How It Looks From Here Full Ecology, LLC
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- Health & Fitness
The truth is, life looks different to you than it does to me. The way race and gender, education and work, and everyday circumstances come together in any person...well, it’s different.
Hosted by Mary Clare, How It Looks From Here brings you diverse perspectives through engaging interviews. It's easy to think that everyone is feeling the same way you are - but they’re not. For every person, how it looks from where they are matters. And, with every interview, we’re enriched. It's helping.
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#40 Michael Zellner
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 -
#39 Paola Molina Venegas & Guille Vargas Pohl
In January, Full Ecology went to Chile. In Santiago, we had the chance to sit down so Mary could speak with two Chilean professionals - friends who share a passion for the environment.
Paola Molina Venegas is a lawyer and judge. Much of her practice involves social justice issues. Alongside that work, she has, in recent years, become deeply interested in the wellbeing of the environment.
Guille is a professional photographer and videographer. He works in the fashion industry and in film. He sees art as vital to truth and community wellbeing. He is a powerfully concerned citizen with interests in doing what he can to support climate repair and every aspect of social justice.
Throughout our interaction, Paola and Guille collaborated on the answers to questions, diving into the most challenging issues facing Chile's vastly varied ecologies and acknowledging the inescapable interdependence of social ecology with the wellbeing of nature.
You can learn more about the issues Paola and Guille describe at the links below. As they said in our time together, we are all connected by air, water, land. The solutions may only be global. It is vital for us to learn of the profound interactions of social and environmental justice as illustrated in Chile and so many other countries around the world.
2021 Constitutional Election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Chilean_Constitutional_Convention_election
Climate change data
https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/chile
Coup 1973
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
Environmental injustice threats in Chile
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/05/experto-de-las-naciones-unidas-advierte-que-chile-enfrenta-una-tormenta-de
MUSIC ~
This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these fine artists.
--Ahmad Mousavipour 24575281 - Historia de un Amor
from Pixabay
--Sergei Chetvertnykh - Bossa In My Heart
from Pixabay
--William_King - Latin Summer
from Pixabay -
HILFH #38 Oscar Yip
This month, Mary had the opportunity to sit for a talk with Chef Oscar Yip. Oscar is a culinary expert with international experience, as well as a keen sense of the ecologies of humans and food. Oscar was born in Saltillo in the state of Coahuila in Mexico, where he was raised by his Mexican mother and Chinese father.
He later completed medical school at the University of Monterrey. But upon earning that degree, he realized his heart was with the culinary arts, and changed his life path. Training in Austin, Texas with a prominent restaurant group, Oscar would also land an opportunity to cook in a 3 star Michelin restaurant. Known by the name “Martin Berasategui,” it was set in the Basque country of Spain, in the town of St. Sebastian.
Oscar continues deeply attuned to the intimate connection between human wellbeing and the wellbeing of the natural world. His culinary craft and practice hold this connection as a lodestar guiding his work with food as well as his presence in life.
In our conversation we explore this relationship and the way it's available for anyone open to the inquiry.
You can learn more about where Oscar is preparing food by contacting him through Wolf House, an event venue he established in Austin. You can also follow him on instagram at oscarmyip.
Several years ago, Oscar moved out of cheffing for restaurants. Now his main focus is cooking as a private chef for high-end events. That means there's another great way to learn more about Oscar. Come to one of our Full Ecology Retreats this June on the JbarL ranch in the Centennial Valley of Montana. Oscar will be the chef for each of those, and will contribute additional guidance on food for the Full Ecology Solstice Retreat. Check the Full Ecology website or drop an email to Meg at JbarL Ranch - meg@jbarl.com.
Plan now for June, 2024. Come spend time with beautiful land, deep inquiry over Summer Solstice and, the following week, close attention to weaving your writing craft with your kinship to the natural world.
~MUSIC
This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these fine artists.
Same Bossa - Music by William_King from Pixabay
Latin Summer - Music by William_King from Pixabay
Feel Bossa Nova - Music by William_King from Pixabay -
HILFH #37 Paula MacKay
This month, Mary had the chance to talk with Paula McKay, a writer and conservation researcher. Paula has studied wild carnivores for the past two decades, and is currently affiliated with the Living Northwest program at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo.
