Danny's Blogs

Oh The Places You'll Go! Burning Man Version

2012-01-09T17:46:00.000-08:00

Well This is pretty cool, Burning Man and Dr. Suess go perfectly together and especially this story:

People are nuts!

2011-12-15T09:39:00.001-08:00

WOW!!! Humans are crazy animals! Adrenaline is a powerful drug obviously. But certainly there is more to it than that, many of us thrive off expanding the limits of what is possible and it is incredible to watch! Enjoy

and if you are like me and want more:

2011-11-30T21:13:00.001-08:00

Photo Card

View the entire collection of cards.

PG&E blows up on me

2011-11-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

What a circus!!
And what bad timing.
At the very moment my son Hendrik, is blowing out the three candles on his birthday cake I am sitting here on HWY 280 watching a flurry of activity – fire trucks, policemen, people in orange jackets (maybe PG&E), ambulances, etc. They are hosing and sweeping off the HWY. Traffic has been stopped and diverted to Woodside Road, and even the cars who were past Woodside were turned around and sent back. I am the only civilian witness.

And how did I get here? And why am I still here?

I had to work an open house at school (It is a Sunday) and was on my way home to Hendrik’s birthday party. (also the first time we are having a couple friends over to our new house – only a couple as the house is not ready for a full on party yet). I had just gotten on 280 and was accelerating up the hill in the slow lane when I saw a bunch of dirt shooting into the air. Imagine what it would like if a 30 foot tall dog was digging in the dirt and it was flying out between his two back legs. This was happening at the top of the hill about 100 feet above the freeway. As I approached the explosion it continued to grow in size until it was shooting debris 50 feet in the air and looked more like a volcano erupting than anything else. It began looking like I was going to get hit as I drove past. In my blind spot was a car that was slowing at my same pace so there was no chance of me switching lanes, instead I drove right through the plume of dirt, gas (I smelled it as soon as I hit it) and unfortunately large rocks that was avalanching down the hillside. The first rock passed under the car but the second one was way to big and my car bounced over it. Then I heard the grinding and dragging noise that let me know my car was messed up. I pulled over and called 911.

As I stood there on the phone a mudslide actually was rushing down the hill and out onto the freeway. It sent enough water and mud out into the first two lanes of traffic that cars were hitting it and sending HUGE spays in both directions. Traffic slowed, people crept around to the fast lane. The mudslide continued for a few minutes.

One girl stopped to find out what happened to me – she saw it happen as well. Then she left and I now sit here alone.

I walked down the freeway to talk to the firemen and police. Mostly I wanted to make a police report so I would not have to pay for the damage to my car, but I also figured I was the only witness and the fire department might like to know what happened.

As I approached the firemen one asked in a sarcastic voice if I was lost. I told him that my car had been damaged by the explosion and I was looking to make a police report, I also mentioned that I could tell them what happened if they wanted to which he replied “It is obvious what happened!” in other words, get lost. Another fireman asked me what I saw, I told him I smelled gas as I drove through the cloud and they were all surprised as it was water that they saw in the mudslide. When I told them there was definitely a strong gas smell even Mr. “it is obvious” changed his tone a bit and they decided to take further precautions.
Then I went to the police. I told one I was hoping to make a report. When I told him my car was damaged by a boulder he asked “was it moving?” A dumb question in my mind but whatever, he told me someone would come talk to me once they determined it was safe enough to come over to where I was parked. So I walked back through the scene to my car, where I am now, and where I have been for over an hour now.

Here comes someone finally!!

Well a very nice guy from PG&E came to check out the damage. He told me they were using water to pressure test a gas pipeline and no one expected this to happen – ‘what a disastrous failure’ was what he kept saying. He gave me his card and took my contact info. Someone else, also very nice, called that evening. The guy who called had even heard that I missed Hendrik’s bday. So PG&E is going to pay for our car to get fixed (which I was actually able to drive home) but what do you think they should do to make up for me having to miss Hendrik’s party?

At least no one was hurt – I will live to see another Bday or two…

There is an article here that talks about the ‘driver’ (me) who called 911 and the one car that got damaged (mine).

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/11/06/pge-pipeline-explodes-causes-mudslide-on-i-280-near-redwood-city/#comments

My new project with Bioneers: Education for Action

2011-10-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

Well I have been invited to take part in an exciting project with Bioneers. Bioneers has put together a group of 40 people from around the world to act as a pilot program in taking Bioneers from an informational organization to one of action. This initial group will be focused on Education for Sustainability as this was determined to be the most important action in insuring a sustainable future.

I will surely write about the process but for now, if you are curious how one might organize 40 people to develop and implement a plan to create paradigm shift in education and beyond you can check out this orientation video, it is quite fascinating.

Miss Representation: a powerful new film

2011-09-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

Miss Representation 3 minute Trailer 8/24 from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

The Healthy Mind Platter

2011-06-16T20:51:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I attended an incredible TEDx conference on teaching compassion. It was an incredible day with 25 speakers, workshops, and many incredible attendees. A blog about the event will be coming soon but in the meantime I thought I would share one tidbit with you.

Playing off the USDA's recent launch of the new My Plate campaign for healthy eating (think new and improved food pyramid) one of the speakers - Dan Siegel - came up with the healthy mind platter.

In order to have a healthy mind every one of us needs some of each of the following every day:

-Sleep -
-physical time -
-focus time -
-play time -
-down time -
-time in (personal reflection into how you are feeling) -
and
- connecting time (time connecting to other people) -

Since our minds are who are it makes sense to make sure they remain healthy - so be sure to get your servings of all of the above. I know it can seem pretty basic but with our busy lives and constant connection to media many of us are certainly missing out on some of these things. If you have kids, make sure they are stay have a balance brain diet! These days few of them are actually getting all these things everyday!

OF course when you eat you should also eat for your brain (omega 3, antioxidants, amino acids...), but now we are starting to sound like my middle school science class so I will stop.

Bob Dylan special

2011-05-26T22:06:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan is turning 70 years old. Here is a great special about the man on Democracynow:

San Francisco is so Eurotrash! (Danny to be in SF Chronicle)

2011-05-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

Hey there,

Just a quick funny story:

So Friday night I was going to a "Eurotrash" themed party. As a person who likes to wear the proper costume for any event, I went online to get some ideas, and then I hit a Goodwill thrift shop on my way to the party to get my costume.

As it turns out, the classic Eurotrash look is mostly for men and is basically guys trying to look sexy and wealthy - so - tight pants, a tight shirt unbuttoned, designer sun glasses, gold chain, etc. Pretty basic. I found all that at the thrift shop and threw over it a cheesy white fur coat that I also got at Goodwill a few years back which I wear at Burning Man.

As is often the case, many people gave me props for "best costume". But the funny thing happened before the party.

There was another event in the city in the late afternoon. It was a celebration of some Burning Man art that has been installed on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. They had a party at the United Nations Plaza (which I renamed the UN Playa) with music, art, etc. I met some fun folks there and had a great time dancing. Imagine the Burning Man crowd meets the homeless of the Tenderloin. Well we were all having fun and the homeless crowd could sure dance!

It wasn't long before a woman was taking pictures. She took some of me and then talked to me. She said she was with the San Francisco Chronicle (the newspaper) and told me she had a column on San Francisco Fashion and that I was "so San Francisco". Who knew - San Francisco is Eurotrash! I told her I was dressed up for a costume party and that I just went to the Goodwill. She had not even seen the shirt I had on under my jacket. When I showed her that she asked if I could do more of my "disco dancing" and flash her a bit. I went all out for her and she had a photo shoot worthy of the term Eurotrash, for sure!

Turns out the editors liked the photo it is going to run (I think on page two) of the style section of this Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday June 19th). The lady interviewed me recently to find out where I got each item, what brands I was wearing, etc.. She even asked if I was wearing cologne. That was probably a Eurotrash must which I missed. She was interested in my Goodwill shopping and I turned her on to the used gear sale at REI where I got my shoes. I may be the first person in the style section with a head to toe outfit for under $60. I told her buying used was a good way to shop green, since 'green' is in style these days.

Anke summed up the situation perfectly. When I told her she said: "You are LAST person I would expect to see in the fashion section of the news paper!" Really funny thing - the very next weekend I was at a party in the city and a bunch of people asked me about my t-shirt and one even said he was a fashion photographer and he wished he had his camera. Is that just the new pick up line these days?

Incidentally, everywhere I went the night dressed in the Eurotrash outfit - random bars, walking down the street, I got more compliments on my outfit from random strangers than I ever could have gotten if I had tried to dress for compliments. Maybe the Europeans are on to something here....

a photo from my friend's party:

Must See: the Toothpick tours of San Fran

2011-04-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

Well you gotta check this out, this guy built a kinetic sculpture of San Fran using 100,000 toothpicks. The detail is incredible and balls roll through the city on four different tours - it is a great overview of the city and surrounding areas and an incredible piece of work...

Scott Weaver's Rolling through the Bay from Learning Studio on Vimeo.

my latest project to 'save the world'

2011-04-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

Future generations are going to "save the world". Of course the World itself will not need saving but there are many things on this planet that do need saving or will need saving in the future. So we educators must provide our students with the skills, tools, and understanding they will need as well as a motivation to act as compassionate productive members of a global community. The future generations will get to redesign the way we do nearly everything on this planet and they will need to be ecologically and culturally literate.

I wanted to expand the speed at which education can rise to meet this challenge. In order to ignite change beyond my classroom I started a collaborative network of educators in the San Francisco Bay Area (an beyond perhaps) who are interested in teaching sustainability, social justice, and service learning. Teachers work in isolation from other teachers and developing new curriculum takes loads of time (something teachers don't have a lot of). So I thought if I can create a network among educators who have already developed curriculum they are willing to share it would help speed up the introduction of these topics into schools. Also by modeling better collaboration between schools students will get to know their larger community better and also will be better prepared for the increasingly collaborative world in which they will need to operate.

I began by emailing schools near mine to find interested teachers and we had one very inspiring meeting this winter and have another planned in the spring. Seeing the connections people made at the first meeting and the discussions of possible collaborations between students and teachers from different schools, I got a sense of the power of this project. As a tool for keeping in touch and to provide a platform on which teachers can connect with other educators who have similar interests or have curriculum to share, I created a website (with the help of some high school students) called ECOS - educators collaborating on sustainability, social justice, and service learning. The website was launched last week and you can check it out at: http://ecosnetwork.ning.com/.

If you know any educators who might be interested in joining the network please forward this blog to them.

Happy Spring (into action)

one of my students - inspiring news clip

2011-04-05T11:03:00.001-07:00

Well I have to share this news clip about one of my 7th graders. Pretty cool what he does - he has been doing this since 6th or 5th grade.

13-Year-Old Guitarist to Play at Concordia: MyFoxAUSTIN.com

KRS-ONE

2011-03-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

Ah shit, KRS-ONE (my all time favorite MC) is gonna be in the house this Sat, stoked! Here's a little mix off youtube for all ya'll fans:

tsunami video - unbelievablely devestating

2011-03-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Daily Show: Teachers vs Wall Street

2011-03-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

Well you gotta love the Daily show. It is incredible that the truth is so twisted and obvious and hypocritical and, well I guess you gotta at least be able to laugh at it or we would all go insane!

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Dai Zaobab

2011-02-10T21:59:00.000-08:00

I am teaching a class at my school about poi and I was looking for some videos to show the kids when I came across vidoes of my lovely friend Dai. I had to put them here, he makes me smile and he is also a bad ass performer.

This guy is crazy but incredible

2011-02-08T10:44:00.000-08:00

fuel from algae

2011-02-06T20:24:00.000-08:00

A student from my school is a host on a TV show called Eco Company and here is an excerpt on biofuel from algae. Also a call for kids to go into science as a career.

solar roadways of the future!

2011-01-20T08:44:00.001-08:00

So here is an inspirational 15 minute talk in two parts about a couple who has invented something dreamed up by a 6 year old that could change the world - imagine roads, playgrounds, bike paths, and parking lots made of solar panels. Not only can they generate electricity but light up to warn you of things on the road, heat up to melt snow, ....

Barefoot Running video

2011-01-07T13:24:00.000-08:00

I am not a runner but am all about being barefoot. Unfortunately the ground is so cold in Nor Cal I do not go barefoot often. This problem may be solved by the new "five finger' shoes by Vibram.

This is so worth watching!

2011-01-05T10:02:00.000-08:00

Jamie Oliver: Try Something New

2010-11-23T20:39:00.000-08:00

I love this guy!

Michael Pollan: carrots Vs. Twinkies

2010-11-23T20:32:00.000-08:00

This video came from the video nourish which a guy I met made and which our school is using in its curriculum. Below is a video of various food experts discussing their meaning of the word Nourish - perfect Thanksgiving theme.

The Happiness Advantage

2010-11-18T11:58:00.000-08:00

Well we just had an incredible speaker at my school and I must share his life changing insight!

Shawn Anchor is a positive psychology expert. He shared with us incredible scientific discoveries that can change our lives and the lives of those around us for the better.

Some of what he shared seems like common sense, but he has years of scientific research to prove that what he says is true.

The basic premise is that when we are happy, we are more intelligent, healthier with increased immune systems, we do better in school, are more productive at work and in our personal lives, and that it causes a ripple effect in the people we interact with. In fact he said there are 15 ways to test intelligence and using every single one of those, it has been proven that people with a positive mind frame are more intelligent than those in a neutral or negative mind frame. The converse is true, that when people are neutral, depressed, stressed, or negative they do worse in school, at work, etc.

He also gave very simple things we can all do to increase our happiness and therefor our performance which I will tell you about at the end.

One interesting thing he talked about was part of our brain called mirror neurons. He said that we are hard wired for empathy. Of course we all know that when we watch a video of someone getting hurt we cringe and flinch, or we cry when we see others sad, smile when we see others happy, we even yawn when we see others yawn. His studies has shown that when we see someone experience something, our brain fires up mirror neurons and our brain actually experiences that feeling as if it were happening to us. So when we see someone else yawn when they are tired - our brains actually think we are tired and therefor we yawn too.

This has profound implications, for this means we have the power to effect the moods of those around us and our moods are effected by those around us as well. Someone who is anxious about a test will make other students anxious, while someone who is visibly at ease about a test with make others at ease. The brain actually produces these experiences without us even thinking about them. So being happy will make those around you happier, being stressed will make those around you stressed. Makes perfect sense but it is important to understand that this is our brain working the way it is programmed to do.

Also he pointed out that your brain remembers and changes so that if you make a habit of seeing the bad things in life, your brain actually trains itself to see only the bad things, likewise, if you focus on the positive things in life, your brain trains itself to do just that.

So we are more intelligent, productive, and healthier when we are happy and those around us are influenced by our moods as well.

So how do we increase our positive frame of mind, how can we train ourselves to see the glass half full? Even just realizing this you can take steps to increase your performance when it is needed. Let's say you have a test or a big day at work when you have tons to get accomplished. by doing something you love to do before you go to work or take the test will improve your ability to perform. Just thinking about your happiest moment before doing a task has been proven to significantly increase your performance. And of course, if you are stressed or around others who are stressed or negative, you will perform worse, so don't hang around with the crowd before the test or in the coffee room that is being all negative.

Shawn also made the point that if you do something everyday for 21 days in a row, it will become a habit. He said they have done research and had people do something that make them happy for 21 days in a row and by the end they performed better on intelligence tests. But, he said, after the 21 days they stopped requiring the subject to do the activity and they tested then after 6 months and found that their scores on the tests rose even more significantly as they had created habits of mind that had a positive influence on their mood and therefor their performance.

So he suggests choosing from a basic list of five things that will make you a happier person. Choose one to do for 21 days in a row and see the changes. After 21 days you may not keep doing it everyday, but you will miss it when you don't, it will be a habit for you.

The five things are:
1) exercise - start your day with some exercise, do it for 21 days and make it a habit.

2) three things you are grateful for: start you day by writing down three things you are grateful for. Choose three different things each day and do it for 21 days.

3) journal for 3 minutes about a positive experience. Write a journal entry about something that happened that made you happy. When our brains relive an experience we actually get the same physiological benefits in our brains that we did when we actually experienced it the first time.

4) practice random acts of kindness: send nice emails to people, pay the toll for the car behind you, whatever. Not only will you feel great but the people around you will begin to feel happier and research shows that the number one factor in trying to determine the success of an individual is the community by which they are surrounded. So make that a happy community.

5) meditate for two minutes. We are constantly multi tasking and our brains suffer for it. Shawn says that if we spend two minutes doing nothing but thinking about our breathing - paying attention only to our breath going in and out, that it make profound changes in the brain.

So Shawn suggested making a chart for your wall for the 21 days so you can keep track to be sure to do your thing everyday.

He also said that we are stopped by tiny "activation times". For instance he wanted to play the guitar every day but the 20 seconds it took to take the guitar out of the case prevented him from doing it. So he bought a guitar stand and put the guitar next to the couch where he sits. This can also be used to break bad habits. He said he used to plop down on the couch and use the remote to turn on the the TV. He took the batteries out of the remote and put them in his bedroom. Then he put a book he had been wanting to read by the couch. Once sitting on the couch, it was easier to pick up the book than to go get the batteries for the remote.

