All posts tagged: Art

Cascadia Field Guide

Cascadia Field Guide: Art | Ecology | Poetry

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I’m thrilled to be one of a multitude of contributors to Cascadia Field Guide, an anthology of place-based art, science, and literature now available through Mountaineer Books! Where is Cascadia? Cascadia stretches from Southeast Alaska to Northern California and from the Pacific Ocean to the Continental Divide. Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry blends art and science to celebrate this diverse yet interconnected region through natural and cultural histories, poetry, and illustrations. Organized into 13 bioregions, the guide includes entries for everything from cryptobiotic soil and the western thatching ant to the giant Pacific octopus and Sitka spruce, as well as the likes of common raven, hoary marmot, Idaho giant salamander, snowberry, and 120 more! My contribution comes in the form of a short essay on the Pacific geoduck, a large saltwater clam that inhabits the waters I grew up near. But the collection contains facts and verse on many more that inhabit the bioregion, from horsehair lichen and moon jellies to chum salmon and red alders. Congratulations to editors Elizabeth Bradfield, CMarie Fuhrman, and …

The Camunico Annual: On Cultural Leadership

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“… by taking a more post-modern approach, we have tried to bring together a series of articles that initially may seem unrelated but which, we believe, all contribute to offering perspectives from which readers are invited to allow their own ideas to develop; ideas about the nature of change around us, and how we, as individuals, organizations and institutions might thrive within that change.” – Camunico Annual, p.7 I was recently asked to contribute an edited version of my essay, Playing to Tie, to the inaugural issue of the Camunico Annual. Camunico is an Amsterdam-based leadership firm exploring “the cultural changes of our time, and how [they] influence individuals, businesses and leadership.” The short publication is now available free online, and my piece is accompanied by the following features: Joe Zammit-Lucia argues for the need to redefine leadership for the 21st century; Renowned artist Anish Kapoor speaks about lessons artists can offer the business world; Rob Wijnberg speaks on the future of journalism; An exploration of ancient tea ceremonies and their relevance to contemporary leadership. Each article is an intriguing …

Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

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Ursula K. Le Guin accepts the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th National Book Awards on November 19, 2014. “I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality… …Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.” – speech excerpt Copyright © 2014 Ursula K. Le Guin

Science Art Wonder

Art and Science, Wonder and Wisdom

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If there’s one website I never seem to tire of, it’s Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings. “A subjective lens on what matters in the world and why”, Popova’s curation of articles are consistently thought-provoking and inspirational (to the point where my Twitter feed is replete with pieces from her site!) A place of intellectual, creative, and spiritual exploration, Brain Pickings is what I aspire Ekostories to be. While I write through an environmental lens, I am striving to emulate Popova’s approach, to draw insight from a range of disciplines and convey a connective whole. One recent article that caught my eye was titled Art & Science: Leonard Shlain on Integrating Wonder and Wisdom. As someone who has spent his life moving between these two modes, I was naturally intrigued by what Shlain, a surgeon, had to say. Popova highlights a series of illuminating quotes from the book – I would like to share some of them with you today: