What if socially responsible human beings? On September 30, 2011, I gave a seven-minute TEDx talk: Becoming the Inspiration You Seek: the Alchemy of Opposites. It was part of TEDxTransmedia Rome: What if… socially responsible media?, a one day speech fest at the MAXXI Museum sponsored by the European Broadcasting Union, RAI 5 and others.

This poem is a synopsis of my speech:

between
reality and imagination,
a pressure cooker of contradictions.
be curious
embrace opposing forces

as Buddha suggests, build a stainless vessel*
within
to contain the most difficult opposites
in your life and your work…

grow
reach out
become our own heroes!

~ ~ ~

* Buddhist dedication: By whatever boundless merit we have attained through practicing the precious genuine dharma of the supreme yana may all beings become a stainless vessel of the supreme yana. Dharma = teaching, Yana = method

Here is a link to playlist of all of the TEDxTransmedia Rome 2011 talks.

It was here where he taught quantum mechanics, gathering some of Italy’s brightest rising stars around him; and where, with the collaboration of these same students, he did his Nobel Prize winning work bombarding elements with slow neutrons. The tools and methods they used to explore radioactivity back in the 1930′s were rustic to say the least.

In this little  6 min video: tour of building now under construction – in three years will reopen as Centro Fermi, including radioactive? goldfish pond and a toast to Enrico. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Oct 7, 2011 – Thanks to Mark Haney! for cleaning up the sound and adding Respighi track to the Via Panisperna Enrico Fermi video (Mark’s comment below).

Slide from my upcoming talk at TEDxTransmedia Rome: September 30, 2011.

Rome, Italy vies to be called the starting point of the Neutron Trail. It is the birthplace of Enrico Fermi and his wife Laura and where I will celebrate my grandfather Enrico’s 110th birthday on September 29, 2011 at a special location in Rome.

The next day, I am giving a TEDx talk at the MAXXI, also in Rome. The occasion: TEDxTransmedia, a conference dedicated to socially responsible media. Transmedia is current lingo for utilizing a variety of media — books, websites, films, apps, games, songs, events, etc – to spread coherent content. The idea is to utilize the strengths of each type of media to share specific aspects of a story in a multi-dimensional, and at its best, interactive form.

The Neutron Trail is a dynamic, multi-dimensional inquiry, into our shared nuclear legacy, perfectly suited to taking advantage of the variety of media the term transmedia suggests. For example, playing a ceremonial game of squash in 2009, tied the physics of a squash ball to the the physics of the first nuclear reactor. The game was filmed and made into a video loop displayed at M.I.T. as part of a larger exhibition questioning our mental contructs and beliefs around the development of nuclear energy and the a-bomb.

Next stop CERN, Switzerland to visit the European Nuclear Research Institute. If all goes as planned, I’ll tour the facility and meet with the renowned nuclear physicist and renewable energy advocate, Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia.

Stay tuned for updates as events unfold.

Trinity blast after 10 sec. July 16, 1945 at 5:30 am.

In the dark of night, on July 16, 1945 a few scientists and military personnel gathered in the remote desert of New Mexico, USA. Sixty–six years ago the world was at war. The two key aggressors were Germany under the Nazis and Japan.

The secret desert meeting was code–named Trinity and the purpose was to test the first atomic bomb. Now on July 16, 2011, I’m looking back to understand how to move forward. Two months prior to Trinity, Germany fell, ending the war in Europe. Japan was yet to surrender.

Both states committed genocide and war crimes in their respective drives to conquer surrounding nations. The numbers are sobering. Three to four percent of the world’s population was killed in World War II. Roughly, 40–50 million civilians were slaughtered or died of disease and famine in China, smaller Asian countries and all over Europe. Including soldiers, perhaps seventy million died in total worldwide.

The scientists had agreed to build the bomb and to military secrecy and control because of the war. They carried out their test just before dawn on July 16. It was successful by the standards of the time and place. The first atomic bomb exploded and released its mushroom cloud of dust and radioactivity.

Japan attacked the US in December 1941 and the US joined the Chinese in battle against Japan. US soldiers were reduced to starving, diseased slave laborers in Japanese prisoner of war camps. Between helping to free Europe and fighting the Japanese, the US lost close to half a million soldiers.

The first time I visited Trinity in 2009, I didn’t fully understand the horrific scope of World War II. I understood something of the Nazi’s brutality in Europe and against the Jews, but didn’t realize the Japanese military had committed horrible war crimes in China killing roughly fifteen million people. I didn’t have the equanimity I have today.

I did know that three weeks after the first atomic bomb detonated at Trinity, an atomic bomb was dropped, for the first time, over a civilian target at Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.

The Japanese refused to surrender and three days later the US dropped a second bomb, this time on Nagasaki, Japan. The total death toll between the two cities, including later deaths from cancer is roughly two hundred thousand. After the Nagasaki bombing, Japan surrendered. World War II ended on August 15, 1945 and the world celebrated.

The Japanese people suffered terribly throughout the war and including this final tragic blow they lost approximately three million people.

What I learned about since my visit to Trinity is the larger context within which the Trinity test and subsequent atomic bombings occurred. New information spurs fresh insight.

It’s easy to miss the big picture for many reasons. Time goes by and immediate memory is lost. Some parts of the story come to represent the whole. Summaries and simplifications skew our understanding of history.

Then too, our frames of reference shift. Who is the enemy? The nations who were enemies are no longer. Is the enemy us?

