A friend of mine once met the Dalai Lama and asked him what was
necessary for people to solve the environmental crisis. "Radical
Confidence" was the reply: The belief that, no matter how bad things
seemed, people could learn how to live in harmony with the planet and
that things would get better.
In the last month, Gail Lindsey and Greg Franta,
two giants of sustainability -- each of whom was the embodiment of
Radical Confidence -- left us far earlier than any of us could have
ever imagined in our worst nightmares.
Incandescent lives, like light bulbs, always seem to go out too soon.
Gail Lindsey, Principal Pixie of Design Harmony in North Carolina,
having battled back from a near-fatal brain aneurism and breast cancer,
succumbed to liver cancer on February 3. Just a few days later, on
February 8, Greg Franta, who took over Rocky Mountain Institute's Green
Design Services went missing while driving home after having dinner
with his daughter. Greg's car was found in a ravine off a mountain
highway just two days ago.
Gail A. Lindsey
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Anyone who ever met Gail was immediately struck by her RADIANCE and it
wasn't just her larger-than-life blue eyes and megawatt smile. Gail was
the embodiment of Radical Confidence in a positive future.
Some of my
fondest memories of Gail were an outrageous PDA with my wife during the
Greening of the White House, contemplating how the green building
movement would survive if our small plane going to the Grand Canyon
Park Charrette went down, reading medicine cards and delving into their
deeper meanings and soaking in a hot spring next to the Yellowstone
River with several other long-time green building stalwarts.
I'm always
amazed at how philosophical people are who have overcome the kinds of
challenges Gail faced. She always looked at them as an opportunity to
learn, but in the end, she wrote to a friend that she was "ready to let
go of learning thru pain and suffering and INSTEAD go for learning thru
creativity and JOY!"
While at NRDC, I had recruited Greg Franta from a long list of
applicants to help the Belorussian government design some sustainable
housing to relocate villagers who were forced to leave their homes due
to radioactive fallout from Chernobyl.
Greg Franta
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My first meeting with Greg was
in Frankfurt airport on our way to Moscow. The flight was about to
leave and Greg was nowhere to be found; I was paging him every couple
minutes with increasing panic. Suddenly this lanky, longhaired figure
comes around a corner, saying with an impish grin, "I'm here."
There was no worry or stress in him, just Radical Confidence that he could go
to a new city without any clue how to get around, tour Frankfurt's
architecture and make it back to the airport in 4 hours to make his
flight on time. At the time, I wasn't sure whether to hug him or
throttle him, but to paraphrase Rick from Casablanca, it was the
beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Are they GONE? Strangely, I don't feel it. Given how crazy things have
gotten with my life, it got so that I was lucky to see each of them
once, maybe twice, a year. An energizing, flash-bulb encounter that
left me dazzled and smiling, and thinking fond memories from earlier,
less complicated days (damn, I'm sounding old…), but soon the
background noise would overcome their strong signals and "life" would
resume.
Now, I think about them every day. Every day, I see the programs and
organizations they've created or influenced. Ironically, on some level
Gail and Greg are more present in my life than they were before. So,
while their physical bodies are gone, their incandescent energy and
vitality still live on.
Rob Watson
Executive Editor
