conversation is presented courtesy of TheGreenInterview.com, a website that has produced more than 100 feature-length interviews with many of the world's greatest environmental thinkers and activists. More about the site here.  Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger, botanist, medical biochemist, writer and broadcaster, combines medical training with a love of botany. She is an expert on the medicinal, environmental and nutritional properties of trees, and author most recently of The Global Forest. When her parents died, she was raised by an uncle who taught her everything from physics to Buddhism and Gaelic poetry. She was one of only ... posted on Sep 12 2019 (6,776 reads)

by talking about the background of your life, where you grew up, you grew up on a farm, it sounds like, most of those years of your childhood, is that right? Ms. Payne:Yes, I spent the first 17 years of my life on a farm on the edge of a waterfall in this are here of Ithaca, New York called the Finger Lakes region. Ms. Tippett:And you then in college studied both music and biology? Ms. Payne:Well, nobody told me I was going to have to earn my living through what I did in college. I loved music and wanted to learn a good deal more about that than I’d been able to learn back in the farming days. And then after college, I was married to a biologist, Roger Payne, who became ve... posted on Oct 22 2019 (4,914 reads)

one said a word about it. It was all about the Torana paintings. It was this kind of quirk or joke that I had gone there and made Torana paintings, which I hadn’t. They were part of the application that Margaret Olley judged me to win. From then on it was really lazy journalism, people just kept going on. Maybe it’s an interesting story, people don’t expect it, I was meant to come from a yellow corn field in France, not the north-western suburbs of Sydney. But I always knew I loved art. I never stopped. I went straight from high school to art school because when I was pushed to say what am I going to study at university I didn’t want to study anything except art or d... posted on Nov 20 2019 (4,658 reads)

October 23, 2006, Brain Pickings was born as a plain-text email to seven friends. It was then, and continues to be, a labor of love and ledger of curiosity, although the mind and heart from which it sprang have changed — have grown, I hope — tremendously. At the end of the first decade, I told its improbable origin story and drew from its evolution the ten most important things this all-consuming daily endeavor taught me about writing and living — largely notes to myself, perhaps best thought of as resolutions in reverse, that may or may not be useful to others. Now, as Brain Pickings turns thirteen — the age at which, at least in t... posted on Oct 31 2019 (16,635 reads)

not afraid we will not be kind, not really. We are afraid—desperately afraid—that we are not lovable. We are summoning Fred from our collective memory because somewhere, deep inside, we are still children. We are sitting cross-legged in front of boxy televisions in daycares and basements and dens across this country. We are not simple. Our times are not simple. Our lives are not simple. We are watching, rapt and slack-jawed, loving him, not because he is kind, but because he loves us. All these years later, we are drawn to him for the same reason. It is that simple. It is that deep. The movie—thank Fred, thank Tom—got this blessedly right. When you flock... posted on Nov 27 2019 (12,547 reads)

past July, I decided to leave the San Francisco summer fog, and head across the Golden Gate Bridge to a retreat center in warm Marin county. The Santa Sabina Retreat Center, tucked away in a corner of the Dominican College campus, feels likes a large home, with 40 single bedrooms surrounding a lovely courtyard with a center fountain.  I was first introduced to the Center over a decade ago when I was coordinating retreats for tenured public-school teachers here in San Francisco, and for half a decade, I held six week-long retreats a year there until the funding ended. Throughout those years, the Center began to feel like a second home to me and was a place that comforte... posted on Dec 7 2019 (6,317 reads)

to offer us today to think about as ways to stop Ferguson from happening again; three things that I think will help us reform our images of young black men; three things that I'm hoping will not only protect them but will open the world so that they can thrive. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine our country embracing young black men, seeing them as part of our future, giving them that kind of openness, that kind of grace we give to people we love? How much better would our lives be? How much better would our country be?  Let me just start with number one. We gotta get out of denial. Stop trying to be good people.&nb... posted on Dec 13 2019 (8,341 reads)

have been thinking about time lately, as I watch the seasons turn and wait for a seemingly endless season of the heart to set; I have been thinking about Ursula K. Le Guin’s lovely “Hymn to Time” and its kaleidoscopic view of time as stardust scattered in “the radiance of each bright galaxy” and the “eyes beholding radiance,” time as a portal that “makes room for going and coming home,” time as a womb in which “begins all ending”; I have been thinking about Seneca, who thousands of seasons ago insisted in his Stoic’s key to living with presence that “nothing is ours, except time.” And... posted on Jan 13 2020 (10,018 reads)

goal is to share the experience that a return to gratitude is a return to nature, including our own nature. Yet another goal is to illuminate how, through gratitude for even our challenges, we can turn our wounds into gifts. What do you think moves people to attend The Nature of Gratitude events? Tom: It’s always difficult to ascribe motives for others, and the reasons for attending The Nature of Gratitude are likely as diverse as the individuals who come to our programs. Some love hearing performances from the artists they know in our ensemble. Others are looking for light in dark times. Gratitude brings that light. And because our core philosophy embraces a deeper form of... posted on Mar 5 2020 (5,912 reads)

think we have to love our sense of place, and champion the heck out of it,” says Greg Tehven, who is turning the world of economic development on its head and inviting people to build the communities they want to live in. Confronted with the business failings of his beloved hometown of Fargo, North Dakota, he asked himself what the community could offer to the public, that would help get it back on its feet. An unexpected answer surfaced, based on the city's small population and open spaces: drones! Fargo now hosts an annual drone conference attracting attendees from around the world. The town has quickly become an appealing city for college graduates, business leaders, an... posted on May 11 2020 (3,279 reads)

