We recently had the great fortune of welcoming Micah Blumenthal into conversation. Micah is a worker trustee at the Good Work Institute, a workshop leader of the Kingston based TMI project, serves on the board of Radio Kingston, and is co-host of The Breathing Room and host of Hip Hop 101 on Radio Kingston. In this episode, Micah and our host Martin Ping reflect on the phenomenon of time, the importance of being rooted in place, the nature of work, our complicated relationship with money, and...
In this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Aisha Hassan and Lukas Paltanavičius, the founders of Cycle to Farms, an advocacy project with the goal of documenting regenerative agriculture practices in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa by cycling from farm to farm. They began their cycling journey in the Netherlands, ultimately visiting over 20 farms in 15 countries. The couple's initial goal was to explore regenerative agriculture and learn its true meaning from farmers themselves...
We are back after a bit of a hiatus with a very special guest, Helmy Abouleish, CEO of SEKEM Group, based outside of Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 1977 by Helmy’s father, Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish, the vision for Sekem is “sustainable development towards a future where every human being can unfold his or her individual potential; where humankind is living together in social forms reflecting human dignity; and where all economic activity is conducted in accordance with ecological and ethical principles...
This episode features Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School Class of 2005 alumnus Eliot Livingston Wilson, the founder and design lead for FUTUR, a firm developing regenerative affordable housing solutions. Hawthorne Valley's Executive Director, Martin Ping, chatted with Eliot about his exciting venture to find solutions to the interconnected housing and climate crises. They also talked about his family's deeply rooted history in the Hudson Valley and the impact of that history and of Waldorf educa...
Thank you for joining us for Episode 4 of Season 2, highlighting the work of Hawthorne Valley’s Farmscape Ecology Program. Their mission is to foster informed, active compassion for the ecological and cultural landscape of Columbia County, New York through participatory research and outreach. In this episode Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director, Martin Ping, sits down with two of the founders of the Farmscape Ecology Program – wildlife ecologist, Conrad Vispo and field botanist, Claudia...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron DessnerIn this episode Martin Ping, Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director, welcomes Cornelius Pietzner, who served as the Director of Camphill Communities of North America, and whose father Carlo brought the Camphill movement to the US, including founding Camphill Copake. Hawthorne Valley’s origin story is closely tied to Camphill Copake as our Waldorf school was, in part, founded to accommodate the children of the Camphill Copake community. Children f...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron DessnerThis is the second episode of our second season, and what an honor and pleasure it is to welcome Mary Berry, Director of The Berry Center in Kentucky, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to bringing focus, knowledge and cohesion to the work of changing our industrial agricultural system into a system and culture that uses nature as the standard, accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and takes into consideration human health in local comm...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron DessnerWith this episode, we're excited to officially launch season two of our Roots to Renewal podcast, and we are thrilled to have Greg Watson as our guest to kick things off. Greg is the director of policy and systems design at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics and a self-described lifelong student. He has spent nearly 50 years studying systems thinking as inspired by Buckminster Fuller and has worked to apply that understanding to achieve a...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron DessnerThis is our twelfth episode of the podcast and this time Martin interviewed one of Hawthorne Valley’s longest standing coworkers, Gary Lamb. Gary is currently the director of the Hawthorne Valley Center for Social Research and its Ethical Technology Initiative. Over his 36 years of employment at Hawthorne Valley, Gary also served the Farm Store manager, school development and admissions director, and high school economics teacher. His profession...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron DessnerRecently our Executive Director, and podcast host, Martin Ping sat down with Melissa Auf der Maur, an artist, musician, photographer and writer – probably best known in musical circles for her turn as the bass player for the band Hole from 1994-1999. Melissa is revered locally as social entrepreneur, she’s the co-founder and director of Basilica Hudson, a nonprofit multidisciplinary art center in Hudson, NY. We consider Basilica to be a si...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron DessnerWe are happy to be back after a short hiatus for a conversation with John Fullerton, founder of the Connecticut-based Capital Institute, a think-and-do tank with a mission to reimagine our economic and financial systems to promote transformation to a more just and regenerative world. An unconventional economist, impact investor, writer, and philosopher, John is the architect of Regenerative Economics, first conceived in his 2015 booklet, “R...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron DessnerIn this episode, we stayed in our own back yard – right here on Hawthorne Valley’s 900-acre Biodynamic farm. Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director Martin Ping sat down with Spencer Fenniman, Director of Farm Operations, and Jess Brobst, our Dairy Herd Manager. Together they discuss the essence of biodynamic farming, the pedagogical function of the Farm, and the role of art on the Farm. We are very excited to share this behind the scenes gli...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Aaron Dessner.In this episode, Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director Martin Ping had a chance to chat with artist and educator Martina Müller. Together they explore the many ways that art enlivens our lives – from the practice of observation intrinsic in the experience of making art and its impact on our interpersonal relationships, and even society as a whole – to the way that creativity allows us to access our more divine selves. Martina believes that we’r...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Aaron Dessner.In this episode we’re excited to share a follow up conversation with our very first podcast guest, Frances Moore Lappé. We are delighted to acknowledge and celebrate the release of the 50th anniversary edition of her seminal book, Diet for a Small Planet. Once again Frankie and our Executive Director, Martin Ping engage in uplifting conversation on topics of the day that are also woven into Diet for a Small Planet: living democracy; the im...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Aaron DessnerIn this episode Hawthorne Valley's Executive Director Martin Ping enjoys a wide ranging conversation with John Bloom, General Secretary of The Anthroposophical Society in America and former Vice President of Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance, about the role of money and philanthropy in the creative process, and how money can serve human destiny and foster creativity. In the course of their conversation. You'll hear John mention...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Aaron DessnerMartin welcomes activist, author, entrepreneur, and long-time friend Judy Wicks into conversation about her life's work to build economies based on cooperation and local self-reliance. In 2001, she founded the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, and co-founded the international Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. BALLE now includes some 30,000 local independent businesses in the U.S. and Canada. Judy envisions ...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Aaron Dessner. Hawthorne Valley Executive Director Martin Ping chats with Herbert Dreiseitl (see bio below) about the nature of creativity, the role of beauty in our lives, and the gifts of Waldorf Education. Herbert joined Martin in conversation this past February over Zoom from his home on the shores of Lake Constance in Germany when the country was still in the throes of the pandemic and in a state of strict lockdown. 3:00 Herbert talks about the changes ...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Grammy Award winning artist Aaron Dessner.In this episode, Martin Ping and Rising Tide Capital cofounder Alfa Demmellash discuss the notion of economy and what we need to do to reimagine it so that it can serve us, our communities, and our children, and their children’s children. Alfa was born and raised in Ethiopia. She came to the United States at the age of 12 with a keen interest in poverty alleviation and conflict resolution. Alfa graduated ...
Sponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Simon FrishkoffIn this episode, our Executive Director Martin Ping had the chance to sit down with environmental activist Bill McKibben to talk about the daunting crisis of climate change and the important work of citizenship in facing this challenge. Bill's 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and he’s gone on to write a dozen more books. A founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben spearheaded the r...
March 1, 2021 | Roots to RenewalSponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Simon FrishkoffIn this, our first episode, Hawthorne Valley’s executive director Martin Ping engages in an uplifting conversation about the power of hope with special guest, activist thinker, Frances Moore Lappé. She is the founder of Food First and the Small Planet Institute, and is author or co-author of 19 books about world hunger, living democracy, and the environment, including her seminal book, Diet for a Small Planet p...