Small Planet Institute: Thoughts

Be the Change

2007-11-20T11:13:00.000-05:00

(Frances) We’re just above Nova Scotia, says the flight map on the seat-back facing me, so I’m nearly home after an exhilarating week in England. An hour ago, I was totally exhausted, but then I started reading the book they handed me as I left last night’s extraordinary 3rd annual Be the Change gathering in London’s Central Hall, where the response to the message of Getting a Grip moved me

The Power of Frame

2007-11-05T10:27:00.000-05:00

I head for Burlington in two hours—while still absorbing all I’ve learned from Boulder, Denver, Portland, Seattle and near home last night in Jamaica Plain. In Portland an extraordinary trailblazer, Jeff Goebel, who I had not seen for at least 15 years, came to my dialogue with students. It was as if I’d planted him there to prove my point about the power of frame! Jeff shared his experiences

Dispatch from the Colombia River Gorge

2007-10-31T15:58:00.000-04:00

I spoke here last night to a conference of the Rural Development Initiatives, a fabulous organization bringing democracy to life in hundreds of rural communities in Oregon and Washington. This morning I heard one of my heroes, Michael Shuman, speak about local living economies. He’s the author of the Small-Mart Revolution, the book that busted the myths that keep us feeling helpless on the

Boulder rocks!

2007-10-31T15:48:00.000-04:00

Okay, I apologize for my pun, but it is how I feel this morning at the break of Boulder dawn. Last night at the Boulder Book Store I spoke to a standing-room-only, caring, attentive audience—an author’s dream come true. This community already had a special place in my heart for because I’d used its gorgeous library some years ago as a writing retreat when I was finishing You Have the Power. And

A book tour like no other!

2007-10-31T15:46:00.000-04:00

From past experience I’d seen the challenge of a book tour as figuring out how to repeat my key messages over and over while always sounding fresh. But this time around, with Getting a Grip, the challenge is not the similarity of experiences but the rich differences. My head is spinning. Last week it was the UConn Coop in Storrs, Connecticut, where I met impressive student leaders before the

Launched from New York City

2007-10-14T20:45:00.000-04:00

(Frances) The energy in the living room of seventy-plus guests last night was about as electric as the lightning show I could see through the picture window of Josh Mailman’s apartment. Richard Rowe, Josh Mailman, Anthony, Frances, and Anna Lappe at the party. The much anticipated Getting a Grip launch party became an evening I’ll carry with me for a lifetime. When the time came for our brief

I've been to the Mountaintop

2007-10-14T20:44:00.001-04:00

(Frances) And I have a photo to prove it. Last Sunday was a glorious Vermont autumn day, and the 15th anniversary of my falling in love with the state where I made my home during the 1990s. Lucky for me, I had been invited to speak at the Harvest and Courage Celebration, an annual celebration of the six-year old Center for Whole Communities in Waitsfield, Vermont. I didn’t know what to expect. I

Am I hallucinating...?

2007-10-14T20:42:00.000-04:00

Arriving in Northampton, Massachusetts, for my first Getting a Grip talk and book signing, the town looked even perkier than I’d remembered it from a decade ago. I was a neighbor, a Vermonter, then. Energy, color, and activity seemed everywhere on this Sunday afternoon, and that was before I encountered the electricity in the air inside the large art center room for the wrap-up of the Pioneer

America's Best Kept Secret--No More!

2007-10-03T10:47:00.000-04:00

A new book and a new film. Things are really jumping here! With our new 10-minute documentary Getting a Grip on Money in Politics, we’re trying our best to bust open one of the best kept secrets in America: There is a proven solution to the crisis of money’s grip on our political system. Watch the film and meet my new hero, Deb Simpson. I’m proud to say the director is my son, writer and editor

Getting a Grip on the Roots of Hunger

2007-10-01T08:31:00.000-04:00

I feel like the T.S. Eliot-kid. “The end of our exploring,” he famously wrote, “will be to arrive at where we started, and to know the place for the first time." Just as my new book Getting a Grip is hitting bookstores, I’m circling back to where its core ideas first began to take shape in me. Yesterday we fired off the final, final version of a chapter I’ve been working on since last January:

An Invitation to Getting a Grip

2007-09-12T14:18:00.000-04:00

Super plant or super problem?

2007-09-12T14:16:00.000-04:00

It depends on our getting a grip … A premise in Getting a Grip is that we humans actually create scarcity from nature’s abundance, and Sunday's (9.9) New York Times carries a story focusing our minds on just this question: Will we use a plant with amazing potential to enhance abundance or to contribute or our planet's decline? The West African country of Mali offers a rich example of the choices

Getting a Grip - off the press today!

