Time to take a little breather for the Holidays. It's been an excellent and productive year for The Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project. From the Rotten Jellyfish Awards to Hollywood Ocean Night to the Tiny Fish PSA, the Shifting Baselines network of volunteers have helped us have a really productive and fascinating year.
We want to end the year with a few sincere and specific SB thanks to Christy Mahaffey (for editing the RJAs), Tyrone Carlisle (running the SB Office), Linette Ancha (developing SB Teaching Materials), Stevo Polyi (actor extraordinaire), Amy Schoenfeld (tireless SB Blog and Photo Contest Coordinator who somehow fits it in between journalism classes at Columbia), Tom Chan (our sound guru at Raleigh), Dave Allen (world's best Naked Trucker), Sara Townsend (MPA feature researcher), Anna Cummins (bright light of ocean inspiration), The Tree Media Folks (who know how to make the oceans un-boring on the internet), Jon Rusho (landlocked SB voice in Utah), Sharon Lawrence (#1 most reliable celebrity, good sport, with the smile that deserves a word as unique as dazzling), Ruben Aronin (recipient of an individual "gets it" Award), Christi Allen (person most likely to play a major role in SB for next year), Muffy Moose (my mother, whom we honored with her 80th birthday party in Hollywood last year but had to pull her off the dance floor at 1:00 a.m.), Lawrance Bailey (tireless Scripps guiding light), the amazing Scripps Donors (who have bravely and defiantly said to themselves, "we're mad as hell at ocean decline and we're not going to take it any more"), Phillip Martin (for services above and beyond the call of duty at NPR), Margaret Easley (who really looks smart like she could have been a marine biologist instead of a lovely and talented actress), Paul Cummins and his merry family (our guardian angels who truly know the value of good education), Jason Ensler (the puppetmaster pulling the strings behind my directing efforts), Patti Malone (for bringing Hollywood Ocean Night life in its beginning stages), Pete Farnon and Blue Room Events (for accompanying me into battle), Steven Miller (who flipped the first switch 2.5 years ago to start the SB ball rolling and is still the number one switch flipper), Raleigh Studios in Hollywood (home of our windowless office -- come visit us, we've got nothing to show you, but we're real lonely), Surfrider Foundation (winners of the SB "they get it" Award), The Groundlings (bravely going where no comic group has ever gone -- the oceans), Jeremy Rowley and Roy Jenkins (who like alchemists know how to turn the flatline tedium of ocean conservation into comedy), The Ocean Conservancy (for flipping the second major switch), World Wildlife Fund (for sponsoring the most interesting night of ocean conservation that Hollywood has ever seen), Gale Anne Hurd (for defying Hollywood stereotypes and coming through for SB in spite of the demands of producing $100 million Hollywood movies), Daniel Pauly (who mesmerized the Hollywood Ocean Night audience and proved, in his own words, "we're not as boring as most people think"), and last, but undoubtedly not least, the grandson of the man Bertoldt Brecht called, "the greatest storyteller I've ever met," the man I saw fall in the swimming pool at the 1987 Benthic Ecology Meetings, the 61 year old who can out-drink and out-converse the best of my Hollywood friends, and the speaker who can still give a rabble-rousing, bible thumping, jump-up-and-shout-hallelujah speech about the fate of the world's oceans, Dr. Jeremy Jackson!
To you folks and every wonderful person who has written us wonderful e-mails asking for copies of our materials to use in enlightening and motivating the general public on the sad state of ocean decline, we wish you a Happy Holiday season and a truly great New Year!
Posted by Randy Olson at December 16, 2004 01:54 AM