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2011 Conversations at The New School at Commonweal

Physicist Tom Nash
Our Particular Universe: Understanding What We Know, What We Don't Know (Yet), and What May Only Allow Informed Speculation (Dec 29, 2011)

Eric Karpeles with readings by Melissa Smith
Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It (Dec 18, 2011)

Cam Trowbridge
Point Reyes and Marconi's Dream Around-the-World Wireless Network (Nov 10, 2011)

Rebecca Katz and Jeanne Wallace, PhD
The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen (Nov 3, 2011)

Robert Hass, Eric Karpeles, and Volunteer Readers
Community Reading of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself (Oct 23, 2011)

David Spangler
Apprenticed to Spirit (Oct 21, 2011)

Richard Heinberg
The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality (Sept 18, 2011)

Arjun Makhijani
Carbon-Free and Nuclear Free: A Design for U.S. Energy Policy (Aug 31, 2011)

Kate Levinson
Emotional Currency: A Women's Guide to Building a Healthy Relationship with Money (Aug 28, 2011)

End-of-Life World Cafe
Special Event - no recording (Aug 26, 2011)

Tomas Howlin and Shorey Myers
Argentine Tango: A Modern Contemplative Practice (Aug 17, 2011)

Orland Bishop
Spiritual Biography (June 25, 2011)

Anna Deavere Smith and Eric Karpeles
Listening between the Lines (June 23, 2011)

Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, and Kristina Flanagan
Goddess Archetypes in the Ring Cycle and in Us: Psychological, Political, and Spiritual Parallels (June 12, 2011)

Frank Ostaseski
Being a Compassionate Companion - End of Life Conversations Series (May 1, 2011)

Sarah Hobson
Working with Women in Sub-Saharan Africa (Mar 16, 2011)

Steve Heilig
The Modern Evolution of Death - End of Life Conversations Series (Mar 6, 2011)

U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin
Reading and Conversation with Eric Karpeles (Feb. 13, 2011)

Gregory Orr
The Blessing: Poetry as Survival (Feb 11, 2011)

Dr. Margaret Kripke
Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk (Feb 7, 2011)

Dr. Stuart Lord
East-West Contemplative Education at Naropa University (Feb 1, 2011)

Peter Kingsley
The Great Taboo: A Story Waiting to Pierce You (Jan 21, 2011)

 

 

Thursday, December 29, 2011
2-4 pm

A Conversation with Physicist Tom Nash

Our Particular Universe: Understanding What We Know, What We Don't Know (Yet), and What May Only Allow Informed Speculation

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

See article about the event on Michael Lerner's blog.

Tom Nash is now an emeritus scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where he spent more than 30 years as an experimental high-energy and astro physicist, a high-performance computer developer, and finally as associate director for Computing and Technology. He is presently a member of the California Institute of Technology group collaborating on the LIGO Gravitational Wave Project. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Amazingly, he speaks English and can help us understand some challenging, very current, and surprisingly related subjects. These include:

• The conceptually difficult "Standard Model" and the much in the news search for its final undiscovered prediction, the Higgs Boson (aka the "God" particle);
• Stephen Hawkings's beautiful book The Grand Design about the structure of the universe and the suggestions that there is a multi-universe, of which ours, The Universe, is just one of a huge number;
• The technically heroic search, in which Tom is participating, for gravitational waves, perhaps including some from The Beginning.

He's a lot of fun to talk with. Join us for a New School Conversation.

 

 

Sunday, December 18
2-4 pm

ELIZABETH BISHOP: Life and the Memory of It
Presented by Eric Karpeles
with readings by Melissa Smith

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

The embrace of Elizabeth Bishop's modest but exacting body of work into the canon of English literature continues unimpeded. In her lifetime (1911-1979) she was admired and celebrated, acclaimed by fellow poet John Ashbery as "a writer's writer's writer," but it is only since her death that her influence on the literary arts of her time has been fully recognized.

A troubled life was marked by struggle and pain, while her inspirited poetry was painstakingly crafted by determination and integrity. She paid dearly for the precious poetic jewels a now-wider readership has begun to evaluate and treasure. A fascinating prose writer and a phenomenal correspondent, Bishop wrote in whatever medium her voice allowed, always frustrated that there were not more poems emerging from her.

