by Richard Gould

BIRDMAN isn’t Michael Keaton’s own story of course, but it’s hard to think of a better pairing of actor to role. His recent Oscar-junket rounds for the film, set against the background of his career-making turns wearing the cape in 1989 and ’92, show a cheerful willingness to be misunderstood. Keaton plays “serious” actor Riggan Thomson, whose ill ease with the comic book character that brought him fame years ago has put him on a mission to stage a Raymond Carver short story on Broadway, starring himself. More theatre de l’absurde in the rehearsals than “Angry Old Man,” it’s seen by most as an attempt by Thomson to find relevance in an industry that’s passing him by. But we see what others can’t; All he really wants to do is break through his numbness. Costar Mike (Edward Norton) arrives, bringing some real theater chops and an ego to match; when Thomson isn’t being upstaged by him, he’s contending with a daughter whose self-destructiveness and cutting barbs are enough by themselves to shoot him down–say nothing of the theater critics. But Thomson’s flights of imagination seem to rise above the surrounding grimness–his strange telekinetic powers, and a certain booming-voiced feathered man just over his shoulder. The film’s single tracking shot has wowed many, but I was more struck by the dazzling one-piece score by Antonio Sanchez, who believes–as composer Alfred Newman did in 1945’s Leave Her to Heaven–that insanity’s theme song is a military march.

by Annie Spiegelman, the Dirt Diva

As a diva, once I learned where the milk is sourced from at my local Starbucks, I decided to search for a new coffee joint that serves organic milk in their lattes. (Thank you, Rustic Bakery.) Diva or not, you, too, deserve safe milk in your delicious, overpriced coffee drink! Coffee giant Starbucks purchases milk from large, industrialized farms where cows are fed a diet comprised of genetically modified corn, soy, alfalfa and cottonseed.

Plus, a high dose of antibiotics. Non-organic livestock production is responsible for 80 percent of all antibiotic use in the world, and the dairy industry, in particular, uses the strongest and most dangerous forms. As an example, a super potent antibiotic drug used by commercial dairy farmers called Ceftiofur creates resistant bacteria after only one dose.

Scott Blankenship, founder and CEO of Amplifyd, a social activism startup based in Berkeley, is concerned about the health risks. “Most people are aware that the overuse of antibiotics can create super bacteria no longer resistant to the antibiotics we’ve come to rely on to save our lives,” Blankenship says. “But what’s truly frightening and alarming are the numerous and recent scientific studies telling us that this is no longer an apocalyptic theory but rather something happening now, and it’s killing people at an increasing rate all over the world.”

Blankenship’s latest advocacy platform is inviting coffee lovers to take a stand by asking Starbucks to make the switch to organic-only milk in a unique, easy and powerful way—through the use of consumer pledges. It can be a win-win for everyone (consumer and corporation) if the company makes the switch. “At the end of the day, corporations respond to their financial bottom line,” Blankenship says. “Through consumer pledges, we have the ability to positively incentivize corporations to change by increasing that bottom line if they change their behavior, without any risk or effort by the consumer.”

Here’s how it works at amplifyd.com:
1. You select the dollar amount you want to pledge.
2. Your credit card information is securely saved for later. (Your pledge amount will never be charged unless the campaign is won.)
3. Amplifyd will then use the collective pledges as the financial incentive to get Starbucks to switch to organic milk. The more collectively pledged, the more financial incentive these companies have to change.
4. If (and only if) the campaign is won by March 31, 2015, and Starbucks decides to offer organic milk in their stores, Amplifyd will charge your credit card for the amount you pledged. They’ll then send you a gift card with the pledge amount they just charged, minus their transaction fee, which you can use with the company that made the switch.

Just what is considered “organic” milk?
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, organic dairy cows must graze in pastures for at least four months per year, their feed for the rest of the year must not have been grown from Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) seeds or treated with pesticides or synthetic fertilizers and the cows must not be treated with hormones or antibiotics.

WHY ORGANIC?

Nutrition:
Studies show that organic food has less cancer-causing pesticide residue than conventionally grown crops and more macro- and micro-nutrients. A 2003 University of Washington study found that children who were fed mostly organic produce and juice had only one-sixth of the level of organophosphate pesticide byproducts in their urine compared to children who ate conventionally grown foods.

