СВЕТИ ГЕОРГИA beautiful short film. I love the narration in Inuit (not sure if it’s Inupik or Yupik dialect). Enjoy and pass it on!
Set against the expansively beautiful and iridescent landscape of Northern Greenland, Glen Milner and Ben Hilton’s subtle and touching short visits the annual sun-welcoming ritual of the country’s Inuit population, which celebrates the dawn after more than 40 days of complete winter darkness. Following the daily routine of an Inuit ice fisherman and his son, Return of the Sun examines the affects of the changing climate on their livelihood and community, and pays tribute to the locals’ innate adaptability.
Fin whales are one of the most spectacular creatures on Earth. They are also endangered. So why is Iceland hunting them? I hope Nat. Geo. TV will broadcast this film in the U.S. I also hope that Gaia Girls and Gaia Guys will take a moment to tell President Obama to impose sanctions on Iceland to pressure them to stop hunting and killing these beautiful mammals.
It has been in the single digits here in the Finger Lakes region of New York. At the pond in the park, the willow tree’s slim branches are frozen into the ice. They no longer blow gracefully in the breeze…they hula! I discovered the ice forming in the river travels faster than I walk; and the crows have begun their winter ritual of combining into huge flocks, yelling their heads off, each evening at dusk.
I’m not a huge fan of winter; mostly because I find cold a bit painful. But as I travel this journey of writing Gaia Girls, I look for Gaia’s magic everywhere…even in the ice and snow.
This video is quite magical. Enjoy the splendor of the Snowy Owl. I highly recommend full screen viewing!
BIG THANKS, to Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology!
Biologist have collected thousands of Orca and Pilot whale calls and are asking people to help the “match” calls that have similarities. From the website:
“The communication of killer whales and pilot whales is still poorly understood. While we know for some species the general context in which sounds are made (reproduction, contact calls for finding each other) many of the calls remain a mystery to us. To properly understand the implications of these responses, we need to know more about why and when animals make specific calls. This process is very challenging especially for vocal species such as killer whales and pilot whales.
The increasing size of current acoustic datasets and the large call repertoire make it very difficult for scientists to address these questions. A single person would take months to go through the data, and the outcome would still depend on a single persons’ interpretation.
For this reason we want to ask you to help us solve this problem, by categorizing the calls of killer whales pilot whales that you find on this website. The dataset generated by this project will allow us to address interesting questions, such as:
How well do different judgements of volunteers agree, and how well can we categorize calls of vocal species such as pilot whales?
How large is the call repertoire of pilot whales? (is size repertoire sign of intelligence?)
Do the long and short finned pilot whales have different call repertoires (or ‘dialects’?).
Does this repertoire change during sonar transmissions? if so, how does this related to changes in behavior of the individuals and the group as a whole?
I think this is an amazing “citizen scientist” project and I will be taking part for sure. I hope you’ll join me.
This is an amazing video! A wonderful way to look at a slice of sky over a year’s time. See if you can tell which are the winter and which are the summer months, and why.
A few days ago I had the great pleasure of meeting “The Story Seekers,” a book club in Southern California. The girls had read Gaia Girls Enter the Earth, (and then were inspired to read Gaia Girls Way of Water as well…so it was a two-fer!) We had a great chat via Skype. They asked thoughtful questions, and I answered. I showed them the Gaia-puppet I take with me when I travel, and early draft of Gaia Girls Way of Water (complete with red ink!) and the office where I work.
The cool thing about the Story Seekers, is that they do projects based on each book they read. For Gaia Girls, they created a Public Service Announcement about using cloth, reusable shopping bags. You GO Gaia Girls!
иконографияПравославни икониIs it wrong that I laughed? They don’t seem worse for wear; and all of Gaia’s critters must learn about the power of wind sooner or later!
I’ve put this off for way too long. But, in my renewed state, I’m ready to draft my mea culpa.
First, I’d like to extend the biggest apology to my young fans. I know the excitement of finding a book series that speaks to you. When I was a young reader, if I had had to wait three years between reading “On the Shores of Silver Lake” and “Little Town on the Prairie,” I would have been quite vexed! My fan mail tells me this is true of Gaia Girls fans, and I am very sorry.
Second, I have the coolest publisher in the world. And, I hope that when Mizz Margo reads this, she’ll be as enthused as I am.
Third, and last, my darlin’ hubby, without whom Gaia Girls wouldn’t exist. He’s my biggest fan and has been a pouty puss about the lack of the third book for a very long time.
Three years ago I made what turned-out to be a poor decision. In an attempt to get a higher profile for Gaia Girls, I took on a collaborative writing project. The shifting sands of the project cause it to stretch out to an excruciating 18 months. I finally quit. And I don’t like being a quitter.
I came out the other end of that experience loathing the very idea of writing, distrustful of my own creative instincts, and questioning just what it was I wanted to be doing for a living. A question that I avoided answering by getting busier with my corporate wellness consulting, city council/deputy mayoring (is that a verb? If not, it should be.), teaching yoga, and the new role of creative writing instructor.
Do you like the cliché? Those that can’t do, teach…right? I did learn a lot. I had great fun introducing people to Joseph Campbell, the evils of adverbs, and how write with their five senses. As I worked through material with my students, I realized I missed writing. At the end, I joined them, working on the first two chapters of a planned novel called, “Scrabble Cat.” It felt pretty good. The writing was tight and compelling. So, I pulled out Gaia Girls Air Apparent and got to work.
But something was still very wrong. I felt like I was pushing too much story down too small a pipe. My character felt practically mute in my head, and I didn’t want her to be. A character can only nod, shrug, and stare at her toes so much and before readers will hurl the book down and instead, wander around the Book of Faces. Rightly so, it’s (air-girl) Lucha’s story, she should be an active participant!
When I tried to talk about my struggles with GG-Air Apparent, I literally would choke up. A ridiculous constriction would manifest, burning my throat and freezing my jaw. Part of me wanted to throw in the towel on the entire of idea of living a creative life and instead, beg some local corporate-types for a “real job.” Money’s money, my little honey. A rich man’s jokes are always funny. However, seriously contemplating that idea reduced me to tears. Obviously, not the road I should be travelling.
Welcome to your mid-life crisis! Who are you? What are you supposed to be doing in the world? Does the world care? Let’s just say, I did all the right things to surf my way through the crisis. I generally don’t like to listen to long recounts of other people’s therapeutic dramas, so I won’t bore you with mine here. Suffice it to say, it was its own adventure.
Most readers don’t know that I have always felt that Gaia Girls was but just one expression of something; that, in addition to writing, there would be a way for me to communicate ideas and be a force for good in the world. I was so happy to “find” the Gaia Girls concept within me, but knew there was something else to unearth.
I found it. The day of my “a-ha” moment, I wept with relief! For a long time, I called my idea, “1 Giant Leap for Kids.” 1 Giant Leap is a musical duo that travels the globe, not only creating fantastic music with world musicians, but talking to thinkers, luminaries, and folks on the street about “the big ideas:” death, money, time, sex, happiness etc.
Music. It has always been a crazy-strong energy in me and around me. At age 18, I had seriously considered joining the Air Force Band as an oboist. But I knew I wasn’t the type to thrive on that kind of discipline. Music is potent stuff. It changes people. It stays with you for a lifetime. Oliver Sacks writes of how, within the dwindling brain capacity of various dementias, rhythm and music still hold sway. A patient of his used to sing whole arias daily. Beautiful.
From the beginning, Gaia Girls Air Apparent featured music and singing and finding your authentic voice. How can you have a book full of birds and NOT make it all about song? Air-girl Lucha struggles to speak and be understood. Joke’s on me! I was writing about myself! Something within me wanted to come forth, be spoken. And the book clamped down on my vocal chords, refusing to let out Lucha’s story until I figured it out.
I hope, as a fan of Gaia Girls, you will check out my eco-centered arts in education program, “The Daisyworld Project” www.daisyworldproejct.org Our intro video is scored by Uwe Reibling in Germany. I’ve been working with Brooklyn-based music producer, Scott Slater, and we have created a short sample of how we will be building music with middle-school students, professional musicians, and various “environmental voices.”
I can’t wait to hear the voices of our middle school participants! I can’t wait to ask Chelsea Green if they will ask their authors to upload a few sentences via SoundCloud. I’m encouraged by the enthusiasm of musicians and teachers and kids and parents. This is going to be fun. It’s my dream job.
And Lucha is talking again. She is chattering away in my mind, dragging me down story paths, pointing out the richest scenes. This is the fun of writing fiction, and my fingers are itching to go. I’m currently re-reading the first two Gaia Girls books. The writing instructor in me cringes at points. But the writer in me is excited by what lies ahead: a great story told with a bit more finesse than the first two books.
I am grateful for your patience, and hope you accept my sincerest apology for the very long delay.
Yes. There is can absolutely be benefits to television time. Watching a show like, “Nature,” will help you stretch your imagination around the world. An episode like, “The Beauty of Ugly” helps us understand the weird and scary of nature. And when we have understanding, we can have compassion for our living world. Gaia says, “thanks for watching!”
Show: Nature
Episode: The Beauty of Ugly
Station: PBS
