When Freeheld won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, it was more than just a win for the filmmakers, Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth. It was a victory for same sex couples everywhere who face discrimination and are told they cannot take care of the people they love. And it was a victory made possible by someone who wasn’t around t celebrate it: the woman whose life, love and struggle for justice is the subject of the documentary. When Laurel Hester, a 50 year police Lieutenant who had been on the force for 25 years, was diagnosed with cancer she knew she would have to fight for her life. What she didn’t know was that she would have to fight for her partner’s security, for her pension and for basic fairness and decency.

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I’m not sure what to call this musical genre: green bluegrass? Low carbon country? Whatever it is, I love it, and I think a lot of other people would embrace Wisconsin singer Sue West’s green-tinged, gospel-flavored folk music, too; it’s an authentic, timeless kind of music that hugs you back. As one fan wrote in an open note to Sue on CD Baby: “Listening to your music is like being rocked by strong arms.”

No doubt West’s own arms are pretty strong, since she makes her living as a sustainable farmer. When she’s not busy picking her guitar you might find her picking berries, particularly the wild ones for which her website, Wild Fruit Folk Music, is named, as is her first CD, Wild Fruit, of which she wrote:

I enjoy writing and recording songs about life here in rural Wisconsin. You may know me as the “Egg Lady.” Life on the Rush River with my hens and my dawgs is full of poetic moments. I have captured many of them in the songs that I share through my performing and my cds. If you have any curiosity at all about what fills the thoughts of your local organic egg producer, look no further. 

West’s a stellar example of a locally oriented eco-entrepreneur/artist, making a living by sharing the fruits of her labor, literally and figuratively. Her website offers such sustainably produced products as homemade beeswax hand balm and her own home-roasted coffee made from certified organic, fair trade Mexican Altura Chiapas. She sells the coffee “handground”¦in re-used recyclable bioplastic produce containers,” or, if you prefer to grind your own, the “whole bean is sold in homemade cloth bags made from “rescued” shirts.”

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Fatih Akin has been on my movie radar since I saw his 2000 film In July. From there I saw his short film in the program Visions of Europe, which I enjoyed and then on to the first film in his Love, Death, Devil trilogy Head On, which I absolutely loved. I was lucky enough to see an advanced screening of the second film in that trilogy, The Edge of Heaven on Saturday afternoon (part of The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Film Comment Selects series.)

The Edge of Heaven, as you might imagine, deals with death, but it does so through a moving examination of fathers and sons and mothers and daughters as they navigate between two countries whose connection is always changing, Germany and Turkey.

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Crate and Barrel recently introduced more initiatives to help make homes more eco-friendly.

Among their earth friendly changes C & B has:

• Introduced more eco-friendly upholstery
• Without more expense, offered two wood Outdoor collections that are certified as sustainable by nonprofit organizations that oversee the conservation and responsible management of millions of acres of the world’s natural forests
• Offered several teak and mahogany collections available that are now Tropical Forrest Trust supported
• Phased out the use of white bleached board for shipping boxes in favor of a more eco-friendly renewable fiber that contains post-consumer recyclable material
• Discontinued using petroleum-based packing peanuts

Hopefully these changes will inspire other stores to follow suit. For more on Crate & Barrel’s earth friendly initiative and to purchase some green goodies for your home visit http://www.crateandbarrel.com/

One of my favorite websites is http://www.apple.com/trailers - mainly because I could watch movie trailers for hours! When I went to the trailers page last, I noticed that the trailer for The Visitor was up. I excitedly hit play and watched. (*I should note that trailers for Get Smart and Love Songs also made me happy)

The Visitor is about “a disillusioned Connecticut economics professor whose life is transformed by a chance encounter in New York City.” And it teaches us that “in a world of six billion people, it only takes one to change your life.”

The film stars Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) and is written/directed by Tom McCarthy, who also wrote/directed The Station Agent, a great little film that also deals with different folks coming together and finding that new relationships and experiences can change one’s life.

to watch the trailer on the Apple website, or watch the YouTube version below (the quality isn’t as good though ).

Also and learn how you can get involved with the film.

Gwyneth Paltrow has teamed up with Unicef to make a new short film that dramatizes a new poem from Simon Armitage. Paltrow narrates the film that deals with HIV and a mother and daughter’s experience with it.

The film is a part of Unicef’s Born Free From HIV Campaign. They want to inform people that “almost every minute of every day, a baby is born with HIV, passed on by their mother during pregnancy, labour or delivery. This is because only one in five mothers with HIV receive the right medicine and care to prevent passing on the virus to their babies. Without treatment, most of these children will not live to see their second birthday.”

to watch the video

to sign a petition that will be sent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, asking him to secure funding to help babies be born free of HIV when he attends the G8 Finance Ministers’ meeting in 2008.

to learn more about the gift campaign.

