As our 2010 blog series on “Your Food Supply” starts wrapping up, we present an interview with an intern at Hardwick Vermont Farmer’s Market. She had quite an interesting perspective on the health of Vermont’s village centers vs. those in the western U.S. Check out her perspective…
Your Food Supply #27
01/10/2010Glacier Melting & Time-Lapse Photography
27/09/2010“More ice is released into the global ocean, from this glacier*, than from any other glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. If sea level rises, this is where it all begins. This is it, ground zero.”
EIS's James Balog
From: NPR’s Living on Earth
A photographer was one of this year’s Heinz environmental award winners. James Balog’s project — the Extreme Ice Survey — documents the rapid melting of glacial ice through time-lapse photographs from cameras in some of the world’s most remote areas. Host Bruce Gellerman talks with James Balog about the Extreme Ice Survey.
GELLERMAN: Winners of the prestigious Heinz environmental award have just been announced. This year the Heinz Foundation is honoring a wide variety of environmental innovators including a distinguished academic for his work in sustainable transportation, a pioneer in green chemistry, and a scientist who studies the suspected endocrine disrupting chemical BPA.
Awards and checks for a hundred thousand dollars will also be going to several winners who focus on climate change, among them James Balog. He’s director of Earthvision Trust and a one-time climate change skeptic. James Balog joins us from Boulder Colorado. Welcome to LOE…and congratulations.
BALOG: Well, thank you so much. It’s a wonderful week, and a wonderful honor and a privilege. I feel very blessed.
GELLERMAN: A climate change skeptic winning one of the premier environmental awards. Now, that’s an achievement.
Greenland ice sheet melting fast
BALOG: Well, I’m not a skeptic, and I haven’t been in a long time. Twenty years ago, I thought this whole science was based on computer modeling, and I’m a bit of a technological Luddite, and I thought that if it was all based on computer modeling, there could be something wrong with it. But then I took the time to learn about the evidence that was in the ice cores, and then I got out into the field and looked at what was happening to the glaciers, and I realized that this was not about models and projections and statistics. This was incredible concrete and real and immediate and happening really quickly.
GELLERMAN: In a sense, seeing is believing.
BALOG: Yeah, absolutely. As a photographer, my whole career and as a once-upon-a-time experiential educator for Outward Bound School, and as a mountaineer for forty years, I am quite keyed in to the feeling of experience. You know, seeing things, feeling things, touching things. Letting the vibrate in your chest, well when you are standing at the side of these glaciers and you’re watching huge masses of ice go away, you really get it.
Read the rest of this interview….
Snatam Kaur Rehearsal, Part B
25/09/2010Part B of Snatam Kaur, GuruGanesha Singh and Ramesh Kannan rehearsing the morning of their performance for our Mountain Spirit Institute Fundraiser, in Sunapee, NH.
Snatam Kaur Rehearsal, Part A
25/09/2010Snatam Kaur, GuruGanesha Singh and Ramesh Kannan rehearse the morning of their performance for our Mountain Spirit Institute Fundraiser, in Sunapee, NH.
This was their third day of rehearsals, and it seemed the energy was so high that I had to capture it, with GuruGenesha’s permission of course.
Thanks you all, for gracing our living room with your music of the spirit and heart.
Your Food Supply #26: Walmart, or…..
24/09/2010Gail Brill talks about the first “community owned department store” in New York state. Learn more…
Your Food Supply #25: Convergence & Food
20/09/2010Gail Brill continues the discussion, and talks about Peak Oil, “Transition Towns” in the U.S and how it all comes down to the local food supply.
Your Food Supply #24: Saranac Lake, NY
19/09/2010Meet Gail Brill, Founder of the very active Adirondack Green Circle in Saranac Lake New York. She’s getting things done. Learn more….
