Last evening, watched a local TV program that did a spot on Julia Butterfly Hill, the lady who lived almost 2 years in a giant redwood tree to save a priceless forest from loggers. She is extremely articulate and inspiring for anyone who needs encouragement to stand for what they believe in.

Lessons to learn.

Admire her courage of conviction and action, and extreme sensitivity... greatly. Plan to get that book, a.s.a.p.

Diane

'''

Tree Huggers All Aflutter Over Butterfly

SAM McMANIS

Friday, April 28, 2000

)2000 San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/04/28/CC108073.DTL

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

Anticipation is palpable, strong as the unmistakable aroma of patchouli oil wafting over the park. Earthlings of all shapes, sizes, sexes and skin colors congregate on the grass in Berkeley and gaze with munificence at the stage. They are waiting, waiting for Julia.

Word is, she's stuck on BART but will be here soon. Any minute now, Earth Day organizers promise. Hey, isn't that her skulking near the rock-climbing wall? No, wait. There she is, ascending to the stage. Yes, it's really her. Julia Butterfly Hill, the woman who spent 738 days in a redwood tree she calls Luna.

The crowd rises as one -- and it's tough, too, since many were sitting in the lotus position -- for an ovation. This is more than a warm, heartfelt response; this is rock-star level adulation. Think Sting at a Rainforest benefit concert. That's how enthusiastic the response is.

And, after J.B.H. delivers her earnest environmental message, the standing ovation resumes with enough natural, nonfossil fuel-burning power to light up Pleasant Hill. Hands clasped in front of her as if in supplication, she bows repeatedly and then floats off the stage as if borne by the good vibes.

-- -- --

ENVIRONMENTAL ICON: That was last Saturday. Sunday, it'll be our turn to meet and greet and simply adore Julia, who's too young and feisty to be called an Earth Mother. How about Earth Niece With Attitude?

Anyway, she's planning to BART her way to the Chronicle Pavilion at Concord to give the keynote address at Contra Costa's Earth Day festival and, afterward, sign copies of her book (printed on recycled paper, natch).

Sure, there will be other eco-cool things to see, such as checking out the world's fastest electric car (more on that later) and chomping on some barbecued veat -- yes, that's veat with a v. But let's face it, those are just the opening acts. Julia, noted tree-sitter, is the star.

Because the environment has long been our pet cause, we managed to procure an exit visa to the other side of the tunnel (via BART, of course) so we could sample Julia's speech in Berkeley as sort of a preview of coming attractions for her Chron Pavilion appearance.

First thing you notice: Julia looks nothing like the stereotype the mainstream media (hey, that's us) portrays.

There are no twigs entangled in her shoulder-length brown hair. She's not bone-thin, either, just (pardon the pun) willowy. She wore an outfit you'd find at, say, St. Mary's College: T-shirt and drawstring cotton pants and a even a black Scunci wrapped on her right wrist. Not a single thing on her was tie-dyed.

Julia's world view, however, is unapologetically neo-hippie. She asks you to put away your detached suburban irony and seriously consider concepts such as loving the Earth.

``I've been all around the country since I came down,'' Julia told the crowd, ``and I've spoken to people. And you can just see the mainstream media roll their eyes when I talk about love and sacred spirituality. They say, `Oh, God, you can tell she's from California.' Well, yes, I am, and I'm proud of it.''

Roll our eyes? Gosh, no. Our eyes were fixated -- pupils dilated, too -- on her during her speech. She wasn't all feel-good, though. Her message doesn't lack bark (last pun, promise). She took people to task for hypocrisy, jaded thinking and ``green-washing.''

Note to those planning to drive to the Pavilion Sunday: You'll get a gentle scolding and be reminded that it's better to bike it, BART it or hoof it.

Other targets:

-- Mainstream media: Bad.

-- Government: Very bad.

-- Drivers of SUVs: Very, very bad.

-- Large corporations: Beyond bad. Evil incarnate.

She upbraided the mainstream media for failing to report on earth- desiccating large corporations. She ripped into Gov. Gray Davis (``He ran on the platform of preserving the redwoods. But guess what? He hasn't done anything, and he's taken millions from the timber industry.'')

That reads more harshly than it actually was. Julia was sweet and sensitive, bereft of curdling cynicism. She told people to hug trees, embrace the grass -- and folks did. That might be tough at the Pavilion, where there's mostly asphalt and concrete.

