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A 50-state environmental anti-depressant comes to Oklahoma

More YERT scoop is here! See below for part 2 of the Q&A email interview with Mark Dixon and Ben Evans, producers and directors of the documentary YERT: Your Environmental Road Trip, a year-long eco-expedition through all 50 United States. With video camera in hand and tongue in cheek, these daring filmmakers explored the landscape of environmental sustainability in America and found plenty of laughter, fun and innovation happening all along the way.

YERT is screening today and Saturday at the deadCenter Film Festival in Oklahoma City and was winner of the Audience Award at the 2011 Environmental Film Festival  at Yale. And tomorrow, Transition OKC is hosting a Meet & Greet with Mark Dixon from 4-6 p.m. at Elemental Coffee, 815 N. Hudson. First ten people at the Meet & Greet win a reusable YERT ChicoBag, and Dixon will also be giving away two copies of Better World Shopping Guide by Ellis Jones.

More YERT scoop tomorrow.

Come back for the third and final installment of our interview with Mark and Ben where we’ll find out what the YERT team discovered that inspired and depressed them, what was meaningful and made them very happy, and what they hope people will take away from the film.

Photo credit: Erica Bowman

YERT email chat continued.

Q: How did you plan your routes and stops, and research and select those you interviewed along the way?

A: The first thing we did, way before we started the road trip, was to do a fair amount of research by meeting and listening to people at Green Festivals, the Bioneers conference, and also doing a fair amount of web-based research. That gave us a rough idea of the topics we wanted to cover, states where those topics might be most relevant, and which states held the most interesting interviews for those topics.

Then we jumped into the actual road trip route, and our goal there was to figure out how to hit the northern states in the summer, and the southern states in the winter -- particularly hitting Alaska in the height of summer. We were ultimately trying to avoid driving in snowy conditions to make it easier on ourselves, our car and our schedule.Then we identified a few key events that we wanted to be sure we hit along the way -- college reunions, San Francisco Green Festival, Bioneers, and holidays near home -- and that led to a rough state-by-state itinerary.

Ben is a bit of a road-trip junky and map nut who had been to almost every state before the trip even started, so he really went to town solving the route puzzle and pinpointing key must-see spots while Mark, who is a spreadsheet guru and great contingency planner, dove into logistics and figuring out the perfect equipment and packing list that could keep the mission functioning on the road. 

With the itinerary in mind, we generally focused on the next couple of states in our planning efforts, setting up about 1/3 of the interviews in advance, and leaving plenty of room for fate (and a bit of luck) to guide us to the remaining 2/3. We often found that one interview would lead us to another interview, and so on, until our schedule forced us to leave a state. All throughout the trip we were hopelessly dependent on the Internet for research, e-mail, mapping and web-based communication with our audience.

Q: How did you handle conflict on your team during the trip and throughout the production process? 

A: Everybody on the team had their individual reasons for wanting to do the project, but ultimately we all wanted the trip to succeed and were motivated most by our collective desire to address the large-scale environmental problems facing us all - and we weren't looking to get rich or famous from it. So from the beginning, we never needed to second guess the motives for anybody on the team. That said, we had no shortage of different ideas about how to best move things along, and we ultimately spent huge amounts of time in extremely thorough discussions of the smallest details. Generally, Mark was more conservative and interested in arriving early with extra time (turning down unique opportunities in order to get to places on-time, and to get enough sleep), while Ben was often interested in pushing the limits of what was humanly possible (embracing unique opportunities as they arose, trusting in providence to sort out the logistics, and ready to pull all-nighters to make them happen). More than anything, we handled conflict with patience and mutual respect, knowing that we had to solve most issues for the long-term, not just push them under the table for another day.

Q: Regarding conflict, any anecdotal incidents you’d care to share?

A: We had to work through a few tough spots – like Julie's pregnancy in the face of our garbage challenge and the mostly healthy tension between Mark's cautious risk aversion and desire to shoot less versus Ben's intuitive risk taking and desire to shoot more freely. Generally, the fact that we were all doing this in the service of a much larger mission kept our egos in check and our foibles in perspective. Mark did eventually have a significant meltdown about halfway through the trip when Julie's food needs from the pregnancy started to conflict with the garbage challenge -- but, as a friend of Mark and the husband of Julie, Ben tried to function as a mostly-neutral sounding board and, ultimately, it wasn't anything a little ice cream apology couldn't solve.

Technorati Tags: Environment,fun,hope,sustainability,transition,YERT

Is it possible to laugh and help the planet at the same time?

Mark Dixon and Ben Evans shout out a resounding “Yes,” and they show you how they’re doing it in YERT: Your Environmental Road Trip, a documentary screening not once, but twice, at Oklahoma City's deadCENTER Film Festival this week. For screening locations and times click here.

The tagline describes the film like this:

50 states. 1 year. Zero waste. Three friends on an environmental road trip across America in search of extraordinary innovators tackling humanity's greatest crises.

