Someone to Watch over Earth

Image: NASA

Neil Armstrong, an American astronaut and the first man to walk on the Moon, once said of his journey, “It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

In many ways, the university’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies was created four decades ago to watch over that tiny pea. The institute has played a steadfast leadership role in this arena, from examining local concerns about Madison’s lakes to tackling the global issues of climate change. The institute adopted its current name in 2002 to honor the late Gaylord Nelson LLB’42, former Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator, and the founder of Earth Day.

As both the institute and Earth Day reach fortieth anniversaries in 2010, On Wisconsin looks at how compelling films can build awareness of environmental issues and notes the UW’s remarkable connection to three of the most influential environmentalists in American history. To commemorate these milestones, the institute is sponsoring a public conference, Earth Day at 40, and an environment-themed concert at the Overture Center for the Arts, both in April.

In addition, a traveling mini-festival is planned to continue conversations about the environment that began during the 2009 Tales from Planet Earth, a festival that featured fifty films from around the world. (See story, below.) This spring, the Wisconsin Humanities Council is hosting Making It Home film festivals in Baraboo, Dodgeville, Milwaukee, and the Ashland/Bayfield area in Wisconsin. Following the films, people will discuss what defines their homes and communities, their cultural and historical ties, and environmental and social-justice challenges they face.

Jesse Mursky-Fuller x’11 (left) works with Maggie Flamingo PhDx’11 to edit a video project as part of a class offered last fall. Students learned how to use the artistry of film to convey messages about the environment, and to then spur audience members to apply what they’ve learned to tackle problems at the community level. Photo: Jeff Miller

Making a Reel Difference

Take one environmental film festival, add two classes of enthusiastic students, and mix with community groups in need of partners.

Gregg Mitman believes in the power of film to change lives. He should — he’s living proof that a good tale, told with passion and heart, can influence the way an audience regards our planet.

As a youngster, Mitman MA’84, PhD’88 was enthralled by the 1960s television programs The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and Flipper. That early enthusiasm led to a degree in biology and graduate degrees in the history of science, and today, Mitman is interim director of the UW’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

Ten years ago, he published an award-winning book, Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife Film, and a second edition was published last year. The book was the first to examine the enormous impact of nature films on how Americans see, think about, consume, and protect animals across the planet. Mitman, who holds appointments in medical history, and science and technology studies, teaches courses on the history of ecology, and the history of environment and health. He decided to draw upon the lessons of history, saying he wants to “open up what we think is a good environmental film and how we might tell other types of stories to change our interactions and attitudes.”

He had a chance to put those ideas to the test in 2007, when he organized a film festival, Tales from Planet Earth, as a project of the Nelson Institute’s Center for Culture, History, and Environment. He coupled the festival with a class in documentary storytelling, and students taking the course created short films that debuted at the event.

Judith Helfand, an award-winning environmental filmmaker and a UW-Madison Arts Institute artist-in-residence, collaborated with Mitman on the class and the festival. Helfand, too, was inspired by a story well told. After seeing “The Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time” on television in the 1980s, she was motivated to create documentaries that explore justice, equity, and the environment. In that film, Pete Seeger talks about art in the service of activism, and Helfand was smitten with his message and the power of nonfiction film. Today she is active with Working Films, an organization she co-founded that links nonfiction films with activism.

Tales from Planet Earth and its student films drew raves in 2007, Mitman says, but the audience was left with a now what? feeling. “There was so much enthusiasm from the last festival. We wanted to take that energy and turn it into community engagement and activism,” he says. “If you know something, you’ll care. And when you care, you’ll do something about it.”

With one festival behind them, Mitman and Helfand devised two courses that, together, could become a groundbreaking model. The first, a film production class, explores what constitutes an environmental film, then challenges students to create stories that use film’s artistry to engage an audience, create hope, and provide opportunities for action. The second class links storytelling with activism by partnering students with Madison-area nonprofit organizations that are dealing with issues raised in the festival’s films. Students are charged with linking one of the festival’s films with the needs of a community partner, then building an outreach campaign that is beneficial and measurable.

