The story of Keith:
Many decades ago, a young architect and young urban theory student met at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. They fell in love, moved west to California, and one became a real estate developer and the other a nutritionist. Then they had a son and named him Keith. Keith would come to embrace both elements of his heritage, attending an architecture + planning school while focusing on urban agriculture and sustainability to earn a Master in City Planning with an Environmental Policy specialty. Keith even came to embrace his rebellious college years, when he majored in film and English (very UNLIKE his parents), by writing blog after blog and starting podcast upon podcast. Which brings us to Green Thumbprint, an exciting collaboration with longtime friend Elise.
The story of Elise:
Elise grew up hugged
by the hills of West Virginia and two incredibly loving, sensitive, and
trusting parents. She was a compulsive child of extremes - hoarding hundreds of
ketchup packets in the closet, keeping everything in her room in perfect stacks
and rows, and burying all of the silverware in the backyard to minimize clutter
and foster the preferred method of eating with one's hands. In addition, she
was often worried with the inherited sensitivity of her parents. She read the
Velveteen Rabbit, O’ Christmas Tree, and Charlotte's Web, and her a extreme
sense of anthropomorphism was born, manifested as a consuming concern for the
feelings of all objects, with some amount of certainty that nearly all things
are mostly sad or on the verge of becoming sad. Her strategy for most life
things was always and still mostly is: “Imagine and prepare for the worst.” Perhaps
because Elise was all too aware of how loved she was, and how much she needed
that love, this projection of vulnerability onto all creatures and objects came
very easily. Years later, she discovered her love for Biology. Her
anthropomorphic tendencies (if you can even call them tendencies), constant
anticipation of the worst, and propensity towards extremes (it’s all or
nothing!) can make work and life challenging, always more so than is necessary.
Some of this worry imagined, but a lot of it is based on the reality that
humans, plants, and animals are indeed vulnerable, maybe not to the emotions
that Elise is constantly projecting onto them, but to anthropogenic forces
resulting in pollution of the environment and habitat destruction (direct and
indirect). Inspired by her wonderful friend Keith, coupled with an overwhelming
desire to preserve and restore what is possible of this wonderful and amazing planet
we call home, she decided to take some action - to find and share reasonable
ways that we, our planet’s most dominant inhabitant, can minimize our negative
impact and maximize our positive one.
