The Art and Growth of Interviews

Taken from my project website, www.adaptingtoscarcity.org.  I am still working this all around in my head, so I decided to post it here too.  Attempt #5 to revive the blog…..

Interviewing is a challenging and rewarding process. Until recently, I didn’t fully enjoy conducting interviews because it was exhaustingly demanding and somewhat daunting, particularly in Spanish. However, and this may seem obvious, so many people have so much to share if you simply ask the right questions. There are morsels that pop up in interviews that may never arise in a day to day conversation and those tidbits are beautiful, raw pieces of humanity to witness and learn from. While interviews may be nerve biting and awkward, interviews are also SO COOL.

Read the rest of this entry »

Technology, Innovation, and Social Change

Ashoka Tech hosted a contest to win a trip to Hyderabad to blog about their Technology 4 Society conference. I ended up running out of time applying, but I still wanted to share my thoughts.  Even though I won’t be attending the conference, Ashoka Tech is a phenomenal organization and I look forward to following the conference.

Recently I participated in a moving popular education conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, where we were divided into our generations and collectively defined and expressed the trends of each generation. In my generation, those born in the 1980s and late 1970s, we came up with two succinct differences that distinguish us from older generations. They are:
1) We face problems that are much more complex and pressing – such as climate change, water scarcity, and loss of biodiversity on an unprecedented scale.
2) We possess technological tools to connect the local to the global and create movements and communications that were previously impossible.

Read the rest of this entry »

Virtual Connections

Recently, for Adapting to Scarcity, I have been exploring the ins and outs of virtually organizing.  There is a LOT to comb through.  Since we are filming and preparing short videos of our work, doing preliminary research and building a network to share our work is crucial to its success.  Below is my experience thus far with of each of these main outlets.

Facebook: We have a page with 211 fans, which is respectable for a brand new organization based internationally.  Facebook is the single largest generator of visitors to our website.  We share all our blog posts, updates, and many of our photos there.  It serves as a second website, easier to visit and read blurbs instead of whole blog entries. Of course, we have Facebook linked to twitter, so every time we post there it goes to twitter.

Read the rest of this entry »

World Pulse Entry

I found a very cool women’s media project and online magazine, World Pulse.  I participated in their My Land project, and here is my essay. I’m going to try and be a bit more regular with the blogging.

Rooted in Water

Growing up listening to waves crashing and loons calling, I discovered and nurtured my bond to the Earth. My connection with land has always been intertwined with water. All of my experiences with it have tapped me into the rhythms of our planet.

Water feeds the vegetables and animals that feed us, it nourishes forests and its cycle acts as the pulse of life on Earth. With the fluidity of its form, water provides many of our connections to the land. It trickles down to replenish groundwater, and percolates up mountains to precipitate into valleys.

When we contaminate water, land becomes poisonous, vegetables toxic, rainwater acidic, and the cycle of life becomes the cycle of death. I coordinate a community media project on confronting water scarcity in the Rio Santiago watershed in Guadalajara, Mexico. The Rio Santiago is one of the most polluted rivers in the word, receiving much of Guadalajara’s untreated industrial and human effluent.

I am struck by how a river, providing a green band of life along its path to the sea, can become an instrument of death. In Guadalajara, however, I find hope in the connection of the people to the land and their grassroots effort to protect the water running through it, despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation. They celebrate life by organizing to protect it, to become more numerous and powerful than those who destroy. Movements like these to protect our land have deep and strong roots; eventually, we will prevail.

Nopales and Street Art

So I’ve been experimenting with Mexican cuisine a bit.  It’s been fun, despite the fact that the burners on our stove don’t have a low setting, and the functionality of our oven is questionable.  My real objective is incorporating vegetables into our diet, since they are hard to come by.  And no, raw onions just don’t count in my book as a serving of vegetables.

Here’s a Nopale salad recipe, adapted from a salad our host mom, Carmen, made for us when we first arrived.  Nopales are a vegetable made from young spiny prickly pear cactus pads.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pre Ghost?

Saturday night we drove up into the highlands of Jalisco to visit Temacapulin, a town nestled in hills along the Rio Verde actively resisting relocation because of a dam.  I am personally very interested in dams and their many social, economic, and political implications, so I have read a lot of literature on the topic.  Nothing prepares you for pulling into a town you know could be inundated within a few months.  It’s like seeing a ghost before it’s a ghost, but knowing it’s going to be a ghost soon - most likely.

Read the rest of this entry »

Blogging for Climate Change

I blogged for climate change today blogged for climate change today as one of 8,728 blogs in 148 countries reaching 12,167,771 people. Yowzah, globalization.

Check it out on my project website, Adapting to Scarcity.

Syncretism, who knew?

Monday we attended the Virgen of Zapopan festival.  The procession  (Llevada de la Virgen) began at six in the morning from the Catedral Metropolitano in the Centro and ended in the Basilica of Zapopan eight miles later.  Led by the Virgen, followers included many different indigenous groups in traditional wear, cowboys on horse, masked characters carrying whips, and ordinary citizens.  It was a scene.

Read the rest of this entry »

Futbol and Virgens

Yesterday we went to see the Mexico versus El Salvador futbol game at a local bar, as recommended by our Spanish teacher for the full experience.  It certainly was a full experience.  I’m sorry to say we only registered a small amount of the banter with the noise level and various other distractions.  Mexico beat El Salvador 4-1, and the crowd was raucous from the beginning through the end.

The game was stopped for the first nine minutes to exterminate a bees nest in the goal box.  The bees proceeded to swarm the media/filming station on the side, and surrounded a large microphone for a while.  The level of extermination was impressive, and about a third of the field was covered in a chemical fog.  Then, after each goal or attempt, the goal box would give off more chemicals.  Poor goalie.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tortas Are Fun..

…and delicious!  Yesterday we went and sampled a delicious Tapatio (people of Guadalajara) specialty.  The Torta Ahogada.  Since we are gringos, we were only served medio Tortas Ahogadas, which means instead of a full 100% chile sauce, it’s only half chile and half tomato.  Next time, we know better.  Particularly for a reborn again meat eater, it was delectable.  Bread, cut open, with pork and fresh onions smothered in spicy tomato sauce.  Yum.

Read the rest of this entry »