Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life

Shodo Harada Roshi The Calligraphy of Emptiness, The Zen of Dying Part of the End-of-Life Conversations Series Join Michael Lerner in conversation with Roshi about his experiences with death and dying and for an unforgettable demonstration of his calligraphy. Shodo Harada Roshi Shodo Harada Roshi is Abbot of Sogen-ji, a 300-year-old Rinzai Zen monastery in Okayama, Japan. He is also Abbot of Tahoma Monastery on Whidbey Island north of Seattle. He founded Enso House, a hospice affiliated with Tahoma, where his students attend the dying. He is a master of Japanese calligraphy, and has conducted demonstrations at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. His translator and colleague, Priscilla Daichi Storandt, is co-abbot at Tahoma and a senior teacher in her own right. Find out more on his website. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Kevin Starr, MD Hippocratic Philanthropy: Helping the Poorest Around the Globe Most people agree that philanthropy, whether in the form of foreign aid or local grassroots projects, is a worthy undertaking. But many have long held that philanthropy often fails, wholly or in part, in terms of impact and sustainability. Sometimes it can even make things worse. How do we make philanthropic efforts most effective? What has worked best around the world? Join TNS Host Steve Heilig in conversation with Dr. Kevin Starr—a pioneer in developing and supporting workable projects in health, ecology, and economic development—about effective philanthropic strategies and stories. Steve has also worked in developing nations, and co-authored an article with Starr titled Hippocratic Philanthropy: Lessons from International Health. Kevin Starr, MD Kevin Starr, MD, directs the Mulago Foundation and is the founder and director of the Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program, focused on sustainable projects to help the very poorest people around the world. He practiced medicine for decades while exploring the world and for the past decade has devoted himself full-time to studying, designing, and supporting good work around the planet. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Betsy MacGregor, MD In Awe of Being Human ~Part of the End-of-Life Conversation Series~ Join TNS Host Michael Lerner for a conversation with Dr. Betsy MacGregor, cancer survivor, retired medical doctor, author, and founding board member of Enso House, a hospice residence providing compassionate, holistic care for terminally ill patients and their families. From decades of work as a hospital-based physician and end-of-life researcher, and from her own experience as a cancer patient, Dr. MacGregor has come to view illness and death as profound teachers that carve out in us a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Now retired from clinical practice and living in the Pacific Northwest, Dr. MacGregor remains active as a writer, speaker, and founding Board Member of Enso House. She is author of In Awe of Being Human, a book that shares some of the remarkable experiences that being a doctor led her to witness and participate in. Betsy MacGregor, MD Dr. Betsy MacGregor has a BA from Wellesley College, a Masters of Science in Neurobiology from New York University Graduate School, and an MD from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Over nearly three decades, she trained and worked as a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist at Beth Israel Medical Center, a major academic hospital in New York City. Dr. MacGregor has conducted numerous educational programs and workshops for health care professionals focusing on the psychological, social and spiritual dimensions of health, healing and end-of-life. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Ananda Brady Ten Years on the Hippie Trail, and Beyond A ten-year odyssey around the world, and what did it all mean? An open exploration of “the sixties” and the legacies of the times. Join TNS Host Steve Heilig in an interview and dialogue with long-time Bolinas denizen Ananda Brady about his new book, Ten Years on the Hippie Trail—an engrossing retelling of his worldwide wandering in the 1960s and 1970s. He will talk of those travels, and explore the deeper questions of why “the Sixties” happened, what has lasted and what was lost, why, and what it all means. Ananda Brady Craig G. Brady was born in a Naval hospital in Oceanside, California, on August 14, 1945 (“VJ Day”—the very day of the wildest American celebration ever, the day that marked the end of WWII). His family moved back to Kansas, where he grew up. In 1966 he moved to Southern California, beginning a four-year process of change that was to alter his beliefs and assumptions on just about everything. To satisfy his deep need for ‘knowing’ he set out on a general quest coupled with a resolve to get to India, no matter how long it took. He tossed himself onto the open road without any plan and only a couple hundred bucks in his pocket, and crossed the border into Mexico, his first time out of the country. He wandered in lonely misery and doubt for a few long weeks, but the day his entire reserve of funds was stolen was the day his adventure kicked into gear, never again to wain. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Catherine Baumgartner Embodied Ecologies: Exploring Biocultural Neuroscience Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in conversation with Catherine Baumgartner, project director at Embodied Ecologies, a new organization dedicated to building large-scale knowledge and action partnerships that leverage the latest research findings in neuroscience, cognitive science, somatic psychology, and biocultural diversity in exploring and understanding the links between place, embodied experience, language, and culture. Catherine’s exploration of art as an embodied expression of place began 15 years ago, inspired by her experience as a performer with the site-specific dance company Global Site Performance, directed by Marylee Hardenbergh. Seeking further insight into the embodied aspects of place-based artmaking, Catherine turned to neuroscience, gradually piecing together clues that revealed a picture of the human nervous system as the crucial medium through which sensory experience of place is translated into symbolic systems such as art, language, and culture. Find out more about Embodied Ecologies on their website. Catherine Baumgartner Catherine is an artist, interdisciplinary inquirist, and initiator of collaborative projects that explore the ways in which individuals and communities relate to living environments and translate these sensory experiences into worlds of meaning. Her creative practice encompasses movement, poetry, installation art, and collaborative place-based art, and her inquiry into meaning-making draws on multiple fields. She received her master’s degree in Transformative Arts from John F. Kennedy University. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Frances McDormand and Joel Coen Adventures in Collaboration Join us for a conversation with stage and film actor Frances McDormand and writer and director Joel Coen, moderated by Commonweal board member, Eric Karpeles. Up for discussion are the ways in which the creative act, kindled in an individual, often requires active input from others to be realized. Collaboration manifests itself on many levels—personally, professionally, and communally. McDormand and Coen have each made careers forming strong, supportive bonds with other artists in their field. And sometimes they work with one another. Adventures in Collaboration Frances McDormand Actor Frances McDormand studied at the Yale School of Drama. On Broadway, she has appeared in David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People, Caryl Churchill’s Far Away, and as Stella in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Off-Broadway plays include The Sisters Rosenzweig and The Swan. She has worked extensively with The Wooster Group, in To You, The Birdie!, North Atlantic, as well as in her most recent stage performance in Early Shaker Spirituals. McDormand played Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Gate Theater in Dublin. Her film work includes Promised Land, Moonrise Kingdom, This Must Be The Place, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Burn After Reading, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Friends With Money, Laurel Canyon, Something’s Gotta Give, and Wonder Boys. With her husband, Joel Coen, she made the films The Man Who Wasn’t There, Fargo, Raising Arizona, and Blood Simple. Joel Coen Film writer, director and producer Joel Coen studied at Simon’s Rock and New York University. With his brother, Ethan Coen, he has made sixteen films, beginning with Blood Simple in 1984. Other titles include Inside Llewyn Davis, Serious Man, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, Miller’s Crossing, True Grit, and Barton Fink. With his wife, Frances McDormand, he made the films Burn After Reading, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Fargo, Raising Arizona, and Blood Simple. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Peter Gleckler Climate Change: What We Know and Don't Know about Where We're Going Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in a conversation with Peter Gleckler, a lead climate change scientist for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an entity established by the United Nations Environmental Programme. Peter Gleckler Peter Gleckler, a Bolinas resident, has been studying climate change for more than 25 years. His most recent research explores how the world ocean has warmed since the 1970s, and demonstrates that the likely explanation for this warming is the increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from human activities. In addition to his research, Peter has served in numerous capacities to help advance international collaboration in climate research and modeling. Peter has spent much of the past three years serving as a lead author of the latest scientific assessment produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an entity established by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). Peter received his PhD in Atmospheric Science from U.C. Davis in 1993. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Suzanne Ciani Piano Concert Hear the inauguration of our newly gifted grand piano with a concert by Bolinas composer-pianist Suzanne Ciani. Suzanne performed original compositions for piano solo, followed by a conversation with TNS Host Michael Lerner. Ciani’s many recognitions include five Grammy nominations for Best New Age Album, the Indie Award for Best New Age Album and Keyboard Magazine’s “New Age Keyboardist of the Year.” Suzanne Ciani In the early nineties, Suzanne relocated to Bolinas from New York City to concentrate on her artistic career after 20 years as a leader in the field of sound design for film and television, creating award-winning music for a host of high profile Fortune 500 clients. Additionally, she has the recognition of being the first woman hired to score a major Hollywood feature, scoring the Lily Tomlin feature The Incredible Shrinking Woman. Suzanne also brought her special talents to games, scoring original musical FX for Bally’s Xenon Pinball and becoming the first female voice in a game; the story of her creative work became the subject of a television segment of Omni Magazine, hosted by Peter Ustinov. In 1995, she established her own record label, Seventh Wave, after many years as an artist on major labels (Atlantic, Private Music/Windham Hill/BMG/Sony). In addition to her fifteen albums, she has published four books of original piano music through the Hal Leonard Corporation. Her signature composition, “The Velocity of Love,” appears in numerous anthologies of romantic music. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Ken Wilson On the Resilience of Connected Diversities and the Backing of Indigenous Innovation Dr. Ken Wilson serves as executive director of The Christensen Fund, a private foundation established in 1957 and currently focusing on sustaining the “biocultural”—the rich but neglected adaptive interweave of people and place, culture, and ecology. The Fund backs indigenous initiatives to restore relationships between traditional lands, living cultures, and community well being in ways that are not “preservationist” but instead seek to support revitalization and resilience: bottom up processes of innovation and adaptive change. Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in conversation with Ken about his work as a philanthropist focused on indigenous cultures. Ken Wilson, PhD Born in Malawi with a life spread rather across the world, Ken Wilson studied zoology at Oxford and anthropology at University College London where his doctorate focused on indigenous knowledge, health, and human ecology in the agro-pastoral arid savannahs and woodlands of Southern Zimbabwe (a community with whom he is still closely involved). In 2002, after nine years at the Ford Foundation in Africa and then as deputy to the Vice President for Education, Media, Arts, and Culture in New York, Ken was the first non-family executive director of The Christensen Fund. Ken lives in San Francisco and has played a variety of roles in international philanthropy, including as past president of International Funders for Indigenous Peoples, and on such boards as the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity and the Seva Foundation. He currently chairs the steering committee of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food and is a board member of the Prince of Wales Charitable Foundation. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott Ramblin' On with Ramblin' Jack Jack was King of the Folksingers. -Bob Dylan Nobody I know—and I mean nobody—has covered more ground and made more friends and sung more songs than the fellow you’re about to meet right now. He’s got a song and a friend for every mile behind him. Say hello to my good buddy, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. -Johnny Cash One of the last true links to the great folk traditions of this country, with more than 40 albums under his belt, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott is a living legend of American music. A longtime West Marin resident and Grammy Award winner, he has recorded more than 40 albums, influencing countless other well-known musicians. Join Ramblin’ Jack and Commonweal’s Steve Heilig, a veteran music journalist, for an informal talk about Jack’s amazing life story, the many figures he has known and played with through the decades—names like Guthrie, Seeger, and Dylan—and even hear a song or two. Ramblin' Jack Elliott There are no degrees of separation between Jack and the real thing. He is the guy who ran away from his Brooklyn home at 14 to join the rodeo and learned his guitar from a cowboy. In 1950, he met Woody Guthrie, moved in with the Guthrie family and traveled with Woody to California and Florida, from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters. President Bill Clinton awarded Jack the National Medal of the Arts, proclaiming, “In giving new life to our most valuable musical traditions, Ramblin’ Jack has himself become an American treasure.” He has recorded 40 albums; wrote one of the first trucking songs, Cup of Coffee, recorded by Johnny Cash; championed the works of new singer-songwriters, from Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson to Tim Hardin; became a founding member of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue; and continued the life of the traveling troubadour influencing Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Tom Russell, The Grateful Dead, and countless others. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.