Good Green News!

I suppose it all started back in the day, when I was living in the Bay Area and reading about local legend Ken Kesey in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. It was assigned reading for my History of San Francisco (mandatory) class at SF State. Reading about Kesey's urge to live his storytelling really resonated with me. Writing can be so removed and absorbed in endless analysis. Too much time in your head will isolate you and shrink your worldview. Over-intellectualism can drain energy from your body faster than replenishing it, especially if you're missing out on real-life interactions, touch and physical movement.

While our thoughts may come first, it's movement that creates action and action that ultimately defines reality.

Hope lives in action; in our connections with our communities and each other. While today's actions determine the future, moving with hope seems to be the wisest, most ancestor-approved direction we can choose to take. If we practice acting out of hope rather than fear, with creativity and joy, those movements will grow stronger and stretch exponentially, spilling out wherever we go, sowing seeds of hope within the souls of everyone we come across.

Wild flower child that I am, still so full of hope that I can inspire people to take action that helps make the world a better place, through my writing and teaching. I've had the pleasure of watching that unfold in China, now let's see how everything I touch here will respond. We shall see. Only time will tell. Some seeds take their time to sprout.

For hope to be sustainable, it must be nurtured and replenished through imaginative, loving, pleasurable actions. How fortunate, as a US Citizen, I've grown up with the promise of hope, change and evolution. By spotlighting and making green news over the years, I've learned how to generate and live in constant hope. Even on a victimized planet suffering from corporate exploitation. As long as humanity exists, there's still hope for us all.

Today, it is an honor for me to be included in Planet Detroit's Neigborhood Reporting Lab. I have been a big fan of the one and only independent publication focused on sustainability issues in the Detroit metro area for many years. I have been learning how to be a better documenter and writer through the regular workshops they've presented our cohort. It's been a valuable practice, not just for writing, but for inspiring my hope for our city and deepening my love for it.

I know this isn't new news, but Detroit is full of fascinating folks doing pretty cool things for the environment. It's a post-apocalyptic-utopian phoenix of a place and its transformation over the centuries seems to always spiral back to its core. Throughout the history of humanity, this area has always been a sacred gathering space for exchange, celebration and final resting. Still to this day, Detroit, the gateway to freedom, is a sanctuary city, full of passionate, creative people living in a state of hope. It is the city where some of my earliest memories are from and where I first began to write.

I'm excited to share those stories with you soon, but for now, please enjoy my most recent media profile, written by local reporter, Heidi Ausgood. I'm featured as the Mandarin Chinese Teacher from Detroit Waldorf School in this short Q&A. She did a wonderful job telling my story and definitely has my vote for best headline ever written about me to date.

It's true, I have trodden a path of curious kitty, passion-driven footsteps that have taken me all over the world in search of more wonders to share with others. That was definitely the case back in 2009, when I was hosting events with international artists to raise environmental awareness in Beijing.

Really, you might say it has been the case my entire life.

Me in the Ann Arbor News, August 1980

Beijing Visit, April 2004

When I moved back to China in 2014 for Greening the Beige, my eco-adventures continued. I settled into the country's futuristic and most "greenest city", Shenzhen, to start several Roots & Shoots chapters at K-12 schools. It was a warm welcome, and I was hailed as an "environmental activist" shortly after I arrived.

Although I've been setting up my permanent base here in Detroit, there's definitely a possibility I may have more Chinese press. I still advise the SZ Green Drinks group I helped start in 2016. It's always a pleasure to continue announcing their "green" community events. I would love to go back and visit one day. Perhaps even go on tour with The Blue Marble Series. We desperately need to hear each others' stories so that we can all thrive in a world without enemies. We must remember the universe is made of love (I'm just paraphrasing Carl Sagan here).

Acting with love and hope is really the only way to sustain humanity and our relationship to all life on Planet Earth. (At least, that's what the merfolk in my stories keep telling me!)