 We're going to begin this evening with each speaker addressing the question, how does your work relate to the Bayer region and what is your relation to planet drum? And then after everyone gets a chance to answer that question, the speakers get to ask each other questions. And then eventually you get to ask them questions too. So we don't really consider this like a formal panel. We're just friends here chewing. So the first person is, we can just go around. We have limited. There's Mike's, I think there's, yeah, we have none. Mike, not everybody. Well, every, every other person. Who wants to go first? I'll go first. Okay. Ask me a question. Go ahead. That first question was how does my work, how does my work relate to Bayer region, the concept of Bayer region? Well, first of all, I want to say my relationship with planet drum is over 40 years. I've been essentially a board member for over 40 years. And you hear the list of projects, the work that planet drum's been doing over the years. And if you knew the budget of planet drum, you would not believe that they're able to accomplish as much as they do. I mean, joking aside, it's remarkable how efficient and effective it is as an organization over many, many years. So my work, since 1975, I've been consciously working with the concept of Bayer region. And when I became director of the San Francisco Ecology Center, it was the San Francisco Ecology Center, meaning it was addressing ecological issues that were the wilderness, wildlife preservation, you know, wild and scenic rivers, et cetera. And it was having a really tough time. And given my own personality and disposition, I thought, why don't we think of this as the San Francisco Ecology Center and to really focus it on the ecology that was right in front of people's faces every day. And as a result of that, you know, making a long story short, the place turned into a tremendously vital, successful place with art exhibits and different organizations. We said the ecology of San Francisco is street artists. It's artists. It's poets. It's the architecture. It's the wild, the flora and fauna in the city and really tried to draw people's attention to that so that they could, when we see the wires overhead, you realize that's power coming from Hetch Hetchie or the water, where does our water come from? And it really helped people appreciate that and then relate to it and bring their own ideas to it. It was a small place and, but I brought that same concept when I went to work at Fort Mason Center as I was the executive director there for 20 years. And never called it an ecology center, but always felt that the reason it succeeded was that it focused on the place, what was unique about the San Francisco Bay Area, the culture, the history, the people's interests, the talents of the people in the San Francisco Bay Region. And the place turned into a tremendous success because people recognized it was like a mirror of who they were, but also a window into parts of the Bay Area culture and ecology that they were not aware of. So to me, the way in which my work is involved by a region is focusing on the word place and how to make that place, how to use that place to enhance the quality of life for people who live there, work there, or visit there. And the projects I've had wound up taking on a life of their own because people felt like it was their project and my work became very, very easy because it was really basically opening the doors to people expressing the things that were unique in their minds and their experience to the bio region, even though they wouldn't have used that word in their lives. So does that kind of answer it? Perfect. And I will mention one of the things. The final project, not final project, but the most recent project that I worked on came out of indirectly a book that we did in the 80s called the Green City Project, which looked at, we had eight panel discussions on water, energy, urban agriculture, wildlife in the city, a variety of topics like that, all of which were designed to draw a comprehensive picture of what a sustainable city would look like. And I almost had a chance 30 years later to do it because the group that I was involved with was going to buy a city, a small town rather, in Southern Oregon, and they wanted to do this. Unfortunately, they didn't come up with the money, but this was their entire focus, was to create a sustainable, sustainable city. And I think that it's possible to see that happen if we kind of keep looking for the opportunities and the people who may have the means to help make that happen. So I'll stop there. The only thing that I think you left out was that the way that you got people to come to the Ecology Center was by having soup lunches. We started a vegetarian lunch program. And because we were located on Columbus Avenue right across the street from the Transamerica Pyramid, tens of thousands of people literally would walk by every day. And we had a big storefront window and we took the burlap off the walls, put local artists' art up that was mainly focused on environmental issues, and then did a vegetarian soup kitchen and had guest speakers every day talking about topics that were pertinent to San Francisco and its environment. So yeah, it was a fabulous... Fort Mason was really a bigger version of that, really. I have to leave a little early just because my wife made an appointment for us that I had forgotten about, and so I don't want to let her down. At some point, I'll have to get up and leave, but it's not because I'm bored or uninterested. Maybe the other people I was going to have to do so to talk first is if I go over to Manhattan. Oh, yeah, we should... Well, I don't even want to go next. Shouldn't we do Boy, Girl, Girl, Girl? Oh, God! All right. Okay, well, thanks for including me in this panel. Judy, lots of respect to you and Planet Drama Foundation and the rich history of work