Hasta La Gadget!

Looking good doesn’t have to ruin the environment.

That’s the message of a new video featuring fashion designer Stella McCartney, who’s partnering with environmental nonprofit Canopy to push clothing companies to stop sourcing fabric from ancient and endangered forests.

The video, which dropped this week, explains how producing fabrics like viscose and rayon, which is made from wood pulp, pose a serious threat to ancient forests across the globe. And it describes how major fashion brands and designers, like McCartney, are working with Canopy to stop sourcing materials from imperiled woodlands.

When we think about fabric, we tend to think cotton, wool, polyester. But ballooning cotton prices have caused wood-based fabrics to make a comeback. That’s a problem, environmental groups say, because around 30 percent of the rayon used in clothing comes from ancient or endangered forests.

“These man-made cellulosic fabrics like rayon, viscose and lyocell, are created from trees cut down exclusively to feed dissolving pulp mills,” Nicole Rycroft, founder and executive director of Canopy, told The Guardian in 2014.

The result? “Ancient and endangered rainforests are being logged, pulped and turned into T-shirts, dresses and suit linings,” she said.

Each year, suppliers grind up roughly 100 million trees, often culled from ancient and endangered forests, to produce wood-based fabrics, according to Canopy. That number could double in the next 10 years, the group says. 

CanopyStyle, a subset of Canopy which launched in 2013, works with clothing brands, designers and retailers, including H&M and Zara, to remove trees harvested from endangered forests from their supply chains. Thanks to their work, producers responsible for more than 75 percent of the global rayon production have committed to protecting endangered forests, according to a press release from the group. 

McCartney, who’s partnered with Canopy since 2014, has championed environmental causes throughout her career. McCartney says she became concerned about the impact of fashion on ancient forests after finding out how many trees are felled each year to produce clothes.

“When Canopy approached me, I did not hesitate be part of the solution,” McCartney says in the video. “We’ve all got to come together and we’ve got to protect what’s left of our ancient forests on this planet.”

Check out the full video above. 

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As seen in my blog IMF in Denial to the Realities of the World one of the greatest challenges facing organizations at international, national and local levels is the inertia and apathy of the civil servants within those organizations, whose inaction and inertia is creating the human rights violations of governments who have an obligation to provide the services, that are simply not being produced by those charged with the task–calling attention to the links below to Spanish and American government authorities who are guilty of crimes against humanity in their “ostrich-playing.”

Large bureaucratic organizations, in the private as much as the public sector, are impersonal give-you-the-run-around service orgs, waiting until people just gives up, and go away. And, this is why most people are so angry with government authorities at present–no one is “minding the store”–with all the “managers” too busy giving speeches and going to meetings to care. The chaos, disorganization, and inaction of “authorities” is exposed in my on-going, unilateral discussion with the Spanish government, the US Department of State, the US Congress, and the White House -and even the Hillary Clinton camp received a letter which was left unread. (Einstein was right. There is no difference between people who don’t know how to read, and people who don’t!). But, the list of grievances and complaints of violations of rights does not stop there. Due to ongoing inaction of authorities everywhere, my list of grievance grows daily.

One of the major issues, is that the labor market is flooded with MBAs and PhDs, coupled with the fact that there is a dearth of people who wish to hold or execute the administrative function in organizations–with the motivation in these jobs purely financial. I explain the issues in detail in my Huffington Post blog Lessons Learned in Our Nation’s Capitol and Global Governance,

A few months after Ronald Reagan entered office as president of the United States for the first time, I started my first job as an intern on Capitol Hill. While I eventually abandoned a career-path in the political arena, I never forgot the important lessons I learned from my boss Patsy Guyer, Executive Assistant to former Senator J. Bennett Johnston (LA).