How this applies to my teaching. Well of course teaching this to my students will be such a gift to them. I teach about the brain which is the perfect time to incorporate this into my curriculum. I can even give them a homework assignment to do one of the things for 21 days. But also as teachers we can start the day with something to set the mood in a positive light - a joke or good news story. Also before students take a test you can have them all think of a happy memory - what if that was the first question on every test you give.

It also applies to us as teachers and faculty. I remember last year people were bummed that in the faculty lounge the topic of conversation was so often complaining and negative. You can see how this brings moral down but in light of Shawn Anchor's research there is actually scientific evidence to explain why.

Personally I also think about the fact that I often inform people of "bad news" stories because I think we should all be informed about the world around us. But I will now, focus more than ever, on choosing the good news stories to share. I want to help everyone I know take advantage of the advantages in life that come with being happy.

Shawn was an engaging speaker, here is pretty much the same speech he gave to us I found on youtube:

Shawn Anchor speaking Part 1:

Part 1:

Part 3:

The Story of Electronics

2010-11-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

Bioneers: Inspiration for the Revolution

2010-11-03T10:41:00.001-07:00

Just as Gill Scott Heron said: The Revolution Will not be Televised.

In these seemingly hopeless times of increasingly divisive politics; people losing their jobs, homes, and businesses; two political parties that can game the political system for the benefit of the corporatocracy; a country moving away from Democracy and towards Plutocracy, it is easy to think that the global economic and political trains are running out of control with too much inertia to avoid a wreck. However I am here to say that the revolution has begun and you won't see it on TV, at least not yet.

Let me tell you about the revolution, a revolution from the heart of nature.

I recently attended the Bioneers conference in Marin. It is the most inspiring event on the planet Earth, in my humble opinion.

Imagine spending a weekend listening to presentations by and engaging in conversations with CEOs of large corporations, women's rights activists from India, Shaman from the South American rain forest, the nation’s leading chemists, and the Chief of the Iroquois Nation. The topic of conversation: how to save the world by igniting a paradigm shift in human consciousness.

In this blog I will start with a general description of Bioneers and then I will give specific inspiring examples of the people who presented at this year’s event. I will wrap up with a few comments on what all this means to me as an educator. Depending on your interests you may chose to skim parts but I hope you do not skip the blog all together for there is some good stuff here!

General Description:

Bioneers has been around for 20 years and it’s tag line is “revolution from the heart of nature”. Bioneers is a conference celebrating environmental and social justice and the people involved recognize that the Earth is a living system and that all the problems we face today are interlinked. The fact that you cannot have environmental justice without social justice and vice-versa is a fundamental principle of the organization.

There are two major factors, which for me make it so inspirational. First is the fact that the conference brings together people from all different backgrounds – economists, business people, environmental activists, scientists, entrepreneurs, social justice activists, educators, farmers, students, indigenous leaders, artists, movie makers, and the list could go on. The second factor is that despite the fact that all these people are very well aware of the scale of the problems we face on the planet today, they have all come together to share the solutions that they have already proven effective at solving these problems and to outline the path we need to follow to develop further solutions.

The people and the ideas that are represented at the Bioneers conference truly represent a revolution in the way we do everything. Not only a new industrial revolution but a shift in human consciousness. Of course I must say that it is not necessarily new, for much of it is informed by our collaboration and learning from indigenous peoples throughout the globe as well as learning from the millions of species who have lived on this planet without causing the problems our species have created.

One of the ideas embraced by the Bioneers community is that of biomimicry. Copying the way life on this planet already does the things we wish to do. At a basic level is the principle that: “life produces conditions conducive for life.” That is the secret to how life has thrived on this planet for 3.5 billion years. It is also an idea that we have completely left out of our design process for the past 200 years. Nearly everything around us, form the computer I am typing on to the food I ate for lunch has been produced without any consideration of how these products effect the conditions for life to exist on this planet. Michael Ableman in a great slide show of agriculture around the world showed pictures of families in China who have been farming the same land for 4,000 years without any loss of fertility while noting that much of the farm land in North America has been rendered sterile in just a few decades. The co-founder of the field of green chemistry John Warner noted that the tens of thousands of chemicals and materials that fill our world were created by chemists in a lab who had not one class on toxicology. Chemists are trained how to make a chemical red or water soluble or resistant to UV radiation but were never taught how to tell if a chemical they invent might cause cancer. His business partner, Amy Cannon, noted that when she was asked to design products as a working chemist, she was given a long list of design criteria and that list never included things like what will happen to the product when people are done using it or whether or not it was toxic. Mary Gonzales an inspiring community organizer who mentored Barack Obama when he claimed that noble title, made the point that the most alienated people in our society are on the front lines of these issues – working with the pesticides which are causing birth defects in their children, suffering the health effects of inexpensive processed foods, having polluting power plants located in their neighborhoods. She laid out her strategy for solving community issues which revolves around identifying the various stake holders and finding out what is in it for each of them. She said that activists should identify the group of people who are most alienated in their community and find out what it is they want or need. By making this the starting point, she argued, we will all end up solving the problems that are important to us.

One of the youngest of this year's speakers, Jess Rimington, made the point that this generation and the ones following are going to get to redesign the way we do nearly everything. We need to redesign everything so whatever we do increases the ability of life to exist. We need to be efficient, non toxic, and the model of production needs to be circular, not linear. In nature there is no waste. One organism's waste is food for another. We need this to be true for factories. Land fills, toxic chemicals, and pollution need to be designed out of the system. As does poverty and exploitation of natural and human resources.

As an educator it is exciting to think that the students I teach today will be entering a radically changing world and that I may be able to have an influence on what kind of effect they will have on this change. Much of the conference addressed more specifically how, we as educators, can prepare our students for the tasks ahead of them and to spread the information that is shared at Bioneers.

Reinventing the world seems to be a daunting task, but if it is shown, as the Bioneers have been able to do, that the solutions create win-win-win solutions for everyone involved then perhaps it will not be as difficult as many of us imagine. This is also where talk of a paradigm shift in human consciousness comes in to play. Only with a readjustment of our priorities as a species on this planet, will people find the motivation to change the way they make decisions.

Our matter is not what matters. Meaning the matter that makes up our body is not what defines us. We are all made of the same stuff, as are all the other living things on this planet. We are defined by our relationship to others. If we are a care giver or a criminal, a clown or a warrior, an herbivore or a carnivore, these distinctions exist in the invisible world outside of who we are, they are based on how we interact with the world. Do we suck life out of those around us or do we breath life into them? Do we create conditions conducive to life? Having empathy for others and being generous with our giving is not a purely altruistic way of being if one accepts the fact that we are all connected. Being good to the Earth is being good to ourselves. Being good to the people who make our shoes and grow our food can be thought of as a selfish endeavour. The better off the people who share this planet with us are, the better our lives will be. Restoring and preserving the environment is going to create the conditions in which our genes, many generations from now, will be able to survive.

One of the founders of Bioneers, Kenny Ausubel, gave the opening remarks for this years conference, which can be found on Huffington Post. His address is titled: “The Revolution Has Begun - "The Shift Hits the Fan".

He suggests that: “We're experiencing the dawn of a revolutionary transformation.” He makes reference to the problems we face; the concentration of wealth and the distribution of poverty, and the fact we are reaching “peak everything”, but he notes that: “From breakdown to breakthrough, it's a revolution from the heart of nature and the human heart. It leads with a basic shift in our relationship with nature from resource and object to mentor, model and partner. He highlights the fact that countries around the world are making huge advances in their investment in renewable energy, without lowering their standards of living. Germany for example has reduced its emissions by nearly 30% since 1990. Sweden, addressing the fact that 25% of industrial societies’ carbon production comes from the production of the food they eat, has passed a law requiring carbon labeling on food and restaurant menus and they are planning to phase out fossil fuels for energy production by 2020 and gasoline powered cars by 2030. China has become the largest manufacturer of wind turbines and solar panels and is even building green cities. He points out that industries from engineering to banking are redesigning the way they see the world to embrace this new revolution.

He reminds us that nature can be our guide during this transformation. Nature uses energy from the sun, its strengths are diversity and cooperation, it recycles everything, and again, life creates conditions conducive to life!”

And in jest he gave us the classic quote from Groucho Marx: “Why should we bother with the next generation, they never did anything for us!”

Inspiring examples of how change is possible from this year’s conference:

Gary Hirshberg: CEO of Stonyfield Farm

It is true that in this day and age money makes the world go round. So if it can be shown that being environmentally and socially responsible is profitable then convincing companies to change the way they do business should not be too difficult. Gary Hirshberg the founder and CEO of Stonyfield organics is an inspiring example of this fact. He has taken his business from a demonstration farm with 7 cows to a $35 million dollar a year business, all the while making social and environmental responsibility his fundamental business strategy. And each step he has taken to improve the environment and the lives of the people involved with his company, the more profitable his company became. In fact during the recession with the $7.8 million dollars his company saved through energy efficiency measures, he was able to hire 46 new employees. The company buys 100 different products from around the world and he pays top dollar for everything he buys making sure the farmers are getting a living wage. He pays for farms to convert to organic, his employees get incredible benefits including 2 month sabbaticals, he looks at the company’s carbon footprint from every angle including how his employees get to work and what kind of diet reduces the amount of methane his dairy cows produce by burping and farting (actually one of the big problems with the industry). When he was faced with having to build a sewage treatment plant for his facility he learned that by building a traditional plant he would produce two truckloads of sludge per week that would need to be taken ‘away’. As “there is no such thing as ‘away’, is one of his guiding principles he decided to invest an extra $600,000 and build an anaerobic facility that would completely process the waste. The extra money was paid off in only 9 months and in four years he has not had one truckload of waste come out of the facility.

Every farm he buys from must go through a greenhouse gas and fair labor toolkit. When farms are run organically the farmers make twice as much money and the animals live twice as long. He supports 1,760 family organic farms. In buying bananas he was able to lift 100 families out of poverty. In buying sugar from Brasil he was able to convert 35,000 acres of sugar cane to green harvest which has increased soil health, and in 15 years there has been a 90% reduction in pest damage, 189 species have returned to the fields, the water is healthier, and there has been a 10% increase in yield. By changing the cows' diet off of corn and soy onto omega 3 grasses he had a 30% reduction in green house gas emissions and an increase in the animals longevity. Gary switched all his little lunch sized yogurt containers to plant based plastic. When he did this he paid his farmers to take our GMO corn from their fields and his development of the container is open source so other companies can use it. He said if all yogurt companies switched to plant based plastic it would reduce CO2 production equal to burning 1.5 million barrels of oil a year. When cynics like me might say: growing food to make packaging is not sustainable, Gary would say "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." He makes the good point that we need to make improvements where we can and as we continually improve we will get closer to perfect but we will not get there unless we start with some imperfect, but good, improvements.

His company has seen an annual growth of 20% for 20 years and he gives 10% of his profits to environmental organizations. He points out that we have the proof that organic farming is better business all around and that we need to get the government on board to help farmers transition and to get organic up to scale so EVERYONE can afford to eat it. Right now our government heavily subsidizes large scale conventional farming thanks to the fact that the five biggest ag. corporations have spent $28 billion dollars lobbying the government just since Barack Obama has been in office.

And of course Gary Hirshberg is not the only one to prove that sustainability is profitable. Ray Anderson the CEO of a billion dollar carpet manufacturing company, is halfway to making it a zero waste company. And like Gary Hirshberg has shown, each step he took to be more socially and environmentally responsible made his company more profitable.

Fun quotes Gary used:

"Success is the ability to move from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm." -Churchill

"Anyone who thinks they are to small to make a difference has never been in bed with a mosquito!" - Gandhi.

My own tangent:

Of course the idea that everything is connected needs to be embraced by governments and society to take the economic argument for sustainabilty to the next level. Modern economic theory needs to be completely revised. As it is, the cost of coal generated power, for example, does not factor in the medical costs of the people effected by the mining of the coal or the air pollution, or the cost to the fishermen who’s fisheries are ruined because they are downstream from the places where the mountain top removal takes place. These ‘externalities’ need to be factored in. They are true costs to society and in the ‘real world’ using natural resources sustainably and keeping people out of poverty are less expensive to society than the current system.

How is it that it is less expensive to farm using toxic chemicals that cause cancer and destroys the fertility of the soil for future generations than using farming methods that restore soil fertility and produce healthier food? Of course besides the fact that the externalities are not factored in to the true cost, much of the reason is that large scale agriculture is often subsidized by governments and the oil industry from which we derive our fertilizers and pesticides is subsidized as well.

Another perfect example of how a holistic approach to the world makes more economic sense is our current problem with immigration and drugs. Our economic policies of free trade have caused millions of farmers to be driven out of business. This has happened in Columbia, Mexico, Haiti, even the US. These farmers, no longer able to support their families often turn to growing drug crops to make enough money, or they become economic refugees and travel to cities and foreign countries to find what work they can. If our economic policies helped farmers make a good living while farming their land sustainably, we would not have the problems with immigration and drugs that we do today.

But I stray off topic a bit.

John Warner: Green Chemist

John was one of the nation’s leading chemists. He invented thousands of new molecules and worked in industry as well as in academia. When his two year old son died of a birth defect he had an epiphany. What if a chemical he invented or worked with caused the birth defect that killed his son?

He noted that no matter where chemists were educated throughout the world, they were not required to take one class on toxicology. They are trained to know how to make chemicals and materials that are resistant to UV rays, clear, flexible, etc, but were not being taught how to recognize if a chemical might be toxic. And these were the people who are making everything around us. And during the design process toxicity was not even thought about. If something turned out to be toxic it was usually only discovered after decades of use and then the industry would hide the fact or try to cover it up.

Well John and another like minded member of the faculty where he was a professor, Amy Cannon, to give up their secure careers to prove that Green Chemistry is a viable endeavour. Not only has their company, Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, developed hundreds of new molecules, they have started a global movement to change science and chemistry education from the Kindergarten through University level with their non profit: Beyond Benign. They have developed a k-12 curriculum to teach green chemistry to students of all ages. They recognize that fewer and fewer US students are going into chemistry and that companies have overwhelming desire to hire green chemists but there just aren’t very many who are trained in this area.

So what is ‘Green Chemistry’? Green chemistry takes into account our basic premise from before that ‘life produces conditions conducive for life’. So green chemistry is trying to re-imagine how things are made so they are non-toxic, use little energy to produce or recycle, they do not end up in a landfill when they are finished being used. (see John's 12 principles of Green Chemistry for more info). Biomimicry is essential for green chemistry. Nature has invented ways of making things strong, colorful, water soluble, water resistant, etc. And everything nature makes is food for something! Using structure to create color rather than chemicals is just one example. How is it that we use food coloring that is poisonous! Wow, they figured out how to make food red. But if it kills you, who cares? (on a side note: Today I heard on the radio that in Europe natural colors are used to color M & M's while here in the US, food color made from petroleum (which is poisonous to us) are used. McDonald's shakes in England are pink from strawberries while McDonald's "strawberry" shakes in America are pink from petroleum based food coloring. That's an example of what we get when governments fail to protect its citizens by regulating business and when lobbyists spend billions of dollars keeping the public uninformed by preventing proper labeling of such products.)

So green chemistry is truly one of the revolutions that the next generation is going to get to embrace and run with. One thing that modern chemistry does is use lots of energy to produce high temperatures and pressure under which chemicals can be made. It also takes lots of energy to recycle these chemicals at the end of their useful life. Well nature does just about everything at room temperature! So figuring out how this happens is another example of green chemistry. John had radiation therapy to treat his eczema. He wondered what it was that the light did to the molecules to produce the changes that cured his disease. He figured out how the molecules are changed by the light and then programmed chemicals to do what he wanted when a light is shined on them. So for instance he created a soft substance that could be formed into the shape of a bag and then when light was shined on it, it would become hard and resistant to water, acids, etc. He also learned that e-coli were not susceptible to being changed by radiation. He discovered that they produce an enzyme which reverses the molecular change caused by the light. So he produced an enzyme which would reverse the hardening of the bag mentioned earlier. When you are done with the bag, you only need to put it into a solution with the enzyme and it dissolves and is ready to be made into something else by forming it and shining a light on it. And all this happens at room temperature.

Now we cannot even imagine where this is going to go! Nature makes things that self replicate. The shell on a mollusk was given as an example. John challenged us to imagine something you spray onto a building and it builds itself into a solar panel. Nature uses CO2 as a building block while we consider it a form of air pollution. Imagine bricks that build themselves out of the CO2 that comes from a power plant. Vaccines that do not need refrigeration are something else they are working on – once again using biomimicry. This invention will save millions of lives. And the list goes on…

John Francis: founder of Planetwalk an environmental organization

One of my favorite talks of the year. John as a 'hippy youth' decided first to stop riding in cars and then to stop talking. When he stopped talking he realized he had not been listening. He ended up remaining silent for 17 years and walking around the world. On his 7 year walk across the US he stopped at various universities where he studied and taught (all while not talking) and he ended up with a PH.D. in environmental studies. He became a United Nations Ambassador, he wrote Oil Pollution legislation for the US government, and started environmental education programs in countries throughout the world.