that's represented up here by all these folks. So yeah, your question is simple. My answer could be incredibly complex, but I'll try to keep it simple. So I, as well as many people in this room, and Anthony on this panel, vis-a-vis San Francisco, I think are poster children for the bioregional concept. So I landed in San Francisco initially in 1989, lived in the Castro in the summer when I was in college and then permanently in 1990 and went to grad school down at UCLA and I went to grad school in geography. So I'm down there. I was studying biogeography and cultural geography and a lot of critical thinking about the world and our relationship with the environment. So that's really how I began thinking about how we should interact with nature and how we should be on the Earth. And then came back up to San Francisco and through the search for a thesis topic found what was going on at the Presidio. So for those of you who are familiar with that story, the Presidio was a military base for a long, long time since 1776. And in 1994 it officially became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, our local coastal national park. In 1995, the army left. So I was there right at that moment post a park, as they called it. And it was a really inspiring, incredible outdoor laboratory and experiential learning of like, wow, how do you get to know a place where you live and work? It was total immersion. So I did an internship for an entire year. And it was during that internship where my first relationship to Planet Drum occurred. So that was from 95 to 96. And we were working on putting together a calendar of all of the natural resource volunteer activities in the park. And our model was the Green City calendar. And that was in 95, 96. And then I was joking with Judy that I actually applied and Peter Berg interviewed me for a job at Planet Drum in the spring of 1996 that I didn't get. We don't know why, although she says she has a theory. So yeah, so my relationship to Planet Drum goes way back. And that was a really amazing time to be on the Presidio and to be in San Francisco in the Ecological Restoration Movement because we're out there, we're pulling weeds, we're talking ecology, we're talking philosophy. And so it's all just bundled up into one mash for me in terms of just becoming a devotee of the bioregional philosophy and living and working that. And being able to continue to do that, having the privilege of being part of this community and representing this community in other places and trying to be a leader, but hopefully a constructive leader in this community in sharing what we're all doing with the rest of San Francisco and with the world. And so I founded the Organization Nature in the City and then this opportunity, this sort of pivot happened and now I work at the Department of Environment which also has a relationship to Planet Drum going much further back than, well, not that much further back than mine actually. So these discussions that happened in the 1980s led to this book that Mark mentioned and that there was a little evolution which ultimately led to advocacy for figuring out how to implement this in San Francisco. And so there was a woman named Barrow Magalavi who led an effort to have discussions in the 1990s around creating a sustainability plan. And by the way, I happened to bring a copy of it right here. This is my copy with my name in it, so I'm not gonna give it away. This is published in 1997. Yeah, please. And at the same time, actually in 1993, there was a charter amendment that created the Commission on the Environment. But then in 1996, there was a subsequent charter amendment that created a newly formed commission and our Department of the Environment simultaneously and then essentially simultaneous to the publishing of the sustainability plan which really became the blueprint for the sustainability vision that we're now implementing. And today is in the form of this, hello, where are you? Oh, sorry about that. Here we go. Of this very condensed version, it's hard to see from down there, but 080-100 Roots. And this is what our department and the other city departments propagate as kind of the vision of what we're implementing in terms of our climate goals, climate and sustainability goals. So zero waste, 80% sustainable trips, 100% renewable energy. And Roots kind of represents the positive things that we do to restore our natural ecosystems and to restore our natural environment in the city and our relationship to it and to make sure that everybody, all San Franciscans have an opportunity to connect with nature in the city, not just those of us lucky few like myself, but everybody. I'll stop there initially. I feel like I'm the one working maybe furthest afield. It depends on how you look at it, but not strictly environmental. Definitely working. I work for something called Maker Faire. So how many folks are familiar with Maker Faire? Oh, lots. Okay. So it's a festival that started here in San Mateo in 2006 as a celebration of creativity, invention and resourcefulness. And that word, that aspect of resourcefulness, I think is the value system that really connects back to bioregionalism and that point of view and that respect for nature and for resources and how to live efficiently and with purpose and in a thoughtful way and in a creative way. And so Maker Faire is really fundamentally just a big show and tell. People come and show the projects that they, the things that they make and they share with people who come to check it out and what they've learned while they were making it. So it's a big exchange of ideas and it's also fairly physical. I think that was part of what I enjoyed working with you Judy and the rest of the Green City gang around the focus on the actionable. It becomes overwhelming a lot of times to become literate in the world of what is occurring in terms of ecosystem health or the lack thereof. And