What I learned from Patsy, was not only the importance of a well-functioning administrative workflow and organizational system, and how to structure one, but also the necessity for team-work and a hands-on, ‘fair-but-firm’ managerial approach in succeeding at any endeavor. Circumstances of my life in the ’80s were as turbulent and chaotic as they have been in the past decade, so the examples and lessons Patsy gave to me were of great significance — and a rock of stability and sanity in a time where my life desperately needed it. Recently, on the Internet, I found a letter from Senator Johnston where he paid tribute to Patsy Guyer — his words mimic my sentiments exactly:

“Patsy [] handled a huge array of responsibilities over the years, ranging from supervising State offices to managing summer interns, to creating and overseeing an exceptionally efficient mail operation.

But if Patsy should be singled out for anything, it is her management of and deep personal commitment to a case work operation that is unmatched in the volume and quality of service it has rendered to countless thousands of Louisianians in need. I am very proud of the aid my office has given over the years to people who had nowhere else to turn…

We were able to be effective principally because Patsy Guyer has an astounding network of friends and colleagues throughout the Congress and among Federal agencies and, most of all, because she greeted every case, no matter how routine, with the enthusiasm and commitment she brought to her first day on the job in November of 1972. Whether the challenge was to bring home from Abu Dhabi a tragically injured Louisiana businessman, locate a missing child in a Rwandan refugee camp or organize a food airlift to Cambodia, we always knew Patsy would have the ingenuity and contacts to start the process and the absolutely iron-willed determination and dedication to see it through to completion. I have never known a more selfless and giving individual…”

No other words could more perfectly describe the person I knew and admired. Patsy, through her actions (not words) showed me to what extent ‘getting the job done’ necessitates dedication, perseverance, networking, and absolute iron-will determination that won’t bend even when faced with the most obstinate federal bureaucrat that the US government can conjure up. (And, my message for the give-me-the-run-around State Department officials that I have been writing to for the past 8 years, is that I was taught by Patsy Guyer, so I’m not going anywhere until they start doing their job!)

Unfortunately, the vital importance and role that the administrative function plays within an organization has been lost in the past decades. Masters and doctorates are as common now as high school diplomas once were -with too many people forgetting the importance of street-smarts and common sense in actually getting things accomplished.

In fact, much of the elevated level of negligence in the ‘modern’ world (see my blog The 70/90 Rule & the Principle of Due Diligence) is due to a dearth of qualified administrative personnel within the labor force, coupled by ‘too many chefs spoil the soup’ syndrome at all levels of management.

Not only is the Feminist movement ‘stalled’ — everyone, and everything, seems to be ‘stalled’ these days, for the simple reason that no one will take action. Everyone is so busy chasing their tails in speech after speech, conference after conference, and meeting after meeting – that no one is minding the store. Never before has mankind possessed so many extremely highly-educated populations and work-forces, extra-ordinary technological capabilities, and a multitude of research and information in all of the physical and social sciences. However, we still find ourselves at the ‘cross-roads’ to humanity because of rampant greed, immorality, and apathy as much in the public sphere as in the private sphere. The actions (or inactions) that we, as a global community, take in the coming decades will determine the survival or demise of the human race and this planet – with the present inertia amongst our leaders tipping the scales towards our demise.

As Ian Goldin states in Divided Nations: Why Global Governance is Failing, and What We Can Do About It

“As we work on the many global challenges we are struck by the need for global solutions. If there is one thing that keeps us awake at night, it is the absence of global leadership and even awareness of the scale of the global challenges… Humanity is at a crossroads. This could be our best century ever, as we find the means and collective will to overcome poverty, disease, and many of the other tribulations that remain endemic despite human progress. Or it could be our worst century, as systemic risks and the unintended consequences of technological progress and globalization overwhelm the gains and lead to devastating destruction. The outcome will depend on our collective ability to understand and take action to address key challenges. It depends on global management. The widening gap between our knowledge of the issues and the failure of global leaders to address global concerns is our biggest challenge.

The future, however, will be unlike the past. We face a new set of challenges… Resolving questions of global governance urgently requires an invigorated national and global debate. This necessitates the involvement of ordinary citizens everywhere. For without the engagement and support of us all, reform efforts are bound to fail.”

