Norie Huddle
Norie Huddle is the published author of seven books and numerous articles, a professional interviewer, a popular and highly respected public speaker and storyteller, and an organizational and creative consultant to private industry, government, NGOs and academia. She is Chairman of the Board and President of the Center for New National Security, a small nonprofit corporation established in Washington, DC, in 1979, with the mission of looking for and educating the public about new directions for enhancing national and global security, broadly defined.
Norie is actively committed to designing and supporting projects in peacemaking on a local to global scale. She grew up in the woods of Northern Virginia, inside of what is now the DC Beltway, was a Girl Scout for ten years attaining the rank of Curved Bar. Graduating from Annandale High School a year early, Norie was an exchange student in Italy for a year (1961-62), under the auspices of the American Field Service. After graduating from Brown University (1966), where she majored in Russian Language and Literature, she served two years in the Peace Corps (Colombia, SA, 1966-68) and began establishing a network of cooperative working relationships with a wide range of individuals, creative strategists and problem-solvers around the world.
Norie lived four years in Japan (1971-75), working with Japanese environmentalists and researching the Japanese pollution crisis and its implications for the Earth. This research led to her co-authoring, with Michael Reich, the landmark book Island of Dreams: Environmental Crisis in Japan, an holistic analysis of the crisis Japan faced and what they were doing about it. Published in English, Japanese and later in Korean, Island of Dreams had a powerful impact on environmental awareness and the tightening of related laws in Japan. The book also noted Japan’s role as the “canary” for the world, alerting us to future global environmental dangers that Japan suffered from very early.
Upon returning to America, Norie organized a cross-USA bicycle trip, Project America 1976, involving a dozen Americans and Japanese. Her purpose for the trip was to rediscover America after four years absence. Her second book, Travels with Hope, published only in Japanese to date, chronicles this grand adventure and the insights she gained from interviews and conversations with a wide range of Americans. Norie is currently preparing this manuscript for publication in English as an e-book.
After completing Project America, Norie was hired by Mobilization for Survival (MFS), a broad coalition against nuclear power and weapons and in favor of clean energy alternatives and community building. She worked for a year helping to building the coalition (1977-78). Then, realizing that “something new, yet undiscovered” was necessary, she left MFS to begin her search for new directions and a new way of thinking that would serve America and the world.
This quest led both to Norie’s incorporation of the Center for New National Security and to her third book, in which she conducted in-depth interviews with over 400 people of all walks of life and political persuasions during a four year period, asking them for their ideas for how to make America and the world more secure during a four year period. Surviving: The Best Game on Earth was published on Independence Day, 1984, and quickly became a national best-seller. Surviving contains only 30 of the interviews but these capture the essence of a new paradigm for humanity. This research also led to Norie’s creation and subsequent systems design of what she calls “The Best Game on Earth”. (See www.bestgame.org.)
During the decade of the 1980s, Norie also had the opportunity and privilege of sharing views on numerous occasions with a wide range of Soviet citizens as she engaged in a variety of citizen diplomacy efforts. She was one of 30 US citizens invited to participate in a Citizen Summit Conference in Moscow, for “Inventors for the Third Millennium”. Her “invention”, The Best Game on Earth, was picked up enthusiastically by leaders in the pro-democracy movement prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Norie also was instrumental in helping Rank Xerox bring photo-copy machines into the USSR (1988).
An experienced multi-lingual public speaker, Norie has addressed live audiences of up to 10,000 (Japan, in Japanese) and 2-3,000 in the US, and TV and radio broadcast audiences (in Japan and in the USSR) of 20 to 30 million (speaking in Japanese & Russian). Her print audience in Russia and Japan is even larger.