The legacy of what happened on July 16 is still with us. The Trinity test explosion was much more than a proving of new technology. It led to the end of World War II and to the loss of human life.

For safety and security, the test was carried out in the isolation of the desert. It turned out when it comes to nuclear explosions, there’s no such thing as isolation. According to the Centers for Disease Control, humans, livestock and crops in the immediate area around Trinity were exposed to radiation and fallout. Also fallout from the first atomic bomb test showed up in Indiana contaminating Kodak film.

It turned out there was no such thing as secret when it comes to discovery. In 1945, from a technological point of view, humanity took a great leap forward. Yet, from the standpoint of human behavior, we appear stunted. Trinity was the seed from which nuclear weapons proliferation sprouted and spread across the planet. Many of the same scientists who had built the bomb saw the dangers, and alongside visionary political leaders, called for humane and global controls on nuclear weapons technology. It turned out it was a lot easier to create an atomic bomb than to learn how to wisely abstain from misusing its power.

The first time I visited Trinity in 2009, I was full of inner turmoil. I was born after the war. I never knew a time when Japanese people were my enemy.

I wanted to understand the different points of view. I wanted to understand why people came up to me and told me how grateful they were to the scientists including my grandfather Enrico Fermi who built the bomb and presided over the Trinity test.

The people who seemed to thank me by proxy —many of them, but not all, were old enough to directly remember the horror of World War II. They told me they saw the use of the bomb as an end to atrocities and as a vehicle to save lives. I wanted to understand why others saw my grandfather’s work as evil.

That need to understand drove my visit to Trinity and my desire to learn enough of the history to find some answers. Over a number of years I did my research and read some books. I spoke with Japanese people, with scientists, with my own family members and with families of survivors of the Trinity test.

Despite the two perspectives being diametrically opposed, gradually I have come to be able to look at it from either point of view. Doing so requires letting go and accepting, even if momentarily, another’s frame of reference.

Now, if I look from one point of view, I can find the humanness in it. If I look from the other I can as well. Yet it’s hard to see what the two points of view have in common. That requires a melting of the heart, which I feel as I type these words.

If I take the two views at face value, I can find love of human life at the heart of each. What I notice is the two sides are maintained by doing the opposite — by demonizing and reinforcing of differences. I often wonder what this serves some sixty–six years later.

All families suffer losses and betrayals. When families triumph, their members embrace the whole, through hurt and with love finding healing and new behaviors. Cultures do as well. Perhaps our world is part way through healing from the birth of the atomic era and part way toward maturing enough to handle nuclear technology with sanity and wisdom. It’s what the scientists who detonated that first bomb sixty–six years ago hoped for.

It’s something many of us hope for.

I would like to dedicate this day, July 16 as Trinity Day. Let it be a day of balance, where we contemplate maturing not just individually, not just in our families but culturally and as a species: to act a little bit smarter, wiser and healthier. If we all do it, the world will change. Happy Trinity Day.

What's in the Enrico Fermi time capsule? Olivia Fermi, Dr. Paul Weiner (grandson of Enrico Fermi), Kathy Weiner and Ben Weiner (great-grandson of Enrico Fermi). Photo: Blythe Olshan-Findlay/Olivia Fermi

If you were around in 1949, and someone asked you to select items to place in a time capsule, what would you have picked? This was the task my grandfather Enrico Fermi was given and today we learned what he chose. Some 62 years later, the occasion has nothing to do with an anniversary.

Rather the University of Chicago is demolishing the Research Institute (RI), where my grandfather worked after the war and which contained the time capsule, to build a new and more modern facility. Alumni, friends and some of our family gathered to watch Dr. Riccardo Levi–Setti pull the capsule from within the cornerstone and discover its contents.

It seemed a fitting honor for the paleontologist–physicist who, in 1992, took over Enrico’s office and became director of the Fermi Institute (part of RI). The  building is across the street from the Henry Moore statue “Nuclear Energy” marking the spot where Enrico achieved the first controlled release of atomic energy in 1942.

Dr. Roger Hildebrand, physicist, spoke about the objects as Riccardo lifted each from the capsule. The two men worked with Enrico and they and their wives were all good friends.

Levi-Setti hands Hildebrand 1949-era road maps placed in time capsule by Enrico Fermi. Photo: Olivia Fermi

Some of us tried to guess what was in the capsule before the ceremonial opening. The most popular guess — newspapers — turned out to be the closest to reality. Items included a University of Chicago course catalog, an airline schedule, road maps and a promotional brochure: The new frontier of technology: Atomic Research.

Roger Hildebrand displays Enrico Fermi time capsule item: “The new frontier of technology: Atomic Research”. Photo: Olivia Fermi

Reading this page today from the 1949 brochure highlights a certain amount of disconnect between what was envisioned and where our world is now with atomic energy and atomic weapons. (photo below):

Page from brochure "Atomic Research". Photo: Olivia Fermi

Bundle of maps from Enrico Fermi time capsule. Photo: Olivia Fermi

Here are two videos of Enrico Fermi time capsule opening. The first one is the mini two minute version, the second one is the full nine minute version including Roger Hildebrand’s humorous commentary and close-ups of the items; plus more photos and story below.