Even though the need for enhancing global governance is widely recognized in the politically correct rhetoric of today, as Goldin points out,

“too often reforms [] are equivalent to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titantic… The world has changed in fundamental ways since the institutions were formed and so it should come as no surprise that they are overwhelmed by new challenges. Concerted reform may in some areas close the governance gaps, but for the most part the participants in these reform efforts include representatives of the governments who have resisted reform and so significant reform is stymied.”

If good governance is going to become an effective tool in facing global challenges, we must start looking towards implementation, implementation, and more implementation – but effective implementation by real-live human beings who understand real-live problems. What is needed is the hands-on, no-nonsense approach of Patsy Guyer – someone who didn’t gawk at any task, and who was tireless and dedicated in moving mountains within the nightmare, bureaucratic, minefields of the American federal government.

This is what America (and the World) needs! Action, and more Action — from someone with the moral integrity of Patsy Guyer.

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Helen Keller’s birthday was earlier this week. Icon of perseverance, symbol of hope, heroine of my girlhood. For years, I finger-spelled with classmates, later learning rudimentary American Sign Language because I was intrigued by the idea words could be made with fingers, bodies and faces as well as with letters.

I’ve read several biographies of Helen Keller. The idea that she born fine and then she wasn’t horrified me. That Annie Sullivan arrived and used her fingers to teach Helen how to communicate fascinated me; the family’s inability to help her, their well-meaning thwarting of Annie’s techniques made sense to me, a career school teacher, the leader of a school. The Kellers indulged their daughter because they did not know better. It was Annie who saw what Helen needed and offered structure, discipline, and ultimately, language. Teachers sometimes see in our pupils what parents cannot. Helen Keller went on to be a formidable scholar. Her resilience continues to inspire me.

My fascination with the moment Helen understood language stretches back long before I could finger spell or had watched the Patty Duke-Anne Bancroft film. From the wings of a theatre in a former Chataqua auditorium in the summer resort of Eagles Mere, I inhabited Helen’s story. In 1967, I was six. The Eagles Mere Playhouse produced The Miracle Worker, and I played the role of the smallest blind girl in the Perkins School for the Blind, hoping Annie would not leave me.

“Don’t go, Annie, where the sun is hot,” I said, loud and confident. And, “Don’t go, Annie, away.”

I was not the youngest of the little blind girls. Ginny was younger than I, but she was taller with red hair. When I fussed to Cherie, the actress who played Annie Sullivan and whom I worshipped, she consoled me, “You say your lines well; that’s why the director gave you more of them. It doesn’t matter that you’re not really the youngest. You’re acting.” I was soothed. My love affair with theatre began.

The sound of Jimmy in the poor house calling out for his big sister, Annie, sent chills rippling through my scratchy dull shift, as I peeked from the wings. When I heard the lullaby that Helen’s mother sang, “I gave my love a cherry that has no stone,” I imagined I was Helen. I loved Annie. I’m not sure I made much of a distinction between Annie and Cherie, the actress. I know that I believed I was a blind child, hoping my favorite wouldn’t leave me. I remember being off stage, transfixed by what I could see unfolding on stage. I had gone to the theatre before, certainly, watching the matinees for children, but this was a real play and I had a part in it. Ecstasy.

As a drama teacher and as a mother, that amazing summer floats back to me. Now, I watch young actors I have trained taking risks, soaring. For years, I crooned to my own fretful children, “The story that I love you, it has no end; a baby when she’s sleepin’ has no crying.” That particular summer theatre experience marked me, sent me down the path that would become my life — all because the theatre company needed a few local children to play the blind girls.

One afternoon, waiting outside for our cue on a damp mossy staircase, I lost my footing and tumbled all the way down the wooden flight in my grown-up flats. When I came to, I was lying on the grass outside of the Playhouse, Dr. Brackbill looming above me. I heard Ginny saying MY lines, and I struggled to get up. The good doctor gently pressed me down again, insisting on rest. I lay in Grannie’s high bed, gazing out the window at the lake, jealous of Ginny worried I might be replaced. I wonder how my mother felt, if she worried because I did not come around quickly? We were decades away from the concussion protocol schools now take so seriously. The next day, recovered, I was back in the theatre, no worse for my fall, leaning against Annie’s knee, wishing she would keep her cool hand against my cheek a little longer.

A few years ago, I “friended” Cherie, my Annie, on Facebook and thanked her for the care she had shown me, for kindling my love of theatre, my commitment to teaching.

In college, I auditioned for the play again, hoping, hoping to be Annie. Instead, I am Aunt Ev, ineffectual, dithering. Still, it was a Dramat show, so though the part was not much, I was still excited to be a part of the production. Kay was our director, and she was a teacher, guiding us to become a strong ensemble. I admired Becky, who played Annie, and I loved Nancy, who played Helen’s mother. I was old enough now to have spent lots of time in the theatre, aware how a production came together, but it still felt as magical as it did when I was six. And, it was during that production that I met Seth, the man I would marry though, of course, I don’t know that then. One December day, I left rehearsal early, not feeling well, and when I returned, Seth was alone in the theatre. The time of the call had been changed, but no one had told me.

“Well, as long as you’re here, would you mind sitting on stage, so I can focus the lights?” he asked, skinny in jeans and a t-shirt despite the cold theatre.

Mind? Of course not. He was cute. I moved from one spot to the other on the set as he climbed up to refocus fresnels and lekos. Did we talk? I can’t remember. I do remember the feeling of being there with him, the glow of the lights. We didn’t get to know each other well during that production, though I learned he had a serious girlfriend back in Ann Arbor. He was the lighting designer; I, a lowly freshman. But over the next few years, we grew to be good friends and later, much later, we fell in love and started a theatre program of our own.

The Ensemble Theatre Community School was the six-week summer theatre program Seth and I and our friend, Eleanor, founded and ran for almost 30 years in Eagles Mere. Our stage was in the DeWire Center, the Playhouse having fallen down one winter, the weight of the snow too much for the elderly wood. But our little company of student actors lived in the same house that actors from the Playhouse had lived in each summer for decades, The Players’ Lodge, in between The Sweet Shop and the Presbyterian Church. Alvina Krause, the Playhouse’s artistic director, was long dead, but I conjured her as we made plays. I hoped she would be proud we had brought theatre back to her mountaintop.

In 1994, we produced The Miracle Worker. Our daughter was small and I was pregnant with another baby — our own miracles — so Peter directed the play with a concept that each character had a doppleganger. Kyra played Annie. She was tall, coltish, strong and young; she struggled to learn her lines, but her determination mirrored Annie’s own. Barbie played Helen, daring, feral, brave in her trust of the others in the cast, rehearsing with a blindfold and earplugs. I watched, again from the sidelines, as an Artistic Director does, seeing the play take shape, suggesting “I gave my love a cherry” as a lullaby, transported back to my own first moments in the theatre.

Decades after that first Miracle Worker, I, myself, was an acting teacher, helping kids learn to be authentic on stage, to eschew overacting, to allow themselves to be vulnerable. For some, I hope I served as a metaphorical Annie, unwilling to give up on connection, no matter how defended and fierce a young person might seem.

In that production in Eagles Mere in the 90’s, Seth figured out how to make the pump actually pump water. On opening night, I shooed away my disdain of cliché and cried a little bit as Kyra pumped water into Barbie’s hand and spelled, W-A-T-E-R. Triumph. Connection.

There are moments that shape us. Helen Keller’s story; Annie Sullivan’s story — these are stories that have taken root inside of me, cliché or no cliché. I am awed, grateful to William Gibson for writing this script, lucky to have spent portions of my life in close proximity to wonder and revelation and struggle and awe.

I am a teacher because I stood in the wings of a theatre when I was six and fell in love with a story… and with a girl and her teacher and what they accomplished. Happy birthday, Helen. Thank you, Annie.

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I’ve been dating my heart now, on and off, for years, ever since the days before it came of age and so did I.

When you are little, your heart is every bit as wild and out of control as you are and for that brief blink of whimsy toddler time you are pretty much in concert together. You are Don to its Phil. And the harmony is as pristine as you can possibly imagine.