That intriguing sound bite and the film’s trailer convinced me that not only did I need to see this film, but that it’d be cool to find out more about this project straight from the filmmakers. Lucky for us Okies, Dixon, one of the filmmakers, will be on hand Fri., June 10, from 4-6 p.m. at Elemental Coffee, 815 N. Hudson, in downtown Oklahoma City, to discuss the making of the film, which won the Audience Award at the Yale Environmental Film Festival. The informal Meet & Greet is organized by Transition OKC a program of Sustainable OKC. Coffee and snacks will be available to purchase from Elemental Coffee.

Giveaway alert.

First ten people at the Meet & Greet win a reusable YERT ChicoBag, and Dixon will also be giving away two copies of Better World Shopping Guide by Ellis Jones.

Advance chat.

As a lead-in to the screenings and Meet & Greet, I got to do a little early Q&A with Dixon and his colleague, Ben Evans, producers and directors of the film, and am featuring part one of that email interview here. Stay tuned for more.

Photo credit: Rich Press

Q: How did the idea for this project develop – specifically from inception (the germ of the idea) – to actual “We’re going to make this happen” implementation? And what or who do you credit – in addition to yourselves -- for encouraging, supporting, making the idea reality?

Group answer.

All three of us were really starting to get worried about the state of the planet and not feeling like we were doing enough about it in our respective careers. A video road trip to explore sustainability seemed like an interesting way to educate ourselves and others about all kinds of encouraging solutions to the urgent environmental problems facing humanity, a good way to discover hidden pockets hope and inspiration and share them quickly and widely. We weren't sure what we'd find in all the nooks and crannies of the country, but we were determined to have fun finding it.

Ben's more personal take.

I credit my mother for instilling in me a strong sense of environmental concern and a general interest in creative solutions to repairing humanity's relationship with the planet. When she died from cancer in 2004, it really lit a fire under me to start living my beliefs more fully and focusing my life on issues of lasting importance. I'd been an actor in New York and Los Angeles for a number of years and had started kicking around ideas for a bunch of different environmental endeavors with a creative bent. I packed up my life in New York and co-created YERT with Mark as a way to marry my love of creative entertainment and performance with my long-standing concern for environmental issues. I really wanted to stop worrying and start doing something about the problems.

Mark's more personal take.

I was a newbie to the environmental movement and was struggling to understand where I fit into a world faced with so many troubling ecological symptoms. I quit my job in an attempt to re-direct my life and lifestyle, but it wasn't until halfway through a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat that the idea for a national road trip documentary project dropped into my head. I quickly checked the idea with friends and family (all of whom were very supportive-- particularly my parents), and that's when Ben jumped at the opportunity to help shape the adventure in its early form. A year later, after intensive planning, preparation and a few videos under our belts, we embarked on Your Environmental Road Trip - YERT.

Q: With all the environmental films and documentaries that seem to be hitting the market almost every day, why did you decide this project was worth pursuing?

A: There's a lot of doom and gloom out there in traditional environmental organizations and films, and many of these issues have become needlessly politicized. We wanted to cut through all that with humor, visiting with regular people on the street, and by turning ourselves into guinea pigs on the trip. Really the project is an effort to personalize these issues in a way that can reach out to people who, for whatever reason, aren't part of the conversation yet.

Q: When did you start and end the project and how old were you when you started?

A: It's been almost five years from the first germ of the idea to the premiere. The idea germinated in summer 2006 and we prepped for a year before leaving on the trip in July 2007. The film premiered in April 2011. At the start of the trip on July 4, 2007, Mark was 32,  Ben was 37, and Julie was 38.

Q: How did you fund your trip and the year off for traveling and exploring?

A: We basically pooled our savings and begged friends and family for contributions. Ben and Julie had been working as stage actors in New York City and Mark had been working in Silicon Valley saving for a house and grad school in California at the time, so that provided the bulk of the funding. We're all pretty much broke at this point, but hopefully screening at great festivals like deadCENTER will help start to change that.

More insider YERT scoop to come so check back soon.

Technorati Tags: environment,film,sustainability,transition,fun

Garden architecture

Seven things I learned from going bald

A few years ago I went bald. I didn't go bald because I was undergoing cancer treatment or because I had some strange hair-loss condition. I was fortunate. It was totally my choice. I had my head shaved to raise money for childhood cancer research via a unique fundraiser known as St. Baldrick's, and in going bald that year, joined the ranks of more than 8,600 women who over the last 10 years have chosen to prove bald is beautiful.

In the U.S., more children die of childhood cancer than any other disease. Every three and a half minutes a child is diagnosed with cancer. One in five children diagnosed with cancer will not survive. Every four hours a child loses their life to cancer. Yet despite these grim statistics, cancer research is almost daily positively changing the outcome for so many and that's where St. Baldrick's plays such a critical role. St. Baldrick's funds are granted to some of the most brilliant childhood cancer research experts to find cures, and improve the quality of life for patients and survivors and the foundation funds more childhood cancer research grants than any organization except the U.S. government.

