The Joy Trip Project

An interview with climber and writer Majka Burhardt

If you’re a writer, there are few things better than to combine your passion for storytelling with something else that you truly love. For writer Majka Burhardt climbing has long been the subject of her many articles in adventure magazines. A certified rocking climbing instructor and a member of the American Mountain Guides Association Burhardt blends her love for the outdoors with vivid descriptions of scenic landscapes and literary portraits of the many interesting people she encounters.

But it was on a trip to Africa a few years ago that she discovered a unique opportunity to add one more passion to the mix. On a journey to explore the industry and culture of Ethiopia coffee, Burhardt found that when you least expect it you can find adventure in the most unlikely places.

"Well interestingly enough I saw a lot of crumbly basalt on that first trip," Burhardt said. "But I realized that there was just so much potential in Ethiopia that was really unknown to rest of the world, mainly because we all associate with it drought, famine and war, and instead I’m in this bucolic countryside searching for wild coffee and I looked at these basalt faces and said, O.K. there’s got to be more because the topography is amazing.” You have things from the third highest peak in Africa all the way to one of the lowest points on earth. So there’s got to be climbing."

So Burhardt put together to small team of her best climbing buddies all of them women, and one photographer, guy named Gabe Rogel, and headed back to Africa climb a few first ascents on mountain spires in the cradle of our most ancient civilizations. Her book Vertical Ethiopia tells the story in words and pictures behind this expedition to explore a world of new possibilities.

Check out Majka's new film on climbing in Africa called Waypoint Namibia

Music this week by the band Khumbula

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast help spread the word by posting a link to it on your Facebook page. Or send it as a tweet to your followers on Twitter. Social media is vibrant exchange of ideas join the conversation by becoming engage. Post your comments the Joy Trip Project blog or send us an email to info@Joy Trip Project.com.

Share your stories. share your passion for outdoor recreation, environmental conservation, acts of charitable giving, and practices of sustainable living. You just might inspire our next Joy Trip together. But most of all don’t forget to tell your friends. Until next time take care.

In 1971 John Francis witnessed a catastrophic oil spill in San Francisco Bay. The greasy black sludge that coated resident sea life and stained nearby beaches left an indelible impression him as well. As a young man at the dawn of the environmental movement he felt compelled to act. But what can one person do to change a society bent on its own destruction?

An interview with Love Hope Strength executive director Shannon Foley

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from my friend Maitri. A friend of hers was in serious trouble and she wanted my help.

"I’d seen her the day before and everything was fine. And she said, 'I think my husband has leukemia'." Maitri said. "And they’ve checked him into the UW cancer ward."

Here in Madison the University of Wisconsin is home to one of top research facilities in the county the Carbone Cancer Center. With very little notice Maitri’s friend was immediately admitted to the affiliated community hospital.

"I was most surprised with how quickly it happened and how urgently the medical profession had to respond," Maitri said. "Sunday I was at church with her. She went home after church. Her husband said 'I have some pain in my legs. I think I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow.' And she said 'Let’s give the nurse on call a quick phone call and just make sure this is fine.' The nurse said you need to go to the emergency room now. We went and they were ready to check him into the hospital that afternoon. So one minute fine, leg cramp, next minute checked into the UW Hospital ward."

"With leukemia,"I said.

"Correct," she said.

I’m no doctor. So from me it was not medical assistance she was looking for at least not directly. What Maitri wanted was my bone marrow. You see the best chance anyone suffering from Leukemia has is to receive a bone marrow transplant. And while there are more than 8 million bone marrow donors registered in the United State it’s nowhere near enough. With very specific genetic requirements an exact match for a bone marrow donor is very hard to come by.

"It’s easiest to find a genetic match with someone who’s related to you and secondarily of the same ethnic background, etc," Maitri said. "And 70 percent of people cannot find a match within their own family. So they need to find an unrelated donor and unfortunately only about 4 out 10 people that are looking for an unrelated donor actually do."

Hearing this it didn’t take much to convince me that it would be worth it to register as a bone marrow donor. And though I was not a good match for Maitri’s friend someone somewhere out there may one day need my help. Fortunately her friend's husband found a match. He's undergoing treatment. But the plight others who might not be so lucky got me thinking.

Less than a week after signing up for the national bone marrow donor registry, I reconnected with another friend named Shannon Foley. She’s the executive director of an organization called Love Hope Strength.

"Tell us what your organization is and what it does," I asked Shannon in an interview.

"We are I guess the one and only, therefore the largest, rock n roll cancer foundation," she said. "And we started about 3 and half years ago. And we travel the world, putting on concerts in order to raise money to build cancer centers in regions of the world that have no access to cancer care. And here in the United States, we go to concerts and we find matches for people in need of bone marrow transplants. So we swab peoples’ cheeks It’s a very simple process. We wave to processing fee, which is normally $65. And we get you registered to see if you can be the match to a patient with leukemia, sickle-cell anemia, any kind of blood disorders, blood cancers."

In the summer of 2009 Shannon and her team at Love Hope Strength managed to register 4,000 new bone marrow donors to the national database. So far this year they’ve matched 30 cancer patients for bone marrow transplants that will save their lives. The idea of mixing performing artists and their music with this kind of philanthropic giving is part of an amazing adventure that’s becoming a global movement. Raising both awareness and money in support of cancer treatment Love Hope Strength is changing the world.

http://joytrip2019.mhwebstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/01-Love-Hope-Strength.mp3

Music this week by the Ahn Trio and the band The Alarm

.

Special thanks to our sponsors Recreational Equipment Inc, REI and Patagonia. We don’t take money from just anyone. Sponsors of the Joy Trip Project support our mission of an active lifestyle through outdoor recreation and community involvement. Support us by supporting them.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast help spread the word by posting a link to it on your Facebook page. Or send it as a tweet to your followers on Twitter. Social media is vibrant exchange of ideas join the conversation by becoming engage. Post your comments the Joy Trip Project blog or send us an email to info@Joy Trip Project.com.

Share your stories. share your passion for outdoor recreation, environmental conservation, acts of charitable giving, and practices of sustainable living. You just might inspire our next Joy Trip together. But most of all don’t forget to tell your friends. Until next time take care.

An interview with Time Magazine reporter and author Pico Iyer

From a very young age  Pico Iyer has had a close personal relationship with one of the worlds great spiritual and political leaders. In 1960 his father a professor of philosophy and a student of world religions was among first westerners to seek an audience with the Dalai Lama.  Traveling from his home in England Iyer’s father journeyed  back to his native India to meet the Dalai Lama then around the age of 24.  In their conversations the Tibetan Buddhist ruler in exile and Iyer’s father discussed ancient mystic wisdom that had been unavailable to the outside world for centuries. And with the exchange of a single simple gift, they also established a connection between the Dalai Lama and Iyer that now spans almost 50 years.

"At the end of his conversation with the Dalai Lama in 1960 he said 'I have this little three year-old boy back in England and he was already quite interested in the story of your dramatic flight from Tibet into India'," Iyer said.  "And so the Dalai Lama, with his great gift for the perfect gesture found a photo of himself when he was 5 years old and sent it to me. And so from the time I was three I had this photo of this little boy, 5 years old, already ruling 6 million people. I didn’t understand who or what the Dalai Lama was. But I could make a contact with this little boy sitting in this place. And I could see all the responsibility he had. So in that sense I grew up with the image of the Dalai Lama and stories of the Dalai Lama from the time I was a little boy."

From the gift of that photograph to their first meeting years later Iyer and the Dalai Lama have been become good friends. And through the course of his career as a journalist Iyer has cultivated a deep insight to the philosophy that has guided the Dalai Lama toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict between China and Tibet. In his new book The Open Road: The Global Journey of the 14th Dalai Lama Iyer shares his view of the spiritual and political path we all take to find peace in our lives and the world in which we live.