Anything else? Roger Hildebrand & Riccardo Levi-Setti peer into Enrico Fermi time capsule. Photo: Olivia Fermi

Enrico Fermi time capsule. Photo: Olivia Fermi

Some of the guests…

Far right: Steve Berry, chemist-physicist, spoke during the ceremony. Photo: Olivia Fermi

In the 1960′s, Steve Berry lobbied in Chicago for clean air alongside my grandmother Laura Fermi. In 1971, the Environmental Protection Agency enacted the Clean Air Act, which mandated states to implement air pollution control laws. Shortly after this success Laura Fermi told her girlfriends Lilla Fano (widow of Dr. Ugo Fano) and Steve’s wife Carla Berry, “Now that clean air has been picked up by Washington, it’s time to move on.” Laura Fermi, with her friends, then formed the first handgun control lobby in America, which eventually led to the Brady Campaign.

The mathematician and dean of the University Robert Fefferman introduced and closed the event. Also viewing the time capsule opening were Dr. Jim Cronin, Nobel laureate, Courtenay Wright, physicist and go enthusiast, worked under Enrico Fermi and his wife Sara Paretsky, mystery author, Henry Frisch, Fermi Institute physicist (born in Los Alamos to two Manhattan Project physicists), Priscilla Frisch, astrophysicist, Mel Shochet, physicist, Jon Rosner, theoretical physicist, Stewart Rice, chemist, Howard Zar, Peter Hildebrand. [Send me an email if we missed you!]

Awaiting Fermi time capsule opening, University of Chicago. Front row from left: Priscilla Frisch, astrophysicist (back to camera); Henry Frisch, Fermi Institute physicist; Sara Paretsky, mystery author, and her husband Courtenay Wright, physicist worked under Enrico Fermi. Photo: Olivia Fermi

Students with Olivia Fermi after her Neutron Trail presentation at Montclair State University March 23, 2011. From left to right: Mariam, Stephanie C. Lear, Merari Mejia, Olivia Fermi, Binta Jalloh and Marianela Parra. Photo: Stephanie C. Lear

Students and faculty from the colleges of science and art at Montclair State University in New Jersey welcomed me to their campus last week. Both my Neutron Trail – Elemental presentation, a keynote to launch their Second Annual Physics and Art Exhibition (Wed, March 23) and Neutron Trail workshop (March 24) were well attended and enthusiastically received.

In the workshop, twenty honors and graduate students, who also attended the talk, explored themes of legacy, power and influence in an interactive format. It was a personal thrill to launch the first-ever Neutron Trail workshop, which I had been gestating for months.

Students reported positive shifts in how they view their own power and the power of others. Many left with new insights about volition and their capacities to recover from adversity. Exercises offered mental challenges and physical interaction along with discussion. With the Neutron Trail material as fuel, it was natural for me to utilize my experience as a facilitator, trainer and martial artist to create this type of workshop. I loved working with the students and am looking forward to offering more.

The Deans of Art and Science hosted the Neutron Trail events in conjunction with my participation as a provocateur in performances of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange’s The Matter of Origins.

My whole stay has been punctuated with delightful meetings both planned and random. Professor Peter Lax, the Abel prize winning mathematician, and his wife Lori, violist, host me in Manhattan. They were my guests at a Matter of Origins performance last Thursday. Peter said, “The dance was outstanding.” Lori remarked, “that’s why I like modern dance and I don’t like ballet. Ballet has a sameness about it. Modern dance offers something new. It’s much closer to the here and now of the human soul.”

At a faculty lunch last week, I met Mary Lou West, physicist, who has a special interest in cosmology, asteroids and magnetism. We spoke of nuclear fission, nuclear fusion and the power of the sun. Our conversation highlighted some of the most troubling implications of our nuclear legacy — the struggles for greater power in spheres human and high-tech.

Fission, the splitting of heavy atoms like uranium, is what today’s nuclear power plants and fission (uranium) bombs use. Fusion combines the lightest elements releasing far greater power than fission.

“Our sun and all the stars generate energy via nuclear fusion,” explained West. It is fusion energy from the sun 93 million miles (150 million km) away lighting our days and giving us warmth.

Bringing the sun’s energy to Earth is almost unfathomable. Yet the United States and Soviet Union did just that in the 1950’s creating the first fusion (hydrogen) bombs. In their Cold War race to create ever-greater weapons, they harnessed forces capable of ending life as we know it.

Today research is ongoing into how to take plentiful hydrogen and turn it into what could be the cleanest, most efficient energy production method ever devised. “We’ve made a few hydrogen bombs, but we’ve yet to make a hydrogen power plant. We’re just taking baby steps,” commented West.

When I read a draft of this blog post to Peter Lax, over breakfast this morning, he stated, “Fusion is full of instabilities. I don’t think it should figure into our [near term] policy for a source of energy.” Stewart Brand, the environmentalist and futurist, are more optimistic about fusion as part of the solution to our energy crisis.

Learning more about the potentials and pitfalls of cleaner, safer nuclear energy is a priority for me on the Neutron Trail. At the same time, I’m keeping my central focus on us how we evolve in groups. How might we change our own behavior — in communities, corporations and as countries — to adapt to the challenges of peak space on Earth? Peak resources? To human-induced climate change on a planet chock full of us homo sapiens.

Keeping a balance on the Neutron Trail between people and science is only part of it. I also have a firm commitment to play along the way.

Going to dinner alone last Tuesday, I saw (and heard) a double table of seven guys and one woman, talking, laughing and lively. As I walked by, one of them called, “You looking for a group?”

Banter ensued. I asked what they were doing here at a hotel on a strip mall highway, in New Jersey. “Tires. Well we’re tired too, but really we’re at a tire convention.”

Someone else asked me, “What kind of tires do you have?”

“I’m in a car co-op,” I chirp proudly.

“You’re one of those!” A quiet young man, at the end of the table, invited me to join their group and I did.

Another of the group, Shawn queried me about what was I doing at this hotel. “Neutron Trail,” I replied.

He wanted to know what the Neutron Trail is, but the conversation flowed in another direction. More jokes went by about this and that.

Shawn asked again, “What is the Neutron Trail? Is that about science or the environment?”

“You figured it out,” I told him, “It’s both.”

It didn’t stop there. Pretty soon Shawn, who studies physics as a hobby, and Patrick, who is Italian-Irish, had gotten out of me about Enrico Fermi, my famous physicist grandfather. Flipped out the two of them and left the rest of the table cold. I’m used to this.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “Most people haven’t heard of Enrico. On we went. With humor and wit they enticed me to share my story, asking all sorts of questions about my talk and the Neutron Trail. Patrick, Shawn and Rick wanted to come to the presentation and seemed disappointed when they learned it conflicted with their tire convention duties. “Why don’t you be my warm-up act?,” I said, “You know the Tire Trail.” We all laughed.

In the wake of the crisis at the Fukushima Nuclear plant in Japan last week, BBC Radio contacted me. In this five minute interview, aired this morning, I also talk about the Neutron Trail, my grandfather Enrico Fermi’s response and the future of nuclear energy.

Listen to Olivia Fermi – BBC World Update Radio Interview

To read the transcript:

Transcript of BBC World Update Radio Interview, aired March 21, 2011
Presenter: Dan Damon, Producer: Pearse Lynch

BBC:         The work continues on the Fukushima plant. The disaster there has reignited the debate surrounding nuclear energy: gift or curse?

Olivia Fermi is someone who understands that dilemma at a personal level.

Her grandmother Laura Fermi was a writer and environmental pioneer.

Her grandfather Enrico Fermi was the Nobel Laureate, experimental and nuclear physicist known for his development of the first nuclear reactor — known as Chicago Pile I — and with J. Robert Oppenheimer is frequently referred to as the father of the atomic bomb.

I asked Olivia Fermi if coming from an inheritance of nuclear understanding gives her a greater level of comfort or perhaps a heightened concern over humanity’s relationship with the atom.

Fermi:         Growing up with it has made me more aware of it. From the age of five, I was made aware of the power and dangers of nuclear energy. It’s like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. If you’re put into that situation then you tend to think about it more.

We need nuclear energy now. We’re a planet of seven billion people. It’s kind of like we’re halfway through the birth canal with nuclear energy. We have a lot of problems to deal with and yet it’s giving us power. The Japanese people as a whole are suffering because of a lack of power right now and fresh water and they’re having to ration electricity.

BBC:        You didn’t know your grandfather but you learned a lot about him from your grandmother and your family. What was his idea of the potential danger and benefit from nuclear power, from nuclear fission?

Fermi:        That’s a very tough question to answer. My grandfather was very quiet on political matters. I found a quote from shortly before he died (in 1954), where he talks about technology outstripping our maturity as a race or as a society to handle. And that he fervently hoped that we would grow to handle it properly.

BBC:        Did he have doubts about what he had done, about what he had helped to create? For example, like Oppenheimer he began to worry about what he did.

Fermi:        I’m sure he did. He was never as outspoken as Oppenheimer or Niels Bohr or Bethe or Szilard or many of the other scientists. My grandmother, his wife, was a Jew in Italy [where fascism and anti-Semitism were taking over, putting my grandmother, my mom and her brother at grave risk]. They fled Italy when my grandfather won the Nobel Prize in 1939. They were Italians and in the United States at that time Italians were enemy aliens because Italy was allied with Hitler.

My grandfather had top-secret clearance, the highest top-secret clearance that can be given to a civilian. At the same time he was an enemy alien. I think that kept him very active in science and very quiet politically.

On top of that, he was impeccable in his work, one of the most brilliant scientists of the twentieth century. I think he had a, maybe, naiveté or professional blindness that politicians and policymakers would be as impeccable with their work as he was with his. He believed very strongly in open science and in democracy.

BBC:        Tell me about the Neutron Trail.

Fermi:        The Neutron Trail is a project I started. It came out of a personal inquiry visiting the people and places most impacted by our shared nuclear legacy. I’ve been going around visiting and meeting physicists, activists, environmental activists, artists. It’s quite a journey to start with this premise where we’re not following through with nuclear waste and yet on the other hand benefiting from the power.

If government or whatever body it is allows nuclear waste to be put in cardboard boxes and dumped in trenches, as it was in the Savannah River Plant, which is one of the largest plants in the United States, then of course, people are going to be harmed. The Neutron Trail is all about looking at all the different realities and putting them together so that we can basically face what we’ve done in the past and make better decisions in the future.

BBC:        That’s Olivia Fermi. Her grandfather was one of those who developed the first nuclear reactor and the future of nuclear power is something that she worries about and wonders about all the time. If you google “BBC World Update”, you’ll be able to see some pictures Olivia sent us including a couple of pages from her grandfather’s notebook. Just some remarkable documents there. And if you understand them, it will be interesting to hear from you.

