My husband used to station a video camera near our gurgling baby, capturing an hour or so of what I considered excessive b-roll of her discovering her hand, exploring the texture of newspapers on a shelf with her tongue and fingers, or looking around with a glazed- over grimace from the over taxation of her developing brain and then whimpering for some attention.

These weren’t pastel-coated Kodak moments like taking those first steps, blowing out a Disney princess cake, or the splashy footage of a swim lesson. Nonetheless, my deeper half was fascinated with the mundane because it conveyed the anthropological human experience. This is where is all starts. And we are usually too busy to notice.

Apparently, this fascination and a desire for universal connection also drove French filmmaker, Thomas Balmes, whose documentary Babies offers a simultaneous bird’s eye (and sometimes fly’s eye) view of early child birthing and rearing among four cultures. Two of the women featured live close to nature in a tribal village in Namibia and a grassy plain in Mongolia and have experienced motherhood, while two from industrialized countries of Japan and the U.S. welcome their first children into the world.

The latter are hands-on mommies supported by their spouses, while we rarely see glimpses of the fathers in the third world settings – either because they refused to be filmed or because they are mostly out hunting and doing other manly things (i.e. napping and yapping) – while the matriarchy gathers, milks and nurtures the young. All of the families except for the African one have pet cats that seem to fill in for any nanny or grandparent, by lounging with or on the baby while the mother is otherwise occupied. Got to love cats.

In following these babies from birth to their first steps, the documentary attempts to redefine the nonfiction art form while linking humanity in the stages of life that are universal to all of us, namely the earliest yearnings stemming from innate survival instincts: food, shelter, warmth and love. There are no words spoken (à la Winged Migration) but the language is wholly familiar. Often, it speaks volumes about boredom.

Ponijao, who lives with her family near Opuwo, Namibia, spends a great deal of time sitting around with other babies, flies swarming her face, nothing to play with but a found bone or a playmate’s body parts. In one scene on a walk with other women and kids, her mother soothes her discontentment by simply bending down and extending an exposed boob for the baby to suck. Hey, it worked great for me, and it works great for her. Breast milk: the new mother’s helper!

Bayar lives with  his family in Mongolia and is closer to nature than most, as cows graze and meander around him as he crawls around the plain, often left to his own devices when he isn’t being tormented by a jealous and also bored older brother. We root for the helpless, tightly swaddled infant who will never visit a Gymboree class or pull plastic treasures from a toy bin, but is somehow contented with what he knows. Like the other babies, he seems relatively well off with enough to eat and a warm place to sleep. His working mom is tough, his brother is mean, and his dad drove him home after birth strapped to his mom on the back of a crude motorcycle. No baby seat available, officers. But somehow you just know he will persevere and join his clan, working the herds in no time. Like many of us, if Bayar can survive a sadistic older brother, he can survive anything.

Mari, who lives with her family in Tokyo, Japan, is the epitome of the yuppie Beverly Hills baby, dressed to the nines in designer rompers and leg warmers and adored by her gentle parents who live in a typical Toyko high rise tower. Nothing here is lost in translation. She is escorted to Mommy and Me classes and caressed by her cat, and only appears distressed in one scene when frustrated by her inability to fit a peg block through a whole. That sort of challenge would excite my husband to no end, providing reels and reels of tape.

Hattie from San Francisco holds up a mirror to modern parents. While her mother seems the stereotypical Marin County hippie to a comical degree (naked hot tub soaking and Indian tribal songs at baby group bonding), this setting – like the Toyko apartment – makes us modern mommies wonder if we offered too much stimulus, creating humans that want and need endlessly to be happy. While the documentary makes no judgments about less is best, we come away understanding why our parents have a bone to pick with the “things” we have bought to entertain our children, and the schedules we have managed to fill their time. It all leaves little room for self discovery.

Perhaps that is why so many industrialized children need shrinks later on. “I never asked for all of that; I just wanted my parents to love me.” In some parts of our world, love is the only option. In all parts of the world, there is no substitute. Man cannot survive on Disney alone.

Images: Courtesy of Focus Features

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“Get real! This is the biggest crisis humanity has faced,” warns Annie Leonard in her latest environmental education video, The Story of Cap & Trade. It is getting mixed reviews as the dust settles since its recent release.

A follow up to her widely popular animated eco tutorial, The Story of Stuff, it offers a pureed breakdown of how energy traders (greedy corporations and industries) and Wall Street financiers hope to get rich off of pretending to save the planet. The method to the madness: capping carbon emissions by giving permits to the polluters, who will in turn have the free license to pollute, especially in the third world where lax standards pose disastrous consequences for farmers and villagers.