Music by Jake Shimabukru

This recording from season 1 of the Joy Trip Project was originally brought to you thank to a generous grant from KEEN Footwear. Also thanks to our current sponsors, Recreational Equipment Inc, REI and Patagonia. We don’t take money from just anyone. Sponsors of the Joy Trip Project support our mission of an active lifestyle through outdoor recreation and community involvement. Support us by supporting them. Find links to their web sites on ours at JoyTripProject.com

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast help spread the word by posting a link to it on your Facebook page. Or send it as a tweet to your followers on Twitter. Social media is vibrant exchange of ideas join the conversation by becoming engage. Post your comments the Joy Trip Project blog or send us an email to info@Joy Trip Project.com.

Share your stories. share your passion for outdoor recreation, environmental conservation, acts of charitable giving, and practices of sustainable living. You just might inspire our next Joy Trip together. But most of all don’t forget to tell your friends. Until next time take care.

An interview with adventure filmmaker Dominic Gill

I don’t know about you. But I’ve got a hard time getting motivated, especially when it comes to doing something hard, something that might take a lot of time, cost a bit of money or might even be a little scary. Life’s journey can be tough enough just trying to get by making it from day to the next. But every once in a while, someone comes along that prompts you to action. They get you psyched up and excited because you can see they’re going places and the next thing you know you get swept up in the momentum and just like your own life’s journey heads in a whole new direction. You follow that person right down a new road of adventure. Last fall I met a guy just like that.

Dominic Gill was one a one of a few dozen movie producers I met during the 2009 Banff Film Festival. His documentary called Take A Seat follows his two-year journey by tandem bicycle over 20,000 mile of open road. Asking total strangers to pedal behind him on what his calls the stoker seat his travels brought a fresh sense of adventure into hearts and minds of everyone he met or who tagged along for the ride.

Music this week by the band Trees On Fire

Special thanks to the New Belgium Brewing Company for underwriting travel expenses to Banff that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to our sponsors, Recreational Equipment Inc, REI and Patagonia. We don’t take money from just anyone. Sponsors of the Joy Trip Project support our mission of an active lifestyle through outdoor recreation and community involvement. Support us by supporting them.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast help spread the word by posting a link to it on your Facebook page. Or send it as a tweet to your followers on Twitter. Social media is vibrant exchange of ideas join the conversation by becoming engage. Post your comments the Joy Trip Project blog or send us an email to info@Joy Trip Project.com.

Share your stories. share your passion for outdoor recreation, environmental conservation, acts of charitable giving, and practices of sustainable living. You just might inspire our next Joy Trip together. But most of all don’t forget to tell your friends. Until next time take care.

Even though temperatures across the country are still well below freezing there are still plenty of people out there riding their bikes through the winter. On this blustery day in Madison Wisconsin a small class of avid bikers have gathered together to learn the finer points of riding around town in some pretty rough road conditions

Dwyer:

So on one of the hills practice unweighting your seat a little bit and see if you can pedal standing up a little bit, maybe practice how that feels to change it up. So lighten your seat, you might feel the rear wheel. Yeah that it! Great! Just to get the feel for that.

James_002

The students practice making tight turns in a circle. All bundled up in cold weather clothing they plow their bicycles through snow some would hate to drive a car. Angie Lauersdorf is a stay-at-home mom who wants to ride her bike year-round.

Lauersdorf _001

I normally road bike. I started about two years go. And I just really enjoy it. I used to do it pretty much every day and I was missing biking. So I wanted to get out in the winter and do it in snow.

James_003

But before Lauersdorf set out on her bike into the snow. She and the other members of  Viola and Allie Dwyer offer specialized classes in bike maintenance through a training program called We All Mechanics. But on this day Viola said the class is all about bike safety while riding through the winter.

Viloa_001>>

It seems that a lot of people like the idea of winter biking, but don’t now how to start. And so our classes try to have an access point for people with the mechanical side of things, while clinics like this are an access point for people just with general biking skills. So if you’ve never biked out in the winter, but always thought it would be a fun thing to do, this is a really supported way to do it.

James_004>>

The clinic provided handy tips on winter riding. The students learned bike maintenance, the importance proper lubrication of the chain and gear mechanisms, the inspection of brakes.

