The second poem Gerald Stern reads in this video clip from the 2008 Dodge Poetry Festival ends with the phrase, “the way my brain works.” Yet it is exactly how his brain works that pulls us into the poems and astonishes us with where he takes us.

He begins with the most mundane objects: coffee pots, wilted rhododendron, a rusted burst-out water pipe, a green cap. For Stern, nothing is insignificant; everything demands our attention and our praise because, as one of his book titles instructs us: Everything Is Burning. In the act of cherishing this transitory world, he stumbles over human ignorance, cruelty and greed, and rages against them. But it is the rage of one who refuses to abandon his faith in our capacity for joy. Stern may be our one true ecstatic poet, for he will praise what most of us abandon and neglect.

And he does this with great humor and irony. But Stern’s irony has little in common with that praised in much of the poetry of the last century. He does not use it to gain distance from his subject, or to allow the reader to feel superior to human emotion. His irony is like that in King Lear. It is awful and awe-full.

Lear does not see the truth until Cordelia is dying. We know it is too late to matter, to change anything, and yet, like Lear, we lean forward, hoping against hope she will breathe. In “Asphodel,” the speaker, after a lifetime that has spanned World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, both Iraq invasions and the war in Afghanistan, refuses to believe it should take a lifetime “just to hate one of their dumb butcheries.” And yet, because it is the last line of the poem, we know it does, and it has. The aged veteran we meet in the poem, wearing his Korean War cap, which we would assume is a sign of pride and patriotism (Is it?) calls that war stupid and useless.

In “The Dancing,” the speaker and the reader share the historical knowledge that creates the terrible irony that the small family dancing so riotously in their small apartment in Pittsburgh in 1945 know nothing of the “dancing” of the families dying in gas chambers across the sea. In a few short lines Stern has painted that small family with such loving detail they come alive for us. They become every family we did not see because they were vanished in the Holocaust.

This Time: New and Selected Poems offers a generous selection from Gerald Stern’s first seven books of poems. Save the Last Dance is his most recent collection.

In case you wondered: Stern’s “Here’s Eddy” during his opening remarks is his noticing his old friend Edward Hirsch in the audience.

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
For more information, visit the Poetry website.

Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

When I put on these shoes this morning I knew they were going to be painful, and that I was in for a tough day. The end of the day delivered.

I was at my wits end as I tried to get dinner ready. My little one was crying non-stop with a fever, her sister needed help with her homework and her brother couldn’t seem to settle down, giving new meaning to “bouncing off the walls.” I could have handled this if my husband had come home after work. Instead he went to the bar to forget his own day from hell. He had a run-in with his boss and was fortunate not to lose his job, but it was going to be uncomfortable going back to work tomorrow.

He was still pretty worked up when he got home and realized he had forgotten his keys.

I had just gotten the kids quiet in bed when I connected that the persistent ringing, ringing, ringing was the doorbell and rushed to let him in. I don’t really remember what I said, but it clearly wasn’t the right thing. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground with a boot kicking my ribs and a fist smashng my nose. By the time the door slammed on his exit, the kids were up and screaming.

I’d been pushed before when liquor and stress were involved, but nothing like this. I never imagined I would be sitting in an emergency hospital room at Paterson’s St. Joseph’s Hospital with my kids waiting with a social worker while my broken nose is set and I await x-rays. My mind is racing. I need to do whatever I can to make sure my kids are safe. I don’t have any family to turn to, just this judge the hospital staff says I can speak with through a teleconference system (the only one in the state, so I am lucky I came here). The judge will talk to me via video, look at my bruises and decide if I can get a temporary restraining order. I don’t have to go to the courthouse. But if I get a temporary restraining order or file charges, my husband might only get angrier. Plus he really didn’t mean it. He is just under a lot of pressure.

I have got to get these shoes off; they are killing me!

