TED Talk Thursday – Life’s Third Act by Jane Fonda

On TED.com: Jane Fonda-Life’s Third Act. “Within this generation, an extra 30 years have been added to our life expectancy — and these years aren’t just a footnote. Jane Fonda asks how we can re-imagine this new phase of our lives.”

Today is my 65th Birthday (and it happens to be a Thursday). In the eyes of our government, I am now “officially” a senior citizen. I have been disabled by chronic illness for 30 years. I have been living a life removed from what is the”norm.”  I have missed most of the markers for a human life, parenthood, grand-parenthood, career and retirement. I have only marked each birthday as another year of more illness, and another year closer to death. By one of those unexplained “coincidences” I stumbled upon this Ted Talk by Jane Fonda.

For some unknown reason when I started this blog, I not only created Mandala Monday, but Ted Talk Thursday as well. For the last couple of months I have not been drawn to create a new Ted Talk Thursday. I don’t know why. It was just how life unfolded.  But today, I am drawn to share this one with you.

So here is my birthday gift to you. Enjoy.

Life’s Third Act by Jane Fonda

 

In case you don’t live in the USA or have been living without media for the last 40 years or so this is who Jane Fonda is according to TED.com:

“Jane Fonda is an actor, author, producer and activist supporting environmental issues, peace and female empowerment. She founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, and established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at  Emory. She cofounded the Women’s Media Center, and sits on the board of V-Day, a global effort to stop violence against women and girls.

Fonda’s remarkable screen and stage career includes two Best Actress Oscars, an Emmy, a Tony Award nomination and an Honorary Palme d’Or from the Cannes Film Festival. Offstage, she revolutionized the fitness industry in the 1980s with Jane Fonda’s Workout — the all-time top-grossing home video. She has written a best-selling memoir, My Life So Far, and Prime Time, a comprehensive guide to living life to the fullest.”

For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!

TED Talk Thursday – Kate Raworth a Healthy Economy Should Be Designed to Thrive Not Grow

According to TED.com:  “What would a sustainable, universally beneficial economy look like? “Like a doughnut,” says Oxford economist Kate Raworth. In a stellar, eye-opening talk, she explains how we can move countries out of the hole — where people are falling short on life’s essentials — and create regenerative, distributive economies that work within the planet’s ecological limits.”

“Kate Raworth writes: “I am a renegade economist, dedicated to rewriting economics so that it’s fit for tackling the 21st century’s grand challenge of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the planet. After 20 years of wrestling with policies based on outdated economic theories — via the villages of Zanzibar to the headquarters of the UN and on the campaigning frontlines of Oxfam — I realized that if the economic conversations taking place in parliaments, in boardrooms and in the media worldwide are going to change, then the fundamental economic ideas taught in schools and universities have to be transformed, too.”

“I wrote Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist to be the book that I wish I could have read when I was a frustrated and disillusioned economics student myself. And silly though it sounds, it all starts with a doughnut (yes, the kind with a hole in the middle), which acts as a compass for 21st-century prosperity, inviting us to rethink what the economy is, and is for, who we are, and what success looks like.”

Kate Raworth a Healthy Economy Should Be Designed to Thrive Not Grow

 

For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!

TED Talk Thursday – A Vision for Sustainable Restaurants by Arthur Potts Dawson

According to TED.com: “If you’ve been in a restaurant kitchen, you’ve seen how much food, water and energy can be wasted there. Chef Arthur Potts-Dawson shares his very personal vision for drastically reducing restaurant, and supermarket, waste — creating recycling, composting, sustainable engines for good (and good food).”

“Arthur Potts Dawson wants us to take responsibility not just for the food we eat, but how we shop for and even dispose of it. And he’s showing the way — with impeccable taste.”

“Which came first, epicure or eco-warrior? For 23 years, Arthur Potts Dawson has worked alongside Britain’s most respected chefs, including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver. But his interest in food began during childhood, on a Dorset farm. “There was never much money around when I was growing up,” he says. “We learned to turn lights off, put a jumper on instead of the heating.”

“This thrifty sensibility found expression in his acclaimed London restaurants Acorn House and Water House, opened in 2006. From rooftop gardens to low-energy refrigerators and wormeries that turn food waste into compost, these restaurants prove the profitability of an eco-friendly approach — and serve as training grounds for the next generation of green chefs. Potts Dawson is now taking his crusade to kitchen tables, launching The People’s Supermarket, a member-run cooperative supporting British farms, and cooking for Mrs Paisley’s Lashings, a supper club whose profits fund urban gardens in London schools.”

A Vision for Sustainable Restaurants by Arthur Potts Dawson

 

For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!