Ben Starling's Blog, page 5

Plastic Ocean Festival near Paddington

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On sunny Tuesday, July 18th, I visited a Plastic Ocean Festival event near Paddington station, London. Located on the Paddington canal system, charity stalls and free outdoor movies promoted awareness of the overwhelming amounts of, and intense ocean and waterway ecosystem destruction caused by, plastics.

I met with enthusiastic representatives of two outstanding charities, Thames 21 and Thames Estuary Partnership, that are both working hard to reduce plastics in our water systems in different ways. This event was one in a series of events run by the creators of  A Plastic Ocean movie.

Thames Estuary Partnership

[image error]Kim Ferran Holt, Marine Litter Coordinator for TEP, explained that the group is currently working with partners to run a One Less Bottle Campaign – encouraging people to refuse single use plastic bottles and carry a refillable one. You can follow their campaign under at onelessbottle.org and #OneLessBTL. Other exciting projects (among many) that TEP is partnering with include a Thames Lens Photography competition and an around Britain sailing eXXpedition that Kim will join, with 14 women sampling waters for plastics and toxins as they go.

TEP is “the only non-campaigning organisation looking after one of the world’s premier rivers…provide a framework for sustainable management of the Thames.” Their “mission is to connect people, ideas and the Thames landscape…by raising awareness of estuary issues”.

[image error]Thames 21

Nick Anthony explained Thames21’s vision is to put healthy rivers back at the heart of community life, with a four-pronged approach including clean ups, education, research and advocacy.

The charity also provides free training on Leading a Waterway Cleanup and gives guidance and support afterwards if you decide you’d like to lead your own cleanup at a waterway near you. Or you can just join in a project already organised in their events calendar. Every contribution helps!

Thames 21’s tagline says: We reconnect people to nature by helping them enjoy, protect and enhance their local rivers.

A Plastic Ocean – the movie

This compelling and informative documentary, A Plastic Ocean was shown on the outdoor movie screen on the building next to the festival area . Stomach-wrenching to watch, this high definition and well researched film delivers a strong message: The health of our oceans is not going well.

If you’d like to get involved and be part of the solution, here below is the contact information of two charities that are doing some great work:

[image error]Thames 21

Stay in touch and find out more about opportunities to help out and training at Thames 21 events on twitter, facebook and at Thames 21’s site. You can also contact them at info@thames21.org.uk or at 020 7248 7171.

[image error]Thames Estuary Partnership

Find out more about Thames Estuary Partnership on twitter, facebook and at their website. You can also contact them at tep@thamesestuarypartnership.org or at 020 7679 8855.

Plastic Ocean Festival

For more Plastic Ocean events, visit the Plastic Ocean Festival site. For more information on how you can help out, check out What I Can Do.

Filed under: environment, marine, news, ocean, wellness Tagged: marine, news, ocean

Ben Performs Live at the E. Dulwich Literary Festival

Ben performed A Surprising Encounter live at the

East Dulwich Literary Festival

at The Ivy House, Dulwich, UK, on July 17, 2017.

 

 

Filed under: Uncategorized

Eye of the Tiger: Ben-isms

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If eyebrows developed to stop sweat running into your eyes when you are running away from a sabre-toothed tiger, why do old men’s eyebrows grow and grow…when they are too old to run. Answers on a postcard please.

Builders sawing bricks outside. Incredible noise. Brick dust has settled on my lunch. On the plus side, I won’t need to add pepper.

COOKING TIPS FROM BEN!! Brie not ripe? Simply:

(1) Remove all packaging. Place brie on plate in microwave.
(2) Microwave for 2 mins and 30 seconds for 700w microwave (allow 2 mins for 800w).
(3) Lie down on floor.
(4) Open mouth.
(5) Allow brie to drip off ceiling onto your tongue.

The time has come…for the time to come.

Sitting here thinking about ambergris, spermaceti, shagreen and the ampullae of lorenzini. If you’d like to start a conversation on any of these topics, Nurse Ratched will show you to my room…

The straws are collecting on the camel’s back.

