Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

By Wendy Liscow, Program Officer

Last week, Steven Slater became the new poster boy for every stressed, overwhelmed, and harried person in America when he activated the literal and metaphorical emergency slide to escape his job as a JetBlue steward.  Every news outlet covered the story, some appealing to our common frustrations with airlines and others focusing on worker liberation from an unhappy or stressful job situation. All identified with the feeling of living on the edge of collapse.

A recent article in the New York Times suggests that there could be other alternatives to taking Slater’s dramatic career-ending route and even increase the happiness quotient in our lives.  In fact, the stark realities of the economic downturn have yielded some unexpected positives in American’s lives as they have had to save more, spend less and simplify their lives.  There is a raft of research suggesting that accumulating more money and more “stuff” does not yield more happiness, and people are now shifting priorities and investing in experiences that have a greater happiness return.

At Dodge, we have the honor to support many nonprofits who spend every day working to help people access these experiences.  Last week I visited one of these  self-renewing opportunities in action.  Every summer for the past 35 years, Arts Horizons hosts two Artist/Teacher Institutes (aTi), one held at Rutgers Camden Campus  and the other at William Paterson University.  I had the pleasure of experiencing the fruits of 40 teachers, artists and administrators’ two weeks of labor in intensive workshops focusing on book arts, installation art, Latin dance, poetry, memoir writing and glass painting.

WiredPRNews.com interviewed Jenifer Simon, Arts Horizons’ Director of New Jersey Programs, Partnerships and aTi, about how the summer opportunities allowed participants to explore their creativity and gain new perspective on their artistic or teaching practice.  “For teachers, aTi is an opportunity to become ‘the student,’ while connecting with a community of peers…aTi helps teachers find their inner artist, and then helps them bring this creativity into the classroom. Many teachers comment that aTi gives them a new lease on life for teaching.”   You can get a 30 second taste of the program by watching this terrific coverage of the Camden experience on NY1

It is inspiring to see a group of people pay money and dedicate two weeks of their summer to doing something that deliberately takes them outside of their comfort zone.  Yet, at the end of the intense immersion in art making, they were ecstatic with the results.

Dr. Donald Ford is a practicing veterinarian, a professor, and a dapper dresser who was able to take his passion for protecting endangered species and create two installation pieces that explored the relationship between the demand for endangered animal products and importation of these products and the people who peddle them.

Dapper Dr. Ford (left) and his chair (right)

Sarah Kaplan is an elementary school teacher and she discovered how to make an explosion page book to help her to teach about the color wheel.  The color wheel moved in unimaginable ways taking all sorts of shapes.  I was enthralled by it; imagine what a six year old would think!  What I loved most was when the other teachers gathered around Sarah to discuss all the opportunities the new design opened up to them, building ideas upon ideas.  It was creativity in motion.

Sarah Kaplan and her color wheel

The entire glass painting class learned about this ancient craft and paid homage to the history of the great glass artists by creating a window of saints, but replaced the faces of the saints with images of their present classmates to whom they had grown to respect  and love.  It is stunning.

Perhaps your internal voice is resisting saying something like, “That’s fine and dandy if you have two weeks to spare and the money to take advantage of this kind of opportunity.”  Well, Christine E. Salvatore, an AP English teacher in Egg Harbor Township school district and a second year aTi graduate, suggests an antidote to this pushback through the poem she wrote in her poetry workshop.  Please enjoy it and I, for one, am going to make it a practice until I can schedule the flamenco class at Alborada Spanish Dance Theatre and Bikram Hot Yoga I have been wanting to take for two years.

Praise for the Ordinary

Do not blame your mundane life
on piles of laundry, unmade beds,
and the never ending heaps of mail.
You can, without fail, find pleasure
in the ordinary, contrary to what
you’ve always been told.
We build our lives task by task,
so do not ask where all the time
has gone.  We should learn
to praise each day.  Tonight
instead of our quiet waltz
of dirty dishes and leftovers,
I’ll suggest a jitterbug.
Wine glasses raised, and barefoot,
We’ll dance on the living room rug.

- Christine E. Salvatore

Let us know what your prescription for stress is and how you increase your happiness factor.

