Starting Day Two

Day one ended up being as fantastic as it started. The classes I sat in on were really really good, perhaps a bit abbreviated for the liking of some of the presenters, they are of course very passionate about what the speak of, but very informative nonetheless. Then after a day of cramming my brain with great info, I got to enjoy a couple of bands playing folk and bluegrass (some of my favorite music by the way) while I ate my dinner. It was a great day!

I'll give you all more information in more detail later, but so far I've been able to get into a class on peak oil and the things we can do to both mitigate the damage and prepare ourselves and our homes to deal with it, should it come to that. I had a chance to sit down and have a great talk with the presenter, Matthew Stein, and found he was a very nice guy with a lot of good information and ideas.

I was also able to get in and listen to a phenomenal keynote talk from Gary Paul Nabhan, whom I'd really looked forward to hearing here, and also found him to be a very approachable and genuinely concerned man. He's doing great work on the local food and restoration of food traditions front and listening to him I really got the sense of passion about what he's doing.

In addition to that I caught a couple of cool demos and presentations, for instance on building a geodesic dome greenhouse and part of one on biochar, and look forward to more today.

I was also given an opportunity to meet with a number of authors and a couple of radio personalities in the sustainable and "green" fields at a publishers reception that evening and met even more wonderful people, with whom I hope to work with in some capacity in the future.

There's much more to do, so I'm going to head out to do it, I'll make sure to get lot's of good info for you all and will write more later. If you just can't wait to find out more, check out Mother Earth News' fair blog for updates throughout the day.

Take care all
Paul