Recovering journalist off the wagon

Like the sharks in Finding Nemo, I have been a recovering journalist for three years. That said, I'm having a press release for lunch today!

I'll be back on the wagon for dinner, coaching how to write a compelling book review and use humor to engage readers. After that, deep diving into Mental Health and current treatments for it, for an upcoming reference encyclopedia published by ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press. I'll be writing entries, and may be editing, too, down the road.

National Park in Japan, 2009



Some of the subjects are new to me, though one feeds an idea I've long wanted to bring to life. The treatment approach is called "ecopsychology." The idea I've wanted to bring to life is to create a place where people and the land cultivate each other. It's a kind of a school.

I need help developing the idea, finding the right "board of directors," and creating an action plan. This place, which I've always envisioned on a foothill, is a solution to problems of mental health, violence, prevalent negative feelings and cynicism about self and others, and more.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, offers a case study, cited in the back of author Richard Louv's book, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder." In the section, Notes from the Field, Louv tells of Riverside Park, which runs along the Milwaukee River through deep urban everything.

He writes, "when this park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the founder of American landscape architecture, and established in the late 19ths century, it was a tree-lined valley with a waterfall, a hill for sledding, and places for skating and swimming, fishing and boating. But in the 1970s, topography was flattened to create sports fields. Pollution made the river unfit for human contact, park maintenance declined, families fled, violent crime and drug dealing moved in. Riverside Park became associated with blight, not beauty. Then, in the 1990s, a remarkable chain of events occurred. A dam on the river was removed, a natural water flow flushed out contaminants. A retired biophysicist started a small outdoor-education program which evolved into the nonprofit Urban Ecology Center, annually hosting more than 18,000 student visits from 23 area schools. ...In Riverside Park, nature was not the problem; it was the solution."

I'd like to carry on that work, and make it grow. If you'd like to get together with me on this, please write to me at DashonDeadline@aol.com.