I thought that the Green City project A, it was the first time I had, I think it was a very new idea that one could be a city dweller and to think of cities as actually like the virtue of density and actually that it didn't all happen out in the beautiful country that actually being a city dweller and loving and living on your life and living on your bicycle and the efficiencies of energy consumption and things like that about being a city dweller. That was a very new idea and that book was kind of revolutionary in this picture and I really, really appreciated the point of view. And then, you know, the programs that we developed for Green City project were very, very practical and physical. They were work days. They were connections to other people doing work and making a kind of database of all of the organizations doing urban sustainability work in specifically San Francisco but the whole Bay Area available to people. This is really pre-functional internet. So, you know, it was about relationships and connection and community and doing and that in some ways is very much what we do at Maker Faire. I mean, it's a community of people that value making and so it's interesting to see it. That was 25 years ago that I worked with you all. Also, it's interesting to have hindsight in one's own life path but also into the history of movements and to the extent that, you know, this was a passion, mission-based work, right, that a lot of us are doing. Maker Faire and the Maker Movement is also, you know, passion-driven, focused around, in some ways, anti-consumerist. Like, how can one be... How can one make a difference and how can one sort of have agency around being physically capable and competent and making things. So, I know that's one haphazard view on the relationship between then and now. Planet Drum, whenever Planet Drum put out an ad for a worker, an employee, something like that, one of the aspects of the job was ability to dig a hole. Here we go. I got you. You can kind of say something about Green City. Green City was the sort of concept that Peter had. Sabrina came in and created this incredible program that was super dynamic and, like you're saying, super physical. So, I feel like she's being a little modest here, but I just really wanted to speak that it was sort of this idea that Planet Drum was swirling and Sabrina came in and made this incredibly tight, interesting program. I'm loud enough already. Wow. You know, the Shasta Bioregion. Here we are, right here in the middle of this estuary. I just want to share a little bit. I'm really enjoying this dialogue and I want to make way, of course, for our out-of-bioregion guest. Yeah, yes. In our parallel universe over there. But, you know, I'm really concerned with our Bioregion right here in the seven. I'm a native Shasta Bioregionist. I've been a lifelong biophiliac, lifelong bioregionist without even knowing it, okay? And the concept that Judy shared earlier today around life place, okay? Life place matters, right? Bioregion, life place. But something that I do in my own daily life as a father, as a teacher, as an educator, as many others is trying to create experiences, try to connect and network with other beings, other people where life, you know, doesn't matter at the same level that brought everyone here tonight, okay? What I mean by that, there's different things happening in our own local Bioregion that I come from that is different from anyone here. And we're all here in all this diversity and it's really special that we share this connection. In my traditional ecological knowledge, it's called the kapua, okay? The kapua is the shared self. And something that I admire about Planet Drum and all the allies and all the ancestors of Planet Drum movement is that it built its foundations upon high-tech knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge. But something that I admire even more is how do you take a timeless topic like traditional ecological knowledge and make it relevant? What I mean by that is, you know, we're the stars out last night. You know, as it was mentioned today, Mr. Mark, you were saying, you know, our water coming from 150 miles away, Hetch Hetchy, you know, we just turned it on. These questions in the contemporary and Western model need to be asked. I really give a lot of credit and respect to the Planet Drummers, if I may call you know. For paving this way, for receiving this traditional knowledge but making it relevant to, you know, society today and in life, you know, here in the seven by seven, it's really hard as urban dwellers to really think of these concepts that we're detached from. Planet Drum illuminated these 40 plus years ago in a way that maybe made it more sense to us urban dwellers, Homo sapiens, urbensis, you know, whatever we are now, 80% of us living in cities, right? So these concepts that are rooted in land-based societies, rooted in concepts of kapua, the shared self, all life is sacred, all life is interconnected and intertwined with these natural systems. What I mean by where life doesn't matter most is, you know, neighborhoods where species are facing extinction, that's happening right here in our backyard in this estuary, as we know in the Shasta Bay region. But it's also people of the global majority, women, immigrants, you know, we know that this is where life isn't valued in society most. And so when we talk about life place and it mattering, where do we need to bring these concepts? And it was kind of coined after the Planet Drum as this concept also as ecological literacy, that term, you know, how to read and have a literate society which understands these ecological interconnections. So where it's taking me is really looking at Planet Drum as the mycelia for groups like that I currently work with, Literacy for Environmental Justice, we're celebrating 20 years this year. And it's just, yeah, all right, all right, a little something. And