Painter and writer Eric Karpeles will present a talk about Bishop as a celebration at the end of her centenary year, discussing her work, her life, and the world through which she moved. Integrated into Karpeles's talk, Melissa Smith will read poems and excerpts from Bishop's stories and letters.

 

 

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Cam Trowbridge
Point Reyes and Marconi's Dream Around-the-World Wireless Network

Download the presentation slides here (PDF). Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

This conversation and presentation, held at the Point Reyes National Park's Red Barn, focused on Guglielmo Marconi's construction and operation of two wireless radio stations in the Point Reyes area between 1912 and 1919. Marconi's ambitions and business acumen, the topic of his 2010 book, will be explained in relation to the Point Reyes sites near Bolinas and Marshall that could connect wirelessly with Hawaii.

In 1916, service to Hawaii opened, and, through Hawaii, to Japan. In World War I, the U.S. Navy took over operation of stations owned by American Marconi, a subsidiary of British Marconi. In 1919, after World War I, the United States government, led by the U.S. Navy, forced British Marconi to sell American Marconi to General Electric and its subsidiary, the Radio Corporation of America, thereby ending Marconi's participation in the California stations.

Calvin (Cam) D. Trowbridge, Jr., is the author of Marconi: Father of Wireless, Grandfather of Radio, Great-Grandfather of the Cell Phone, The Story of the Race to Control Long-Distance Wireless. He has spent forty years in the corporate field observing, analyzing, managing, and writing about international, legal, and financial affairs, marketing and personnel concerns, development, and other critical issues. He has been engaged with start-ups, conglomerates, as well as mature companies. Trowbridge is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Yale University, and Harvard Law School. He has lived in England and the northeast coast of the United States and, like Marconi, has a deep love for the sea. To prepare for writing the in-depth biography, Trowbridge studied Marconi's texts, historical events of the time, biographies of scientists and businessmen relevant to Marconi, and financial reports of Marconi companies.

 

 

Thursday, November 3, 2011
2-4 pm

Rebecca Katz and Jeanne Wallace, PhD
The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen

Download the presentation slides here (PDF). Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

A cancer diagnosis is shocking, disorienting, and capable of scrambling anybody’s mental GPS—not to mention their culinary compass. To find a stabilizing force, a grounding activity such as cooking and eating well can provide more than nourishment; it can offer a huge psychological boost.

When you get a cancer diagnosis, suddenly you become a very powerless person. A nutritional plan can give a sense of empowerment. So many common foods—everything from broccoli to blueberries—have multiple cancer-fighting properties, including everyday herbs and spices ranging from ginger to cinnamon to turmeric. In addition to supporting you nutritionally, they can help quell side effects ranging from nausea to fatigue.

Discover the "power of yum"—great nutrition and great taste joining together joyously on the same plate.

• Learn diet strategies that strengthen the body's resistance to cancer, complement medical care, and bolster recovery after treatment
• Discover specific foods that can significantly boost the body's innate ability to resist cancer
• Understand which foods are most important to avoid (and explore healthy substitutes)
• Learn how some foods (and spices) can alter gene expression, turning off cancer promoting signals in the body

Rebecca Katz is a nationally recognized expert on the role of food in supporting health during cancer treatment. Rebecca has a masters of science degree in Health and Nutrition Education, and received her culinary training from New York's Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts. As a consultant, speaker, teacher, and chef, Rebecca works closely with patients, physicians, nurses, and wellness professionals to include the powerful tool of nutrition in their medical arsenal. Rebecca is the executive chef for The Center for Mind-Body Medicine's Food As Medicine and CancerGuides® Professional Training Programs, which attracts the country's top cancer wellness physicians, nurses, social workers, and researchers. She is also visiting chef and nutrition educator at Commonweal's Cancer Help Program. Rebecca is author of The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen: Nourishing Big-Flavor Recipes for Cancer Treatment and Beyond, and One Bite at a Time: Nourishing Recipes for Cancer Survivors and their Friends. Her website has more information.

Jeanne M. Wallace, PhD, CNC, is widely regarded as one of the nation's most prominent experts in nutritional oncology. She is the founder and director of Nutritional Solutions, which provides consulting to cancer patients throughout the United States and abroad about evidence-based dietary, nutritional, and botanical support to complement conventional cancer care. She completed her undergrad studies magna cum laude at Boston University, earned her Nutrition Consulting degree at Bauman College in Santa Cruz, CA, and completed her PhD in Nutrition through American State University. She is an independent consultant to oncologists, naturopaths, and other health care providers working with cancer patients, and has provided educational training to numerous integrative cancer centers. Her life's mission is to empower those facing cancer...with powerful anti-cancer tools at farmer's markets, in backyard garden plots, kitchens, and, hopefully, on your fork!