Fawlty, my new basil plant, drinks so much water, I fear it’s an aquaholic.

Never had a blister THERE before.

Be the first to receive more great Ben-isms – join Ben on twitter and facebook!

Connect with Ben – join him at

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Filed under: Ben-ism, writing Tagged: Ben-ism

Things I love about the USA

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Recently, I renewed my passport and it got me thinking about my favorite things about the States and being American. About New York, where I was born. Got me feeling pretty poetic in fact…

Things I love about the USA

I love the States, where I was born,

But where to start? I’m somewhat torn.

So here, in no particular order,

By a consummate happy memory-hoarder:

The electric bustle of a Manhattan street,

A salt-rimmed Margarita in the Key West heat.

Cerulean skies that flood your mind,

Folks so open, strangers so kind.

Bronzed waffles freestyling in maple syrup,

Grizzled cowboys, scuffed boots, a gleaming stirrup.

MoMA, the Met, the Guggenheim,

The late-great Shel Silverstein’s command of rhyme.

A velvety cab sauv from the Napa Valley,

Seals a-lolling on the beaches of Cali.

Monument Valley and a sun-scorched pinnacle,

A Louisiana steamboat captain’s binnacle.

That jiggle-tailed rattler, an inquisitive racoon,

The Berkshires and Cascades in the first days of June.

Levis, baseball caps, slacks and tuxedos,

Button-down collars, white Spandex Speedos.

Partying with friends at the end of the day,

Listening to (Sitting on) the Dock of the Bay.

Dolphins cavorting in a quivering ocean,

Hawaiian Tropic’s utterly smelltastic lotion.

The Grand Canyon’s meandering 277 miles,

Those perfect teeth, those gleaming smiles.

A prowling gator in the Everglades,

The pomp and palette of a victory parade.

The Statue of Liberty, New York,

Griffith Park (LA) for an evening walk.

Funky Florida and Walt Disney’s world,

Ben and Jerry’s Save our Swirled.

Hollywood’s shiny Walk of Fame,

The Hudson River, where Sully landed his plane.

Four presidents carved in South Dakota stone,

Endless deals on your mobile phone.

The mountains known as Blue Ridge,

The rusty red Golden Gate Bridge.

New Orleans and All that Jazz,

The Superbowl’s rambunctious razzmatazz.

Cape Cod in the blazing summer,

Munching popcorn to Dumb and Dumber(er).

Cool San Francisco’s stepped streets,

Cooler blues with its soporific beats.

The fall leaves that gently dapple,

Apple pie in the Big Apple.

Go crazy on the 4th of July,

In the city a mile high.

I miss the States a whole lot,

East or west, cold or hot.

Yes, my new passport needs dusting,

And my schedule adjusting.

The industry that made us Citizen Kane,

Massachusetts, Oregon, Hawaii, Maine.

I better book a liner or plane,

To be free of London’s endless…sunshine.

…And come home to America again.

 

Got a great memory of the US? What’s your favorite memory?

Filed under: Ben, interviews

Alice Kuipers on CTV Morning Live Literary Segment

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Click to watch

Bestselling and award-winning author Alice Kuipers  appeared recently on  CTV Morning Live Literary Segment to discuss three favourite books and why she recommends them. Click the image above to hear her.

[image error]Upcoming interview: Alice released her new young adult novel, Me (and) Me in Canada on April 11, 2017 and will join us soon to speak about the inspiration behind it!

[image error]Alice Kuipers, the award-winning author of 40 Things I Want to Tell You, Death of Us and Life on the Refrigerator Door, is an expert chronicler of the teenage heart. Born and raised in London, England, Alice now lives in Saskatoon, Canada, with her partner, the writer Yann Martel, and their four young children.

Alice’s website is full of tips and hints for writers. Find her at www.alicekuipers.com or on twitter.

Filed under: guests on Ben's blog, interviews, media, videos

Alice Kuipers on CTV News Literary Segment

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Click to watch

Bestselling and award-winning author Alice Kuipers  appeared recently on  CTV News, Literary Segment to discuss three favourite books and why she recommends them. Click the image above to hear her.

