About
ME
I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a place that still, in lots of ways, holds my heart even though I no longer live there. I was surrounded and supported (and still am) by a close family – wonderful parents, two sisters and a brother – and a large, colorful network of extended family and friends. I am enormously thankful for them all.
After going to some excellent schools like St. Paul’s and Yale, I moved to New York and then Massachusetts while working in art conservation. Fairly quickly, I realized my temperament wasn’t well suited to the work; I am not patient enough and my mind way too restless. But I have huge respect for those who are best in the field, those whose talent is that rare alchemy of artist, chemist, historian, and channeler of people long gone. I was lucky to work with some. I can tell you without hesitation they are special people, and it’s a fascinating field.
I left the rarefied world of artists in the Northeast for the early days of CNN in Atlanta, a place where people moved fast to meet daily deadlines and hurled swearwords flamboyantly across the newsroom. I loved it! It was exciting and tremendous fun to be part of an upstart network that, in the beginning at least, people ignored. My how things change.
But I was drawn to formats longer than the news story and eventually wandered over to their documentary department, which was a little slower paced and more contemplative than news. While in American Samoa on assignment I worked with underwater filmmaker Mike deGruy. Lo and behold, a few years later I married him, joined his madcap world of natural history filmmaking, and settled in California.
Mike still amazes and inspires me, and perhaps most of all, continues to make me laugh a lot. He is relentlessly passionate about the ocean, is one of the best storytellers I know and is an all around good guy. Together we’ve made films for the BBC, National Geographic, PBS, Discovery and others for which we’ve gathered awards along the way. He’s also been very busy with his own projects, most of which focus on our imperiled ocean, especially the deep ocean, and its myriad creatures.
I’ve never really liked the word ‘career’, at least for me since so much of my life seems indistinguishable from my work as a filmmaker. And anyway these last few years I’ve been preoccupied with things that aren’t very career-ish in the classic sense. At some point I took to heart words written on a pillow given to us by a friend:
We now have two perfect 
children I adore. It is my total honor, joy, and challenge to be their mom. I bumble along and am doing my best to further our human species through these delightful two people.
THE BLOG
I’m looking at life through the prism of my wildlife filmmaking experience, and thinking about how to raise children. There are so many things that nurture vibrant, young spirits into loving, kind, productive and good members of the world.
Again and again, I keep returning to the notion that we should think of ourselves more often as simple (but wondrous) mammals, animals scratching at the earth in an effort to survive. I think if we kept that in mind, lived more simply and connected more viscerally to the elements around us, our future might be a little brighter.
There is much talk these days about biomimicry, which Wikipedia defines as follows:
Biomimicry or biomimetics is the examination of nature, its models, systems, processes, and elements to emulate or take inspiration from in order to solve human problems. The termbiomimicry and biomimetics come from the Greek words bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate. Other terms often used are bionics, bio-inspiration, and biognosis.
So, along those lines, how about this: observe nature and see what it suggests we do when raising our children. Not that our children are problems, but, I do think we’ve veered off course and might ‘recalculate our route.’ We are incredibly anthropocentric – or, more simply, incredibly self-centered – and are trashing the very host upon which we depend: earth. And I, like so many others, fear for our future.
Why don’t we garner some lessons from nature and at the same time, stop considering ourselves so superior to the rest of the natural world. That arrogance is outdated and, in the parlance of my teenagers, is so ‘yesterday’.
With some help from biologist friends and filmmaker colleagues I’ll look at interesting animal behavior and see what we might learn in terms of raising our own children. I’m no biologist myself, so this is just an intuitive interpretation.
In addition, I’ve struggled, like all parents do I suspect, with how best to teach my children. Thankfully, education is a very hot topic these days: testing, no testing, private schools, charter vs public schools, too much homework, not enough time for kids to be kids. Tiger moms, lenient moms, emphasis on teaching science and math. All are incredibly important debates, but it seems to me that what we need beneath it all is broad, systemic change. Redefine our very notion of success. And to me the more pressing question, the one that vexes me, is how and what are we going to teach our children so the human race is successful, or simply survives? If you begin to answer that question, I think many things might fall into place.
I’m fascinated by the stories of people I admire and am curious to know what in their lives allowed them to become the people they are. Who influenced them? At what point did they recognize their chosen path? Where do THEY think we should go in education? I’ll share bits of my conversations with these varied types – a very idiosyncratic list – many are our culture’s wise elders, in an effort to provide just one more facet of the ongoing discussion about how best to prepare our young for a quickly changing world. There is so much talk about what is the new, latest, greatest research in education. Well, to me there is tremendous wisdom in the past in every field so I’d like to hear what those who’ve been around for a while have to say.
In the end, though, there is one thing that matters most. When it comes to my children and those children everywhere in the world, more than anything, I believe the most important thing we can give them, the thing that rises above all else and in the end may save us all, is the prevailing power of love and peace.