Viloa_003>

And then temperature regulation can be hard. It’s easy to over heat and get cold and over heat and get cold and so figuring out what types of layers you can wear so you can peel some off along the way. Or do you have to start off cold? That kind of thing. Just getting comfortable with the elements and getting used to the range of normal comfort and what you just have to sort of put up with.

James-005>

Some might suggest that there’s nothing normal about winter biking. Viola’s co-instructor Allie Dwyer let’s her students know that riding through ice and snow is about a lot more than just staying warm

Dwyer_001>>

A big, big deal is having ice tires. So whether or not you feel like investing in both maybe just one, the front ice tire is very important. It’s got studs in it so it makes it very easy to go across ice.

James_006>

And of course there are other vehicles to consider.

Dwyer_002>>

Another big important thing is being visible.  So lot of lights, a rear light and a front light for sure.  Lots of reflective clothing is really going to let you be seen by other cyclists and motorists if you’re out on the same roads that motorists are driving on.

Fade up sound of vehicles:

Even though the price of gasoline has come down dramatically since the beginning of winter, there will always be those like Angie Lauersdorf who prefer bikes to cars.

Lauersdorf _002

For me it’s fun. I mean I really enjoy being out and I…just being outside. You know the wind when you’re biking in your face and just nature kind of. Just being out there is the big thing about biking or the thing I enjoy most.

For the Joy Trip Project this is James Mills.

Thanks to our sponsors, Recreational Equipment Inc, REI and Patagonia. We don’t take money from just anyone. Sponsors of the Joy Trip Project support our mission of an active lifestyle through outdoor recreation and community involvement. Support us by supporting them.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast help spread the word by posting a link to it on your Facebook page. Or send it as a tweet to your followers on Twitter. Social media is vibrant exchange of ideas join the conversation by becoming engage. Post your comments the Joy Trip Project blog or send us an email to info@Joy Trip Project.com.

Share your stories. Share your passion for outdoor recreation, environmental conservation, acts of charitable giving, and practices of sustainable living. You just might inspire our next Joy Trip together. But most of all don’t forget to tell your friends. Until next time take care.

Racism is a word that seldom comes up in a discussion of environmental protection. Clean air, water and soil are universal human values that transcend ethnic identity or the color of one’s skin. But in metropolitan centers around the United States minority communities are being inundated with a disproportionate burden of pollution. Industrial waste, municipal garbage and sewage treatment plants are routinely deposited in areas predominately populated by low income African Americans and Hispanics.

In 1988 a community organizer named Peggy Shepard was asked to help address concerns around the creation of one such sewage treatment plant. A facility built in the New York City burrow of Harlem.

” It’s interesting how you can walk by things everyday or they can be in your community and it just never registers what they are," Shepard said. "And so we began to organize around getting people jobs there because we thought that was the issue. But once it fully began operating we realized that emissions and odors were making people sick. And we began an eight-year organizing campaign to get the city to fix the plant and we were successful."

By bringing people in the community together Shepherd’s organization compelled the City of New York to commit $55 million to clean up the facility. They were also successful in creating environmental safety policies that would prevent further contamination at this and other sites in the future. With a lawsuit settlement of $1.1million Shepherd create a new organization called West Harlem Environmental Action Inc. And today known as WEACT the group fights to prevent minority communities from suffering illness and premature death due to acts of environmental injustice.

"When we look at the glaring health disparities that we have between communities you’ve got to wonder about the contributing factors to that illness and excess mortality," Shepard said. "And we believe that it’s housing conditions and the desperate burden of pollution."

For those of us who care deeply about protecting the environment we should take a real close around at the world in which live. Clean air, water and soil aren’t only at risk in the distant wild and scenic places of our national parks, but in the spaces where we work, play and make our homes. And in these places segments of our society, often still segregated by race are being unfairly targeted with more than their share of our pollution. We’re not just talking about environmental protection. The issue now is environmental justice. In this edition of the Joy Trip Project we talk to Peggy Shepard the executive director of West Harlem Environmental Action Inc.

