Summary: “There is something peculiar about this book: the fact is the cover gives it away right from the start.” That was the first line of Walter Benjamin’s review of The Fairy Tale and the Present written by Alois Jalkotzy in...
Read More
Over two years have passed since I began writing articles for Mother Pelican . I embarked on this personal-political narrative of globalization and bioregionalism at EcoVillage Ithaca, New York, continued through Sage Co-Housing in Boulder, Colorado (both communities, predominately white and upper-middle class) to Pontiac,…
A central theme is how to integrate the personal with the political, the private with the public. As I discuss with the audience embodied energy and supply chains, Fibershed* consciousness (individual, community, corporation, infrastructure, policy paradigm changes as a collective practice of...
Read More
April 4th, 2:00pm PST University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Micaela Amateau Amato’s illustrations from Zazu Dreams projected during first break; Micaela Amateau Amato‘s art projected during 2nd break; my projected photography on display during third break Ladino (the language of my maternal and paternal family)…
March 24th Brown University As a guest lecturer for Heather Bhandari’s ART/WORK class, I will offer an interactive presentation focusing on vulnerability, integrity, conformity, and compliance–not just as individual artists, but co-creating a culture of creativity in the face of digital-age tyrannies. …
March 8th Bishop’s University, Montreal As a guest lecturer for Shoshannah Bryn Square Jones’ Literature and the Environment class, I will offer an interactive presentation focusing on my eco-action model: S.O.U.L. (Shared Opportunity Used Local) and daily eco-ethics from my creative non-fiction book: Zazu Dreams.
For this month, I offer Micaela Amateau Amato’s recent presentation at Pennsylvania State University’s Cancer and the Environment Symposium. Amato is not only my mother, but my primary collaborator focusing on fossil-fuel addicted culture and counter-hegemonic, living-art practices. Amato’s presentation on Cancerous Collusions, is the…
I conclude my essay series for Mother Pelican 2022 with a confession. I have reached an impasse, a seemingly untraversable territory bordered by child-rearing landmines—a misstep may suck me into parental-failure quicksand. I thought I “did the right thing:”… READ MORE…
Howard Zinn distinguishes between a totalitarian state and democracy: “To go along with whatever your government does is not a characteristic of democracy.” The colossal scale of industrial technologies (Big Data, Big Telecom), fifth generation of wireless networks (5G), digital…
Cultural Biomimicry: An Evolutionary Guide to the Ecozoic through Epigenetics In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson shares: “There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature.” These cycles are not about eventually doing more through increased efficiency, but about equilibrium and relationship. This sense…
Monthly Essay Series Mother Pelican ~ A Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability Love & Waste: Igniting A Permaculture Paradigm Shift~ A Personal Story, Part I Love & Waste: Igniting A Permaculture Paradigm Shift~ A Personal Story, Part II Love…
Published in: Communities Magazine, Winter 2021 issue, Children in Community Summary: Ecoliteracy begins at home; it begins with parenting; in every room of the house; in the classroom, in the media. An ecoliterate mindset inspires us to draw connections as...
Read More
By entering one’s consciousness through the mediated vehicle of storytelling, Alhadeff aims to surprise her audience—evoking a reconsideration of how the consequences of one’s daily choices impacts global human rights. Her story’s characters explore unfamiliar geographical and metaphysical terrain…
Summary: We must practice caution during our transition from our global petroculture, not based on the motivation, but on the underlying false assumptions and strategies that perceived sustainability agendas offer. At this juncture of geopolitical, ecological, social, and corporeal catastrophes,…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: ”The future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.” — Rainer Maria Rilke For my Mother Pelican…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: Dedicated to Greg Jacobs aka SHKG Humpty Hump “April is the cruellest month, / breeding lilacs out of the dead land, / mixing memory and desire, /…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: “Realizing the potential of women is the single most important pathway to planetary regeneration.”—Paul Hawken Yes, but how? Many environmental activists claim that empowering women through education is key…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: For February’s Mother Pelican installment, we take a detour from our exploration of Big Tech and Big Telecom exploitation. Corporations market Valentine’s Day as yet again another…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: “Electricity is an element that is more intimate to us than the air we breathe.”—Abbé Nollet, 1746 “The relative divergence of my bodily senses….indicates that this body…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users:’ illegal drugs and software.” — Edward Tufte We can no longer ignore the intricate interconnections between manufactured consent…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: “Our house is on fire…I want you to panic.”—Greta Thunberg’s speech at the 2019 World Economic Forum The fires, dear Reader, have caught up with us. As…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2022 Summary: As activist-educators, we must scrutinize extractive-capitalist interrelationships among slowwashing (including stress reduction technology that actually increases cortisol production), greenwashing (including fraudulent “corporate social responsibility” – CSR) and whitewashing “a coordinated attempt to…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: “We fear that when we stop, even for a moment, the sheer enormity of our lives will overwhelm us. Our outspoken and unspoken fears, they speed up…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: The terrestrial has been exiled from the earth.—Sajay Samuel’s review of Zazu Dreams We woke in the Safeway parking lot, ash falling from the sky. The gated…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: “You cannot regulate an abomination. You have got to stop it.”— Wendell Berry Driving across the United States in our over-heating converted eco-art school bus tiny home—painted…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: The mold had not only seeped into the fibers of our clothes, sheets, pillows, it infiltrated the hinges of my eyeglass frames, the space between the bed…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: Following a determined, iridescent dung beetle, my previous four-part Mother Pelican series ended with: “And then we, too, shift our path…” I hadn’t realized how dramatically our lives…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: Creative-Waste Living as Biophilia Rob (Wild Menagerie), Zazu, and I integrate the utilitarian with the sacred. This is our tikkun—our particular task of repair. Our actions model…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: Practicing Non-Violence through Creative-Waste Living I had met Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, at Peaceweavers while Zazu and I were living at EcoVillage Ithaca. His book, Be…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: I have always attempted to live my ethics to the utmost. During my book launch for Viscous Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene, author Jill Nagle, introduced me…
Published in: Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, 2021 Summary: Migration In search of a home that could support my ardent values for my son’s education, Zazu and I had been living in off-grid intentional communities from…
Published in all of the following: –a collaborative series sponsored by– VIEW NOW VIEW MEDIUM Mother Pelican: The Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability VIEW NOW The Esperanza Project...
Read More
Published in: Communities Magazine, Summer 2021 issue, Ecological Culture Summary: A devotion to repurposing objects, to constructing co-beneficial, regenerative infrastructural support systems, is an antidote to industrialized convenience culture…
Published in: Tikkun, Journal of Radical Empathy, 2022 Summary: Each fall, I send out the following appeal to my communities: Dear friends, While buying Halloween candy this year please consider the links between many of the popular brands...
Read More
Published in: Deep Green Resistance News Service, 2021 Summary: “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” —Audre Lorde As with our shift from our systemically racist culture to one rooted in mutual respect for multiplicity and difference, we must...
Read More
Published in: Tikkun, Journal of Radical Empathy, 2022 Summary: In the framework of our current Shmita Year, “Sacred Attunement: Shmita as Cultural Biomimicry” explores the Hebrew concepts of selah (pause, including a practice of decolonizing our relationship to homogenizing…