Emergency to Emergence

Favor Ellis, Sterling’s Dean of Community, explores how one finds home and a sense of belonging. After working with unhoused youth, traversing varied geographical and emotional terrain, and moving many times, Favor found a place to call home at Sterling.  She now shapes Sterling’s community to be one centered on care, where all are welcome to bring their whole selves, evolving identities, and hard truths and brave aspirations.  While modeling truth-telling and vulnerability, favor draws upon her studies in embodiment and somatics, her experience as a birthworker, and poetics (her own words and the words of others, to call forth emergent change and rebirthing processes).

[04:33]-Defining home; after working with homeless; moving many times; found community at Sterling

[06:25]-Defining place and space; bringing the physical and emotional into practice

 [11:40]-Embodiment studies and somatic tools to build community at Sterling 

[16:45]-Rebirth; creating a better world; birth doula; mirroring, supporting, belonging

[22:12]-Reading of Favor's poem "trucker's atlas", maps for exploring alongside the monsters, learning from and inspired by the Nap Ministry’s Audre Lorde  

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action:

Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing

• Father Greg Boyle, Founder of Homeboy Industries (website)
• Vermont Department of Corrections, Restorative Justice (website)
• Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman (book)
• Abenaki Wisdom
• Melody Walker Brook, Weaving a Thread Through the Seven Generations (TED Talk) 
• Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki (website), a Sterling Trustee 
• Michelle Kuo, Reading with Patrick (book)
• Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed (book)

John Zaber has a long history with Sterling and in this episode he reflects on his rich career as an explorer and educator. As a Sterling alum, faculty member, Dean of Student Life, and Director of Learning Support (among other important roles), John has lived and shaped so many aspects of the Sterling experience and inspired generations of students. In this conversation, he offers reflections from various lookout points on his personal and professional journey -- a journey often traversed on two wheels and pedal-powered. He also explores learning theories and explains why communities eclipse classrooms as spaces where education happens. John reminds listeners of the power of reflection, the importance of allowing students to have agency, and the need to serve diverse learners and cultivate a polyculture of thinkers.

[04:50]-Early inspirations, Peter Jenkins’ A Walk Across America-biked across country to Sterling as a student

[08:35]-Educational Systems and Sterling's unique version; theories applied to personal life

[17:41]-Re-defining old educational models; developing self-reflective tools; students and agency

[22:55]-Learning communities rather than classrooms; teaching is story-telling 

[27:16]-Role of failure in education; community and belonging

[31:21]-Inspired by Sterling students; students walking examples of resiliency

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action:

Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing

• Salvation Farms.org (website)
• Ruralvermont.org (website)
• Wendell Berry’s, Writings and Resources (website)
•  J.R.R. Tolkien, ”The Hobbit” (book) 
• John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath" (book)
• Vermont Gleaning Collective (website)
• Jack Kornfield (website)
• Jack Kerouack, On the road &  “Big Sur” (Books)

Sterling Alumna (‘01) Theresa Snow,  Founder and Director of Salvation Farms, conveys the origin of her non-profit and explores the practical and ethical importance of food surplus management.  This conversation reveals the multifaceted potential of gleaning and surplus management activities, which serve as an eye-opening and activating type of experiential service learning while also supporting more equitable access to Vermont’s bounty of fresh produce.  Theresa also speaks about her first-in-the-nation statewide study of edible food remaining on farms, and how to appropriately integrate technology and data to reveal supply-demand dysfunction and support more full food utilization for the benefit of farmers, eaters, and the environment.  But in the end, she makes and defends some important claims about how change really happens -- and, despite all the good work that Salvation Farms and its organizational partners have done, Theresa doesn’t view institutions as the most important change agents.

[02:58]-Salvation Farms origins; basic needs to eat; food supply chain

[14:40]-definition of gleaning; experiential component; access to food

[20:15]-first in the nation state-wide study of edible food remaining on farms

[27:44]-technology, data and gleaning  

[:33:29]-value of community

In this mini-cast, we rejoin Rick Thomas, Faculty in Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems at Sterling College, as he shares with us thought leaders that have inspired his work including Lynn Miller, the Small Farmer's Journal, Rural Heritage Magazine, and more.  Take a listen and glean and apply the practical knowledge to your life.

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action:

Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing

• Lynn Miller -Draft Animal Power Systems (author of many good books)
• Small Farmer’s Journal   (online journal)
• Rural Heritage Magazine (Draft Horse Resources) 
• Steven Leslie, The New Horse Powered Farm (book)
• Draft Animal Power Network (Board of Directors and Sterling Alumnx - John Smolinsky ‘14) 
• Anne and Eric Nordell - Small Farmer Journal,  ”Cultivating Questions: Weed the Soil Not the Crop” (online journal)
• Drew Conroy-Oxen- “A Teamster’s Guide To Raising, Training, Driving & Showing” (book)
• New England Ox Supply (website)

Rick Thomas, Faculty in Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems at Sterling College, joins us and discusses the definition of draft animal power systems, the student experience at Sterling’s Wendell Berry Farming Program in Kentucky, and the philosophy of Wendell Berry. Rick guides us through challenges of working with draft animal power and the conscious choice of doing right for the land. In this episode, we explore the failed food systems and transition from what is to what can be.

• [01:41]-Definition of draft animal powered systems
• [05:58]-Student experience at Wendell Berry Farming Program 
• [09:12]-Discipline and challenges of working with draft animals
• [13:10]-Doing what is right for the land, not what is possible
• [14:06]-Alexander Pope: Genius of the Place
• [19:17]-Failed Food Systems; Transition from what is to What Can Be
• [24:15]-Solutions will Draw on Ancient Wisdom; Nature is the Metric

The Emergency to Emergence podcast intends to engage in spirited, heart-centered dialogue about intersecting eco-social emergencies featuring the voices and perspectives of people purposefully engaging in ecological thinking and action while fostering active, community-engaged responses that offer hope.