“I was thrilled to come back to Madison and to be able to bring and wear my Working Films hat,” says Helfand. “There is a new level of community engagement and interest among students. They want to be engaged in the world where they live while they are in school. My filmmaker friends are so jealous.”

Together, the classes and the festival created a compelling focal point for environmental storytelling. Held last November, the festival presented the best examples of the craft from the world’s filmmakers. Student-produced trailers addressed issues raised in the films, and community program leaders were present to show the audience members how they could take next steps. Forums and special events held before and after the films channeled new awareness into action. Students took big-picture topics raised by the film festival and turned them into local efforts. (See sidebar, below.)

Making all that happen — in just eight weeks or so — would send most people packing. But Mitman and Helfand viewed it as real-world experience, challenging the students to learn on their feet. During a boot camp held over two and a half days, students met their community partners, visited sites, and learned to listen to their partners’ needs and issues, while also being sensitive to the cultural and political dynamics in the organizations.

“Some of these students have lived in Madison for years, but have never left the campus. They are seeing that the issues raised in the films are very real, and real right here,” says Mitman. “They are also learning new ways to think about community service — where they learn about doing things with people, not for them. That builds relationships, trust, and follow-through.”

In the film production class, students learned how to use a camera, frame shots, edit footage, use sound and music, and truly understand the story — all while exploring how people shape and interact with the environment. It’s a tall order for neophyte filmmakers.

After learning the nuts-and-bolts aspects of hardware and software, the artistry enters. For a documentary to be effective, Helfand says, it must have high stakes: a relationship worth fighting for and a heart at risk of being broken. “Without heart and character, it’s just a lens and a camera. I want to teach the students to make moving moving pictures,” she says.

The student films explore topics ranging from the dairy industry’s dependence on Hispanic labor, to the story of an eighty-six-year-old woman from North Freedom, Wisconsin, who led a revolution in recycling plastics, to an example of how marketing food products for a housing organization can create jobs.

In turn, students in the community- engagement class had to quickly develop skills to broker real-world relationships, where the stakes are high. “This was not a typical class,” says Helfand. “The students were accountable to their [community] partners and learned lessons of tenacity, negotiation, and respect. What was hardest for them was also the most exciting. And best of all, they could see they had an impact.”

Knowing that people in the community were counting on them made students in both classes determined to commit significant time and energy. “[The students] were so respectful of the partners. … In return, the students earned their trust,” says Helfand.

Jesse Mursky-Fuller x’11 knew what he was getting into after taking the first film production class in 2007. Even so, when he had the chance in 2009, he enrolled in both classes. “I understand and agree with Gregg’s teaching philosophy — that is, experience and hands-on training [offer] the best way to learn. Just like science courses have lab sections, Gregg’s classes are labs for community engagement and film production,” says Mursky-Fuller, who is double-majoring in biology and life science communications.

His film, More Jam, More Jobs, demonstrates what can happen when the film, the classes, and the community cross-pollinate. It follows fellow student Jessica Halpern x’10, who — tray in hand — tries to convince twelve sororities to buy food items (such as fruit preserves) produced by Porchlight, Inc., a Madison housing advocacy group. After the festival’s screening of More Jam, there was standing room only for a tasting of Porchlight products.

Although he wasn’t sure what the community-engagement class would entail, Mursky-Fuller says he was happy as the experience unfolded. “That’s what’s nice about these classes — different issues and problems will present themselves each time. It’s not textbook material,” he says.

Kevin Gibbons MSx’11 and Judith Helfand, artist-in-residence, (both standing) look on as Meridith Beck Sayre PhDx’11 describes her video project for a class taught by Professor Gregg Mitman (far right) and Helfand. Photo: Jeff Miller

Public engagement is a core mission not just of the Nelson Institute but also of the campus in general, says Mitman. And he sees film as the perfect catalyst not only to bring the university and the community together, but also for weaving together perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. “It’s such an effective medium to see relationships — often hidden from view — in a new light and to harness the power of storytelling to effect environmental and social change,” Mitman says. “Environmental film festivals on college campuses are growing, and I wanted to create a model for others to follow. The classes are a true expression of the Wisconsin Idea.”