Wendy Liscow, Program Officer

I owe Dale Busch a long-deserved thank you; it’s a thank you 30 years in the making. Aside from my parents, I would have to say that Dale Busch, and her husband Ted, are responsible for shaping who I am today, my career path and my work ethic. I wrote about my experience with these mentors who first introduced me to the theatre in my previous blog about leadership. Fortunately, thanks to Facebook, last night I was able to reconnect with these two teachers/artists and finally thank them for transforming my life.

The real inspiration for this sudden need for closure with my treasured, though unrecognized mentors came from my recent visits with grantees who have shared inspiring stories about how their education, environmental and artistic programs are impacting lives. I realized that for every story of a kid’s transformation that an artist or teacher can tell, there are hundreds more that they will never know about.

Think about it: if you are an artist, you rarely know how your art impacts others. Sure, you hear the applause, get letters and other positive feedback, present to sold-out crowds, get great reviews, and even make it to the “big time” (whatever that means for the artist’s particular discipline). But you rarely find out the full extent to which you impacted someone’s life or changed the way they view or live in the world. How do you measure the true impact?

If you are an educator, either in a traditional classroom or as part of a nonprofit endeavor, you hopefully get sufficient indicators to keep you motivated and passionate about your work. You see a kid turn around their grades or discover their talents. You witness the blossoming of a student who hasn’t said a word in class suddenly reading a poem out loud in front of the class. You watch a kid decide to make different choices that lead to a totally new future to them. But again, for every story you know about, there are thousands you don’t hear. How can you know when the kids don’t yet know?

At a recent site visit to see a dance class for the youth company of the School of the Garden State Ballet at Symphony Hall in Newark, I witnessed Jody Jaron, the school’s astounding teacher and executive director, in action. She had a group of 30+ kids, ages 7 to 19, primarily from Newark and the surrounding area, laboring in their toe shoes to execute demanding warm-up and dance routines. Jody alternately bellowed compliments and corrections, the girls immediately made subtle adjustments, and indeed there was improvement.

I asked a young woman who had been watching the class with me how she felt about the intensity of the teaching. Turns out she had grown up in Newark, trained under Jody for many years and adored and respected her so much that she came back from college in Virginia whenever she could to help teach classes. While she hadn’t chosen dance as her career, the classes she took at the School of the Garden State Ballet taught her discipline, endurance, the value of working hard for something you are passionate about, and how important it is to give back to your community. This young woman was a metric of Jody’s success and impact.

Although Jody doesn’t always get to see the grown-up end results, she gets to see students accepted into great schools and highly respected companies like Alvin Ailey. Recently a past student wrote Jody on Facebook to tell her that her successful business in cruise lines entertainment planning began when Jody asked her to be in charge of a small section of the Nutcracker. Jody is willing to work 80 hours per week because one student who happens to be in the DYFS system nonchalantly told her that “when she is unhappy, she just thinks about her ballet walks.” These are everyday miracles that often go unnoticed and don’t get measured by quantitative yardsticks.

Sometimes you just have to be comfortable with qualitative measurements.

I am thinking that today would be a good day to celebrate an artist, teacher and/or mentor who impacted your life. Help reveal some of the untold stories. Tell us about your mentors, or if you are lucky enough to know how your work influenced another, share that story too. We would like to know. And don’t just tell us, tell your long lost teacher.

Photos courtesy School of the Garden State Ballet

Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate

If you’re not familiar with GOOD (the magazine, the website, their events & videos), they are worth checking out. They show us how to collaborate – individuals, businesses and nonprofits – and move forward on a wide range of issues, and they are, for me, a really interesting example of building community and nurturing creativity through the internet.

They routinely give out assignments, such as “Help Us Create ‘Neighbor Day’” and “Design an Everyday Solution to an Extraordinary Problem” inviting anyone and everyone to participate. One of their most recent assignments was to design a way to give easier access to healthy, fresh food to people who receive government assistance. The winner of the Food Stamps and Farmers’ Market assignment shows us how this is already being done in Santa Monica, CA – useful, practical information for anyone else who might be working on these same issues.

I am also a fan of GOOD’s infographics, which are always fascinating.

Lately, I’ve been reading their feature on neighborhoods: what makes for a nice neighborhood? (See also Nate Silver’s really interesting article, “The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York“  in New York Magazine and his methodology for ranking them).

Also, how do you make your neighborhood better? As we continue to improve and expand Sustainable Jersey, these questions about improving our neighborhoods and communities are essential.