 

 

Sunday, October 23, 2011
2-4 pm

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass and Local Readers
Reading of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself

Organized by Eric Karpeles, co-presented by Point Reyes Books

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

In 1855, Whitman published 795 copies of his book Leaves of Grass, paying for publication himself. "Song of Myself," as it came to be known, was the first experiment in long, free-verse poetry—a poem that former U.S. poet laureate and Whitman scholar Robert Hass calls, "the most unprecedented poem in the English language." The poem is Whitman's "song" about democracy and imagination, life and death.

Using the 52 numbered sections of the 1891 "Deathbed" edition, local volunteers read Walt Whitman's Song of Myself in its entirety.

 

 

Friday, October 21, 2011

David Spangler
Apprenticed to Spirit

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

Since 1964, David Spangler has been an author and teacher of spirituality. In 1970 he visited the Findhorn Foundation community in Northern Scotland where he was invited to become its co-director and to be a teacher-in-residence. He lived and worked in the community until 1973, becoming the founder of its educational program. Along with several friends and colleagues from Findhorn, he returned to the United States in 1973, and in 1974 he joined with them to create the Lorian Association, a non-profit spiritual educational foundation.

His recent book, Apprenticed to Spirit, is a memoir of David's journey to understanding how we can learn to lead lives of greater blessing and to be sources of blessing and service for the world as a whole. In the book, David documents his encounter in 1965 with an extraordinary presence, which he named "John," and which over the next quarter-century would be his colleague and mentor, assisting him in exploring the "inner worlds" of the spirit. No ordinary teacher, John was David's guide to comprehending the sacredness within us, and he helped build partnerships with the spiritual worlds. John tutored him in some of the most basic mysteries of life and the nature of the human spirit.

David's other books include Emergence; The Call; Everyday Miracles; Parent as Mystic, Mystic as Parent; Blessing: The Art and the Practice; The Story Tree; Manifestation: Creating the Life You Love; and The Incarnation Card Deck.

 

Sunday, September 18, 2011
2-4 pm

Richard Heinberg
The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

Co-presented with the Post Carbon Institute, Point Reyes Books, the Regenerative Design Institute, Transition West Marin, and the Mainstreet Moms

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

Economics has failed us . . . but there is life after growth!

Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. Richard Heinberg's latest book, The End of Growth, proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits.

Richard maintains that growth is being blocked by resource depletion, environmental impacts, and crushing levels of debt. These converging limits will force us to re-evaluate cherished economic theories and to reinvent money and commerce.

In conversation with Michael Lerner, Richard explores the ongoing financial crisis—explaining how and why it occurred; what we must do to avert the worst potential outcomes; and what policy makers, communities, and families can do to build a new economy that operates within Earth’s budget of energy and resources.

Richard Heinberg is the author of ten books—including The Party’s Over, Peak Everything, and The End of Growth—and a senior fellow-in-residence at Post Carbon Institute. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s most effective communicators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels. With a wry, unflinching approach based on facts and realism, Richard exposes the tenuousness of our current way of life and offers a vision for a truly sustainable future.

 

Wednesday, August 31, 2011
2-4 pm

Arjun Makhijani in Conversation with Michael Lerner

Carbon-Free and Nuclear Free: A Design for U.S. Energy Policy

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

Arjun Makhijani is an eminent researcher on energy, nuclear weapons, and environmental issues. His work is strongly endorsed by Helen Caldicott, M.D., among many others. He is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, and author of Carbon-Free and Nuclear Free—A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy and Ecology and Genetics: An Essay on the Nature of Life and the Problem of Genetic Engineering, among other books and pamplets.

 

 

Sunday, August 28, 2011
2-4 pm

Kate Levinson in Conversation with Susan Braun

Emotional Currency: A Woman's Guide to Building a Healthy Relationship with Money

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Watch the video of this conversation.

The emotional connection that we all have with money is undeniable. Whether we feel comfortable with it and understand how it works in the world or ignore our finances completely, there is a strong psychological dimension to our personal dealings with money. But there is also a strong taboo about discussing personal details around money—what we earn, what we save, and what we spend—that has contributed to women, in particular, feeling financially isolated and vulnerable.

