Welcome to Earthseed Detroit
Detroit: pathways, rocks, thorny patches, and fertile soil.
I am Lottie and this is my parable.
The inspiration for this blog is made up of a combination of events: attending the Children & Nature Networks's Grassroots Gathering last week, finishing Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, learning the environmental ropes as I transition from media activist to enviromentalist, and having the impossibly huge task of trying to help my community within the confines of a somewhat balanced work week for a small environmental justice non-profit here in Detroit. (Somewhat balanced work week at a small non-profit? How oxymoronic is that?)
The C&NN Conference was well attendend by almost 200 attendees, all intent on getting kids outside and convinced that nature experiences can transform kiddie couch potatoes into caring stewards of the earth. In one of the plenary sessions on using social media tools to expand and enhance your work, the tech savvy Grass Stain Guru pointed out that a work blog is, not only a great way to market and publicize the work of your organization, but a great way to provide documentation to funders, the boss, or even yourself about what you have been up to. I see this as the yellow brick road to the new and improved, organized super activist that I will be!!
The name and theme honor Octavia E. Butler and her Hugo and Nubula award winning book "Parable of the Sower". I understand the work that I do is part of a much greater tag team race. I will not see the finish line, but I must run my part of the race as swiftly and skillfully as possible for the hand that reaches to take the baton. I am trying to package up a baton, rolling all these tears and experiences into a tight cylinder. I also have a huge concern about the lack of hands awaiting this gift, so my mission and passions are two-fold.
My road has twisted and turned many times over the course of this trip. My background in multi-media design has served me well in creating workshops that I hope have been interesting for youth and adults, designed to promote consciousness, media-literacy, and cultural awareness. Now I am taking all that I thought I knew and draping it with a green overlay. And this green business is hard! Most of my co-workers have extensive alphabet soups of environmentally related degrees and have zipped all over the world seeing well, "the environment". This destination or place always seemed to be exist elsewhere in my urban mind. I was of the mindset that is shared by many who are unfamiliar with the environmental justice movement, that environmentalists are a leafy bunch of folks, concerned mainly with trees, polar bears, and the rain forest. You know, over there...wherever "there" is, but not on my block. Have I learned a lot! But I still have a long way to go and I hope to chronicle my evolution out of the narrow confines of my mind into the urban farm girl that I am becoming, here in my heartland: Detroit.