You’ve been listening to World Update from the BBC in London.

In our Neutron Trail documentary film shoot yesterday, John O'Brian and I shared nuclear postcards.

Last summer I was thrilled when two executive producers approached me to make a feature-length documentary about the Neutron Trail. Yesterday was our first day of shooting.

In between, the director and I met face to face and conversed via email. I shared the treasures I’d collected, the insights I’d earned and the access to key people who might agree to be in the film. Mostly he listened, took notes and reflected his understanding of my external experiences on the Neutron Trail. With the producers, we wrote proposals to funders and succeeded in procuring seed money for the demo shoot yesterday.

I am a Neutron Trail Walker. I visit people and places most impacted by our shared nuclear legacy. But in some ways, what motivates me is more important than who I talk with or where I go. As I walk the Neutron Trail, questions appear like leaves in spring. As answers appear, the questions, like autumn leaves fade and fall, dissolving into the ground.

New questions spring forth and orient me about where to step next on the Trail. Through staying true to my inner orientation, the Neutron Trail is becoming an interactive, expanding community-building event on the move.

As we collaborated, I found myself wondering if the director really understood what motivates me? Or for that matter, did I? The beauty and power of true inquiry starts with any burning question. Answer that question and perhaps a more fundamental, underlying question will appear.

The director was keen to hear all about my Enrico, but barely seemed to notice the role Enrico’s widow, my grandmother Laura Fermi played. This was really bothering me.

In my mind, the director was reflecting a larger cultural perception. It’s easy for all of us to notice technology while remaining unaware of the kinds of holistic endeavors my grandmother championed. Technology is great but not without common sense and human caring.

Without Enrico Fermi, the history of atomic energy would not be the same. Without Laura Fermi, there wouldn’t be a Neutron Trail. I felt impelled to bridge the communication gap between myself and the director.

She was the one who came at our nuclear legacy from a humanist/activist perspective. She carried on after Enrico died in 1954, attending the first International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (1955) as recorded in her book Atoms for the World. Then in 1959, Laura Fermi became a pioneer in the environmental movement.

Professor John O’Brian, an art historian at UBC with a vast atomic archive, generously responded to the invitation from the director and myself to hold our first shoot with him at his home in Point Grey. After a seamless setup by the crew, we sat at a table in John’s dining room and showed each other nuclear postcards. We talked, on camera, about the Neutron Trail, my grandparents and the moral and ethical questions Laura raised.

Together with the director and the crew, we created a space where I found ample opportunities to talk about the challenges, the dangers and the rewards of being a Neutron Trail Walker. John and I went beyond interview. We created a generative dialogue — continually eliciting ideas and feelings and insights, one from the other.

During the filming, the director asked me to talk about Enrico’s personality. I answered as well as I could, despite some inner friction at the presumption, considering I’d never met my grandfather. Then I took a risk, deciding to tackle directly the question of Laura’s importance.

I segued to my grandmother’s pivotal role in my development and in the world.

Spontaneously my hands came together in horizontal prayer position. Wriggling the point forward where my fingers touched, I announced, with the camera as my witness, my grandmother Laura gave me a route forward out of the paralysis, out of the strange mixture of pride and guilt I felt growing up under my grandfather’s shining sun (not shadow). Lo and behold, under the gaze of director, camera and crew, a new articulation had emerged.

When I was five, I already knew radioactive fallout travelling through the atmosphere from above-ground nuclear tests was a bad thing for milk, bones and teeth. I knew my grandfather was a very great scientist and someone to be admired. His work was related to nuclear fallout. Out of these disconnected messages, I came to live with a strange mix of pride and guilt.

Also, when I was five, Laura and her girlfriends invited me to fold flyers with them. The flyers were part of an ultimately successful campaign to enact air pollution controls in Chicago.

When I was seven, my grandmother gave me a leather bound journal with gilt-edged pages and exhorted me to write. She told me the pen is mightier than the sword and my imagination, if I troubled to write about it, could effect the world in good and positive ways. She gave me a path out of the pride and guilt, a path, which has become the Neutron Trail.

What motivates me is more important than who I talk with or where I go. The Neutron Trail is foremost a humanistic inquiry into our shared nuclear legacy –  dedicated to all of us alive today who imagine possibilities for human evolution, who imagine we can grow up enough to properly handle the technologies we’ve birthed into our world.

I am grateful to the director. His questions represent the questions of the audience for a film about my travels on the Neutron Trail. The director’s questions are arriving early, from the future. They test me and prepare me for what is to come: a future hopefully filled with Neutron Trail Walkers who may look to our film for orientation before setting off in new directions.

The stated goals of yesterday’s shoot were to make a screen test of Olivia and to see how we would work together. As the make-up artist packed away her powders and the cameraman and soundman loaded their gear into their truck, our Executive Producer said the session exceeded his expectations. This was wonderful feedback indeed. Throughout, the director, said, “good,” in his gentle way, all the while orchestrating the shoot. Everyone liked the way I expressed myself and talked about Laura’s contribution to the Neutron Trail. We all liked how we worked together. My heart feels satisfied, purring like a happy, contented kitty. It was a dynamic and wonderful experience.

Apparently, in a few days we’ll see the director’s cut of the footage and maybe some of the outtakes. I want to learn from what worked as well as what didn’t. From 1.5 hours of footage (including a shot of me dancing to “Radioactive Mama” (1960)), the director will make a 5-minute piece to submit to funders. There are many possibilities for the documentary and it’s much too soon to say how or when we will move into production. Definitely, we are at the beginning of a potentially very exciting project…. stay tuned!