Through her own experiences and her longtime work as a psychotherapist, Kate Levinson has come to understand the ways that money and emotions are intricately entwined. In Emotional Currency, she provides an insightful and empowering guide that explores money in terms of feeling and our relationships with ourselves and others. Using real-life examples from years of her Emotional Currency workshops and from her psychotherapy practice, Kate helps readers come to terms with their family’s financial history, reveals how old habits and ideas affect present-day patterns, and offers fresh ideas to help women make smarter financial decisions.

Kate Levinson is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a Ph. D. in Clinical Psychology. In addition to her private practice in Oakland, California, she leads Emotional Currency ™ Workshops on the psychological and emotional aspects of money. She has presented in numerous settings on money and psychology and is on the faculty at the Psychotherapy Institute in Berkeley. Her dissertation was entitled, "Work Attitudes of Women with Inherited Wealth." She is the owner, along with her husband, of Point Reyes Books, an independent bookstore. Her website has more information.

Kate Levinson in Conversation with Susan Braun from emotional currency on Vimeo.

 

 

Friday, August 26, 2011, 2-5pm

 

SPECIAL EVENT: End-of-Life World Cafe

No podcast available.

World Cafe is a powerful social technology for engaging people in conversations that matter. It is a process developed in the Mill Valley living room of New School friends Juanita Brown and David Isaacs in 1995, and has spread around the world as an effective and heart-full method of bringing people together in dialogue. Participating in a World Cafe event is an amazing experience in and of itself - the outcomes of the dialogue bring people together and are often surprising.

Join us for this special event where we explore our relationship to the end of life, gather the collective wisdom on these issues, and provide direction for The New School end-of-life programming using the World Cafe dialogue process. Stay for the potluck dinner afterward!

 

 

Wednesday, August 17, 2011
2-4 pm

Tomas Howlin and Shorey Myers
Argentine Tango: A Modern Contemplative Practice

No podcast available.

Argentine Tango—like other modern styles of expressive movement—can be an interface between imagination, memory, and physicality. The awareness, connection, and creative expression that comes from experiencing expressive movement changes our relationships with our surroundings in a drastic way. Developing these skills can help you to more accurately understand and interact in the leading and following roles that arise in your daily activities and exchanges.

During this experiential event at The New School, Tomas and Shorey led us into the world of Argentine Tango, using expressive movement to increase listening skills, physically express intention, and enrich our ability to be present with ourselves and others. The afternoon included an exploration of the rhythmicality and lyristicity of tango (musical expressions using the body) as well as the possibility of using leader and follower roles as a cycle of interaction. The event included a combination of singular and partnered exercises, conversation, video presentation, and group discussion. Their website has more information.

Tomas Howlin was born and brought up in Buenos Aires. Using his experience of nearly 20 years of teaching and performing throughout Argentina, North America, and Europe, Tomas creates a bridge that links traditional tango with the newer tendencies. He is also founding member and co-creator of the first teacher-training program in North America. Tomas has had the privilege of studying and assisting some of the greatest teachers of all time during the rebirth of tango in Argentina and has also studied Martha Graham Dance Technique, Alexander Technique, and Feldenkrais Technique. He was trained at the University of Tango in Buenos Aires. He taught for several years for the University of Buenos Aires and has presented workshops for Shambhala International and the University of Miami at Cincinnati.

Shorey Myers was captured by the music and beauty of tango at a young age. Instantly enraptured, she began to travel all over the country and world in search of the perfect tango connection. She is also a famous and devoted tango DJ, well-versed in music recorded during tango's Golden Era, and she is renowned for her ability to keep the party going until the wee hours.

 

Friday, June 25, 2011
10am-4pm

Orland Bishop in Conversation with Michael Lerner
Spiritual Biography

Download the audio file in four parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. Or subscribe to our podcasts.

Orland Bishop is best known as the founder of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles. He mentors young people and has worked on sustaining historic gang truces for many years. He also lectures on many social and spiritual questions in the United States and internationally. Orland integrates wisdom traditions from Guyana, Africa, and the West. In this remarkable series of four interconnected conversations, we trace Bishop's spiritual biography from his childhood in Guyana to his teen years in Brooklyn, his college years in California, and the subsequent conscious emergence of his shamanic journey. These conversations with Michael Lerner took place on Saturday, June 25, 2011, in the presence of a small group of friends at The New School at Commonweal.