After 17 years he started talking again because he had something to say. He came to the conclusion that we are the environment and how we treat each other is how we treat the environment. This message that equal rights for people is part of the environmental movement is the message he shares today.

He gave a very funny and engaging talk and his kind, insightful, humorous manner must be seen so although this is a different talk than he gave at Bioneers, it is a must watch: John Francis' TED talk:

Jess Rimington: founder at age 18 of the One World Youth Project

Jess Rimington on her website calls herself a "social entrepreneur, artist, and global advocate for the power of international grassroots communication to ignite crowd accelerated innovation and affect local social change". Wow, that is worth reading again!

She is yet another incredibly inspiring person who spoke at Bioneers. She began changing the world in profound ways when she was a teenager. In 2004 when she was just 18 years old, she started an international organization called the One World Youth Project, described on her website as "an innovative education start-up connecting schools to transform students into empowered, discerning, and empathetic global citizens." Also worth digesting for a moment.

The organization is quite incredible. It's not too small of a goal is to transform education on a global scale!

Einstein said that "we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Jess is an example of young mind who has a new kind of thinking and is solving the problems the generations before her have created. She says with excitement that young people today get to "almost completely reinvent how almost everything is done on Earth." We live in a world of globalization and her strategy is to "work with it's potential". She sees a world that is interconnected but still disconnected. She wants to change that by transforming education to teach empathy and cultural competency. This is what led her to start the One World Youth Project. She sees a world where having lone leaders is not enough in an increasingly collaborative world.

Her project is designed to engage students to solve real existing problems in their community and is designed to be self sustaining. What they do is to partner Universities with middle or high schools. University students go to the schools and implement the program, this helps create a relationship that encourages students to move on to higher education when they graduate. This partnership is then matched with similar partners in another country. The students begin by connecting on a level of friendship. Once this is established they look at the UN Millenium Development Goals and chose a problem to tackle. They then map out and explore their own communities to see how this problem shows itself locally. Next they come up with a plan and implement their solution to address the problem. Check out the website for more details.

A quote Jess has on her website which I love is: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." --Howard Thurman.

Mallika Dutt: Human Rights Leader, founder of Breakthrough

Mallika has taken human rights activism into the 21st century. She has demonstrated that by using a variety of modern media forms she can make wide spread change. She started an organization called Breakthrough who's tag line is "bring human rights home". On their website they describe themselves as "an innovative, international human rights organization using the power of popular culture, media, and community mobilization to transform public attitudes and advance equality, justice, and dignity in India and the United States".

Breakthrough has trained 75,000 activists in India to educate and take action on issues like violence against women and HIV awareness. "Human rights starts at home" is one of breakthrough's fundamental principals. Mallika made the point that once youth are empowered through Breakthrough's training to address and issue like violence against women they become empowered activists and they often take on other issues in their communities. For this reason the 75,000 activists that have been trained by Breakthrough are now becoming a huge positive force for change in India and beyond.

One of Breakthrough's multimedia campaigns is called "Bell Bajao" which means "Ring the Bell". This is a simple public awareness campaign to end violence against women. Using creative television ads as well as other media they are encouraging men and boys to take action when they hear women being abused, by ringing the door bell. Then they ask for milk or ask for the time or whatever, the point is to just interrupt the activity and let the perpetrator know people are listening. This campaign is expanding past India to places such as Africa where they may not even have door bells but the form of interruption is adapted to the local community.
Recently Bell Bajao went global at the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative and the Secretary General of the UN, Mr. Ban Ki Moon, became the inaugural champion of the Bell Bajao Global campaign and recorded a public service TV spot for the organization.

Check out examples of the Bel Bajao TV ads:

Dr. James Hansen: head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Dr. Hansen testified before congress in 1988 warning about human caused climate change. He spoke to the Bioneers community in detail about the science behind climate change. He noted that it is true that the climate has changed in the past but that now, due to our actions, it is changing again and much faster than it probably ever did before. CO2 in the atmosphere is now 389 parts per million (ppm) and it was 280 ppm during pre-industrial times. If we want to have a climate similar to what we have enjoyed during the past 7,000 years, which has allowed the rise of human civilization, scientists believe we need to reduce that amount to 350ppm. 50 million years ago it was 1000 ppm and there were no ice sheets and the sea level was 75 meters higher than it is today. He pointed out that the natural rate of change in CO2 in the atmosphere is .0001ppm/year while humans are changing it at a rate of 2ppm/year.

Dr. Hansen is now sponsoring a "million letter march" to advocate to our elected officials the instigation of a carbon fee on the production of CO2 by any industry. This fee would be paid back to every citizen in this country equally. Many believe this is the best way to provide incentive for companies to pollute less and for people to use less energy. Energy will be more expensive, especially that which created more CO2, which is why we would each get a check, every month, from the tax, to offset the any rise in prices. This system will make polluting energies more expensive while making renewables more competitive as they go through their transition into large scale production. You can learn about the movement and how to write a letter at: www.millionlettermarch.org.

Dr. Hansen was followed by an incredible 16year old youth environmental activist named Alec Loorz. He was introduced with the following quote from David Brower: "I am always impressed with what young people can do before adults tell them its impossible."

Alec Loorz: Youth Climate Change acitvist, founder of Kids vs. Global Warming

Alec gave a short, firey, and inspiring speech. He quoted Thomas Jefferson "Every Generation needs a new revolution". He said he defines sustainability as: "Living as if the future matters". A powerful definition in my opinion. His organization is organizing a million kids march on Mother's Day, May 8, 2011 called the "iMatter March". He is calling on youth to organize marches in their communities to call on the "ruling generation" to change the way they do business and to remember that the youth matter.

On his website he has a very clever video called: iMatter: Story of Global Warming, here it is:

Elizabeth Kapu'uwailani Lindsey, PH.D. filmmaker, anthropologist, first female National Geographic Fellow

Elizabeth was another inspiring female voice at the conference. a descendant of Hawaiian Chiefs, English seafarers, and Chinese merchants she was raised by Hawaiian elders who profesised her role as a steward of ancestral wisdom when she was a young girl. She spoke about the interrelatedness of poverty, education, cultural survival, biodiversity, and health.

She spent years learning from the world's leading "way finder" who was a Micronesian Elder who was skilled in the art of navigation and knowing about the world and the future based on signs from nature such as waves, wind, birds, clouds, and the stars.

She talked about how in this technological age we are "more connected but more lonely". That we are "bloated with information but starved for wisdom". She said we need to shake ourselves out of society's stupor and to remember that "everything is sacred".

Other memorable quotes from what she said: "Our obstacles are a prelude to our greatness" and "Until the lioness is given a voice, the story of the hunt glorifies the hunter". This last quote strikes me as very poignant with regards to the wars we find ourselves fighting as a nation. How often do we get to hear the voice of the people in who's counties we are fighting?

She related stories of what she learned from her Micronesian mentor and she ended with a statement that referred to a valuable lesson she learned him: "may we always close our eyes to see more clearly".

Peter Warshall: Dreaming New Mexico

Here is a story of real change being made. Bioneers has a project called Dreaming New Mexico which is changing how the state does everything to incorporate the Bioneers philosophy into the planning and decision making. They created a dream of what a sustainable and just state would be like and then are taking the steps needed to create that. They have two main focuses: creating an age of renewable energy and creating an age of local foodsheds and making New Mexico a Fair Trade State.

Peter Warshall the co-director of Dreaming New Mexico spoke about the process of developing and implementing the program. He began with a quote: "When you walk into the future, you must walk in beauty". The program is creating an alternative economic model to the WTO by turning New Mexico into a Fair Trade State. Throughout the process the point of the project is to protect biodiversity; end hunger, poverty, and food insecurity; protect cultural diversity (New Mexico has 22 sovereign Native American nations); help farmers; improve the economy; among others. They are taking a truly holistic approach. For example they consider farmers to be ecosystem managers and they are developing a system to pay farmers to take care of the land. Using food sheds and value chains as tools they are providing a "globalocalized" model for envisioning and implementing a radical shift in the way we produce, market, and eat food.

They are turning the dream into reality one step at a time. One small example is that they discovered farmers did not have a good local market for their apples while schools were importing apples to feed to their students. Why weren't the farmers selling their apples to the schools? It turned out that the apples had to be packaged and polished in just the right way and the farmers did not have the means to do that. So by providing the farmers with a polisher and packaging tips and equipment, they not only created a local market for the farmers, they got local organic apples into the schools. They also recognize that not everything can be produced locally all year round which is why they look at their 'value chain' on a global scale and are making New Mexico a Fair Trade state.

This work is providing the world with perhaps the largest model of its kind. The governor of New Mexico recently announced that June 25th, 2010 is officially "Bioneers - Dreaming New Mexico day." How about "Dreaming California"? "Dreaming America"? Bring it on!

Peter ended with a quote: "Walk gently on the Earth, for it is the face of our children."

Destiny Arts:

Just to illustrate the diverse cultural threads which make up the Bioneers fabric, Peter's address was followed by an incredible hip hop dance performance by Destiny Arts. This is a dance company for public school youth in the East Bay that teaches movement and violence prevention. Their performance was one of the best choreographed dances I have seen, plus it had an entertaining and poignant social justice message.

Mary Gonzoles: legendary community organizer and California director of the Gamaliel Foundation

Mary Gonzales was another incredible inspiring speaker. She used her life story to illustrate much of what she was trying to explain. She is a Mexican-American Chicago native and growing up her parents told her she had no use for school for the only thing she would do in her life was raise a family. So as a girl she learned to clean and cook, got married young, and began to have kids. She believed that as a poor woman of color she had nothing to contribute to society. She felt alienated from the world and even her own community. One day her minister invited her to take part in some community meetings. She explained that she would be happy to put out the chairs or cook some food but that she would have nothing important to contribute to the meeting. Well the minister did not let her take the easy way out and insisted she come to the meetings. She became forced to engage in the community and as she did her alienation began to disappear. Now she is on a quest to end others' alienation. She has become an incredible force in community organizing, mentoring Barack Obama when he was a community organizer in Chicago. She has successfully waged campaigns against multibillion dollar corporations and she had incredible insight to share about how to be successful in organizing the community.

One of her fundamental beliefs is that social justice and environmental issues are intimately linked. She also said that everything is driven by power and self interest. She said that to have a successful movement you must first listen to all the parties involved and find out what is in their self interest. Then you find where these converge and you get power in movements.

She told us as an audience of "tree huggers" that to start a movement we need to identify the poor, disenfranchised, often people of color, in our community - the people who feel alienated. Find out what their issues are. We will discover that their issues are the same as ours and that by working together we can be a force for change.

Lynne Twist: founder of Pachamama Alliance and the Soul of Money Institute.

Lynne Twist is a world-renowned fund raiser who has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to address some of humanity's most pressing problems. She founded an organization called the Pachamama Alliance. This organization has a two fold mission according to its website: "to preserve the Earth's tropical rain forests by empowering the indigenous people who are its natural custodians and to contribute to the creation of a new global vision of equity and sustainability for all."

Part of the origins of this organization are from the indigenous Achuar people of Ecuador. As their rain forest home was threatened by development from the outside world, leaders from their community decided to go out into the previously unknown world to teach the rest of humanity about their culture to try and save it. Along with this mission they brought a story, an ancient prophesy that told of a condor and an eagle. It said that one day there would be great problems facing people and only when the condor and eagle fly as one will humanity be able to solve the problems. The shaman of the Achuar recognized that the condor represents the indigenous people and the wisdom of sustainability that they keep and the eagle represents the industrialized nations that have incredible technology and control over the planet. Only when the modern knowledge and ancient wisdom comes together will we solve the problems we face and this is the message that they bring with them.

I had the honor a number of years ago to guide an Achuar Shaman, while he was visiting the Bay Area, into our sacred redwood forests of Marin. While you might imagine an exotic tail of hallucinogenic herbs and profound spiritual revelations, I actually had Noah with me as a baby so our journey into Muir Woods was more like two tourists with a stroller gawking at the big trees. But I could certainly play the story up if I ever want to.

A quote Lynne used in her talk: "If you are coming to help us, don't bother. But if you know that your fate is reliant on ours, then lets work together."

Lynne did not really talk about her past work but instead introduced her new initiative, Four Years. Go.. She said she had taken a man into the rain forest to meet the Achuar. He was so moved he told her he would do anything to help her. It turned out he was the owner of the world's largest independently owned advertising agency. So she enlisted his services to launch a campaign that in her words "is going to change the trajectory of mankind. To change the human dream."

Lynne acknowledged that many scientists believe if we do not change our trajectory now that we will experience catastrophic collapse in 30 years. So she concluded that the next four years will determine the future of life on Earth for thousands of years.

They chose the number four because it is long enough that people know change can happen - it is the time it takes to go through high school or university. It is also short enough that there is urgency, we need to start today if we are to be successful in creating change in four years.

The website says "Four Years. Go. is a campaign to catalyze and empower fundamental shift in the direction of humanity, inspiring collaborative action, connecting individuals and organizations, and amplifying best practices and successes." As I write this they have 1022 allied organizations.

This is an example of how people in the Bioneers community feel they need to take their solutions to the next level. To effect change on a global scale. This is the revolution and perhaps with Lynne's help it will get some television time. But whether or not it does, as you can see from the small sample of things I told you about that are going on, the revolution is in full effect. What are you going to do to be a part of it? You have Four Years. Go!

Watch the Four Years. Go. video:

Conclusion and how this all relates to my role as an educator.

Well I only told you about some of the many incredible speakers I heard and did not really even discuss the workshops I attended in my three days at Bioneers. There are so many more people and actions to tell you about. Like john a. powell a civil rights attourney who is creating new models of housing around centers of opportunity and stresses the fact that everything is linked, the importance of systems thinking, and that everything we see through our cultural perspective. Or Gloria Felt, the past president of Planned Parenthood and author of the book: No excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change The Way We Think About Power who points out that women do 70% of the world's farming, receive 10% of the world's pay, and own 1% of the world's assets. Read her 9ways blog.

I did not even tell you about Jane Goodall who spoke. Everyone knows who she is and if you ever get a chance to hear her speak, do. She has a global educational organization called Roots and Shoots and she told of how she was able to create protected habitat for the chimps she studied by teaching the local people how to sustainably farm coffee. This became such a profitable business that the local community created a habitat zone around the park where the chimps lived. Another example of a win-win-win situation.

So I hope all these stories inspired you. They certainly did me. As an educator I cannot tell you what a gift it is to be given such positive inspiration and hope for the future. For, as a science teacher it is my job to explain the problems we face on this planet. It is my passion to teach kids to think about how their actions effect the world around them. But to have these success stories, to be able to explain that solutions to the problems have been found and that many other solutions, of the kind we have not even dreamed of, will be thought of by people like them, the future generations. I now tell my students, thanks to Jess's insight, that THEY will get to reinvent how we do almost everything. They are going to live in a world where they can tell their grandchildren "when I was a kid we had things like landfills. That's right, we actually just threw things into a big pile and left them there." or "when I was a kid we actually used oil from the ground to make poisons which we poured on the food that we grew." or "when I was a kid we drank water out of plastic water bottles that caused cancer and we even made baby chew toys out of this same toxic material!"

So besides telling my students this, how, in light of the kind of future we want them to create, can we best educate our students? How can we prepare them for the 21st century when we do not even know what it is going to look like? This is a question schools ask - last year I was on a committee at my school called "education for the 21st century". There are books written about it. At Bioneers is has become an increasing focus of the conversation for it is recognized that we need to not only develop in the students the skills they will need, like problem solving and creativity, but we need to give them the ethical/spiritual knowledge that will allow them to create the world that Bioneers envisions. We need students who have empathy, who understand the interconnectedness of everything, can think systemically, are culturally literate and globally connected.

One of the places to start this is by teaching children a sense of place. Make sure they are connected to their homeland - they know where their water comes from, their food, they know who lives around them. Who lived on the land before them? Engage students in map making to get to know their local area.

We need to incorporate art and observation. To foster emotional intelligence. We discussed the need to mix the disciplines, to use inquiry based teaching methods, to teach bio-regionalism in every discipline, to learn about sustainability in every discipline. The fact that teachers do not need to know all the answers and that students need to learn to think holistically.

I was just looking at my notes from a talk by Anthony Cortese about greening higher education and they are worth summarizing here as many of them also apply to education in general.

Anthony Cortese: Founder of Second Nature and the Presidents Climate Committment

Anthony Cortese is on a mission to change higher education. He believes that colleges should be examples of sustainability to governments.