* * * *

Our shoot was bracketed by the news of the massive, 8.9 on the Richter scale, earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Northern Japan. Ways to send donations to Japanese survivors.

We on the Neutron Trail are especially following what happens with the four nuclear reactors in the earthquake zone. Earlier today there was an explosion at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant and now an emergency at a second plant in the same facility has occurred. News reports are changing so fast it is impossible to say more, other than at least some workers have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. (as at March 12, 3:30 pm PST).

* * *

UPDATE – May 2011. In a surprising turn, the documentary project was cancelled. Now it is July and I am over the jolt and happily looking ahead to new and even more fitting opportunities. The Neutron Trail is about active and empathic conversations: I’m networking and researching generative and collaborative media forms loosely under the umbrella of Transmedia. Transmedia is all about generating content and dialogue through various media including live urban, on the street games, film, music, apps,  and enhanced books.

Sunagawa #5 (1955) by Nakamura Hiroshi. ANPO: Art x War. www.anpomovie.com

Watch enough nuclear documentaries and it’s a self-sustaining Atomic Film Fest.

To better understand the history and cultural impact of the emergence of the A-bomb and the Cold War, I’ve popped in and out of my DVD player well over a dozen of these flicks. Titles include: The Day After Trinity (1981), Atomic Cafe (1982), Radio Bikini (1987), White Light/Black Rain (2007) and last year’s Countdown to Zero (2010); plus extras like original US Department of Energy (DOE) propaganda films, deleted scenes and interviews.

Though all are on a topic most of us, including myself, would prefer to avoid, I watched them as part of my commitment to following the Neutron Trail.

The intertwined issues of nuclear bombs, nuclear energy and toxic waste have literally brought us to a crossroads in our cultural evolution. How will we find new paradigms and ways to live in the world we’re creating?

Each of these documentary films has a distinct voice to add to the conversation about our shared nuclear legacy. Each finds its own way to confront us with our nuclear dilemmas. Together they create a strange portrait of our collective consciousness around atomic and hydrogen bombs.

The challenge of writing coherently about this private Neutron Trail Film Fest inspired me to pull out colored sticky notes — one for each movie. The following color groupings were spontaneous, more influenced by the pre-conscious than the conscious mind.

I chose green stickies for films with a high content of original interviews with the people who were part of the creation of the bomb and its immediate aftermath.

I used orange for films weaving interviews and archival footage to shed light on the cultural phenomenon of the nuclear bomb and the Cold War. Blue for made outside of North America. One film, which brushes close to reality, I put onto a pink sticky.

A group of fear-based fact films I tagged with white. White is neutral and blank. Though absolutely necessary as the strongest warnings in the chorus of nuclear cinema, I don’t particularly enjoy messages of terror.

Each sticky note went onto the white board and patterns emerged in the placement and the color arrangements. I was looking for an entry point.

Starting with a grouping of three whites and two greens would certainly make for a depressingly sober review of nuclear terror cinema and the threat to all life as we know it.

That would mean starting with Nuclear Tipping Point (2010), sticky white fright category. The film features Henry Kissinger and three other Cold War Warriors of the US administration. Kissinger was a proponent of the let’s-point-thousands-of-ever-more-powerful-nukes-at-each-other doctrine dubbed Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.). He acknowledges after thirty years he couldn’t make sense of M.A.D. doctrine or rather of nuclear weapons strategy — period.

A row of orange stickies in the center of the white board, symbolizing the center of this nuclear topic, promised a patchwork of cultural insights into the nuclear-tinged psyche of North Americans. If I were to start my A-Bomb Cinema review from this angle, I would lead with Atomic Café (1982). It’s full of archival footage and propaganda songs expertly put together in service of illuminating the effects of the Cold War on us.

Each theme, each film seemed important – too important for me to choose one as the starting point. Then, I noticed Scared Sacred (2004) on an orange sticky, separate from the others, in the top right corner of the white board.

Looking for the sacred in the scared, Velcrow Ripper, director, visited and filmed eight ground zeros across the planet – from Hiroshima, where the first atomic bomb was dropped on civilians (1945); to Bhopal, India, where hundreds of thousands of citizens were subjected to a Union Carbide chemical leak (1984); to New York City and the destruction of the World Trade Center (2001).

Wherever he goes, Ripper interacts with people to learn about the original crisis and to document how locals are coping and responding now to what happened then.

Thinking back on the film, which I watched some months ago, it strikes me there was no particular Hosanna moment. Rather, this is a film about the simplicity and importance of witnessing the whole kaleidoscope of human experience, as we go along.

Ripper accentuates his redemptive message by focussing on the wounds of the planet – our collective ground zero’s. The sacred in the scared is something I instinctively know – the sacred is in every moment of being alive and this film’s human-scale portrayal of disasters beyond comprehension brings the reality of the film’s title to life.

The other atomic movies I watched may have richer content, stronger cinematography and more to say about the facts of our nuclear era and the terrain of the Neutron Trail. Scared Sacred suggests a new paradigm from which to view all the others.

Seeing this, I made a new category yellow representing paradigm shift. Here then is a summary of 15 nuclear documentaries by category.

Yellow

Films suggesting a paradigm shift.

