How It Looks From Here
Dec 31, 2021
HILFH #14 Alayna Rasile Digrindakis
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This week, Mary speaks with Alayna Rasile Digrindakis, about Alayna's work with plant-based textiles, fine art, and environmental activism. As an emerging young artist and designer, Alayna is keenly aware of the need to leverage her skills to make money, but that doesn't mean she needs to sacrifice her values: in fact, leaning into those values can open entrepreneurial opportunities, as Alayna found while working with milkweed fibers.
Find Alayna's work at:
https://alaynarasile.com/projects/
Music this week by:
Cedar Mathers-Winn: https://kgvm.org/show/cedar-mathers-winn-naturalist/
Gary Ferguson - www.fullecology.com
More episodes from How It Looks From Here
Aug 31, 2023
HILFH #34 Gary Ferguson & Mary Clare
With this episode we begin our fourth season. Our very first episode of How it Looks from Here went live September of 2020. The pandemic was just getting going. We were being asked to work from home, to keep our distance from each other. A huge cost of this distance was that we wouldn’t be hearing how other people were making sense of Covid in their lives. How were people coping? How could we learn from each other with so little face-to-face contact? How did the world look to the people we weren’t seeing on the street, at work, in the grocery? Our first season was dedicated to hearing from people across the country and in many different roles about how they were navigating life in the time of Covid.
By September of 2021, we began extending our focus, keeping an eye on the pandemic, and looking to see what more we could learn from each other for living well in the time of climate change. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with poets and dancers, with wildfire experts, ranchers and reproductive health advocates from all walks of life. The archives are live and worth diving into to learn from this wide range of perspectives.
That brings us to today - to launch this fourth season. In this episode, I speak with Gary Ferguson, a highly acclaimed nature writer, co-creator of Full Ecology, and my life partner.
Only recently have we realized that, in January of 2024, we’ll have been developing and learning from Full Ecology for 10 years. It only seemed right to begin this season with a conversation on what Full Ecology has taught us - and what it continues to teach.
Gary is the author of 27 books in which he renders science in story. In this podcast, we revisit the origins of Full Ecology and make our way to speaking about the impact Full Ecology has had on Gary’s work as a writer and mine supporting organizations committed to healthy work culture.
To learn more about Full Ecology visit the Full Ecology website. Drop us a line at connect@fullecology.com and we'll get your name on the list for the monthly newsletter.
Also, if you'd like a slightly different slant on what we talk about in this podcast episode, check out our Full Ecology September Viedo Update on YouTube. After all of that you won't be able to keep yourself from writing to let us know what your thinking and seeing in your own life. And we'll love hearing from you.
In addition to our theme song, you heard music by:
LesFM | Acoustic Love - Creative Commons CC BY 3.0
Michael Kobrin | NightLife - 95bpm
Chris Haugen | Campfire Song
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Jul 30, 2023
HILFH #33 Dr. Zaher Wahab
Dr Zaher Wahab is professor emeritus of Education at Lewis & Clark College, and former senior advisor to the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education. Dr Wahab, also taught at American University of Afghanistan from 2013 to 2020.
Zaher was born and schooled in Afghanistan. He was the first person in his family’s history to attend the "village school," a boarding school in Kabul, and later received scholarships to attend college in Lebanon and the US. He earned a BA in sociology from The American University of Beirut, an MA in comparative education from Teachers College at Columbia University, and both an MA in anthropology and a PhD in international development education from Stanford University.
Zaher is dedicated to praxis - the practical application of our best thinking to real life challenges. He and Mary take this time to dig deep into the ways praxis can be applied in support of climate justice and repair.
In our conversation you will get a sense of the vast and direct knowledge Zaher has of education and society across the globe. Listen to this advocate for global understanding and respect. Consider with us how these fundamental ways of being naturally show up in our honoring of both interdependence and sovereignty.
You can learn more about Dr. Wahab's work and vision by searching through his abundant contributions on the internet.
Peace Action: https://www.peaceaction.org/tag/zaher-wahab/
Columbia University Center for Oral History: https://oralhistoryportal.library.columbia.edu/document.php?id=ldpd_8095968
Connect with Zaher’s most recent thoughts by watching the you tube of his 2022 talk, with the Schiller Institute and entitled, “Dialogue, Not a Clash of Civilizations.”
Learn more about the Brazilian educational philosopher Paolo Freire who has been such an inspiration to Zaher.
FACTS:
Kabul is ranked the 12th most polluted capitol in the world.
Afghanistan is the 6th environmentally the most damaged country in the world.
Ecological disasters in Afghanistan have displaced millions of Afghans.
Only 13% of Afghans have safe drinking water and 15% electricity.
MUSIC CREDITS:
Podcast score: Original music by Gary A Ferguson.
Arabic Instrumental, Music by DMD_Production from Pixabay
Islam Dream, Music by SergeQuadrado from Pixabay
Desert, Music by ArtSlop_Flodur from Pixabay -
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Jun 25, 2023
HILF #32 Mariana Pickering
In this episode, Mary spends some time with Mariana Pickering, co-founder of Emu Passive, a consultation group that offers training and consultation on the design and construction of high quality, supremely efficient buildings.
Mariana describes herself as a recovering architect who, because of her devotion to the wellbeing of the natural world, has found her way deep into building science. There she discovered a powerfully energy friendly building standard - The International Passive House standard. Now, she and her business partner travel the country to train construction professionals in this remarkable system.
Listen in as Mariana describes her work and the collaboration she and her colleagues continue to establish with building construction professionals across the globe. Learn with Mary about the powerful actions being taking by builders to address and alleviate the climate breakdown.
You can find out more about Mariana and Emu Passive at the organization’s website, https://emupassive.com/. You can also follow these links to essays by Mariana and the rest of the Emu crew.
By Mariana:
https://passivehouseaccelerator.com/articles/denver-city-council-approves-green-code-and-lists-passive-house-certification-as-compliance-path
More writing available on the Emu website:
https://emupassive.com/services/reports/
Mariana also has a playlist on YouTube titled "Monday BS with EmuMariana" (BS= Building Science). https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoDR94ljwiBEGsaPo13i1PhJcKWb1Pnrz There, she talks about high-level passive building concepts in more simple terms.
In a company named for that amazing big bird, Mariana and her colleagues at Emu Passive "run wild and build passive." They inspire as they lean fully into maximizing the opportunity to support building construction practices that retain ecological wellbeing.
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