He points out that change is not enough, we need transformation. We currently have the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced, to literally save our life support system. He points out that not only do we need to change how colleges and universities educate our students but they need to teach by example. All the higher education institutions in this country combined have a higher budget than all but 31 countries. Community colleges hold 46% of all higher ed students and they are leading the way in training green students. This is why he started the Presidents Climate Commitment and has 700 campuses across the nation committed to becoming carbon neutral and 340 of those have already submitted action plans on how they plan to get there. He says we need a healthy, just, and sustainable society and we need to make it inevitable!

As far as education he says we need to teach systems thinking and ecology to EVERY student. That we need to teach that sustainability is not only an environmental issue but a social justice, economic, and equality issue. We need to get rid of the linear thinking of education, break down the silos in which we have divided the various disciplines. We need to use less energy, eliminate waste, live off of nature's income - not its capital, teach biomimicry, and that we not only need to transform science and technology but also the arts, religious, and social aspects of our society.

He says education needs to be active, experiential, engage students in problem solving, service learning, and to make their communities sustainable.

He envoked the old adage that we must "Throw our hats over the fence" and noted that "Tragedy in life is not in not achieving a goal, but in not having a goal."

Now all these thoughts have me thinking about how I can use this to inform my teaching. To transform my teaching. But one problem is that I only teach 75 students a year. So if I want to help make these changes inevitable I need to scale up my influence on the world around me. This leads me to ponder, how can I change the school community where I work - what about the upper school of which I have little relationship. But we are only one school. What about all the other schools out there? This brings me back to the idea of bio-regional education and that perhaps I need to try to instigate change on a regional level. Perhaps I can enlist teachers from different schools in the area to collaborate on a project to either educate our students or to transform the institutions where we teach collectively. But then we are only one region in a big country so what ever kind of collaborative project comes of this I would like to make it a model for other regions to be able to follow to come up with their own regional collaborative educational projects centered around sustainability. Sounds like I may be thinking a bit big? I am busy enough as a teacher right? Well I think I will throw my hat over the fence and then figure out how to get it back. Because we have four years. Go.

Please email me at dboyer@menloschool.org if you are interested in working towards the goal of educating our youth to take humanity in a whole new direction...

Gill Scott Heron: The Revolution will not be televised

2010-10-27T19:19:00.000-07:00

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

Hoop Girl

2010-10-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

Besides being super hooper she drops wisdom about leading a happy healthy life, and she's hot.

rapping organic farmers

2010-10-25T19:09:00.000-07:00

An interesting marketing gimmick.

Bioneers 2010

2010-10-19T15:04:00.000-07:00

Well the Bioneers conference is the most inspiring thing I have ever experienced. I will write a full blog about it but for now here are two of MANY great talks that happened this year:

John Warner, Green Chemistry:

John Warner: Intellectual Ecology from Bioneers on Vimeo.

Mallika Dutt: Changing the Frame:

Mallika Dutt: Changing the Frame from Bioneers on Vimeo.

update: Obama goes solar on White House, 187 countries to take action 10-10-10

2010-10-05T14:06:00.000-07:00

Hey there,
Well today the White House will announce that it will put solar panels back on the White House.
350.org pushed for this as part of their 10-10-10 global climate change work party. They now have over 6,000 actions happening in 187 countries! (if you come to Decompression this Sunday I will be doing a solar cooking demo as my small action)

A list of interesting actions:

--
10/10/10 Event Highlights

Funniest: Sumo wrestlers cycling to practice in downtown Tokyo.

Most remote: An education center in the Namib Desert in Namibia installing six solar panels.

Smallest country taking part: Divers on the smallest island nation of the world, Nauru (8.1 square miles) will plunge into their coral reefs for an underwater clean-up.

Most presidential: President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives is installing solar panels on his roof.

Most tipsy: Partiers in Edinburgh will be throwing a "Joycott" (a reverse boycott) at a local bar that agreed to put 20% of its extra revenues on 10/10/10 to making the bar more energy efficient. Attendees will try and drink as much as possible to raise money. Cheers!

Most poignant: In San Pedro Garza Garcia, Mexico, students will hand out solar-powered lights to families who are still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Alex this June, 2010.

Most cross-cultural: Over 100 cyclists from Jordan, Israel and Palestine taking part in a 3-day bicycle relay to carry water from the Yarmouk River and the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea to symbolize the need for cooperation to stop climate change and save precious water resources.

Most educational: 850 universities in China, India, and the United States are joining 10/10/10 as part of the Great Power Race campaign, a clean energy competition.

Most carbon cut: On 10/10/10 the Mayor of Mexico City will sign a commitment to reduce the city's emissions 10% in a single year. The city government will be directly responsible for 5% of the reductions and lead a public campaign to get citizens to cut the remaining 5%.

Most futuristic: Young people in Barbados will be demonstrating the viability of fuel cell technology in a hovercraft they have built themselves.

Most ?????: We want to know what's the most fascinating thing about your event. My more web-savvy colleagues tell me you can feature it as a comment on this popular Facebook post.

The associated press article about Obama going solar:

Here comes the sun: White House to go solar

By DINA CAPPIELLO – 10 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Solar power is coming to President Barack Obama's house.

The most famous residence in America, which has already boosted its green credentials by planting a garden, plans to install solar panels atop the White House's living quarters. The solar panels are to be installed by spring 2011, and will heat water for the first family and supply some electricity.

The plans will be formally announced later Tuesday by White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Nancy Sutley and Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush both tapped the sun during their days in the White House. Carter in the late 1970s spent $30,000 on a solar water-heating system for West Wing offices. Bush's solar systems powered a maintenance building and some of the mansion, and heated water for the pool.

Obama, who has championed renewable energy, has been under increasing pressure to lead by example by installing solar at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, something White House officials said has been under consideration since he first took office.

The decision perhaps has more import now after legislation to reduce global warming pollution died in the Senate, despite the White House's support. Obama has vowed to try again on a smaller scale.

Last month, global warming activists with 350.org carried one of Carter's solar panels — which were removed in 1986 — from Unity College in Maine to Washington to urge Obama to put solar panels on his roof. It was part of a global campaign to persuade world leaders to install solar on their homes. After a meeting with White House officials, they left Washington without a commitment.

That campaign followed calls by the solar industry for the White House to become a national billboard for solar power.

"Putting solar on the roof of the nation's most important real estate is a powerful symbol calling on all Americans to rethink how we generate electricity," Solar Energy Industries Association President Rhone Resch said.

reviving Carter's Vision on Global Day of Action

2010-09-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

I tell this story to people all the time. Jimmy Carter was a visionary. He put solar panels on the Whitehouse 31 years ago and challenged the United States to become solar powered, pointing out we could get off our addiction to foreign oil which would make us safer and we could become leaders in the solar industry. Then Reagan came in and took the solar panels down. Meanwhile countries like China and Germany have taken Carter's dream and made it a reality.

Well today activist Bill McKibben (who I have met) and some college students from Unity College in Maine are taking one of Carter's original panels back to the Whitehouse to try and get Obama to reinstall the solar dream. The panels have actually been heating water at Unity College are still up and running.

Carter's words when he installed the solar panels are noteworthy:

"A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people."

Bill McKibben is asking Obama to install solar panels on the Whitehouse on 10-10-10. Sungevity has offered to donate the array and McKibben has found Union workers to install it.

The day 10-10-10 is being organized by 350.org as the biggest global environmental work day in history. You can go HERE to plan an event or find an event in your area to attend. So far they have over 1700 events happening in over 140 countries.

Other words from Carter's 1977 speech:

"By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us."

"Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war" -- except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy."

"We must look back in history to understand our energy problem. Twice in the last several hundred years there has been a transition in the way people use energy."

"Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power."

"Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden."

He laid out 10 principles in his great speech upon which his energy policy would be built - much around fairness. I think his 6th principle is worth special note:

"The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it. "

The entire speech is good and if you took out the dates it could be given by someone today. Such a shame we did not act on Carter's vision but the world is even more prepared to act today so how about it Obama?

Mos Def and Lenny Kravitz - It Ain't My Fault

2010-06-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

Check it out - cool song by some of my very favorite musicians. Recorded in a 12 hour jam session as a response to the BP oil spill which is going to wipe out the culture and livelihood of an entire region of this nation. Enjoy the music, it may not survive either.

Who needs the Onion?

2010-03-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

Obviously I have figured out to embed video from you tube into my blog.

This one proves we do not need spoof news stories like the Onion provides us with when we have real live American news stories like this one:

spring stilts demonstrated

2010-03-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

Dr. Megavolt at the Exploratorium

2010-03-15T20:14:00.001-07:00

interactive playa art - you gotta love it

2010-02-10T20:23:00.000-08:00

So Burningman is all about interactive art. If you have never been before or if you have been going for years, I think this example of what happens on the playa is a great one and will be enjoyed by all.

Someone put a typewriter in the middle of the playa. Imagine yourself crossing a huge expanse of dry lake bed, on the outskirts of Black Rock City, and finding a stool and a table and typewriter. So you type.

This web page has a selection of things people typed. Some sweet, some funny, some weird, and they all provide a window into what life on the playa is like.

Enjoy,

click here to take you there: Timelovememory

2010-01-25T10:43:00.001-08:00

I pop bubble wrap at 5.00 bubbles per second!

I popped 77 bubbles in 15.4 seconds
at www.Virtual-Bubblewrap.com!
Can you beat my score?

an entertaining victory over the SF DPT

2009-12-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

Well it was a long battle but when I finally received the final letter of judgement the other day I had to laugh out loud at how ridiculous it was.

Last spring I had a parking ticket I needed to pay so I called to check on it and discovered I had another one that I did not know about. It was for not curbing my wheels in a neighborhood in South San Francisco on a week day morning at around 8 AM. Now I had never been to that part of town and certainly was not on that day. My first class begins at 8:15 AM and I was at work that day. (I did actually go to work late that day because I was in Marin helping Anke get off on her trip to Germany but I left that detail out of the official story)

So I wrote a letter to contest my ticket. I explained I had never been there and that I was at work and that there must have been some kind of mistake and that I was thankful for their understanding and their action to fix the mistake.

I eventually got a letter saying I had not payed my fine and it was now doubled. I called to tell them about my original letter and the lady on the phone actually had a copy of the letter on file. She read the whole thing and said "Well this is not a letter of contest: you never say in the letter that you are 'contesting the ticket'".

I could not believe it! Because I had not written the words "I am contesting this ticket" they did not consider my letter. I guess they thought I was writing to tell them that I could not have gotten the ticket and I wanted them to fix the mistake but that I also wanted to pay the fine?

So I asked her if I could write a letter explaining that my original letter was in fact a letter to contest my ticket. She said I could try. So try I did.

Months later another notice said my fine was increased yet again. I called and the lady said that my second letter was not considered because it did not come within the 21 days that I have after getting a ticket to write such a letter. The fact that my original letter came within that 21 days did not matter. The second letter was late so it did not count.

I was furious (but polite) and talked with the lady about my options. She said she could reduce my fine to the original amount if I wanted to pay it or I could talk to the manager. I liked the idea of just paying the original amount ( a fraction of the new fine) but figured I would talk to the manager, who at the least, would give me the same deal. She took my name and said she would get back to me.

A week later she had not gotten back so I called, the manager was not in but I left a message on her voice mail. Never heard back. After a couple months or so of leaving messages with this "manager" I finally explained to another lady that I was getting upset about this whole thing.

This lady opened my file, read the letters and gave me more options. She said I should come in and talk to a judge but this would mean taking a day off school which is a bad option. She said I could write and request a hearing by telephone and that someone would call to schedule a time. This sounded like my best option.

But then the lady went on to say she thought I was obviously guilty and that I had little chance of winning a hearing. Her main reasoning for this was the fact that my car's VIN number was written on the ticket, which guarantees (she said) that the officer walked around and took the time to make sure it was the right car and everything. I told her that meant nothing to me, that there must have been some sort of computer error that put my info on this ticket. She did not believe me but told me to write for a hearing if I want.

So I did (plus you must pay the fine which they will give back to you if you are found innocent) and I never got a call.

BUT I did just get a letter that said after reviewing the case it was decided that they would refund my money and dismiss the the case because "the citation was determined to contain incorrect information". It went on to clarify:

"The citation location documented in the citation does not exist!!!!"

Those @#*#@ers

The Cove: a must see movie

2009-08-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,
This summer I popped into a movie expecting a regular movie and was blown away by what I saw.
The movie was The Cove and it was described as a spy thriller. It turned out to be an extremely well made and moving documentary about the true story of a bunch of environmental activists who risk their lives to film the annual slaughter of over 20,000 dolphins in a small town in Japan.
The story has so many levels from the star Ric O'Barry who captured and trained Flipper and who has since dedicated his life to fight the industry of captive dolphins he helped create to the fact that the dolphin meat is highly toxic due to the levels of mercury in it yet the group slaughtering the dolphins were having it served in school lunches. There is also amazing footage of the most graceful human swimmers swimming with whales and dolphins, lots of humor, suspense, it is a great movie.
It is also a landmark use of media to expose an injustice (the murder of 20,000 self aware intelligent beings). It is an emotional roller coaster but it is worth the watch!
If you do not want to see it you can at least check out the trailer HERE and do your part to help stop the slaughter.
In the movie they also discuss the wonders of dolphins, the politics behind the international Whaling Commission, and the dispel the myth that this is a cultural practice in Japan.
Check out another clip about mercury in meat and meat in Japan from the movie: mercury clip

check out the website for the movie

danny

The Playa Privides

2009-08-25T20:27:00.001-07:00

Wow, some of you are going to the playa in less than a week, holy shit, it is just hitting me, seems unreal to me really since I am not planning my own trip.
A quick story:

My new job and home are incredible and more on that soon but while I am working here I will not be able to make it to the Playa, grounded.
But of course the burner spirit permeates the Bay Area so be sure to let me know when things are happening locally.

So the process of moving sucked and after it was all over the absolute last thing I had to deal with (after looking for places to live, sorting, packing, cleaning) was getting rid of a couch I had once picked up off the street in San Fran. A guy on craigslist had promised to come and get it, I trusted him, he flaked and I was stuck with this thing.
I tied it on top of my car and began driving to the dump where I would have to go out of my way to pay to have it become landfil. On my way I stopped to drop off extra boxes to our moving company. When I arrived there was another guy trying to figure out where to pick up boxes for a move so I emptied my car into his. The owner of the moving company came out and after emptying my car of boxes I pointed to the couch strapped to the roof of my car. "Need a couch?"
"Sure" the owner repied, "we'll take it to Playa!"
Fuck yeah, after a long day of cleaning I was saved a trip to the dump, 25 bucks, the couch was saved from the landfil (if only for one last adventure) and I now have a part of me going to the playa. Something going in my place. And think of all the ass I will get going as a couch!

So remember the Playa Provides, so give what you have, seek what you want, and celebrate the process...
Danny

a website to save the world

2009-06-06T13:48:00.001-07:00

Hey there,

Well this is the coolest website I have ever seen, hands down, everyone has to check it out! It is called the GoodGuide and it is in an experimental phase but it can save the world!

Of course I know the world will always be here and does not need "saving" but as far as saving the life that is on it now, this guide can perhaps do more than anything else.

A brief justification of the claim:

First what is and how does it work?:

Well the Goodguide is a website made by a professor in Berkeley of course, where lots of good things start. It has over 70,000 products listed and each one is analyzed for it's effects on your health, on the environmental impact of the product and its manufacturing, and on the corporate practices of the company that manufacturers it such as labor issues, transparency, philanthropy, and environmental actions such as energy efficiency.

Let's say you want to buy shampoo. It will list the products in order from best to worst, or if you prefer you can flip that to see them listed with the product with the worst rating first. They all have a score from 1 to 10 and this score is broken down into separate categories such as health performance, environmental performance, and social performance. You can read further to find out what independent organizations provided information which was used in determining the performance. You can filter your search for things like "unscented", "organic", "low in sugar", obviously things that make sense for the product type you are researching. For food they post the nutritional information, which of course plays into its health rating.

They rate food, personal care products, toys, and household chemicals.

You can type in any brand you usually buy and see how they rate.

You can also compare prices, create a list of things to buy or not to buy, and learn about various issues as the website has a wealth of information.

And one of the coolest features is that you can send a message to the company via the website. So you can send a message saying you are impressed with a company's efforts to be energy efficient and because of that you are switching to their product or you can tell a company you are no longer buying their product as long as they treat their workers poorly. This kind of feedback of course will help drive changes on the corporate level. Companies want to sell shit and if the public is informed and tells the company so then they will likely change their actions.

And that is how this website can save the world. Our consumption of the world's resources, production of pollution and toxic chemicals, and our exploitation of people around the world are obvious downsides to our modern capitalistic system. I am enough of a realist to know that people will not be willing to give up much of what they are used to having so the only solution is to produce the things we want to buy in a way that is as friendly to our bodies, the earth, and to those who make them for us as possible.

Only as educated consumers can we make the best choices and tools like the Good Guide (which you can get as an ap. for your Ipod) are just what we need to be well informed.

So check it out and change the world when you shop!!!!!

here's the link: go to the GoodGuide!!

