Sustainability, #72

Cecily Pingree:

It was a really exciting and fun thing to be a part of. To spend a lot of time and dedicate to a film or a project that has real life implications is a pretty exciting one and a pretty humbling one and certainly an exhausting one. In a lot of ways.

Seth Silverton:

Maybe living in Maine as I do on a farm is a strategic advantage. My personal goal is to improve my own sustainability skills every day and then to empower other people by helping them do the same.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 72 Sustainability, airing for the first time on January 27, 2013. Good ideas become truly great when we back them with a solid foundation of practice as part of our sustainability show. Cecily Pingree describes her experience with Maine's own organic milk farmers while filming the documentary Bedding The Farm and TEDxDirrego presenter Seth Silverton explores the idea of self reliance as espoused by the Woodchop School. What does it mean to be sustainable or act in a sustainable way? It really means being able to do something over the long term. Sustainability has become a buzzword and really something that we've had difficulty embracing, much less defining. In my life, I try to do things that contribute to the healthiness of the planet, the healthiness and wellness of my children, my family and myself as a person. Things like composting or recycling. What I'm really trying to do is understand that life is long and I want to minimize my potential negative impact on the world and maximize my potential positive impact. For me, that's really sustainability. It's really doing something that I can do for many years, hopefully till I die. Cecily Pingree and Seth Silverton both have unique views on sustainability based on their own personal experiences and based on time that they've spent with other people who are trying to create sustainable lives. We think you'll really benefit from hearing their interviews today. Let us know what you think and what your own ideas about sustainability are. We're really interested to hear other people and their approaches to building sustainable lives. Thank you for listening. Winston Churchill once said, those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. One thing that I spend a considerable amount of time on with my patients is their history, their health history, their family history, their social history, because I think it's important. None of us exists in a vacuum, and past actions that we've taken with regard to our health or general living can impact our present and our future circumstances. If you're an individual who wants to move forward in your life, I'd suggest that you spend some time thinking about where you've actually been and understand your own past history. If you'd like somebody to help you out with understanding this history, I'm that person. Give me a call. I'm Dr. Lisa at the Body Architect, 207-774-2196. And we'll help you learn from your history. Dr. Lisa, Radio Hour Health in general, but we like the idea of sustainability and sustainable health from a much broader view than just individual health. And we know that our guest, the one that's sitting in the studio with us today, Cecily Pingree, is also about health and sustainability. So we thought we'd invite her in and have her talk to us about Bedding the Farm, the film that she just created and I saw at the Ceph Film Festival last fall, and also about the type of work that she's doing out and about in the state of Maine, and what she's seeing in the area of sustainability. Thanks for coming in.

Cecily Pingree:

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Great to be here, Cecily. You had to come down on off of the island and via ferry, and you've been all over the place. You must have quite a lot of energy to be able to be doing what you're doing.

Cecily Pingree:

Yeah, you know, it comes, I think, with the turf of living on an island. There's always a lot of logistics involved. So it's been interesting to be on the road for the last two months with the film because it's just a lot of logistics. You know, for the most part, it feels it's very exciting, which I think helps my energy level. You know, going to different towns night after night with this film helps sort of bring a whole new energy to sort of moving and being on the road and living out of my car and all those kinds of things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But, yeah, now talk about sustainability. You've been Doing filmmaking. And you're, you're one of the founders of Pull Start Pictures, but prior to that you were a filmmaker for many years. This, this requires the ability to basically get up and go at a moment's notice because you actually have to be where the people are.

Cecily Pingree:

Yeah, yeah, it definitely does. And it's been, you know, betting the Farm was a really interesting project that way because it was our first independent feature length film and it really did require us to keep in touch with all of our main characters and go at a moment's notice. We are lucky. The rest of our work, we do a lot of commissioned work for organizations, nonprofits, businesses. So we can kind of do it when we need to do it. But certainly when we get a call from the farmers, you get, you know, you've got about six hours of travel, getting on and off a ferryboat and driving to Aroostook county or Washington County. And it really was crucial. I mean, I learned a lot over the two years that we shot that, shot this film as far as being ready to go at any time because there's certain moments that we would have missed if we hadn't have just tried her gut and said, you know, this is probably a pretty important moment in these families lives, in this company's lives, you know, everything that kind of our story revolved around. So yeah, it was a good learning lesson on all of that. And you know, prior to that I had worked for a company in New York City for many years and definitely learned a lot just about that idea. If you're going to do kind of a run and gun documentary style filming, particularly if it revolves around human beings lives, that's just the nature of life and you really just have to be ready to kind of put your own life on hold and say, I have this great plan for this weekend, but you know, the next three days I have to go to this place and be with this family, be with this person and shoot this or it may affect the story.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why is it that farming has been so important? I know that you did work with the Maine Farmland Trust and the Meet yout Farmer project and you've gone on to do Betting the Farm, which is about the and Maine organic milk. Why is farming become something that you've had an interest in?

