Luminaries: Kathleen Dean Moore on W. S. Merwin’s “Unchopping a Tree”
Release Date: 03/01/2024
The Art of Reconnection: Daniela Naomi Molnar and Danielle Vogel
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In the final episode of “The Art of Reconnection” series, co-host Daniela Naomi Molnar speaks with poet and ceremonialist about the scope, power, and possibility of language. Danielle is an experimental poet who is committed to an embodied, ceremonial approach to poetics and relies heavily on field research, cross-disciplinary studies, inter-species collaborations, and archives of all kinds. Her installations and site-responsive works are often extensions of her manuscripts and tend to the living archives of memory shared between bodies, languages, and landscapes. She is an associate...
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The Art of Reconnection: Lee Emma Running and Ben Goldfarb
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In part three of “The Art of Reconnection,” series co-host Lee Running speaks with guest Ben Goldfarb to take us on an exploration of roads. Their conversation invites us to see these in-between places in new ways. Ben is a conservation journalist and award-winning author. His writing has appeared in many outlets, including The Atlantic, National Geographic, and “The Best American Science and Nature Writing.” His first book “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter” won the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. And his latest book...
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The Art of Reconnection: Daniela Naomi Molnar and Marcia Bjornerud
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In part two of “The Art of Reconnection,” series co-host speaks with guest about the narratives, notions of time, and deep wisdom embedded within rocks. Marcia is a writer and a structural geologist whose scientific research, which focuses on the physics of earthquakes and mountain building, has taken her around the globe. She is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and the LA Times. She is also the author of the books “Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World” and the recently published “Turning to Stone: Discovering...
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The Art of Reconnection: Lee Emma Running and Daniela Naomi Molnar
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In part one of “The Art of Reconnection” our series hosts, and , engage in a rich conversation about the ways their place-based practices of artmaking have transformed the quality of attention they bring to a place and their appreciation for the deep memory that is carried by the botanical, animal, and mineral elements found there. Daniela is a poet, artist, and writer who creates with color, water, language, and place. She makes large-scale abstract paintings with pigments she creates from plants, bones, stones, rainwater, and glacial melt. Gathered from specific biomes she has...
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The Art of Reconnection: Series Trailer
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Welcome to “The Art of Reconnection,” a new podcast series produced by the Spring Creek Project, an initiative of the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts at Oregon State University. The series was created in collaboration with The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon. During this four-part series, place-based artists Lee Running and Daniela Naomi Molnar invite us to imagine ways of restoring our relationship to the land. Their artistic practices have helped them hold grief and love, anger and forgiveness, reverence and wonder. By creating art from a place—working with...
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Collective Climate Action: Osprey Orielle Lake on women leading the way in climate justice organizing
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Because of unequal gender norms globally, women are impacted first and worst by climate change, and yet, one of the untold stories is how incredibly vital women are to local and global solutions. In this episode, Osprey Orielle Lake joins colleague Ashley Guardado to explore the ways in which empowering women worldwide is essential to climate justice work. Study after study shows that we must involve women at every level if we are to succeed in areas of just climate solutions, social equality, and bold transformative change. Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder and executive director of the...
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Collective Climate Action: Diego Arguedas Ortiz on lessons from climate journalism as we look for climate hope
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Where is the space for hope in a world where it is almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken? In that "almost," argues journalist Diego Arguedas Ortiz. In this episode, Diego argues that climate hope is linked with action: both ours and that of others alongside us. He follows the case of climate journalism, which was traditionally a domain of science and environment reporters; now, it is populated by political writers, sports editors and photojournalists that want to do their part. This expanding landscape offers a template for others to find their own space in the climate movement....
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Collective Climate Action: Francesca Polletta on three misconceptions about social movements
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People often think that social movements emerge when people get so frustrated with the state of things that they cannot not act. They think that only people who really believe in the cause join social movements. And they think that social movements only have an impact when they change the hearts and minds of the public. In this episode, Francesca Polletta draws on research about social movements to say why each one of these commonsensical beliefs is actually wrong. Then she suggests what lessons we can take from the reality of why movements emerge, why people participate, and when movements...
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Collective Climate Action: Aisha Shillingford on audacious visioning to shape the future
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In this episode, Aisha Shillingford invites us into a practice of imaginative world-building that involves thinking far into the future, deep intuition, and bold dreaming. She says we have the right and the responsibility to imagine another future, and what comes next depends on our ability to imagine. Aisha asks us to imagine not just changing our current system by knocking down what’s not working, but envisioning new systems altogether. She also reminds us that making space for imaginative work and allowing time for rest are necessary for entering a mindset of bold visioning and working...
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Collective Climate Action: Jeremy Lent on climate breakdown as a symptom of a deeper malaise
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While we need urgent responses to climate breakdown, we will only make meaningful progress once we recognize that it is a symptom of a deeper underlying malaise affecting our society. Climate must be understood as one aspect of a multifaceted process of global ecological degradation caused by problematic characteristics of our socioeconomic system. In this episode, author Jeremy Lent explains how the underlying cultural foundations of modern civilization have led to our current crisis, and identifies the key leverage points that could redirect our society toward a more sustainable and...
info_outlineOur inaugural guest on “Luminaries” is Kathleen Dean Moore, a climate activist, philosopher, celebrated environmental writer, and one of the co-founders of the Spring Creek Project. She co-edited the collection “Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril” and is the author of several books, including “Wild Comfort,” “Holdfast,” “Great Tide Rising,” “Earth’s Wild Music,” and “Take Heart: Encouragement for Earth’s Weary Lovers.”
During this episode, Kathy recalls a field course during which she and her students ponder the prose poem “Unchopping a Tree” by W.S. Merwin. Merwin (1927-2019) was an American poet who wrote or translated more than 50 books of poetry and prose, winning two Pulitzers and National Book Award, among many honors, in his decades-long career. In 2010, he was named the 17th Poet Laureate of the United States.
“Unchopping a Tree” was originally published in 1970. You can find it in Merwin’s prose collection “The Miner’s Pale Children” or as a standalone piece in Trinity Press’s gift edition.
“Luminaries” is produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. This series invites people to share stories about writing and art that illuminates their environmental thinking or work.