Roots to Renewal

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Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Aaron Dessner.

Hawthorne Valley Executive Director Martin Ping chats with Herbert Dreiseitl (see bio below) about the nature of creativity, the role of beauty in our lives, and the gifts of Waldorf Education. Herbert joined Martin in conversation this past February over Zoom from his home on the shores of Lake Constance in Germany when the country was still in the throes of the pandemic and in a state of strict lockdown.

3:00 Herbert talks about the changes he’s seen in the city where he lives during the pandemic – both from nature-based and social perspectives: incredible how nature is taking back lost spaces; less hectic life; have stopped looking elsewhere for beauty – we’ve had to find it on our own doorsteps.

6:45 Role of beauty – beauty is a kind of spiritual awareness we have as humans; healthy social connections often connected to a certain balance, and aesthetic/beauty of the surrounding environment.

7:40 Herbert’s work with water in built environments; what we feel inside is reflected outside, and what’s outside is always reflected back to us and the bridge for this is beauty = flow. 

9:00 The pandemic has highlighted hopeful signs that maybe we’re overcoming the story of human beings’ separation from the natural world, and finding our way back to an understanding of our integral place as nature in nature.

9:45 Insights we might glean by appreciating water – how might this transform our thinking.

11:35 Herbert’s views on/experiences with the gifts of Waldorf education; key to Herbert’s biography and what he does now.

https://www.dreiseitlconsulting.com | https://hawthornevalley.org/donate

Herbert Dreiseitl is a renowned landscape architect, urban designer, water artist, interdisciplinary planner, and a professor in praxis.

He is an internationally highly respected expert in creating liveable cities around the world with a special hallmark on the inspiring and innovative use of water to solve urban environmental challenges, connecting technology with aesthetics and encouraging people to take care and establish a sense of ownership for places.

Herbert is a Harvard GSD Loeb Fellow, and Fellow of the Center of Liveable Cities in Singapore. He lectures worldwide and has authored many publications including three editions of “Recent Waterscapes, Planning, Building, and Designing with Water.”

He has received many awards for his work in the United States and around the world. He founded Atelier Dreiseitl in 1980 (today Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl), a globally integrated

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

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Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Grammy Award winning artist Aaron Dessner.

In this episode, Martin Ping and Rising Tide Capital cofounder Alfa Demmellash discuss the notion of economy and what we need to do to reimagine it so that it can serve us, our communities, and our children, and their children’s children.  Alfa  was born and raised in Ethiopia. She came to the United States at the age of 12 with a keen interest in poverty alleviation and conflict resolution. Alfa graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 2003, where she majored in Government. Named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2015, Alfa co-founded Rising Tide Capital in 2004 to empower underserved urban entrepreneurs in northern New Jersey to start and grow successful businesses.  

2:15 Rising Tide Capital (RTC) works with entrepreneurs who are starting and growing businesses and local communities. They're predominantly entrepreneurs of color and women. 90% are people of color; 70% are women.

4:00 RTC works with about 1,000 entrepreneurs in New Jersey alone a year…many of them are mom and pop businesses.

4:50 How are we thinking about the economy and setting things up for our children and our children’s children and so on?

5:15 We are navigating uncharted territory with the pandemic and it has brought up eye-opening questions around what is an economy that can actually serve us as humans, and serve our community and our places.

7:10 The perspective of taking the long view has enabled us to ask the more profound questions about what does it mean to have an economy? What is the purpose of an economy and what does it facilitate besides the production of goods and services? 

11:30 Alfa talks about her early childhood and education in Ethiopia and connects the dots to how she came to the US and became who she is today.

14:30 Importance of centering children as a strategy for long-term change-making.

15:45 New Jersey pandemic relief efforts and Alfa’s involvement with First Lady of New Jersey Tammy Murphy in crisis relief and long-term solutioning.

17:00 Alfa on the murder of George Floyd and the call for any morally oriented human to look at that and recognize the call to action…the callousness with which human life is treated, spells not such great tidings for all of us and the kind of world we're building.   

19:30 We have to get out of the path we've been on and turn around to look at the fields upon fields of opportunity. We have to look at the role of localized more resilient micro-grids of human creativity...