Cecily Pingree:

Yeah, you know, we sort of naturally fell into the project, the commission project for Maine Farmland Trust, which hired us to make eight short films which we called Meet yout Farmer, which was really just profiling small farms, big farms, organic farms all over the state of Maine. And then we met one of the MOO farmers. And when we met one of those MOO farmers that Bec profiled in the Meet yout Farmer series, they had just got dropped by Hood and were sort of banding together to start their own milk company. So that too, sort of all of a sudden ended up being what we thought would be a really interesting story. You had all these folks who didn't even know each other who all got the same letter, dropped at the same time, and were forced to either stop dairy farming or band together and make something totally new and different and get into the marketplace fairly immediately. So I don't know necessarily if we went. We. We were like, we want to just make films about farms for the next three years, but sort of one led to the other. And then once, particularly for bedding the farm, once you're a couple months into it, you know, I'm sure it happens where people say, you know what? I just don't know if there's a story here. I don't know if we want to keep doing this. But we felt like once we had met our main characters and really started to spend time with them and connect with them and appreciate their story, it was like there was no turning back. So we didn't know we were going to shoot it for two years and really sort of get knee de into dairy policy and this company and these people's lives. But it was inevitably what had to happen to make the film we wanted to make. But I will say, with all that being said, I'm from a very rural area. I grew up around a lot of farmers. I appreciate farming. Before this, we were working on a long project for Penobscot East Resource center, which was all about fishing communities and down East Maine. So, you know, there are two things that are crucial to the Maine economy, the main landscape. So. And they're also, you know, in my backyard. So it sort of felt like this was a natural place for us to sort of start out with our own independent film in a community that was pretty close to home and also one that we sort of understood. Certainly have understood a lot more since we finished this film. But just. That's just brazen the surface.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I was struck in watching the film. This was at C.E.I.F, the Canada International Film Festival, and we had had the founder of CEPH on last fall. I was struck watching you up on the stage with the farmers and the sense that there really wasn't a particular resolution to the story that Maine's own organic milk was still really in Its infancy, as far as a company was concern. It was almost a discomfort or not quite resonance that was happening. How was that to have a film that didn't really provide a resonant ending?

Cecily Pingree:

Yeah, no, it's really interesting because of course, finding your ending for a film or even knowing when you found an ending and you stopped shooting for us was really difficult because when we finally stopped shooting, it was more, you know, there was. They weren't feeling the turbulent times that they had felt for the last, last two years that we had witnessed and we had filmed. But still it was. It's not. It was still a rocky road for these guys. So that was probably the hardest part. We shot 300 Hours. It's an 84 minute film. And finding that ending amongst those hours was very difficult. I mean, an ending that, you know, I mean, we obviously kept following them for two years because it felt like it was going to go one way or the other. The company was either going to fold up, all these farmers would be sort of left with plan B and it was different for every farmer or it was gonna keep inching along. Like, I think in the very beginning we thought, this is either gonna fail or it's gonna be an instant success. And that didn't. Neither one of those happened. You know, they got. They were certainly at the edge of the cliff many, many times towards closing the company and bankruptcy and all these different things. But they never, they were never. It became very apparent to Jason and I, who my co director and brother in law, that it wasn't like all of a sudden people were going to go in herds into the grocery store and make this company really successful. And it was all about. It's all about consumers for this company and how much they can sell across the state of Maine and now all over New England. So it has been interesting because we've just finished a big Maine theatrical tour. And the question that I get first or second out of every Q and A that we do afterwards is how are these guys doing? Where are they? Because the film couldn't answer that question. And I even wonder whether if we kept shooting today, we'd still be able to, you know, change that ending and make it feel like it was any more resolved. Because I talked to these farmers. I mean, most of them come to the Q&As with me. So I see them, I've seen them a lot over the last year, even though we're not filming, but they're getting regular paychecks and the sales are moving up and they're Moving into new stores. And so there's all of these little things that show that they are a company that is growing. But I think there's been a bunch of business classes, analysts for this company that say, you know, it really takes for a startup company, it takes at least five years to see if a company is going to make it or not. You know, they'll crash and burn in the first year if they don't have the right capital or they don't have the right marketing or. And certainly all those problems. Moo had all those problems, but I think it's just starting to become a real company, which is exciting for them. But as far as a filmmaker, you know, incredibly exhausting being like, oh my gosh, should we keep shooting? Is anything changing? And you know, so well, as somebody

