Archive for the ‘Ecology / Environment’ Category
She was big
She was big, and we’ll never forget her.
Katrina came along five years ago and changed a lot of things. She changed me, not just because of her enormity, but because exposed me to several new levels of the human experience.
I’m no stranger to those layers of the human experience of which most people aren’t aware. I don’t consider myself anything but grateful and better for having been occasionally in a circle of people, emotions, places, and circumstances that informed and educated my soul. The Army in the early ’70s immersed me in one kind of world; my seven years in a row of fasting and cooking in San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon on every Thanksgiving and Christmas, working with everyone else to serve 5,000, immersed me in another world; doing adult literacy tutoring for inmates in one of our county jails is another world.
A related aside: one Thanksgiving night after having worked in Glide’s kitchen all day, I was invited to spend that evening with the parents of the woman I was dating at the time, which I did, even though I wouldn’t be eating. As I sat down across from the woman’s father, a man I will diplomatically describe as conservative, asked, “So, Michael, how many of those people today would you describe as just freeloaders?”
“I’d describe most of the people I saw today as families,” was my answer.
Every world we experience — gated communities, slums, blue collar, white collar, discretionary income, welfare — is the same — this world.
Katrina hit us, hit me, hit you, and that world was a nightmare.
It hit Louisiana five years ago. I was driving an American Red Cross truck from California to Louisiana with another volunteer about a week after it tore through. I came home three weeks after that somewhat altered, somewhat the same, and a year later did a solo performance based on my experiences in and around the Lake Charles Coliseum shelter. Next week I’ll do a series of posts about my experiences. I’ll do them for the same reason I did the show, and for the reasons I write and create: because every day, someone experiences their own Katrina on some level, and people need help every day, and they need it from us. I have the creative skills to share what I’ve experienced, and I believe people can learn and grow if I share those things that help me learn and grow. It’s not a big deal, it’s not anything special, it’s just a way I’ve found to contribute to this thing we call our existence.
She was indeed big, and we’ll never forget her. I’ll never forget the things she taught me, and I’ll be sharing some of those things with anyone who’s interested.
They need a general
I haven’t posted in a while because so many ‘things’ are going on in my personal and professional life, but I want to get this out there: the President and his usually excellent team have yet to recover from their early inaction and communication missteps regarding the Gulf oil disaster, and CNN is at this moment is doing a segment with the man who symbolically represents what the white House should have done within the first two days of the disaster.
The White House needed, and still needs, a version of retired Lt. General Honore’.
Our information about our world is delivered visually. We still read, but most of what we read and almost all of the data we’re we’re personally interested in incorporates a massive amount of visual data. From a communications perspective, during the hurricane Katrina disaster, one of the most effective and riveting images, outside of the human suffering and destruction images, was the footage of Gen Honore’ rolling into New Orleans and ‘taking control’ of chaos. The video of Gen. Honore’ yelling at a truckload of New Orleans policeman and ordering them to lower their rifles is an unsung moment in great news footage history. It captured a moment of a lone human being, with a presence that no one else could muster, taking, shouldering, and spreading control over something that seemed on the verge of complete chaos.
What the White House missed in the early response was how powerful and cinematic the images of the disaster were going to be. That lack of anticipation put them right behind the 24-hour news cycle, and the news is where we see the disaster, and we’re seeing it every day, for hours and hours and hours. Right or left, soldier or pacifist, stockbroker or stay-at-home dad, NO ONE is unaffected at the site of animals blanketed in raw crude. It’s one of the images that conveys that we, the highest species on the planet, are puking where we live, work, eat and play.
That’s what is communicated by those simple images. Now, toss in families worried about their future, oil on beaches, outraged governors and community leaders, shit-brown slicks miles wide and long on the pristine Gulf, AND the lack of any ON-SITE, “I’m responsible” representative from the government, and you have exactly what the White House has: a communications disaster.
Aside from what this has done to our complacency as a population, this is an example of how not to communicate, and an example of how the even the smartest people around (let it go; I know there are smarter people) can under-appreciate, to a disastrous degree, the power of visual communications and the need for communications action.
A view from the Hill
My thirteenth hawkwatch season ended a few weeks ago.
For the last thirteen years, every other Friday between mid-August and mid-December (unless it’s foggy or rainy), I’ve been at the top of Hawk Hill in the Golden Gate National Recreational Area, watching the skies as part of a team of like-minded volunteers from the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (GGRO).
It’s a volunteer-driven, scientific process, in an extraordinarily beautiful wildlife laboratory, smack dab in the middle of a modern, metropolitan area.
It is, for me, soul expanding. I can’t imagine not ever being part of it.
It gives me super-powers.
Really.
Here’s my personal description of the process and history:
We watch for hawks, or, more appropriately stated, we monitor raptors. When we see a raptor we identify its species and its age (juvenile or adult). If there is some difficulty with the identification, others on the team turn their binoculars toward the raptor and, with rare exception, one or more of us has a definitive answer, which is then recorded and, after the day is over, the information we gathered is entered into a database.