The contrast, uncomfortable at first, even painful, becomes a clarifying force. Without the superfluous, the essential is revealed. A century before O’Keeffe’s artistic heyday, Herman Melville (August 1, 1819–September 28, 1891) took up these questions of discomfort as a tool of discipline and contrast as a clarifying force in a passage from Moby-Dick (free ebook | public library) — the 1851 classic he composed as he was falling in love with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Herman Melville. (Frontispiece for the 1921 book Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic; wood engraving by L.F. Grant from a photograph.) In the chapter titl... posted on May 15 2020 (8,469 reads)

entryway into race. I guess that’s my preamble to the answer. And the answer is that I think you’re right. I think most American families are in one way or another somewhat racially complicated. Mine was maybe especially so. My household when I was growing up was mixed. My stepsister was black, my stepfather was black. So I was exposed to people from a lot of different backgrounds, but I don’t think that that is, in America, all that unusual either. Tippett:One thing I love about this article you wrote and about your writing in general is that you interrogate words, individual words, language that always appears in this conversation that we don’t really know h... posted on Jun 16 2020 (7,699 reads)

of abiding insight in its totality — one of those rare books that illuminate the immense breadth of the human experience while also plumbing its richest depth. Complement this particular portion with Rebecca West on storytelling as a survival mechanism, Pablo Neruda’s touching account of what a childhood encounter taught him about why we make art, and Jeanette Winterson on how art redeems our inner lives, then revisit Iris Murdoch on causality, chance, and how love gives meaning to our existence and her devastatingly beautiful love letters. ... posted on Jul 16 2020 (5,761 reads)

And so many times we think it means indifference, but it really doesn’t. It’s such a huge capacity of our hearts to see what we’re going through, to see what others are going through, and to just have this perspective of, there is change in life. And there is light in the darkness, and darkness in the light. And we’re not avoiding pain, because some things just hurt. That’s fundamental. But we’re holding it in a way that — it’s like the love is stronger than the pain, even. And then we can really be with things, in a very, very different way. Tippett:I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Sharon Salzberg is the co... posted on Oct 24 2020 (7,518 reads)

everybody, I’m here with you…. Never Give Up. Love Never Fails…. One Family on Earth…. May all beings have enough of everything…. You are, therefore I am…. You Matter…. “Le deseo paz y tranquilidad, amor, paciencia y compasion a todos que mas lo necesiten. Nos tenemos que amar unos a otros.”  (I’m just learning Spanish, but I think this translates to something like: ”I wish peace and tranquility, love, patience and compassion to all who need more of it. We have to love one another.”) You’ve requested that I write your names with hearts and smiley faces and peace signs and paw pr... posted on Nov 7 2020 (4,825 reads)

that it was difficult initially to stay true to the commitment of finding gratitude every day but found an unwavering strength to believe that there is no day without joy and she felt moved to look for one each day. Many of her followers are inspired as she shares, “It’s easy to feel that what we do is so small, but none of us will ever truly be able to grasp the profound impact that our lives will have on one another. Happiness and kindness are just another way to express love and that’s something I think we could all use a little more of right now.” “People are good, people are kind and they want to take care of one another,” she says. To li... posted on Feb 2 2021 (5,882 reads)

us is too intense to hold, integrate or comprehend. The emotional charge that arises saturates our capacity to make sense of the experience, and we become overwhelmed and alone.   We’ve all become familiar with the term PTSD. (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) We hear stories of veterans returning from war carrying the violence they experienced and witnessed within them. Victims of natural disasters, car accidents, school shootings, rape, or the sudden death of someone we love, are all forms of acute trauma. There are other forms of trauma as well. Trauma can also arise in our psyches, not so much from an event, but through erosion; the slow wearing away of the sens... posted on Mar 4 2021 (10,645 reads)

that beneath all of this there is something that’s so primitive and inescapable. And as much as we try to, I actually think that’s one of the things this pandemic has shown us, is as much as we have tried to create so much connection — I’m using air quotes, “connection” — we actually see how insufficient that is. Tippett:And so much has happened, both in the world and in our society and in individual lives and communities. But what I’d love to just have you open up for us, to start, is — [laughs] all of that aside, just the nervous system effect that this virus in the world, the baseline with which we entered into all the thin... posted on Mar 30 2021 (13,831 reads)

from which the entire spectrum of nature unfolds. This understanding provides us with a home in the wilderness again, in the creative natura naturans that so many people are longing for in their private lives, within which they roam and that they seek to protect. How peculiar and sad that within the framework of the mainstream sciences this universal, timeless element of life is seen as a mere curiosity, if it is acknowledged at all. Feeling the Others Nature is not dead. We humans love, seek, and long for it. We feel that walking through a forest fills us with peace, gazing onto the ocean calms us. The nightingale’s song moves us. We need nature and know we must conserve ... posted on Jun 29 2021 (3,721 reads)

on a farm, I repaired clothes for people in exchange for pineapples. They tasted yummy. I recently stayed with a friend and helped my friend with home improvement. In exchange, my friend provided me with food and shelter. This reminds me that before machines, humans used their hands to make everything. That is why I wants to exchange my products with other homemade items. I was very happy when I exchanged my products for mango, peanut, salted apricot, seaweed and even two books (which I love). I hope I will meet more friends who share this path and learn interesting things in sharing and exchange our homemade products. ---------------------------------------- NHAT NGUYEN (Quang N... posted on Jul 8 2021 (3,474 reads)