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

who was sitting and watching the film, I found it incredibly anxiety provoking to see people getting the bills for their, I don't know, our utilities and think, how can I pay for this? And how can I buy a new tractor? And you know, there was one farmer who was relatively young and he and his wife had children that were running around. And it really, you know, this idea of sustainability is. It's so important and yet it's difficult to reach.

Cecily Pingree:

Yeah, no, and that's a very good point. And I think that's what Moo Milk is all about, is finding that sort of sustainable place where as a company that they can sit on those grocery shelves, they have enough consumers that go buy them and they continuously kind of grow. But getting to that sustainable place for them as a company has been incredibly challenging. And it's interesting because I think, you know, Jason and I set out to make this film because we felt like these farmers were very compelling. But also this idea of starting a brand new company from scratch with barely any capital with a bunch of people you don't know in total outskirts of Maine, some of the most rural and poor places in New England, banding together. So, you know, all of a sudden you have, you have enough product that you can get into Hannafords and you can get into Whole Foods. You become a big customer of theirs right out of the gate, which unlike any of these farms could have done individually. You know, these guys could have never done that. They've got about 60,000 gallons of milk. So that's a lot of milk. But they could have only come up with that if they had banded together and said, okay, well, we're going to try a new model of farming or a new model of business by banding together Becoming what looks like a national company essentially, or they're sitting next to national companies in the grocery store. Unless you're at a small co op and it's your raw milk or it's your local farm, which is great. But these guys needed a much bigger market than that to survive in general. So the idea that they could be sustainable but still be small, still farm the way that they want to farm, still have their families work at those farms and not grow to a size that they just couldn't, they couldn't keep up with. And a lot of these big companies, they're dairy farmers. I mean, you just don't see dairy farms this small banded together in sort of co op. I mean, a lot of dairy milk that you buy, say organic valley, a lot of great family farms, but most of them are pretty big at this point in time. So again, the idea of sustainability as far as small farms and dairy farming is a really hard industry to make it in and particularly be small and have somebody that will buy your milk.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Seth Silverton:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Seth Silverton:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Seth Silverton:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a documentary filmmaker, you're actually a storyteller of sorts. Maybe not of sorts. You're a storyteller, and you end up telling the stories of the people that you film, and you have to create a story out of what you see. Do you see this as being an important part of an organization's sustainability is your ability to tell their story?

Cecily Pingree:

Yeah, I mean, we certainly hope so. I mean, I think as a company, as Polestar Pictures, we do a lot of trying to work with organizations that are working on really crucial issues in the state of Maine and outside of Maine, too, whether it's healthcare or landscape or trying to save farmland, trying to start new businesses. I mean, any of those things, and we sort of say, okay, so here's your mission statement as an organization. But who does this affect? Who are these people behind this that's either going to affect their life or, you know, say, in the fishing, it's like, who are the people that are fishing that really, like, are all about sustainable policies and want to be part of that conversation and, you know, sort of helping find the stories? Because, of course, you know, I think most people will say, like, stories are very compelling, particularly if you're trying to make a case of why your organization is doing great work. People behind it that are people that you're advocating for are great spokespeople. And we certainly usually recommend that we seek those folks out and try to build an organizational story out of that. And then, of course, with documentarian work, it's like with Bedding the Farm. It was crucial for us to say, okay, so who are these people that are going to tell this story? Because there's a lot of great films out there that have narration and do animation and, you know, our stories, like Food Inc. We have a lot of really smart policy people telling you why this is a crucial, critical issue. We all need to be sort of aware of it. But we weren't those film filmmakers. We didn't know how to make that film, nor do we want to. We really want to tell a film about where we want to tell it through people's lives and how it sort of unfolded and why someone else might care about it. You know, because at the end of the day, betting the farm is a story about dairy farmers, but we also felt like it's a story that anybody could relate to as far as business, as far as running a small business or raising your family or being really stressed out about a certain thing in your lives, and then everything around it starts to sort of crack in relationships, get exhausted. And, you know, so we felt like there was a lot of threads that are very typical in every human being's lives that could. You could sort of empathize and also, of course, sort of start to root for them and say, well, maybe dairy farming is bigger than just whether a small farm can make it. It's about the landscape. It's about, you know, all these other important aspects of all of our lives. But we don't necessarily, you know, particularly we live anywhere, but if we live in Portland, it's like, I don't know about Rustic County. Like, I don't know that much about Aroostook, and I don't really go there. And then you watch this film and you're like, oh, yeah, like, I may want to visit there. I don't want to live there. But, you know, this lifestyle, this life, this product is important. Is more important maybe than I thought it was. So

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I understand that you are a 2013 media and performing Arts Fellow with the Maine Arts Commission. So you have that in your future. What else is in your future? What's coming up for you?

Cecily Pingree:

Well, this year, yeah, that was a great honor. It still is a great honor. So I hope that we will be working on a bunch of commissioned work this year for a variety of organizations and also hopefully start a new independent film. And I'm not sure exactly what that will look like or what it will be. We've got a couple of ideas in the pot, but, yeah, I mean, we are hoping to continue to make films, make important films, films that people want to watch that are entertaining but also are useful. So that's sort of our hope for the next year. My brother in law, conveniently, is my business partner. My business partner is conveniently my brother in law, and he just had a second kid. So, of course, you know, there's always shifting. We're always bringing new people onto our team, but it looks like it's going to be a good year, so.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And what is it about documentary filmmaking and maybe the things in your life in particular that sustains you?

Cecily Pingree:

Yeah, you know, I've learned I still am such a new filmmaker in many, many ways, and I feel like I'm constantly learning and I'm constantly surprised. I mean, I think we learned a lot through this last year or these last two years of making Betting the Farm, that certainly, I think in retrospect Retrospect has been really great, but it certainly has sustained me to get involved in a project where to work that intensely with a bunch of folks where you're filming their lives and you become really part of their life and their sort of family fabric because you are a bystander to everything that's going on in their life. And it was a really exciting and fun, you know, thing to be a part of, but also very humbling in the sense that I feel like I'm always surprised. And we would have never made this film if these people that we decided to follow had been so open with us. It was shocking to me that anyone would want to be followed around with a camera. But of course, our light, their lives are much bigger than just this film. So they were willing to. But I think as far as sustaining me, you know, to spend a lot of time and dedicate to a film or a project that has real life implications is a pretty exciting one and a pretty humbling one and certainly an exhausting one in a lot of ways to sort of figure out how to do that and how to do that well and be respectful and honest about someone else's story that you've captured hundreds of hours of. But at the same time, it certainly is really exciting to me to think about the future of the projects that we could tackle that are about really important things and really fun things and really great characters and really great places in Maine and outside of Maine to sort of piecemeal all that together. And, you know, and film is one of those things that I feel really lucky to do because it's very palatable to most people. You know, most people. It feels like an art form that's not so far away. You know, it's pretty accessible to most of us most of the time. So that feels like a great medium for us to sort of work in and be challenged by. Definitely challenged by. So that is a sustaining factor, is something that I'm sure we will never, you know, as far as Polestar Pictures, we will always be staying up late trying to figure out how to do it right and doing it all over again. And that seems fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I appreciate your coming and spending time with me today. We've been speaking with Cecily Pingree of Pullstart Pictures and co creator and filmmaker of Bedding the Farm. Thanks for coming in.

Cecily Pingree:

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As listeners of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast may know, we've started out the whole show talking about Ted Xdirigo about a year ago and we've talked about Ted Xdirigo since and we've had guests from Ted Xdirigo on. But we only pick the sort of best spoken, most important guest to come on. And one of these. This is Seth Silverton who is the director of the Woodchop School who came on to talk to us today about sustainability.

Seth Silverton:

Wow, that is such a nice introduction. Thank you so much.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, you are welcome. I enjoyed watching you were a Ted Xterrago up at Bates and it was the Villages show. And of course we also had the director, Adam Burke of tedx Darrow go on in. I think it was August or September. So.

Seth Silverton:

Fabulous interview.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, yes. He's a very well spoken man. As are you.

Seth Silverton:

Yes, 99 out of 100 days. I absolutely am well spoken.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

All right, well be well spoken today. Tell us about the woodshop school.

Seth Silverton:

Cool. Well, the woodshop school was founded in order to answer kind of what I consider to be the most pressing issue of our time. And that is resource scarcity and addressing it in a positive way by talking about what it is that people can do within themselves and within their worldview and within their daily tasks to begin to live a slightly different kind of life that will make this shift into what some people refer to as a post peak oil world and what other people think of as dealing with climate change more effectively. And these are all extremely valid concerns. And of course there's a big market out there and some of it is manifested, some of the responses to this reality are manifested in different ways. And I think it's very, very important for somebody to say here's a place where we can go deal with this in a Healthy way. So I'm going to be aware of questions like, where does my food come from? And where does my water come from? Literally, what are the steps that it takes to get that water coming out of my faucet and that food to my plate? Because if you do the math and you go backwards and you realize that a lot of the food that we eat comes from an unsustainable system of delivery, but not only that, that unsustainable system of delivery is responsible for poisoning us as a people. And that is, by definition, unsustainable. So it's important to have your attention on the fact that maybe living in Maine is a great thing. Maybe living in Maine, as I do on a farm, is a strategic advantage. And so, as I said in my TED Talk, my personal goal is to improve my own sustainability skills every day, and then to empower other people by helping them do the same. We taught a class called Attributes of the Sustainable Mind, which is kind of the study guide for a book that I'm working called of the same name. And these are 21 attributes and daily practices that people can start having their attention on one a day. And they're things like, how has this life of entitlement and peak oil and the ability and the wonderful things that that brings to my door and to my plate, how has that changed me as a human being? And what happens in the absence of that? So very important for judgment to be a thing of the past in one's psyche, in one's daily routine. So I ask that people just have their attention on words like judgment and what it does to our interpersonal relationships and our relationships with places and how we can benefit by slowing down a little bit and not judging as much, not judging circumstances or other people, and understanding that we really need to become leaders of sustainability in our own community, which leads to another one of the attributes of the sustainable mind or another one of the practices, which is to become a compiler of sustainable activities in your community, become an active builder of networks. And when you become an active builder of networks, you discover that you can help people. You can help people begin to insulate them from this very real thing called paradigm shift, called peak oil and called climate change, as well as a number of other things that are happening right now in our culture.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This all came about the Woodchop School and even your move to Maine because of a very significant event that happened not only in your life, but in the lives of Americans and maybe even citizens of the world. Tell me about that.

Seth Silverton:

It was a moment of reckoning for me. We lived in Brooklyn, New York, and we lived in a neighborhood that the neighborhood came about at the early, early, early part of the 20th century. And if you've seen the documentaries on New York and the development of New York, you'll see that the subway system was built to address overcrowding in New York City. We lived all the way at the end of Flatbush Avenue, close to Brooklyn College, where I did my undergraduate studies. Great school, by the way. Love Brooklyn College. And so when September 11 happened, I turned to my wife as the second tower came down and I said, we're moving to Maine. I had two small children, A.J. and Emma, and that started a process of internal discovery and exploration for myself and for my family that has led to what I consider to be all sorts of wholesome and enjoyable and fun behaviors that we do on a daily basis. We, you know, that event landed us in Maine. I said, we're moving to Maine. We did exactly that. We had like the most major yard sales in history, you know, lightened our load and just took off in a, in a big truck and came up here and we rented a house in Camden. And I began to see the differences in our culture and the way this tremendous change was manifesting itself in this part of the world. And I began to have my attention on the fact that maybe what I did. I'm not recommending that people abandon the cities and move to Maine, but I think we have a tremendous strategic advantage because part of paradigm shift is climate change, and part of climate change is water scarcity and unfortunately, water related events like Sandy. So these shifting tides, if you will, are tremendously advantageous for people who live in the state of Maine, because Maine is one of two water rich regions in the country and it is a station, a station, a state with tremendously undeveloped and unexploited, if you will, natural resources. And for the state of Maine, it's tremendously important that we manage these resources to our advantage. They are going to give us the opportunity to be the breadbasket of New England. Because, of course, water scarcity means that the tremendous aquifer that is in the center of the country, which has an unpronounceable name, which sounds like Olagala Aquifer, but I'm dyslexic and tongue tied anyway, so I won't try it. It's depleted and it runs into mud frequently. And that's where our country's breadbasket is. And we have turned that part of the country into. Well, some would see it as a toxic waste site of food where fertilizers, which are come by unnaturally fertilize land which is tremendously distant from us. And then you put your. You put that food, that product into a vehicle which uses petroleum which is in decline, and get it to wherever it's going, to the population centers.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell me how you balance the need to bring people to a place where they have to change, where you're asking them to think about things and also change their behavior and have enough positive energy to make these changes, but simultaneously be reckoning with the notions of what you've called our poisoned food network and poisoned food and scarcity and post peak oil. How do you get them past the fear of those notions and into the positive energy required for change?

Seth Silverton:

The real way in which human beings in Western civilization, or in any civilization in any part of the world, the real way in which people, human beings, will be able to conquer this tremendous challenge, and we will, is by acknowledging the fact that we are an interdependent species and that it is incumbent upon us to not stock up on rice and potatoes and things of that nature and say, you can't get my food. And when the end comes, I'm wearing a tinfoil hat, so the government's not going to steal my brainwaves. That's not the answer. The answer is by reaching out to people in your community, in particular in Maine, where we have all the advantages, all of the advantages. We have tremendous soil, we have tremendous rainfall still. And to manage that as a village, the theme for the TEDx talk was Villages. And if you go to see my TED Talk, if you YouTube Seth Silverton or you go to Tedxdirigo.com and you look at my TED Talk, I take a moment to say, hey, listen, the theme of today is villages. And that is a great call, because a village is exactly what's required to extract us from this situation. I believe that to the root of my soul. Also, just as an aside, the practice of developing this village, the practice of meeting and developing community for me and seeing my children abandon video games, abandon texting, and volunteer, as they did on Saturday night, to do a dinner for Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, when you start announcing an intention for you and your family to embrace those behaviors, good things happen. And all of a sudden, people start calling you and sending you emails and saying things like, hey, how do I do this? Or you become an authority on sustainability in your community. So the answer to your question, Lisa, in a long, roundabout kind of way, is that it's necessary for people to become leaders of sustainability and resilience in their own community. A word on this Resilience and sustainability are phrases. They're words none is more valid than any other. Arguing about that is counterproductive. Sustainability communities Communities that embrace sustainability are resilient. And resilient communities by their nature, engage in sustainable acts and practices.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is there a place for technology in this upcoming sustainable world? I mean, you talked about abandoning video games and tech and that sort of thing, and I'm totally in agreement with you that it's important to kind of go back towards the human to some extent. But is there a way that we can bring the technology and the advances that we've had due to modern civilization into bear

Seth Silverton:

Great question. I guess you've been doing this for a while and what I would say is without question, the answer is yes. Because things like social networking and things like electronic communications and things like listening to podcasts such as yours, which provide human beings with information that they can use for positive change in their lives, is not only going to be a part of is absolutely critical for our future sustainability. And the good news is it's not going away. If you look at studies about the ways in which people think about things like gender, race, rape, violent behaviors from our past as human beings, you discover that when there is any polling done with questions like I heard this on NPR the other day and I'm sorry I couldn't get the exact study for you, but it's Googleable, which is another wonderful thing. Everything is Google able people who answer questions like in 1970 it is I do not want a black person living next door to me. In the 1970s, that number was in the 60s or the 70s on a percentile basis, specifically in the South. And then when they took that study again two years ago, it was 6%. And that was the crackpot response. We are changing as a species. We are developing new ways of compassionate communication. I'm going to download this podcast when it airs and I'm going to put it up on the Woodshop School website. Not because I'm on your show, but because I value Your show. I also share, I actively share, for instance, Adam's interview that you did, which I thought was brilliant. And you know what must listening. So download it now. Like, as you're listening to me. Click it and download it now. Okay, thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I admire your passion, Seth, and I think it must be passion that's enabling you to do something that is admittedly a bit risky. To move your family up to Camden and to start a farm and a sustainability school. And coming out of New York City

Seth Silverton:

as you did, I'm going to push back a little bit and ask you why you think it's risky.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I guess the people that I have known who have come from urban centers tend to have less experience. And I don't want to assume anything about you in your life, but they tend to have a little bit less experience living in less urban places like Maine. So sometimes they find that the reality and the manifestation of something is very different from the idealization.

Seth Silverton:

I understand. And don't think for a second that I didn't do tons of research about people who have moved to this part of the world during that time. I really feel that there's an energy and this energy is being broadcast from this place and it attracts people who have positive intentions, who are open eyed, who don't have any delusions about what their circumstance is going to be because everybody can investigate what is my potential income going to be.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you did. You're saying it wasn't risky because you felt like you had done a lot of background work before you came here in the first place?

