On Grace and Gratitude

I wanted to share  a wonderful reflection on gratitude by film maker Louie Schwartzberg.  He is an award-winning cinematographer, director, and producer whose career spans more than three decades.  I found the imagery here inspiring.....it's good to remember, every single day, what a gift the day is. 

 https://youtu.be/gXDMoiEkyuQ

TOMORROW - a New Film by the Transition Network

“TOMORROW” CAN BE SEEN IN THEATERS IN APRIL TO COINCIDE WITH EARTH DAY CELEBRATIONS  Transition Network has been one of the leading inspiration of the narrative and the spirit of “TOMORROW”.   “TOMORROW” is an upbeat environmental documentary directed and narrated (in English) by actress Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds) and activist Cyril Dion. Together, they traveled to 10 countries to visit Permaculture farms, urban agriculture projects, community-owned renewable initiatives. They introduce us to people making a difference in the fields of food, energy, finance, democracy, and education. See “TOMORROW” at these Theaters or set up a screening in your town or city: Northern California: San Francisco: Vogue Theater – April 14th to 20th – Q&A with Director Cyril Dion and Robert Reed on April 14th Sebastopol: Rialto – April 14th to 20th - Q&A with Director Cyril Dion and Robert Reed on April 15th Berkeley: Elmwood – April 14th to 20th - Q&A with Director Cyril Dion and Robert Reed on April 15th Southern California:  Los Angeles: Fine Arts – April 18th – Evening event with fundraising opportunity - Q&A with Director Cyril Dion Los Angeles: Laemmle’s Music Hall – April 20th to 21st – Q&A with Director Cyril on April 21st Pasadena: Laemmle’s Pasadena Playhouse – April 22nd to 23rd Claremont: Laemmle’s Claremont – April 22nd to 23rd Mid-Atlantic region:  New York City: Village East – April 21st to 27th - Q&A with Director Cyril Dion on April 22nd Rhinebeck: Upstate Films – April 24th Washington DC: Film Fest DC – April 24th and 26th Rockland, ME: Strand Theater – April 21st - 27th More info here on the film's release in the U.S., including contact info of the distribution team, prices for screenings and more!  Watch Trailer Here Press Kit Here And the film is also a book! The English language paperback edition of Tomorrow will be available in the U.S. on April 5th. Chelsea Green Publishing is making a special 50% (20 books or more) to Transition initiatives screening the film, or using the book as the basis for a discussion group. For more information, please contact Darrell Koerner at dkoerner@chelseagreen.com, 303.963.5612. Mission: Transition US (TUS) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that serves as the national hub for the international Transition Towns movement. Our mission is to catalyze and strengthen a national network of citizen-powered groups who are building local resilience through community action. We accomplish this mission by: Inspiring people to take action in their communities From water and energy to transportation and agriculture, we help local people gain the skills they need to build a resilient communities and localized economies Training local leaders to educate, organize and mobilize their communities Identifying and sharing best resilience-building practices Providing a knowledge hub of resources and models Connecting emerging leaders to this vital movement and to each other We are working in close partnership with the Transition Network, a UK based organization that supports the international Transition Movement as a whole.

"Nicky's Family" - A Wonderful Film

Lately I've been feeling it's so important to remember, be inspired by, and model the best of what human beings can be., in the face of such a concentration on the worst in the media.  In other words, I need good news before I fall into cynicism and despair.  So I decided to remind myself of the many unknown heroes and heroines, amazing people most people will never hear about.   This wonderful documentary has lingered with me for weeks, and I felt like sharing it here.  

During part of the year, by the way, I rent rooms in my house like a B&B. I sometimes, but rarely, have Europeans visit.   Strangely enough, in the way of synchronicity, as I write this I have  no less than 3 travelling German women staying here, and a woman coming from Austria next week!  None of them know each other, but they are all enjoying the unexpected opportunity to speak their native language in, of all places, far off Tucson!  These women, an artist, a scholar, an alternative healer, are perhaps the children and grandchildren of the people who witnessed Hitler's rise to  power and the horror of Nazi Germany.  They are also contributing to the beauty and knowledge of the world................I don't know the meaning of this synchronicity, only that the film, and the synchronicity, leave me awed and reassured.

Sir Nicholas George Winton, still alive and over 100,  is a British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War.  Winton found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain. The UK press has dubbed him the "British Schindler". Just before Christmas 1938, Winton was about to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday, when he decided instead to travel to Prague to help his friend Martin Blake, who was involved in Jewish refugee work, who had called him asking for his help.   A young, successful business man not even 30, he single-handedly established an organization to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis, setting up an office at a dining room table in his hotel in Wenceslas Square. 

This film, created by one of the children he rescued,  documents not only the rescue work, but also the lives of many of the children he rescued, the contributions they made to humanity themselves, the thousands of people who came into this world, and contribute to its betterment, from his work.  "Nicky's Family"...........an expanding circle.  Remarkable!

 

http://youtu.be/PGEXoXkDgqk

Alice Walker "Beauty in Truth"

 

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365171000/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_campaign=americanmasters

It's wonderful that you can stream PBS films from the internet (see the link above)........just wanted to share this wonderful film about Alice Walker, which can be viewed online.

AMERICAN MASTERS

Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth. Full Film

"Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth" is the first film biography of writer and activist Alice Walker. Most famous for her seminal novel "The Color Purple" for which she won a Pulitzer Prize, Walker was raised in poverty in the rural South during the violent and seismic social changes of mid-20th century America. Women, poverty and civil rights became the inherent themes in her writing.

"The World According to Monsanto" in Newburgh Tonight

 

I was invited to introduce THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MONSANTO by my friend Lisa Gervais of the Healing Arts Studio at 75 Broadway, in Newburgh, N.Y. because I shared the film with her last year.  I’d also very much like to thank  Chris and Paul of Newburgh Brewing for the  privilege.  The film will be shown at 88 Colden Street, in Newburgh, N.Y. at 6:30. 