I kick off the shoes and immediately everything returns to normal.  Almost.  The physical pain is gone, but a new pain, born from empathizing with someone who is trapped in a horrible situation needing to make difficult decisions still remains. I’ve just removed the shoes of Miriam, the subject of the simulation exercise I participated in last week as part of Leadership New Jersey’s class of 2010 and the two-day seminar on Human Services and Health Care that took place in Paterson and New Brunswick. This is just one example of the Leaderhsip New Jersey’s powerful use of experiential education.

Leadership New Jersey, Class of 2010

My Leadership New Jersey team (there were four others with four different case studies) was given the scenario I described above and sent to St. Joseph’s Hospital to meet with an Emergency Room physician and a social worker to figure out what type of treatment and support was available. These amazing and dedicated hospital angels were the first line of defense for my kids and me. They patched me up, treated my daughter, and connected me with nonprofit services to help find a temporary space to stay and guidance on how to deal with my situation.

My team then went over to the courthouse to meet with a judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Passaic County Family Courts and watch him try a restraining order case. Watching this case unfold, wearing Miriam’s shoes, I knew it was going to be hard to go through with the final retraining order because I couldn’t imagine standing up to my husband in court. This was serious life and death business for both of us. He might lose his job, or what if someone thought I couldn’t take care of the kids by myself and try to take them away?  All sorts of unhappy outcomes kept bombarding my resolve.

The goals of the seminar were to increase awareness of the structure, capabilities and limitations of social service and health care delivery in New Jersey, experience what it is like to seek the assistance of social service agencies, offer opportunities to think about ways to improve social service delivery, and improve understanding of the social and economic realities facing New Jersey cities.

You can talk about these issues all day long in the comfort of a classroom and never get a true taste of how complex the world of human services is. I don’t assume for one moment that our day-long exercise even began to approximate the full realities of living in poverty or being a victim of domestic abuse or countless other challenges that make one vulnerable in America. But there was no better way to quickly immerse ourselves in the issues involved in creating a safety net for those children, individuals, and families who are struggling in our society.

The exercise underscored how much New Jersey’s safety net system is dependent on the nonprofit sector to deliver services in order to function. Government establishes laws and outlines protections, but it is nonprofit service providers who make the system work. It was equally clear that these nonprofit organizations are already stretched to their limits, and more and more people are in need of their services every day. With state budget cuts, and reduced philanthropic and corporate support, it is likely that growing numbers of individuals will fall through the expanding holes in society’s safety net. This is the reason why the pain continued even after the shoes were removed.

What gave me hope was talking with so many of my fellow Leadership New Jersey class members who are working in human services and fighting the brave fight every day. They wrestle disillusionment by keeping their focus on the individuals they are trying to help.

It was also great to hear from the two impressive women who are leading our state‘s Departments of Human Services, and Children and Families:  Jennifer Velez and Dr. Janet Rosenzweig, respectively. The two commissioners (both Leadership New Jersey graduates) spoke candidly about the challenges they and their departments face, their priorities, and even a bit of their frustrations of not being able to do everything they would like to do, especially in the area of prevention. They realize it isn’t a perfect system and want to use every tool in their toolbox to improve it and help more individuals.

Great Falls of Paterson

Another boost of optimism came from meeting the President of Paterson’s New Jersey Community Development Corporation, Bob Guarasci, and around twenty youth from the Paterson Youth Council, Youth Build Program and The Great Falls Youth Corps. NJCDC focuses on neighborhood revitalization, youth development, education, affordable  housing, and the preservation of the Great Falls Historic District. In fact The Dodge Foundation recently made a grant to support the Great Falls Youth Corps and their partnership with the National Park Service to help launch the new Great Falls National Park in Paterson. Talking with these kids and hearing their thoughts on creating a brighter future for Paterson and their families rekindled hope.

So I just want to take a moment to thank all those individuals who work hard every day to build a safety net for children and adults who are struggling in our society.  Although your work is invisible to most, you give people hope when they most need it and change their lives for the better.