21:00 Martin and Alfa’s shared experience with the 50th anniversary of Earthrise image from space that change

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

Sponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Simon Frishkoff

In this episode, our Executive Director Martin Ping had the chance to sit down with environmental activist Bill McKibben to talk about the daunting crisis of climate change and the important work of citizenship in facing this challenge. Bill's 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and he’s gone on to write a dozen more books. A founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben spearheaded the resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement. 

2:20  What inspired you to write End of Nature?

4:20  I knew the minute I started learning about it [climate change] in the 1980s, that this was, trouble with capital T… and so beginning a long time ago, some kind of mix of journalism and activism, became my life.

4:53 Now we've built these large movements and they're at the point of really being able to challenge finally, the political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry. 

5:50 So there are days when my answer to this question has nothing to with whether we’re going to win or not. It’s simply how much trouble can I cause the bad guys today, that has to be enough reason for getting out of bed and doing the work… 

6:30  Dr. King used to say at the end of his talks, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long and it bends toward justice.’ Which I think translates to, this may take a while, but we’re going to win. The arc of the physical universe is short and it appears to bend toward heat, and unless we get it solved really soon, we will not get it solved. 

7:04 Nobody has a plan for refreezing the Arctic now that it's mostly melted. So that makes it daunting, but it makes it all the more beautiful that people are willing to join in this fight.

7:41  We think agriculture is about 18% of emissions around the world…, the good news, although it's, you know, the science is still tentative in a lot of ways, and we don't really understand all of it are the indications that regenerative agriculture could pull a lot of carbon out of the air and that treating soils correctly, would be very, very helpful. 

9:30 We're past the point where we can make the math work one vegan dinner at a time, one Prius at a time. And so I keep saying to people, and I think the most important thing an individual can do is be a little less of an individual and join together with others in movements that are actually big enough to make political and economic change, because that's what has to happen if we make we're going to make the math work.

11:20 The work of citizenship largely gets done after hours and on weekends. And it’s crucial to making the world work.

11:40 The people that move me most watching this are young people…Everybody knows Gr

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

March 1, 2021 | Roots to Renewal

Sponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Simon Frishkoff

In this, our first episode, Hawthorne Valley’s executive director Martin Ping engages in an uplifting conversation about the power of hope with special guest, activist thinker, Frances Moore Lappé. She is the founder of Food First and the Small Planet Institute, and is author or co-author of 19 books about world hunger, living democracy, and the environment, including her seminal book, Diet for a Small Planet published in 1971. A 50th anniversary edition with a new opening chapter will be released this fall, and her latest book, It’s Not Too Late: Crisis, Opportunity and the Power of Hope can be previewed on her website smallplanet.org. 

3:35  Frances’ new book about climate: It’s Not Too Late: Crisis, Opportunity and the Power of Hope

4:50 Hope has power to organize our brains toward solutions.

 5:55 Our thoughts have enormous power - thoughts relate to our fundamental beliefs and are shaped by dominant culture - as we believe, so we see. And if we believe in possibility, so we see it. 

7:45 Diet for a Small Planet and zeitgeist of the time – what was going on in the early ‘70s that contributed towards writing of this book? 

8:35  How food helped Frances find her path – “If I could understand why people go hungry, that would unlock economics, and politics for me – that was my best intuition I ever had...there’s more than enough food for all of us and we’re actively creating scarcity – the experience of scarcity out of plenty no matter how much we’re growing. And so to me, that was the best news ever…we’re creating hunger, so we can end hunger.” 

10:55 Connecting to our purpose in life – following our intuition. “The highest compliment I’ve ever been paid was, ‘Frankie, you ask the question behind the question!’ The ultimate question is, ‘Why are we together creating a world none of us would choose?’” 

11:45 “Idea that what is special about humanity is that we see the world through filters that are culturally created, and we can’t see what’s outside of that… we’re trapped in a series of blinders – the scarcity mind...that’s what we have to break. Food in many ways can help us to break that.” 

12:45 “Asking the question behind the question throughout our lives is the most satisfying way to live.” 

12:52 Final word on what gives Frances hope now. “Hope is not what we seek in evidence…but what we become in action together.” 

14:08 “We were born at this unique moment in human history on our planet where so much is at stake. What an honor. What an honor to be alive right now.” 

Episode resouces, suggested reading & social media handles:

·        https://www.smallplanet.org/

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!