Our Mother Earth, with all of Her infinitely complex eco-systems, has spent millions of years evolving the systems that sustain us.  With unthinkable naiveté and  arrogance, multi-national corporate entities are altering the genetic basis of food that we eat with no understanding of the long range consequences, to our bodies, and to the body of the Earth.  Furthermore, as this film and the “Monsanto Protection Act” demonstrates, not only is the health of future generations in grave danger, but so is the future of  Democracy; we are very close to being a “corporateacracy”, with no real choice about what we eat, think, or know.  This is a very important film.

The World According to Monsanto
 (Re-posted from previous article)

The passing of the "Monsanto Protection Act" is something all Americans should be aware of, it's long term consequences and its implications.   Having watched the documentary "The World According to Monsanto", I believe everyone needs to see this film.  

We hear a French scientist reporting that the universally used weedkiller Roundup "provokes  cell division leading to the formation of cancer".  We also learn about the almost complete  loss of independent farms and  biodiversity in Paraguay, and that in India farmers are being driven to suicide because they can no longer, due the fact that Monsanto completely controls the cotton seed market,  afford to plant their traditional crops.  As a result, they are falling deeper and deeper into debt, and losing their traditional homelands.  

 

In North America as well,  Indiana farmer Troy Rouse talks about being sued by Monsanto and the "gene police" phenomenon.  (Consider:  if you grow organic or conventional,  and your neighbor grows Monsanto, the two will  inevitably cross and you will be legally liable to be sued by Monsanto when they field test your seeds.)  Further, seed crops are being designed to be sterile, so that future planting must be purchased anew from the corporation.    What this could mean is that essential crops could be potentially controlled by a corporate entity demanding a tax which it can determine at will.   They're doing this in India now.

We need to educate ourselves as to what lobbyists are accomplishing - it is frightening indeed to allow Monsanto to control  food production, as well as unleashing biologically modified crops with very little testing, and certainly no long term understanding of what the consequences of such tampering could mean.

As a mythologist,  I cannot help but reflect that the two most popular Epics of the past decade years was "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter", both about a "Dark Lord" intent on sacrificing everything in the pursuit of power.  The profit driven  soul-lessness of corporate entities such as Monsanto reflect that mythic struggle, the shadow of our crucial time.

 "Monsanto's talk of ‘technology' tries to hide its real objectives of control  where genetic engineering is a means to control seed.  These are the promises Monsanto India's website makes, alongside pictures of smiling, prosperous farmers from the state of Maharashtra. This is a desperate attempt by Monsanto and its PR machinery to delink the epidemic of farmers' suicides in India from the company's growing control over cotton seed supply - 95 per cent of India's cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto."......GMOs are failing to control pests and weeds, and have instead led to the emergence of superpests and superweeds.   The highest acreage of Bt cotton is in Maharashtra and this is also where the highest farmer suicides are. Suicides increased after Bt cotton was introduced - Monsanto's royalty extraction, and the high costs of seed and chemicals have created a debt trap.  As Monsanto's profits grow, farmers' debt grows........Monsanto's seeds are seeds of suicide."

The ultimate seeds of suicide is Monsanto's patented technology to create sterile seeds. (Called "Terminator technology" by the media, sterile seed technology is a type of Gene Use Restriction Technology, GRUT, in which seed produced by a crop will not grow - crops will not produce viable offspring seeds or will produce viable seeds with specific genes switched off.) The Convention on Biological Diversity has banned its use, otherwise Monsanto would be collecting even higher profits from seed............ A Monsanto representative admitted that they were "the patient's diagnostician and physician all in one" in writing the patents on life-forms, from micro-organisms to plants, in the TRIPS' agreement of WTO. Stopping farmers from saving seeds and exercising their seed sovereignty was the main objective." 

Read More:

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/271-38/16674-focus-monsanto-and-the-seeds-of-suicide

Thanks to Janie Rezner for article.

Connected: An Autobiography about Love, Death and Technology

"We as humans have accumulated so much knowledge.  Why do we have such a hard time seeing the bigger picture?"........for centuries we've been declaring independance:  perhaps it's finally time to declare our interdependance."

One of my favorite books is Leonard Shlain's 1997 "The Alphabet Vs the Goddess".  It was my privilege to meet Dr. Shlain briefly when I was living in Berkeley, and his book was influential for me.  I was saddened to learn that he passed away in 2009, and in many ways, this provocative, funny,  and delightful film by his daughter, filmmaker Tiffany Shlain is a tribute to him. 

As someone who follows the Trail  of the Spider Woman, ever wondering at the new ways She has found to remind us of the Web, I'm nevertheless from a generation prior to computers, cellphones or even, heaven forbid, color xerox.  So I don't always know what to think of all this.  I remember last winter I went with some friends to an expensive Indian restaurant.  As we enjoyed our food and ambiance, we all noticed, at the candlelit table next to us, a well dressed young couple.  Both of them sat with heads bent over the little illuminated boxes in their hands, tapping away on them, and we had to admit, this was another generation.  We figured they were probably talking to each other.


"Have you ever faked a restroom trip to check your email? Slept with your laptop? Or become so overwhelmed that you just unplugged from it all? In this funny, eye-opening, and inspiring film, Director Tiffany Shlain takes audiences on an exhilarating rollercoaster ride to discover what it means to be connected in the 21st century. From founding The Webby Awards to being a passionate advocate for The National Day of Unplugging, Her love/hate relationship with technology serves as the springboard for a thrilling exploration of modern life…and our interconnected future"


To watch the film for free! :  http://connectedthefilm.com/

Trailer: