Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life

Lynn Willeford Small Is Beautiful: Building Volunteer Circles of Mutual Support on South Whidbey Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in a conversation with writer, editor, and social entrepreneur Lynn Willeford about her work, her observations of 40 years on the culture of South Whidbey Island near Seattle, WA, and her rules of thumb for nonprofits that successfully serve and are supported by the local community. Lynn Willeford Lynn is a writer, editor, and social entrepreneur, as well as co-owner of The Clyde Theatre in the town of Langley on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. Since moving to South Whidbey in 1972, Lynn has founded or co-founded five successful volunteer-based nonprofit organizations that repair homes, pay medical expenses, cover the cost of back-to-school supplies, and support local lending for local businesses. She is working now on a project to enable rural seniors to stay in their homes. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Norman Fischer Everyday Zen: Changing and Being Changed by the World Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in conversation with Zen Buddhist Priest Norman Fischer. A former Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, Norman is the founder and teacher of the Everyday Zen Foundation, a network of spiritual communities and projects. He is also co-founder, with the late Rabbi Alan Lew, of Makor Or, a Jewish meditation center in San Francisco. His newest writings include Experience: Essays on Thinking, Writing, Language and Religion, and What Is Zen: Plain Talk for a Beginner’s Mind. Photo (below): Christine Alicino Norman Fischer A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Norman began publishing poetry in the late 1970s as part of a San Francisco Bay Area group of experimental writers. His books include Turn Left In Order To Go Right (O Books, 1989), Precisely The Point Being Made (O Books/Chax Press 1993), Jerusalem Moonlight (Clear Glass Publications, 1995), Success (Singing Horse Press, 2000), Slowly but Dearly (Chax Press, 2004), I Was Blown Back (Singing Horse Press 2005), Questions/Places/Voices/Seasons (Singing Horse 2009), Conflict (Chax 2012), The Strugglers (Singing Horse, 2013), and Escape This Crazy Life of Tears: Japan 2010 (Tinfish Press, 2014). His spiritual writings include Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong (2013), Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up (2004), Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms (2003), and Sailing Home: Using the Wisdom of Homer’s Odyssey to Navigate Life’s Perils and Pitfalls (2011). He lives in Muir Beach California with his wife Kathie, a biology teacher and expert scuba diver. They have two grown sons who live in Brooklyn. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Lewis Samuels Making Waves on Both Sea and Land Join TNS Host Steve Heilig for a conversation with Bolinas-born Lewis Samuels—surfer, shark dodger, and surf writer for Surfer Magazine and other magazines in the United States, Australia, England, France, Brazil, and Japan. Lewis Samuels Lewis Samuels is a senior writer for Surfer Magazine, best known for his caustic wit and unflinching honesty. In search of the story, Samuels has chased swells to Sumatra and Ireland, dodged great white sharks, shadowed Kelly Slater on the path to an 11th world title, shot automatic weapons with Hawaiian gangsters, surfed Maverick’s with the world’s best big wave surfers, driven one top-10 surfer to seek therapy, and weathered threats from MMA fighters, stalkers, professional surfers, and publicly traded surf brands, who are accustomed to the surf media delivering advertorial content. Samuels’ articles have appeared in premier surf magazines in the US, Australia, England, France, Brazil, and Japan. He was born and raised in Bolinas and now lives in San Francisco. And yes, that surf photo features him (photo by John Barton) Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Nate Hinerman, PhD Ending the War on Death: Improving Care for Dying Patients and those Who Will Be Join TNS Host Steve Heilig for a conversation with psychotherapist and Golden Gate University dean Nate Hinerman, PhD, about medicine, hospice, palliative care, and grief in the modern world. Nate Hinerman, PhD Dr. Nate Hinerman is an associate professor and serves as dean of undergraduate programs at Golden Gate University. He chairs the San Francisco Bay Area Network for End-of-Life Care (now in its 16th year), and organizes the largest annual international conference in dying and death (now in its 13th year). He also maintains a psychotherapy practice, helping clients transition amidst loss. His research is interdisciplinary, and includes topics in death and dying, psychology, human suffering, and special areas of philosophy. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Pete Myers and Keith Hansen Surf to Sierras and Beyond: Bird Photographs and Drawings Join TNS Host Michael Lerner for a short conversation with two bird-loving artists very familiar with the feathered residents of West Marin County, CA, and beyond: Pete Myers and Keith Hansen. This conversation took place during an artists reception for Pete and Keith called Surf to Sierras and Beyond—a unique pairing of photographs with watercolor, graphite, and colored pencil by two bird lovers who have explored the world, as well as West Marin County, to bring the beauty, detail, and diversity of bird life to this show. Pete Myers Pete is founder and chief scientist of Environmental Health Sciences and a trustee of the Jenifer Altman Foundation. He has been photographing birds for more than 40 years. His images and writing about birds have been published in numerous venues, including Audubon, Natural History, and American Birds, magazines, plus numerous publications in the scientific literature. He is the co-creator of BirdsEye, the birding app that uses data from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to help birders find birds. The app was highlighted by the New York Times as “app of the week” in 2009. Pete is an international authority on endocrine disruption and was co-author, along with Theo Colborn and Dianne Dumanoski, of the seminal book Our Stolen Future. He received a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley for ecological studies of shorebirds, including years of research on sanderling along the sandy beaches of northern California, including Point Reyes and Bodega Bay. Keith Hansen Keith took up illustrating birds in 1976, his senior year of high school. He explored much of California as a young man, expanding his explorations toward Mexico and Central America, the tropical Pacific aboard a NOAA research vessel, and then a foray to the Andes, the Galapagos, and the Amazon of Ecuador. As a visitor and volunteer for the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, he was introduced to the breathtakingly beautiful region of Marin County’s Point Reyes Peninsula. Keith has created bird illustrations for books, scientific journals, magazines, newsletters and logos. His most recent endeavor has been a 14-year project illustrating a book entitled Birds of the Sierra Nevada: Their Natural History, Status and Distribution authored by Ted Beedy and Ed Pandolfino. Keith lives and works in Bolinas, where people are welcome to visit his studio and view his originals, and purchase prints. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Patricia Berry, PhD Echo's Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in the next in our Archetypal Psychology Conversations series with Patricia Berry, PhD—a Zurich-trained Jungian analyst and one of the founders of Archetypal Psychology (along with James Hillman). Their conversation covers her life, her work, and her marriage and partnership with James Hillman. Listen to the podcasts, at the right, or watch the video of the event, below. To watch part two of the video, click onto our YouTube site. Click here for the transcript mentioned in the conversation. Patricia Berry, PhD Patricia has been active in the Jungian world for nearly half a century, serving on faculties and boards of training institutions, and as president of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, as well as of the New England Society of Jungian Anaylists. She teaches and lectures internationally and lives and practices in West Bath, Maine. She is author of Echo’s Subtle Body: A Contribution to Archetypal Psychology. In 1991 she was the first Scholar in Residence at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. She lectures internationally and has served as president of both the New England and the Inter-Regional Societies of Jungian Analysts. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Patricia Berry, PhD Echo's Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in the next in our Archetypal Psychology Conversations series with Patricia Berry, PhD—a Zurich-trained Jungian analyst and one of the founders of Archetypal Psychology (along with James Hillman). Their conversation covers her life, her work, and her marriage and partnership with James Hillman. Listen to the podcasts, at the right, or watch the video of the event, below. To watch part two of the video, click onto our YouTube site. Click here for the transcript mentioned in the conversation. Patricia Berry, PhD Patricia has been active in the Jungian world for nearly half a century, serving on faculties and boards of training institutions, and as president of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, as well as of the New England Society of Jungian Anaylists. She teaches and lectures internationally and lives and practices in West Bath, Maine. She is author of Echo’s Subtle Body: A Contribution to Archetypal Psychology. In 1991 she was the first Scholar in Residence at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. She lectures internationally and has served as president of both the New England and the Inter-Regional Societies of Jungian Analysts. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Dennis McNally, PhD The Long, Strange Trip of American Music, Race, and Freedom ~Co-presented with Point Reyes Books~ Join TNS Host Steve Heilig for a conversation with Dennis McNally—historian, author, and longtime publicist for the Grateful Dead. Read Steve’s interview with Dennis in the November issue of the Pacific Sun. Dennis McNally, PhD Dennis was born to an Army counter-intelligence operative and a legal secretary in 1949 at Fort Meade, Maryland. He holds a doctoral degree in history from the University of Massachusetts and has written about Kerouac and the Beats for many scholarly journals. He is perhaps best known as the longtime publicist for the Grateful Dead. His first book, Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation and America, so impressed Jerry Garcia that he was hired for the job with no relevant experience. Years later, his second book, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, became the definitive band biography. His new book is On Highway 61: Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom. About this one, he says “Why did America turn itself inside out in the 1960s, get so nuts that the culture wars that started then are still being fought in 2014? One of the major reasons was the long relationship of white (mostly young) people and black culture (mostly music), going back from minstrelsy (the 1840s) and on up to the 1960s, where you can see it revealed in the music of Bob Dylan.” And many others, for that matter. Photo credits: top, Liz Hafalia; bottom, Susana Millman Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Sadja Greenwood, MD A Life of Changing the Rules Join TNS Host Steve Heilig for a conversation with long-time Bolinas resident Sadja Greenwood, MD, about her life of action and activism in women’s health, teaching, nutrition, and more. They’ll talk about her most recent book, published in 2013, called Changing the Rules: “This novel is set in the 1950s: romance, bohemian life (before the Beatniks), medical school, sex, illegal abortion (safe or deadly), and a young woman’s journey to find her calling. It’s a cautionary tale for today.” Hear the podcast from Sadja’s last visit to The New School: Sadja Greenwood, MD Sadja Greenwood received an MD from Case Western Reserve University and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley. She was an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco. She worked at Planned Parenthood in San Francisco where she started one of the first Teen Clinics in the United States in 1968, in response to the “summer of love.” She started an abortion clinic at San Francisco Planned Parenthood immediately after the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. She also worked for the International Planned Parenthood Federation in Singapore and in family planning in Latin America, Bangladesh, and Africa. She made a teaching film, Aspiration Abortion Without Cervical Dilation, in 1973 with her mentor and colleague, Alan Margolis, MD. The film was widely used to teach medical techniques for safe abortion. She is the author of Menopause, Naturally (Volcano Press, 1996), which became a popular book for women seeking alternatives to hormone therapy. She published a novel, Changing the Rules, in 2013, which is available at bookstores and at Amazon.com. She is a longtime Bolinas resident and plays in the renowned local celtic group, Midnight on the Water. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Enso House: The Story of a Zen Hospice Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in conversation with Ann Cutcher, MD, director of Enso House—a hospice on Whidbey Island in Washington State affiliated with the nearby Tahoma One Drop Zen Monastery (founded by Zen Master Shodo Harada Roshi). Enso House began in 2001 as a result of his vision of a home for the dying where the qualities of humility, service, compassion, forgiveness deepen in those both giving and receiving care. Ann Cutcher, MD Dr. Cutcher is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and has 15 years experience caring for patients in hospices, nursing homes, and hospitals. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.