Author: thevideoslab

Being a Writer

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It’s really frustrating to be a writer. You know? Because it means before anything creative you want to do -that isn’t writing-can’t get done until you write first. And that’s where I am today.

This morning was a huge ball of stressors on The Last Shark movie. Last minute challenges and changes and OMG moments that were not fun. It will make for a better movie but it was one of those things where I went from soundly sleeping to jolting awake with stress chemicals injected into my brain and scrambling to edit animations, narrations, etc.

So this morning, after putting out trashcan fire #5 I knew that I needed to write before I can work. I have a meeting with the composers coming up and true picturelock on the film has to fricking happen yesterday! I have so much to do. I looked at the calendar before the premiere and studied closely how many working days I have left when I am not traveling, etc. There is wiggle room but it’s really and truly coming down to it and there is no margin for error. No pressure though lol!!!

Also, as if that wasn’t enough, life has also seen fit to throw me a few new curveballs this last week and so it’s been a lot to deal with even besides this movie. I am emotionally wrung out. Even just staring at the screens for as long as I have can melt your brain but this additive has made things much harder. Yet, the work has to continue no matter what. The November 7th Premiere date looms large!

So I was standing there in the kitchen and realizing that if I don’t go write, I won’t be able to edit. I need perspective on my situation and life in general. Then I realized that I have barely had time to really feel into the facts of my life here in Charlottesville VA. I don’t actually live here at all. I was just staying here for a month to be near my dad and check in on him. I will be leaving here in less than a week to go somewhere else that I don’t live. This whole “I don’t live anywhere” thing really started right here in Charlottesville. And indeed, in many ways it began where I am sitting right now. You wanna see?

Quality Pie in Charlottesville VA is the first place I discovered to eat at in October of 2019. It’s what anchored me in sanity. I began coming to Charlottesville for one reason only. Mom was dying. I used to drive about 4 hours a day, every day, round trip- to deliver mom to the hospital at UVA’s Cancer Clinic for treatments. I was her sole live-in caregiver, much by accident. When her diagnosis happened my whole life shut down…all of my work stopped. I closed the doors on this company, The Video Slab, and my entire life circulated around mom’s three kinds of cancer, her combative dementia. I became her nurse for a full year to the exclusion of all else. But it started here nearly 4 years ago on October 21-2019. I would come to Quality Pie to chat with the regulars, to drink coffee, to eat cookies while mom was in her appt’s and I had some time on my hands. It was here that I found some small measure of solace. I got to feel like a normal person for tiny bits of time and chat with the chef about his recipes. I am sitting here right now while writing this in 2023.

I found one Charlottesville post on my IG from October 2019 month actually…here are screenshots…

Instagram Pic October 2019

So here I am again, visiting dad in the retirement community. The toll that taking care of mom took on me, during the pandemic no less…and then taking care of dad for a year thereafter…I definitely reached a point where I thought that I would never return to film making. I was through with it. I planned on deleting this website in fact. I never cared to see a Premiere Pro timeline again. Somehow film making as a way of art found me. This month I finished the release of Season One of Salmonfolk Radio podcast. And within the next two weeks (somehow) I will finish The Last Shark. I am wrapping up these projects in the place where my creative life seemed to end-yet now I am thriving creatively. In fact literally all I work on are creative projects that matter to me. I am making $0…but I am really fulfilled. Considering how low things were with mom back then, it’s not a place I expected to be in ever again. Life is so strange.

I guess I would say this: You can’t change what your art is. It has to come through you. And so, after writing, here at the end, I get my lesson. I get to see what’s true about me. With that, I think I can get back to work. Finishing this movie is what I am here to do. It’s just a huge full circle that took me 4 years to complete.

Full Circle

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Above is a framegrab from a movie that premieres in Capetown, South Africa exactly one month from today. I am the Co Director, Editor and script writer of said movie…The Last Shark.

I am in that liminal period of my work on this particular timeline, just like this photo…on the in between horizon.

I have been actively working on this movie since receiving the hard drive from South Africa in June of 2023. And now, given the premiere deadline of November 7th…I am most definitely in that underwater/abovewater phase. Sometimes I see the sky and the end of editing the most complicated and important story I have ever been a part of. Sometimes I am back down under the waves of revisions, wondering if it will ever be completed at all. And then in the next moment considering, once I am done, what the actual fuck will I do with my life afterwards?

