Annie Leonard & The Story of Stuff

Less Stuff, More Fun!

Today, I would like to share the Green Challenge from Slate Magazine, and a fascinating article on Annie Leonard, a committed woman (one among many) who's making a difference. According to the Green Life section of the Star blog,

She’s an environmental activist who spent 18 years digging through dumps and factories in places like Bangladesh and Haiti researching the international dumping of garbage for environmental groups like GreenPeace and Health Care Without Harm.

After three years of lecturing on the destructive nature of the disposable consumer culture, she condensed her talk into a 20-minute free on-line video called “The Story of Stuff” which is has become an underground hit – averaging 15,000 new views every day.

In it, Leonard shows how most stuff we buy is made to break or seem run-down and old fairly quickly, in order to keep us buying more. She calls it planned and perceived obsolescence – terms coined first by U.S. industrial designer Brooks Stevens in 1954 — and she reveals how it’s been enshrined not only in North American culture, but economic policy since the 1950s.

“It was a combination of the government and industry groups that decided to push excessive consumerism as the defining force in American culture, which includes where people gets their self-fulfillment,” Leonard says in an interview from her office in Berkeley, California.

But instead of fulfillment, North Americans are decidedly more miserable than they were 60 years ago, she says – trapped in a culture of trying to buy shiny new versions of happiness predestined to break. (1)

Want to lighten your load? Try the Freecycle website or consider donating some things to a worthy cause in your area. JustGive.org can help you find a charity that can use your old cell phone, car, clothes, computers, and even hair. (2)

Animal shelters can always use extra leashes, beds, crates, food, unused animal medicines and water bowls. They also need paper towels, blankets, and towels.

Sia

Links:

The Story of Stuff website

Photo: Siberian King Owl by Dani Hernaz at Flickr. Click on his page to see the larger version. It's stunning. He has a wonderful eye for wildlife.

Endnotes:

(1) I also loved this bit:

“The motto was `less stuff, more fun,’” says McMahon, a mother of two known affectionately as the “eco-witch” of her Danforth-Woodbine neighbourhood. “Consumption is terrible for the planet. All this stuff uses a lot of energy — creating it makes pollution, selling it, then using it and disposing of it. Do we really need it? Does it make us happy?”

The neighbourhood posse of mothers is part of a growing movement around the world that’s unplugging from the consumer grid. Instead of buying green, or buying recycled, they’re just not buying.

(2) I knew a woman acing chemo and radiation treatments who cut off all her hair and gave it to this charity. I was there when she did it, a part of a circle of women who were toasting her and laughing with her and admiring her new short hair cut. Locks of Love is a great organization. For the record, this lady is going on 10 years cancer free.

The Last Child In the Woods

The question of the day comes from a woman speaking at the inauguration of the new Wildlife Center (1) at the Tualatin River Refuge (Oregon, USA)

"Who is going to be our next conservation heroes?" asks Kim Strassburg, the refuge's visitor services manager. "Our kids. And if our kids are losing touch with nature?

Who indeed?

Richard Louv author of Last Child In the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder attended the opening and signed copies of his book. You can view one of his lectures here.

Earthwise parents concerned that we are losing touch with nature may wish to check out Spiral Scouts.

Enjoy,

Sia

For those of you using a reader, the video I've posted at my blog is from the Netherlands, and it is titled Discovery of the last child in the woods.

Endnotes:

Tualatin River Refuge

was established as an urban refuge to provide wetland, riparian, and upland habitats for a variety of migratory birds, threatened and endangered species, fish, other resident wildlife, and for the enjoyment of people. The refuge is now home to nearly 200 species of birds, over 50 species of mammals, 25 species of reptiles and amphibians, and a wide variety of insects, fish, and plants.

Habitats include remnant and restored communities along rivers and streams, emergent, shrub, and forested wetlands, riparian forests, oak and pine meadows and grasslands, and mixed deciduous/coniferous forests common to western Oregon prior to settlement.

These habitats are known primarily for their importance to salmon and steelhead, wintering Canada goose, pintail and mallard ducks, and for providing breeding habitat for songbirds.

Links:

Gaia's Guardians

PanGaia & PantheaCon

The most recent copy of PanGaia arrived in our mailbox this week (we've been snowed in for days) and I was pleased to see it was a Special Issue on Science, Magic and Planetary Change. John Michael Greer is on the cover under the heading "Path of the Green Druid". I do not know this gentleman, so I look forward to reading this.