Shoe photo courtesy Asif Akbar
Leadership New Jersey photo courtesy of Leadership New Jersey
Great Falls of Paterson photo courtesy Gianfranco Archimede

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
For more information, visit the Poetry website.

Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
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Saint Vitus may be the acknowledged patron saint of dancers, but New Jersey dance companies and artists know that the true patron saint of dancers is Randy James.

Saint Randy, currently an assistant professor of dance at Rutgers University and the President of Dance/New Jersey (the statewide service organization for dance companies and dancers), is the founder and artistic director of Randy James Dance Works, an acclaimed company that he started in 1993. Through the years, his company grew to have a national and international touring schedule, while also maintaining a focus on educational and community-based residencies, master classes, lecture demonstrations and workshops here in New Jersey.

Randy put his company on hiatus after an impressive fourteen year run. The demands of running the company day to day coupled with the death of his best friend were exacting a toll and so he decided to devote his time – full-time – to Mason Gross School of the Arts, his alma mater, where he had been teaching for many years. During all this time, and still today, Randy also played an integral role in the development and growth of Dance/New Jersey.

So Randy knows firsthand the inherent challenges of running and sustaining a professional dance company in New Jersey. And he has, single-handedly, changed the fortunes and increased the exposure of a number of New Jersey dance companies while instilling a true appreciation of dance in a new generation of audiences.

Since Randy started teaching his Dance Appreciation class at Rutgers three years ago, it has grown from one section with 53 students to three sections with 1,100 students this spring. In the fall of 2010, Randy anticipates four sections with over 2,000 students enrolled. Amazing. He had to turn away hundreds of students this semester because of space issues, which Rutgers promises to solve for the fall semester. Macada Brandl, Dance/New Jersey’s Executive Director, told me, “Randy’s class is remarkable. I wish I could take it every semester.”

As part of Randy’s class, students are introduced to a range of professional dance companies, many from New Jersey, who perform and lead master classes and lecture/demonstrations. This year, Randy has engaged a number of Dodge grantees: Nimbus Dance Works, Nai-Ni Chen, Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, American Repertory Ballet, Freespace Dance, Terra Firma, Cleo Mack and The Shua Group. This is an incredible win-win for everyone involved, and needless to say, dance companies in New Jersey are tremendously grateful to Randy for his loyalty to them and his determination to showcase the best of the best work being done by New Jersey dancers and choreographers. The dance companies are receiving excellent compensation from Rutgers. These engagements allow the companies to have more rehearsals, performances, and exposure.

The students at Rutgers are learning about dance in a meaningful way which can only lead to them being dance audience members in the future. (Randy told me, “I see many former students at dance performances all around the state, and they say they love dance now and will continue to seek out dance events in New Jersey.”) In fact, another component of Randy’s Dance Appreciation class involves students going to see performances in other venues. Because he can guarantee the sale of 1,000 seats (his students are required to attend these performances), he has had great success in negotiating with two major presenters, Raritan Valley College (in Branchburg) and The State Theatre (in New Brunswick). He is in conversation with other presenters now, and knowing Randy, it won’t be long before New Jersey dance companies are being featured in venues across the state.

In a creative and sustainable New Jersey, you would hope that the state’s leading university would be making this kind of a difference for an entire genre. Thanks to Saint Randy, it’s happening.

For more information on New Jersey’s dance community, including upcoming performances, check out the Dance/NJ website.

Photo of Randy James courtesy Randy James Dance Works

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
For more information, visit the Poetry website.

Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
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For poet, novelist, essayist and newspaper columnist Taslima Nasreen, the nature of the relationship between poetry and politics is not an academic question but, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Her outspoken poems and essays supporting women’s rights and freedom of expression have led repeatedly to fatwas calling for her execution. As a result, she has spent long periods of her life under house arrest, in hiding or living in exile from her native Bangladesh.