The brain, during this rather slow but steady, I think I can, I think I can, maturation period, is basically the size of a baby molecule inside an actual molecule and that someday overcrowded section of downtown common section is for all intents and purposes a vast empty parking lot somewhere in Texas.

Ideas have yet to even hit the road.

I remember how happy my heart and I used to be. I used to fly it like a kite, flying it proudly in the air, watching it loop and soar, showing it off to the world while daring it to fly higher and then higher still.

I remember listening to its each and every word that was broadcast with digital quality in the primitive language of it’s own beat poetry. And my, did it Howl.

Impulse was the fuel of my life once upon then and my heart was my Leonard Bernstein conductor.

I trusted my heart and hung on to its every word and suggestion. God I loved my heart then. It was so full of life. It seemed like its purpose was to continually throw me back into the deep end of the life pool, beyond confident that not only would I not drown but would float upstream for the rest of my life.

I remember thinking that forever would last forever.

I remember when the closing hours of a day was the saddest thing of my life.

I remember how my life partner, my heart, directed to me towards the dopey bliss of everything small which made virtually everything and everywhere fascinating and so unbearably beautiful that to leave the point anywhere would reduce me to soul tearing tears.

My heart was my nanny then, who was in charge of bringing me to the play dates of my life. And it was also in charge of picking me up and taking me home so I could float in a vast ocean of bubbles and later pow wow in my ritual Superman pajamas with my parents, so I could, with eyes barely open, describe the incredibly fascinating minutiae of my life with all the gusto of an astronaut trying to convey you to what the earth looks like when you are not on it.

In those early days of dating, my heart was my very best friend who I trusted implicitly. It was way too powerful and all knowing to, for even a moment, doubt it’s influence. There was no man behind the curtain.

Yet.

And then I grew up.

Physically my heart grew up right along side with me and yet in some ways, it remained, and still does to this day, infant sized and as 100% pure as Ivory soap.

But like a couple who has been married for decades, we have long lost our luster, our passion and the sparing of everyday secrets.

One day I woke up and decided: I’m in charge now and just like that my heart’s importance was slashed and diminished and it began it’s steady decline as its memory began to fade and its pulse became more and more faint, drowned out, no doubt by the cacophony of the everyday out there whose symphonic dissonance at once resonated and at times drowned me, beneath the surface, weighed down by the ankle weights of disappointment and despair.

My heart, today, feels like a quaint scrapbook project, always there, nicely ribboned and tidy, always ready to be opened and remembered, but usually ignored.

The bigger you get the bigger all your distractions become and before you know it, you are estranged and in some cases divorced from your heart. Living far apart.

It you do not pay attention to this along the way, sooner or later you will, like I did, implode with depression and anxiety and completely fall apart, splintered like chipper wood into a million razor sharp fragments that will lacerate your most vital veins with each and every dark thought.

My loving shrink at the time, Mike Gold, who when I look at that name looks like My God (which he was) told me that depression was a crisis of faith and when you allow yourself to metaphorically die, then and only then, will the clouds part.

And he was right.

I just wish it didn’t take me five years of floating in the dark, in a toxic sea of glass shards while wishing that I would sink to the bottom.

But the thing is, once you finally surrender to the void and allow yourself to literally sink, once you hit bottom you find that you are far more resilient than you thought.

The bottom, after all, is where the Phoenix rises from.

And so I did and so can you.

Just. Let. Go.

Because living somewhere in the deep, dark universe of nothing but concern, buried beneath miles of coral and sadness, is your still beating, very young Dory sized heart.

It is waiting for you, like your after school best friend dog, whose tail is wagging like a cranked up metronome, ready to leap on you and kiss you until you are convinced that you are worthy of that kind of love.

So my prescription for you is to start dating your heart again.

It is never too late.

Where people slowly decay and morph into their old age self, the heart simply does not. It will feel awkward and make you feel self conscious at first. It will take a minute to put your training wheels back on.

You simply have to relearn how to first balance yourself before you can ride.