One of her peeves, it seems, is the use of paper cups.

``I can't believe how disposable this society is,'' she said. ``Most of the food stalls at this (festival) use paper cups. What are we thinking? Carry around reusable mugs. And when you go to the store and they ask you, `Paper or plastic?' whip out a canvas bag.

``Now corporations and the mainstream media will say that's small stuff, that it's crunchy granola type of thinking. But it's not. It's doing your part.''

Some in the crowd, we swear, sheepishly put down their plastic and paper smoothie and juice cups to applaud.

THIS GUY'S JUICED: You won't find Ed Dempsey up a tree, or even down on terra firma hugging one. More likely, Dempsey's got the hood up on a car and tinkering with some battery. All for the sake of the environment, of course.

Dempsey is the owner and designer of ``White Lightning,'' the electric race car that set a world speed record for electric vehicles last year at the Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. Top speed: 245 mph. Dempsey will show off his vehicle at the Chron Pavilion but, no, you can't take the car out for a test spin.

``I guess you could call me an environmentalist, but I'm not one of those people who'll lie down in front of a logging truck,'' he says. ``I'm not crazy.''

Nah, Dempsey, 62-year-old retired construction demolition expert, isn't that kind of extremist. It's just that he was willing to spend $1.24 million in the past three years to build a car powered by 6,040 Moltech ``C'' size power cells.

``You know, I didn't start out to spend that much,'' says Dempsey, who made his fortune blowing up buildings (he swears) quietly. ``But you know how it is. You get started, and you can't stop until you get it right. It becomes sort of an obsession.''

See, Ed and Julia aren't so different, after all. They both seek to raise consciousness about preserving environmental resources through unusual means.

``This shows the world that an electric car can be fast and capable of record speeds,'' Dempsey says.

------

AND FINALLY: Allow me just one green gripe amid the positive vibes: Earth Day? Puhleeze, it's been more like Earth Month.

The logical mind craves uniformity, so all these Earth Day celebrations on different days is bound to confuse. In some Bay Area locales, Earth Day celebrations began three weekends ago. Last Saturday supposedly was the real Earth Day, when cities such as San Francisco, Berkeley and Richmond held fairs. Tomorrow, San Jose checks in. And now, on Sunday, Contra Costa pulls up the rear.

What, did we not get the memo that the real Earth Day was last week? This is like celebrating the Sixth of July or deciding to throw a Ocho de Mayo party. Let's consult a calendar next year.

Sam McManis welcomes column contributions. Write to him at The Chronicle, 2737 North Main St., Suite 100, Walnut Creek, CA. 94596. Phone: (925) 974-8346. E-mail:mcmaniss@sfgate.com.

)2000 San Francisco Chronicle

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2000

Answers

The Legacy of Luna : The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods by Julia Butterfly Hill

http://www.amazon.com/exec/ obidos/ASIN/0062516582/qid=957274860/sr=1-1/102-6923832-2713644

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2000

And "For The Record" I think there are many businesses AND mega corporations that are beginning to make the transition... transformation... to paying attention to their corporte stewardship and envirnonmental responsibilities.

In fact, I'm quite hopeful, they'll be the pioneers, role models and case studies to lead the others along the sustainable "do it, don't just talk about it" pathways... because it's "what works" for everyone... long-term.

Business taking butterfly steps?

Diane

See...

Sustainable Business.com (dot com)

http:// www.sustainablebusiness.com

The Sustainable Business Forum, for CEOs and Key Executives of private industry (dot org)

http:// www.sustainablebusiness.org

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2000

Julia Butterfly's Two Years Up a Tree
Activist's spirituality suffuses the memoir of her environmental protest
REVIEWED BY Tom Turner
Sunday, April 2, 2000
)2000 San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/04/02/RV23908.DTL

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

THE LEGACY OF LUNA

The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods By Julia Butterfly Hill HarperSanFrancisco; 256 pages; $25

Everyone else has told Julia Butterfly Hill's story by now: major newspapers, People, Time, Newsweek, George, Good Housekeeping and scores of others. Now it's her turn.

``The Legacy of Luna'' is a brisk, somewhat meandering, ultimately moving account of Hill's 738 days and nights living near the crown of a battered, old 200-foot-tall coast redwood that activists had named Luna.