Music this week by Brett Dennen

Thanks to our sponsors, Recreational Equipment Inc, REI and Patagonia. We don’t take money from just anyone. Sponsors of the Joy Trip Project support our mission of an active lifestyle through outdoor recreation and community involvement. Support us by supporting them.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast help spread the word by posting a link to it on your Facebook page. Or send it as a tweet to your followers on Twitter. Social media is vibrant exchange of ideas join the conversation by becoming engage. Post your comments the Joy Trip Project blog or send us an email to info@Joy Trip Project.com.

Share your stories. Share your passion for outdoor recreation, environmental conservation, acts of charitable giving, and practices of sustainable living. You just might inspire our next Joy Trip together. But most of all don’t forget to tell your friends. Until next time take care.

An interview with adventure filmmaker Bryan Smith

It’s been more than a month since the last podcast. Thanks to everyone for all the emails and Facebook messages asking for the next edition. After an action packed first season of production, the realities of life came crashing down like a devastating wave. The recession of 2009 made times a bit tough. Simply put the project was placed indefinite hold while I scrambled together a few odd writing jobs through the end of December and all of January. I had to work to make enough cash to pay our property tax bill. I’m happy to say that I recently wrote a fat check to city of Madison and now the project is back on track.

Bryan Smith

I’ve learned a lot through that first season. With the collapse of traditional media, as newspapers and magazine continue to fold up under the weight of an antiquated model of communication, I’ve discovered that this form of storytelling, sharing music, art and adventure online is the wave of the future. With many creative souls out there building new high quality content for Internet there’s no shortage of great stories to tell. If you’ve been following along on the blog and on Facebook, you’ll know that I’ve been more than a little busy still traveling and finding new subjects to share with you. And in the process I’ve become thoroughly inspired by the work of many others who are pushing the boundaries of creative expression as they explore the heights and depths of the human spirit.

You’ve heard me mention my friend Fitz Cahall. He’s the creator of my favorite podcast The Dirtbag Diaries. Fitz has new project that recently posted the Internet, a series of short films that depict the lives of adventurers chasing their passion through course of a year, a season.

I connected with Fitz toward the end of last year during the Banff Mountain Film Festival. There I saw the premiere edition of the 22 part film series The Season. It’s an exciting yet, moderately paced thoughtful contemplation on what motivates ordinary people who do exceptional things in the outdoors. At the Banff Centre for mountain culture, in Alberta Canada, I also met Fitz’s partner co-producer and director of the Season Bryan Smith.

Produced exclusively for distribution online, the Season brings Internet adventure storytelling to a new level. Directed by Bryan Smith this new film series illustrates the narrative behind the lives of people like each of us who aspire to lead a rich live in adventure.

The Season Trailer from Fitz Cahall on Vimeo.

The Season produced by Bryan Smith and Fitz Cahall premieres online at www.theseasontv.com.

Music this week by Jake Shimabukuro.

Special thanks to the New Belgium Brewing Company for underwriting travel expenses to Banff that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to our sponsors, Recreational Equipment Inc, REI and Patagonia. We don’t take money from just anyone. Sponsors of the Joy Trip Project support our mission of an active lifestyle through outdoor recreation and community involvement. Support us by supporting them.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast help spread the word by posting a link to it on your Facebook page. Or send it as a tweet to your followers on Twitter. Social media is vibrant exchange of ideas join the conversation by becoming engage. Post your comments the Joy Trip Project blog or send us an email to info@Joy Trip Project.com.

Share your stories. share your passion for outdoor recreation, environmental conservation, acts of charitable giving, and practices of sustainable living. You just might inspire our next Joy Trip together. But most of all don’t forget to tell your friends. Until next time take care.

Now that winter is here it’s a good opportunity to discover that despite the cold there were many opportunities to enjoy your time outside. Hopefully you get out to ski or ice climb or skate or make angles in the snow.  By far one of the coolest moments I had last winter was the better part of a morning I spent riding through the woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on a dog sled. I’m not sure what I expected but I can tell you that it was nothing like anything I could have imagined.