it's just a point of reflection to say, what have we learned, you know, what have we done and where do we need to go? 20 years is a blink in the eye as we know in the geological timescale. You know, we know it's just, what is it, the last millisecond of that clock, right? Our living time right now. With that in mind, 20 years in this point in time makes an immense impact. And what we're doing right here, our organization, is repairing our local ecosystems, you know, restoring habitats but restoring ways of being, restoring people, restoring the historical and institutional trauma that has not only affected people, but the species that have inhabited this area. And that's a concept that I know Planet Drum was founded on is protection and wellness. And I really like what was said earlier, the quality of life. Let's just cut to the chase. We don't need to get too edgy-speaky. You know, we all have the right to live in a world where life is, you know, has certain qualities of it. And these qualities are grounded in ecological principles. And those ecological principles were the original, traditional ecological knowledge, that high tech. So I want to end and just say, there's a real special personal connection to Planet Drum, both of myself and the founders. So as Planet Drum was the mycelia, these four-plus decades of ecological literacy, bioregionalism and just living in your life place like it matters. When you think about that, that was the mycelium for our founder. Her name was Dana Lanza. Folks might know her in this room. I had the privilege of getting to work with her. And she was an understudy. She was an educator. She was a mover in Shaker, Wood Planet Drum, as Ms. Sabrina, as many folks in this panel. Movering in Shaker in the bioregional community, and which helped her shape that vision to create an organization in an area that has the highest concentration of toxicity, the highest, you know, hospitalization rates, the lowest life expectancy rates. You know, this is the metrics of what I mean where life doesn't matter as much, okay? Because if that's going on in 2018 with all the boop-boop, you know, phones here and everything, we still have a segregated society in one of the most ecological cities in the world. I am an ambassador to rip the cover off of that, to understand that it isn't just about one way or the other, but it's about all interconnectedness of the kapua. I truly believe that bioregional thinking honors that principle. I give credit to people like Dana who took that mentoring and coaching that Planet Drum provided so many years ago in these new concepts and turned it into a reality that is now standing 20 years later, like many of us continuing this work. And, you know, in conclusion, I want to say I had the honor of working with Peter Berg in his last days knowing that the Planet Drum beat definitely beats on strong till his last breath. He was keeping up the things that are most important to all life. And I think that is a model of living life to its fullest and living the life that you want to lead. And I admire folks like Peter Berg and all the folks who model this type of selfless nature because it is the shared self that we're working towards. So I want to thank you for just this little moment, but also just share a little bit of that energy and bring some of that in here that the beat goes on. Yeah. Well, how does bioregionalism relate to my work? My work has changed and my bioregion has changed and I'll go back to some reminiscence and then forward to my work. I first met Peter Berg in the 70s when he and Freeman House, both diggers, came to my office at a Rolling Stone publication and wanted me to donate a centerfold to the diggers and I couldn't get the boss to agree and frankly I didn't try very hard. And next connection was the Frisco Bay Muscle Group which was a pioneering watershed group formed to call attention to one of the zillion ever resurrected schemes to divert northern California water to southern California around the delta. Then when I was editing at Friends of the Earth we published Ray Dazman and Peter Berg's Re-inhabiting California in Not Man Apart which was the publication of Friends of the Earth. So we got, I got a chance to be schooled in some of the foundational concepts of re-inhabitation and as a worker in a sort of a mainstream environmental group I was really drawn to bio-regionalism because the analysis went deeper and was systemic and the vision was for a cultural change not just to adapt industrial civilization to have it function for another century or so but really to have, well one of the phrases was the idea of a future primitivism to move our cultures back in the direction of subsistence which really is sustainability and equilibrium within an ecosystem. But the way that that concept gets expressed in bio-regionalism is so rich and multifarious. I was, Peter and I were good friends. He was a mentor and a friend and I returned to his writings. I am a writer and his work continues to influence me and I try to carry the thinking forward and sometimes his lengthier pieces are extraordinary works of philosophy and understanding but sometimes the aphorisms just nail a thing like more than just saving what's left. You know how bio-regionalism was distinguished from conservation which is extremely necessary and always will be but the idea of not just sort of preservation and rescuing but creating something beyond this moment that will be sustainable and enjoyable. The celebratory part of bio-regionalism has always been quite wonderful, the solstice celebrations. One of the things that is so important about bio-regionalism and again this exists now by many other names but was the sort of focus on natural history and an affective relationship with the nature of place and the possibility which still continues of amateurs and the root of the word is love. Getting to know their bio-regions in