Day 4259: Jane Goodall, Demura Sensei.

  

"Loss": junk collage, china marker sketch in journal

 

 

  

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Click : Brenton Woods, Oogum Boogum Song

 

  

 

 

2GN2S

British primatologist Jane Goodall, pictured here attending an event in Los Angeles in July 2019.

Jane Goodall is world-famous for her chimpanzee work  Now her focus is on a different crowd

In 1960, on the banks of Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania, one young British woman would set out to change what we know about primates forever. Jane Goodall defied conventional scientific methods by immersing herself in the jungle, which led to groundbreaking discoveries about chimpanzees; most notably that they use tools, are omnivores and that they are socially complex beings. More than six decades later, her unorthodox field work – and her conservation efforts – are still celebrated around the world.

Today, the recently-turned 90-year-old’s work looks a little different – taking place mostly indoors, and with a different crowd. Through her program called “Roots & Shoots,” Goodall empowers young people to create change within their communities. And for her, this work is just as significant.

During a trip to South Africa, where she observed some of the projects local Johannesburg students are heading up as part of Roots & Shoots. Goodall: I think it’s really important, this exchange of information from the elders to the youngers. I was really lucky; I had an amazing mother. I was born loving animals, and she supported that love of animals. I was one-and-a-half years old, and she came into my room and she found I’d taken a whole handful of wriggling earthworms into my bed. Most mothers would’ve [said], ‘Oh, throw these dirty things [away].’ She just said, ‘Jane, I think they might die without the Earth, you better take them into the garden.’ And so she nurtured this inherent love I had in all the insects, the birds, the animals, everybody around me.

Click here for British primatologist Jane Goodall, pictured here attending an event in Los Angeles in July 2019 video.

 Roots & Shoots is active in 70 countries, where hundreds of thousands of young people are making an impact within their communities. How did the program come about?

Goodall: When I began Roots & Shoots in Tanzania in 1991, it was because I was meeting young people then who had lost hope. Young people who felt we’d compromised their future. And the reason they’re losing hope, it’s obvious: climate change, loss of biodiversity. I could go on listing, listing, listing … but when they said there was nothing they could do about it, then I thought, ‘No, that’s not true.’

It has been a long, empty, hard year since Demura Sensei passed one year ago today. His loyal students are working hard to carry on his legacy. It's so hard to believe he is gone, but we feel his spirit giving us strength and hope in the dojo.

2023

 

  

 

A 16  minute video, LA City Art,  here

 

 

 

  

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