Norie’s in-depth interviews with thousands of people (in several languages and cultures) over the last five decades have given her a unique ability for engaging empathetically with a diverse range of people in a way that builds collaboration and a shared vision of a world that works for everyone. Her deep desire is to work in harmony with as many people as possible, to redesign our social systems in a way that will support us in restoring balance to the Earth’s biosphere and create a new global civilization that draws on each person’s strengths while integrating and synthesizing all of our efforts in creating beauty and sustainability.
Norie’s fifth book, Butterfly, published on Earth Day 1990, is the original source of the cultural meme for positive cultural transformation that has been picked up by Deepak Chopra, Elisabet Sahtouris, Barbara Marx Hubbard and many others.
First published in English on Earthday 1990, Butterfly has been translated into Japanese and was published as part of Norie’s sixth book, If The World Were to Become a Butterfly (2002). This book has original Japanese artwork to illustrate the story of Butterfly, and also includes a collection of stories and observations about how humanity is transforming and new habits of thought we need to develop. It formed the central theme of a seminar and training series that Norie helped carry out all over Japan with Japanese colleagues for six weeks in 2002.
“Together we can do what no one of us can do alone.”
LINKS
BUTTERFLY BLESSINGS: http://gardenofparadise.net/Garden_of_Paradise/Butterfly_Blessings.html
THE BEST GAME ON EARTH: www.bestgame.org
GARDEN OF PARADISE: www.gardenofparadise.net
CONVERSATION WITH ELEANOR: http://gardenofparadise.net/Garden_of_Paradise/Eleanor.html
Du Plain International Speaker’s Bureau: http://www.duplain.com/Norie-Huddle.html
Contact
Norie Huddle
email: noriehuddle7@gmail.com
website: www.bestgame.org
Richard & Norie at
Garden of Paradise
email: info@gardenofparadise.net
Norie’s most recent book, Conversation with Eleanor, the first of a series, is her first novel, published on Valentine’s Day, 2010, in Spanish in Ecuador.
In Conversation with Eleanor and in future volumes of the “Eleanor Chronicles” that Norie is working on, she is introducing (in the form of novels) a range of solutions to major problems confronting humanity—solutions that she has been searching for and helping to develop for over 40 years. While the concepts introduced are sometimes difficult, Norie has a knack both for great storytelling to illustrate her key points as well as for explaining difficult concepts in a clear and simple fashion.
Butterfly Blessings
On August 23, 2010, Norie received her inspiration to draw and color 1001 butterflies, one each day. She began immediately. About three weeks into this project, Richard began to scan the butterflies into the computer. By December of 2010, Norie came to understand that these 1001 butterflies are a "Countdown to Global Transformation".
During the 3-4 hours that she spends creating each new butterfly, Norie meditates on personal and global transformation. Her understanding is that transformation of the world begins with transforming of our thinking and being. “We’re each being called to embrace the Infinite - Eternal as our ground of being. In this way the Creative Spirit moves through us consciously, moment by moment, inspiring us to create beauty and harmony in every aspect of our lives.”
Norie and Richard have come to realize that this great gift of the butterflies will lead to a series of products that can strengthen a positive, constructive way of thinking and being, as well as generate funding to support a variety of important projects around the world. For more on this project please click here:
http://gardenofparadise.net/Garden_of_Paradise/Butterfly_Blessings.html
Trained in systems thinking, Norie is an artist, musician, carpenter, gardener, facilitator and social inventor. She is an advanced practitioner of Drs, Hal and Sidrah Stone’s Jungian-based emotional therapy known as the Voice Dialogue Process. She is also an advanced practioner of Dr. Steven Gallegos’ Personal Totem Pole process, based on Jungian therapy as well.
Norie’s current consulting is largely focused on helping a variety of groups with their converging agenda of meeting basic human needs while restoring the Earth’s environment.