The President’s Cancer Panel examined the impact of environmental factors and the use of synthetic chemicals on cancer risks before reporting its findings in 2010. Written in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, the report recommends that American consumers eat food grown without pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.

And, can we stop thinking about me, me, me? (Unless you are a diva.) And think about the farm workers?
The President’s Cancer Panel’s 2008-2009 Annual Report showed an increased incidence of certain types of cancers in farm workers and their spouses and an increased incidence of leukemia in children living in agricultural areas.

Climate Change:
After conducting research trials on organic agriculture for nearly three decades on its 333 acres, the Rodale Institute’s records show that organic systems’ soils, when intensively managed with compost and cover crops, can store more than 2,000 pounds of carbon per acre, per year. If all of the world’s 3.5 billion tillable acres were converted to these biological farming methods, we could reduce global CO2 emissions by 40 percent.

Feeding the World:
Globally, scientists are finding that regenerative organic farming holds the only sustainable solution to fight world hunger. A recent report to the United Nations drafted by more than 400 cross-disciplinary researchers and development workers drew the conclusion that organic, regenerative agriculture utilizing available and affordable techniques—such as cover cropping, crop rotation and composting—would serve the people of the developing world far better than imported chemical fertilizer and other outside purchased inputs.

Today, I want you to stop thinking that organic food is just for the elite! When you look at its full value, organic food is still a bargain. “The cost of non-organic food doesn’t include the loss of topsoil or crop-disaster relief, health concerns, climate change or dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico,” says the Rodale Institute’s Tim LaSalle. “If you factor in all that, conventional, chemically grown food is actually much more expensive than organically produced food.”

Blankenship believes that the switch to organic milk would reverberate across the industry. “Starbucks [is] such [a] large milk-buyer that a switch to organic milk would have a big impact on this critical health problem,” he says. “This would be a huge win for consumers and would be a step forward in safeguarding the effectiveness of the antibiotics used to save human lives.”

To pledge, or to watch the latest video from Amplifyd on their organic milk campaign, visit: www.amplifydpledges.com/campaign/organic-milk.

Send Annie free lattes (with organic milk) at th*********@*******nk.net.

by Molly Oleson

It all began with a toast. Raising a glass in her San Rafael home more than 17 years ago, Heidi Kuhn, a fifth-generation Marinite and mother of four, had an epiphany. Deeply inspired by the defining work of the late Princess Diana—who the world had lost just three weeks prior—Kuhn had a strong vision to turn landmines into vineyards.
“It was an epiphany from my heart,” says Kuhn, sitting in the backyard of her home, passed on to her from her grandparents and overlooking the bay. “That the world may go from mines to vines. And you could hear a pin drop. It was an epiphany of turning—almost a visual, of blood to wine, killing fields to vineyards, peace on earth.”t all began with a toast. Raising a glass in her San Rafael home more than 17 years ago, Heidi Kuhn, a fifth-generation Marinite and mother of four, had an epiphany. Deeply inspired by the demining work of the late Princess Diana—who the world had lost just three weeks prior—Kuhn had a strong vision to turn landmines into vineyards.

People around the globe, Kuhn says, understood that the passing of Princess Diana was not just the passing of a princess, but of somebody who stood for compassion. “And the passion she brought through the issues she shed light to.”

Kuhn says that she wanted to give her dinner guests that night something very meaningful, and ensure that the work of Princess Diana would be carried on. “I looked at the kaleidoscope around where we stood and I thought, the Napa vintners, the Sonoma vintners, the Marin vintners—these people harvest the land, they celebrate the harvest, they smell the juicy nectar of the grapes,” Kuhn says. “Whether fermented or not, this is life.”

Encouraged by her guests to take her toast out of the living room and into the world, Kuhn presented her idea in Napa Valley the following week. Support from key vintners like Robert Mondavi, Mike Grgich and Diane Disney Miller—“pioneers and dreamers in their own right”—led to the 1998 launch of Roots of Peace, an organization dedicated to replacing landmines in war-torn regions worldwide with bountiful agriculture.

