For this episode, Mary spoke with Katja Biesanz, Katja says of herself, "I help people like you to discover and to integrate different parts of themselves." She provides this service as a professional counselor, drawing on her experience as a dancer, poet, masseuse, and forest farmer.

By the time she was 12, Katha and her family had livied in five different countries. Several of these countries were dictatorships; the things she saw through her child's eyes have stayed with her. She routinely draws on them. including using them to help shape how she thinks about climate change and climate action.

Katja is also profoundly skilled in dance and movement. She draws on this knowledge in her therapeutic work. That service is also significantly influenced by her immersion in Latin American cultures, experience she credits with seeding in her the capacity to sense the energy people carry.

Finally, it's important to mention Katja's commitment to land stewardship and restoration. As you can imagine, ours was a wide-ranging and rich conversation, entirely in keeping with the suggestion that each of us is our own wilderness.

You can learn more about Katja by visiting her website at katjabiesanz.com. You can also check out this facebook link to - The Land - TEMENOS where Katja and her partner practice forest farming - tending and harvesting only the plants that grow in the ocean-front rainforest ecosystem.

Below you’ll find references for the three books authored by Joanna Macy that Katja mentioned early in our conversation. You’ll also find the list of characteristics shared by dictators that Katja has compiled as a diagnostic tool and as a warning.

Perhaps most powerful in our time talking together were Katja’s offers of ways for considering our energy fields in relation to those of each other and all of the natural world. Let’s take what she suggests and open to the possibilities.

Joanna Macy (2012). Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy.

Joanna Macy (2007). World as Lover, World as Self.

Joanna Macy (1991). Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory.

Distilled List Dictator Traits (in progress)

• Like to hang out with other “Strongmen”
• Showmanship
• Entertaining
• Humor
• Emotion — such as Hate Mongering
• Demagoguery
• Usurp sacred symbols of other religions
• Uniforms and special clothing
• Demagoguery
• Knows how to get attention
• Not taken seriously until it is too late
• Saying what will do and only the avid believe it
• Desensitization
• Numbing, wearing down
• Scapegoating
• Dehumanizing
• `Press distortion
• Emotion
• Make self/followers victims
• Hate (see scapegoating)
• Nationalism vs Patriotism
• Use religion (usually cynically)
• Projection of unowned parts of self
• Violence
• Encouraging Amateur Violence
• Paramilitary
• Military against own people
• Many are military or control it, but few know war
• Self Enriching
• Countries Wealth Blended with own
• Plutocracy — Wealthy become more so, as long as stay allies
• Ordinary people often suffer
• Many can have extraordinary wealth even in a ‘Communist ‘country
• Lack of truth
• Repetition - repeating lies
• Propaganda
• Discrediting reliable sources
• Say things obliquely, plausible deniability, mafia don
• Power
• Use government functions for retribution
• Loyalty is to party or self, not to the country or all the people

MUSIC ~

This...

With this episode, we begin our 5th season of How it Looks from Here - Life in the time of Climate Change. As we've done in the past, we're launching into year 5 with an episode involving the two of us - co-creators of the Full Ecology programs.

Ten years ago, we began creating the programs and ideas we hold under the canopy of Full Ecology. Among those initiatives is this podcast. In this episode, we look back together over the past four years and share our sense of where we've come, where we are now, and where we're going. We also interview each other to learn how the world is looking to each of us these days.

Listen in to hear about our extension of Full Ecology into each of our current projects, our continuation of programs from the past, and what we're seeing going forward. Gary shares updates from his writing on the Ponderosa pine forests of the American Southwest. And Mary speaks about her new work on Elderhood and wilderness. Finally, with the opening of this HILFH season, we take a step toward keeping our programming real and growing by introducing a way you can help support our work (see below).

You can learn more about our work by visiting our website, www.fullecology.com. We also invite you to drop us a note. As I said in the podcast - Do Not Be Shy! We truly want to hear from you and welcome you as part of the Full Ecology community. Write us about Elderhood or aging. Write us about Ponderosa pine. Share your stories. Ask for a recent newsletter and join us on the second Tuesday of each month for a Deep Dive into topics linking all ecologies.

The thing we can guarantee is lively conversation about trees and wilderness, about devoted hearts, and about wild Elderhood.

Finally, do check out the two friends Mary mentioned. Listen to Paris Mullen speak of his experience in two early HILFH episodes [Episode #3, and Episode #4], and dive into the profound work of Dr. Carma Corcoran, Chippewa Cree scholar and Elder. Dr Corcoran's book, published by University of Nebraska Press is entitled: The Incarceration of Native American Women: Creating Pathways to Wellness and Recovery through Gentle Action Theory You can also learn about Carma in this recent Underscore Native News article.

HOW YOU CAN HELP~

If you like what you’re hearing on HILFH, make sure to subscribe. Let’s get these perspectives out there. Tell your friends and family. Share a link right now with someone you know would enjoy learning how it looks from another viewpoint. As you know, you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your podcasts.