2007-09-12T14:11:00.000-04:00

Today I held in my hands the first copies of my new book! I couldn't help myself - I dropped one off at the local bookstore, where I was thrilled to learn five are on order. Then I hurried to a coffee shop nearby to compose a response to The New York Times magazine Sunday cover story by Mark Lilla. His is just the thinking I hope Getting a Grip can help uproot. The professor seems, sadly, to

Frances: About Eating Local— Times' op-ed pulls the wool over our eyes

2007-08-10T15:06:00.000-04:00

Just as the local food movement is taking off, the New York Timesgives huge space to a misleading op-ed sowing doubt about its merits. How infuriating. So Anna and I shot off the letter to the editor below. Afterward we learned even more about what's wrong with the op-ed's logic (see below our friend Michael Shuman weighing in). To the Editor: In an apparent attempt to set us straight on

Getting a Grip first responders capture message, ironically

2007-07-25T18:29:00.000-04:00

I’m smiling. How could I not? Galley copies of Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity & Courage in a World Gone Mad go to about ninety media and in only two weeks we get an email from a senior editor at O (Oprah’s magazine) eager to excerpt key passages about personal empowerment. Great! Then, yesterday, a Publishers’ Weekly review appeared. I was thrilled that the review contrasts “thin” and “

Frances: My Earth Day Journey

2007-04-30T11:00:00.000-04:00

Winding up to Earth Day, I traveled to inspiring campuses, including the University of California at Santa Cruz, where a student-initiated sustainability course packs three hundred students every week into an auditorium buzzing with energy. These students, using Research Action Teams, are turning their campus green. (Find out more at the Education for Sustainable Living Program's homepage.)

Frances: Africa & the Myth of Doom

2007-02-12T10:33:00.000-05:00

Today’s New York Times story about tree-planting in Niger grabbed me, big time. I got up this morning eager to put the finishing touches on a chapter I’m completing on world hunger for a textbook, A Sociology of Food & Nutrition. But first, I thought, it’s Sunday; I had better read the Times. There, on the front page with a big photo, was the headline: “In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the

Frances: Paris diary: “Democracy is like love…”

2006-12-14T11:02:00.000-05:00

I’m sitting in a Paris hotel lobby near the Gare du Nord… And, if you know anything of my passions, you’d not be surprised that I am thrilled to be here—after all, a prime contender for the French presidency, Segolene Royal, proclaimed recently ... "Democracy is like love: The more you get of it, the bigger it grows." I am here to participate in a two-day seminar, actually a field trip

Frances: Lessons from the spinach recall

2006-10-12T17:19:00.000-04:00

Most media coverage of the recent spinach recall alerted Americans that the likely source of the problem was E. coli O157:H7 in the intestines of ruminants, like cattle, whose manure contaminates spinach fields. But many headlines perpetuated a dangerous misunderstanding. Our problem isn’t a spinach problem: it is an economic-concentration problem.

Frances: The Pope...what most media missed & what disturbs me

2006-10-04T22:25:00.000-04:00

The Pope’s recent speech doesn’t seem like another goof in intercultural relations. Something is going on that's left me deeply troubled. The Pope has tried to distance himself from a harsh put-down of Mohammed by a late 14th-early-15th-century Byzantine Emperor whom he quotes early in his speech. The emperor's statement said that Mohammed brought “things only evil and inhuman such as his

Frances: Sunrise on the Tambopata & my encounter with the rainforest’s greatest enemy

2006-09-05T16:22:00.000-04:00

My journey in Peru… At sunrise last week in the Amazonian region of southeastern Peru I got to see hundreds of rare, endangered macaws – red and green, blue and yellow, scarlet – partying loudly at a riverbank cliff called the world’s biggest “clay lick.” (Turns out, clay detoxifies other elements in a macaw’s essential diet.)During the week, I gazed on dozens of varieties of butterflies among

Frances: Democracy, the power of kids, and “moments of dissonance”…

2006-08-14T11:17:00.000-04:00

I got a very special treat last week. Before a huge window backdrop of a sparkling Boston skyline, I addressed teachers gathered by the KIDS CONSORTIUM for a conference entitled Living Democracy. Fifteen years ago when I first learned about KIDS from its founder Marvin Rosenblum, I was changed forever. At the time, I was just beginning

GRUB ON THE ROAD

2006-08-04T11:42:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, I've been racking up the frequent flier miles on the Grub tour. See our escapades here. Anna

Frances: World Future Council convenes

2006-06-05T17:33:00.000-04:00

In Geneva two weekends ago, I felt honored to gather with 16 other founding councilors of the World Future Council, a project initiated by Jakob von Uexkull, who created the Right Livelihood Award (the “Alternative Nobel”) in 1980. We “will identify the ‘implementation gaps’ between current practices and necessary measures to assure a sustainable and equitable world. As an institution

Frances: Lessons from Rochester to Napa Valley… next to northern Italy’s local, economic democracy that’s working…

2006-05-12T10:11:00.000-04:00

Rochester, New York, and Napa Valley, California, may seem worlds apart, but I came away from each deeply inspired. Seeking Common Ground in Rochester invited me there for its 3rd annual festival, Planting Seeds of Change, co-sponsored with Lifeways. Seeking Common Ground was started by five women with corporate jobs and kids at home. Good friends, these five decided to use their skills