MSI Successful Board Retreat
16/09/2010
Burning the midnight oil
At MSI’s recent residential retreat, the energy was contagious. The board members worked on actively bringing Mountain Spirit to a new level of commitment and confidence. MSI was started in 1998, when R. Richards, after having just returned from high alpine guiding in Peru, led a trip under the MSI name to the Cusco region of Peru. Since then the non-profit organization has had numerous and successful programs and workshops ranging from a Peruvian Shamanic Studies program which ran over the course of two years, a wilderness experience educational program, author lectures, and a film series, ongoing programs to Peru, the teen healing adventure and the Peru/USA Music Exchange held in the Northeastern US in the fall of 1998.
“Becoming more sustainable as an organization, and building capacity to deliver programs ” has been the board’s goal for the last two years. At each board retreat we’ve identified how we can move forward, and at our last retreat, we dug in and wrote our first grant together. Laptops were all over the room, crunching numbers from every program we have on the calendar.
We had a ball, put in some long hours and have some great results. Importantly, we have set a time to develop our annual program schedule where we’ll slate new programs for the coming year during our Board of Directors summer retreat. Also, as a result of the great work every did putting together some great programs and an top-notch organization-wide budget, we applied for our first grant to the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Express Grant. We put in some serious hours, and suffered from a bit of what fellow board member Craig Cimmons calls “HBO”. The acronym stands for “Haven’t Been Outdoors”.
Thanks to Cindy Heath, Craig Cimmons, Bob Stremba, and Amanda Richards for all the work and energy that they put into the board retreat! Adelante!
Image: MSI Board Members LtoR: The beagle Daphne (not a board member), Randy Richards, Amanda Richards, Bob Stremba, dinner guest and author *Henry Homeyer, Cindy Heath and Craig Cimmons. (*Who you’ll be seeing more about on this blog)
MSI Director & VP Present at Conference
16/09/2010
Assoc. of Experiential Ed
R. Richards and Bob Stremba, Ed.D, will be giving a presentation at the 38th Annual International Association of Experiential Education Conference on November 4th in Las Vegas, NV, USA. The two will share MSI’s unique mission and how MSI blends the world of experiential education with practical spiritual facilitation. Ther a number of presnetation categories, and the two are slated for a workshop during the conference under the Body/Mind/Spirit category.
The conference, bills itself as “Connecting Communities, Sustaining Educators” which brings together more than 900 experiential educators and practitioners for professional development and networking.
The title of the presentation, “Exspiriential” Education: Integrating Spirit with Experience, comes from the term coined by MSI Founder Richards, which combines Spirit and Experiential education. The MSI website states: “We’re a hybrid organization – a cross between an experiential wilderness program and a holistic learning center, with elements of both experiential education and spiritual development.”
Stremba is a former board member of AEE, and continues to be actively involved in the association. He currently runs the Outdoor Pursuits program at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. Richards has recently joined again as an individual member of AEE.
November 4-7, 2010- Workshops
2010 Workshop List (subject to change)
- Adventure-Based Programming
- Experienced Based Training and Development
- Facilitation/Processing
- Mind/Body/Spirit
- Program Administration/Business Development
- Research and Evaluation
- Schools and Colleges: Higher Education
- Schools and Colleges: K-12
- Social Justice and Ethics
- Therapeutic Adventure/Adventure Therapy
3rd Annual Trends and Issues in Outdoor Education Programs Panel Discussion
Andrew J. Bobilya, Tom Holman, Betsy Lindley, John Gookin, Tim O’Connell, Nina Roberts, Bobbi Beale, Bob Stremba & Jay Roberts
Accreditation 101
Shawn Tierney
Adventure Education and Motherhood II; Are they Mutually Exclusive or Mutually Beneficial?
