Came across the following by environmental journalist Paul Voosen this morning.

“Historically, the push behind conservation has been a love of nature,” said Wiens, the former conservancy scientist. “Translated, there’s a sort of religious underpinning to that. It’s our moral obligation to protect all living creatures. And it’s still a strong feeling in the movement, that everything is important.”

A decade ago, though, the Nature Conservancy saw this love of nature fading. Young, mostly city-dwelling Americans don’t go hunting, fishing or camping as they did in the past. Between 2004 and 2009, the group saw a 10-point drop in self-identified environmentalists.”

Posted on May 14th, 2012 in Christians, Educators, Environmentalists, Parents, Scientists

Comments Off

Our interviewees are very much in the news of late.  E.O. Wilson has a new book coming out.  Last month, writes Elizabeth Grossman in Yale Environment 360, ‘…12 scientists – including such experts as [Theo] Colborn and the University of Missouri’s Frederick vom Saal – published a paper…their research, based on a review of 800 scientific studies, concludes that it is “remarkably common” for very small amounts of hormone-disrupting chemicals to have profound, adverse effects on human health.’

Posted on April 13th, 2012 in Educators, Environmentalists, Parents, Scientists

Comments Off

I am captivated by the evocative patterns, codes, and beauty of seashells. Who and what are they? Small earthly creatures, millions of them. Capable of exquisite design and construction. Precise. Mathematical. Inventive. Shells represent unceasing evolution over the past 500 million years. This process could continue on and on into the planet’s future. Humanity’s past valuation of shells occurred at a confluence of art, culture, and science.

Botticelli’s Venus. The cowries currency of Africa. The shell of St. James, the fisherman disciple of Christ. Closing one of his Taliesin Lectures, Frank Lloyd Wright described the seashell as the “housing with exactly what we lack- inspired form.” Shells were once the treasured objects for the wealthy on summer trips to the sea, but they have always been accessible and collected by coastal and island peoples regardless of economic class or culture. They are the essence of accessibility and simplicity, a “gift of the sea” wrote Anne Morrow Lindberg. Shells have a heritage of stimulating the beholder to find a playful solution to the great mysteries at the source of their creation.

“Can you hear the Ocean within a Shell?”

Posted on May 20th, 2011 in

Comments Off

Torrential rainfall. A rising river. Time passing amidst the drive for survival and direction at the water’s edge. Below, a timelapse created by cinematographer Hunter Snyder. He has joined our visual study of the surrounding landscape. Here, we visit the nearby Ducktrap River in the last days before snowfall on the coast of Maine. Melody is Dirk’s evocative banjo from WATERBOUND (see previous blog entry).

Posted on December 6th, 2010 in Environmentalists, Indie Film

Comments Off

Dirk Powell is our film’s Song Composer, responsible for finding musicians and tunes that fit, as well as contributing some of his own music. I’ve always been extremely moved by previous recordings of his song WATERBOUND, then heard this new recording from across the Atlantic… which he performed with friends at the Glascow Royal Concert Hall. Someone videotaped the event and posted on YouTube. Wow!

In Tennessee, “waterbound” apparently means “flooded.” The tone and lyrics are seeped with a special kind of agony, the kind that a flood or a shipwreck can cause. Not just loss. But the cleansweep loss that made the story of Noah and the flood so devastating, and the survivor’s guilt so poignant. Lyrics below.

WATERBOUND

I went out late one night,
The moon and stars were shining bright
A storm come up and the trees come down,
I tell you boys I was waterbound

Waterbound on a stranger’s shore
River rising to my door
carried my home to the field below
I’m water bound, nowhere to go.

Carved my name on an old barn wall
Or no-one would know I was there at all
Stable’s dry on a winter’s night
If you turn your head you can see the light.

Black cat crawling on an old box car
A rusty door and a falling star
Aint got no dime in my nation sack
I’m waterbound and I can’t get back

It’s I’m going and I won’t be back
If you don’t believe me count my tracks
The river’s long and the river’s wide
I’ll meet you boys on the other side

So say my name and don’t forget
The water still aint got me yet
Ain’t nothing but I’m bound to roam
I’m waterbound and I can’t get home

Posted on November 11th, 2010 in

Comments Off