Tag Archives: Sustainability
Equal Night: the Spring Equinox and the Sports We Love
Friday, March 20, marks the Spring Equinox… Equal Night… one of the two moments every year when night and day are equal…the start of spring! Happy Spring, where hope runs eternal.
Spring training is now in full swing. We’re in the middle of the first week of the NCAA tournament where 68 (used to be 64) teams get whittled down to 16 (in the seven days from Selection Sunday to Sweet Sixteen Sunday). Daylight Savings Time & St. Patrick’s Day hangovers are nearly over. And soon the snows from this crazy winter will be gone.
Funny how things balance out. The universe seems to want to it that way. And for the most part, so do we. We don’t like it when things are out of balance. We strive to make things fair. Especially when it comes to our sporting events and games.
If there’s one thing that Americans can agree on, it’s a fair game. For good or worse, we as a culture are obsessed with sports, and to most of us, fairness and a level playing field are sacred. Americans love to compete. We play to win. And although we may root for different teams, most of us hate cheating and unfair advantages. We won’t stand for a rigged game. We hate unfair competition. So with balance and fairness in mind, we ask you a couple questions:
[socialpoll id=”2156237″ type=”set”]
Humans Destroying the Planet
It doesn’t look good, and many don’t believe we can save ourselves? We do. On the road to Gateway…
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/humans-destorying-planet-earth
PROUD TO BE PRESENTING AT
Hello. We’re very proud to be presenting at the 2013 Webster University Sustainability Conference ON April 13, 2013. Our session, Our Common Future: The Stage for Stories in a New World, is about creating the setting for a web/television series called Gateway: the City’s Reason. It takes place 50 years from now in a “sustainable” St. Louis.
In order to create a “sustainable” vision of the future of St. Louis for the series, we will be interviewing sustainability professionals and advocates from around the world and right here in St. Louis.
The Webster Sustainability Conference administrators have been kind enough to let us do a quick survey that will allow us to continue expanding our series development bible. Whether you are attending this year’s conference or not, we invite you to share your thoughts with us. It won’t take long and we will not be able to identify you.
Click here to take the survey!
+++++ CONFERENCE PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
“Our Common Future”: The stage for stories in a new world.
Fiction and entertainment are shaped by our times, but stories also have the power to shape our world. They can help citizens bridge the gap between what is now and what is possible.
We’re used to seeing the drawings and models of architects and planners when it comes to sustainability issues. But how often is a positive vision of our common future incorporated into popular entertainment that can compellingly communicate innovative visions for the future?
We are creating a sustainable “stage” for a television drama set in the near future here in St. Louis. The show’s creators have been interviewing leaders in business, government and science in order paint a picture of St. Louis in 2063. A picture of a future where we live more intelligently with the earth and with each other.
“Gateway” offers a vision of a sustainable way of living and working, and it does so in a way that is unthreatening and energizing. It gets this vision into the common air of public thought, into the mainstream experience–and mind’s eye–of ordinary Americans. We need this now, as we face terrific challenges and the immanent need for smart, agile changes as a society.
Our team, which will include producer/writer, Gene Pfeiffer, director, Mike Sneden and casting director, Joe Hanrahan, will present the series trailer and storyboards and will discuss our research and vision of Gateway: the City’s Reason.
Why St. Louis?
by Gene Pfeiffer, renga communications
Throughout most of human history economies have been based locally. Communities produced the majority of their own food, clothing and building materials. They also produced their own entertainment – music, song and theater. It wasn’t until the 20th century that we came to expect our entertainment to come from somewhere else – New York, Nashville, Hollywood.
In 2014, changes in technology, distribution channels and entertainment consumption are redefining the business of entertainment once again. This new paradigm in communications has opened up opportunities even for productions created here in the heartland.
Why St. Louis? Because we can. There is enough talent and technology in the region to create, write and produce a high-quality television series and share it with the community and other communities around the world.
Other reasons to work in St. Louis: it’s where the creators live, the combination of beauty and flaws that this city has, its decay and its promise, its great baseball and good beer.
St. Louis has been called the Gateway to the West, the jumping off point for pioneers. We’re asking, why not one of the Gateways to the future?
Gateway: the City’s Reason will think locally. Write locally. Direct locally. Act locally. Edit locally. Distribute locally (and globally).
Our creative and production processes will be lean, green and local (as much as is possible).