great detail and to protect and preserve them as the Sound Bruno Mountain Guardian is doing and so many people who are exhibiting here so that focus on natural history seemed really, really valuable and not just a not reductive but inclusive. The idea of growing a life-place politics is a title of one of Peter's essays and the notion that the politics of life-places at various scales would sort of emerge from cultures, wouldn't just be superimposed as an off-the-shelf analysis or program but the governance would come from the place and from the whole community including the biotic community. My life totally changed because of bio-regional congresses. This was something movement-wide that included groups other than Planet Drum but in 1984 bio-regionalists from all over the Turtle Island gathered in the Ozarks and it was a week-long camp out. Everyone was there doing childcare and so it was kind of like seeing things whole because there were people from everywhere, First Nations from the Southwest, musicians, gardeners, alternative energy mavens, restorationists before the letter. There were people like Thomas Berry, esteemed cultural historian, and many others. It was one of the liveliest, most meaningful gatherings I'd ever been for and it was a great place to meet guys and I met one and I moved to Michigan. I followed him home. So that's how I jumped bio-regions and took the... It could be the best place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, in ornithology there's the idea of being an accidental. You're sort of blown off course by a freak wind. Well, my freak wind was a hippie carpenter and thank goodness. So I took my sort of bio-regional education to Northwest Michigan with me and spread the word, did organizing and still try to extol natural history and people who love organisms, other than human organisms, not to the exclusion of humanity. And I did a book on ecological restoration because I learned about it from Freeman House and Peter Berg and others. It's called in service of the wild, restoring and re-inhabiting damaged land and the whole concept of re-inhabitation emerged from planet drum. So it's given me a way of being in the world, planet drum. And so I love the... Oh, one thing I wanted to talk about is this wonderful workbook based on Peter Berg's kind of mapping exercise discovering your life place is one of the most illuminating things I've ever done as a teacher. It's like steel from the greats. I do use this workshop with whenever I get a chance and it's a way of empowering people to draw their own bio region and discover what they know about it and peel the geopolitical boundaries off and sort of see the underlying realities of place. And in one instance, it brought a woman to tears and a very savvy, you know, sort of cob construction expert just because she had never been exposed to anything like this in her primary education. You know, she's never been exposed to the idea of place. So an incredible tool as so many of the publications are. And, you know, I can be a little pessimistic and misanthropic, my friends will tell you that. And one of the gifts of the planet drum ethos is not giving up on the human species, being the human species as integral to nature and that we're all in this together. And so moving forward inclusively in a life-affirming way with the most meaningful and diverse understanding of life. So just an immensely valuable entity in the world. And, you know, who's here tonight and the work that's being done testifies to that. I'm jealous of you being able to stay. I have to leave. This is a great discussion. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mark. Hello, Mark. Come in, Mark. Oh, come in, Mark. Tell me one. She's here all week. I am from another estuary. I'm from New York City, the Hudson and East River estuary. So in a way, what am I doing here if you live in place? But I've had, my family has lived out here. I've come, I've known Judy and Peter for years and years. And I think there's so much to be gained from realizing that we're making the whole world look alike. And you don't know that until you travel. You get off an airplane and you can't tell. The vegetation is potted. All the architecture is the same. The smell is the same from the fumes of the planes. So this effort that we're all talking about, Mark said to me when I just met him tonight for the first time, this is in our DNA. There's such a longing for home. There's such a longing to belong someplace. And we can't find it because cities are blanketing the natural dynamic that's there. And that's how I got started. I, from the Midwest, my parents let me run wild. And I mean wild, you know, in the woods and climbing trees and falling out and not being, in fact, I ran away at home when I was 18 months. I have a newspaper article to approve it. But I didn't realize that that was my best friend. So when I went to New York City for graduate school, I said, well, you know, I know the earth is here. It's got to be. And that's what I did my studies on. And I went all around the city only looking for the living earth, not potted plants, you know, with a subway underneath or the streets and the sewers, where the earth actually came into the city. Like Central Park is the living earth. Its hairstyle is not natural. But, you know, it's like if my hat had a hole in it, the hair was sticking up. That's Central Park. So there are places. New York City has more living earth in its city limits than any city in the world. One fourth of it. I know. It's absolutely astounding. And that's how I got started. I published a book called Urban Wilderness, Nature in New York City. And then, as I said, my family lived out here. And then I met one of their best friends. And I'm positive he was my soulmate. He died a few years ago. He was from that New York City estuary. And when I met him and I was working on my book, I had no idea that it was