Gwen Evans ’79, a senior university relations specialist for University Communications, never turns down the chance to see a good film.

Fervent Voices

From its earliest days, the UW can claim strong connections to three visionary men who loved our planet.

They were three men, environmental pioneers, each with a distinct approach to a common cause: protecting the wilderness. John Muir x1864, a reverent appreciator, saw divinity in the forests, rivers, and mountains. Aldo Leopold, a forester, academic, and educator, applied scientific methods and study to protect the wilderness he loved. Gaylord Nelson LLB’42, a plainspoken politician and son of Wisconsin, maneuvered the halls of government, creating a national environmental movement along the way. The University of Wisconsin nurtured three of the country’s best-known environmentalists: Muir and Nelson were UW students and Leopold was a UW faculty member.

“I was only leaving one University for another, the Wisconsin University for the University of the Wilderness,” Muir wrote. UW–Madison Archives

John Muir

Perhaps it was his childhood in Scotland or his years on a Wisconsin farm. Maybe it was the view from his room in the university’s North Hall.

Who knows what place or experience triggered Muir’s love of nature into a passion for its appreciation and defense? Whatever the cause, Muir’s vision and environmental resolve helped create the ecological conscience we have today.

Farmer, inventor, sheepherder, explorer, writer, and conservationist, Muir — through his writing and tireless advocacy — inspired many American conservation programs, most notably the establishment of national parks. Muir was also the founder and first president of the Sierra Club, and his work was featured prominently in Ken Burns’s recent six-part documentary, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.

Born in Dunbar, Scotland, in 1838, Muir immigrated to the United States with his family in 1849, settling on a farm near Portage, Wisconsin. He entered the university in 1860 and studied botany and geology. He left after three years to travel the United States, including a saunter from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico and a sailing voyage that included land passage through what would later become the Panama Canal and up the West Coast. He then walked from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada.

What he saw on his travels was transformative. He abandoned the pioneer attitudes from his youth, a homesteader’s ethos of subduing and controlling nature for the benefit of man. His self-described “baptism of nature” sparked a respect and reverence for the interconnectedness of the environment and a lifelong mission of approaching nature with a deep, worshipful humility. For Muir, God was revealed through nature. Over the years, he published some three hundred articles and ten major books that detailed his travels and thoughts on environmentalism.

Although President Theodore Roosevelt usually gets the credit for establishing the country’s national parks, it was mostly Muir who did so. In 1903, Muir invited the president for a three-day camping trip in the Yosemite Valley. That trip sowed the seeds for conservation programs, leading to the establishment of the first National Monuments by presidential proclamation and Yosemite National Park by congressional action. Muir also had a hand in the creation of Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petrified Forest, and Grand Canyon national parks.

Although Muir once described himself as a “poetico-trampo-geologist-botanist and ornithologist-naturalist, etc., etc.!!!!”, history has bestowed more generous titles, including “The Father of Our National Parks,” “Wilderness Prophet,” and “Citizen of the Universe.”

“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect,” Leopold wrote. UW–Madison Archives

Aldo Leopold

Leopold is one of the most influential conservation thinkers of the twentieth century. An educator, philosopher, ecologist, and wilderness advocate, his “land ethic,” which articulated a new relationship between people and nature, set the stage for the modern conservation movement. He believed that the land — its soils, waters, plants, and animals — should be protected and preserved, and that we have a responsibility to ensure the health of the natural community. The land, for Leopold, was to be loved and respected as an extension of ethical behavior.

At the beginning of his career and with a degree in forestry in hand from Yale University, Leopold took positions with the U.S. Forest Service in the Southwest. He came to Madison in 1924 for a job with the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory. He joined the university in 1933 to lead game management studies; in 1939, he was named chair of the new Department of Wildlife Management. The department — a first for the university and the nation — launched an area of studies known as wildlife ecology.

Leopold is perhaps best known for A Sand County Almanac, a collection of essays on wild and manmade worlds that he wrote over a twelve-year period. He wanted to convey his observations and expertise on wildlife, and in doing so, convince readers that they should treat the natural world ethically. The book, published in 1949, describes, with heartbreaking eloquence and scientific rigor, the wonders of nature he saw at his famous “shack,” a played-out farm north of Madison along the shores of the Wisconsin River. More than 2 million copies of the book have been sold, and it has been translated into nine languages. Over the years at the shack, Leopold and his family planted thousands of pine trees and restored the land.