Public Speaking
Norie is a public speaker with DuPlain International Speakers Bureau (http://www.duplain.com/Norie-Huddle.html). Her current public speaking topics are:
How to create a peaceful, healthy, prosperous, just and sustainable world
In this talk, Norie presents over 40 years of her research and design, showing how we stand at a crossroads of choice. We have everything we need to create a new and highly successful human civilization. Problems are shown to be opportunities. Concrete, practical examples are given. The window of opportunity is still open and we need to act with deliberation to succeed in this greatest leap humanity has ever taken. She shares the perspective gained from her book, Butterfly, that has now become a transformational "meme" and from The Best Game on Earth.
Money, Power and Purpose
In this talk, Norie shares new perspectives on "what is money," showing how the fundamental nature of money has been transformed. She presents her ideas for reorganizing the economic and financial system so as to take advantage of the transformed nature of money to help humanity to fulfill our great human purpose. She presents novel ways of looking at power and offers evidence for the unique role or purpose that human beings have—both on Earth and in the broader Cosmos. She weaves facts and stories together to give an inspiring new world view that warmly invites participation by all.
Creating the Garden of Paradise
Norie talks about the work that she and her colleagues are doing in the "Valley of Longevity" in Ecuador, in the Garden of Paradise Healing and Retreat Center. She relates the work in Ecuador with the larger task of recreating the Garden of Paradise on Earth, sharing ideas and experiences from a lifetime dedicated to global transformation.
How to Live Your Life The Way You Want
Norie describes how, without savings or inheritance, she "retired at age 25, to do only what made absolute sense to her for the rest of her life." She tells stories of her adventures in defining and living a life of powerful purpose, while sharing practical advice for others who also wish to find and live a life that will have purpose and meaning for them.
Personal and Global Transformation
In this highly interactive presentation, Norie works with her audience using a comprehensive set of exercises that she developed over several decades to help herself with her own transformation. The presentation moves from work with individuals, to work with small groups in her audience, to an overview of the kinds of remarkable results these sorts of small individual changes are having around the world. Norie draws examples from her life as a social inventor and organizer, as well as from her knowledge of breakthroughs in the world. For groups wishing to take this work further, Norie offers a follow-up program in which participants (all or part) can work with her to co-create an “Episode” of The Best Game on Earth, for posting on the Internet and in other venues.
In 1993, Norie moved to West Virginia to fulfill a long-time dream of building her own house with her own hands and the help of friends and neighbors. With this as her base, she has continued her writing, consulting and public presentations. This has included half a dozen trips to Japan and several trips to different parts of Europe to do workshops, give talks and meet with colleagues.
Because Conversation with Eleanor uses easy, common vernacular, Norie aims to publish a series of bi-lingual editions of Conversation with Eleanor, to help those interested in learning languages. For more on Norie’s new book, click on this link:
In 2007 Norie and her husband, Richard Wheeler, were “spiritually hijacked” by an extraordinarily lovely piece of land in Ecuador and currently live there part of the year. Together they have co-founded the Garden of Paradise, to create a small model of sustainable living while they write, create music and art, and continue networking with people around the Earth.
In 1991-1992, Norie participated in the preparatory committee meetings for the United Nation’s First Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. At this Summit Gathering, Norie conducted video interviews with a variety of people from many different countries, asking them what the core values and requirements were for creating a successful global civilization. She also distributed widely two white papers on transforming the global monetary system and on creating a global security system to supplant the current national security system. During these years, Norie also produced video and audio products for a number of clients, including the US Environmental Protection Agency and the National Education Association.
Above, Norie’s house and a studio building she later built with a friend. (Alas, the photos are taken in winter.)
To the right, the beautiful 14-acre lake that is collectively owned by members of the HOA where Norie has been living in West Virginia.
Beginning in 1990, Butterfly, with its “tiny tale of great transformation”, has been used by a large number of organizations around the world to set the context for their conferences. Perhaps the most well-known of these was the first gathering of the Alliance for The New Humanity, which attracted hundreds of leading activists from all over the world to Puerto Rico in 2005. The graphic below served as both the invitation and the cover for the week-long program.