happening other places. People were saying, where's home? Where do I belong? And as a result, New York City has such a powerful place in the fight for home. The whole legal environmental movement started in the Hudson River in the 1970s. Exxon ships that were bringing crude oil to New Jersey to be refined were cleaning out their hulls. They would leave the crude oil in New Jersey, go up the Hudson, clean out the boat, and fill it with Hudson River water to take back to swimming pools in the Caribbean. And a very important activist, Richard Boyle, discovered what they were doing and sued Exxon. And that's how the legal environmental movement started, the Natural Resource Defense Council. And it was like a whole other dimension. We could take them to court. I think you were talking about. I mean, we are the voice for all the other living species. And this legal movement talks for mountains, talks for rivers, talks for animals, because we have to bring back the life. So I mean, what I'm doing now is very upsetting because I teach at a university and do a lot of curriculum development. And what they're asking me in the middle of doing is to figure out ways to integrate into curriculums at the graduate and undergraduate level being prepared for disasters and climate injustice, disrupting climate injustice, because the people who are being most devastated are the ones that have been pushed to the margins, and those are the ones closest to water or on hill sides that are sliding away. So it's making me sick, literally. And it is so much not what I was after because if we don't realize we are Gaia, it's not something separate. The air we breathe, you're breathing the same air I'm breathing. The water goes right through our bodies. The energy coming from the sun, the air. We are integral. It's not something separate. And that's what we don't understand. We think of the earth as a resource. It's our source of life, and we've cut off the arteries. So we have these... I mean, I feel like the earth is this extraordinary, powerful being, and we've cut some arteries, so it's just turning around and saying, well, fuck you. You know, it's just unbelievable. The hurricanes, the mudslides, the wildfires, Sandy when it came into New York City, crashing right into people's... You know, you're not going to let me in the front door. I'm going to break it down. And if we don't understand that we can't intervene in something like this, we're the drunkards. We have to change our habits until we can have a habitat that is aligned with the dynamic of the earth. And whether we have enough time or not, I don't really know. But I do believe that we could evolve with the earth, where it's going. Lately I've been working with UNESCO Artist of Peace. He's actually a geomancer, which means somebody who works with the meridians in the earth's body and is trying to heal them. But I really think we're at a moment when everybody has to stop what they're doing and realize that we're out of sync. There's nothing wrong with the earth. The earth is trying to survive, but it's very hard when children don't play in the woods like I did around the prairie. And so how can you tell them that they're part of nature? So bioregionalism gives me a kind of legitimacy, a frame who wants to know what some little girl did when her parents were looking. Climb out the window, climb a tree, get out of there. But bioregionalism is the frame for what we need to do for climate change and for what's happening to the globalization, the making of the whole world into the same place. So Judy and Peter, thank you. Jean, could you talk about, you mentioned to me some things that interactions you had with people introducing bioregionalism to them? Well, when you look back on your own life and you kind of say, who was that? How did we do that? But after the Exxon revelation, they started in the 1970s, and it wasn't until the 1980s that Richard Boyle, who was a fisherman and a sports writer, discovered what they were doing. So a group of us thought we'd ought to get together with our elders and honor them, the ones who were celebrating the Hudson Valley. So that was Pete Seeger and Tom Berry, who was mentioned, who was a passionist monk, actually, and had traveled the world studying religions. And he said, we have to put these religious books on the shelf. We've got to create a new, he called it, a biocracy that included all animals, all living species. So in the fall, I couldn't find out the year, but it was soon in the early 80s. We met in the Hudson River Valley at the Omega Institute all season, a group of people interested in the survival of the Hudson Estuary. To honor these Pete Seeger with his Clearwater efforts to clean up the Hudson really did turn it around. And then Richard Boyle, the fisherman, and then, of course, Tom Berry, the monk. To honor our elders. And somehow or other, I got the idea with a friend that we ought to write an environmental platform in New York City, because there was a mayor oil race coming up. And we thought, well, you know, if we wrote a platform, and there are always international environmental organizations in New York City, and national ones, like the Sierra Club, had their headquarters there. And then there are lots and lots of small community groups. If we had a platform, we could maybe muster enough votes to get David Dinkins, the first Afro-American mayor or candidate, elected. So we wrote an environmental platform. This is in the late 1980s. And he won. And a lot of people in our core group, not a lot, several became commissioners. And then I got invited by Richard Register to come out to Berkeley to speak at the first international eco city. But there really were green cities that he was talking about. So there was always this connection back and forth. I don't know. I can't remember who else you wanted me to mention. I mean, it's just, yeah. That's fine. Pete Tigger, by the way, was when, you know, he did the clear water down the Hudson and worked on cleaning it up. And he actually, there was one piece from one of the early publications of Planet Drum that he really liked. It was called Nuclear Order 235. And it was an anti-nuke. It wasn't an anti-nuke thing. It was just recognizing that if we had nuclear waste that had to be put someplace where nobody would see it for millions of years, bioregional understanding was ruined. And he came back to Planet Drum numerous times to get extra copies of that particular article. It's in the exhibit upstairs if you go up there. So I think we've heard from all of the speakers. Do the speakers have questions for the other speakers? Is there anything anybody wanted to talk about? Yeah. You know, Planet Drum is just a treasure trove of resources. And we've shared a little bit of today, you know, literary works, workshops, mentoring, what's going down in Pachamama. You know, there's just so many ways that Planet Drum is a resource. And one of the resources that our organization has utilized, and I would say this is almost, you know, broad throughout Unified School District, is the great map wild in the city. And so my question is a little bit, if, you know, I know, Judy, you can speak on this, but if anyone's experience with Wild in the City is just a visual resource, who's familiar with that resource, Wild in the City Map? There you go. Okay. I've got to say that almost every time when I've used that map with a group of San Francisco students, I ain't talking about East Palo Alto, I'm not talking about Richmond, I'm not, you know, I'm talking about San Francisco, and we know that was produced in the 90s, so I want to hear from folks. Yeah. I love it. So one of the projects we did at Green City Project was we owned a section of Carnival Street Fair that was on Harrison, and we worked with different organizations we were working with to come up with, not just tabling, we tried to go beyond tabling, but I will say that the map was a centerpiece of the engagement and of the interaction with people. It's kind of one of those, you know, undeniable, it's such a beautiful illustration of place, and there's moments of intrigue. We all have sort of ego associated with where we live, like in some ways, right? We have like self-interest, so it's kind of unnatural. You're going to grab people, and where do I live? Where am I in this? And then sort of the discovery of the watershed, and then, oh, the conversation about the landfill, and it just was such an easy way to engage people of all shapes, sizes, races, the whole, you know, the broad gamut. And I really always appreciated that. It's like a tool, right, for communication and learning. I can riff on the wild in the city map all day long. I know. Yeah. So I was leading volunteer programs for 10 years at the Presidio, and literally in a totally, almost religious, committed way, we would start every single program, rolling out the wild in the city map. Yeah. And saying, this is what we're doing here. This is what it used to look like. This is what it looks like now. And we're restoring habitat, and in the process we're reconnecting, we're re-inhabiting with nature where we live right here. So, yeah, re-inhabitation, bioregionalism, that's been part of my lexicon, and the folks that I've worked with way back in the day, including my mentor Sharon Farrell, who was the first biologist hired in San Francisco by the Park Service, and many other people. That was the language. And I want to exploit this opportunity to also say that the wild in the city map, if you remember it, on one side it says 1750, kind of the ancient natural environment, right, beautifully illustrated by Nancy Merida. And then on the right side, you're facing it right now. On the right side, if you're facing it, it's this stark contrast with the 95% developed, you know, San Francisco, the second densest city pretty much in North America, right? And it was very authentic in that Golden Gate Park almost entirely was the same color as the whole built environment, right, because that's an artificial landscape, with the exception of the coastline of Oak Woodlands, which were saved on purpose by John McLaren and William Hammond Hall before him in the planning of Golden Gate Park. But we produced the nature in the city map in 2007, inspired by the wild in the city map, partly because we wanted to try to tell a richer story of what's happening today. So the stark contrast is striking on the wild in the city map. But don't worry, I got one of those two. But yeah, bring up that one. But hang on, I'm starting with this one. Wait, don't look at him yet. Put that down. We did it in 2007. Yeah, if you could hold that up. So we tried to just, you know, kind of illustrate with a little bit more nuance the state of the parks and the open spaces in the natural environment in San Francisco, you know, in this era. So you look at Golden Gate Park, right? It doesn't look like the built environment. It looks like a park. And so we did this kind of three greens, you know, that exists in these planted landscapes. Well, we went further with that version, and that's nice and rolled out and laminated, so we won't use my folded version this time. That's totally awesome. Thank you, Joel. Oh, yeah, there it is. There's the wild in the city map. Yeah. And very authentic in terms of the native habitat that remains that's represented on the right side of the wild in the city map with our old mentors, Jake Sieg, Greg Gar, Mary Patrilli from the Fort Funston Nursery way back in the day. This is produced in 1992. So this is really the first kind of comprehensive ecological, bioregional tool to talk about San Francisco's natural history. So a real legacy. And so then with the 2018 version of the nature in the city map, 10 years hence from the first, actually the second one, even more nuance. And so we used a lot of GIS layers