How I Saved My School $25,000 a Year

2009-03-07T20:42:00.000-08:00

Hey there,

So I thought I would share this story in the hopes that some of you may motivate to look into how your business/school/home can save money by becoming "greener".

Maybe it is not a coincidence that green is the color of money. It is at my school for sure.

The short answer of how my school is now saving $25,000 a year is this: we reduced our garbage bill. That's it.

The longer answer:

When I came to the school a year and half ago they had just started composting in the dining hall. This was organized by the San Francisco Department of the Environment. It was pretty easy since everyone at school eats the school lunch and we use washable plates, silverware, and glasses. So pretty much all the waste in there is compostable. (The only exceptions are things like aluminum foil when we have baked potatoes). The city of San Francisco collects compost just like recycling and trash so that makes it super easy.

Of course I quickly moved to suggest we start composting everywhere else - the bathrooms (all paper towels), the classrooms (mostly tissues and food scraps from snack), etc. Not surprisingly the brakes were put on me by the powers to be who had the big picture in mind and are weary of fast change happening without proper thought to who would be effected. I too, had all that in mind, but I quickly realized I needed to be patient. First we decided we should be at least composting in the staff lounge so we did, but I decided to take on emptying it and sorting through it myself so the custodial staff did not feel like they were given extra work.

I forget how long I did this, nearly a year I guess. When we first began composting in the staff lounge I had to really educate and remind people what can be composted. ( I still pick out a piece of plastic wrap each and every day and often find plastic creamer cups and other stuff in there.) My boss told me one day, when the subject came up, "you know people laugh at you behind your back because of the compost thing!" She said it in a totally frank way (her style) not meaning anything bad by it at all. She was just telling it like it is.

Signs explaining what goes where were key as were funny emails to remind people what can and can't be composted and recycled. Some teachers began composting in their classrooms and making 'compost monitor' a classroom job for the kids. I tried to help devise a system for composting the snack waste.

I continued to discuss behind the scenes the idea of composting in all classrooms and bathrooms. Everyone was basically behind it, a system just had to be put in place so the custodians did not have extra work.

The final factor that gave the final push from the top was when I made the case that we could save a lot of money.

I had called the trash service and asked them how much money we can save by reducing the trash we create. I was interested in how much money we had saved so far by composting and how much money we could save if we really went for it. I actually know the guy at the company from when I greened festivals. Anyway he had a formula on his computer that calculates our bill. Our current bill said we payed for 7 large black trash bins a day which was 60% of our waste. The other 40% was divided by green (compost) and blue(recycling). I jotted down how much we would pay for different scenarios and then calculated that for each of the 7 black bins we can switch to blue or green we would save about $500 a month. Sure we could knock two or three of them off I told the administration we could save at least a $1000 a month.

This helped grease the wheels and soon with everyone involved we got a system so the custodians can empty both green and black campus wide. We then ordered compost bins for all the classrooms and began composting in each class. The last push was to include the bathrooms. The bathroom trash consists of mainly paper towels so this is a no-brainer. We just put up signs and switched the liners in the trash cans from black to green. (the adult bathrooms have both trash and compost, both of which, despite the signs, end up with paper towels in them).

I then actually had to push to get rid of the unused black trash cans which was the step we had to take to save the money. I began noticing that there were cardboard boxes and bags of compost being thrown away into the trash cans. It seemed someone did not get it and that someone was the person deciding how many black cans to keep. Talking with everyone I finally got our number of black cans down to 3. This means we cut out 4 cans! Our official diversion away from the landfill is now something like 84% and we are saving $2,100 every month on our bill that was about $4,000 buck a month.

Finally when this was all said and done I looked at our garbage bill to see our savings and it turned out the company forgot to change our billing rate. So I called and then told the administration we were being over billed, which no one noticed.

One shocking secret to this whole thing is that we did not need to add as many green and blue bins as we reduced our black bins by. Which means we were paying for more black bins than we needed, probably for years. I figure even without the composting we probably could have cut out one or two black bins. Especially if we used them more efficiently by not throwing whole cardboard boxes away or filling them up with odd sized items that could be broken down to take up less space.

So even if you do not have the ability to compost, check out your trash dumpsters at work, school, or home, and see if you are using them wisely, you may be able to save some money for your self or your employer.

And of course all the waste you divert from the landfill towards recycling or compost saves energy and resources and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

save money and save the world at the same time!

peace, Danny

pictures of Noah (and Hendrik)

2009-01-04T00:22:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Noah was such a cute model today I had to share the pictures. He is quite a character. My Mom knit the sweater he is wearing. We went on a hike on Ring Mountain in Tiburon - gorgeous view of the city, beautiful day. It was a boys hike as Anke was home sick resting. Bummer since it was our fifth anniversary. At least we remembered this year - last year be both forgot (luckily we BOTH forgot)

Noah is a goofball as you can see from these pix.

This morning he was cutting papers from our recycling with scissors. I left the room and came back and he had cut out a picture perfectly. "Wow", I said " You spent a lot of time and cut that out very carefully!" (I try to praise the process and effort not the end product).
He said "yeah" and then proudly said: "I cut my hair too!" I looked down on the table to see a big golden lock of hair and said "Oh Shit Noah! Mama's gonna be bummed!"

I asked later at the cafe in front of all our friends (I figured they would get a kick out of the story) if he wanted to tell everyone what mistake he made that morning, and he smiled bashfully and said no he didn't want to say. Mama still doesn't know so I guess he didn't cut too much.

We were eating lunch and I asked Anke, "Do you know where Noah is?" "No" she replied. Neither of us were too worried but we began to look around the outside mall area where we sat. Anke spotted him, he had climbed up inside the lath that the plants were growing up. I had to stop him or he would have gone all the way up (it was a perfect little place for him to climb. So perfect that when Anke saw him she said matter of factly "he's in the climbing structure".)

He is such a proud big brother. At the cafe when friends were looking at our other friend's baby, Noah spoke up: "Look at MY baby!"

Rebuilding (The Holiday Spirit) Together

2008-12-18T23:15:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Happy Holidays!

The Holidays at the end of the year mean many different things to many different people. I grew up in a family that celebrated Christmas and am raising my children with the same tradition. But what does it mean to celebrate Christmas? The ultimate answer I suppose is to enjoy quality family time (with plenty of food and gifts to catalyze the enjoyment). The gift part of it can be such an issue that it often is enough to turn people off of the holiday completely.
We tell Noah the story of Baby Jesus and how the tradition of gift giving started with those three wise men. Now the true spirit of the gift exchange is in the GIVING. However too often people get caught up in the receiving part of it all. As an environmentalist, I have problems with the consumption and materialism that run rampant this time of year. Too often the gift giving is nothing more than a forced waste of resources - both form the Earth and our wallets. Being a conscious consumer makes Xmas shopping extra hard. Yesterday I was in a store with $1 stocking stuffers. My first reaction was "great, I can get this knocked off in one stop". But as my hands filled with things I wouldn't normally be buying - all of which were certainly made in China with every corner possible cut to make sure I got the lowest price possible, I realized this did not feel right. I put back most of the things and decided I would go buy some fair trade chocolate bars instead.

Now the best gifts of course are from the heart. Homemade gifts rule! Or if you find just the thing you know someone would really enjoy. Many people put a lot of thought into the gifts they give and I know it is from the heart, so I am not knocking people who like to give on Christmas. I love the act of giving. I often find myself picking something up that I know someone would love and I give it to them as soon as I can - I am not the one to save it for x-mas, as smart as that would be. So that leaves me empty handed before x-mas. Stuck with the dilemma - do I just go out and get random shit for people. No. Most people will not get presents from me. The few people who do will get home made ________s that Noah will help make. I feel this is super important - to teach him that GIVING is important. For at five years old he is all about RECEIVING. He has absolutely no qualms with getting tons of shit. That worries me but of course he is only five...

So what I wanted to tell you about was an experience I had that epitomizes the spirit of the Holidays for me. It is something I had hoped to blog about long ago but did not get around to it. It happened last April. Christmas in April, sort of.

I had the great privilege of being involved in an extremely inspirational day of volunteer work with a most extraordinary organization: Rebuilding Together.

The staff at the school where I work (Town School For Boys) had been talking about integrating more service learning into our curriculum and one of the things we felt was important was that the staff take part in some community service to both inspire us and to act as models for our students.

So Ana, a teacher at our school who is active in this area, organized for us to take part in the National Rebuilding Day, put on by the organization Rebuilding Together .

The idea is to get a team of people to gather on one day and completely rebuild something. This something may be an apartment of an elderly person, a church, a school, etc. So a team from our school including faculty, parents, students, siblings and friends (I dragged my buddy Dave along) joined forces with a bunch of other people - some from a church, some from a law firm - to rebuild a nursery school which provides preschool and day care to very poor working families.

And it was incredible what we did. We built fences, water tables, and benches; repaired roofs; redid the garden; painted bikes and furniture; sanded, spackled, and painted the entire building inside and out. It was amazing. The most inspiring part of it is that you get to see the transformation in one day. In so much of the work we do when volunteering that is not the case. You just have to have faith that you are making a difference. But the way this project is run you see the change in ONE day.

The smiles that the volunteers had that day, despite the hard work they were doing, that was the spirit of Christmas - or whatever holiday you celebrate. The true spirit of GIVING, without wanting anything in return. Giving just to give because we can and because we know that it will make someone else's life better.

So I just wanted to share that with you and to wish you all a very happy holiday season. And instead of getting me a present this year, wanna join me in April for the National Rebuilding Day? Oh, you weren't getting me anything? (cheap @$%#&^$) Wanna join me anyway?

The Miracle of Life: Hendrik is Born

2008-11-09T20:54:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,
Well once again we were touched by the miracle of life. Our second son Hendrik Jonah Boyer was born November 6 at 1:15 AM. Mom and Hendrik are perfectly healthy, and the entire family is enjoying the cute new addition to the family.
We are especially enjoying being new parents the second time around now that we are practiced and adjusted to family life.
The whole story will come soon but for now here are some pictures.

The most important action you may ever take

2008-10-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

" Those who say it can't be done need to stop interrupting those already doing it!"

Please stick with me through this convoluted essay. There are lots of points I will try to make briefly. Basically I am arguing that every one of us MUST take action (beyond voting) because we have an opportunity to spark a change in world history as monumental as the industrial revolution, and the cost of inaction is likely to be very dire indeed. We must use this grass roots enthusiasm for the November election and the widespread concern over the economy and national security to put pressure on our elected officials to take immediate and drastic action toward a future of green, clean, domestic energy. This will reduce our dependence on and financial support of the middle east, it will put our economy back on track driving innovation and creating jobs, and it will put us back as leaders in the world in addressing the most pressing global issue of our time; global climate change. To anyone who says we cannot afford to this we must say "we cannot afford not to".

(This blog was written and then I saw today's headline which said the economy may prevent either candidate from addressing global warming. This is the fallacy we need to expose! We just threw $700 billion to save wall street. What about saving the world? What if a country threatened to devastate an American city (Like New Orleans) we might launch a $3 trillion war (like Iraq) to prevent it. Well if we don't act we will have moreKatrinas , we will see war over water and food resources throughout the world, do you think terrorism in the world will be more of a threat in the world if this happens, of course. And we must remember that efficiency can go a long way towards fixing the problem with relatively little investment and will create jobs which will grow the economy. The more domestic energy production we have the more money we will keep circulating in our economy. Also green energy lends itself much more towards the creation of small companies than does say oil and of course small companies help our economy much more than do large international corporations. But I digress)

A few months ago I wrote a journal entry about what I see as the coming paradigm shift in humanity and how I am dedicated to doing my part in bringing it about. I will turn this into a blog in the nearish future but it basically was about a future of social and environmental justice, a future where economics, environmental stewardship, human rights, consumerism, energy, politics, international trade, national security, and other issues are thought of systemically and through a moral lens of cooperation, empathy, efficiency, and the right of all living things to exist unharmed by the actions of others.

Now I had envisioned this taking an unknown amount of time and my main niche for helping to cause this shift is through education of our younger generations to understand their sense of place in the world and how they can live as a contributing member to the world rather than a destructive force.

But since I wrote that the world has changed. There is a window of opportunity that has presented itself since then and many experts argue it could be the last chance we have. Two factors have opened this window and provided lubrication for us to slip through it. One is the financial crisis and failure of the "free market" and two is the election of a new president and new congress.

OF course we do not know at this point who the next president will be and if there will be a shift in the congress (to say a Democratic,fillabuster proof majority). Regardless of who wins we must attempt to do what I lay out below. I think Obama is much more likely than his opponent to actually take the steps needed and he will only have the power to do so if there is a majority in congress who will agree with him or push him in the right direction. Of course if Obama is elected there is no guarantee he will be thetransformative president we need. That is where we come in. If elected Obama and congress will have industry lobbyists and Washington nay sayers filling their ears with garbage. Trasformative presidents of the past acted because the groundswell of citizens pushing for change was too much to ignore. This is what we need again. This is the defining moment of our time, how we shapeObama's presidency in the first few months could change the course of the world and honestly if we fail the world's leading experts now agree the situation will be dire.

So the economic collapse is a double edged sword. On the bright side it has gotten usually apathetic Americans to wake up and pay attention to the issues and to want a solution. It has also exposed the deregulated free market as fundamentally flawed and forced even Republicans to take steps to "socialize" or "federalize" the banking industry. In other words they can no longer argue that there is no role for government to play in all this.

On the down side the crisis has drained even further our coffers. With 700 billion dollars thrown at the problem we are even further in debt and even less likely to be able to muster up large amounts of money to pay for programs that the people want and need. Cities, States, and Federal agencies are all slashing budgets at a time we need investment in our future.

Luckily doing the right thing is also good for business and can SAVE us money. For EFFICIENCY is gonna be one of the most important first steps. Efficiency alone can help us get off fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create jobs, drive innovation, and will save us money!! Just a small example. If we were to introduce basic energy efficiency to this country's public school system we could save $6 billion! That is enough to hire 30,000 new teachers. McCain is right, we do not necessarily need to throw more money at the problem to solve it. Imagine the savings to be had in the Military budget!!! Let's bring our troops home and employ them to make our nation's buildings energy efficient!

Now back to global climate change. There is a magic number that scientists said is the point at which we cannot avoid climate change that will greatly effect our world and its ability to provide food, water, and stable living conditions for those of us who live here. That number is 350 and it represents parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. (Go to 350.org to learn more and take action!) We are already PAST that number which means we need to take immediate and dramatic action to freeze and reverse the current trend. In 2009 the world community will gather to try and agree on a global plan to address this issue. (Leading experts warn this is most likely the world's last chance to address this problem effectively. We need, as "the leaders of the free world", in this country, to take a lead on the issue and we need our President to go to this meeting in '09 and be able to say, "here are the steps WE ARE TAKING, and we hope the rest of the world will join us". (again for the naysayers who say "what about China, India, etc. Well China right now is actually doing more than we are, they are not necessarily unwilling, in fact they are less entrenched in the old way of doing things than we are. And when developing nations realize it is actually cheaper and more sustainable to be green, clean, and efficient do think they will hesitate?

To elaborate on the cheaper part of it. In a time of abundance it is easy to be wasteful. Americans throw out 25 % of the food we buy. (During the depression do you think this was the case?) The standard light bulb wastes 95% of its energy producing heat. Our cars get half the miles per gallon than the cars in Europe. If we increased the fuel efficiency of cars we would not have to "drill baby drill" or even import oil from the middle east and it would cost less for Americans to get to work/school/etc. So as oil prices rise so do food prices and as the economy turns down people need to save money. Efficiency is the easiest first step and it happens to also be the best way to be an "environmentalist".

So back to politics. Our government is by the people for the people. So we the people need to be engaged. We need to be a voice that can be heard over the chatter of coal industry lobbyists. We need to say no to new coal and we need to say it loud. There is no such thing as "Clean Coal" - this is just a theory and the fact Obama talks about it shows us what we are up against. But I strongly believe that Obama has the intellect, foresight, and heart to grasp the problem and chose the right solutions. But we must let him and our representatives in congress know that this is important to us.

The take home message must be that we need to address global climate change and in doing so we will solve our economic and national security problems and without doing so any attempts to fix the latter two problems will fail! It needs to be done through efficiency and clean, renewable energies like solar and wind, we need to stop using coal and nuclear power, reduce our use of oil and natural gas, and end the wars which are draining our resources and destroying lives and the environment.

This sounds like a lot but it must be done, in fact it is already being done. For example through the efforts of nonprofits and foundations who came together to revolutionize how these two sectors work together, taking a systemic, cooperative approach, the RE-AMP initiative has made huge progress in the countries most unlikely region. RE-AMP is a seven-state network of nonprofits and foundations, striving for Midwest leadership in 21st century clean energy by reducing electricity sector global warming pollutants 80 percent by 2030. This group has been so successful that the governors from each of the states involved have signed on to the plan. And RE-AMP has done this with investment in the millions (pennies for the federal government).

And if you think industry won't like it then get them to talk with Ray Anderson. A dozen years ago he made the audacious goal of turning his $1 billion dollar carpet manufacturing company Interface, INC. , into one with a ZERO environmental footprint! He is now halfway to his goal and each and every step the company has boosted profits by more than he could have imagined. Green is good for business!

