Storytelling

Today we have a guest post from Ariya Martin of the New Orleans Kid Camera Project. The Crescent City is a realm near and dear to my own heart and to many others here, and I think this initiative is one of the most inspiring to emerge in the post-Katrina era.

Well, as the first blog posted from the New Orleans Kid Camera Project, and as one of the organizers, I thought it would be appropriate to give a project overview and talk about our mission.

The New Orleans Kid Camera Project is a grassroots community endeavor that was created to address the psychological and emotional impacts of Hurricane Katrina on children returning home to New Orleans. Working with professionals in mental health, journalism, photography, and emerging Internet technologies, participants develop the creative, cognitive and technical skills to represent their own experience and perspective without external mediation. The primary goal of the project is to furnish young New Orleans' residents with the skills, equipment, motivation and expectation of success that will empower them throughout their lives to advocate on their own behalf, influence policy to create social change, find a creative outlet to process the changes they have undergone, and expose a broad, global constituency to their community's ongoing struggle.

Chris

So Eva-Marie is our scent guru, our emissary to the unseen world of olfactory mystery that surrounds us. In October, we first introduced her in a post that also came with a story. Except that when we posted it all, the story itself somehow got lost in the luminous ether. During some talk yesterday about this and that, Eva-Marie mentioned the missing story, and we went looking for it. Wasn't there. Don't know why. Just know it went elsewhere when we engaged the apparatus. Normally, we'd overlook this oversight and move on. But a tale such as this deserves its telling. So it is that we reprint the original post from Gregor--this time with the story it was meant to share.

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Eva-Marie Lind, CEO of EM Studios, AROME, was at 7th Gen today helping us think through new designs in organic and bio-dynamic scents for our product line. Eva-Marie is a specialist in aromatic and medicinal plants. The focus of her work is the science, aesthetic and formulation of cutting edge and authentic whole scent designs. It was an amazing experience to sit in the midst of subtle and very organic scents. There was a very profound story behind each scent - a story of the nature that the scent held and revealed - a story that we want people to see and hear when they use our products...

Telling stories that live alive in the moment and in the imagination is a gift...I think we all lived alive all day. Eva-Marie sent me the following story of a point in her life:

When I did one of my summer apprenticeships in teaching middle school I
created a classroom in the russian style of story telling - whereby
children would have but one picture to relate to as the story was told.
In those days I used to do alot of pen and ink sketching and took
upon the challenge of sketching one of the primary components of the
story.

Recently, a valued employee and Seventh Generation parted ways. This story is told with thoughts of that employee, and an expectation of learning and growth at our company.

The Cygnet (A Story)

In the rolling hills of a richly forested Northern country lies a pond. Nestled among trees of strength and wisdom, the pond is fed by brooks of pristine water, and its surface is a deep blue.

"Stories in words are among our oldest, most powerful, most mysterious tools. Through mere sounds on the air or squiggles on the page they give us what no other technology can, ourselves." -Rafe Martin