The Joy Trip Project

A lot of businesses are starting to explore their creative side. Expressions of art have begun to creep into the culture of many companies. In boardrooms and at seminars across America the stage is set for performing artists    like corporate poet Gordy Boudreau. “I write poems for whatever organization will invite me to do that,” Boudreau said. “And I use their raw materials the specifics of their culture to craft these very intimate specific poems that entertain and hopefully instruct a bit." Boudreau is one of several former street performers who are showing senior executives how to have fun in the world of business. Lead by Carr Hagerman, the group known as OnTend Creative Partners is developing new strategies to raise the chuckle quotient among their clients’ employees and customers. “We worked as consultants for Hampton Inn. It was the first time I had ever done such work,” Boudreau said.” And early on when we were in sort of the planning phases we were out at a bar with our contact a woman named Gina Valente and I had played a poet at this renaissance festival. Carr said to Gina, you should hear one of  his poems that he’s written. So I recited a poem and Gina’s eye lit up and she said “Oh my Gosh! Could you write an ode to Hampton and present it at these 19 cities? That we were going to tour with them. Do I did. And beyond any anticipation that I had, it was a huge hit people and they wanted copies of it. They wanted it filmed which they did. And then Hampton came to me ask me to write more poems.” The tradition of commercial poetry goes back long before the day of Shakespeare. And as companies  try to define their corporate culture in different ways Boudreau says that poetry offers a unique alternate to business as usual. “I think really at the very bottom of it all it’s a departure from powerpoint presentations,” he said. “And nothing against that, but I think people are a little tired of seeing the same graphs and charts.” Gordy Boudreau and his fellow OnTend performers were to keynote speakers at the Outdoor Industry Association breakfast during Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2009 in Salt Lake City Utah. In an amazing poem called the Ballad of Mount Gitchigumi, Boudreau summed up the culture and business of outdoor recreation.

Out here on the Midwestern prairies of Wisconsin were surrounded by acres of farmland. This time of year as we ride road bikes along the creamy smooth highways of Dane County. From one township to the next it’s vast fields of tall green corn plants as far as the eye can see. Averaging between 14 and 17 mile per hour, we whiz past one corn field after the next. With ours heads tucked in the draft stream keeping pace with the summer training schedule the last thing anyone’s thinking about is the soil beneath our spinning tires. It’s not just dirt you know. Earlier this summer during the Mountain Film Festival in Telluride Colorado I met a guy, a scientist who succeeded in changing how I’ll think about soil forever. Glover_001 My name is Jerry Glover. I’m a soil scientist/agro ecologist at the Land Institute in Selina, KS. Glover was one of the many presenters at day-long symposium on food and where it comes for. He taught me a thing or two about why soil is so important to sustaining human life. Glover_002 All you have to do really to think about how important soil is, is pinch yourself. Because our flesh and bones are made up of elements: nitrogen, carbon Oxygen, hydrogen, Those comprise 97 percent of our body. We’re also made up of other elements alike phosphorous, calcium, and magnesium Glover_003 These elements have to come from somewhere. It’s not like we take a breath we know suddenly transform a breath into bones and flesh and skin. It’s from the food we eat. And of course then we need to ask, where does the plants that feed us or feeds the animals that we eat come from? They get it from soil. Unfortunately, Glover says there’s problem. Modern farming techniques are eroding the planet’s soil and robbing it of the vital nutrients we desperately need to survive. Glover_005 As soils erode wash away or degrade our abilities as humans to grow the food that we need to sustain our nice secure civilizations is degraded. And we see evidence throughout history. The Mediterranean civilizations that eroded and lost their soil, their civilizations collapsed. Likewise around the world, where people don’t have enough topsoil to produce abundant foods, they suffer political, they suffer social and economic crises, often resulting in wars, famines and you know a lot of serious problems that we don’t want to hand down to our children and our grand children. Despite the lush green farm fields of our agricultural landscape Glover says the soil beneath is in serious trouble. Click here to listen>> Soil For more information on soil read the September 2008 issue of National Geographic Magazine: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text

This item came aross the desk this morning from the folks at Wend Magazine. The creative minds of Tappening, an intiative to encourage the consuption of tap water over bottled water, is spreading rummors. Adman Eric Yaverbaum is prompting consumers to make up falsehoods about the industry that delivers municiple tap water in plastic bottles. Check it out at www.Startalie.com. You can also listen to an interview with Yaverbaum posted to the SNEWS Live Podcast in April 2008. Click here for the link: http://cache.snewsnet.com/snews/podcast/Tappening.mp3

Ming Tsai is the chef and owner of Blue Ginger Restaurant in Wellesley Massachusetts. He’s also the national spokesman for the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network and works with the Obesity Center at Harvard University. You might have seen him on his PBS cooking show Simply Ming. Tsai understands better than most that it’s harder than ever for working families and individuals to prepare healthy meals. Tsai was the master of ceremonies during a day-long symposium on food during the Mountain Film Festival earlier this summer in Telluride, Colorado. In this interview he discusses some of our most basic issues that people in the United States face when making food choices at home, in school and at their local restaurants. Click here to listen>>Simply Ming

If we slow down long enough to think about our food we just might come to realize there’s more to it than filling that nagging void in our bellies. We’re so pressed for time that we fail to think about the nutritional value of what we eat. Racing through the drive-thru window of fast food restaurants we pack faces with hamburgers and tacos loaded with fat, salt and empty carbohydrates. And worse than that, we really have no idea where this food came from, how it’s prepared or whether or not the people who made it are treated well and paid a living wage. And it’s not just the folks that flip those burgers and pack those tacos. There’s a complete food chain people who planted and picked the tomatoes, the lettuce and the cucumbers that become our pickles. What about them? Josh Viertel is the president of Slow Food USA. It’s his job to help all of us slow down and make better food choices. “As I see it, my job is to help Slow Food basically change the food system so that everyone can eat food that’s good for them, that’s good for land that’s good for the people who produce it and pick it,” he said. Josh Viertel was one of several presenters at the Mountain Film Festival in Telluride, Colorado. This year the conversation was all about food and how we eat. Viertel suggests that every meal best served slowly. Click here to listen>>Slow Food