Leonard’s release of the video comes on the heels of what many considered the failed talks for climate change solutions at Copenhagen, and identified the devils in the existing caps and trade proposals. These include issuing free permits to major polluters rather than selling the permits instead and allotting dividends to citizens and paying back ecological debt.  She also cites fake offsets which let polluters make false claims about what they will do the cut emissions, as well as the most dangerous devil of the plan – distraction.

Leonard tells us relying on the scheme weakens our ability to make strong laws away from fossil fuels.

While climate talks in Europe or on Capitol Hill have yet to scratch the surface on global caps on carbon emissions, the video illustrates (with charming, monochromatic animated stick figures) that education of the masses is crucial for curbing any crisis, as witnessed with the AIDS public information campaigns of the early 80s.

Leonard is adept at making sense of it all with her wholesome, kindergarten teacher approach to feeding our overwhelmed brains one truth at a time. In the end, she basically throws up her arms to declare about the process, “It’s protecting business as usual.”

Not all agree. “Just colossally ignorant,” is how one Grist writer sums up the video’s treatment of the trade entities, such as Enron, and how Europe has botched its attempts at handing out permits to cut emissions. Of course, many of the critics calling the critique of cap and trade deceptive also lump Leonard with the rest of the “Left” making up all of this hogwash about fossil fuels contributing to climate change.

Meanwhile, eco activist Michael Gaworecki, writing for Change.org, agrees with the video’s arguments, but says he isn’t sure the cap-and-trade plan isn’t the best mechanism for lowering carbon emissions that we can put in place  in enough time to make a difference.

“America needs to take the lead on stopping global warming if we’re to stand a chance, and anything perceived to interfere with unfettered capitalism is unlikely to fly in the good ol’ US of A,” he says.

Gaworecki adds that the few alternatives, such as a straight-up tax on carbon pollution, could be simple and effective, but “would never make it out of the American Congress alive.”

Image: Telegraph

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What’s even scarier than the scariest of Halloween costumes? How about the labor abuses suffered by women and children in third world countries?

This year, little Hannah Montanas and Harry Potters can have a treat up their sleeves as they get out the word about beneficial Fair Trade sales to the homes they visit on October 31st.

It’s called Reverse Trick-or-Treating and allows participants in the U.S. and Canada not just to receive candy from neighbors but also distribute Fair Trade certified chocolate donated by companies. The participants are looking to promote the work they are doing to give poor people a fighting chance to make a living and provide for their families.

A card accompanying the chocolate informs recipients of poverty and child labor problems rampant in the cocoa industry that produces much of the bite-size candy eaten at Halloween and other products consumed throughout the year. It explains how Fair Trade certified chocolate combats that poverty by supporting and creating labor opportunities.

The candy has been generously donated by Equal Exchange, Alter Ego, Sweet Earth and La Siembra. The participating non-profit organizations taking the lead in the effort include:

• Africa Action
• Amherst Fair Trade Partnership
• Ballston Spa Fair Trade Coalition
• Fair Trade Federation
• Global Exchange
• Green America
• International Labor Rights Forum
• Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
• Montclair Fair Trade Coalition
• Not For Sale
• Oasis/Stop The Traffik
• San Diego Friends of Fair Trade
• Taos Fair Trade Steering Committee
• Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
• United Methodist Church (UMCOR/GBC

You can order the chocolate and cards for free from Global Exchange’s Sweet Smarts Network from now until the October 1st deadline and will only be charged $5.50 for shipping and packing supplies. Just fill out the order form and you are on your way.

Let us know how your neighbors responded to the lovely gesture of receiving not just a thank you but also a chocolate from your family this year.

Image: Matt McGee

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A new makeshift shelter has emerged in the form of resin-soaked cellulose recovered from recycled cardboard and newspapers.

Costing $5,000, the Universal World House was invented by design engineer, Gerd Niemoeller, as a quick dwelling for long-term refugees in Third World shantytowns. The paper house, developed at German’s Bauhaus University, was featured in the Times Online. It contains built-in single and double beds plus a veranda equipped with a private shower and bathroom. It’s apparently easy to assemble, earthquake-proof and stable enough to withstand strong winds. The interior features prefab panels that look like honeycomb patterns and an air vacuum fills each unit, similar to the construction technique employed in aircraft and high-speed yaghts. This allows for the combination of flexibility and strength.

According to the Telegraph, the paper houses have been tested in the worst slums of South African and one of the first settlements of the houses will be built in Zimbabwe in conjunction with the German aid organization, World Vision. Nigeria also has ordered 2,400 of the houses. Neimoeller is the founder of the Swiss company, The Wall AG, which has a patent on the mini houses.

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