Your heart, you will discover, is just like your brilliantly shining dad, who is right there, right behind you, holding onto the edge of your seat, fully scented by Old Spice and summer sweat, radiant and most of all, so very, very proud of you.

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Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

If you’re feeling tired, burned out, or just stuck, awakening your sense of “why” can be a powerful way to build resilience and thrive. A strong sense of purpose is the everyday awareness and conscious acknowledgment that you exist for a reason. It’s the pervasive belief that your life is worth living and that whatever you are spending your time doing is worth doing.

Purpose itself is defined as the “reason for which something is done or created.” And you have a reason by default.

Focusing on this reason and bringing it into your awareness on a regular basis can be powerful in transforming your personal life, leadership, and work.

It may even help you live longer.

Research has found that people with a strong awareness of purpose in their lives and work experience the same physical benefits as regular exercise. In a survey of 136,000 men and women, Dr. Randy Cohen found that when people indicated a clear purpose in their lives and work, they had a 23% reduction in mortality and a 19% reduction in cardiovascular events.

And like exercise, a sense of purpose isn’t something that just “happens” or that you can go out and find or get.

Awakening your purpose takes the same practice and patience as developing any new habit.

Here’s how to start today:

1. Believe that you matter

Scientifically, you can’t not matter. The truth that we must all reconcile is that we are an integral part of the living, breathing, complex system called Earth. And, by being part of a system, each and every thought, word, and action has a positive or negative infinite impact on the world.

The butterfly effect is a real scientific phenomenon. Just as the weather is a product of the complex interactions of 5 billion tons of water vapor and air whipping around in our atmosphere, so too does the human experience of the world result from the billions of interactions taking place every millisecond.

In a system with infinitely complicated interactions holding it all together, we never know when we’ll be the actor in the crux of the whole thing.

The key and prerequisite to awakening your purpose is to believe that you do matter, right now. Every time a doubting thought arises in your mind, simply say to yourself, “I do matter.”

2. Focus more on others

The biggest mistake I’ve seen people make when trying to awaken their purpose is that they focus too much on themselves. Ironically, if it weren’t for other people, you’d have no real purpose or reason for existing at all. Constantly thinking about and reminding yourself how what you do everyday helps others can transform your life.

Psychologists call this focus on the well-being of others a greater good motivation and it’s been shown to increase both happiness and productivity.

As a quick exercise, pick the most mundane part of your day. Now, intentionally trace its impact to its end. At the end of the chain, you will find that you’re solving some problem for a human being.

This compelling problem is your purpose and by focusing on it you can be happier and healthier in any situation.

3. Keep a focused, daily journal for one week

The below diagram is a powerful visualization that depicts purpose. If you look at each of the circles, you’ll find that these elements aren’t some sort of hidden fantasy. They are real and you already possess each one.

Try keeping a focused journal for 7 days. During the half-hour before bed, make three lists. The first should be all of the things you loved doing that day. And write down everything (no matter how small) that comes to mind until you can’t come up with anymore.

Next, write a list of the things you were good at that day. Whether it’s listening to a friend or finding motivation to go on that long run, write it down.

And finally, make a list of things that bothered you about the world that day. What did you see on the news that you can’t stop thinking about? When you were out and about, what did you see that made you upset?

At the end of the week, look at your lists (you’ll have 21 of them!). You will soon find that themes emerge. These themes are powerful in both identifying and awakening your purpose.

This idea is called convergence, and can help you identify where best to focus your time.

4. Try something new every day

Many times we get so stuck in a routine, that we quickly overlook the opportunities that present themselves every day to awaken purpose. This is why I try to do one thing I’ve never done every day.

Not only is trying new things exciting, but psychologically, it can help you systematically break down barriers your brain’s natural desire for comfort has subconsciously created for you.

Over time, you’ll start feeling more comfortable in new situations and taking risks. Then, you’ll be ready to leap when you see new opportunities.

Most of the time it is not money, time, or practicality that holds us back from living with purpose, it’s the artificial barriers our brain has put in place without our consent.

You do matter and you have a purpose. It’s time to awaken it.

Story originally published on www.PurposeSpeaks.com

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