Trick or Treat

Three generations of Tricks and Treats.

2006 Brower Youth Awards

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Goethe

These words capture one of David Brower‘s guiding principles and are embodied by the 6 winners of the Earth Island Institute‘s Seventh Annual Brower Youth Awards.

Earth Island Institute established the Brower Youth Awards in 2000 to honor David Brower and to call forth a new generation of leaders. This annual national award recognizes six young people for their outstanding activism and achievements in the fields of environmental and social justice advocacy. Each winner is awarded $3000 in cash and flown to San Francisco for the award week and a backcountry camping trip. The Awards not only promote the accomplishments of these new leaders but also invest in their continued success by providing ongoing access to resources, mentors, and opportunities to develop their leadership skills through Earth Island Institute’s New Leaders Initiative.

The Awards ceremony, held at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on 27 October, 2006, featured Adrienne Maree Brown, of the Ruckus Society, as MC, a performance by GRRRL Brigade on taiko drums in a tribute to Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the Green Belt Movement, a short film about David Brower, video presentations of the 6 award winners, and a short speech by each winner. (The videos were produced by Max Harper, 2002 Brower Youth Award recipient and will be posted on YouTube shortly.)

The winners, ranging in age from 16 to 22 are working on safe cosmetics, clean cars, habitat restoration, saving a sacred peak, climate change, and youth leadership training:

• Jessica Assaf, age 16, San Rafael, California. Teens for Safe Cosmetics Campaign.
• May Boeve, age 21, Middlebury, Vermont. The Road to Detroit.
• Karoline Evin McMullen, age 16, Chesterland, Ohio. Save our Streams – SOS.
• Alberta Nihbaa’ Nells, age 16, Flagstaff, Arizona. Youth of the Peaks.
• Elissa Smith, age 21, Vancouver, Canada. Climate change activist.
• Ruben Vogt, age 22, El Paso, Texas. CYnergy Fellowship (Civic.Youth.Energy).

A New Blog

After months of stalling and two aborted attempts (sharing Yaniv Cohen‘s Typepad account and setting up a Blogsome account), I’m finally getting down to the business of starting a new blog. And that’s because I’ve just discovered the easy, semi-customizable, free blog by WordPress. I know, I know – I’m such a technotard.

So here I go, cutting and pasting my old entries so that when my original blog finally disappears into the ethersphere, I will have all my entries collected here (I hope).

Blog on!

When Death Comes

For Allyson Anthony, who died today.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

–Mary Oliver