The year I went bald I did so in memory of my brother, Maury Douglas Lawyer, who died of leukemia when he was only five years old. Dougie as we called him was my older brother and I was two when he died. I do have a few cherished memory snippets of him, but more vividly, I remember watching the shoulders of my handsome six-foot-two father heave with sobs at my brother's grave site. Year after year I've seen my mother's eyes well with tears on Dougie's birthday as she recounts stories from his all too brief childhood, notes how old he would be, and ponders what he might be like or how our lives would be different if he was here. My younger sisters and I, longing to connect to the brother we never really knew, treasure any photo, any remembrance by family and friends. It's a yearning and loss in my family that even with the passage of time can never be erased. In light of this, shaving my head to raise money so that perhaps one day families won't have to experience this kind of suffering seemed not the only right thing to do, but was a cathartic personal pilgrimage that brought many more blessings than the hair I left on the parking lot of VZD's ever did.

I also went bald to honor my friend, Fletcher Christian Vines, who was battling Ewing's sarcoma at the time. Sadly Fletcher died in 2006, but his mother Gail Vines, also a dear friend, with the help of many neighbors and community volunteers, organizes a St. Baldrick's event each year to help keep the momentum going for childhood cancer research and as a way of honoring Fletcher's memory.

St. Baldrick's is happening again in Oklahoma City this year at VZD's on Sun., March 28, 2 p.m. The concept is simple and loads of fun. St. Baldrick's creates a festive, party like atmosphere with music, fun, games, food and drink all part of experience. Shavees volunteer to have their heads shaved while friends and family watch and cheer them onward. Prior to, during and after the event, shavees raise money for childhood cancer research by asking friends, family and the community to donate in support of the shavee in their solidarity with kids fighting cancer. In the U.S. St. Baldricks raised $16,647,783 in 2009, and to date in 2010 the total is $13,664,684. With more events are taking place this year there's a good chance the 2009 total will yet be beat.

Now if the thought of going bald just isn't your thing, no worries. The good news is you can still be a part of this amazing experience. All it takes is coming to VZD's on Sunday, donating, watching 80 or so folks go bald, joining in the fun. Or if you can't make it to the actual event, donate online.

My friends, family and neighbors were amazingly generous when I was a shavee and I ended up raising more than $5,000. This was indeed gratifying, but far beyond the dollar amount, in the process of going bald, I was reminded yet again of the power of community, love, compassion and camaraderie. And along the way I learned a few other things as well:

1. Helping others always brings illumination. In this case the Universe's lessons were many. Despite the skewed perception of our society that celebrities should be treated differently, better than everyone else, what I learned in this event is that life really isn't about any of us as individuals. Countless acts of courage by those living with cancer, their families and friends will never see the light of a television camera, printed page, or 15 minutes of fame. Yet those quiet lives are no less significant, worthy or full of meaning than those deemed "celebrities." In the end, life really is all about community, reaching out to each other, sharing in the joy and suffering, highs, lows and everything in between.
2. Shaving my head to raise money was a bold adventure -- and believe it or not -- it was also one of the most energizing and liberating things I've ever done. Illusion fell to the wayside and life suddenly became starkly real, clarified, with colors that were more vibrant, and emotions dancing like delicate strands of music, connecting me to something indescribable. The evening after I had my head shaved, I went home and took a long hot shower, dried off with the biggest, thirstiest towel I could find, donned a soft knit cap and sat wrapped in a blanket, warm and at peace -- perfect peace.
3. Going bald saved me money and time. Forget all those expensive hair products! And, by not having to mess with my hair for a few weeks -- I got so much more done.
4. I was coloring my hair before the "big shave" and afterwards decided to continue the liberation. I stopped all the messy, expensive, chemicals AND didn't have to go through that awkward, icky, funky, root-showing phase. Shave it baby, shave it.
5. Being bald is cold. Yes, your hair really does keeps you warm, so I quickly become well-acquainted with the joys of soft, snuggly knit caps and beautiful scarves while waiting for my hair to grow back. 
6. Despite the fact it keeps us warm, in the grander scheme of things, hair is irrelevant. Going bald is a humbling experience, but I learned very quickly that my hair isn't who I am at all. And getting over myself, how I look and worrying about what other people think -- well that was and is indeed a priceless gift.
7. Empathy. Going bald in solidarity with kids fighting cancer I was rewarded with a tiny smattering of insight into how cancer patients who lose their hair during treatment must feel -- topsy turvy, upended, discombobulated, scared.

Albert Einstein once noted:

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Sometimes in this crazy world you're given a chance to be free of the prison of self, to connect to something bigger than all of us. That's what St. Baldrick's is all about -- stepping out of the prison.