Speaking of PanGaia, Anne Niven (Editor and Founder of Sagewomen, PanGaia and New Witch) has recently moved her home and business to Oregon, just outside of Portland. This makes her my neighbor. I've known Anne for years (she was a long time supporter of our charity Witches' Ball and The Pagan Voting Project) and I'm look forward to haunting Powells Books by her side.

Anne will be at PantheaCon this year over President's Day weekend- it's her first time ever. Sadly, I am traveling elsewhere and cannot go with her. I hate to miss this convention, which I have attended since it started over a decade ago, but so it goes.

I've pleased to see that East Coast Pagan presenters and authors have finally discovered this wonderful West Coast convention. The line-up this year is diverse and interesting and includes names you know, along with some very good home-grown talent from in and around the Bay Area and the western states. These folks include, among others:

Starhawk, Margot Adler, RJ Stwart, Caitlin Matthews, T. Thorn Coyle, Z. Budapest, Luisah Teish, Amber K., Christopher Penczak, Raven Grimassi, Holly Tannen, Macha Rising, Anne Hill (who is now teaching at the Cherry Hill Seminary and will have a vendor booth there selling Pagan music as she does every year) and the always witty Thalassa (if you love Tarot and literature, by all means catch one of her seminars).

The theme for this year is Gaia and the Spirit of Activism. (Holy Zeitgeist, Batman!)

My hat's off to whoever decided to offer Pre-Con Intensives this year: One is about spirit and the other is titled "Growing a Pagan Non-Profit". The presenters in both cases look like they know their stuff.

I have long argued that if Paganism is to have an lasting or valuable impact, then we need to have groups which are organized, healthy and self-supporting. Let us hope that this is one more more step on that long and winding road.

If you go, have much fun. And be careful in that Vendor Room. There are many shiny things to buy - have someone else hold your wallet until you've walked the room at least once.

Pantheacon is organized and hosted by Ancient Ways and is run by hundreds of dedicated volunteers. My thanks go out to all those who work so hard to make this large and complex event possible for our community.

All good things,

Sia

Art: Gaia

Links

Gaia's Guardians

Big Cat Rescue- Think Green, Live Green Challenge!

By watching a video and passing it along to all your friends we can win 5 thousand dollars for Big Cat Rescue. They are currently in 2nd place and the contest ends Feb 28th. So please go and watch the video. (You can find it at Youtube or Sia's Blog and at the link to Big Cat Rescue below).

If you want to help further, you can also post this video at your own blog.

Big Cat Rescue TV is the 2nd most popular nonprofit video site on all of YouTube.

Go cats!

Sia

Links:

Think Green, Live Green Challenge
The Think Green Live Green Challenge is an interactive competition that aims to build a community of dialogue about the challenges of eco-friendly living.

Big Cat Rescue (the video is posted here)

Training as a Green Witch

We seek to find our calling and to
develop the will and the wisdom to follow it.
- Spiral Steps, Step 13

I am a Green Witch. (1) I begin the formal training in my tradition with an older woman in California who is, among other things, writer, an artist and a naturalist. I have loved animals and nature since I was a child and before I began working with her, I had many years experience working with groups that protect both. Among other things, I had worked for over a decade as a volunteer with companion animal and wildlife rescue groups. I was also an avid gardener (most often using herbs and native plants) and while I wasn't a hard body hiker, I loved being outdoors and often did my rituals and mediations in wild places. So why, then, did I feel the need to train with this woman? Well, for one thing, I admired her skills and her renaissance mind. I also wanted to understand her connection with Gaia, which was different from my own. I'd heard from someone she had trained that she choose to work with very few students over the years but I was not told why. That sounded a bit daunting. Nevertheless, I went to her home, and asked if I could learn from her. When a student comes to her, she says this:

"Find a place that speaks to you. Adopt that place. Go there at least once a week. Pick up any trash you find there. Do not disturb the animals, do not remove anything from that place that belongs there. Make it known that you are there as a guardian and as a student. Do this for a year and a day. Take notes. Make sketches. Look at the clouds. Note the changes in weather. Take photos. Record your observations about the animals you encounter, what flowers bloom and when and where they bloom. Find out which birds come and go. Learn the names of the trees. Sit quietly from time to time, and just listen. Do this for four seasons. When you have done that, come back here and we'll begin. (2)

And this is why she had so few students. To many, it seemed like too much work. They wanted some spells and some ready-made answers. Most wanted power the easy way. Word to the earthwise: There is no easy way.