So what can each of us do? There are a few things we all can do, MUST do!

(before you think you do not have time, we all can admit that we have some time we could devote to saving the world. Turn off the TV, put down your magazine, and get to work!

1) The first small step is VOTE! And make sure EVERYONE you know is voting.

2) Join 1sky This is a very well organized group pushing politicians to fight global climate change through green jobs and green energy. At the least join them, better yet, get everyone you know to join, and even better still become a precinct captain to make sure we succeed in this mission.

4) Go to the Presidential Climate Action Project, learn about the Plan and sign your support.

5) Go to 350.org and invite Obama/McCain to the 2009 global summit on global climate change.

6) Call and write letters to your congressional representatives as well as key members of congress and federal government and tell them you think this is of utmost importance. To find out who to contact and how to do it go to USA.gov.

7) write letters to the editors of every newspaper and magazine you can think of!

8) spread the word to everyone you know!

thanks for taking the time to read this and even more thanks for passing it on and doing your part to be an engaged citizen of this country and world.

Peace and God Bless the World,
Danny

Earth week tip #2: reusable shopping bags

2008-05-29T13:21:00.001-07:00

Daily tips: Shopping Bags:

The following pictures are from Chris Jordon’s work which can be seen online at:

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

This picture depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.

Detail zoomed in:

Paper shopping bags:

The following pictures are from Chris Jordon’s work which can be seen online at:

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

This picture depicts 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags, the number used in the US every hour.

Zoomed in:

Amazing facts about disposable bags:

· Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.

Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.

Windblown plastic bags are so prevalent in Africa that a cottage industry has sprung up harvesting bags and using them to weave hats, and even bags. According to the BBC, one group harvests 30,000 per month.

shopping bag facts and info:
reusable bags.com:
http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php

plastic bags website:
http://environmental-activism.suite101.com/article.cfm/say_no_to_plastic_bags

Actions:

- reduce the amount of bags we use, reuse the ones we do and then recycle them when we are done! Imagine if we used each plastic bag ten times before we recycled it, that would reduce our consumption by 90%

- Get in the habit of using cloth or other reusable bags. Encourage others to do the same. This is not only good for the environment but reusable bags are so much stronger they work much better!

- The Chico Bag is a brand of bag that comes in its own little stuff sack and has a little carribeaner to easily attach it so you always have it with you!

- A cool gift idea for kids is to take canvas bags and paint on them, maybe put their hand prints all over them.

- Some stores will take back paper bags and reuse them.

- Of course make sure any plastic or paper bags that are used get recycled. Plastic bags need to be brought back to the store and recycled in the bin provided (I think Safeway usually collects them. They are not recycled with the city’s mixed blue bin recycling.)

Earth Week Daily Tip #1 nix your Plastic Bottles

2008-05-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

OK, I just read an article in the magazine Discover ab0ut plastic that reminded me I never posted my daily Earth Week tips to my blog.

I will begin with the one on plastics. Plastics have been called the "global warming of biology and human health" because of their far reaching and drastic effects. The two worst chemicals we are currently aware of that come from plastic are BPA and phthalates. These are linked to cancer, and lots of abnormalities in the hormonal and reproductive systems. In fact the plastic exposure of a pregnant woman can not only effect her unborn daughter but can effect the eggs that are growing in her daughter, hence effecting the woman's grandchildren as well.

Europe has banned these chemicals from children's toys as has California beginning in 2009. But they are everywhere, so think about where you can use less plastic, switch to glass or metal when possible and for gods sake stop buying water in plastic water bottles!

So here is my first of five Earth Week tips, included are pictures, facts, links for more information, and simple actions to take. And remember, EVERYDAY is earthday.

Daily tips: Plastic Bottles:

The following pictures are from Chris Jordon’s work which can be seen online at:

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

This picture depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Zoomed in:

Plastic bottle facts:

Americans use over 50 billion disposable plastic water bottles a year!

Only 23% of these get recycled.

In 2007 we spent $16 billion on bottled water. That’s more than we spent on iPods or movie tickets.

Plastics leach harmful chemicals into the water you drink. Number 1 and 7 plastics are the worst. They leach chemicals linked to cancer, type 2 diabetes and other diseases. These are especially harmful to children!

Bottled water, unless it says “spring water” is actually tap water that has been bottled and sold for huge profit.

plastic water bottle facts
http://earth911.org/recycling/plastic-bottle-recycling/plastic-bottle-recycling-facts/

article on chemicals that leak from plastic water bottles, including baby bottles and most bottled water:
http://trusted.md/blog/vreni_gurd/2007/03/29/plastic_water_bottles

Actions to take:

- Use a refillable water bottle, especially here in San Francisco where we have some of the best drinking water in the country. Metal bottles are the best! Plus the water stays colder and does not taste like plastic. Think of all the money you will save!

- do not reuse plastic water bottles, the older they get, the more they leach

- make sure any bottles you use do get recycled!

- Do not drink out of plastic bottles if they have been left in the sun or put in the freezer, both increase the amount of chemicals that leach into the water.

Earth Day Special: Noah Meets the Bag Monster

2008-04-21T22:15:00.000-07:00

Well you will all have to wait for the daily Earth tips I promised, I am going away camping with my 7th graders for a week beginning tomorrow and I have yet to upload them to the blog. But before then I will tell one story in honor of Earth day and that is the story of how Noah met the bag monster.

Anke, Noah, and I were at the Green Apple Festival in Golden Gate Park yesterday. It was an Earth Day/4.20 festival, one of 8 held nation wide, put on in part by the people who started Earth Day in the 70's. I heard about it through friends who were there with their Sustainable Living Road Show. It was a great event and a beautiful sunny day in the park. There were lots of great bands, speakers, booths, and at least 30,000 people in attendance.

I was feeling quite at home as by coincidence I knew many of the speakers and performers - I have had amazing conversations with Kevin Danaher ( true hero in the environmental and social justice movements), I have partied with Radioactive (the event's MC), and I have had countless Burningman moments with Michael Kang (one of the performers). The one "person" who caught my attention who I had never met before was the Bag Monster. Luckily as I get old and less social I am passing the torch to my son Noah, who at four years old has the ability to meet and impress anyone with his outgoing nature. It did not take long for Noah to get to know the Bag Monster.

So at some point in the concert the Bag Monster came up on stage. He was a man in a costume made entirely from plastic bags - a year supply of bags. He had a whole shtick about how he had moved to San Francisco years ago because it is such a tolerant city but now the city had banned him (referring of course to the recent plastic bag ban San Fran adopted) so he would have to move on. He talked about how people complained about him polluting the ocean and how people said turtles and birds ate him and died. It was a very clever public awareness stunt and it caught my attention and of course Noah's as well. The idea of a bag monster certainly sparked his four year old imagination.

A while after the stage appearance the bag monster came cruising down through the crowd. Noah happened to be inspired to dance at the moment by Radioactive's beatboxing so I had my camera/video camera out to try record his classic moves. Instead the bag monster had Noah all excited so I missed the dancing moment. Noah ended up talking with the bag monster for quite awhile. ( Most people talk to us adults and ask about the kids (Noah) but few people really talk to the kids themselves. When someone does, as the Bag Monster did, it is amazing as a parent to watch, for Noah has not been talking that long really (a year and half) and it is amazing to hear the conversations he has with people. Anyone who starts talking to him might be stuck for a good half an hour, and I say stuck only because he is so damn entertaining that once you start you are hooked. Kids say amazing things and Noah is certainly no exception).

Noah learned a lot during the conversation about the Monster. Later he demonstrated what he learned when he picked up a piece of plastic off the ground. I asked him what he was going to do with it and he said "Give it to the Bag Monster's mom",
"Oh yeah, who is that?"I enquired
so noah expalined: "she is an old bag and she lives in the ocean".

At some point I suggested he show the Bag Monster his re-usable bag. We have a bunch of re-usable shopping bags that fit into their own little bag and have a little carribeaner with which to attach them. They are called Chico Bags and are super convenient for those of us who would otherwise forget their shopping bags. Noah has insisted that he has his own so I thought he would enjoy showing it to the Bag Monster. Anke had one on her backpack so Noah took it off and showed it to him. He played along and was horrified at the Chico Bag. Noah explained he got it at the Green Festival (that is an example of a time when as a parent I was blown away by what Noah remembers - it takes a while to get used to the fact that this person who was just a baby is now someone that remembers pretty much everything and can articulate it). Noah also explained that he uses the bag to put his treasures in when he finds treasures.

Of course since I had the camera out I took some pictures. I was thinking to myself what a perfect teachable moment - this little person showing the Bag Monster his re-usable bag. I tried to get a good photo of the event so I could write a blog like this and while telling a fun little story I could educate and inspire people at the same time.

So after the whole encounter the guy gives me his card and asks if I can send him the photos I took. Turns out the Bag Monster is sponsored by Chico Bag!! (That explains why he was so patient with us while Noah struggled to get the Chico Bag open.) He explained that they have a bunch of Bag Monster suits that have been sent around the world for education purposes and that they are coming up with a program for schools that includes a variety of eco-villains and heroes. I told him that I was an educator and greener as well and promised to be in touch.

Good net-working Noah! I will let you know if Noah's pix end up on the Bag Monster's blog (which you can check out at: http://bagmonster.blogspot.com/) In the mean time if you do one thing this Earth Day go out and buy yourself a re-usable shopping bag, be it a Chico Bag, Green Bag, canvas bag, or.... and use it!!!

Peace and Happy Earth Day!!!!!!!!!!

(for those who are curious in the background that is Radio Active beatboxing in the first video and Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks featuring Michael Kang in the second)

danny's day with the mayor and the rock star

2008-04-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,
Monday was an exceptional day and I thought I would share it with you (I figured a feel good story was in order after my recent anti-Hilary rant on my politics blog).

This week at my school we are having our first ever Earth Week Celebration. I have been one of the ones organizing it and was the MC for our all school assembly on Monday. As I was to do much of the talking to the 450 people in attendance I was a bit nervous leading up to the event.

It turned out to be one of those days where synchronicity was present making the day go just right. An example was when after searching everywhere for a black sharpy I finally asked a fellow teacher if she had one. Without saying anything she opened the large cardboard box that was in her hands to reveal an almost empty box. The only thing in the bottom of the box was a brand new box full of black sharpies. Since things like that happen to me fairly frequently, I was not too surprised but I did happily take note of the event. Another thing that happened that day was on my way into the city in the morning I was thinking about stickers to put on my car and I remembered one that I saw once a long time ago that said "EARTH" and the ART was written in a different color. I liked that one and thought about it a bit. Well on the way back home, while driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, I saw the same exact model car I drive, a 240D, with one sticker only on it - the earth one I just described. So perfect for that was my Earth Day!

So the assembly went off without a hitch and everyone in the school loved it. There was comedy and education and inspiration and the boys were captivated which says a lot. My main speech was about why we were celebrating Earth Week. I talked about all the obvious things that come from the Earth like penguins and beaches. Then we discussed the things we need for survival that come from the earth like pizza and sushi, fresh water and oxygen. Then I challenged the kids to think of things that do not come from the Earth. I told them that there were some things inside the gym that do not come from the Earth and had kids guess what they were. They guessed things like the basket ball hoops and polyester. I agreed that you may look out of this world while wearing polyester but I explained to them that it actually does come from the Earth. Well after some kids got kinda close by guessing stars and sunlight I pulled the meteorites out of my pocket.
So then we talked about the things we like such as I-pods and basket balls that we rely on the Earth to supply us with as well. This was all wrapped up with the point that besides just celebrating the Earth for providing us with all the things we love from penguins to video games, the purpose of Earth Week is to become aware of how the choices which we make in our lives effect the Earth and its ability to continue to provide all these things and to learn actions we can take to make it easier for the Earth to do so.
In addition to me talking we had a video presentation of "Eco-mercials" done my different classes, a trailer for the BBC Planet Earth series with amazing video images of nature, a skit where students went around to teachers and educated them about the paper coffee cups, plastic water bottles, and plastic shopping bags that they were holding, and we talked about individual actions and school wide actions we are encouraging the school community to take this week and beyond. As I ended the assembly I told the kids that they were very lucky to be living in San Francisco, one of the greenest cities in the country, and that the upper school was gonna have the treat immediately following the assembly of hearing from the city's Mayor, Gavin Newsom about how the city is leading the nation in many areas relating to the environment. Just as I said that I looked down to see the mayor sitting on the gym floor with the kids right in front of me. Not an everyday occurrence at school to say the least. I knew he was coming to talk with us but we were not planning on having him in the assembly at that point.
So anyway the upper school went to the little theater after the assembly and we heard from Mayor Newsom for 45 minutes about his passion for and the cities action on environmental issues. He was a fantastic speaker with a casual manner and had the boys attention the whole time. I had just wrapped up my 2 week energy for the future research project with the 8th graders and Gavin touched on everything we had learned. I had even talked a bunch about biodiesel from Algae and he told everyone to look into that if they had not all ready. I could see the boys looking at each other as he covered topics we discussed in class. It was a great way to re-enforce what we studied. Plus I had talked in depth about the government's role in making change so it was very good to hear from a politician, especially one who was taking action on these issues.
We also have lots going on in different classes throughout the week. There is a buzz around the school among the boys and staff alike about what we can do to be greener. It is inspiring and I had sensed a desire from many in the staff to get greener so I am taking full advantage of the momentum and running with it. There are compost bins sprouting up across the school and kindergarten parents who are getting lectured by their children at home when they use a paper towel instead of a sponge.
And this is just the beginning as I hope to plug myself in next year and coordinate even more as far as service learning and greening on a regular basis.

So I realize I have written a lot and I titled this email "my day with the mayor and the rock star". So I guess I still have to talk about the rock star. Well after school I rushed to sea Trek in Sausalito to do one of my fund raising trips for the Power to the Peaceful Festival that I have done a few times before. The trip is called "Paddle with Michael Franti "(he is the rock star for those unfamiliar with him) and it is a big money maker for the festival. We take just a few people out for an hour or so with Michael and his managers and then hang out with some wine and food to chat afterwards. We came up with the idea while brainstorming fund raising options a few years back when I had the thought and then Michael verbalized it before I could say anything. Turns out he likes to kayak and so we turned it into a good money maker and a fun excuse to get out on the water every once in a while.
Michael and his gang are the kind of people that when you meet them you feel like you have always been friends - really great people. And they are also extremely politically active. One of Michael's early songs when he had the Hip Hop band Disposable Heroes had a chorus that said "all I ever think about is music and politics". This is obviously true if you see what he has been up to ever since. I talked once with Sat Santokh who was an activist since the 50's, manager of the Grateful Dead, and deep in the antiwar movement of the 60's and he said that Michael was the most dedicated musician he had ever met to the anti-war movement. Miachael Franti's lyrics and messages are all about peace and social justice and he even went to Iraq, Israel, and Palestine to see first hand what it was like and he made an incredible movie about is experience called "I know I am not alone".
Anyway, he is awesome as is the Guerrilla Management crew and so hanging with them and talking about everything from the environment and traveling to Madonna and Clinton was entertaining and inspiring and a great way to end my Earth Week kick off day.

peace ya'll

Danny's Earth Week update to Town School Staff

2008-04-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,
Well this year at my school I am helping organize the Earth Week at our school which includes an all school assembly and daily activities in the various classes. Today I will talk with the staff at our staff meeting about the week and last night I wrote these quick notes to organize my thoughts. After talking with the administration I get a sense that I have to move a bit slower than I had hoped and I am definitely gonna tone down what I say today from what I wrote last night. I do not want to offend the less enthusiastic of the bunch, and reading what I wrote last night at midnight I realize that some of it might offend people.
But I thought I would include some of my work for our school's earth week to my larger community so I will post some of it here. Starting with what I wrote last night. here it is:

Hi,
Well I am honored to be part of the Town school earth day Celebration.

There are a couple things I would like to say. First about what earth day (or earth Week in our case) means to me and then what I think it could mean for Town School this year.

To me Earth Week is a time to celebrate the wonders of the planet earth, AND an opportunity to raise awareness about how we effect the earth by the way we live, and to inspire people to make changes in their habits that can improve life on Earth for everyone.

As educators I believe we have a very important role to play when it comes to this mission. We have a very big influence on how our students live their lives, that is part of what we get paid to do. For example we teach them to be kind and empathetic towards each other and part of our strategy for teaching this is to create an environment where they know this is what is expected and by modeling the behaviour we hope to foster.

When it comes to being responsible environmentally we often fail when it comes to modeling the behaviour we try to teach.

Now Town school is impressive in many respects - recycling bins in the classrooms, now compost in the dining hall, we have planted the seed of environmental responsibility but there is much more to gardening than simply planting the seed and walking away.

We are such creatures of habit, it is difficult to break old habits - for example remembering to bring my own shopping bags when I went to the grocery store took me years to finally do habitually. Here at school in the copy room I see paper thrown in the waste bin instead of the recycling all the time. Now that we are composting I notice that 99% of what gets put in our classroom trash can is either recycling or compost.

