Mary Olive Smith ’88 is glad she isn’t 20 years old today, when everyone is expected to have an Instagram brand that may or may not reflect reality. Reality is Smith’s bread and butter.
At 53, the seasoned filmmaker remains laser focused on bringing truths about the world into viewers’ living rooms.
As the owner of Flying Pup Productions, Smith aims to create “moving image that moves the world” through the medium of documentary filmmaking.
Now the winner of an Emmy Award for the feature-length documentary A Walk to Beautiful, Smith says the path to her art was both obscured and illuminated by her varied passions.
Smith created her own major at Davidson, combining her love of culture, language, art history and political science. She first considered diplomacy as a career option.
“I was given the advice that sometimes the policy line wouldn’t align with my heart,” Smith says. “I had always been involved with film and music, and I knew that was truly what filled my heart, so I kept following my passions, and everything fell into place. It turned out I had knack for the technical and logistical side of filmmaking—the grind of it all. I was never doing it for the glamour; I love the day to day.”
For the first decade of her career, Smith produced primetime documentaries for PBS, Discovery and National Geographic, among others. Then, while working at Engel Entertainment in New York City, she was approached about the life-changing opportunity to direct A Walk to Beautiful.
The film tells the story of women in Ethiopia devastated by obstetric fistula, a childbirth injury with medical complications that can result in depression, infertility and social isolation. A USAID study documented an estimated 36,000 to 39,000 women in Ethiopia live with obstetric fistula, with more than 3,000 additional new cases occurring each year.
An anonymous funder contributed seed money for the project to shine a spotlight on the under-recognized issue.
Smith directed the documentary, which is available on Netflix in abbreviated form. She says it is both a story of healing and hope.
“By far, it was the best experience of my life,” Smith says. “There’s something about childbirth that is universal—you can go to the most remote part of the world and connect with another mother.”
Form and Content
Smith has since shifted her focus to freelance work, which provides more freedom to choose projects. Much of this work calls for shorter pieces on big topics, ranging from maternal health to infectious diseases—in places across Africa and in Haiti, remote parts of Nepal and Indonesia.
“I’ve always tried to tell the in-depth story no matter how long the end result is,” she says. “The challenge of adapting my storytelling technique into very short pieces was fascinating. I still prefer long form, but I learned you actually can tell a lot in a short time.”
One recent, longer-form project for the acclaimed PBS science series NOVA took Smith to Baltimore. She followed Safe Streets, an organization that’s working to stop violence by using an epidemiological approach. Filming in drug-ridden neighborhoods, she worked alongside a team of former gang members who are now fighting to save their communities.
“Culturally, it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “I had to gain trust from people who have lived very different lives from my own.”
Looking ahead, Smith, who sings in a country music band and grew up in North Carolina, is interested in covering Appalachia and the poverty and plague of drug addiction in the region. She sees parallels to her work in Baltimore—addiction destroys urban and rural communities alike. She lives in a universally accessible home in Maplewood, NJ, with her husband, a librarian and fellow musician, and their 11-year-old son, who uses a powered wheelchair and enjoys life to the fullest.
“I can’t work for free, but I wish I could,” Smith says. “I feel lucky to get to work on these issues and tell important stories. Whether I’m in Baltimore or Ethiopia, I listen with sincerity to what people have to say. I’m 53 now, and I hope I’ll keep making films for another 30 years. People in my field tend to never quit.”
This piece appears in the Spring/Summer issue of the Davidson Journal magazine.
Documentary filmmaker Mary Olive Smith ’88 practices the Art of Reality
Visibility study of Nairobi, Kampala and Addis Ababa reveals big air pollution problems
The global coronavirus pandemic is having a devastating effect on economies worldwide. However, one of the few positive consequences of travel restrictions and industrial downturn has been a temporary reduction in air pollution. This has made skies cleaner and clearer.
In Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, residents have documented this, reporting that they can now see two prominent mountains – Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro – from the city. It’s a view they haven’t enjoyed for decades.
Similar examples have been seen in other cities around the world where short-term visibility – our ability to see blue skies – has improved due to the coronavirus lockdown effect.