In this framegrab the lens of the camera person was positioned just on the waterline. So in the actual footage the water deliciously sloshes about, dipping the camera view above and below in fits and starts. Then the title of the next chapter of the movie suddenly appears in that space, right on the horizon.

My co-director, bless her amazing heart, says I shouldn’t swear in social media postings…but I am 52 and so, you know…on my blog I get to paint with all the fucking colors. At my age, and with the things I have been through in my life I find myself in that pleasant phase of life where you truly cease to care what people think. Or if you do care, you notice that you care, but you decidedly stop changing your behavior due to that.

In a world packed with people seemingly hell bent on destroying the world that they live in…do I really care about offending some people with bright language here and there? As an old friend of mine always said, “consider the source”. I am here to be me. We all really need to be. If you think something is right and it follows basic principles like doing no further harm and respecting other’s rights then for real…when has their been a more important time than now to do something?

That is what has driven me to give up everything for this project. It’s an odd situation. And it’s also something I have wholly lost perspective on. When I ponder life after I hit that final upload button and what happens after Frankie downloads it for screenings in South Africa…it’s also then that I ponder where I have been in life that led me to this project.

I find myself asking a lot of questions about the value of work and how we, as a society at large, seem to have linked the value of work with financial compensation. These things, in reality, have nothing to do with one another. If none of us were paid for what we did, we would have a completely different society, ordered upon wildly different values. If every single thing wasn’t commoditized, including us, including animals, what would it be like to live in a world like that? That’s really what I am trying to say with my movies. I am working towards a world where everything isn’t for sale. I believe in that world because I inherently believe that until we make that a reality, we will continue to dessicate the place we call home.

If any of you readers are technical folks…we are nearly at picture lock. Besides a few footage outliers, which can all be dropped on top of interview footage as B roll…the length of the film is locked in at one hour and 19 minutes. Narration lock happened yesterday. Composers are working on the original sound track. There is still plenty to do but if you liken this process to building a house…we are the painting phase. It’s 98% percent move in ready.

It’s staggering though. Every other movie I have made was honestly so simplistic compared to this one in scope. I have never made a movie about a species that is going extinct. I have made movies about saving tracts of land from deforestation. I have made generalized movies with a strong conservation message. But the situation that exists in South Africa with the shark nets and the fear driven killing of so many sharks hits so hard for me on every level. It defines the human vs nature conflict so precisely. We are such a fearful and unintelligent species. And the most dangerous thing about is that we think we are so damn smart. We don’t recognize that so many of our fact based decisions are actually based on fears disguised as facts. How do we ever learn if we are so busy being blind? Who will read the writing on the wall?

That’s why I make movies. That’s why I make podcasts. That’s why I do conservation work for free for 6 months while living out of my car. I feel like it’s worth the effort to craft a narrative that just might shake someone new out of the old ways of thinking.

What will I do once the timeline is saved for that final revision and I export this movie? In less than a month I will be in alone in a cabin in the wintery woods of northern Vermont for 6 weeks. What will it be like to find my creative output grind to a specific halt? Will the movie take on a life of its own? Will I be contacted by someone I haven’t even met yet and offered my next project? Oh…and where the F will I live after those 6 weeks?

It’s a mystery. It all is.

Recursive

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In my field of work, there are times when the truth can’t be talked about by those who I am interviewing. There are those who can’t even be involved on any level with a production for fear that they will lose their jobs, or that even their spouses will lose their jobs-job loss by association.

It’s happened in two of the movies that I have made: Bolin Creek Unpaved and 400 Feet Down. It has happened in the podcast series that I am currently releasing; Salmonfolk Radio. In these three instances I am helping others illuminate the truth about environmental concerns through interviews and filmmaking. The goal is always the same…bring these issues to light for an audience so that they can know the issues exists and how to do something about them. 

These issues need highlighting because there are people who will do anything to make money and the Earth is, so to speak, what they use to convert their greed into cash in their bank accounts. Some people are motivated by greed. Some already have more than they could spend in a lifetime. What runs greed though, is fear. Every hoarder runs on fear. If you’ve been in the home of a true hoarder, the stacks of dross, the 30 year old newspapers, the dust, the waste…it’s the same mentality that drives some of us to just collect more and more money. Fear of not having enough, fear of letting go.  The earth’s creatures, mineral deposits, are what stands in the way of the money making machinery. And the only thing that can stop this machine is when the truth becomes the monkey wrench. This requires people to talk about the truth…because those motivated by greed can’t find it on a map of the Earth any longer.