This year we have an opportunity to collectively change our habits and become world leaders in the future of education by practicing what we preach. We have the support of the San francisco department of the environment who has helped us start a new composting program and is going to monitor how much waste we divert from the landfills and simultaneously we have Earth Week to remind us what we need to do and why.

So my challenge to us as a staff is to give up our cynical and lazy tendencies and to rise to the occasion at hand. Through modeling and encouragement we can change our habits as well as the boys.

One thing I think is important is to be consistent throughout the school. If we expect them to really get the importance of compost, for example, we need to not only compost in the dining hall but throughout the school. As long as we thoughtlessly throw the banana peels from snack into the trash cans our students are not getting the lesson that composting is important. Without this consistency all we will have changed from the boys perspective is the color of the trash can in the dining hall. We as a school should think of it as a big group challenge to see how much of our waste we can divert from the landfill.

I was the chief sorter for the green team at the San Francisco green festival and we set a world record for event waste diversion. I, along with a team of volunteers, sorted 20,000 lbs of trash in four days - 96% of which we diverted from the landfill. We ended up with roughly 6,000 lbs of compost, 6,000 lbs of cardboard, 6,000 lbs of mixed recycling, and only 900 lbs of trash. That was an awsome feeling and the people who saw what we did were very inspired to make changes in their lives. And once you really become present to it all you will really notice all the things that needlessly are going to the landfills and will eventually become greenhouse gas and contribute to global warming.

I know teachers are busy and making changes means training dozens of boys to follow the changes as well. But the first step is being aware of what can be changed and then if we come up with a good plan and go at it with a "we can" additude we can create a whole new set of habits that will change many of our boys lives and have a ripple effect out into the world.

So I would like to work with any of you who are interested including teachers, administration, the kitchen staff, office staff, janitorial staff, etc, to come up with plans that make sense for everyone and accomplish our goals without creating more work for anyone. OF course inspiring and enrolling our students is one necessary step in all this but each of us must also buy into it and do our part.

I will leave with an example of a change we should all make regardless of what the school decides to do. EVERYONE for their own sake as well as the earths should stop drinking bottled water!!!!!!!!!!!! The facts are astounding.

First there is the cost to the environment. In this country alone we drink over 50 billion bottles a year, and of course that represents rediculous amounts of raw materials and energy that say thirty years ago we did not use.

But as we find in nearly every case what is bad for the Earth is bad for us. It turns out plastic, especially numbers 1 and 7 which most of our water is bottled in, leaches deadly chemicals into the water. One of these is a synthetic xenoestrogen which is endocrine disruptor and is linked to breast and uterine cancer, insulin resistance and Type 2 Diabetes. These chemicals are particularly devastating to babies and young children and are unfortunately found in baby bottles, sippy cups, and toys made by Gerber, Playtex, Evenflo, Avent, and Dr. Brown's. Europe has banned these plastics in children's products. Anyway, the point is that bottled water is an example of something that our society has created as a habit. And this habit is horrible for the planet and for our bodies. I tell you this so you can use it as motivation to change your habits if you drink out of plastic and especially if you have young children who do.

And this same story can be told about our other wasteful habits such as the use of plastic shopping bags, paper coffee cups, etc etc.

So I am hoping, this earth Week, to create a whole new level of conciousness here at Town school that we can make part of our culture and in turn changing the world for the better, which, after all, is what we get paid to do.

Chris Jordon's Incredible Art

2008-03-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

Wow!!! You gotta check out this guy Chris Jordan and his artwork. It is perhaps the most socially and political relevant work I have ever seen. What is amazing is how well he uses visual art to represent numbers that are normally so big when you hear them as statistics it is difficult to really get what it means.
Of course when seen on-line these works are far less impressive than they must be in person when you really can see the scale to which they were meant to be viewed. But even on-line they are amazing. Besides the link I am sending you he has exhibits on Katrina and other important topics.
check out Running the Numbers by Chris Jordon at: (or click on the link in my links section)

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

peace, and in honor of Earth Day which is approaching, and of Chris Jordan's work, let's all make an effort to reduce our waste and use REUSABLE water bottles, coffee mugs, shopping bags, to go containers, etc, etc...
Danny
Below I have a couple examples but you GOTTA check out his site!:

Paper Cups, Depicts 410,000 paper cups, equal to the number of disposable hot-beverage paper cups used in the US every fifteen minutes.
Detail zoomed in:

Plastic Bottles: Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.

detail zoomed in:

Ben Franklin:
Depicts 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills ($12.5 million), the amount our government spends every hour on the war in Iraq.

detail when zoomed in:

Prison Uniforms, Depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005.

Detail zoomed in:

Tyrone to the Rescue!

2008-03-24T11:12:00.000-07:00

Well today I had unbelievable luck. Considering that my car began stuttering as I ran out of gas going up the hill on 101 over Sausalito at 6:30 this morning, I could have begun this blog much differently. But thanks to my fairy godmother or actually thanks to Tyrone, luck is what I had.
The gas gauge in my Mercedes does not work very well but I have been going over 300 miles on a tank of biodiesel. So at 270 miles I did not expect to run out. But the car began stuttering on my way to Ocean Beach (I have the day off - hooray). I pushed it up the hill and luckily made it, coasted through the rainbow tunnel and down the hill, pulling off just before the Golden Gate Bridge. I pulled over and turned my increasingly struggling car off. I was about to leave a note on my car that I ran out of gas in hopes of avoiding a ticket for parking in a no parking zone (my plan was to hike up to watch the sunrise and call someone to bring me gas). Before I even found a pen a truck pulled up behind me. It looked like a road side assistance vehicle so I hopped out and told him I ran out of gas. He looked at my bumper sticker and said
"You ran out of bio-diesel", I said "yeah but regular diesel will work" and he said "well I got some of that!". He poured a couple gallons of diesel in my tank and then gave me a survey to fill out asking me how the FREE service was!!! Our tax dollars at work! Thank God for socialism. Shoot, with fuel prices the way they are, I wonder how often I can hook up with this guy?
Tryone worked for the Freeway Service Patrol a joint effort of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the CHP, and Caltrans.
Tyrone was a super friendly guy and was in love with my car. He could not believe how nice a condition it is in and he was very curious about the bio-diesel. He says he is thinking of going diesel and making his own bio-diesel in his garage so he can say "fuck you" to the oil companies. Sounds like a good idea to me. I wish I had the ability to make my own fuel from garbage veggie oil, that is truly how bio-diesels really are a more environmentally friendly form of transport.
Anyway, just had to share my luck with you all, happy Monday.

sunrise to sunset photos

2008-03-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

Hi there gang,
Well today I happened to be out with my camera for the sunrise and the sunset. Both were gorgeous events, mother nature doing her magic on the canvas of the sky. In the morning I was waiting for my carpool into the city and in the evening I was getting my car after going for a long walk on Ocean Beach with Anke. (we met the guy who does the beach art - the balanced log sculptures - that is another story - ask me about it sometime)
so here are a couple shots, book ends on the day:
peace, Danny

a really funny story ...

2008-02-24T16:38:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone,
I have to share with you a funny story about a shocking moment the other night:

Adam and I were walking back to my new (to me) Mercedes after a fun concert at the Independent the other night. There was an incredibly heavy drizzle as we walked up the side walk anxious to get to the dry interior of my car. As we approached we both noticed that the front grill of the car was smashed in. We zoomed up to it to inspect as I exclaimed "holy shit" or something like that. It was as if someone kicked in the grill, but I assumed someone just backed out and hit it since the parking spot in front of my car was empty. I quickly noticed that the hood was not dented and said "well at least it is superficial".
As we stood up something else seemed wrong.
"Oh no" I exclaimed, as I noticed the sunroof was pushed down into the car, "someone tried to break in". Now this bummed me out because I new that fixing that sun roof was gonna be expensive. I noticed the rain going through the damaged roof and then walked around to the back of the car. I suddenly stopped and looked, sensing something else was wrong but not able to pin point it. The antenna was still there, all the little Mercedes logos, the trunk seemed OK, the lights were in tact. I went back up to the front. Adam looked inside, Noah's car seat was there but his jacket was not. The hood was all wet but it just didn't look right. There was black smudge all over it, at first I thought it was my imagination but I wiped some water off and looked closely, it was as if it was burned. As I stepped back I noticed the whole car was blackened, "Oh my god, did they BURN my car?!" as I said this I looked inside expecting to see the chard remains but what I saw made me think, "wait a minute".
I stepped back and looked up the street and two cars away was parked a shiny silver Mercedes with grill intact, I jumped up and screamed with relief "that's not my car!!!!!" And then we just about died laughing. It was an interesting roller coaster of emotions to say the least!

Danny

The US as a World Leader of Peace and Sustainability

2008-02-21T16:33:00.000-08:00

Today is the 50th anniversary of the peace symbol! In honor of this historic day I thought a short blog was in order.
Last weekend Anke and I took part in the Landmark Forum. It was an amazing weekend to say the least. The forum is meant to teach people how to live powerfully and to live a life they love. It ties in very much with the idea of living peacefully as much of the theory is that we should leave the past in the past and make our choices not on what happened to us in the past but according to how we want to be in the future. Part of the process is to imagine a possibility of how you want to be in the future and then to take actions in the moment that will support the way you want to be.
So I though in honor of the peace symbol's first 50 years I would let you know about a possibility for the future of the United States that I often think about. I know I knock the way things are going right now and I complain about how things have been done in the past. So here is the possibility I see:

I see the United States as a World leader in peace and sustainability. I see the citizens of the United States as well as the government getting behind a New "New Deal" where we create a green sustainable infrastructure and at the same time providing jobs for people in poverty. I see us using our incredible innovation and diverse knowledge as a nation to inspire and help developing nations around the world to develop sustainablely. I see us realizing that by using our resources to create a massive military and by selling weapons around the world we are encouraging the world only to become more dangerous and hostile. After this realization we will limit our military spending and give sustainable development aid to nations in need instead. This will help bring people around the world out of poverty which will increase peace and will restore the global image of the United States, making us loved rather than hated and reducing our need for a crazy military. I see consumers realizing that what they buy impacts people throughout the world and choosing to shop consciously so that as we spend money we lift people out of poverty instead increase the poverty they live in. I see us buying products free of the most harmful chemicals thus improving the health of our children, ourselves, the people who make the products and clean up after they are done, and of course improving the health of the planet as a whole. I see the disconnect between people's hearts and wallets disappearing and I see Americans once again becoming a great nation of peaceful generous people. America will again be a leader for positive change in the global community. That is the possibility I see for my country.

Now this possibility is what drives me in my every day actions. The reason I send out all the political news is to help wake people up to the reality of how bad we are behaving. The reason I chose to be an environmental educator is to inspire our future generation with this possibility. The reason I have volunteered to sort trash at music festivals, spend the entire Green Festival in the dumpsters sorting the 20,000 lbs of trash produced, use my own coffee cup every time I buy a drink, buy mostly organic products, use my refillable water bottle, drive a biodiesel car, and smile at people I don't know is that I know we must all start to change the way we behave.

It is easy to be cynical as I often have been. But if we dismiss the possibility I have laid out as impossible then it will be impossible. If we embrace it and live our lives accordingly, who knows what will happen, anything is possible. Great shifts in consciousness and politics have happened before, it is foolish to suggest they will never happen again.

So the first form of action we can all take is to sign on to the following petition to our congress which is demanding a true stimulus package, one that will
not just prevent the current recession, but will create lasting, meaningful
change and a clean energy infrastructure for Green Collar Jobs, initiated by
the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/553/t/3751/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=892

I just signed it, if we don't tell congress what we want then all they will hear is what the corporations want. So speak loud and speak often!

peace,
Danny

the great car chase

2008-01-22T20:44:00.000-08:00

Oh my gosh, am I glad to be done with the car search. I hope that by writing that previous sentence I did not jinx myself.
Like the guy in the song "Bitchin Camero" by the Dead Milkmen; 'I have a car now'. It wasn't easy, in fact it was an epic journey, often a tragic comedy, but with a very happy ending.
Throughout my more discouraging moments people always threw out the typical bits that are supposed to make you feel better like "well it wasn't meant to be" or " maybe it happened for a reason". The reason was I had shitty luck. Until I ended up with the car that must have been the real reason, the one that was meant to be. The car my mechanic described as the best car ever built.
It began a year ago when I decided that I needed to sell the Burning Van. I had had it for 6 years, lived in for three, and had used it to voice my opinion about the political state of this country post 9/11. The changing wind in American politics plus the fact that it barely ran had me finally ready to move on. I sold it in October (that is another story). Since then we have been talking about getting a new car and selling Anke's VW bus. The bus is beloved and not easy to sell. This stalled the process. I finally began shopping for cars before Anke had officially decided to actually sell the bus. The first car I was interested in got me in trouble since Anke had not officially decided it was time.
Then Anke finally was sort of at peace with selling the bus so we started the search for real. Craigslist is a great website for buying used stuff (and getting it free). An on line community bulletin board. This is where I would spend all my spare time searching for a car.
When we bought our previous car I wanted a diesel to run on veggie oil/biodiesel. We needed a station wagon for our family car to fit surfboards, for sleeping, etc. It was nearly impossible to find one. People were flying to Texas and Washington to buy diesels and driving them back to Marin. So we gave up on that idea and bought a mini-mini van, a '96 Isuzu Oasis (actually a honda Odyssy). We love it.
This time I had my sights set on a Toyota or Honda. Originally I was only looking for wagons. We figured we would sell the Bus for about $3000 if we were lucky so I was looking for a car with around 100k miles. Many in my price range had more like 200K. Of course these cars are in high demand and if you aren't the first to see the good ones they are gone. Plus most are located in San Jose or some other location 1 or 2 hours away.
During the search there were so many failed attempts at purchasing a car. The problem was made worse by the fact that as I got seriously into the search the bus died which meant we needed a car ASAP and we had a lot less money with which to purchase one.
Among the failed attempts:
There was the time I dragged my buddy Jessie, who is a mechanic, out to the delta, about 1 1/2 hours away to check out a honda with low miles. We met the guy selling it at the gas station where he worked and where all his hommies seemed to hang out. The car was filthy (underwear in the trunk) and dented but ran strong. While Jessie and I test drove it he looked in the glove compartment. First paper he pulled out read in large bold letters "domestic violence". The next was a receipt for one night at Motel 6.
On the phone I had asked the dude numerous times if he had all the paper work. I did not want to drive all the way there if he did not. He assured me he did.
Back at the station as people carried stereo equipment from car to car the seller explained to us the the car was not registered in his name and that he would mail us the title. He said it was just like buying a car from a dealer, only difference we were at a sketchy gas station, in the hood, at night.
We left without the car.

There was the '82 toyota corolla station wagon with only 80K miles - grandpa's car. We checked it out near San Jose and as soon as we saw I thought it was cute and Anke said "no way" . It was too old. Then she saw rust and there was no way. She was not gonna sell her bus to buy this piece of junk. I was crushed and pissed. I didn't even get to test drive it. She promised to find me a nice car, I vowed to stop looking. I was actually bummed and a little pissed all day and every time the car search went wrong after that I remembered that car.

Another car was an '85 nissan station wagon. Well taken car of, 70K miles. But still too old for Anke.

As I abandoned the station wagon requirement gas mileage took over as main factor in my search. I settled on Honda for gas mileage, reliability, and looks (over toyota). The civic was what I had my eye on. Four door sedan or two door hatchback.

The next time I brought Jessie 1 1/2 hours away to see a car we left without even test driving it. The guy on the phone said there was nothing wrong with it but when we arrived he listed the things wrong, broken windshield, axle, every panel was dented, the seats were the worst I had ever seen, etc. I took a half day off work for that one.

Then it was finally over, I had finally found the perfect car. A two door 91 civic hatchback. Owned by a brasilian girl who was returning to brasil. Sad to sell her cute little car. Well maintained. She met me two blocks from my work to show me the car. It was perfect, mint condition. No Jessie to check it out and she said she did not have time until Friday (it was tuesday) to meet to sell it. I agreed to buy it on Friday and planned to have Jessie go with me to check it. That night I was so relieved to be done and to be buying a car from someone I could trust. I emailed her those thoughts and she replied that some girl came to her school and payed her cash for it so she sold it. I had even had the cash with me when I saw it that afternoon. I was crushed.

