E D U C AT I O N & T H E A R T S E D I T I O N
D E C E M B E R 2 0 15
Dear Commonweal Friends, Welcome to the Education & the Arts edition of the Commonweal newsletter. As we begin our 40th anniversary year in 2016, we find ourselves with more news than we can fit it into one newsletter. By focusing on one of our three program areas—Education & the Arts, Health & Healing, and Environment & Justice—we hope you can better experience the breadth and depth of each area. Some of you know that Rachel Naomi Remen’s Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (ISHI), after 25 brilliant years at Commonweal, is becoming the Remen Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio. The Dean of Wright State School of Medicine made a wonderful offer to Rachel to provide a permanent home for ISHI’s work and to raise an endowment that will cover the costs for sustaining her work. The Board and staff of Commonweal strongly supported Rachel’s decision to accept the offer from Wright State. It is simply the best way to serve Rachel’s work. We feel a natural sense of sadness and loss at ISHI’s departure. But we are grateful for 25 years of truly extraordinary service to the fields of medicine, nursing, and healing. Most of all, we are grateful that Rachel is not leaving Commonweal. She will continue to live in Marin County and will continue to serve as Medical Director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program and as a senior faculty member for The New School and Healing Circles. Rachel and I have worked together for more than 30 years now. Our work together is not done. Even as ISHI departs, Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) has joined Commonweal. Oren Slozberg, our Chief Strategies Officer, served as Executive Director of VTS for a decade before he joined Commonweal. VTS has created a national network of schools where children learn new ways of thinking
Pictured above: One thousand origami cranes folded and hung in support of Lenore Lefer, beloved CCHP staff psychologist who died in 2014. Pictured below: Food writer and journalist Michael Pollan at The New School in April. (photo: Kyra Epstein)
through exposure to the arts. VTS was looking for a new home that would provide a solid platform for the next stage in its evolution. And VTS strengthens Commonweal’s longtime commitment to services for children—especially at-risk children from low-income communities. David Steinhart, working tirelessly in our Juvenile Justice Program, celebrated an important accomplishment in September. Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 666, a comprehensive measure sponsored by Commonweal and the California Juvenile Court Judges Association that allows for a new court process for the “auto-sealing” of juvenile delinquency records—a critical step in the “re-entry” process for juveniles coming out of prison. Another major development this year was holding the first Power of Hope camp for teens at Commonweal. As Oren Slozberg writes below, Power of Hope grows out of our Creative Community Institute partnership with Peggy Taylor and Charlie Murphy, who live on Whidbey Island, Washington, where Commonweal Northwest grows stronger with every passing year. Commonweal Northwest also includes: Elise Miller’s Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE) and CHE’s 5,000 partners around the world exploring environmental health science; Diana and Kelly Lindsay’s Healing Circles Langley; the partnership with Rick Ingrasci, Peggy Taylor, and others that has brought the Fall Gathering to Commonweal; and the growing number of New School conversations I have done in this extraordinary community an hour north of Seattle. Thank you for being part of the Commonweal community. Michael Lerner, President