 

Thursday, June 23, 2011
2-4 pm

Anna Deavere Smith in Conversation with Eric Karpeles

Listening Between the Lines

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

Observation is one of the most exacting skills every artist must cultivate. For a writer, listening is critical to the process of transmuting observed reality into art. Playwright and performer Anna Deavere Smith has shaped a singular career mining the riches of both spoken and unspoken language. Honoring her sources, she has developed an idiosyncratic theatrical form that is composed exclusively of verbatim texts hobbled together from years of interviews with both ordinary and extraordinary people. Her journey has led her through riot-torn streets and up academic ivory towers, encountering a dazzling cross-section of American individuals. Her current production, “Let Me Down Easy” is centered on the drama of the human body and its rough handling in the hands of the medical-industrial complex. Performances at Berkeley Rep run through June 26th, 2011.

Anna Deavere Smith is a poet, teacher, actor, and playwright. Her explosive theater works about race in America—Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles 1992—garnered considerable acclaim. Television and film credits include Nurse Jackie, The West Wing, The American President and The Human Stain. A professor at NYU, Smith is founder of The Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue and has taught at Harvard and Stanford. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1996.

 

 

Sunday, June 12, 2011,2-4 pm

Conversation with Jean Shinoda Bolen and Kristina Flanagan

Goddess Archetypes in the Ring Cycle and in Us: Psychological, Political, and Spiritual Parallels

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

The New School at Commonweal and Point Reyes Books are pleased to present this engaging event for lovers of archetype, myth, opera, and Jung.

Join Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, and Kristina Flanagan in a lively discussion with Michael Lerner about the goddesses in Wagner's Ring Cycle. This year's SF Opera presents a powerful interpretation of Die Walkure, showing Brunhilde’s evolution from an archetypal Athena into a “true hero,” a woman with courage and compassion, free of being an extension of her father. Fricka and Freya have qualities that connect them to a diminished Hera and Aphrodite. There are strong parallels between patriarchy’s effect on the planet, and the end of the World Ash Tree and Erda’s wisdom. Wagner’s genius is in the multiple levels of meaning.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, is a Jungian analyst , psychiatrist, and author. Her book, Ring of Power: Love vs. Power in the Ring Cycle and in Us, connects archetypal psychology, dysfunctional family psychology, and patriarchy. The archetypes she described in Goddesses in Everywoman and Gods in Everyman—based on Greek myths—transfer readily from Zeus on Olympus to Wotan and Valhalla. The symbol of the World Ash and the deeper significance of it is in her new book, Like a Tree: How Trees, Women, and Tree People Can Save the Planet. Find out more at her website.

Kristina Flanagan has been serving the San Francisco Opera as director of the Opera Association since 2007 and chair of development for the Medallion Society. She also serves on the advisory board for the Petaluma Arts Council and the Airlift Foundation, and is a member of the Stinson Beach/Bolinas Community Foundation. She has two wonderful grown daughters, Caitlin and Zoe Flanagan, and a beloved former husband, Daniel Flanagan, former chairperson of Frameline, LGBT film society, and CEO of Friends of the Urban Forest.

Sunday, May 1, 2011, 2-4pm
Frank Ostaseski—Being A Compassionate Companion

TNS End of Life Conversations Series

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

Caring for people who are dying can be an intense, intimate, and deeply alive experience. It often challenges our most basic beliefs. It is a journey of continuous discovery, requiring courage and flexibility. We learn to open, take risks, and forgive constantly. Taken as a practice of awareness, it can reveal both our deep clinging and our capacity to embrace another person's suffering as our own.

This conversation aims at supporting professionals or those caring for family members or friends facing life-threatening illness.

In 1987, Frank Ostaseski helped form the Zen Hospice Project, the first Buddhist hospice in America. In 2004, he created Metta Institute to broaden this work and seed the culture with innovative approaches to end-of-life care that reaffirm the spiritual dimensions of dying. A primary project of Metta Institute is the End-of-Life Care Practitioner Program that Frank leads with faculty members Ram Dass, Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, and many others.

