When Bill Sharpsteen wrote Dirty Water, his book about how schoolteacher and swimmer Howard Bennett led the movement to clean up Santa Monica Bay in the 1980s, he wanted to tell a good story and hopefully make a difference in someone’s life. “With any luck, I hoped, someone might recognize the little guy versus big government theme and would be inspired to take on an environmental issue where they lived”, he wrote in a Huffington Post article this week. Sharpsteen succeeded in some unexpected ways, as he discovered. In the article, he reflects on the pleasant surprises that came from writing the book and from recognizing Howard Bennett and others for their hard work, sacrifice, and ultimate success in cleaning up the bay.
Read Bill Sharpsteen’s article, ‘“Dirty Water” and Unintended Consequences: When Doing the Right Thing Spawns Another Right Thing’, in the Huffington Post
Listen to the UC Press podcast with Bill Sharpsteen: [podcast]https://www.ucpress.edu/content/podcasts/11181.mp3[/podcast]