Academy-Award winning and four-time Oscars-hosting Whoopi Goldberg was not part of the montage of the Academy Awards’ 80 most exciting moments on Sunday. On Monday, an emotional and disappointed Whoopi received applauds and support from The View’s audience and solidarity from her co-hosts. Sherri Shepherd was confused by Whoopi’s omission and told the actress, “You were the first Black woman to host the Oscars, you were the first woman to host the Oscars.” And Joy Behar comforted Whoopi, saying “you did make history.” Today the dis was explained. The producer of the show, Gil Cates, said, “No harm was intended, and I feel very, very badly that she was left out…. I’m going to call her and tell her that… I asked her to be on the show. She did it twice…. She is a formidable talent…” The omission, Cates said, was “an absolute oversight.”

So how did this “oversight” happen? An optimistic Elisabeth Hasselbeck suggested to Whoopi, “Maybe they accidentally lost a clip of you hosting.” A more skeptical Sherri Shepherd seemed frustrated with the Academy saying “it’s not very hard to figure out who hosted the Oscars four times.” Sherry, who I assume was being sincere and not sarcastic, and Elizabeth made me think.

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Londoners got a look at a breakthrough in energy efficient home design on Tuesday–an affordable zero-carbon home. From the Independent:

You can pick up the phone and order one, and in three months you can be living your life without contributing anything from your domestic surroundings to Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions, the manufacturers say. They’re a consortium of green building companies called ruralZED, and they say the house they unveiled at the EcoBuild Exhibition at Earl’s Court in London yesterday is the first truly affordable carbon-neutral home.

The super insulated house””three times more efficient than the average British home–is designed to let its owners live off the grid year-round, according to the Independent. Power to the home’s state-of-the-art energy saving appliances is provided by solar panels on the roof, which heat the water, too.

Bill Dunster, whose architectural firm ZEDfactory designed the home, told the Independent that the house itself “is based around a very strong timber frame, supplied as a flat-pack kit, “a bit like a sofa from Ikea.”

ZEDfactory’s zero-carbon home is, like IKEA furniture, geared toward the thrifty do-it-yourselfer who prizes form and function. It has the potential to popularize no-impact living on a scale that seemed unattainable only a few years back. I just hope it comes with better instructions than your average IKEA desk or dresser.

Find out how you can lower your own home’s impact on the planet at lowimpact.org. 

Environmentalists cheered when China announced recently that it would ban flimsy plastic shopping bags. As of June 1st, supermarkets will be forbidden to give free plastic bags to their customers, a more stringent measure than most developed nations have adopted.

But the War on Plastic Bags has caused some predictable collateral damage, forcing China’s biggest plastic bag manufacturer out of business, as the Guardian reports:

The shutdown of Suiping Huaqiang Plastic, which employs 20,000 people, highlighted the social costs of a government drive to clean up one of the world’s most polluted environments.

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On Monday I blogged about 5 songs that had helped shape Civil Rights Movement, and were sung during the rallies, sit ins, marches, arrests and beatings. These songs, often spirituals adapted during or after slavery, had no authors, but belonged to everyone. They were a civil rights soundtrack made of the people, for the people, and by the people. But what about the original songs that were written, composed, performed, and recorded to capture the injustice and racism that made the Civil Rights Movement so urgent? They may be written by songwriters, and not by the people. But they were certainly written for the people. These next songs are 5 of the countless ballads whose poignant lyrics and moving melodies raised awareness, called for action, and helped create that the Civil Rights Movement.

1. Old Man River (1927) was written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II for the 1927 musical Show Boat and is sung by the character Joe, a black dockworker. But it was Paul Robeson who immortalized the song in the 1936 film version of Show Boat directed by James Whale. Paul Robeson, the singer, actor, athlete, trained lawyer and activist performed the song on countless occasions in recitals all over the world. But he would sing his own version, with his own lyrics which made the character of Joe more empowered and dignified. For example, instead of saying “Tote that barge! Lift that bale! Git a little drunk, An’ you land in jail,” Robeson sang “Tote that barge and lift dat bale! You show a little grit and You lands in jail.” And Robeson replaced “Ah gits weary. An’ sick of tryin’; Ah’m tired of livin, an skeered of dyin. But Ol’ Man River, he jes’ keeps rolling along!” with “But I keeps laffin, Instead of cryin, I must keep fightin; until I’m dyin. And Ol Man River, he’ll just keep rollin’ along!” Although the film was extremely popular, the 1936 version was taken out of circulation because of the black list against Paul Robeson until it debuted on cable television in 1983. Both Show Boat, which was the first integrated musical, and the song Old Man River highlight taboo subjects like passing for white, interracial relationships, and the tragedy of racism.

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