The End of Life Conversations are co-presented by The New School at Commonweal and the Coastal Health Alliance.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 3-5pm
Conversation with Sarah Hobson

Working with Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

When Sarah Hobson travels in the developing world and sees green hills, she wants to walk into them. She is drawn to peasant villages untouched by modern life. In the 1970s Sarah disguised herself as a boy and traveled through Iran alone. She wrote a book about it. As a documentarian, writer, and foundation director, Sarah has devoted herself to women in peasant communities around the world. Now executive director of the New Field Foundation, she is supporting village women in Sub-Saharan Africa in their quest for sustainable livelihoods. In this interview at The New School at Commonweal, Sarah talks about her adventures, her philanthropic strategy, and her efforts to balance family and work.

Sarah Hobson is a writer, documentary film-maker, and foundation director. A West Marin resident, Hobson is author of Through Iran in Disguise and executive director of New Field Foundation, which supports rural women creating change in sub-Saharan Africa. Hobson previously served as executive director of International Development Exchange (IDEX), partnering with community organizations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America on grassroots economic development. She is founder and trustee of Open Channels, a British nonprofit working with indigenous peoples in Africa to define their lands, resources, and rights. Hobson is author, contributor and editor of eight books and producer of many documentaries for television. She is a mother and grandmother, with a strong sense of the critical issues facing the world today.  

Sunday, March 6, 2011, 2-4pm
Steve Heilig—The Modern Evolution of Death

TNS End of Life Conversations Series

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

For the past century or so, more humans than ever before have lived in a historical bubble of relative affluence, medical sophistication, philosophical discussion, and unprecedented longevity. Modern times have had significant impacts on how we think and feel about death, and what we try to do about it. The limits of our lives and our technologies have raised many questions, most still unanswered.

You won't get many, if any, of those answers from this discussion, but we seek to shed some light on the ways sophisticated, modern people confront death and dying in our times.

Steve Heilig is director of Public Health and Education for the San Francisco Medical Society and the Collaborative on Health and the Environment at Commonweal, co-editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, and a clinical ethicist at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.

He is also a trained hospice worker and former volunteer and director of the Zen Hospice Project. A longtime book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications, he has authored over 400 pieces on a wide range of medical, public health, ecological, literary, and other topics.

The End of Life Conversations are co-presented by The New School at Commonweal and the Coastal Health Alliance.

Sunday, February 13, 2011
2-4 pm

Reading and conversation with
United States Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin

Commonweal Gallery

The videotape of this event cannot be downloaded, but you can watch it on Point Reyes Books' website. No podcast is available.

The New School at Commonweal and Point Reyes Books hosted this special event, featuring U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin reading his poetry and in conversation with Eric Karpeles.

In a career spanning five decades, W.S. Merwin, poet, translator, and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read—and imitated—poets in America. The son of a Presbyterian minister, for whom he began writing hymns at the age of five, Merwin went to Europe as a young man and developed a love of languages that led to work as a literary translator. Over the years, his poetic voice has moved from the more formal and medieval—influenced somewhat by Robert Graves and the medieval poetry he was then translating—to a more distinctly American voice, following his two years in Boston where he got to know Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Adrienne Rich, and Donald Hall, all of whom were breaking out of the rhetoric of the 1950s.

W.S. Merwin’s recent poetry is perhaps his most personal, arising from his deeply held beliefs. He is not only profoundly anti-imperialist, pacifist, and environmentalist, but also possessed by an intimate feeling for landscape and language and the ways in which land and language interflow. His latest poems are densely imagistic and full of an intimate awareness of the natural world. He was named United States Poet Laureate for 2010-2011 and is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and National Book Award-winning poet and essayist.

Eric Karpeles and U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin at the New School February 13, 2011. (photo Marianne Hale)

The Blessing: Poetry as Survival
Conversation with Gregory Orr

February 11, 2011

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

Gregory Orr was born in 1947 in Albany, New York, and grew up in the rural Hudson Valley. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, including How Beautiful the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2009); Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved (2005); The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems (2002); Orpheus and Eurydice (2001); Burning the Empty Nests (1997); City of Salt (1995), which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Poetry Prize; and Gathering the Bones Together (1975).

He is also the author of a memoir, The Blessing (Council Oak Books, 2002), which was chosen by Publisher's Weekly as one of the fifty best non-fiction books the year, and three books of essays, including Poetry As Survival (2002) and Stanley Kunitz: An Introduction to the Poetry (1985).

He is considered by many to be a master of short, lyric free verse. Much of his early work is concerned with seminal events from his childhood, including a hunting accident when he was twelve in which he accidentally shot and killed his younger brother, followed shortly by his mother's unexpected death, and his father's later addiction to amphetamines.

