Chasing Ice is a must-see film by James Balog documenting real time consequences of our current way of living. Incredibly powerful example of the passion of one person to use his artistic vision to share what is happening to the Earth. No question what we are doing to the planet's climate stability...to the air we breathe, the ecosystems we all are inextricably connected to. Go to Chasing Ice and Extreme Ice Survey to learn much more...get the film and share it!

Walking down the road
coming to this buckeye tree
full bloom
beautiful symmetry
sweetness of scent
fine tuning my vision
sun lighting up each stamen
each glorious stamen
there attracting the bee
bees that help keep us fed
bees that help show us the way--
if we pay attention.

Click here to read an article about the significance of the decline of honey bees. And click here to read how native bees and other indigenous pollinators depend on native habitat to help support pollination of crops and indigenous plants. Losing native pollinators and native plants have a domino effect on all that depend on these crucial links in the food chain...for birds, butterflies, bats, moths, bees, mammals...including humans.

Last week David Orr, author of Hope is an Imperative and the Nature of Design, among many other books all about what sustainability really means, was in Monterey giving talks to various groups. In 2003, I took an Ecological Design course at Schumacher College in England with David Orr and John Todd. It was exciting to talk with him ten years later and give him a copy of Passion for Place. The core of his message is the concept he has been and is putting into effect on a  community scale and wider area...creating projects that respond to the many facets of remaking how we live on this earth. He calls it Full Spectrum Sustainability that brings together agriculture/forestry, renewable energy and efficiency, policy and law, education, communication, economic revitalization, marketing, community mobilization,  and banking. These elements are all brought together through leadership and coordination.  

David also spoke about the importance the arts  and celebration play in this remaking. Passion for Place puts forth this same message through the Watershed Arts spiral..a way of connecting to where we live through the arts and how that leads to taking action on behalf of the natural world. Watershed Arts brings the arts front and center in our llves, thus supporting creative change in how we live in support of the natural world.