Well, in case you hadn't noticed, it's taking me a while longer than I'd thought it would to synthesize my notes from the Peak Oil conference into blog postings. In the interest of getting them done and published at all, this entry will be much less detailed than my others, and hopefully you can check out the DVD of the conference (not yet available) if you want to learn more. You can start with my introduction if you're just joining us.
Continue reading "Peak Oil Conference: Sunday and Conclusions"
Category: adventures
This post summarizes the events of the second part of the second day of the Second U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions. You can read my introduction, my summary from Friday, and my summary from Saturday morning.
Continue reading "Peak Oil Conference: Saturday Afternoon"
This post summarizes the events of the first part of the second day of the Second U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions. You can read my introduction and my summary from the first day. As you'll note, there's quite a lot there, I hope it's not too discombobulated to be useful. I should note that the conference organizers are planning to produce a DVD of the various sessions held here, so if you're at all interested in seeing some of this stuff for yourself (and without my filters/bias), stay tuned to the conference website for details.
Continue reading "Peak Oil Conference: Saturday Morning"
My friend Frank arrived in Richmond this morning to form the beginning of our small caravan to the Second U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions, as I mentioned yesterday. After some brief touring around town, a visit to Summersault, and showing off some of the great local stuff Richmond has to offer, we headed east to pick Dayna up at the airport. From there we headed to Yellow Springs, Ohio and the campus of Antioch College, where the conference is being held. You can check out some random photos from today, or read on for a summary of the opening keynote by Richard Heinberg.
Continue reading "Peak Oil Conference: Friday"
I have the privilege to be headed to the second U.S. conference on "Peak Oil and Community Solutions" this weekend in Ohio. I've mentioned Peak Oil here before, and so I'm excited to be joining some folks who I already know think about this stuff on a trip to meet new people and explore this "issue" further. It seems to come at an especially relevant time, where energy concerns and oil production are tied in to most every headline, public policy decision, financial planning fear - even weather pattern! - that we hear about (and many we don't).
Continue reading "Headed to Peak Oil Conference"
I've had a bad case of unusually persistent headaches lately, and when I experience health problems I usually try to identify simple potential causes and solutions before I go get all up inside the conventional healthcare system. Some call this holistic health, I just call it common sense and listening to the marvelous self-diagnosing machine that is the human body. Am I particularly stressed out or upset about something? Have I been getting enough exercise? Is my cuisine all screwed up? And so on. I was talking to someone today who practices craniosacral therapy and she did a good job of reminding me how many ridiculously toxic, but FDA approved, headache-causing substances there are out there in the food we buy.
I caught her mention of aspartame as a common one and started doing a little research. While I tend to avoid looking up medical information on the Internet after previously embarrassing experiences doing so, I found lots of connections mentioned between headaches and aspartame. Who would have thought that ingesting formaldehyde would have negative health effects? Huh! Thanks, Monsanto! I took a brief skim of my pantry and found three products at the front of the shelf with aspartame and related substances like sucralose / Splenda, listed as an ingredient, both of which I've consumed lately - they're now in the trash. Yeah, I know - we can't just start throwing away everything that's bad for us to any degree. But I figure that if a given edible substance has to have dueling propaganda websites and panels of experts to talk about whether or not it REALLY causes brain tumors, I can probably live without it to be on the safe side.
Perhaps I can ONLY live without it.
A few bits and pieces: I've recently returned from a great vacation. I took some of my time off to explore a few Richmond-area touristy type things that I haven't gotten to see yet, including a thorough tour of the Wayne County Historical Museum. They have quite an impressive collection, and I learned a lot I didn't know about this community. As a result I had one of those great moments of cosmic unity: I'd enjoyed reading about the history of the Wayne Corporation which was headquartered here in town. On Thursday, I was in North Carolina climbing onto a converted school bus for a whitewater rafting trip with the Nantahala Outdoor Center and thought to look at the bus's manufacturer label, and sure enough, it said "Wayne - Richmond, Indiana". Cool! (BTW, if you're ever looking for an awesome place to vacation in western NC, check out Earthshine Mountain Lodge - amazing place, people, and food.) And just a few months ago I was touring the Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago, and noticed that the metal winches used to open and close the glass panels were labeled "Quaker City Steel Works - Richmond, Indiana." Wowsers - this place really made a name for itself. Speaking of Chicago, I did several other museum tours there this time around, including a nice walkthrough of the Adler Planetarium (though the show "Stars of the Pharaohs" was minimally fascinating) and the Chicago Historical Society's exhibit Without Sanctuary, a visual history of lynching in America. The images of communities - men, women, children - laughing and smiling as they gathered to celebrate death were indescribably haunting. And finally, to end on a note of humor, if you haven't already, check out the June 22, 2056 edition of The Onion - hilarious.
I've been doing more and more public speaking over the last few years, and find that it's something I enjoy immensely. There was a time when I was younger when I considered a "career" in it (as a minister, even), despite my introverted nature and the nervous shakes I'd always get right before beginning a talk. I'm still introverted and I still get the shakes once in a while, but I really appreciate opportunities to be a part of group learning and educational sessions, especially when I have something valuable to contribute and/or unique ways of contributing it. Lately I've been getting some good feedback on my approach to these opportunities and my ability to engage an audience; I've also found more and more sessions that fit well with other projects I'm pursuing. So, I've created a page on this site about speaking opportunities and requests, in hopes that it will lead to more of these. If you're involved with a group or event that might benefit from this kind of contribution, please let me know!
After a few preparatory steps over the last few weeks and months I finally got my garden planted today - my second since moving to my house. I've planted two kinds of tomatoes, basil, bell and jalapeno peppers, celery, broccoli, parsley, cilantro, cucumber, mesculin mix, lettuce, kale, and dill. If just a few of those actually turn out and one of them is basil, I'll be satisfied. The whole process was a lot easier this year - last time I was doing things like wiring together a grow light, putting up shelving for seed trays, tilling a large section of grass, and just generally getting my bearings with gardening after having been away from the agriculture I'd learned at Elkhorn Ranch for a while. This year I also ordered a rain barrel rainwater collection system, which I'm really excited about putting to use instead of shocking my plants and soil with cold, hard chlorinated water.
Last night I helped to facilitate the "U-Plan" community input sessions that the City of Richmond, Indiana is conducting as a part of its work on updating the City's comprehensive plan. I was struck and impressed, perhaps more than I should have been, by the simple process of people in a community coming together to discuss their concerns, interests, areas of pride about our town, and where we should go in the coming years. I was equally impressed that we were able to use an approach that is very important to me personally - building shared vision through respectful dialogue. I don't know how many other places in the world get to engage in that process on a regular basis - perhaps it's really common - but I feel proud and fortunate to live in a place that can and does.