How It Looks From Here Full Ecology, LLC

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

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

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

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