In 2015, she earned an MFA in creative writing from Pacific Lutheran University, and earlier served as managing editor for Noninvasive Survey Methods for Carnivores (Island Press). Her work has been published in Deep Wild, Wild Hope, Earth Island Journal, and elsewhere.
A central part of Paula's research is the practice of non-capture-based survey methods, opting to use cameras and other noninvasive techniques in the wild rather than more invasive practices like trapping. At the heart of her vision and mission is rewilding - that now-global effort to restore natural processes and species, to allowing nature to express its full genius.
Paula lives on an island near Seattle with her husband and more-than human dog in the company of elder trees. Today we talked about why and how of being in deep relation with the wilderness - within and around us.
You can learn more about Paula by visiting her website . Spend some time with her published essays and with her blog, Wild Prose. Check out her essays on rewilding, wolverines, grizzlies and urban mammals, among many more.
~MUSIC
This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these fine artists.
Sedative - Music by Oleksii Kaplunskyi from Pixabay
Coniferous Forest - Music by orangery from Pixabay
Far from the City - Music by Zakhar Valaha from Pixabay -
HILFH #36 Tyler Mark Nelson
Tyler Mark Nelson is an advanced student in the Masters of Divinity program at Yale Divinity School. He was raised on the northern banks of the Mississippi River, a stretch of the world that figured deeply in helping him come to know who he is.
Tyler began his work life with several years in horticulture, supporting human resources and sales at a large Minnesota greenhouse, leading operations with a university vermiculture and compost program, and farming at an organic lavender farm in eastern Washington state. He’s also spent a great deal of time in the wilderness, most recently with people new to time in wild nature.
Tyler is a Christian. He is a writer and theologian. He’s a climate activist and he’s also a person who has lived with significant mental health challenges. Tyler finds eco-theology and his own experience in the natural world to be reliable supports for living well these days on Earth.
In our conversation we weave childhood clarity with adult wisdom and consider how we may all reach out to the natural world for guidance when the going gets tough.
You can learn more about Tyler by visiting the links below. In particular check out his recent article - Environmental Justice and the Religious Imagination - recently published in the Yale Divinity School Journal, Reflections.
You’ll also find below links for several resources Tyler mentioned today. Each of them helpful to considering how, religious or not, your way of making sense of the world is affected by listening to nature’s wisdom and honoring that kinship.
Tyler's work with the BTS Center in Maine
GreenFaith
Dr. Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination.
William Blake. 18th Century. "To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour."
~MUSIC
This episode included music by Gary Ferguson and these fine artists.
Calm My Mind, Music by LesFM from Pixabay
Relaxing by Music for Videos from Pixabay
Touch and Sound by Juan Sanchez from Pixabay -
HILFH #35 Elizabeth Bernays
This month, Mary has the unique treat of listening to and learning from Dr. Elizabeth Bernays. Liz is an entomologist by training having received her Ph.D. from the University of London. But her love of the natural world began as a child in Australia where she was free to roam and to watch and befriend the animals and insects who lived there.
She began her career as a field entomologist for the British government, took an academic post at Berkeley, and followed that with service as head of Entomology at the University of Arizona where she is currently a Regents' Professor Emerita. Along the way, she obtained an MFA in writing and has since been contributing beautiful literary nonfiction with the effect of reawakening any reader's love for the natural world.
Liz describes herself as a biologist turned writer with over 200 scientific papers, books and several popular biology articles. She's also published fifty poems and essays in a variety of literary journals and authored three nonfiction books. Her newest - Across the Divide: The Strangest Love Affair - was published to great acclaim in May of 2023. With her wife, Linda Hitchcock, she's also published three children's books.
You can learn more about Liz’s work and life at her website elizabethbernays.com.
But don’t miss checking her out on Google. There you’ll find jewels of literary nonfiction like Kamquat, Time in the Desert, and Pond.
Give a read to Liz's recent essay, In Praise of Looking.
Along the way, treat yourself to her books,
Six Legs Walking: Notes from an Entemological Life Across the Divide: The Strangest Love Affair.
Let yourself be captivated by Liz’s wonder, awe and kinship with the natural world - a delight that carries the sense of truly coming home.
This episode's music:
Endless Beauty - Music by Zakhar Valaha from Pixabay
Far From the City - Music by Zakhar Valaha from Pixabay
Playing in Color Music by 29811401 from Pixabay