GOOD offers a lot of advice that may seem basic, but sometimes we need to be reminded to be good regulars at our local businesses, to throw an occasional block party, and to  get to know our neighbors. You can find their neighborhood issue here, which they will be updating until they’ve posted all of their articles. Given our work around healthy regional food systems, the article “Agriculture is the New Golf” is especially interesting.

You can also find GOOD on Facebook and on Twitter, where they ask a daily question (e.g., “Who or what inspires you?”), and it’s interesting to read people’s responses.

Do you like the neighborhood you live in? What would make it better – and what can you do to make it better?

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Tickets for the 2010 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival go on sale through the NJPAC box office on Friday, April 23 at 10 am.

Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate

We’re only weeks away from getting our hands in the dirt and planting our rooftop garden—we’ve already cleaned it up and have starter plants of lettuces, dill and radishes in our kitchen. We’re also working with the Freylinghuysen Arboretum to source native and local plants and to help us plan for three seasons of planting.

We took advantage of the warm weather last week to clean up our planters.

Our lavender and chives are thriving already.

And so are our strawberries!

This compost bin is a very happy addition to our gardening arsenal. We have a smaller compost bin in our staff kitchen which we empty into our rooftop bin frequently. In addition to our food scraps, the Dodge Foundation uses compostable plates, cups and napkins which we can tear up and stick in our bin.

Right now, the rest of our green roof is growing beautifully. The color of the sedum is spectacular.

I’ll share more pictures as this year’s garden grows. In the meantime, if you want to take a look at last year’s garden and green roof photos, you can find them on Flickr.

While we’re on the topic of green roofs and gardens, below is an interesting video from the Guardian on green roofs in Sheffield, Yorkshire, UK which I saw on Twitter via our friends at grist. (Follow grist on Twitter).

Here’s a clever idea for small space gardening from Re-nest using recycled soda bottles:

From CRAFT, you might find these best easy garden tips helpful:

And The Crochet Dude helps you plant your garden in an easy grid:

Excited to get your hands in the dirt? What are you planting this year?

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7-10
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Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate

At the beginning of this month, Wendy Liscow offered an extensive selection of thoughtful holiday gift ideas that also benefit New Jersey non-profits.

But some of you are procrastinators. We know it.

So, here are a few more last minute gift ideas, in addition to Wendy’s comprehensive list – many of them are just a phone call away. And in case you missed the news that the State of New Jersey has frozen $10 million in grant money to arts organizations across the state, a donation to any arts group, or a purchase of gift tickets/subscriptions is especially meaningful and useful to them while also making a lovely gift for anyone on your list.

Shakespeare Theatre Box Office

The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey has a well-stocked gift shop with handmade items like jewelry and scarves, as well as toys, t-shirts and, of course, Shakespeare-inspired gifts. They also offer gift certificates for subscriptions, tickets and the gift shop in all denominations as well as gift passes to any performance of any production in the 2009 or 2010 season. You can call their box office at: (973) 408-5600

Shop the Pinelands Preservation Alliance online shop for many Pinelands-related items including books and history DVDs, as well as affordable art prints and photographs. (Today is the last day to shop online for holiday delivery, but you can stop by the Pinelands Visitor Center on Saturday from 11am to 4pm or Sunday from 1pm to 4pm).

Centenary Stage is offering a sweet deal: with your ticket purchase to any of their events, they’ll wrap your ticket purchases in a mug filled with chocolates. Nice! Call their box office: (908) 979-0900.

The Zimmerli Holiday Boutique is in full swing until December 23rd. The museum’s gorgeous gift shop has many things to choose from, and just $3 will give you access to the museum, too. The gift shop is free to enter and open during regular museum hours.

Thanks to Twitter, we know that the Surflight Theatre, which is the only professional theatre in Ocean County, and Appel Farm Arts and Music Center, a residential arts camp for kids 9-17 years, are offering gift certificates as perfect Christmas gifts. You can call their box offices for more information. Surflight: (609) 492-9477 and Appel Farm: (800) 394-1211.

And if none of the above seem just right, we urge you to remember your local food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters need all the support they can get. A donation to these vital organizations in someone’s honor is a truly thoughtful and meaningful gift that directly supports people in need. Here in Morristown, there are too many organizations to mention them all, but if you are local to the area, please consider supporting Homeless Solutions, Interfaith Food Pantry, Jersey Battered Women’s Services, Deirdre’s House, and the Community Soup Kitchen of Morristown.

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