meat-eating, The Last Lunch.

The company Feral Theatre won for Triptych, three productions on loss and extinction: Papusza, The Last of the Curlews and TreeStory.

One Day on Earth

June 2, 2012Ashden DirectoryArts Programming, Associate Editor, Center Materials, Charities, City Materials, Climate Change, Department Of Cultural Affairs, Features Interviews, Gutman, Interviews News, June 3, Materials For The Arts, Metaphors, Proceeds, Reuse Center, Robert Butler, Showings, Six Ways, sustainability, Timeline, Twitter

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Kellie Gutman writes:

On Friday June 1, and Sunday June 3, New York’s premier reuse center,Â Materials for the Arts, will be the recipient of proceeds from screenings of One Day on Earth. Â It was made in 2010, and filmed in every country on earth on the same day. Â There will be a week of showings to benefit local charities in New York City.

Materials for the Arts is a program of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Â It collects unneeded materials from businesses and individuals and donates them to arts programming across the city.

Tom Toles wedding cartoon

May 31, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Caricature, Cartoonist, Climate Change, Doodle, Editorial Cartooning, Environmental Issues, Features Interviews, Gutman, Herblock, Interviews News, Metaphors, Pulitzer Prize, Robert Butler, Six Ways, Toles Cartoons, Tom Toles, Twitter, Washington Post, Wedding Cartoon

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory Kellie Gutman writes: Pulitzer-Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles‘Â latest cartoon on climate change. Toles has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Cartooning, winning in 1990. Â He replaced the legendary cartoonist Herblock at the Washington Postin 2002. Toles’ cartoons are syndicated in over 200 newspapers. Â He is known for tackling complicated subjects such as environmental issues. Â He often includes a small doodle, a caricature of himself, in the corner.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chu on The Avengers

May 29, 2012Ashden DirectoryAmbitious Agenda, Avengers, Clean Energy, Climate Change, Dependence On Foreign Oil, Economic Opportunity, Energy Secretary, Global Competition, Gutman, Interviews News, New Jobs, Obama, Robert Butler, Secretary Of Energy, Six Ways, Steven Chu, Tesseract, Twitter, U S Energy, World Sense

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Kellie Gutman writes:

Steven Chu, the 12th Secretary of Energy for the United States, has a post on his Facebook page about the new movie, The Avengers. Though his friends are not listed, he does have 18,963 ‘likes’ on his page. Chu lists his job:

As Secretary of Energy, proudly carrying out President Obama’s ambitious agenda to invest in alternative and renewable energy, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and create millions of new jobs.

About The Avengers Â he says:

Talking about climate change

May 26, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Climate Change, Cornwall, Digital Narrative, England London, Everyday Life, Everyday Lives, Falmouth, Gardeners, Guerrilla, Kindness, Meticulous Work, Night Time, Northern England, Peckham, Renewable Energy, Robert Butler, Spontaneous Acts, Twitter, Weather Reports, World War I

Jason's story

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Wallace Heim writes:Â

One of the explanations offered for why climate change is not more prominent in peopleâ€™s thinking is that itâ€™s not physically seen. It doesnâ€™t feel â€˜realâ€™ enough.

But a different view comes out in the stories people tell about how climate change is immediately altering their everyday lives. The climate is changing how they feel about the world and their decisions about what to do.

Project ASPECT, based at University College Falmouth, is gathering peopleâ€™s stories about climate change from individuals and communities in Wales, northern England, London and Cornwall. Building a digital narrative archive, they are capturing on DVD how people talk about the climate in the context of their everyday lives.

There are those who watch. Heather continues the diary her mother started, recording every day what work is done on the family farm and the weather. Duncan and Matt are surfers in Cornwall, watching the storms. There are those who work with renewable energy, or, like Hanna, find green jobs for young people. Many are changing the way they grow food and eat: Mary from Incredible Edible; Owen with his backyard in Peckham; and masked night-time Ninja guerrilla gardeners. Singers, rappers, athletes tell their stories. Spontaneous acts of community kindness sit alongside the meticulous work of digitising the weather reports from World War I shipâ€™s logs.

In these stories of everyday life, there is a cultural reality emerging, soft-voiced, but pressing.