We do this for the same reason other scientists, organizations and concerned volunteers do similar work: monitoring wildlife provides information about the state of our existence.
Twenty-five years ago, a small group of dedicated birders noticed a dramatic increase of raptors in the Bay Area skies during the fall months. After a period of ‘unofficial’ monitoring, they determined that the migration pattern of raptors along the West Coast came right over the Bay Area. The GGRO, now in its twenty-fifth year, was officially organized to monitor the migration. It is now maintained by a tiny staff and almost three-hundred volunteers. (again, these are my descriptions; details and specifics can be found on the GGRO’s website)
The Hill has a 360-degree view of the Bay Area. The entire length of the majestic Golden Gate Bridge seems close enough to touch. The hills of the GGNRA roll to the Pacific. On the best days, there are hundreds of hawks.
But I’m all about the special, Shaman-like powers the program has bequeathed upon me (they don’t talk about this at the volunteer recruiting sessions; I’m breaking the code of silence…)
The GGRO has bestowed upon us volunteers vision that mere mortals lack, where nature reveals itself in intimate glimpses, even amidst the daily grind of what our culture labels as day-to-day life, our moment to moment, eyes on our latest handheld communicatingthingy, daytimer-scheduled life, where we scurry about in our existence-altering, chemical-components-spewing rubber and metal transport machines…
Sorry. I digress (never met a hyphen I didn’t like).
I see things that many ordinary citizens don’t. It’s not that those things aren’t there for others to see, it’s that I’m open to things, I’m aware, and I’m looking, because by looking, I am so often rewarded.
I have that active looking and active awareness because Allen Fish, the GGRO’s director (it’s the only job he’s ever had since college, a couple of decades ago…the lucky bastard) and Buzz Hull, the GGRO’s research director, have created and continue a volunteer program that changes lives.
They teach us to see, to examine, to grow, to ponder. After some time in the GGRO, no bird on a power line goes without scrutiny, and the reward is the kestrel; watching the soaring bird high above gives us the red tail, or the osprey, or the golden eagle. And it’s not just the open patches of land or the groves of trees that are the homes of nature’s visions.
There’s a magic in being able to see the sudden flight of a red shouldered hawk, as it glides through a busy intersection, just above the traffic lights.
It’s there and gone. I glance at people in their cars, waiting for the light to change, and at the people on either side of the street, and it’s evident that I’m the only one who saw nature’s beautiful, powerful representative streaking through a moment of our modern lives. It’s a brief glimpse, reminding remind me of what the planet has been about for so long, and why my time, energy and philosophy, as well as that of all the other hawkwatchers and banders in the GGRO, are important; it’s about knowing that the work we do is a gift to us, that we have embraced a commitment, and, in return, we get back gifts, of vision; glimpses of special things; and the camaraderie of others who share the appreciation of it all.
So, in this interim between my thirteenth and fourteenth season, I simply want to say thank you to my Friday II team – Jon, James, Marcine, Janeann, Laura, Robert, David, Stephen, Alison, Matthew, Lisa — for our time together on the Hill; to Herb, Steve and Tim, for sharing your experience, laughs and knowledge with all of us; to John Boyd, my original Friday II mentor; and to Jill Harley, Buzz Hull and Allen Fish, for managing a program unlike any other, that enables all of us to share a vision of what it truly means to be experiencing life on this great big blue ball.
Peace to all.
See you on the Hill.
An aware CEO, and a suggestion to presentation venues
Sally Jewell, President & CEO, REI
Attended an impressive talk last night at UC Berkeley by Sally Jewell, the CEO of REI.
She was entertaining, informative and a darn good speaker. She talked about REI’s commitment to environmental stewardship and connecting people, especially children, to nature. Great information, good Q&A, and a good PowerPoint presentation.
The slides were clean, great photos ranging from outdoor scenes to picts of employees and their families, AND NO BULLET POINTS.
Not one slide with bullet points. When there was text, it was a single, simple, concise sentence.
Very nice.
Now, as to the suggestion to presentation venues.
When we walked in to the lecture hall last night, the ever-present title slide was up on the screen. The text was centered and stacked, with all the requisite information that at least 99% of the audience already knew: where we were; the date; the speaker’s name; the title of the lecture/presentation.
I am a strong promoter of not using title slides. There are many ways for a presenter to incorporate that redundant info into the beginning of a presentation (I’ll do a future post with specifics). I would suggest to venues that rather than have that static, overused title slide up on the screen, do this:
- A welcoming slide, something simple, dark background with white text: “The presentation will begin at (whatever time)”
- Fifteen minutes before the scheduled start, change the slide to “Tonight’s guest, (name), will be out in fifteen minutes — now is a good time to make sure your cell phone is turned off or in silent mode.”
- Five minutes before the scheduled start, change the slide to “Welcome to (name of the venue) — if you haven’t already, it’s time to turn off your cell phone or put it in silent mode. Please don’t wait any longer…do it now.”
This series of slides actually serves a purpose, as opposed to putting something on the screen simply because, well, it just seems something should be up there.