[image error]Upcoming interview: Alice released her new young adult novel, Me (and) Me on April 11, 2017 and will join us soon to speak about the inspiration behind it!

[image error]Alice Kuipers, the award-winning author of 40 Things I Want to Tell You, Death of Us and Life on the Refrigerator Door, is an expert chronicler of the teenage heart. Born and raised in London, England, Alice now lives in Saskatoon, Canada, with her partner, the writer Yann Martel, and their four young children.

Alice’s website is full of tips and hints for writers. Find her at www.alicekuipers.com or on twitter.

Filed under: guests on Ben's blog, interviews, media, videos

Coming soon: Art Books by Ben

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One night in London…

One evening while looking out of my office window over the rooftops of London, I realised that while I am passionate about spinning words into tales… I also really enjoy art. I missed drawing the black and white seascapes and fantastical universes I began to create many years ago, initially for my children.

With a portfolio stretching back fifteen years, many requests, and lucky enough to have attracted thousands of Facebook “likes”, I’ve decided to put my art into two books.

[image error]What kind of books?

The first will be ocean-themed (the formatting is already well advanced), the second land-based. My art is detailed black and white magical realism, interspersed with trompe l’oeil (trick of the eye). Often I disguise a message or story in my imagery.

What I think about when I think about art…

I enjoy taking existing animals and plants and reproducing them with accuracy down to the diameter of a hair follicle or stem texture of a mature sporophyte. But as I believe in parallel worlds (or multiverses—think quantum physics), I also like to modify my flora and fauna, sometimes minutely, sometimes big time, while retaining apparent authenticity. It’s up to the viewer to spot where I’ve accelerated evolution or wandered into a shadowy recess of my imagination.

[image error]How many pictures?

Each book will have about 55 illustrations. On the opposing pages, I’ll include a few (hopefully) interesting facts about the subject matter; my personal experiences; perhaps a few lines about what I was trying to achieve with that picture.

For the originals, I worked exclusively by hand and eye—no computer trickery here! But I’ll be adding a few “digitally doubled” images—images reflected down a central axis—at the end of both books. Just for fun.

When?

[image error]The first book is already 75% formatted. If the Great Crested Lemur, unknown in Mad-agascar but commonplace in Sane-agascar (Editor: Ben, I can’t believe you wrote that [image error] ) would just stop hopping around for five minutes and let me finish the seascape behind it, I’d be able to wrap this up soon and have the first book up on Amazon in a few weeks.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the trompe l’oeil and the hidden stories you might see in these works…

 

Filed under: articles by Ben, Ben, books, news, Releases, writing Tagged: books, event, events, new release, news, writing

Must-See Movie: A Plastic Ocean

Some films leave you speechless. Sow your mind with images that return in unguarded moments. Change the way you think about things. With DiCaprio involved, this one promised all three.

The Most Important Film of the Year

I’d heard about it, of course. The advertising was powerful, for a start. Snippets have turned up on the web. Joe Public had referenced it on Facebook. “Right up your street, Ben,” a friend had promised.

So I trekked up to North London this past monsoonal Monday to watch a 102 minute documentary.

The community hall where it was presented was strung with tiny white lights, and a screen and projector perched at the front. There was tasty homemade tomato soup on offer with delicious dark bread, chocolate cupcakes and cookies too.  I purchased an assortment, met the organisers, found a free chair and settled in to learn something new. I was unprepared for the scenes I was about to see.

The diverse audience sat motionless, apart from the odd gasp, or involuntary intake of breath. Then someone behind me began to cry as a beautiful Bryde’s whale convulsed to death. Choking albatross chicks followed. Bursting corpses. Gasping turtles. Too many dead fish to count. And the common denominator causing their suffering?

Plastic.

Eight million tons of it discarded in the oceans annually. Most as single use items like water bottles and carrier bags.

The film I was watching? A Plastic Ocean.