Leopold was also involved with another lasting restoration project. By the early 1930s, some 1,200 acres of land a few miles from campus, once cultivated farm fields and pastures, had fallen into disuse. With scientific and civic vision, and with years of hard work by crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps, the University of Wisconsin Arboretum has become an example of what at that time was a new ecological concept: returning a landscape to a more natural condition.

In 1935, along with other visionary conservationists, Leopold founded the Wilderness Society, an organization with a mission to “protect wilderness and inspire Americans to care for our wild places.”

Earth Day, Nelson said, met his hopes — “a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment.” UW–Madison Archives

Gaylord Nelson

A boy from the northwestern Wisconsin hamlet of Clear Lake, Nelson went on to become the state’s governor, a U.S. senator, and the founder of Earth Day, launching a wave of environmental activism in 1970 that continues today. Unlike Muir and Leopold, his fieldwork took place in government hallways and meeting rooms, most likely beneath the harsh glare of fluorescent lights rather than in sun-dappled meadows surrounded by pristine wildlife.

Still, his environmental contributions are every bit as significant as theirs, and his legacy endures on the UW-Madison campus: the Institute for Environmental Studies, named for Nelson, is an incubator, a laboratory, and a model for collaborative education, inquiry, and public service.

Nelson earned a law degree from the UW in 1942 and served in the Navy during World War II. Politics became his career, and he rose through the state’s political ranks, serving first as a state senator and then as governor from 1959 to 1963, and U.S. senator from 1963 to 1981.

Land protection, wildlife habitat, and environmental quality were always priorities in his legislative agenda. Among the landmark legislation he sponsored and saw through to enactment are the Wilderness Act, the National Trails Act, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the National Environmental Education Act. He was also the first to work toward federal mandates on automobile fuel efficiency, the control of strip mining, and bans on the use of phosphates, the pesticide DDT, and the defoliant 2,4,5-T. In response to Nelson’s advocacy, Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency and passed legislation to protect air and water quality.

But among his many accomplishments, he is perhaps most remembered as the founder of Earth Day, a seemingly crazy notion he had to organize environmental teach-ins. The idea, borrowed from the anti-war movement, called for a day on college campuses to discuss environmental issues, increase public awareness of problems, and work for solutions.

The first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970. An estimated 20 million people participated in demonstrations across the country, and thousands of schools, colleges, and communities were involved.

Nelson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995. “As the founder of Earth Day, [Nelson] is the grandfather of all that grew out of that event — the Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act,” said then President Bill Clinton. “He also set a standard for people in public service to care about the environment and try to do something about it.”

G.E.

Going Local

IStock image

Last fall, students in the community-engagement class taught by UW professor Gregg Mitman and documentary filmmaker Judith Helfand formed partnerships with Madison-area organizations and achieved significant results. For example:

Several Madison-area grocery stores have agreed to stock products made by Porchlight, Inc., a local organization that hires and trains homeless people to work in its kitchens. Sales of Porchlight’s products, which include jams and pickled vegetables, baked goods, and salads, will spur more hiring and training. The Wisconsin Union is also now buying some of these items for its food-service operations, as are some campus sororities and a local restaurant.

Madison’s Whole Foods Market has agreed to purchase food shares from the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition to donate to food pantries, ensuring a steady supply of fresh vegetables for pantry shelves. Interstate Books4School is donating children’s books to the pantries.

Madison Gas & Electric Company is donating $500 to offset carbon emissions generated by the film festival through the purchase of green-energy credits.

Marling Home Works is donating materials for a kitchen at a community garden on Madison’s north side, where children can learn to prepare healthy meals from the vegetables they help to grow.

G.E.

Correction: April 27, 2010
In “Fervent Voices” (Spring 2010), we should have clarified that Muir embarked on a sailing voyage that included land passage through what would later become the Panama Canal.

Published in the Spring 2010 issue