My mentor knew that she had a great deal to teach, and also a great deal left to learn and she wanted share this journey with those who also shared her passions and her dedication. The older I get, the more I understand this.

I did what she asked. After a year and a day I went back to her with my journals, sketches, photos and field notes. I thought she would ask me a great many questions. I was ready for this test in a way I hadn't been since graduate school. She brought us both some tea, and invited me to sit. She looked at my notes, briefly, while I admired her art collection, and petted her cat. Then she looked at me, and said, "So. How did this experience change you?"

That was it. That was her one question. When I look back on it now, I see that it's a vital question because it deals with the soul and center of our craft. (id. at 1) But just then I didn't know what to say. So we drank some more tea while the cat made a nest in my lap. I looked into it's golden eyes, and thought about my answer, and then I began to talk...and talk...and talk. Because when you look at it that way, I had a great deal to say. None of it was factual in nature. What I had learned from that place had gone so deep in me that it was now an instinctual, gut level awareness. It had nothing to do with my field notes, and everything to do with my love of this place and my relationship to it and to the beings that live there. She wanted to know how this connection had affected me, and how I had affected this place, and whether or not I got it. I had. From that day on, we began to work together, and we have done so for over a decade.

The central question in my tradition is this: "What are Witches for?

Each of us has to answer this question in our own way. (3) For me, it means I work with licensed groups that rescue and rehabilitate injured and orphaned wildlife, and help return them to the wild. I also am a foster mom for kittens and I work to find homes for cats in need. I work with native plants and help educate others on the importance of preserving wild lands and native habitat. I also help to organize events and raise money for grass roots organizations that do this sort of work. I still have to make a living, so I do this as service, as an unpaid volunteer, in my free time, along with thousands of other people just like me. This work has brought me a wealth of experience and enriched my life immeasurably. It's what I'm meant to do.

Whatever our spiritual practice, if our tradition is meaningful
then part of our life lesson is finding out what we are meant to do.
The rest is doing it.

When we ask the universe for teachers or lessons, they come to us. Very often they are not in the form we looked for. They might not be human. They might be an experience or an animal guide or an attraction to a place. The lesson might involve letting go or it might involve love and care. And the learning never stops. At some point in our lives we might be asked to mentor others, and this will lead to yet more connections and change.

After 25 years as a Pagan, this is what I know: We don't choose this path, it chooses us. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to understand and use the gifts we receive along the way.

Best of luck on your journey,

Sia

Art: Storyteller by Susan Sedden Boulet

Link: Spiral Steps

Endnotes:

(1) To find out what I mean by that, read Pratchett and the Pagans

(2) Many Green Witches do this instinctively, don't we? She knew that.

(3) Another one of her students was a software engineer who loved horses. So she worked on a horse ranch as a volunteer, and she was given the same basic quest. Same experience, different paths. She now helps kids with disabilities learn how to ride and she rescues abused and neglected horses.

Essence

What is the essence of your practice?

How do you distill that down one word?

Those were the questions in an academic Pagan group. These questions intrigue me. This is my answer: I'd say it in two words: connection & co-creation.

I say this as a Taoist Pagan as well as a grass roots organizer, a Greenwitch and as someone who works very closely with plants and animals.

For what it's worth, I do not worship the Gods and Goddesses. I celebrate their natures, I honor their gifts and I look for their presence in myself, in others and in the world(s) around me.

Other answers included: Balance * Communion * Compassion * Dialogue * Duty * Ecstasy * Family * Frith (Honor) * Gnosis * Groking * Home * Heart * Justice * Liberation * Paradox * Preparation * Responsibility * * Reclaiming * Restoration * Returning * Reverence * Sacralisation * Song & Story * Study * Syncretism * Thankfulness * Will

I find it interesting that no one said joy, abundance and embracing change; three things I recommend we look for in our teachers and Circles. Is that lacking in our discussions, overall, or do some of us just take these blessings for granted?

Sia