I am making these movies and podcasts about that machinery and the people who I am interviewing become the monkey wrench. 

Those who are motivated to protect, to rescue, to conserve. Somehow, they have slipped out of the monetary padlock. Yet, there are times when the truth can’t come out. In every documentary about protecting the planet I have worked on, there are moments where the camera and mic had to be turned off. And it was when the person I was interacting with said “this can’t be on the record…I could lose my job” or “I could be attacked if they knew I said this”.

Those moments and the things that were said…if they had been shared in the film or podcast, would have been silver bullets to the werewolves. When you sit down with someone for a feel good documentary about doing the right thing and they look at you and say the truth only when it’s off the record…it really shows you, so starkly-what the world of human relations is really like. It’s so recursive.

The reason I am making the documentary is the same reason that the person can’t come forward. 

The documentary is needed because there are people who can’t tell the truth without facing consequences…monetarily, physically…possibly both.
I am trying to tell a story about how to reverse damage to the very home we live upon but  every environmental story is really a tale of people vs people.

Recursive.

Until we figure out how to escape these shackles…

I think a lot about door locks. On every house. On every car. On most doors to buildings. We say that we live in free societies. We talk about community. Every time I see a door lock I know we haven’t gotten there yet. When you are a person who needs protection from other persons…I don’t know how we call ourselves free at all. It instead only happens in small pockets, micro scale.

I am writing this due to a recent development in my work on the story of The Last Shark.  It’s a documentary movie about one of the main sources of the disappearance of the Great White Shark off the coast of South Africa. Spoiler Alert: It’s people.

I am Co-Director and Editor. And for the 3rd time, since starting work on this movie, I have had to wrestle (today) with the fact, that for others to be involved in this production, they run the risk of experiencing bodily or financial harm.

And it’s because of people. People who have are driven so powerfully by fear that they would seek to crush the truth spoken by others. And that’s recursive. Because what it really shows about the oppressors is that the truth in them has been crushed already.

It’s easy to read this and think that I feel crushed under the weight of being close to these heavy topics. Beaten down and wanting to give up. That is there for sure.

But what I get to do in my work is be close to people who want to tell the truth. And that fucking matters. It matters. Whether they go on record or not isn’t important to me. The point for me is that I get the privilege of interacting with people who take the time to observe, think and care about what is happening around us.

What I also have observed, through the films I have worked on and the podcasts…is that even if the fearful many have the numbers…it doesn’t take more than a few honest voices to help dispel that fear and get people back on the right course.

In closing, the theme of this writing is fear and the word “recursive”. It just occurred to me now that recursive is an adjective that one could use to define how fear works. I think only truth can break that cycle.

The Last Shark is a movie about protecting the Great White Shark. I can’t think of a more feared creature than Great White Sharks. So dispelling and overcoming fear is truly the topic of this film.

Salmonfolk Radio Podcast Updates

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2 new episodes released!

Episode 15! I sit down with Frederik W. Mowinckel, who is related to a family that founded one of Norway’s first salmon farming companies. Though his family exited the industry many years ago, he has an insider’s view to “open net” salmon farming that is rare…Grab a cup of coffee, this is going to be good.

Episode 16! This episode is packed with goodness. Besides our meeting with Dan and Bonny, who are Tofino BC locals and the directors of the fish farm fighting org- Clayoquot Action, you will hear about:

  • The Salmon Guild
  • The new Salmon Economy
  • How nitrogen from Kamchatka ends up in the heartwood of BC trees
  • How a Paris Climate meeting connected Norway to BC
  • How nutrients move uphill against gravity
  • How the Ahousaht First Nation forced a salmon farming company to get a salmon farm out of Ahousat First Nations territory
  • How effective and peaceful leadership has worked for Clayoquot Action
  • And as if it needs repeating…how salmon literally connect everyone and everything

Restorying Great White Sharks

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I simply have to clear my head before I embark on this next project, The Last Shark. Before jumping into dropping the first sequences onto that Premiere Pro timeline tomorrow, there’s just some things I need to work out-otherwise I won’t have a North Star. Come along for the ride…

The topic of this next film is so…intense. And loaded. It’s without a doubt the most public facing film I have ever worked on and the stakes feel really high. 

