It’s Saturday morning at 8am. The streets are quiet, as most of the city sleeps off another busy work week. Outside, the air is crisp, the birds are singing, and the morning sunlight streams through the trees that surround me. A crowd of people, dressed in t-shirts and sneakers, gathers around a table filled with bagels and fruit. There is a sense of nervous excitement in the air. I’m reminded of the atmosphere before a race. Only, instead of a race number, I’m given a name-tag when I check in. I write my name in big, bold marker, then set out to mingle with the 50 or so other volunteers who have shown up at Coldwater Canyon Park for TreePeople’s Park Work Day.

I’m surprised to find that nearly every person I talk to, outside of the TreePeople staff, is a first-time TreePeople volunteer. Some, like me, heard about the event directly through TreePeople. Others are here through LA Works, a non-profit that coordinates and promotes different community service projects in the Los Angeles area (their Volunteer Calendar highlights over 60 different team-oriented volunteer activities that you can sign up for each month). When I ask my fellow volunteers why they’ve chosen to spend their Saturday morning helping out at the park, the general consensus seems to be that it is a more productive and fulfilling way to spend their time than just being at home. And, of course, everyone is inspired by the work that TreePeople does and excited to get involved.

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Editor’s Note: Alicia Lipinski sits down with TreePeople’s Jim Hardie, Director of Park Operations, and Heather Goldberg, Executive Producer of the summer series.

Alicia Lipinski: Can you tell me a little bit about what TreePeople does?

Heather Goldberg: At TreePeople, we are trying our best to be a model for the world by acting consciously and sustainably in many different ways, through resources with water and trees.

Jim Hardie: I like to say we’re trying to make this city a better place to live, and we’re doing it by trying to encourage people to take deeper personal responsibility. And to get them to do that, we have to educate, we have to inspire, we have to engage and lead. We have our year-round community events, whether they’re tree plantings or tree care events, virtually every weekend and sometimes weekdays too. We’re out supporting people in their communities to plant and care for trees and make their communities more sustainable. We bring 10 to 12 thousand kids to this park every year, from schools all around the city, to teach them about the cycles of nature and how they, even at their age, can do things right in their own home to make a difference. And our growing issue is looking at watershed/water usage issues. A key factor, just looking at LA, is rainfall. Since so many areas are paved over and filled with manmade structures, most of [the rainfall] goes into the LA river system, so instead of keeping it in the landscape, it gets flushed away to the ocean, and in that process, it carries with it pesticides, dog waste, fertilizers, and car oils, so not only are we wasting this precious resource but we’re also making our ocean and local beaches unsafe. At the same time, when you turn on your faucet, you’re using imported water and also consuming energy. What we’re trying to get people to do is look at how we can use that free rain to reduce our dependence on the water we’re importing.

AL: How did you get involved in TreePeople?

HG: I’ve been excited about TreePeople ever since first grade when I came on an eco-tour, which is this program where kids learn about consumption issues, recycling, soil, etc., and they also take home a little seedling that a kid before them had planted. And you take this little tree home, and you plant it, and you watch it grow. I did that as a first grader and decided that I wanted to work for TreePeople, and I always kept that in the back of my mind.

JH: It’s wonderful how many of the staff members here have these stories of how they came here, not just looking for a job, but were inspired and enveloped by the mission and spirit of TreePeople.

AL: What inspires you?

HG: I’ve always been very concerned with making the world a better place, as I know a lot of people in this world are. I believe in our work so much, and I think it is at the forefront of the environmental movement and has been for so long.

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Like many people around the world, I was saddened by the passing of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon this week.  In times like these, we are reminded of the impermanence of all earthly things – especially our own fragile lives.  We are also reminded that each of us leaves behind a legacy, and it’s up to us to decide what that legacy will be.  What do we want to leave on this earth – and on the hearts of others – when we’re gone?  What seeds will we plant while we’re here that will bloom and grow for future generations?  For me, I hope the seeds that I plant will grow more love and peace in the world.  I hope that I can serve in some small way to remind people that we are all connected, that we are all parts of a greater whole.  I hope that my words and my actions will help stop the cycle of violence and fear and hate, so that rather than being torn apart, we can begin to stitch ourselves together by our common threads – by our love and our hope and our humanity.

That is my hope.  What is yours?

(current news stories Flick photostream, creative commons)

Summer is officially here! I don’t know about you, but this beautiful, sunny weather makes me want to be outside all the time. I’ve even been getting up early to fit in some extra hiking before work, and one of my new favorite places to hike is Coldwater Canyon Park. It is one of the few locations in Los Angeles where I feel like I am actually in a forest and not just on a city hill, thanks in great part to TreePeople, an incredible non-profit organization that is not only based out of the park but also helps to maintain its trails and care for its trees.

Starting July 18th, Coldwater Canyon Park will also be home to TreePeople’s “Once Upon A Canyon Night” summer series. All season long, you can enjoy a wide range of outdoor concerts, performances, movie screenings and classes (from photography to yoga to knitting), all of which will be held underneath the trees and the stars, in the beautiful S. Mark Taper Foundation Amphitheater.

PLEASE JOIN ME at the following TreePeople events, which I will be attending and blogging about:

This Saturday, June 27, at 9am – Coldwater Canyon Park Work Day – we will assist with tree care, help maintain park trails, remove non-native species, and most importantly, have fun and help out the environment! For more information, contact Lisa Sotelo at (818) 623-4879, volunteer@treepeople.org.

Saturday, July 18, at 8pm – TreePeople’s summer series kicks off with comedian Paula Poundstone. For reservations, call 818-623-4877 or email shows@treepeople.org.

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We’ve had our fair share of June gloom in Los Angeles recently, and the rain has brought with it colds and flu. It seems like more and more people have been getting sick around me lately–co-workers, family, friends. Of course, we’re talking about the sniffles and not the swine flu, but I have been worrying a lot about how to stay healthy and keep my immune system up and running, outside of the age-old advice to take vitamins, drink lots of water, and get enough sleep.

As I started reading more about the body’s intricate immune system, I was in awe of how it works and how many different cells play a role in keeping our bodies healthy and functioning properly. A quick Google search informed me that our bodies are made up of somewhere between 50 to 75 TRILLION cells–all of which are actively doing their parts and working in tandem with all the other cells to keep our bodies running at any given moment.

That really got me thinking about how our beautiful planet Earth is one giant body of life, and we are all its cells–we each play an active role in its health and function. Right now, our Earth is being crippled by an auto-immune disease, in which its own cells are attacking it. We’re polluting its air, poisoning its water supply, and stripping it of its energy reserve. We’re cutting its trees, causing the extinction of many of its species, and twisting its natural elements into weapons that we use against one another. In short, we’re severely impairing its ability to function and thrive. Read the rest of this entry >>