Treehugging

I've been starting to get some "I'm thankful for" emails for my Thanksgiving project, which I have really enjoyed reading! (This is a not too subtle hint to please take a few minutes and send me your thoughts).

One thing I am very thankful for is living near trees, on a quiet, beautiful leafy block. The sight of these trees, with their ballet arm branches, immediately feels like an oasis from the city, and provides a calm healthy contrast to concrete, noise, tall buildings and people on top of people.

Trees are not rushing anywhere, they are simply standing; being. From their roots to their branches, trees provide a type of balm to the soul and a lesson in grace, patience and the wisdom behind the fact that slow growth is very often the growth that endures....

I do have a bit of tropical bias and have palm trees not pine trees in my inner eye (..."The palm at the end of the mind, Beyond the last thought, rises..." as Wallace Stevens wrote), but am very much treehugger for ALL trees, and have a happy familiarity with the beautiful trees of the Northeast which are very similar to ones from my youth.
Growing up in a small town on the cusp of Central-Northern Michigan (which has the opposite tree to people ratio than life in New York City), we'd often go on field trips and color tours, as well as visits to pumpkin patches and cider mills.

This week a quick business trip to Seventh Generation offices felt like a New England color tour as the bonus of the trip was seeing trees, in the full glory of their seasonal wardrobe change.


What a beautiful world we live in!

Happy Friday everyone.

Thanksgiving project

According to Feng Shui principles, a koi pond is good luck for abundance and prosperity, demonstrating 'flow'. While I don't have that at the moment, my koi pond is the East River and the harbor, and I adore watching the movement every morning - boats, taxis, helicopters, sometimes cruise ships coming into port so large they block out New Jersey. I love seeing water every day, watching the current and water moving around.

I'm announcing a "Back to the Future" Thanksgiving project - of things large and small - to be thankful for, and I'd like your input! It can be really simple like "I'm thankful to see water every day" to the small things in life like "Mmmmmm, I'm thankful for going to Eataly tonight for that amazing pizza and am going to ask for two swirls of olive oil this time!!"

I'm creating a list and plan to share it around Thanksgiving. If you know me, please send it to my personal email; others can reply to this blog or send to californiajetta@gmail.com.

Thank YOU in advance. Look forward to reading your items and sharing the list.

Seasonal Shift

Like camels storing up sunshine for the dark months ahead, it seemed like all of New York was embracing the beautiful mild Autumn weather this past weekend.

Even though the Earth is on its annual turn away from the sun, Central Park still felt like spring to me over the weekend, with the grass still lush, trees still leafy and green and several people still wearing flip flops (even I am not doing that).

While there are certain markers of the season (Yankee fever, discussions around Halloween costumes, visits to cozy places like Gramercy Tavern and Jack the Horse Tavern which never feel right in summer months), one of the most notable markers is waking up and returning home to darkness covering the Earth.

This year I am going to try a little experiment and really try to embrace vs. resist the inevitability of darker and colder days, and try to see the gifts that the season brings. Introspection. Pruning. Slowing Down. Coziness. Gratitude. Sage, cinnamon, cider, and the pleasure of wearing boots.

AND keep my eye on flight schedules to Florida and California...

River to River

I went to a brunch yesterday at a friend's house in Jersey City, New Jersey. Bridge and tunnel comments aside, it was so easy to travel there, crossing the East River by subway to lower Manhattan, and then 2 stops on the Path train under the Hudson River from the World Trade Center.

Part of my journey was seeing the enormous gap and rebuild happening where the Twin Towers once stood. Nine years ago I was working in Soho and still remember the electrical smell in the air that lasted through the fall, as the fires burned until Thanksgiving.

A friend had commented that Autumn is New York is like 4 months of Northern California, without the mountain lions! For me, though it says October on the calendar, the freshness in the air coupled with bright blue skies and sunshine somehow makes the slant of earth feel like we're seeing new buds of spring (my favorite season), not fall.