Considering her history, reading “You Go Girl” and “A Letter to My Mother” in public is, for Nasreen, the act of taking her life in her hands. This has been the case for nearly two decades, when religious fundamentalists first broke into the newspaper offices where she worked, sued her editors and publishers and threatened her life. She has since been publicly assaulted a number of times and, as recently as March of 2010, one of her newspaper columns sparked riots that left two dead.

Despite the risks, Nasreen has continued to write and speak out, publishing nearly thirty books that have been translated into twenty languages. In the process, she has become internationally recognized as an advocate for women’s rights. It may be that international attention to her plight spared her life on more than one occasion.

English translations of her work include the poetry collections All About Women, Love Poems of Taslima Nasreen, 100 Poems of Taslima Nasreen, and The Game in Reverse and the prose works Homecoming, Phera and Shame (Lajja).

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead.

* * *

The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
For more information, visit the Poetry website.

Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Once inside the unassuming entrance of Roberta’s, if you can cast your gaze past the wood fired stove and pizza gurus, let your olfactory senses take in something beyond the sweet aroma of ricotta pancakes sopping up maple syrup, and put down your mason jar of local beer, you will see, hear and experience the backyard urban oasis – a farming oasis that is. But don’t look out, look up. There is where you will find the first of the rooftop greenhouses.

The hoop greenhouse is built on top of a shipping container that is fitted out as a radio station (more on that later). Another captures waste heat from the condenser unit for the walk-in refrigerator.

The semi vacant lot next door is also being transformed into greenhouse space that will tie into a fledgling compost operation. Look closely as the construction of this greenhouse and you will find yourself peering into salvaged factory windows.

And just when you think the holistic, closed loop vision can’t get any better, you learn that Sarah Trogdon is making soaps from the tallow and oils from the restaurant that are mixed with herbs from the garden (see Goldies Soap).

The brains, brawn and owners behind Roberta’s are Chris Parachini and Brandon Hoy. In a partnership with Ben Flanner of the Brooklyn Grange Farm they come with much more than a dream of “urban farm to fork,” they come armed with a business plan with teeth.

Chris Parachini

They are in the beginning stages of scaling-up this restaurant garden roof venture into a 7 acre Brooklyn rooftop urban farming operation (that’s just for starters). The produce will be sold at a local farmer’s market, and clients like Roberta’s will likely be able to source about 80% of their produce from the Brooklyn Grange Farm in a few years time.

Wait, before you think that this is this some urban warrior plot to cut out the rural farmer, you need to take in the full story. This enterprise is about connecting people to food, and people to people. It is about creating community assets and efficiently using local resources. It is about transforming underutilized urban hardscapes to grow food, while building better relationships with rural farmers to supply the elements that cannot come easily from the urban farm; for example, the meat that comes from farm animals. In fact, Patrick Martins of Slow Food USA fame is part of a growing movement of niche food distributors interested in saving the family farm and diverse livestock. His business, Heritage Foods USA, specializes in selling heritage pigs; and as he says, you save them by eating them. One look at Roberta’s menu tells you how they are a saving grace in this cause.

Sure, there is a greater conversation we all need to have about “eating animals.” Jonathan Safran Foer’s book of this title is a MUST read on this subject, but conversation is just another thing that Roberta’s is serving up. Heritage Radio Network is in its first year of operation and the programming seems to be growing exponentially (maybe there is some magic in broadcasting below a greenhouse). I got there in time to listen in to the end of Anne Saxelby’s Cutting the Curd show (Saxelby Cheese “offers a premier selection of American farmstead cheese”), and on this day she had women cheesemongers from Formaggio Essex (NYC), the Formaggio Kitchen (Boston), and Berkeley’s Pasta Shop talking about their retail adventures – but all share a commitment to farmstead cheeses. The Heritage Radio Network programs are all about the community conversation we need to have around food, land and people.

There was something else about this place that was stimulating – it was the admiration that everyone had for the rich diversity in life (ecological, social, etc.). Then Chris captured it in words, he said that the success comes from fact that the operation is part science/business and part art. That was the clarifying moment. I looked around again and saw the artistry in the vibrant urban palette — it was evident in the cuisine and building design, in the social ventures, and in the patchwork of innovators and community builders who care about all the different entry points that take us to healthy food. The artistry is the secret ingredient in so many social recipes – and the one that does not get captured on food labels. We can extract urban farming models and best practices from site to site around the globe, but the successful recipe requires a pinch of local artistry. Roberta’s is a culinary canvas I encourage you to take in.

What would you add to this recipe? Please join us in conversation here and at Heritage Radio Network.

My interests have always been varied, but fallen mostly into two camps: arts and nature. I could spend equal hours reading plays, watching and producing theatre as I could hiking, watching and caring for wild animals. I count myself extraordinarily lucky, then, to be on the ridge where these two camps overlap; where I can begin to see both the congruencies and unique traits of the arts and environmental fields.

Passage Theatre, where I am the producer, is now in its third year of an unprecedented partnership with New Jersey environmental organizations including D&R Greenway, Green Faith, Isles, NJ Conservation Foundation, Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, Sustainable Lawrence, and Sustainable Princeton. Together, we have created a series of events designed to educate, inspire and promote conservation of our natural treasures, placing live theatre at the center of this four-month series ranging from Pine Barrens tracking, to poetry readings, to watershed reclamation. There are myriad ways in which Greening: Common Connections, Growing Community (as our partnership is named) has proved fruitful and engaging to all of us and our respective audiences on both sides of the “ridge,” including: workshops and talk backs that connect audience members with our artists; joint efforts on new initiatives; and changes to “green” basic operations. What started as a seed of an idea from my Artistic Director has blossomed, with the collaboration of our partners, into a sizeable brain trust spanning the state of New Jersey.

The importance of what our initiative is doing was reinforced at a session on sustainability and theatre at the 2009 Theatre Communications Group national conference in Baltimore last June. Of the five audience members (mostly LEED-certified designers and architects) at this session, I was – alarmingly – the only representative of an artistic viewpoint. The crossover between sustainable practices and environmentally-themed art wasn’t on the table for discussion, but I (admittedly) hijacked the conversation and was able to pull ideas from the presenters to bring back to our initiative, while sharing information on artists with whom we had worked. It was an invigorating conversation! The wonderful presenters included Ian Garrett of the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, Marda Kirn of EcoArts, Lisa Phillips of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Gideon Banner of Green Theater Initiative.

It became apparent at that conference that Greening: Common Connections, Growing Community is one of the first of its kind, and though I could continue to detail the day-to-day operations of our initiative, I really just want to talk about why I find it so cool.

Kaiulani Lee.  Photo courtesy Haskell Wexler.

First, I have met three incredible teams of artists working on this project: Kaiulani Lee brought A Sense of Wonder, a brilliantly performed bio-play about Rachael Carson, to Passage in our inaugural year. Peter Donaldson followed in year two with Salmonpeople, a play enlightening viewers on the importance of watershed stewardship. On March 25th and 26th of this year, we are thrilled to present Brooklyn-based Climbing PoeTree’s Hurricane Season, a tapestry of poetry, theatre, dance, and multi-media, woven with a breathtaking musical score performed with live instrumentation. Rhythmic and uplifting, raw and moving, Hurricane Season takes the view that environmental justice and social justice are one and the same.

Peter Donaldson, Salmonpeople

Climbing PoeTree, Hurricane Season. Photo courtesy Layla Love.

Second, these artists live and breathe their work, foregoing more lucrative jobs in order to carry their messages to audiences: that it is up to us to save our ridges and valleys, no matter what camp we fall into. In the process we will be saving a core part of our humanity – our connection to each other and the world we live in. This will become the mission of my generation over the next 50 years. I have watched these artists bring tears of shame and joy and hope to the eyes of audience members, elicit laughter and stoke imaginations. There is an emotional and interactive aspect to live performance that can make information a reality in ways paper cannot.

Third, I have been privileged to work with leaders and practitioners in the fields of urban reclamation, land conservation, sustainability and watershed restoration (to name but a few) who are as passionate about their life’s work as the artists on our stage. It has been incredibly gratifying and humbling to watch these women and men in action in the state of New Jersey, fighting the hard fight of science, numbers, money and politics to move us toward a sustainable future. It has been equally gratifying to participate in and witness events our partners host as part of this initiative, which entertain and educate in physical, visceral ways.

What I have learned, from both artists and environmental practitioners, is that the common connections exist all around us. Where there is just enough overlap in mission and passion we can find ways to pool resources, get the word out, and support each other. It is always better to ask, “Where can we collaborate? Where can we help each other? Who do I know that you should know and vice versa?” than to ask, “Can we collaborate at all?”

I don’t know if I’m giddy because the air is thin up on this ridge, or the heights are dizzying, or if it is simple elation at seeing the cross-pollination of our industries and strategies working to change people’s minds and behaviors. I do know that I’m having a blast up here, where the air is clear enough for me to see a future that I am not afraid of, because our partnership is only one of the first to find common connections between us and our audiences, which have strengthened our community and our solidarity as citizens of this world. My hope – my belief – is that there are many more partnerships to come.

The Dodge Foundation has been instrumental in making Greening: Common Connections, Growing Community possible with its generous support. We give our deepest, heartfelt thanks to the staff for their continued encouragement and enthusiasm for our initiative.

To read more about Greening: Common Connections, Growing Community, visit Passage Theatre’s website or click here. You can also see a sneak peek of Hurricane Season by watching the video below:

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
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Andrew Motion was the son of a brewer, and grew up in an environment that he describes as “very unbookish indeed.” Yet he went on to become a critically acclaimed literary biographer, established the Poetry Archive project and website in the United Kingdom, and was England’s Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009.

His background is often reflected in the imagery and diction of his poems. The setting is often domestic or rural, and the tone of the poems decidedly understated. We feel both comfortable and welcomed. Within the first few lines of “A-1 Mechanics” we feel that this poet is a guide we can trust, taking us to a place immediately recognizable.

The vivid images Motion creates with such lucid language bid us enter deeper into his poems. We go willingly because we feel we know the place and the speaker. Once we enter fully into an Andrew Motion poem, we discover, again and again, that beneath the inviting surface more troubling emotions and memories lie submerged.

Motion’s many poetry collections include: Selected Poems 1976-1997, Public Property, and most recently, The Cinder Path. His Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life, which won the Whitbread Biography Award; and his life of John Keats, Keats, are considered essential reading for students of these two poets.

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead.

* * *

The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
For more information, visit the Poetry website.

Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

We give our thanks to the contributors to this series:
Stacey Kennealy of GreenFaith
Winnie Fatton of Sustainable Jersey
Caitlin Wargo of Far Hills Country Day School
David Hallowell of Sustainable West Milford

As well as to Jaimie Cloud and Leah Mayor of the Cloud Institute.

Today, we’re happy to hear from Angela Clerico of Banisch Associates, a community planning and design firm in Flemington, New Jersey, about her New Jersey Learns experience:

In a profession where the goal is to plan better communities it seemed to me that we were going about things the same way we had been for decades. Sure, over time the focus shifted away from sprawling communities and toward “smart growth” – building homes near major transportation corridors, protecting the environs. But, there had to be something more… a better way, still, to create more livable communities and communities that thrive, not just survive.

When I was introduced to the NJ Learns program, I was interested because I had an interest in the topic of sustainability. It has been called the largest social movement this planet has ever seen – only you don’t actually “see” it happening. Millions of people all over the world in town halls, school libraries, and community centers are getting together to implement their visions for change. They’re organizing events to inform their local officials and the community-at-large. It’s a movement alright, and I wanted to learn how to better communicate the concept. I learned more than that!

Participating in the NJ Learns program, I had many “aha” moments. From learning how to teach the concepts about and the data for sustainability to a better understanding of how people perceive sustainability and their concerns for changing behavior, I could see how the shift would not only have to come from the community, but that the local leaders would have to set the example. The lone planner in a room full of educators, I began to see how educating my audience would be a little different since I am not a teacher, per se, but that it could be just as powerful. Now, every time I walk into a planning board meeting the topic of sustainability is on my mind and is communicated through my work.

The hard part is that it is a process and results may not be seen overnight. In the NJ Learns program, we participated in a simulation where, in groups, we were fishermen. We had to fish the ocean in a manner that, with an average replenishment rate, the ocean would remain sustainable. The ocean would continue to produce fish for us to catch to maintain our livelihoods. The problem, however, was the same all around: everyone “crashed the system” by overfishing. It took many of the groups several tries, if not more, to figure out that we just had to make it through the down times in order to remain sustainable. Instead, different mentalities took over. “Everyone else was taking more than their share, so I should too!” “I could see this was not going to work, so I jumped on the bandwagon.”

These mentalities translate right into our communities and it is hard for residents and local leaders to see the benefits, when it is such incremental change.

There are a few popular phrases in local government that tend to set the tone for creating sustainability strategies. One is “How can we get the biggest bang for our buck?” Local leaders want to do right by their taxpayers, providing quality of life, but they don’t want to enforce practices that may cost money. The other is “Let’s look at the low-hanging fruit.” This is a good strategy for getting something off the ground. It is a quick way to get a project done and shows that the local leadership is doing something for the community. It also provides momentum for a larger-scale project that may take more time. However, it often doesn’t take into account the bigger picture.

The topic of sustainability is a tough web to untangle and make sense of. Land use planners are typically the ones to break down these issues and present them in a meaningful way so that local leaders can make decisions. Planners guide the development of ordinances, policies, and regulations, at the same time, supporting community-wide campaigns for residents to become more aware of how they can green their lifestyles. If all planners were speaking a shared language of planning for sustainability, we could create a paradigm shift toward sustainability and livable communities from the top-down and the bottom-up.

My NJ Learns training and practice of the program continues every day I am working to create more livable communities in NJ.

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Thanks again to Angela and to all of the New Jersey Learns guest bloggers.

New Jersey Learns introduces teachers and community leaders to Education for Sustainability. Education for Sustainability (EfS) is a whole system approach to schools and communities learning together for a sustainable future and includes the Cloud Institute’s EfS Core Content Standards. The program brings community-based teams to participate in one year of introductory training, implementation, coaching and assessment activities.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
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If you are new to the Dodge blog, you can read the first three installments of the New Jersey Learns series here (Stacey Kennealy of GreenFaith),  here (Winnie Fatton of Sustainable Jersey), and here (Caitlin Wargo of Far Hills Country Day School). Today, we hear from David Hallowell, President of Sustainable West Milford who has been training with New Jersey Learns for two years now.

From Action to Thinking and Back Again!

When I first learned of the NJ LEARNS Educating for Sustainability opportunity, we were well on our way to making changes in West Milford. We had established a nonprofit called Sustainable West Milford and grown our membership from 6 to over 400 people in just one year. We had a variety of action-oriented and educational programs including: monthly educational presentations; “Buy Local” campaigns; an organic community garden: and an annual GreenFest.

We were excited with the prospect of learning more, getting some new tools, and making some connections with other groups around the state to help move our efforts forward. The NJ Learns program delivered all that and more. I was in the first year of the training, and even continued my training for a second year! Not that I’m all that remedial, (well, maybe a little!) , but that fact is, I learned even more in the second year. And more importantly, I learned different things that have shaped the way I think about sustainability.