Luna stands on a ridge above the tiny town of Stafford in far Northern California and looks out across a sea of redwoods, interspersed liberally with clearcuts and mudslides, within sight of the celebrated Headwaters grove. This is not pristine wilderness. All the trees immediately surrounding Luna have been felled and are awaiting a trip to the sawmill as this tale begins.

Julia Hill was born 25 years ago to an itinerant preacher and his wife in the South. She grew up poor. In 1997, just recovered from a near-fatal auto accident, she set out with three friends to explore the West Coast. When they reached the redwoods, she experienced an epiphany:

``The energy hit me in a wave. Gripped by the spirit of the forest, I dropped to my knees and began to sob. I sank my fingers into the layer of duff, which smelled so sweet and so rich and so full of layers of life, then lay my face down and breathed it in. Surrounded by these huge, ancient giants, I felt the film covering my senses from the imbalance of our fast-paced, technologically dependent society melt away. I could feel my whole being bursting forth into new life in this majestic cathedral. I sat and cried for a long time. Finally the tears turned into joy and the joy turned to mirth, and I sat and laughed at the beauty of it all.''

So begins the grand adventure chronicled in ``The Legacy of Luna,'' and that paragraph is a pretty good harbinger. Hill is deeply religious, somewhat prone to overwriting and profoundly serious in her calling.

She also has a fine sense of adventure and a refreshing sense of humor, as in her encounter with angry loggers. After some rancorous banter, she fills a plastic Baggie with granola and a 3-month-old snapshot of herself in heels, makeup, silk suit and styled hair and drops it to the ground. The logger looks at the photograph.

``You're lying! That's not you!''

``. . . I want you to see how silly our preconceptions of each other are.''

``Damn! You really look like this?''

``Yeah.''

``Then what the hell you doing up in a tree?''

It is a question Hill asked herself repeatedly, as the weeks stretched to months and the months to years. No one, she reports, had ever tree-sat through a Northern California winter. She went through two.

Julia Butterfly (all the forest activists adopt noms de guerre) first ascended Luna in December 1997. She expected to stay on the 6-by- 6-foot platform for three weeks to give the previous tree-sitter a break. It would be more than two years before her feet touched the ground again.

Hill recounts harrowing nights in howling gales that nearly killed her more than once. She relates attempts by Pacific Lumber, the owner of the land and the tree, to get her down from her perch by buzzing her with a helicopter and interfering with her supporters, trying to break her will. She tells of visits by the great and the near-great, including Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, Woody Harrelson and the young '60s-style hippies who were her support system. The account of Pacific Lumber President John Campbell's visit to Julia and Luna brings back memories of Richard Nixon's impromptu wee-hours debate with Vietnam war protesters at the Lincoln Memorial 30 years ago.

Along the way Hill became a celebrity, thanks to modern technology. While her living conditions could hardly have been more primitive (all her water she collected from tarps that protected her from rain and mist), an array of electronic devices brought her into the world's living room:

``In Luna, (I had) a radio phone powered by solar panels that are connected to two motorcycle batteries, an emergency cell phone, a hand-powered radio, a tape recorder, a digital camera, a video camera, walkie-talkies, and a pager that functions as my answering machine and controls my life.'' She spent six to eight hours a day on the phone, she reports, being interviewed, speaking to conferences and preaching the save-the-redwoods gospel.

The media reaction was astounding. News anchors and fashion- magazine reporters alike scampered up Luna to conduct interviews. Julia's impish good looks and her infectious passion impressed them all and brought more public attention to her crusade than a hundred advertisements ever could.

If she blazed a trail with her use of high-tech gear, she also set a standard in the economics of environmental activism and publishing. What finally enticed Hill to abandon her post was a binding agreement from Pacific Lumber never to cut Luna and to protect a buffer around it. In return, Hill promised not to trespass on company land, and certainly never to scale another of its trees with the intention of setting up housekeeping. She is, however, allowed to pay occasional visits to Luna. In return, Julia agreed to hand over $50,000 -- a substantial fraction of which will no doubt come from royalties on this book -- to Pacific Lumber, which will give the money to Humboldt State University for forest research. So in the end, readers who buy the book will save the subject of the book -- a tidy bit of circular justice.

Tom Turner is director of publications for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund.

)2000 San Francisco Chronicle

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2000