And remember, there’s a new way to support us by going to VENMO and sharing a donation of $5, $10, heck $25 with How It Looks from Here and Full Ecology. Go to @FullEcology. And thanks for helping us keep it all real and growing.

MUSIC~

This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these other fine artists.

Good Morning Café Jazz - Music by Sleep...

Jacqueline Courteau, Ph.D. is an ecologist, consultant and writer. She's also a teacher of university ecology courses in the field, and focused on restoration, sense of place, natural history and environmental writing.

Most recently, Jacqueline has established NatureWrite, LLC to provide ecological assessment and monitoring, and to measure forest regeneration, deer impacts on vegetation, and other interactions between plants and animals. Earlier in her career, she worked as a science and environmental policy analyst in Washington, DC contributing to an early 1990's report to Congress on how federal agencies could plan for an uncertain climate

In this episode, Mary and Jacqueline consider plant ecology, medicinal plants and love - all in exploration of avenues into climate repair.

You can learn more about Jacqueline by checking out her articles in Feb/Mar and Apr/May issues of Rural Heritage magazine where she offers a two-part series on herbal remedies.

Throughout our talk, Jacqueline continued to call our attention back to relationship with nature - no matter the ecosystem and no matter how urban. Her contention is that paying attention in this way helps us rediscover the love we have for the natural world - a world of which we are and have always been a part.

Jacqueline also mentioned these resources including books on observing plant life, and apps for Citizen Science.

BOOKS:

Kimmerer, Robin Wall (2015). Braiding sweetgrass. Milkweed Editions.

David Haskell, David. (2012). The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature. Viking Books.

CITIZEN SCIENCE:

Spring phenology

Budburst: https://budburst.org

Nature’s Notebook: https://www.usanpn.org/nn

Others

Firefly Atlas: https://www.fireflyatlas.org/get-involved/how-to-participate

Species identification

iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org

This is a species ID app, but if you allow your location to be used, every time you look up a species (and the community confirms it), your finding is mapped, so there’s a great collection of what species have been found nearby.

eBird: https://ebird.org/home

For those of you interested in birds.

And a recent compilation from the Smithsonian, which might list a few additional apps:

https://ssec.si.edu/stemvisions-blog/mobile-apps-citizen-science

Additional Citizen Science Efforts focused on weather:

Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network

cocorahs.org

Skywarn Storm Spotter Program

https://www.weather.gov/skywarn/

MUSIC~

This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these other fine artists.

Peaceful Guitar - Music by Tung Lam from

Jeanne Cuff is a Director with the Information Services Group in Chicago. In that role, she does what she likes best - tackling thorny tech problems by applying her superpower of making sense of chaos, and doing what she describes as interpreting IT speak for the masses. At 50, Jeanne returned to school to earn her Masters of Science in Technology Management from Columbia University in New York City. With that credential, she burst onto the scene unknotting tech tangles left and right while, at the same time, advocating energetically and constantly for advancement of women and girls in IT.

In the conversation Mary and Jeanne had this month, they looked together at the way Jeanne's passion for supporting women in tech, and for encouraging girls into the sector, links with climate repair. Listen and catch the inspiration.

Jeanne mentioned Tech Equity for All, the nonprofit she’s established to support girls moving into IT. You can find that organization here.

Jeanne also spoke of other tech focused organizations supporting women and girls - Chick Tech, Girls4Science, Girls Inc and We are BGC (Black Girls Coding).

You can learn more about Jeanne and her initiatives by catching up with her on the podcast she hosts - ISG Digital Dash. Finally, she recommends a recent discussion on LinkedIn featuring women in tech and entitled: Clean Tech - The Future of Sustainable Technology.

Get inspired! Join Jeanne in supporting girls and women in tech roles. It’s good for everybody - and everything!

MUSIC ~

This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these other fine artists.

Jazz by Denis Pavlov from Pixabay

Jazz Easy Listening Music by Denis Pavlov from Pixabay

Jazz Streets by Michael Daniel from Pixabay

Hilary Zaranek is a wildlife biologist, a ranch woman, and a horse woman. A woman who both learns from and is constantly inspired by animals.

Riding the range, Hilary spends a good deal of time watching and listening to the predators who share the lands of her family cattle ranch at the doorstep of Yellowstone National Park.

The quality, focus of her attention has led to her becoming internationally recognized for her pioneering work in predator-livestock conflict reduction.

Together with her husband, Hilary is committed to ranch resiliency through regenerative agriculture. She's also a mother of four children who learn every day from the land and its wild beings.

This month Mary had the chance to spend time with Hilary to learn about how we can reclaim our kinship with both animals and the land that holds them. As you'll hear, there’s much to be learned about how to live well, simply by opening fully to our relationship with all beings.

You can learn more about Hilary and her family in these articles. This inspiring look into Hilary’s life on the land from National Geographic entitled: Discovering Hope on the Range. Also Bugs, Bovine and Beavers, Oh My! - from Western Sustainability Exchange, and Field notes: An Entire Ecosystem of Conservation on the JbarL Ranch - from Vital Ground Foundation

Each is fascinating and, like Hilary herself, provides generous insight into the natural world that is, in the end, who each of us is. We are nature and Hilary shows us how both to remember and to revel in that.