Back to craigslist. There were others of course. Most sold before I got to them. Finally I got to one all the way in San Jose. Same car that I missed from the brasilian girl, just more beat up. 104K miles honda civic, the guy selling it seemed trustworthy to me, I was sick of shopping for a car, it was my rebound car after the brasilian heartbreak, so I bought it. Drove it home. Noah fell in love with the little red sports car. "Now we can catch up with the trash throwers." was all he could talk about (another story). I registered it, took it to Sam, our mechanic, and OOPS! Everything was wrong with it. Sam was certain it had twice the number of miles. $2000 at least to get it to be worth the $1400 I paid for it.
I called Ed and told him I was bringing it back. He said "of course". He took it back and was very nice acting surprised. I thought I could trust him and I guess I could since he gave me my money back. Either he didn't know or he just was too chicken to stick me with it once I found out.
Sam said he would find us a car. The very next day he was all excited about a car he found. He had a good feeling about this one. It was the best car ever made in his opinion. '83 mercedes 240 D. Known as the best Mercedes ever built, they spared no expense, using the finest metals, leather, and German engineering. Runs on biodiesel.
This particular one was taken care of very well, pretty much mint condition, re painted, rare hand polished chrome wheels. It is the fancy model with power everything, a huge sunroof, it even has air conditioning. It has a manual transmission which is rare for the fancy model.
The guy selling it was funny and nice, older guy, didn't really care how much he sold the car for, didn't know about bio-diesel and the high demand for such a car. Sam went with me to check it out. We were the first to check it out. It was actually about ten minutes away from Ed's house so I returned the hoopty honda before checking out the Benz.
I was so in the mode of a sporty honda that I did not fully appreciate the car I was about to own. But the price was half of what I knew I could turn around and sell it for the next day. Sam was gonna buy it and sell it if I did not.
We took it to Sam's shop, he took the thing apart head to toe and fine tuned the thing. He has the same car and knows all the tricks. He noticed a lot of expensive work done on the car recently. He kept saying "oh, this is good!" as he examined the car.
When I bought it I thought, "well, I can drive it for a year and if I am not happy with it sell it and get something else". After four days of driving it I cannot imagine ever selling it. It is so nice it is ridiculous. It feels like a great car and every time I drive it I like it more. In fact I am having issues with the fact that I like it so much. For me I was always proud of having a car that I did not worry about. If it got scratched, oh well, it is only a car. People being in love with their cars, well that is a bit disturbing. But this thing, although it is only a car, it is an awfully nice one! Plus I was actually hoping to get a car that I could paint into an art car. But painting on this would be like painting over the Mona Lisa. Not gonna happen.
Of course there are also issues with biodiesel once you get to the level of destroying forest of taking over farm land in order to grow feul. Plus growing things like corn for fuel will only raise the price of important food crops and cause massive suffering of very poor people.
The place for biodiesel is certainly as a way to burn oil that is gonna be wasted anyway, factory bi-product or used veggie oil from restaurants. Plus biodiesel does not create the carcinogens that regular petroleum gas does. As a grass roots solution for those of us who want to improve our environmental impact biodiesel is certainly a great option. Until we can all drive solar powered vehicles.
So for now I am rolling in the Benzo, smelling like Micky D's.

Europe vs US

2008-01-16T15:33:00.003-08:00

The other day I was driving and I saw a car with a big sign in the back that read “55 MPG on biodiesel”. It is great that more people are thinking about fuel efficiency but it made me think about how far behind we are in this country. My sister in law is visiting from Germany for the holidays and she was saying how the hybrid cars aren’t especially popular in Europe because it is common for regular cars in Europe to get 50 or 60 miles per gallon. So over there this guy’s 55 mpg would be nothing to brag about.

So while Europeans are driving fuel efficient vehicles we are driving bigger and bigger gas hogs. Why is that? The simple answer if of course that gas has always cost a lot more over there so it was economically advantageous for people to buy cars with better gas mileage. We Americans have always had some of the world’s cheapest gas which has kept us from having the economic incentive to conserve fuel.

So this begs the question why is our gas cheaper? Before we answer this it may be interesting to note other differences between Europe and the US. Here at my Mom’s this xmas I have been catching up on the recent issues of National Geographic. I read a couple interesting comparisons between us and our over seas counterparts. One had to do with the average height of European Americans vs. Europeans. The article said that the height of Euro Americans maxed out in the 1950s. We were, on average taller than Europeans but now they have over taken us. The article suggested this change was due to Europe’s universal health care system. It said that good health care in the childhood years will yield taller adults. While the taller European nations such as the Netherlands are at the top of child well being among 21 wealthy nations, the US ranked in the bottom third for child well being.

The other article was about recycling. It showed the U.S. as by far the largest producer of glass and paper packaging and it put us below the European average for percent recycled and way below countries like Germany, France, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium. In fact we were even below the European countries that fell below the European average. The only country that was on the chart that scored worse than the U.S. in both categories was Cyprus which produces a tiny fraction of the waste of any country on the graph.

And of course there are lots of other comparisons you could make, we lag behind in education, we produce 25% of the world’s global warming gasses and are the one country that is a road block to international action on global warming, and we could go on. Much of this could be summed up by the fact that Americans use twice as many resources as their European counter parts. This means two Europeans live their lives using the same amount of resources as one American.

So all this still begs the question: why? Why are we the most wasteful, most unhealthy, most poorly educated industrialized nation in the world? And how can we be proud to be Americans and let this all stay the way it is?

So are we each individually to blame for being lazy, uneducated, wasteful, junk food eating, gas hogs? Or do we put the blame on our government for not providing us with good education, health care, recycling programs, fuel efficiency standards, and common sense? Or do we blame the corporations who use their financial influence over the elected officials to make sure our government works in their favor and against the public good and use their control of the media to keep us ill informed.

Are Europeans just smarter? Do they have more common sense? Obviously there is no reason to believe they have higher intelligence. I think awareness is the big difference. The average American has very little knowledge of world wide current events compared to Europeans. In fact Americans know less about the world than people in many third world countries. This lack of awareness is partly cultural. In European culture people discuss politics and world affairs more than we Americans. Our conversations are much more often involving TV shows, pro sports, or the Hollywood tabloids. Certainly our television news is much to blame. In the past 30 years TV stations have reduced their news coverage of international events and politics by 80%. While coverage of vital goings on are often non-existent in the mainstream media they dwell in great detail on irrelevant things like Nicole Smith, OJ Simpson, and tiger maulings.

We are given very poor information in what is passed off as news. That is one of the most important factors, I believe, in this whole question. The TV stations are owned by giant corporations that are also weapons manufacturers, oil companies, toy companies, food companies, insurance companies, etc. It is in their best interest to keep us poorly informed for then they can get away with injustices we never hear about as well as getting their way from the politicians. An unaware public puts much less pressure on a government than one that is paying attention to what they are doing.

This is why even though Europe often has conservative leaders and these leaders are very attentive to corporate interests, they still pass laws that have the public interest in mind. In truth they have the public and the corporate interests both in mind. For instance while allowing oil companies to reap huge profits they also levy a hefty tax on the gas people buy. This encourages conservation, helps the environment, and gives the government much needed revenue with which they can turn around and implement environmental education programs and invest in renewable energy such as solar. This has made Germany a leader in solar development. In the US, for comparison, our new democratic majority recently tried to pass an energy bill that would tax the oil companies’ record profits (they have been making more profit than any companies in recorded history) and would invest in renewable energy here in the states. They also had in the bill the first increase in fuel efficiency standards for automobile manufactures in something like 20 years. The republicans forced the dems to drop the tax on the oil companies in order to get the bill passed which makes paying for alternative energy programs problematic. I think they made them drop the alternative energy programs all together.

The trick is to get Americans to become more aware of what is going on and to learn to speak up for themselves. Take genetically modified food for example. Here in the US we are eating genetically modified food all the time without knowing it. Most corn and soy for example is genetically engineered. Most Americans have no idea. Now regardless of what you think about eating this stuff it is common sense that we should at least know when we are eating it and we should understand the risks involved. In Europe the people are aware of the risks and do not want to be eating the stuff. When the US tried to sell GE crops to the EU the people insisted that they be sold with a label telling the consumer that they are genetically modified. A simple request. But the Bush administration sued the EU through the World Bank claiming that request amounted to an unfair trade restriction. They said that if they were forced to label the products Europeans would not buy them so American corporations would lose profit which was not fair. If I remember right the World Bank sided with Bush, that is the World Bank for you.

Another ironic thing that my European relatives like to point out is regarding our laws. It is ironic because we advertise ourselves as the “land of the free”. The truth is, we are way less free than most of Europe. The drinking age is just one simple example. Our government goes way over board with laws that restrict our freedom and of course since 9/11 this has gotten much worse.

I can’t fail to mention here the fact that both of our last two presidential elections were stolen with widespread and proven cheating and Americans are not out in the streets and up in arms about it. In fact how many laws has this current administration broken; torture, domestic spying, preemptive war, outing CIA agents, destroying documents, … and still people are not really out in the streets in major protest.

Of course there is also the idea that we have been brainwashed with here that "bigger government" (ie government that takes care of its citizens) is bad and paying higher taxes would be bad for the economy. Again, look at europe. Their economy has actually been improving over the past 10 years even though they pay higher taxes. Plus the argument that we should not have big government here is rediculous as long as we spend more on our military than the rest of the world COMBINED! That is BIG GOVERNMENT. It is just big government designed to control the world rather than big government designed to help its own citizens. Compare the money we spend in Iraq to say the response to Katrina...

Anyway, I think this rant has gone on long enough. Bottom line: wake up America!!!! Your European counterparts are living a similar lifestyle in a much more responsible way, why can’t we!

Terminating Our State

2008-01-11T14:32:00.000-08:00

Well There have been lots of things that I have been planning to blog about but today's news has me bothered enough to sit down and pound this out right now.
Our Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing massive cuts to the state budget due to a budget deficit faced by the state. He plans to terminate funds for medi-cal, education, parks, prisons, and other public services. (Remember the first thing he did after being elected was to repeal the car tax increase which cost the sate $4 billion a year.)

The numbers for the cuts are staggering!!
--$4.5 billion from schools
--1 billion from medi-cal
--the closure of 43 state parks
--the early release of 22,000 inmates
--and a 10% across the board cut for next year, effecting every state agency

This will mean:
-- thousands will lose their jobs (6000 prison staff and how many from the park service, --medicare, education?)
--public schools will lose something like $700 a year per student.
--tuition will go up for higher education
--poor, elderly, and disabled will lose their health care or have their coverage reduced
--families will become homeless

Now these cuts will obviously be effecting the students and lower income people in the state. This in a state where low income and middle class wage earners are already feeling the squeeze of a high cost of living.

The car tax. Gov Grey Davis raised the car registration fee from .65% to 2% in order to generate funds for the state. Arnold repealed this the first thing in office, sending everyone a check to pay back those of us who had already paid our fees for that year. I received a check for $1 with a nice letter from Arnold. This raised our budget shortfall from $10 billion to $14 billion. Now he goes and slashes the budget to make up for this.
One argument was that if people had the money back from this tax they would spend it and that would help the economy. Now do you think a dollar made much difference in my budget? What about those who have $100,000 dollar cars? Do you think their $1400 made a big difference? If it did then they probably should drive a more modest car. But what about these 10,000 plus people who will lose their jobs? Will that effect their budget? Will that effect our economy? How about having less people with health coverage? Will that effect our economy? What about the loss of tourism due to the closure of state parks? Will that effect our economy? What about having less access to higher education and less resources for k-12 education? Will that effect our economy?
Hell, I say tax the hell out of cars. Raise the car tax to 5%. The tax on hummers should be double! Or how about a tax on big screen TVs. Or a tax on cheap shit made in China. Or what about a tax on houses that cost more than $5 million dollars. Or will that make life hard for those who are in the market for such houses?
If we want to live in a first world country with good education, infrastructure, etc, then we need to pay for it. Come on Arnold, and I guess come on California. You elected this moron partly because he promise to return a couple hundred dollars of you vehicle registration fee. Now you see what we get.
peace

The Story of Stuff

2007-12-08T22:29:00.000-08:00

Well a friend of mine beat me to the email about stuff. I had written my first blog on the subject and then Christina sends out a 'tis the season to think about stuff email with a link to a fantastic short film called "The Story of Stuff". So in addition to reading my initial blog (see below) about World Changing, you can now watch a film on the same subject by going to: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ (or go to the link on my link list under 'other links'). And if you are too lazy to read what I wrote then at least watch the movie, it should be required viewing! Regardless of whether or not the lady annoys you, stick with it, she makes tons of good points.
By the way, I happen to be writing this on Christina's fancy little Mac Book lap top while I am (coincidentally - see next blog) watching her kids. I should have started this blog out by using the first line of my first blog. I would only have had to change the word "first" for "second" and the phrase "to bed" to "off to party".

World Changing

2007-11-27T21:19:00.000-08:00

I am sitting here creating my first ever official blog, taking advantage of a rare bit of time after the kids have gone to bed and I have nothing pressing to do. I said kid(s) because I am child- sitting, I am not at home where my own little one is also asleep.
As I sit here getting myself online and caught up with this changing world, I am driven to talk briefly about a book and website that I just discovered both called World Changing.
This is an extraordinary book designed to help guide us into the 'green' future that I hope we can create. A future of peace and harmony with nature and people through things like green design, fair trade, and community organizing. I only just read the intro to the book and skimmed its chapters and I found a website by the same name. The book covers the subjects of stuff, shelter, cities, community, business, politics, and the planet.
The website subtitle says "tools, models, and ideas for building a bright green future" and the the subtitle of the book is "A User's Guide For the 21st Century"

I want to share with you part of what I read in the intro of the book for this excerpt touches on things I have been thinking a lot about lately and are especially relevant with the ultra consumer season of Christmas at our door step and tons of temptingly affordable Chinese imports to buy.
Having educated myself recently on the true costs of cheep products and having looked into the real life effects of our purchases of these products like child labor, environmental degradation, etc, I have strong feelings about the consumption that we all take part in. Much of this is a new problem, how long has plastic even been around ? I was visiting my grandfather this weekend for Thanksgiving and every time we talked about something he said "yeah, I made myself one of those". An example he showed us were the beautiful bows and arrows he made himself from scratch.
My son has wanted a set and we have even seen them in the toy catalogue for unbelievably low prices. Using my motivation to buy less, we went ahead with the plan we had to cut some cedar and make our own (nothing like my grandfather made but plenty good enough for a four year old).
Anyway, I could go an a 'buy less, buy local, buy fair trade, buy organic, shop responsibly, and make your own bows and arrows' rant but at this point I will simply give you the excerpt from the book which says it all pretty well. As this is the intro it is important to realize that the rest of the book is FULL of solutions to the problems it introduces.

Stuff
"Our things define us.
What we buy, what we use, what we keep and throw away, what we waste, and what we save: the stuff that surrounds us and flows through our lives is a key indicator of the kinds of lives we're living. To be an affluent twenty-first-century person is to float on a sea of material objects -- each with its own history and future.
They may be hidden form our eyes, but in practical global terms, those histories and futures tend to be the most important aspects of the stuff we own. The moment we tear the wrapping from a new toy, that toy is already at the end of a sweeping story involving the mining of metals, the pumping of oil, the operation of huge factories, the shipping of cargo containers, the printing of packaging materials, the purchase of advertising, the careful arranging of store shelves, and the final drive home. Simply buying, say a new laptop connects us with a web of activity that spans the planet.
Another story begins when we throw away our old laptop. It may find itself on a quick trip to the local dump, where it will lie, buried beneath a mountain of garbage, corroding and slowly leaking toxic chemicals for hundreds of years. It might, on the other hand, be shipped off to china, where its circuit boards will be stripped out and where poorly paid workers will extract by hand the valuable metals they contain. Parts of the laptop's titanium body may be sold as scrap and melted down for other purposes. Much of the rest will wind up in an open dump, where children will pick through the dissected electronic remains.
What's true for our new laptop is true for every product we buy: what we actually purchase form the store, as sustainable-design expert William McDonough points out in his iconic book Cradle to Cradle, is just the tip of a vast material iceberg, a gigantic pyramid of extracted resources and burnt fuel, toxic waste and sweatshop labor. Similarly, our use of a product only marks the start of a new cycle - the product will spend most of its time decaying in a dump somewhere. A Styrofoam carton may only spend fifteen minutes holding the Chinese food we have for lunch, but it could easily spend a hundred years decomposing in some trash heap.
The first problem with the secret of our stuff is it hides from us the consequences of our actions.
The second problem is, most of the time, those consequences are not pretty.....
However changes are happening; the things we live with every day are evolving, becoming lighter on the planet, fairer to the people everywhere, safer for our health....
The changes rippling through the fields of art, design, engineering, material science, and biology are nothing short of revolutionary......
Because of these forces, a more radical evolution in design is under way, and a new generation of stuff is emerging. Imagine things that use minimal energy, that are made with non-toxic chemicals, that are completely recyclable, that hurt no one - not even nature - but that perform better and last longer than what we have today....
These products still live mostly on the computer screens of cutting-edge designers, but that's changing quickly. And we have the power to make it change more quickly still. We may not all be designers, but we are all design consumers. By voting with our dollars and showing that we demand smarter stuff - that we insist on quality without the guilt - and that we're willing to walk the talk at the checkout counter, we can help spur this transformation.
We have the power to choose the world we live in, and through our purchasing decisions, we reveal that world every day."

Happy Holidays everyone, if you want, get out there and shop, but shop smart and with the whole story of your purchases in mind.

Peace,
Danny