Seth Silverton:

You know what? I am from Brooklyn, New York. I went to Brooklyn Friends School in the grungiest part of Brooklyn at the time. No, check that. Really not. But I traveled the subway every day to go to college. I've been shot at, I've been threatened, I have been harassed. And this is not the typical experience of people in New York. But I'm telling you that if you've been there for long enough, it happens. And it's excruciating to go through that grind and look at the way human beings react to each other and behave and not get all the time, the beautiful reaction to what happened on September 12, 2001, which was the most astonishingly beautiful day of my life. Horrific, terrifying, but beautiful. Because I saw what happened to human beings when they strip away all of the garbage, all of the judgment, and when they see another human being in need. This is the same thing that happens here. It is the ground state of human beings. It is our nature. To behave this way. I can more easily manifest that here there's less PIB involved in my life. Pain in the butt. That fee doesn't exist as a line item on my charts anymore. And I'm blessed. I have a relatively stable situation. My car has 148,000 miles on it, but it still runs. I have land out back. I've got 10 chickens, got like 20 bunnies. I get eggs. It's fantastic.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So considering what you have already dealt with in your life, you didn't consider this move seemed not that risky to you?

Seth Silverton:

I couldn't wait to get up here. And the reason is because I summered up here as a kid. It wasn't 0 to 60 or 0 to 100. And, you know, I had a feeling of camaraderie. I had lifelong friends that were up here who I'm still friends with, and. And I was tremendously blessed in that regard.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So even if it wasn't okay, so let's say it wasn't risky at all. You did your research, you knew people up here, but you still did something that was very different and there wasn't really a blueprint for you. So maybe at the very least, you did something that was unique. Let's just say that. Have there been challenges associated with that?

Seth Silverton:

Without question, there have been tremendous challenges. And when you come to a community as an outsider, and certainly anybody who is in my situation, anybody who's in my position, in my family's position, knows that they all know the phrase, just because the kittens were born in the oven doesn't make them biscuits. That's a real and living and breathing thing. My kids were born in Methodist Hospital on 7th Avenue. They're bad. That's a challenge. You're not one of us. You'll never be one of us. It's okay. I understand where it comes from. I just want to help people understand this paradigm shift and prepare for it. And what I discovered is the people of the state are the best prepared to conquer that, not only in the United States, but probably in Western civilization.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, the other thing that I know about your area, Lincolnville, Camden, the mid coast region of Maine, is that you're not the only one who is a biscuit. Lots of people have come from other places. In fact, I would go so far as to say that there are maybe the majority in this area right now. So have you found any sort of camaraderie with those individuals?

Seth Silverton:

The visionary leader of sustainability and entrepreneurship, Steve Koltai. K O L T A I who also gave a TEDx talk at TEDxDear ago. A very compelling TEDX talk right after you get done downloading all of Lisa's shows to itunes. Absolutely must go and watch Steve Coultey. Also, Don Gooding, who heads Main Angels, Steve Colthey is a neighbor of mine, as it turns out, in Lincolnville Center, Maine. He lives on Lake McGunnicook and he is from California. He was in the movie business and he is now works for the State Department for Hillary Clinton and he travels the globe promoting entrepreneurship. If you are listening to this right now and you have the ability to watch his talk, I highly recommend really addresses the need for entrepreneurship. As does Don Goodings, by the way. So Steve lives in Lincolnville. There is a tremendous, tremendous Brooklyn, New York, ironically enough to Lincolnville Tangent. There's a thread that connects those two communities together. Weird. I don't know why. I'm sure it's not me. I didn't do it. I'm not fessing up to it. But I noticed that people who run culinary schools here, for instance, on the coast at Saltwater Farm, often partner with butchers from Brooklyn, New York. I run into people from Brooklyn all the time. So I'm not alone and I'm supported. As soon as I moved to Maine, everybody in my family moved to Maine. You know, my dad, my mom, my sister. It's a blessing, you know, it's fun. People love it here. You can't get rid of us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And that's all part of this building of villages and this building of a sustainable network is that you do create connections with people, whether they're people who were living here before, whether they come here after to join you. But that's what you're saying is sustainability really is primarily about connections.