It was one of those days in winter when the overcast sky ironically blocks out the sun’s rays but still traps the ambient heat of the air. There was no wind. So the temperature was a pure 20 degrees. Everything, the sky, the leafless trees, the ground packed in ice and snow seemed cast in monochromatic shades of black, gray and white. Most every aspect of the landscape was utterly still.

But piercing the silence came the sound of barking dogs. Not the least bit disturbing, the noise the dogs made seemed a natural part of this particular environment, like a pack of wolves answer the call the of wild.

Each of the dogs yipped and yelped their excitement because as I came to discover pulling a sled in flashes of fangs, claws and muscle along these frozen trails is exactly what they were born to do. I would find that riding a dog sled is as thrilling and natural an experience as you can have.

Music this week provided The Conductive Alliance

This podcast is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Travel Michigan who provided transportation and lodging assistance to make this joy trip possible. Learn more about other travel opportunities throughout the mitten state at www.Michigan.org

An interview with urban

revitalization strategist Majora Carter

JTP:

Delegates from about 190 countries are gathering over the next two weeks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Although this is a landmark event, the largest meeting ever to discuss the environmental future of our planet. I’m a little concerned that we may not be talking about the most important issues.

The other night on NPR David Kestenbaum reported on the first day of the conference. In his report on All Things Considered he said everyone pretty much agrees that we have to do something about climate change. But how I see it where the problem lies is that the delegates also seem to share the same disagreements

NPR:

In fact most of the disagreements, they’re all about money. Developing countries like Bolivia are arguing “Hey The global warming problem? you in the developed world made it. So to solve it you’re going to have to give us money to adapt and to keep our emissions down as we grow.

JTP:

The industrial growth that caused the climate change crisis in the first place will apparently continue. You see it seems that the Copenhagen delegates are really only arguing about who gets to continue to pollute the atmosphere with carbon gas emissions and how much. The conversation so far seems to be relegated to trading carbon credits for cash so the developing world can continue to build factories and produce consumer goods. But at what cost? What about the environment? And what about millions of disenfranchised people in the U.S. and around the world that will be most directly impacted as our planet’s climate continues to change in the wake of human progress?

I won’t be attending the conference in Copenhagen. But a few weeks ago I did attend the Breaking the Color Barrier to the Great Outdoors conference in Atlanta. A few hundred African American Environmentalist gathered to talk among other things about the role people of color can play in protecting the natural world. There I met Majora Carter, the 2005 winner of the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. She received $500,000 to developed her ideas on creating sustainable urban communities. And while we didn’t talk about Copenhagen in particular Carter has a rather unique perspective how best to curb some of the social effects of Climate Change.

Carter:

The McArthur Foundation dubbed me an urban revitalization strategist. Which I love, because of the work that I did around pioneering one of the first green jobs training systems in the country, really doing community based, led project development in one of the poorest congressional districts in the country that’s also one of the most environmentally challenged. And the idea was that you can do development that met both the environmental as well as economic needs of a very poor communities and give them the tools they need to enjoy it and be a part of its development.

JTP:

The environmental issues that our planet faces aren’t limited to carbon emissions. Though green houses gases are indeed the primary cause of global warming it’s the institutions and practices of human behavior that create them. Carter believes that we need to develop community based initiatives that produce green jobs and allow ordinary people take an active part in the cessation carbon emitting industries.     In order to make lasting change in the fight again climate change we have to rethink how we develop and live in our urban centers. And for many communities around world that’s going to mean taking a hard look at issues of social justice, how we treat the urban poor as well as racial and ethnic minorities. I’m James Mills and you’re listening to The Joy Trip Project.

JTP:

There are many, many challenges that are involved in doing any kind of development in urban areas. Especially those areas where you’ve had a tremendous amount of disinvestment that started at a very high level that lead to the displacement of people or the development of lost of noxious facilities in a community or manufacturing or jobs leaving a particular area. So when you couple all of that, lack of opportunities with a more degraded landscape, then you will layer in things like public health problems and crime and lack of educational attainment. When you put those things together, yes you do have a particular slew of problems that are exacerbated by the fact that people feel powerless because of all these things that have been heaped upon them.  So given that you know you got the fact that you’ve got people from the outside going “Oh! That’s a poor community and the don’t know any better.” And then you also have people on the inside feeling that they don’t deserve any better.  That is not an easy place to work. It’s just not. And unfortunately there’re a lot of places like that in the world.