Here’s where my mind is at…There’s no way to work on deeply involved environmental topics without coming to hate the stupidity of the humans that keep doing the same stupid shit to the planet over and over again. Yeah, I said it. I am just gonna be really blunt. I have made movies about deforestation, open net salmon farming, species loss…and it’s always the same story really. 

When you really look as closely at these topics as you must, in order to make a movie…you get close to the ugly stuff. And we (humans) are always the one’s making the ugly stuff. And it always comes back to the story we are creating from.

My big question whenever I start on a movie, or even a short conservation movie, is how to wrangle my deep disappointment into something positive, into compassion. Because if I allow my anger to come across in the movie, it just results in more anger, not solutions. 

The only way I don’t devolve into hate and embitterment is to dive into the historical record and find context.

I avail myself of the stories most of us have been told…at least in what we call “the Western World”. The problem is that the story we have been told is that we are superior and evolved beings, with all the exploitative privileges that comes with that bearing. 

To find compassion for this perspective, I have to remind myself that I too was raised that way, and for a time fully believed that. 

The true context is that we are technologically advanced but that is where the advancement ends. For most of us, the technological advances all around us serves as evidence of how right we must be about our superiority.

The truth is that species wise, we are still barely past the cusp of tribalism in the most negative sense.  We will fight each other at the drop of a hat or upon the hint of differences in perspective. We will still quickly fight over resources instead of sharing them.

So I like to think about what brought me into seeing the environment in a non-dominant perspective and not separated from it. What changed me was “story”.  I bumped into different stories and presentations of different contexts that showed me something different than the capitalistic love story I grew up with…the one where everyone gets to have whatever they want however they want it. The one where nature and “the environment” is this far off thing that happens in State Parks.  I started to be exposed to stories that asked me “what if it’s better to let natural things live as they wish? What if it’s better to leave something better than you found it, cleaner, more pure, more sacred?”

And so as I embark on editing my fifth feature length conservation focused film, this is what I need to remember and this is the challenge. 

I have to remember that we are crafting a story that can’t blame people for living fearfully and in this case “fear” is very specific. I ask you…is there any animal on this planet that people are more afraid of than a great white shark? Collectively it is likely the most feared creature-most would agree. Are there any blockbuster movies where Great White Sharks are the heroes? Nearly all media portrays great white sharks as aggressive, hungry, human killing, death machines.

So how do we (the filmmakers) use 18 interviews and b-roll to convince a inherently fearful audience that a living shark is more important to them than a dead shark?

I won’t lie, the pressure I feel is real. I’m aware that Frankie (the director) and I are not the last word on this topic and many are pushing back against the anti-shark narrative-and have been for decades. But still, the pressure to create something magical and life-changing, feels pretty large. Also the decimation of sharks is astounding and things have to change quickly. In the ideal world, we are hoping this movie can be a part of restorying people’s relationship with the Great White sharks. 

I came into this project skeptical, just knowing that it was about conservation was enough for me.  But honestly I still lived in fear of great white sharks because of all my cultural storytelling programming. 

When I first came into this project I really didn’t know anything about great white sharks and I know now that after watching and reading the transcripts from our 18 interviews— that my mind is absolutely made up about great white sharks. They are not at all what I thought. I feel…pretty duped by the media. And I also feel that mainstream media should stop what they are doing. The harm is just irreconcilable.

So that’s really what we’re up to here… we are now trying to craft a story that hopefully someone else will bump into, just like I did in my past.  We are hoping that someone might have their mind changed because they’re now telling themselves a true story about Great White Sharks. I think it’s restorative to believe in a story that is actually real. That’s what we need to make.

Sharks, Podcasts, Maps!!!

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I love to write. Which is a shame when I am working so much on so many other things. So for the few who will read this, it’s yet another super short posting here on the old Video Slab site. I am just so busy! And when not standing all day at my standing work station in some new part of the eastern US (at another long term petsitting gig) I am outside playing. Currently I am located in Palm Harbor, Florida…I have named this place the “Strip Mall Capital of the USA”. It’s truly a gross sort of place. Really nice neighborhoods, sure…but everything else is strip malls, tons of traffic, crap drivers and it’s just…let’s just say that coastal Florida has its own unique vibe for sure. But the sunsets over the Gulf of Mexico are life changing. Swimming off of Honeymoon Island is a dream. I love that a LOT.

