Stephanie Mills to Lead First Art, Film, Philosophy Series

Stephanie Mills will be the first of eight presenters at Art, Film, Philosophy, an eight part series of speakers, readings and film followed by discussion. These gatherings will be offered every other Tuesday, beginning January 29 and running through early May at Moka in downtown Bellaire. Join us for an enlivening intellectual gathering! Donations are appreciated.

Stephanie Mills is an author, editor, lecturer and ecological activist. She has concerned herself with the fate of the earth and humanity since 1969, when her commencement address at Mills College in Oakland, California drew the attention of a nation. In her speech, which the New York Times called “perhaps the most anguished statement" of the year's crop of valedictory speeches, Mills spoke out about overpopulation and overuse of natural resources, and vowed to never have children.

In 1984, Mills moved to rural Michigan, where she began her first book, Whatever Happened to Ecology? (Sierra Club Books, 1989). The book offers a bioregionalist's look at the idea of home and place. Mills went on to edit and write essays for In Praise of Nature (Island Press, 1990). In Service to the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land (Beacon Press, 1995) and Turning Away from Technology (Sierra Club Books, 1997) followed. Her latest book, Epicurean Simplicity (Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2002), addresses the rewards and challenges of a simple life.

Since the publication of her first book, Mills has been back at the podium, speaking at such venues as The Land Institute's Prairie Festival, the Sitka Summer Writer's Symposium, Michigan's Backyard Eco-Conference, and to deliver one of the E. F. Schumacher Society Lectures. Mills also has participated in the Orion Society's Forgotten Language Tours, and lectured at the Chicago Academy of Sciences, as well as at numerous universities and colleges throughout the heartland.

Stephanie Mills lives in a modest home with a woodstove in Maple City, Michigan, on thirty-five acres of Scotch pine, sugar maples, cherry, poplar, and beech trees. She shares her space with two cats, now and then a few odd tree frogs, a number of white-tailed deer, some barred owls, red squirrels, grasshoppers and lady beetles, crows, chickadees, garter snakes, lichen, weeds and wildflowers....