to bring out all the different green in the city. And again, the city is not all, all the green is not native habitat, but the birds and the bees and the butterflies, they fly throughout the city. And while they really like the native habitat, they really like the local native plants because that's to what they've adapted and co-evolved for thousands of years. They're also able to move over to some of those non-native plants and certainly nest in the non-native trees, et cetera. The urban forest layer there, that really kind of shows a richer matrix of nature in the city today. And you should look in the back of it, turn it over, because it's got the other layers. It has other layers on the back. And I want to mention that I invited Nancy Morita to be here tonight. And she has family obligations that she couldn't be here, but she was sorry that she couldn't. So I'm really glad that you mentioned it. A couple of things about it that I think the wild in the city map is a wonderful map to show to people, to ask them where they live. Can you find where you live without reference to the streets? Pretty amazing, pretty amazing. And the other thing is I thought you might all probably... You have a question? Oops. Can you purchase this? Yes, outside. One of the... They have this map outside. And the other map you can purchase from Planet Drum. Yeah. Too much to talk about. I wanted to tell the story of how Nancy made the map. Nancy came into our office just all wide eyed and said, I have a project. Would you like to help support my project? And the project shows she sat... Peter and I sat down with her and she said, I want to make a movie. I'm a filmmaker. And I want to make a movie where a little boy wakes up in the morning and when he looks out the window he sees the natural areas. The city peeled back. And Peter said, that's a great project. That would be a wonderful project. But why don't you start by just making a map of what the city would be like without all the buildings. And that's how she got started making it. She made a version before the four color version. She made a two color version. And she made this four color one. And she got lots of flak on all the maps because people disagree about what's where. That makes me nervous. And the other thing I was going to say is that there's a sign up sheet for Planet Drum in the back. And there are two issues. The last two issues of a large newsletter Planet Drum did are anthology issues. They have really good articles in them. You're welcome to take them. Judy, I just want to ask you another question. We have to exit at 7.40, so I don't know if people have any questions. Audience questions, yeah. Question? Yes. Different methods, I think. Eco cities, community work, outreach, art making, environmentalism. I know Judy has created movement pieces and plays and things like that. So as someone who kind of really wants to carry on this torch of environmentalism and art and community work and ecology overall and within, obviously, I'm wondering what methods you guys found to be the most effective and which ones felt the best. And if it's okay, men, you're beautiful, but I'd like to hear from the four women. What do we have? I mean, I'll just say quickly. I think the thing that's so exciting about this moment is that your future isn't known. When I was growing up, you got married when you were 21 and then, I don't know, there was nothing afterwards. There was nothing. They didn't say anything. And just follow what you're interested in. And it's like stepping stones in a mist. You take the first step because you just told us what you're interested in. And then the next one suddenly becomes clear. The mist kind of slides away. And all of a sudden, it's what I call choiceless choices. It chooses you if you just listen. There's that in the accident. What was the oranthology? Yeah, a vegan accidental. That's beautiful. Yeah, I think cohorts are really important. Having friends and kindred, Santa Cruz anthropologist Donna Haraway is grappling with an issue that concerns me much over population in some really interesting ways. She's got a slogan. She says, make kin, not babies. And the idea is to have kindred relations with other species or other sort of unrelated by kin, by blood ties individuals. But to really, as we go forward from this time of uncertainty to see that we can forge really effective and passionate relations with all kinds of others and celebrate them and sort of internalize their genius as well. But not having to go it alone is so important and the kinds of just serendipities that can rise up when you get together with a group to say, hey, you know, let's do a performance piece at the block party or, you know, can we, well, for instance, can we get a permit to pull up some pavement and plant a native garden in front of our house? You build a new kin relation that sustains you going forward. Yeah. I mean, are you asking specifically about work, like ecology work, or a broader life question? Up to me. A lot of pressure. Well, I think that this is, there is a lot of disparate information, and I do agree that, like, finding your kin, looking around for what is out there, connecting, asking questions, never stop asking questions. There's never a dumb question. And those questions drive solutions and they drive progress and they drive connection. Yeah. And being aware, just opening your eyes and just noticing things. The small choices add up to, like the big pictures, and I think it's sort of about your mist. Like, there is relief in the fact that if you stay centered and make the small choices as they go, they kind of add up into a greater thing. So, other questions? Are there questions out there? Maybe we should just move into the outside? They wanted us out of here by now. What happened to the time? Any more questions? More questions? All right. Yeah. Okay, we'll hang out in the front. Thanks, everybody.