Okay…I have eggs and toast to make and need to wrap this up pronto.

First up-Movies: I am the editor and asst. director for The Last Shark film and having a blast with it. I have so much more to say but no time to say it! Here is a video I just put together for the cause:

Thing #2-Podcasts!

I ended up not being able to raise the funds for my podcast. I had brought the episodes all the way to completion sans professional sound mastering by my guy, Jay Siebold. Lacking the funds, I decided to just go for it and do my best with my mediocre sound balancing skills. The story has just been waiting too long and salmon are still being farmed everyday….so Jay let me license some of his music and soundbeds for a very modest fee and I am just giving it my best shot. It’s not too shabby. I am releasing episodes every Tuesday! The last two releases have been so satisfying. One of them had 50 listens over the first 2 days. For a podcast with zero marketing, I’ll take those numbers any day. Take a LISTEN.

Here is the cover for that episode:

Thingy #3-Maps!

I have been hired by a non profit to create a map of a watershed, connecting trails, etc. It’s a group I have worked with before. Naturally it’s conservation related. They need these maps available for online and for print, in huge formats as well. Like 20×30 on foam board-huge. So it’s my first time making a 300 dpi large format map. It also means it has to be built from scratch. Adding in all the streets for an entire town around the watershed means I am becoming very friendly with the “shift + pencil” function in Photoshop.

Here is a screenshot of half of the unfinished map so far…

To be honest, I am having a blast doing this map. I am having a good time doing all of the work that I am doing. The map is the only project that I am being paid for though. So at times, that is definitely worrying. Living off of savings brings benefits. I am only working on what I wish to work on. That’s very freeing. The most frustrating part is that we live in a society where the work that conservationists do, is valued so poorly, that most of us are pretty fucking poor.

Well, that’s my update ya’ll. Ciao from the Sunshine Coast of Florida.

Me and Joshua Slocum

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Today’s post is written from the Starbucks in Freeport Maine. I didn’t want to come into town. My perfect perch right along the sleepy bay covered with swirls of white and black stone with hair and beard made of seaweed didn’t want me to leave. But it’s June 5th in Maine and raining constantly and…it’s only 51 degrees.

Things are getting rather damp inside of my tent! I needed to dry out and send a few emails. I also needed to update this website blog as to where things are.

Today’s post is specifically inspired by Joshua Slocum and his sailing sloop, the Spray. I knew I’d be stuck inside my tent for my whole stay, based on the weather reports. So I went to the local bookshop and picked up something, anything, to do with the ocean. I didn’t want something serious. After spending the entire last month focussing on editing 14 episodes (Spoiler Alert: I finished!!) of a podcast related to some difficult environmental topics, I just wanted something escapist to read. I also came to the coast of Maine to be near where salmon used to thrive. I wanted to put my feet in the water in a place connected to where they should be, as a reminder of why I do what I do. So a good book about the ocean seemed fitting. This terrible and good passion (Salmonfolk) has taken me over it seems and I do need time to rejuvenate and a sense of place is important. I put my feet in the cold Maine water and think “salmon need to return here” and thought about how much we don’t even know what they brought with them, when they were here: The sense of returning. The promise of the long view. The long count. All things sorely missing in modern society.

I digress. Sorry. I do that a lot. Slocum…that guy solo sailed around the entire globe in the late 1880s in a boat about 35 feet long. I read in my tent late into last night, sleeping back damp, my feet just wouldn’t dry out…the rain hammered, I could hear the ocean gurgling around the large blocks of stone on the shore nearby. I wondered a lot how Joshua and The Spray were probably never quite dry either. Man…what an adventure. He was also 51 years old when he set out. I am 51 and setting out on this strange adventure. I am houseless. I do petsitting currently to keep my costs super low so any money I make can go straight towards conservation work, Salmonfolk and a few other side projects. I go where the long term housesitting gigs are up and down the East Coast of the USA. It also makes it so that IF I ever get real funding to travel and interview and film then I can go.