A film directed and written by Craig Leeson, presented by Craig Leeson and world free dive champion Tanya Streeter, and supported by Plastic Oceans Foundation, this is the most harrowing…but in my opinion, most important film of the year. Maybe of the decade. Maybe of the…

Because no, it isn’t the Amazon rainforest that captures most of the atmosphere’s CO2 and converts it into oxygen. 70% of the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean’s phytoplankton. Whether it’s the Sri Lankan deeps, the Mediterranean, the Maldives—in fact anywhere, all the oceans are in trouble. Kill them and our planet dies too.

Gyres in the Ocean

Every ocean contains gyres—slowly circulating current confluences that have trapped decades of plastic waste. Flushed down drains and washed offshore by storm tides, often discarded deliberately, this plastic never vanishes.

Before the sunlight begins to break it down, filter feeders (from majestic baleen whales, to basking, whale and megamouth sharks and countless species of herbivorous fish) consume fragments of bottles, tiny toys, baskets, packaging loops… until their insides are blocked. Trusting turtles mistake plastic sheeting for jellyfish.

Micro Particles in the Gyres

Over time the sun’s UV breaks it down into micro particles whose rough surfaces then attract toxins of humankind’s (“kind”?) industrial and agricultural activities.

Fish, molluscs, crustaceans (and their swarming larvae) eat these particles.  Then these plastic particles pass up the food chain. If they don’t cause death along the way, they end up on our dinner plates. And plastics are endocrine disruptors, causing elevated incidence of cancers and many other diseases.

Hope for the Future

But the film rose to the challenge and offered more than despair. There were creative new ideas. The US navy has installed a plasma destruction system on its Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers to render plastic biodegradable—can this technology be rolled out? An engineering company has discovered how to turn old plastic into diesel to fuel cars. Another makes plastic components to create furniture and other home building materials.

Plastic-conscious entrepreneurs are changing the way they handle this material—reducing, reusing, and building multi-uses for the plastic in their products.

What can we do?

The film suggested we start returning our plastic waste to the companies that use it for packaging (restaurants, supermarkets) until they replace it with something safe and biodegradable.
And crucially, we must stop buying single-use carrier bags and water bottles. Provide our own. Refuse over-packaged, plastic covered items. Take canvas or cotton bags to the supermarket instead.
We can also see a screening of the film —and take a friend!
Or take action: host a screening of A Plastic Ocean, sign up to the Plastic Ocean Foundation mailing list, or donate.

If you aren’t aware of the importance of the oceans, take a deep breath and watch this film. The importance of the health of the oceans is up there with global warming and nuclear war. And maybe, maybe…with a change of heart and habit, this consumer-led, disposably-irresponsible global society can change its ways.

 

Filed under: articles by Ben, environment, news Tagged: article by Ben

Dinner Jacket or Morning Coat? You Choose!

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The Importance of Profile Pics for Casting Agencies

With an exciting new string to my bow—I have signed up as a supporting artist (formerly known as a (lowly) extra)—I need to post photos on my casting agency profile page that will get me noticed.

How does it work?

The production company forwards a brief to the casting agency for, let’s say twenty extras, three of which must be 50-70 years old (check), well dressed (keep reading), and average looking (check) – as supporting artists must blend into the background, not draw the eye away from the leading actors. The casting agency then selects maybe 100 suitable candidates from their books, from which the producer makes his/her 20 choices.

So my profile photos need to include business, casual, sporty, and for today, formal choices—to make sure I get put forward for the greatest range of roles. My formal wear consists of a dinner jacket (aka black tie or tuxedo) and my morning dress (no, it’s not a dress).

[image error]Dinner Jacket Jaunts

This has served me well since my university days, when I seemed to clamber into it every few weeks for one event or another: the college dining club, a charity fund-raiser, someone’s twenty-first, the celebration after a wedding. The tie itself is what we call a single-ender: far easier to tie than the double-ender (which proved useful when a playful young woman decided to give it a midnight tug).

This faithful dinner jacket is beginning to show its age (cigarette burn on arm, missing cuff button) but it has rubbed shoulders with royal princes and princesses, billionaires, international sportsmen, politicians…and far more impressively, many dear lifetime friends.