Broadly, Scared Sacred (2004) includes content beyond the bomb, placing the bomb in context with human-made-cataclysms everywhere. Profoundly, it is a documentary which, moment by moment, fuses the human, in all our foibles with the sacred.

Scared Sacred hints at the ultimate paradigm — the one which melts divisions. It is with a new objectivity we need to tackle our twin nuclear dilemmas (bombs and hazardous waste). Not the clinical objectivity, not the propaganda masquerading as objectivity but the objective reality of the human connection we share in the scared and the sacred.

This paradigm tells me each of us is relevant. By rediscovering ourselves in our collective humanity, we empower ourselves. By empowering ourselves we can humbly accept responsibility for the next step, within our grasp. We can move forward with individual and collective resolve to do it better. With a mess this big, how else to proceed?

White

Films waking us up to the threat of unchecked and unmonitored nuclear weapons proliferation.

If You Love This Planet (1982), the Oscar winning short doc, directed by Terre Nash is Dr. Helen Caldicott’s humane and passionate call for nuclear disarmament.

Last Days On Earth (2006), originally a TV special on 20/20, runs through seven Armageddon scenarios including nuclear annihilation. Puts the idea of ultimate control where it belongs – somewhere out in the universe.

Countdown to Zero (2010), directed by Lucy Walker, with Tony Blair, Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert McNamara, Pervez Musharraf, and Valerie Plame Wilson. A mix of reasoned and fear–based arguments promoting strategic, yet complete global disarmament. Click on logo to sign the Global Zero petition:

Nuclear Tipping Point (2010): the film’s protagonists Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, George Schultz and William Perry suggest we shift our motivation for global disarmament from terror of Russia to terror of emerging rogue states and rebels. Tragically, the words humanity, environment and interdependence and are not uttered in this movie. The key question What really stops war? is never asked nor answered! Nor does it seem any of the four has the signed the Global Zero petition (see above).

Orange

Films weaving interviews and archival footage to portray the impact of the nuclear bomb, the Cold War and its aftermath on our society.

Building Bombs (1981), directed and produced by Susan Robinson and Mark Mori. Five years in the making, this film is a must see. You will learn all about the Savannah River Plant, outside Aiken, South Carolina, tasked in the 1950’s with building nukes for the nation. The filmmakers explore the history of the plant, the eye-popping bungling of toxic waste handling and the contamination risks to one of the largest underground freshwater aquifers in the U.S. Especially inspiring are interviews with experts, who at one time worked inside the plant but now are part of the movement to expose the waste handling risks. Get involved and see what’s happening at Savannah Riverkeeper: A Network of Environmental Advocates working to protect the water quality of the Savannah River and the integrity of its watershed.

Atomic Café (1982), produced and directed by Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty and Pierce Rafferty. While the film’s pace is a bit slow by today’s standard, I’ve watched it twice and will likely watch it again for the sheer volume of culturally revealing archival footage from the 1940’s and 1950’s. For example, I learned M.A.D. drove us crazy and I’m not talking about M.A.D. magazine. It seems the mental health crisis in America started with people’s healthy fear of being annihilated by nukes. There’s even a clip of a handsome, young Richard Nixon (later became a U.S. President) ringing a giant bell for sanity. Another highlight was seeing 1950’s citizens marching with placards protesting the bomb.

Radio Bikini (1987), award-winning, Oscar nominated documentary by Robert Stone. The director combines declassified US Army footage with contemporary interviews to weave a powerful exposé of Cold War policy meets human fragility. Sequences from 1946 show a military officer explaining to the Bikini islanders why they must leave their home (to allow the U.S. to test a hydrogen bomb thus obliterating their island). Equally, if not more revealing, is the then and now footage of the impact on servicemen. I’m not rating all the films here, but Radio Bikini gets a 10/10 for cinematic excellence, compelling story-telling and sheer courage.

Arid Lands (2007), directed by Grant Aaker, Josh Wallaert. Any movie about the Columbia River Basin must include Hanford, Washington the once secret site where plutonium for the first atomic bombs was purified. Hanford covers an area half of the size of Rhode Island and the Columbia runs through it. The movie glimmers and flows like an ambling river as the directors weave scenic vistas among interviews with a broad variety of stakeholders to the area – geologists, ecologists, a Native elder representing a nation who lost their lands, local residents and more. The mistaken (implicit) message of the film is while Hanford Nuclear Reservation hosts the greatest volume of radioactive material in America and is the site of the largest clean-up operation, to date no one has been hurt? This is a shame as too many of the interviews are repetitive. The story of the accidents and the people who have been poisoned by mishandling of radioactive materials at Hanford could have filled the wasted airtime and fleshed out the story. More information and a call to action: Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Green

North American films featuring original interviews with the people who were part of the creation of the bomb and its immediate aftermath.

United Sates Department of Energy Military Training Films (1940’s – 1950’s). Can be found in the extras on Countdown to Zero and many other titles here.

Leaders have been calling for nuclear weapons oversight and disarmament since the Day After Trinity (1981). This must–see film features interviews with Robert Oppenheimer and others who were directly involved with building the first atomic bombs.

Trinity and Beyond: the Atomic Bomb Movie (1995), directed by Peter Kuran, narrated by William Shatner, with Edward Teller. Produced for the 50^th anniversary of the creation and use of the first atomic bombs. Almost a catalog of above–ground nuclear tests during the Cold War. This film graphically showcases the posturing and one-upmanship the U.S.A. and Russia engaged in during the Cold War.