“We need to focus on the economics of peace,” says Kuhn, founder and CEO of Roots of Peace and recipient of the Pacific Sun’s 2014 Heroes of Marin Lifetime Achievement award. “We need to empower people. We need to provide food security on war-torn lands. We need to help heal communities. And to me that begins by the removal of a simple landmine—it’s a metaphor of hatred, and it’s a physical example, but we need to begin that act of removing the hatred from our one soil and then literally planting the roots of peace.”

Since the global initiative began, Roots of Peace has removed more than one million landmines and unexploded ordnances from continents across the globe, and has helped more than one million farmers to improve orchards and crops. “Like little Johnny Appleseed, I go around the world, giving people cards and inviting them to join me,” Kuhn says. “We’ve planted rice in Cambodia, grapes in Afghanistan, orchards in Croatia, flowers in Bosnia.”

Kuhn refers to her work as “changing the tide of hatred into love” by restoring damaged communities to economic self-sufficiency. “When you plant a seed, regardless of the color of your hand, the politics in your mind or the faith in your heart, that seed will grow, as it has for thousands of years,” she says.

A deep respect for the land can be traced back to Kuhn’s family roots in Marin County. Her great-great-grandfather sailed to California from Maine in the early 1850s, purchasing thousands of acres of land in what is now Marin and Sonoma. Her grandfather was president of the Rotary Club of San Francisco in the early 1940s, and his legacy was to help establish what was to be called the United Nations.

“For me, Marin County is really about the land and its people,” says Kuhn, noting that the original model for the Golden Gate Bridge was once laid out on her living room table, when her grandparents lived in the house and hosted a fellow “dreamer” who wanted to “turn his vision into reality.”

Kuhn’s grandmother, she says, encouraged her to dedicate her life to doing something for peace. “And to take those riches that we derive from the land and from its people, and to bring that beautiful spirit of Marin County out into a world that is so thirsty, so hungry … for love.”

A graduate of San Rafael High School, Kuhn holds a degree in political economics of industrial societies from UC Berkeley. A reporter and producer for CNN and other news organizations in the ’80s and ’90s, Kuhn was living in Alaska with her husband, who was working for IBM and who is now the president of Roots of Peace. She then went on to begin her own television news organization—NewsLink International—reporting on the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the melting of the Ice Curtain between U.S./Soviet relations.

The road hasn’t always been smooth. Before the birth of her fourth child, Kuhn was diagnosed with malignant cancer and told that she would not live. “That stops you in your tracks,” she says. “But it can also either paralyze you or make you realize that each day is a gift.”

She’s held on to the latter. “That’s the way I’ve always chosen to live my life,” she says. “I’ve just had to lead with faith, not fear, and be that pioneer woman that I know my great-great-grandfather would be very proud of.”

Although Kuhn is honored to win the Lifetime Achievement award, she says she’s far from done with her work. Her biggest goal? “World peace,” she says, without missing a beat. “Don’t blink.”

“It’s in my soul; it’s in my DNA; it’s in my spirit; it’s in my mind; it’s in my intelligence, to do whatever I can with the human footsteps that I have, and with these hands, to inspire the world to not forget the legacy of war,” she says. “Those beautiful leaders who have been in my life—let’s use them and draw upon that inspiration and believe in the world what is possible rather than what’s not.”

Hero FYI

• Kuhn has been honored with the Cal Berkeley Alumni Award for Excellence and Achievement and the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award/National Jefferson Award for Public Service, among other local and international recognitions.
• She recently launched a crowd-rise campaign, sponsored by Jeff Skoll (co-founder of eBay) in which people around the world can participate in a “virtual walkathon” for peace.
• Kuhn says that political landmines have been her biggest challenge, and that her most gut-wrenching experience has been the Taliban’s attack on Afghanistan—a country 80 percent dependent on agriculture—this past May.
• Most rewarding has been “the farmers and the families on the ground,” Kuhn says. “It’s the face of my children and my husband, and it’s the light in the eyes of the children around the world that keeps me going.”

For more trivia questions (and answers!) see Howard Rachelson’s Trivia Café every week in the Pacific Sun.

Answer: Mt. Davidson