MUSIC ~

This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these other fine artists.

Forest Lullaby

Music by Oleksii Kaplunskyi from Pixabay

River Tram

Music by Olexy from Pixabay

Relaxing and Calming Acoustic Guitar

Music by Premankur Adhikary

This month we're rebroadcasting one of our favorites from 2022. Here, Mary talks with Petra Kuppers, a disability culture activist and community performance artist who lives in delighted concert with the natural world, sharing in powerful intelligence, adapdibility and love of True Nature.

Petra holds the Anita Gonzalez Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture chair in English and Women's & Gender studies departments at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also teaches on the low-residency MFA Interdisciplinary Arts faculty at Goddard College. In her work, Petra uses somatic and speculative writing as well as performance practice to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. She has written academic books on disability arts and culture, medicine and performance, and community performance.

In their conversation, Mary and Petra explore the natural world and its diversity, alongside the political, spiritual and activist considerations that arise from being embodied.

Learn more about Petra Kuppers’ art, writing and activism by visiting her website at https://www.petrakuppers.com

Check out Petra’s poetry books like Gut Botany, her speculative fiction like Ice Bar and her scholarship, most recently in her book Eco Soma with the University of Minnesota Press in the Art After Nature series. You can find more on disability culture in the anthology, Disability Visibility edited by Alice Wong, available as a pdf at the link.

And, in the meantime, Petra has been awarded and is currently a Guggenheime Fellow spending recent months at the Camargo Foundation in Southern France. You can check out the video work she's completed there - Crip/Mad Archive Dances project: a final 35 min video documentary.

She's also completed a new poetry collection, Diver Beneath the Street -- true crime meets eco poetry at the level of the soil, out May 2024.

This month, Mary had the chance to meet up with Cyreena BostonAshby, CEO of Girls' Inc of the Pacific Northwest, an organization that serves girls and gender nonconforming and trnas youth in Portland, SW Washington and Seattle.

Cyreena grew up in Portland, raised in a family focused on social justice and business leadership. She's an alumna of Spelman College, the Historical Black College for Women in Atlanta, Georgia.

For 19 years, Cyreena has been a leader for high-profile public affairs campaigns focused on health care access, youth development and non-profit leadership. She was the first director of the Portland African American Leadership Forum, Imagine Black, and led the Oregon Public Health Institute as that organization's CEO. More recently, she's co-directed the Oregon office of D.C.-based Hilltop Public Solutions as a Partner in providing strategic solutions for non-profit and private sector clientele. Cyreena is also an International Women's Forum Global Leadership Fellow.

In our conversation, Cyreena and Mary take a close and loving look at the climate interests and concerns of girls, young women, and gender nonconforming, gender non-binary and trans youth. You'll also hear Cyreena's insights at the intersection of Black Feminism and environmental thought.

You can learn more about Cyreena BostonAshby by taking a look at the Girls Inc. PNW website. Also, check out her OpEd on STEAM in eschool news and her recent interview on the podcast, At the Core entitled, “Unapologetic Leadership.” Cyreena is so worth learning from and with. Keep your eye on this radiant and generous leader for inspiration and sisterhood into the future.

MUSIC ~

This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these other fine artists.

Sensual Jazz Medium 2

Music by Grand_Project from Pixabay

Background Acoustic Calm

Music by Yevhen Onoychenko from Pixabay

Jazz Lounge Street Food

Music by Alex Cristoforetti from Pixabay

This month, Mary had the chance to meet up with Michael Zellner, a career journalist and business owner, a leader in local and international commu nity-based conversation and an all around agent of positive change.

Since October of 2020, Mike has served as chief executive officer for the Arizona-based Sonoran Institute. Mike has 30 years of experience building award-winning collaboratrions for global organizations, including The Nature Conservancy, Dow Jones & Co., and Euromoney. He has helped regional and local stakeholders to conserve more than 450,000 acres and mobilize more than $30 million foer conservation in the Americas.

As a business journalist in Mexico and the Americas, Mike played a leading role in the lalunch of the editorial operations of AmericaEconomia (a Dow Jones & Co. publication) in Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and Miami. He also served as editor-in-chief and owner of the Miami based business magazine LatinTrade.

In our conversation, you'll hear Mike speak of the power of community-based conservation and share perspectives from across his career.

To learn more about Michael Zellner, check out the Sonoran Institute. And while you're on the site, take a look at the informative and inspiring blogs Mike has written over his time as CEO of that organization.

Finally, take Mike's invitation to look around your community for how you, too can become involved in community-based conservation initiatives. It’s good for the land, for your neighbors, for you - it's for all beings.

MUSIC ~

This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these other fine artists.

Wind Troubles the Water

Music by Aleksey Chistilin from Pixabay

Vigilance

Music by Roman Senyk from Pixabay

Touch and Sound

Music by Juan Sanchez from Pixabay