Blue

Films portraying a view from outside of North America.

White Light/Black Rain: the Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2007) by Steven Okazaki is a moving and highly watchable film. The survivors themselves tell the story poignantly, artfully and directly.

ANPO Art x War (2010), produced and directed by Linda Hoaglund. ANPO is the treaty between the U.S.A. and Japan allowing the U.S. to occupy Japan with military bases and, for which, the host pays its guest. Japanese artists who have protested the treaty and its impact on Japanese culture speak to camera with their works as backdrop. This highly crafted documentary with original score includes fascinating Japanese historical footage.

Pink

Films bending reality.

Naqoyqatsi (2002) (NAH-COY-KAHT-SEE) by Godfrey Reggio, musical score by Philip Glass and Yo-yo Ma on cello called me to write poetically:

With dream-like realism, life merges into death and back again
The filmmakers show us life as war.

Film sequences rendered in all scales, chanting music
Sings to the senses

Voiceless dark pyramid emerging upward rising tide
Broken dissolves utterly
Waves crashing, music chanting Naqoyqatisi, Naqoyqatsi, Naqoyqatsi
Computer bits and bytes in rushing rows,

Neon DNA tracings race to fill the screen
Golden dollar signs ($) float to the sky
Cello sounds carry us onward, without pause

As if through X-ray or atomic bomb blast witness eyes
Human throng treads eternally in reverse exposure
Where light is dark, dark is light yet moves and bobs
Humans always do…
With their reverse exposure videos – fights in rings, riots on roads

Patterns recognizable yet lost in a swirl of recurring disappearing
Life as war, life as imagination, life as meaning mashed up
Sliced, diced – each bit recognizable and unanchored

Colored capsules tranquilizers shield our sleep
While politicians posture security
Space capsule launches tear the air
Piercing something unseen made visual
Until we imagine outer space

This Tower of Babel Opus reminds us to listen and transcend
Or surrender to the tide

Reflections on where we are
Sounding our death knell?
Offering a battle cry to awareness?

You decide!

Artifacts of my grandparents: first edition cover of Laura Fermi's New York Time's bestseller Atoms in the Family and Enrico Fermi's sliderule; both atop his Nobel Prize book (with hand-painted calligraphy). Nobel Prize book courtesy Special Collections University of Chicago Library. Photo: Olivia Fermi © 2010.

I’ve been travelling on the Neutron Trail, learning about our shared nuclear legacy for a decade (really a lifetime). At times randomly, at times with some passionate focus – studying, researching, talking with physicists, survivors and activists, travelling to places like Los Alamos, New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was engineered, including making nuclear art with dancers and poets.

This Thursday and Friday Nov 11 and 12 I’ll be sharing my experiences at the Eastwood Onley Gallery here in Vancouver. [Feedback on that in the UPDATE at the bottom of post.] Images form the heart of the talk, with a mix of my own and archival photos, cartoons, illustrations and even a little of Georgia O’Keeffe who lived and painted near Los Alamos.

A challenge for me is culling and synthesizing such a vast amount of material and experience into an evening presentation. How much should I let the individual images and insights speak for themselves? When should I summarize and highlight major themes and trends I’ve noticed?

A few years ago I began ad hoc interviews on the street with  a diverse range of people on here in Vancouver and across the continent in New York City. It’s turned out to be a very useful kind of market research, resulting in a presentation which people — across generations, cultures and professions — tell me is meaningful,  worthwhile and enjoyable. Many friends and colleagues have and continue to generously review the material and offer wise and cogent feedback at all phases of evolution.

A special thanks to Jerome Friedman, who went to parties at my grandparents home well before I was born and who was Enrico’s last graduate student. We met for the first time a little over a year ago and I became fast friends with him and his wife Tania. Jerry has given me valuable insights, only he could give, that enrich the Neutron Trail. As well he has officially endorsed the project:

“The story of the Neutron Trail recounts some of the most significant events of the 20th Century. Olivia Fermi, the grand daughter of the central figure in unleashing the energy of the atom, tells a story that touches on remarkable achievement and triumph, but also on destruction and the continuing threat to human society. Her account of events is engrossing and thought provoking, and I am glad that she has taken on the task of engaging the public in these issues.” – Jerome Friedman, Nobel laureate, MIT Professor Emeritus of Physics, founding Board Member of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology

UPDATE

Both Neutron Trail – Elemental talks sold out and we had two lively evenings. Here’s a sampling of responses:

“I just saw Olivia’s talk last night On the Neutron Trail. It was fantastic, smart, educational and inspired!” – Linda Solomon, Vancouver Observer Coverage here.

“I was really glad to finally attend one of your sessions.  Your story is fascinating and thought-provoking on so many levels.  I know it will yet evolve further as you expand your gaze and search onwards. And do try to get it into high schools.  I see it as a multi-disciplinary attraction – math, physics, history, psychology…. ” – Esther Chetner, VP Leadership Development, JCC Vancouver

“Olivia, you are a brilliant artist and a brave soul. Your Neutron Trail presentation is profound and enlightening. I love how you fill it with personal touches, far beyond newspaper headlines.  You have shown great strength of heart, wisdom and conviction to bring this fascinating story to us. Thank you. – Tom Tompkins, Community Arts Organizer and Translink Bus Driver