Orr has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and two poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2003, he was presented the Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a Rockefeller Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Culture and Violence, where he worked on a study of the political and social dimension of the lyric in early Greek poetry.

Read more about Gregory Orron Poets.org.

WARNING: Because of the subject matter, listeners should be prepared for what is, to some, emotionally difficult content.

Monday, February 7, 2011, 6-8pm
Dr. Margaret Kripke: Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk
Ft. Mason Center, San Francisco

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts. Download the transcript of the conversation (PDF).

Margaret L. Kripke, Ph.D., recently co-authored a pioneering Report on Cancer and the Environment as a member of the President's Cancer Panel. This report has reverberated through the global public health community as the first authoritative science-based report to recognize the contribution of environmental factors in cancer. She consented to this interview with Jeanne Rizzo (president of the Breast Cancer Fund), Susan Braun (executive director of Commonweal), and Michael Lerner (co-founder of Commonweal), shortly before she spoke to a large audience at Fort Mason in San Francisco about her experience on the President's Cancer Panel.

Co-presented by The New School at Commonweal and the Breast Cancer Fund.

Margaret L. Kripke, Ph.D., is a professor of immunology and executive vice president and chief academic officer of the University of Texas MD Anderson Medical Center. She was appointed to the President’s Cancer Panel by President George W. Bush and is currently serving her second term.

East-West Contemplative Education at Naropa University
Conversation with Dr. Stuart Lord

February 1, 2011

Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.

Dr. Lord, president of Naropa University, talks about his journey from being a foster child to leading America's foremost center of contemplative education. Dr. Lord previously led civic education, community service and religious and spiritual life programs at both Dartmouth College and DePauw University, where he guided relief efforts in New Hampshire’s Upper Valley, the Mississippi Delta and the areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. He has also worked in Bangladesh, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Sierra Leone. Dr. Lord brings a unique voice to the contemplative community with a strong focus on reaching out to serve low income communities and communities of color.

Dr. Stuart C. Lord, a nationally recognized expert in service learning, multicultural and spiritual education, and leadership and ethics became the fifth president of Naropa University on July 1, 2009.

Dr. Lord, 49, has helped foster the growth and advancement of many communities as both educator and humanitarian. He has served as an administrator and managed civic education, community service and religious and spiritual life programs at both Dartmouth College and DePauw University. In these positions, Dr. Lord developed programs that aid under-resourced domestic communities, including New Hampshire’s Upper Valley, the Mississippi Delta and the areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. He has also perennially led international service trips to developing nations around the world, including Bangladesh, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Sierra Leone. In addition, Dr. Lord served as executive director of the 1997 President’s Summit for America’s Future, working under General Colin Powell during the Clinton administration.

During his time at Dartmouth College, Dr. Lord served as associate provost (2000-present), interim vice president for institutional diversity (2006–07) and Virginia Rice Kelsey ‘61S Dean of the Tucker Foundation (2000–08). As associate provost, Dr. Lord worked on initiatives for institutional planning within the Provost Division to enhance staff development, retention and recruitment in support of diversity.

The Great Taboo: A Story Waiting to Pierce You
Conversation with Peter Kingsley

January 21, 2011

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Peter Kingsley is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on the origins of western spirituality, philosophy and culture. Through his writings as well as lectures he speaks straight to the heart and has helped to transform many people's understanding not only of the past, but of who they are.

He is the author of four books which, in the space of only a few years, have exerted the profoundest and most far-reaching influence outside as well as inside academia. He lectures very widely -- speaking to Native American elders and physicists, professional scholars and followers of different spiritual traditions, healers and medical practitioners as well as people who very simply are aware of the need to wake up to a reality greater than the one we are used to. His new book, about the forgotten connections between Mongolia, Tibet and the origins of western civilization, became available in November 2010.

After graduating with honors from the University of Lancaster, England, in 1975, Peter Kingsley went on to receive the degree of Master of Letters from King's College Cambridge before being awarded a PhD by the University of London. He has worked together with many of the most prominent figures in the fields of classics and anthropology, philosophy and religious studies, ancient civilizations and the history of both healing and science. The recipient of numerous academic awards, he was a Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London and has been made an honorary Professor both at Simon Fraser University in Canada and at the University of New Mexico. With his wife, Maria, he emigrated from England to Canada in 1995, then from Canada to the United States in 2002.