JTP:

But here we are. We find ourselves doing the work of creating environmental strategies. And in a lot of ways working toward issues of social justice where the environment is a direct result of inequality, in a lot of ways racially, socially economically for sure. How are African-Americans in particular impact in the type of work that you’re doing and hopefully aiming to correct.

Carter:

The current state of the environment is a direct result of inequality, absolutely. The fact that public policy will look at a poor community, a poor community of color or any color frankly and see that, that would be a perfectly appropriate place to put some of the most toxic industries ever. And yes black people disproportionately in this country are the recipients of things like that. We are, poor black communities in particular.  So it affects everything. It affects public health. It affects education. It affects the kinds of jobs that we’d like to have or not have. It affects the incarceration rates. It affects how people view themselves within the context of being an American. It affects their self esteem. You name it. It affects it.  So that’s an issue we have to deal with.

JTP:

People how find themselves in urban centers where their health and wellbeing is being impacted by their environment don’t always have the opportunity to think about recreation in an environmental standpoint. How do people of color find themselves enjoying the outdoors when they have so many other things to deal with.

Carter:

There have been studies that show when people come in contact with nature that things improve for them. In particular, one of the most famous ones that I know about was done at the University of Illinois. They looked at Cabrini Green, one of the most notorious housing projects in the world as far as I know. They noticed that kids and families that lived near just a cluster of spindly little urban street trees that the test scores for those kids went up, that the self esteem rates for little girls also went up, which was evidenced in the fact that there was less teenage pregnancy amongst those young women. That there was less crime in those neighborhoods because people were outside more enjoying each other and their community more. So when folks tell me that there is this disconnect between people… especially the inner city poor and the environment, I say it’s because it’s not there. Because the second you build it, people start to respond it. For example, I spearheaded the development of one the first waterfront parks in our community.  People are different when they are there, because it’s going trees, it’s got grass, it’s got the waterfront there that like beacons to them. And you automatically become a different person when you’re there. You feel it. You k now that you’re in a safer space. So for all sorts of reason, not just the mental health and wellbeing but the other pieces you need that kind of environment in order to help us deal with some of the climate challenges that we’re experiencing right now. And I think people connecting, the idea that you can even in an urban area there actually does need to be nature we’ll actually help make the transition for them to understand the value of our public lands in terms of how that is also protecting us, that those natural resources they are carbon sinks. They do actually absorb storm water. They do all these things that are protective of the cities and our regions. So we need to be real mindful.

You know, the great migration really I think messed with I think black people in particular minds a bit on some level. You were part of the south and it was an agrarian society and you had to move up north to make it big and so you left all that behind. And I think it’s been generations of people who have been taught to believe that the land is something that we should not fully embrace as a part of ourselves. And I think we are reaping, reaping all the awfulness that comes from separating ourselves from your environment.

JTP:

Is it safe to suggest or even assume that these urban communities can be gateways to the global preservation of wild and scenic places?

Carter:

Hey have to think of our urban areas as gateways to our more natural areas because frankly 70 percent of our world’s populations is going to b in cities not too far in the distant future. So we have to help people live more sustainably and have the opportunities to do so in the urban areas as we help them understand the value of protecting our wild natural places as well for all the environmental services that they provide to the planet, air quality, all those wonderful things.  So given all that we need to be real clear about how we’re helping educate our people because, because it is absolutely an education, communications, PR, marketing campaigns. It’s all that and then some.

JTP

You can learn more about Majora Carter and her work as an urban revitalization strategist online at majoracartergroup.com. For the Joy Trip Project, this is James Mills.

New music this week by Teresa James & the Rhythm Tramps

The Joy Trip Project is brought to you thank to generous support of our sponsors