What a weekend at Jackson Hole Book Festival’s Conversation for the Community. For one, check out featured speaker/author Lt. Col. (ret.) Alexander Vindman, a leading national security expert, whose new book The Folly of Realism explores how SIX US presidential administrations of both parties emboldened Russia’s imperialist mythos, and suggests helpful ideas for change. Another glimpse into one of the world’s largest-scale conundrums came from The Fragile Earth panel with Porter Fox—Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them—and local county commissioner Luther Propst—A Watershed Moment: The American West in the Age of Limits as they shared thoughts about the climate chaos threatening human societies and the habitual views we’ve operated under for many hundreds of years.
Scaling down to a personal story entwined with that of the most recent federal recognition of a Turtle Island tribe, Chris LaTray’s lively discussions around Becoming Little Shell began, like his weekly newsletters, with “Boozhoo, indinewamaaginidog,” a greeting and reminder that we are all each other’s relatives. Like that statement, which turns upside down the faulty Western concept of human exceptionalism, Marni Sandweiss’s The Girl In the Middle challenges long-held assumptions about agency and power. Her investigation of a historical photograph revealed far more than the name of a previously anonymous native girl-woman, and showcases the inherited male lens that truncates so much of our historical understanding.
Words, stories, conversations like these can be powerful catalysts. But writers often get slim clues about the ways their words help carry people forward into the world’s various needs. Two authors and record label co-founders who both served this event as panel moderators, Tiffanie DeBartolo and Scott Schumaker created the ShineMaker Foundation to see literal manifestations of their values through on-the-ground project support. Several of their partnering organizations also come from music industry origins, such as the Etheridge Foundation, seeking holistic treatments for opioid use disorder, and the Road Recovery Project. Others emphasize healthy habitat for wildlife that can also be expected to improve human prospects for a livable future. Wild Tomorrow Fund and Global Forest Generation both bring those values to life. Many writers express their idealism through their creative works, but through the ShineMaker Foundation, these two show how allying with pragmatism, “rolling up your sleeves” as Bono said, turns that idealism real.
*on my own tiny scale, I turn my idealism real by donating all author proceeds from The Scent of Distant Family to animal welfare projects, both local and international. We are all related.