Back in the day, it was an essential prop in a wicked hangover or two (never say yes to a second glass of port). Now its outings are less frequent but at least it still fits!

Morning Dress Mayhem

[image error]With my own wedding approaching in my youth, I needed formal morning dress—the traditional attire associated with the greatest day/mistake (delete as appropriate) of one’s life on this side of the Atlantic.

The morning dress comprises uncomfortably thick, coarsely striped trousers, a beige (or grey) waistcoat and black tailcoat. A white or cream shirt and sober(ish) tie. Lace-up shoes polished to within an inch of their lives.

I’ve only worn my morning dress to weddings as the Queen is yet to invite me to Buckingham Palace for a Knighthood after breakfast. Each outing is preceded with a cautious inspection: has the pheromone trap hung on the closet door prevented the clothes moths from masticating my tails?

I need your help!

Please help me choose which of these formal photos you like best. My new career depends on it!

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Filed under: Acting, Articles, articles by Ben Tagged: Acting, article, article by Ben, humor, humour

5 Steps to Boxing Mojo

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Fat Not Fit

A year ago, I realised I was looking, well… a bit different than I had in my youth. That I had a long way to go to reach my dream — 20 lbs to go in fact. Not only that, but I was headed in the wrong direction. My dream was getting more distant by the day.  How did this ever happen?

Apparently, it happened sometime when I wasn’t watching. Sometime when I was taking my health for granted and watching boxing videos on youtube, rather than getting out and doing the sport I love.

A year ago, I decided this could not continue and it was time to turn it all around.

Fit Not Fat

So what was I ultimately aiming for? To become once again the boxer of my youth! To pound 15 rounds on the bag and never break a sweat. Do endless press ups as in days of yore. Jog like the Flash. Strike fear in the hearts of boxers everywhere when I darkened the gym door. (Hm. I’m not sure it was ever quite like that…)

A Watershed Moment

What was the watershed moment that changed it all? I noticed an ad online and clicked on it. (Crazy, I know. But you know how marketers are always tracking your data and then showing you adverts in the sidebar they  think you’ll be interested in? Well, this time they got it right.) The inset included a story and photos of a 70 year old man – with the body I wanted to have.

If he can do it, I can do it, I thought. I’m competitive like that.

So I did.

[image error]5 Steps to Boxing Mojo

Here are the steps that worked for me:

Admit defeat. Yes, watching boxing greats do their thing was fascinating (I love to study boxing strategy and technique). It might have been giving my brain a workout – but was not doing anything for my health.
Find a gym. The gym that’s right for you. I’m no good at willpower. So I googled till I found a gym with the equipment that would make me want to go to the gym. And…location, location, location. It’s best if the gym you’re committing to is a short walk from either where you live, or where you work.
Get a friend to drag you there. Having a friend to push me there the first time was helpful. Somehow, there’s a mental hurdle about showing up the first time.
Go to the gym. Okay – going once a week is better than never going. And twice a week is better than that. But if I only aim for a couple of times a week, I find there’s always a reason to put it off till tomorrow — a tomorrow that never comes. Resolving to go to the gym 5 times a week, means… I’ll probably get there 4 times a week. So I pick up my resolve and my equipment bag, and go. For me, that works.
Cut the carbs. Moderate alcohol. Reduce the bread and pasta. This was pretty painful for the first week. But after that, it got easier. I’m still open to treats from time to time, but I take care to let it be just that — a once in a while enjoyment. The memory of how tough it was to get through that first low-carb week keeps me on track. I don’t want to have to do that twice.

That’s about it. One year later, I’m feeling good — and like myself again. There’s real wisdom in Mens sana in corpore sano. And no reason to stop as we get older. Good health is a lifetime journey. I’m in it for the long haul.

Have you ever had a fitness watershed moment when everything changed and you resolved for a new future?

What do you do to stay fit? How do you find time in your schedule?

Filed under: articles by Ben, health, wellness Tagged: article by Ben, boxing, health, sports