7th Gen Blog

My brother Peter would have turned 50 today. There would have been a huge party around the swimming pool of a rented house near the beach. Loud music, beautiful people, too much to drink.

But he didn’t quite make it to 44. He lived his whole life in half the amount of time most of us do. His life was lived as if it were a movie. Everything was dark or in Technicolor, there was never anything in between. He loved it out here by the ocean. Tanning oil (not sunscreen), a beach chair that ensured his feet never touched the sand, beers in coolers, girls in skimpy bathing suits, and more beautiful people.

I never quite qualified as a beautiful person, this was a badge of external honor. You needed to dress just so, party just right, know the people I never seemed interested in knowing.

My brother Peter would have turned 50 today. I am 51. It’s been 6 years since he was there to orchestrate his own party. I now need to party for him. So tonight I will celebrate his birthday almost as he would have wanted it. There won’t be a lot of loud music and we will have to stand in for the beautiful people. But there will be my three children, my wife and assorted members of her family.

On July 26th Fortune Magazine published a cover story on Wal-Mart under the banner “Wal-Mart Saves the Planet, Well Not Quite…”

Something is going on here that I’m not quite sure we understand.

Whether you believe Wal-Mart is the devil incarnate or are a cheerleader for what they are doing, the truth lies somewhere else.

Call me crazy – but I believe this is a bigger, more significant, pattern changing event. We can’t understand it by looking back – we need to understand it as a new possibility that is rushing toward us. The future in the making.

Think, the end of the cold war, the Berlin wall coming down, our first trip to the moon.

That is not to say it’s all good, but here are 7 things to ponder...

The second in a series of on the road interviews with the many to find the Inspired Protagonist in the ALL.

We have been on the road for 3 days collecting inspired protagonist quote-vlogs from a variety of people. We were at the GreenPeace office on Friday and had a moment with John Passacantando, the Executive Director of GreenPeace, USA.

WR

As I read the news these days, it's almost impossible not to come to the conclusion that things are bad and getting worse in a hurry! But as is usually the case, the good news is just harder to find because, well... It doesn’t make very good news.

So to brighten up your day, take a look at a story in the July 31st issue of The Nation by Mark Hertsgaard, Green Grows Grassroots. It’s an amazingly thoughtful and hopeful look at how grassroots organizing is making a comeback that is producing some pretty impressive positive change.

That change is symbolized by the new chairman of the board of the National Wildlife Federation, Jerome Ringo, a former petrochemical worker from Louisiana's "Cancer Alley." One of my favorite quotes is:

"Most environmental groups "were founded by people who fished to put fish on the wall, not by people who fished to put fish on the table.”