Earlier in the weekend my yoga teacher had been discussing fall, and how it is her favorite season, and the symbolism of all the seasons. While 'spring' and 'fall' truly show change, fall is about the letting go of what no longer serves you, essentially blessing it and letting it die back to the earth, and then after the period of winter, experiencing rebirth of the new. She talked about the trees in central park, when some of the leaves don't fall to the earth in a golden carpet but remain on the trees, dried up and crumbly long after they should.

Surrender and letting go and flowing with the inevitability of change...a constant theme in yoga, and all spiritual and religious teachings...though no one ever said it was easy!

It was interesting to observe the NY to NJ travelers hurrying to and from the Path train entrance, barely glancing up to look at the big gap in the blue sky. Me and a handful of tourists stood there for a while, on 10-10-10, enjoying the still life and poetic symbolism of construction and new beginnings out of the ashes of the old.

Creative Inspiration

I took this garage art picture a couple weeks ago walking around Ft. Greene on the way to a barbecue. I wasn't sure why I took it, though sometimes its just good to be reminded that you can find creative inspiration in a lot of places, when you open your eyes wide enough to look.

When I lived in San Francisco, during a time the city was a little bruised from the recession, my friend Dave once said that San Francisco more than most U.S. cities is place fueled by originality and creative thinkers. "This is the place that brought you 'The Summer of Love', This is the place that brought you the Silicon Valley, Dot Com, Pixar, Apple, west coast advertising style...San Francisco will reinvent itself again."

New York, like San Francisco, is also a place that constantly reinvents itself, and fueled by creative thinkers from all walks of life, and cherishes originality vs. sameness, which is part of the magnetic pull of the place and the crackle of energy you can almost see in the air.

When I would have some "Orange County moments", I used to drive 20 minutes up the coast to the Laguna Beach Whole Foods to walk around when I needed some creative inspiration in that small special artists' colony. At the moment, I'm finding myself inspired by a glorious fall in New York.

Trees mid color change.


Root vegetables at the farmers market.


Fall colors, smells, tastes. Tea and soup and spices and the glories of ricotta gnocchi. Everyone back in the city, excited about Yankees winning, events, happenings, previews and openings. Even the smell and feel of mild autumn rain.

As well as fall fashion!

One of the creative directors at our office (the guy in white), who's originally from Columbia, created and stars in this video, shot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that we've all enjoyed watching as it's really about nothing...but just makes you smile.

The urban setting, melting pot of New York, all expressing themselves and having fun and "Shaking what you got"...all part of the spirit of why people love and are continually inspired by New York City.

How Big Brands Can Save Biodiversity

In the last couple of years, I've mainly been working with small - mid size companies, ones that grew from the ground up, many that built a mission and sense of social and environmental responsibility into their overall DNA since the very beginning. Having first worked inside a company like this, I know a few of the founders and also follow some of the brands on social media networks, and this mission and sense of responsibility and pride is something you comes through in everything you see and hear - their marketing materials, their packaging, their in-store collateral and corporate websites, even in how their employees talk about themselves.

This new crop of business is exciting and encouraging -- it feels almost revolutionary -- and the accumulation of these small efforts are helping to create a shift with consumers and what they value (because if consumers don't care, it ultimately doesn't matter, because you won't have a business...).

We recently started working with a new type of company - a huge one - a big multi-national company that operates in 80 countries, with 300,000 employees, that touches 10 million people every single day!

Our client is very much a warrior within the company walls, leading and spearheading change, that logically leads to large results when you think about the scale of everything their company touches. The sustainability project we're working on with her is creative, interesting and engaging. Its also equally gratifying to just learn more from her, as she's educating our team on an ongoing basis, about very basic things and how they can add up, positively or negatively like energy consumption, waste, food nutritional value that enhances health or leads to disease, and overall consumption of our planet's resources as populations grows. Things like: Hmmm, we currently consume the resources of 1.3 planets...

Jason once said to me when I was struggling with an excel spreadsheet report, with that non-emotional numbers oriented mind he has, that "If you spend the time up front putting the numbers in, the rest of the report just comes together." At the moment, if you put our planet on some giant excel spreadsheet you might not want to see how the rest of the report 'comes together.'

She recently shared this video with our team, about how Big Brands Can Save Biodiversity that's really worth watching - and sharing - when you have time.