We at Tree Speech are incredibly grateful to Stephanie Kaza and our mothers, Miriam Robinson, Anne-Marie Roach and Jackie Vandenberg for joining us today.

Dr. Stephanie Kaza is Professor Emerita of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont and former Director of the UVM Environmental Program. She co-founded the Environmental Council at UVM and served as faculty director for the Sustainability Faculty Fellows program. In 2011 Dr. Kaza received the UVM George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award for excellence in teaching. Kaza received a prestigious Religion and Science course award from the Templeton Foundation for her course on Buddhism and Ecology. She lectures widely on topics of Buddhism and the environment. Kaza is a long-time practitioner of Soto Zen Buddhism, with training at Green Gulch Zen Center, California, and further study with Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanna Macy, and John Daido Loori.  She was lay ordained by Kobun Chino Ottogawa in the late 1980s and applied her understanding of Buddhism as a member of the International Christian-Buddhist Theological Encounter group.⁠ ⁠She is the author of the books A WILD LOVE FOR THE WORLD, GREEN BUDDHISM: PRACTICE AND COMPASSIONATE ACTON IN UNCERTAIN TIMES, CONVERSATIONS WITH TREES, MINDFULLY GREEN: A PERSONAL AND SPIRITUAL GUIDE TO WHOLE EARTH THINKING, and others. 

Also much gratitude and endless love to our mothers, Miriam Robinson, Anne-Marie Roach and Jackie Vandenberg for sharing their tree stories, and for everything. 

To learn more about our podcast and episodes, please visit ⁠treespeechpodcast.com⁠. We’re thrilled to be able to offer interviews, creative insights, and stories about the natural world we live in, and the trees who guide our way. ⁠Please also consider supporting us through our Patreon⁠ - every contribution supports our production, and we’ll be giving gifts of gratitude including an invitation to Tree House, our new virtual community for patrons of all levels. Please also consider passing the word to tree loving folks, and rate and review us on Apple podcasts. Every kind word helps. See you soon!

Tree Speech’s host, Dori Robinson, is a director, playwright, dramaturg, and educator who seeks and develops projects that explore social consciousness, personal heritage, and the difference one individual can have on their own community. Some of her great loves include teaching, the Oxford comma, intersectional feminism, and traveling. With a Masters degree from NYU’s ⁠Educational Theatre⁠ program, she continues to share her love of Shakespeare, new play development, political theatre, and gender in performance. Dori’s original plays have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Boston. More information at ⁠https://www.dorirobinson.com⁠

This week’s episode was written and recorded in Massachusetts on the native lands of the Wabanaki Confederacy, Pennacook, Massachusett, and Pawtucket people, in New York on the land of the Lenapee tribes, as well as the lands of the Confederate Tribes of the Siletz Indians, and the Grand Ronde Cowlitz.

Special thanks to the ⁠Western Avenue Lofts and Studios⁠ for all their support.

Tree Speech is produced and co-written by Jonathan Zautner with Alight Theater Guild. The mission of the guild is to advance compelling theatrical endeavors that showcase the diversity of our ever-changing world in order to build strong artists whose work creates empathy, challenges the status quo and unites communities. For more information about our work and programs, please visit ⁠www.alighttheater.org⁠.