So why have Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro not been seen for years? This is because visibility is mainly influenced by small airborne particles, often called particulate matter. These are generated through anthropogenic causes – such as traffic emission, power plants, factories, and crop burning – or natural causes – such as forest-fires, sea salt, dust, and volcanic eruptions. The particles scatter sunlight, thereby reducing visibility. So the more particles, the more pollution.
The evidence shows that the air pollution levels in Nairobi, as with other East African urban areas, are currently at unhealthy levels. But there are very few studies and a lack of systematic and regulatory grade measurements of air pollution in East African cities. The existing data only tells us about the current air quality – there’s no historical data to compare it with.
It’s important to know how much more air pollution there is because it can have significant impacts on our respiratory, cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurological systems. To this end, A Systems Approach to Air Pollution (ASAP) brings together leading UK and East African academics to provide a framework for improved air quality management.
We recently carried out a study to fill the gap in information in three East African cities: Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Kampala. The study period was from 1974 to 2018.
We found that air pollution levels in Nairobi increased by 182% over the study period, Kampala by 162% and Addis Ababa by 62%.
This new data set provides a much-needed air pollution baseline for the three cities. They can now assess how effective current and future efforts to reduce air pollution are.
Visibility data
For our study, we used visibility data to predict how much particle pollution there was. Visibility measurements are routinely recorded at airports and other locations, and so we were able to use this data for our research.
Before the 1990s visibility was usually measured manually. Afterwards light sensitive instruments were used, such as visiometer sensors. Crudely, visiometer sensors measure how much light is scattered by particles and thus dictates visibility.
We found that, over the last 45 years, Nairobi has experienced the most loss in visibility (60%) – for instance the average visibility dropped from about 35km to 14km from the 1970s to 2010s. Next with the most loss in visibility was Kampala (56%), followed by Addis Ababa (34%).
From this data we were able to calculate the air pollution levels. Simply put, visibility depends on how many particles there are, so we are able to model this into how much pollution there is. Crudely, the more particles, the lower the visibility – which means the more pollution.
This visibility approach is also translatable to other regions worldwide and can be particularly useful for locations that lack high quality, long term air quality monitoring.
Visibility approach
Over the past 50 years, clear sky average visibility has reduced all over the world. This is indicative of changes in particle, gas emissions and climatic conditions.
In the case of these three African cities, the study linked increased particulate matter pollution to increased rates of fuel use, motorisation and socio-economic development. This influences the city’s air quality because of large-scale construction, energy use, and increased vehicle emissions. In Kenya, for instance, there was a notable increase (200%) in the number of vehicles on the roads over the past decade.
Besides East Africa, many cities in India, and China are also facing visibility degradation due to increased air pollution levels, while visibility significantly improved in European cities. Improved long-term visibility in European cities is the result of decreasing air pollution there, possibly due to the results of successful air quality policies.
Air pollution
We hope this approach will be used to assess future air quality improvement interventions in the region.
Air pollution is an important environmental problem and a major public health concern due to its significant adverse toxicological impact on human health. Globally, the World Health Organisation estimates that 7 million people die prematurely each year due to exposure to harmful levels of air pollution. More than 90% of deaths occur in low and middle income countries.
Our evidence shows that while urban growth is an inevitable product of national development, there is a critical need for actions to be taken that ensure that urban development does not take place at the expense of good air quality.
(The Conversation)
Semhal Gu’ush
Name: Semhal Gu’ush
Education: Degree in architecture
Company name: Kabana leathers
Title: CEO
Founded in: 2017
What it does: Different kinds of leather bags, face masks and PPE products
HQ: Addis Ababa
Number of employees: 80
Startup Capital: 300 birr
Current capital: 3 million birr
Reasons for starting the business: Passion for designing
Biggest perk of ownership: Positive impact on community
Biggest strength: Hard worker
Biggest challenging: easy ways of doing business
Plan: To create positive impact
First career: Architecture
Most interested in meeting: No one
Most admired person: My father
Stress reducer: Sketching
Favorite past time: Sketching and designing
Favorite book: The heart of a woman
Favorite destination: NASA
Favorite automobile: None
President Donald Trump and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Early May 2020, President Donald Trump has threatened to let the United States Postal Service fail. If he allows the 245-year-old institution to go under, he will not only jeopardize 600,000 jobs but sever a key link holding his continent-sized nation together. As well recorded on history books, the United States Postal Service links President Trump to Franklin Delano Roosevelt another U.S. president who faced a big economic calamity. One of FDR’s major public works projects during the Great Depression was constructing or refurbishing post offices around the United States. An astounding number of small towns still have a Roosevelt-era post office, one of 125,000 buildings erected during the 1930s. Between 1933 and 1941, 650,000 miles of new roads, 78,000 bridges and several hundred airports were built in the United States, which at the time had only about one-third of its current population size.
Alexei Bayer, a Senior Economist based in New York stated that Roosevelt not only put millions of Americans back to work but pulled the country out of poverty. His New Deal also made sure that workers got a share of profits they created through higher wages. The Wagner Act of 1935 protected the right of workers to organize and encouraged the government to defend labor from union-busting employers. Unionization levels went from under 10% of the labor force in the early 1930s to nearly 30% in the early 1950s. Collective bargaining raised workers’ wages and benefits and provided unemployment insurance, which even now is the saving grace for 26 million newly jobless Americans. Meanwhile, older Americans have been saved from poverty by Social Security. Without it, the poverty rate in the 65-plus group would have gone from 9.7% to 37.8%.
According to Alexei Bayer, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal unified a country that had been torn apart politically as well as economically. Without it, it is doubtful that President Roosevelt could have taken the United States through a protracted foreign war. The fate of freedom around the world would have been very different. The New Deal was helpful to United States businesses as well. Workers and retirees had money to buy goods and services produced by United States industry. In turn, public works projects created an infrastructure which underpinned the post-World War II economic prosperity.
Jeff Faux, the founder, and is now Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute in America stressed that many New Deal achievements have been dismantled over the past four decades. Perhaps not coincidentally, the United States of the 21st century bears an uncanny resemblance to the United States 90 years ago. Today’s income differentials are back at the extreme pre-New Deal levels. Unionization in the private sector is at 6.2% of the labor force. No surprise either, that highways and bridges built up by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and President Dwight Eisenhower are crumbling and in need of repair, which was estimated by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2013 to cost $3.6 trillion. And now with the COVID 19 pandemic, the unemployment rate too starts to resemble the darkest days of the 1930s. People would think it’s time for a new New Deal.
Blame the unfettered free market ideology that dominates United States politics and which will likely plunge the United States economy into the re-run of the Great Depression. Jeff Faux noted that under the pernicious influence of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, the New Deal has been severely criticized. Why? Because it removed millions of workers from the “free market” economy and made them engage in “useless” activities, such as building post offices, dams and roads – that weren’t strictly serving the purposes (read: bank accounts) of private-sector capitalists.
Richard Phillips, a New York-based international analyst argued that extremist as it is in its world view and view of human beings, this free-market ideology has had a long life. It even colored the recovery from the Great Recession that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The United States Federal Reserve infused hundreds of billions into the financial system, saving it from collapse. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) helped banks mend their balance sheets at the cost of around $500 billion, and not much else.
According to Richard Phillips, now, the Trump Administration is planning to rescue the economy using the same toolkit. It focuses on bailing out corporations and financial institutions, while distributing some cash to consumers, and therefore changes nothing. More than $2.5 trillion in “stimulus” funds, as well as additional money that will certainly be appropriated, is an attempt to freeze the world in February 2020 and hope that once the country “re-opens” the good times will roll once more.
As a result, the Federal government, which thanks to the 2017 tax cut was running trillion-dollar deficits at the peak of the economic cycle, will now have a budget gap of some $4 trillion, according to fairly optimistic projections. Richard Phillips, strongly argued that trillions more may be needed to save small businesses, support state and local governments, keep tens of millions of unemployed from starving, etc. This is why the Trump Administration must not only abandon the misconceived plan to let the Postal Service go bankrupt. Its real task is much bigger than that. It ought to learn from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt what needs to be done to stop the economy from a depression and the United States government from bankruptcy.