Reading through this book made me feel a bit better. I love what I do but yeah…doing a thing you don’t see anyone else doing (living houseless to focus on saving salmon) can be a lonely thing. I will now just pretend I am at the helm of The Spray when feeling out of sorts. However I will make sure to not take Slocum’s other journey…after he returned from sailing around the globe, he later headed for the Orinoco River and never was seen from again. Noted: I will avoid the Orinoco.

So the cat is out of the bag! Yes. I finished!!!!

It feels so amazing to have hit my high water mark for the project. I gave myself one month to finish Season One and I made it with about 24 hours to spare before I had to move to my next house. What is next for me? Now I shift into the zone of seeking funding for the sound design and sound mastering that is critical to making this podcast the best it can be. I have an amazing Sound guy, Jay Siebold. And he produced the existing 5 episodes you can hear on any podcast app but if you don’t have a fave app (or any) then you can easily listen HERE So I will be now be working on securing those essential funds. I have to tell you though…these remaining 14 episodes are just…just!!! I can’t. It’s too hard to describe. You will just have to listen!

Meanwhile, in case you haven’t heard enough from me, here is one more episode from Youtube that I think will interest those of you who wonder how I do the work.

Extending Residency

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Today has been…phew…what has it been? On top of being creative in all sorts of other ways, I am, most unfortunately, also a writer. Not like a famous writer. No no. I assure you. I am the worst kind of writer. I am the kind who has to write in order to process things. It’s like a curse. Always having to write to figure things out. Grab some coffee, this is gonna take a minute.

First of all I like to listen to Kpop when I write. Also you will probably enjoy reading this more if you turn off your punctuation and grammar filter.

Right now I am listening to “EXO 엑소 ‘으르렁 (Growl)’ MV (Korean Ver.)” You are welcome for that link. Enjoy.

Okay so…the podcast. Right? The whole big thing I have set aside this month for. From April 30th-June 4th I had (notice the past tense usage there) set aside this time to finish Season One of Salmonfolk Radio. The remaining content beyond the 5 episodes already released has been languishing on hard drives. Some of that content has been dusting over since 2018…some of it newer content from 2021. I have good reasons for why so much dust but that’s not the point of this post. I am only looking forward.

I know when I am onto something good. I know when I am in possession of something that changes people’s lives. I am not bragging because I am not talking about myself. I am talking about the people who gave their time to me. To be blunt, they are brilliant human beings. These are people you need to know about. They are just looking at the intersection of the natural world and global capitalism and human nature in such relatable and unusual ways. I am so humbled that they spent time with me, a relative stranger (and my cameras and mics) towards the cause of getting fish farms out of the water.

Most of the material I have gone over since April 30th is material I have not heard since the day it was recorded-in 2018. And it’s just…GOD…it’s SO good!! I had no idea until now. I had forgotten how rich it all is. I find myself thinking “holy shit…people need to know about this!”

I have Episodes 6-8 done! I am not releasing any of the new episodes though until I have full funding for sound mastering. So done…but sorta not quite done. My side of the job at least is done there. I am working on Episode 9. I think Season One will end up having about 16 episodes. And everyone dang one of them worth your time.

I have been a veteran now of many enviro campaigns. I have interviewed so many other long haul enviro folks. They all have one thing in common: longevity. It takes years or even decades to make change happen.

I look at the calendar and see June 4th looming-and I know that’s not long enough.

I also know that after June 4th I currently have no idea where I will be living. Money isn’t awful. I have some small amount in savings and I have some very small side jobs trickling in. To keep my costs down, so that I can run off my savings for as long as possible, I am housesitting and petsitting. It’s how I can afford to do what I am doing this month.

I can mostly finish Season One by June 4th…(minus the sound design and mastering) but that is not what it takes to have this podcast be heard by enough change makers. What I need is time for these things to happen:

  1. How to best market and gain listenership for a podcast that has global implications. Seeking someone who has experience connecting with larger players in the world of podcasting.
  2. How to best approach companies for sponsorships, build alliances. This podcast has interviews with fisherman, eco philosophers, scientists and activists from around the world. A lot of outdoor brands I think would want to be a part of the positive messaging. Oh..and it’s also a travelogue, so lots of outdoorsy explorations.
  3. Finding fiscal sponsors for this ocean conservation work so I can attract more donations.
  4. Network with fish farm fighters around the globe.
  5. Tie in the online world wide premiere of Being Salmon Being Human the movie on 11/3/2023.