Seth Silverton:

Sustainability is not only primarily about connections, but it is about your worldview. If you look around at the scary things that you mentioned earlier in our conversation and you start doing the math on what those scary things are, and if you don't think it's time to take positive action in your life, for you to have a relationship with places, for you to have a relationship with water, for you to understand what composting is, for you to understand what foods grow here, and for you to understand that things like Hurricane Sandy are the new normal, it's on you. It's incumbent upon you to become a leader of sustainability. That is on the individual. My message is listen up. Things are changing. You see it all the time when you tune into the news, but experientially as well when you have an experience of climate change or paradigm shift in regard to peak oil. If you don't pay attention, it's on you. If you drive a Hummer and it's taking all of your money to fill that thing up and insure it, and you know that things are changing and that we are past peak oil, which we are, that conversation's over, too. If you know these things and you still act in a way which is contrary to your own sustainability or your own resilience, that is on you. It's about your personal life and your personal decisions. The only healthy way to start making change in your own life is to develop your own skills and then to help other people. When you help other people become resilient and sustainable, it creates a vacuum. And that vacuum is filled tenfold. And it's filled tenfold with what it is that you really need, not what it is that you really want at that moment.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is there a way to engage in sustainable behavior short of raising chickens and having your own farm? And for people who might not have access to the situation?

Seth Silverton:

Absolutely. We're scattered as a people. We find ourselves in different situations. We find ourselves challenged by this reality. And so take solace in the creating of an intention. Your very first step is to come to the reckoning of this paradigm shift and what it means for you as a leader and what it means for your family. And you must announce an intention. As crazy as it sounds, as long as it's based on healthy things, it's up to you. My intention is to help other people through developing their sustainability skills. That's mine. I've heard Deepak Chopra say, my intention is to heal, to be a healer. Whatever it is that floats your boat, you better start. You better start developing those skills and sharing those skills and compiling a database on your iPhone, on your iPad, on your Android, on your PC, or on your Mac, on your MacBook. Whatever product I can plug right now, develop a database called My Sustainable Village and start listing names and make it your business to call these people and say, hey, listen, I'm interested in helping. I like goat cheese. I hear you make goat cheese. That must mean you have goat poop. Can I have some if I buy your cheese? Fantastic. I need, you know, fertilizer. Start making these relationships. I like bees. I like honey. Christy Hemenway knows everything about honey. She gave a great TED Talk. We need bees. These are little things. Announce your intention. If you announce your intention, all of a sudden, things will start to happen. And if you're interested in our curriculum, you can go to woodchopschool.com to read up on us, woodchopschool.com to Read up on us. And also, incidentally, to donate to the Wood Chop School. You can't leave this interview without plugging the donation button on the bottom of the page. You can also see my TED Talk there. I didn't mean to artificially wrap this interview.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think that's a perfect way to end. You've done a great job explaining sustainability and what you're doing with sustainability with the Woodshop School up in the mid coast region of Maine. So I do encourage people to go to your website and to listen to your TED Talk, which of course I have done, so I can attest to its inspirational nature.

Seth Silverton:

Thank you. I need the hits. I need to break a thousand by this afternoon. No pressure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, everybody please help Seth with that. And we hope that people have been inspired to work towards their own intentions and sustainability. So thank you for spending time with me. We've been speaking with Seth Silverton of the Woodshop School.

Seth Silverton:

Thank you for doing this, thank you for your work and thank you for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We're fortunate at the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to have many interesting and insightful guests join us in our studio. One of these individuals, after joining us, was elected to the US Senate as a representative from Maine. Here's an excerpt from our interview with Angus King as part of our Green street show last year. We hope you enjoy this.

Angus King (archival clip):

As I looked out over the landscape in the late 90s, what I saw coming was an economy that was much more more dependent upon education and technology than hard work and a strong back. So my theory was pretty straightforward. If we had the best educated and the most digitally literate society in the world, we'd win. The legislature never sleeps in a sense. There's always change and nothing is ever finally settled. And in fact, that's one of the problems. Problems with term limits. I voted for term limits back in 1993, and I think it was a mistake, frankly, because one of the things that happens is the legislature now turns over so fast that there's a loss of institutional memory that a major, there could be a major issue, a lot of argument, a lot of debate, a lot of research, a lot of data. And then four years later, two thirds of the people that went through all that are gone. In my eight years as governor, I had four speakers of the House and we have perfectly good people now. But it's just this sort of turnover. And what's happened is a lot of the power of the legislature has sort of migrated to the governor's office or to the lobbyists or just sort of evaporated. So yeah, you think an issue is settled and two or three years later you're right back at it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 72, Sustainability. Our guests have included filmmaker Cecily Pingree and Seth Silverton of the Woodshop School. For more information on these guests, visit Dr. Lisa.org the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's shows, sign up for our e. Newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter and Pinterest under Dr. And read my take on health and well being on The Bountiful blog. Bountiful-blog.org we love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, please do let our sponsors know that you heard about them here. We're privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle hoping that our show will contribute to sustainable wellness in your world. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.