Erin Lotz
Building Respectful Learning Communities: Setting Positive Behavioral Norms through Adventure
Jane Panicucci & Larry Childs
Chiji Cards: Beyond Processing
Chris Cavert
Designing Skill-based Initiatives
Paul Nicolazzo
Developing a Self-assessment Study
Shawn Tierney
Facilitating Inclusion in Outdoor Adventure: Decisions in Management and Modifications
Alison Voight & Catharine Bishop
Girl, You Got it! Empowering Girls to Develop Technical Skills
Priscilla McKenney & Nadine Budbill
Good Judgment: The Ultimate Facilitator Skill
Chris Ortiz & Jim Grout
Into Thinner Air: More on Adventure Programming at Altitude
TA Loeffler
Intuition or Cognition: The Dual-Process Approach to Judgment and Decision-Making for Outdoor Leaders
Wynn Shooter & Nathan Furman
Leadership and Challenge Center ¡Lánzate! Empowering Agents of Change
Juan Carlos & Echavarría Flores
Outdoor Ethics – How AEE Members Can Easily Implement Effective Leave No Trace Education Programs
Catherine Smith & Sarah Folzenlogen
Project Venture – Evidence Based Prevention Programming
McClellan Hall, Bart Crawford, Neal Ferris & Heather Yazzie
Standards, Legislation, Regulations, Certification, New Technology. What Does This All Mean for My Challenge Course Program?
James Borishade & Bill Weaver
The Living History of Experiential Education
Tom Lindblade
The Ropes of Ecology
Shawn Moriarty
The Use of Emotional Rescue In Adventure Based Activities
Joel Cryer
Thematic Programming: Unifying the Experience
Patrick Torrey
What’s Nature Got To Do With It?
Jacquie Medina
Willi Unsoeld: Outdoor Education Philosophy and Practice From Risk Taking to Rites of Passage
Krag Unsoeld
Experienced Based Training and Development
A Foundation of Trust
Sam Sikes
Accountable Team Building in a Web 2.0 world
Jason Kipps
Alternative Mediums in Experiential Learning
Anand Upadhyay
Experience and Reflection to Inform Design: Outward Bound and Professional Development for Educators
Billy O’Steen, Andy Mink & Jim LaPrad
Explore the World of EBTD: A World Cafe Experience
Marc Levy & Jonathan Clark
How To Hear What Is Not Being Said
David Kampfschulte
Is Team Building a Set Up?
Claudia Valle & Tim Arnold
Judgment and Decision-Making: How Our Brains Are Wired… and What We Can Do About It
Jeremy Johnson
Overcoming Language Barriers in Facilitation
Sarah Kauntz & Kathleen Day
Secrets of Successful Networking
Jeff Richardson
Spiritual Dimensions of Team
Al Wright
Using Personality Assessments To Become A More Effective Educator
Chris Gee
Facilitation/Processing
A Book of One’s Own: How to Make Books for Processing
Gretchen Newhouse Berns
Building a Sense of Community Experientially
Jeff Jacobs
Creating Transfer of Learning Through Intentional Program Design and Framing
Gregory Paninski
Dramatic Problem Solving
Steven Hawkins
Enhancing Flow in Classrooms Through Experiential Education
Marleah Blom
Focus Your Locus
Justin McGlamery & Mike Gessford
Going GA GA For Global Games
Rich Keegan
Got Tossables? 10 Team Building Games Using Tossable Props You Already Have
Michelle Cummings
Green Mentoring Program
Melinda Campbell & Maryam Davodi-Far
How to Turn Your Support Group from Mediocre to Magnificent
Lynne Downey, Jenni Jardine & Ian Prinsloo
Nature Experiences, Use Them or Lose Them
Francine (Frankie) Piela , Clifford E. Knapp & Mike Bingley
Raccoon Circles, 2010
Thomas Smith
Shifting the Paradigm: from Challenge by Choice to Conscious Choice – An Evolution in Ideology
Jody Radtke & Lizzy Slatt
Systematic Family Sculpting
Gary Hees
Team Interaction Mapping
Mark Rose
The Art of Experiential Group Facilitation & Teaching
Jennifer Stanchfield
The Assessing Matrix
Nate Regier
The Fine Art of Team Building
Adam Ames & Andrew Bordwin
Turbo-charging for Character
James Fish
Mind/Body/Spirit
“Exspiriential” Education: Integrating Spirit with Experience
Your Food Supply #23: Engaging in Life
16/09/2010A wrap-up discussion about what it means to be a local farmer, and who benefits..
Mountain Spirit's Blog 