My current dedicated $$ on hand? $0

My current committment to making all this work happen? 100%

Without an investment made in time spent, Salmonfolk Radio will not be able to do the work it needs to do.

I need longer than a month to make this all happen.

My plan now is to keep this “conservationist in residency” mission going for longer. My kids are grown. I am single. I am relatively healthy (no serious health care costs currently). I have a working car that is paid off. I have nearly zero debt. I am going to continue housesitting and petsitting gigs at least until the end of August. I just locked in a gig that will last most of August. Now to fill in June 15th til July 26th somewhere on the East Coast.

It’s kind of a big deal for me to let go of applying for “real” jobs…to hope that this all works out and I don’t end up broke.

It means not having employer sponsored health care. But when I consider the opposite of this…that is how the world doesn’t change. When we are all on that wheel of having to have the job, having to pay the rent, having to live that way and have those jobs that just don’t make anything of actual value—we unmake the world that we don’t have time to value any longer. And eventually it will be gone. So I am sort of jumping off into really embracing trying to do this differently. I am, for however long that I can, trying to restory my role here.

I am not special. There are thousands of people, probably millions, who would absolutely dedicate themselves to doing similar work. But this isn’t the kind of “work” that our culture values with $$. I just happen be free enough in my life, right now, where I can attempt this approach.

Well thanks for listening to my TedTalk. #rantover.

If you would like to help me stay on this path here is my Patreon.

Here is a screenshot of Episode 8’s timeline after I was done today!

New Video Series

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Something I have also been doing while on my residency in VT is making a series of videos related to saving Bolin Creek. I tried to wrap it all up before my Salmonfolk month began but I didn’t quite make it. It’s okay though. I made the time. I had to, because the notion to pave along Bolin Creek keeps coming up. I won’t go into all the details here because I am tired and have been editing Salmonfolk Radio Episode 8 while also trying to figure out where on Earth I am going to live next after I leave my current housesitting gig on June 4th lol.

I am just stopping by to drop this link https://bolinforestclimateaction.org/videos/

All the videos on that new website about saving Bolin Forest are ones that I put together. It’s always tempting to stop there…with the words “the ones that I put together”. But we all stand on other’s shoulders. All of our knowledge and hopefully some wisdom, usually is on loan from those who came before us. I don’t have a video if I don’t have an interview subject. All the ideas that I worked into the video series you see there, all came from locals who worked hard to acquire their knowledge. There is also deep institutional knowledge about the topic that only folks who have been around for decades can bring to bear. I am the one that synthesizes and streamlines all that into a single video or three…but when working with non-profits…on an important cause, I find that I get to see that village that everyone keeps saying is required.

I am quite proud to have been able to make videos that the group felt strongly enough about to place on their website. I hope the vids make a difference in the fight to Keep Bolin Creek Wild.

Screenshot of a portion of the page below:

Salmonfolk Radio Ep 6&7 Done!

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My “conservationist in residency” is going amazingly well! It’s hard to find the time to do all the editing to the Salmonfolk Radio podcast AND to also post updates on a budget of $0 and doing everything solo. But I wanted to at least say something here. I have brought Episode 6 and 7 to life. The only thing they are missing is the sound design and mastering.

This means that I could technically release them now. But I feel committed to the path of having high quality sound mastering done by Jay Siebold. More and more I find that this process of podcasting is the story, the fuller story. Originally designed as a film project, I would have had to cut 95% of every single interview in order to fit it into a film…or even a film series. Stumbling into making my filmed interviews into a podcast has breathed unexpected life into every single person I met with…all the nuance is revived and made new. It’s the full story that I always wanted to convey. And mainly…it provides impact. It just fucking delivers and I can’t wait to get the funding to have these 100% completed soon.

6 and 7 wrap up my Day 3 on Van Isle in 2018, when I was there filming. What’s fun is that I have great images to go with social media drops for every episode. So once I get more organized I plan to have separate show pages with descriptions and visual for each episode.

Here is Martin, Torgeir and Georgiana…at the end of Day 3. After touring salmon habitats all day long, we enjoyed a fresh caught salmon (from the Eve River) and roasted corn in the husk. Sitting at Harmony Shores Campground on Malcom Island. Such a beautiful way to end our day. This story is so rich! I can’t wait for the world to hear it.