After the first year of Educating for Sustainability (EfS), my focus was on using the wonderful tools and information provided to better engage community members and convince them of the need to change their actions, for as Jaimie Cloud points out, “everything you do or DON’T do, makes a difference.” After the second year of the EfS training, I have become keenly aware of the need to change the thinking of our community in order to change their actions.

Often during presentations on sustainability, I am asked to describe what sustainability “looks like” in the community or in a school. My old answer used to include the usual suspects – they recycle, use renewable energy, buy local, compost, etc. In short, promoting different actions. Now, my answer begins with “they think differently – and that thinking leads to different actions”.

The old expression, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” provides a wonderful analogy to describe our shift. We have done a great job of leading the horses (tons of information and reasons why we should be acting more sustainably) and providing the water (actual opportunities to act differently through our programs), but not all were drinking. Many were, and indeed, many more did with each additional opportunity we provided. For example, Sustainable West Milford’s Farmer’s Market initiative was so successful last year that we attracted 14,000 shoppers. That is 14,000 people promoting our local economy, local agriculture, and effectively acting more sustainably.

But how do you get more people to drink the water? The answer is in helping them to start thinking differently. If we follow the problem of unsustainable actions “upstream,” to their source, we find faulty thinking. For example, in our culture, we tend to focus relieving the symptoms of a problem rather than the problem itself – we take a pill to lower our blood pressure while ignoring our lack of exercise, poor diet, and excess weight. This is an example from EfS of a mental model called “Shifting the Burden Archetyp.e” Using this thinking leads you to working hard to resolve the symptoms of a problem while essentially ignoring the fundamental problem. Similiarly, SWM’s efforts have targeted community member actions while largely ignoring changing community member thinking – the fundamental problem.

Make no mistake: this strategy of changing community members’ actions by providing information and opportunities to make real changes has been extremely effective and essential in building momentum, exposure, and support, but like most strategies, it has its limitations. For one thing, it is not fast enough – our window for change is a narrow one, and for another, we can only do so much!

So, this year, in addition to our action-oriented strategy, we introduced a companion strategy to address this need for a change in thinking. If community members change the way they think, they will lead themselves to make the choices that will result in a truly sustainable community. As Jaimie reminded us during our training, there is never just one reason for a problem and there is never just one solution!

Stay tuned: the last of our New Jersey Learns series will appear on the Dodge blog on Wednesday.

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New Jersey Learns introduces teachers and community leaders to Education for Sustainability. Education for Sustainability (EfS) is a whole system approach to schools and communities learning together for a sustainable future and includes the Cloud Institute’s EfS Core Content Standards. The program brings community-based teams to participate in one year of introductory training, implementation, coaching and assessment activities.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
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Kurtis Lamkin is a contemporary American embodiment of the ancient West African griot tradition, which blurs the boundaries between poet, singer and storyteller.

The griot, bard or troubadour has been a fixture in all cultures since before the advent of written language. It is believed that such bards passed down the legends of the Trojan War and Beowulf for generations before they were set down in the versions now familiar to us, and that Homer himself likely half-chanted half-sung large sections of the Illiad and Odyssey and accompanied himself on the lyre.

When he performs, Kurtis Lamkin often accompanies himself on the kora, a twenty-one-stringed West African harp-lute. He not only composes on and plays the kora, but he makes them by hand. This sense of the intimate bond between performer and instrument is also part of the griot tradition.

In recent decades, there has been much debate in academic circles in the United States regarding the place of politics in poetry. But in the griot/bardic tradition, there is no debate. The poet is seen as someone directly involved in the life of the community, and commentary on events that impact the community is not only accepted, but expected.

We assume our troubadours will sing us love songs, and Lamkin gives us one, but they have also been seen as the chief chroniclers of their times. In Elizabethan England, the news stories of the day were passed on through popular ballads. Like Lamkin, the griots and bards of the past always performed this function with humor and satire.

Lamkin has released a number of CDs of his work, including: My Juju (1995), El Shabazz (1998), and Queen of Carolina (2001).

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
For more information, visit the Poetry website.

Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook