Honoring People & Moments: The Webbys’ 30th Anniversary, Seneca Falls Art & Community Highlights, My Father’s Yahrzeit & Mother’s Day

The last few days have been powerful. First, I went to Seneca Falls, NY, the birthplace of women’s rights, with my feminist history tree ring. Then it was Mother’s Day, and today is the 17th anniversary of my father’s death and the 30th anniversary of the Webby Awards.

I founded the Webby Awards in 1996, a few months before I met Ken while at The Web Magazine. I recently went through boxes of my archives to find my favorite images from that first decade establishing the Webbys and the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences with Maya Draisin and a great team of people. Maya became my best friend from that intense period when we worked so hard to create something unique to honor people. We have been talking about how much the web and the world has changed.

The image above is of me at 29 years old in the early days of the web, when it was edgy, subversive, alternative and optimistic.

As we neared a decade running the Webbys, the web was no longer this alternative new medium. I was working 24/7, Ken and I wanted to start a family, and I knew I wanted to return to filmmaking with the power of the web to make social change. Maya and I sold the Webbys, and my last year with the Webbys was 2006. That year, Prince received a lifetime achievement award. His five-word acceptance speech was “Everything you believe is true.” He threw down his guitar and walked off the stage with a smile.

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Today is also the yahrzeit of my father, Dr. Leonard Shlain. In the Jewish tradition, you honor someone on the day they died, not on their birthday, to acknowledge the life they lived. He lived so fully and taught me so much that is infused in so much of my work. We took many walks through Muir Woods, immersed in the tallest trees in the world. He taught me that, while the redwoods looked like separate trees, underneath they were all one tree, connected by a root system. The idea of the roots connecting underground was a beautiful metaphor for what I thought technology could some day do. Below is an image from my Sundance feature documentary Connected from 2011.

As Marshall McLuhan said, “the wheel is an extension of the foot, the book is an extension of the eye, clothing an extension of the skin, electric circuitry an extension of the central nervous system.” All this interconnection has brought so much good, so much overload, and also carries so much misinformation. We have to keep questioning what we absorb and how we use it.

While the Webby Awards are about honoring people in the present, Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring sculpture is about honoring people from the past. I wanted to provide historical context and offer a different perspective and remind us that what we do today will affect our collective future.

This past weekend in Seneca Falls, New York, the fantastic organization Right to Run brought Dendrofemonology to kick off an exhilarating city-wide celebration of the birthplace of women’s rights. I gave an opening keynote in the hall where the “Declaration of Sentiments” was delivered at the Wesleyan Chapel in 1848.

“The Declaration of Sentiments” was a foundational document written primarily by Elizabeth Cady Stanton that used the Declaration of Independence to argue that “all men and women are created equal,” demanding social, civil, and religious rights for women, including suffrage.

It was thrilling to be in that room, and to see the murals of the courageous people who demanded their rights. I felt their presence, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Susan B. Anthony to Frederick Douglass. I also learned about Amelia Bloomer, who founded a women’s newspaper, The Lily, and rebelled against the fashion convention of corsets to wear pantaloons, now known as “bloomers.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott first met at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. They were excluded from participating in the discussion because they were women and it pissed them off enough to start the women’s movement with the convention in Seneca Falls in 1848. Thank you to Elizabeth and Lucretia for transforming your frustration into action.

My producer Lauren Schiller and I were remarking on how incredible it was to be in a town that honored so many women. It was like “opposite land,” with statues, signs, and museums solely devoted to women. I strongly encourage a visit to Seneca Falls. It feels essential.

Left image: Susan B. Anthony is introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Amelia Bloomer after attending an antislavery lecture by William Lloyd Garrison in 1851. Right image: Laura Cornelia Kellogg (Oneida), Harriet Tubman, Martha Coffin Wright, and Sojourner Truth.

Daniele Bonafiglia and Judy Wentzel, the event organizers, surprised me by designing the T-shirts for the 500+ runners of the Right to Run 5k race with an image inspired by the tree rings of Dendrofemonology.

There was even a special beer can designed by Samatha Sciotti for a beer named “Sentiments.”

I can imagine some of the early activists enjoying this drink.

A big thank you to Dr. Nancy O’Reilly of Women Connect4Good and Piraye Beim for their steadfast support of Dendrofemonology’s moveable monument’s journey.

Next, the sculpture will be installed in the National Women’s Hall of Fame museum until August 2026.

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Over the weekend, it was also Mother’s Day, honoring mothers.

A still from my film Brain Power, 2013

I got to spend time in NYC with our eldest daughter, Odessa. I feel so lucky to be the mother to Odessa and Blooma, and the daughter to my mother, Carole Lewis, PhD, who has always been an inspiration to me.

Now 86, she volunteers by leading support groups in a senior center and told me what she shared during one of them:

Someone was lamenting how they missed who they once were with so much more energy. “Just remember,” she said, “today is the youngest day you will ever be.”

A good reminder to honor your own timeline.

So in honor of all those who came before us, thank you.

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