A month or so ago Robyn put the final touches on a Peak Moment Conversation we videotaped last summer on our 2006 "Peak Moment Travels" in the Pacific Northwest. Once again we were with the "The Worm Guy" giving us a tour of his Vashon Island operations converting food waste into nutrient-dense worm poop.
We smiled and felt a twinge of longing to be back on the road, remembering how we wound our way through Oregon, Washington and British Columbia videotaping more than 80 programs organized by relocalization group coordinators and supported by the Relocalization Network. This blog chronicled that journey.
Back home producing a Peak Moment Conversation program each week, we are revisiting many people and places we taped. There's Sharon Abreu and Michael Hurwicz singing about the End of Oil, and Errol and Kathleen demonstrating the hand tools at Smith and Speed Mercantile (Orcas Island). Karen Biondo and Joe Walling of Vashon giving us a tour of their K-Jo farm, including the cute goats who kicked off the project. Sally Lovell exults about her electric-assist bike (Pt. Townsend). Otmar Ebenhoech's hot electric Porsche conversion created a stir in the electric vehicle online community.
That trip set some wonderful things into motion and kept us full-tilt busy, from a Peak Moment website to new presentations like David Korten's popular and accessible "The Great Turning." You can read about everything in our July 07 newsletter at www.peakmoment.tv/newsletter/0707.
We loved our adventures on the road, and want more. On that trip we started dreaming of purchasing a used motorhome that would let us take longer trips, editing and producing shows along the way. It showed up last May. It's a "Walkabout" model -- isn't that a perfect name, fitting with our purpose? We'll be modifying her to put Robyn's editing bay in back, and a little office for me in the front. We dream of putting solar panels on the roof for extra electricity capacity. So getting her prepared is our big project for this fall and winter. I dream of a trip starting spring 2008 and heading East. Stay tuned.
But for when we can't travel, we just tried something new: we taped our first bi-local, transcontinental Peak Moment Conversation. It was with the filmmakers of "What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire." The idea came by email from someone we've never met -- Charles Allen of Asheville, North Carolina. He arranged for a videographer to tape Tim Bennett and Sally Erickson in Asheville, NC while Robyn taped me at home. We used a speakerphone to hear one another. Robyn edited all the tapes into one Conversation, which came out quite well, despite the strangeness of not being able to SEE one another. You can view the Conversation at www.peakmoment.tv/conversations/72.htm when it's online in a week or so.
Synchronistically, our "information warrior" friend Mary Nelson had a preview copy of the film, so we watched it beforehand. We were stunned. And moved to tears. Framed within Tim's personal story of awakening, this film brings together all the big topics of the unsustainable empire/civilization "story" in a personal way. It's visually rich, drawing from lots of archival films, cartoons, and even home movies; the music track underscores the moods perfectly.
You'll hear from Richard Heinberg, Daniel Quinn, Derrick Jenson, Thomas Berry, Chellis Glendinning, and many other articulate big-picture thinkers.
The film does not provide the "happy chapter" at the end listing "what you can do" to save the planet, but rather asks people to first be with their feelings of despair and grief: to sit with these before “doing” anything (jumping into action can be its own form of denial).
I think it's a film mostly for the choir, people who are already awakened to the serious events unfolding and ready to go deeper than intellectual understanding. Where other films have given us facts, this one slips in deeper -- to our core, to our feelings.I suggest you see it with at least one friend so you can talk about it later.
Right now Tim and Sally are on a Northeast tour, and are coming to the west coast in Fall. DVDs will be available soon. Go to www.whatawaytogomovie.com for more info.
Robyn and I have been reading aloud James Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia. This planetary physician's prognosis for humans and the planet is more dire than we'd imagined. We feel an increasing urgency to continue in the awakening and lifeboat-building, given the accelerating news of climate change, again rising oil prices, and stock market meltdown. Watching the movie "Zeitgeist" a few nights ago stunned us into another bout with hard realities. Watch this one with friends, too. (www.zeitgeistmovie.com).
