Blog
Here are the most recent blog posts for Sustainable Together. Enjoy!
Roundtable Wrap-Up
Yesterday’s “Sustainability Roundtables” provided a satisfying wrap-up to my involvement with Local 20/20‘s sustainability outreach to our local Chamber of Commerce.
It was particularly gratifying to have a number of electeds and appointed officials in attendance: Mike Glenn, CEO of our hospital, sat in on the Healthcare discussion; Port Townsend Mayor Michelle Sandoval was at the Local Investing table; Public Utility District (PUD) Commissioner Barney Burke was at the Energy table. (The PUD will soon be Jefferson County’s very local electrical utility provider, when the sale of our grid from Puget Sound Energy is finalized). City councilor-elect Robert Gray joined the Transportation table.
In addition to the Chamber‘s core of small-business entrepreneurs, also attending were bankers, farmers, retirees, a policeman, and the county’s brand-new-on-the-job environmental health specialist. Two members of Economic Development Council Team Jefferson were there (well, three if you count Chamber Executive Director Teresa Verraes).
Questions answered
I sat at the Local Food Resiliency Table and got some of my questions answered about joining or starting a community garden. The conversation naturally led to preserving the bounty, and I was inspired to hear that one of my peers—also the mother of a toddler—is gung-ho about re-teaching the “domestic arts” of canning, sewing, etc. In fact, she sees a business opportunity in it.
The beauty of having a Local 20/20 table host (in the form of Judy Alexander) was that Judy was able to provide background on ongoing local discussions to host a “reskilling” fair or festival here in Jefferson County. The groundwork is laid, the idea just needs someone to pick it up and run with it! she said.
Judy mentioned the work that Sustainable NE Seattle has done in this area, and I was easily able to find a citation online to their 2011 “Hands On” skills fair. Maybe the event will be repeated this February and my mama friend and I can go do some research…
Director was ‘floored’
I chatted with Chamber Executive Director Teresa Verraes after the roundtable event and she said she was “floored” by the level of participation and by the respect accorded to those who shared their ideas.
She, like I, felt it was very valuable to brainstorm solutions to today’s pressing problems with people in your community you might not otherwise converse with, but who share an interest in the same topic.
“It felt like two different sectors of our community coming together that don’t necessarily travel in the same circles,” Teresa said, referring to business and sustainability leaders.
“I had several people who were new to Chamber come up to me afterwards and say, ‘Wow, this is what the Chamber does all the time?’ And I said, ‘No, but I think we’ll do more of it!’”
Judy e-mailed me after the roundtables to say, “Thanks again, Shelly, for all you did with getting the Chamber on board. I think we may have forged a new partnership today, a big one!”
Roundtable Shout-Out ‘Best Ideas’
• Local Food Resiliency: Put on a Reskilling Fair to demonstrate and promote teaching and sharing of “old fashioned” skills like food preservation, beekeeping, leatherworking, etc.
• Transportation: Would like to see (1) a ferry connection from Port Townsend to Bainbridge Island, (2) an ORCA-style regional transportation card system for all buses and ferries, and (3) free Jefferson Transit service from the Port Townsend Park & Ride to downtown and uptown (a fare is currently charged, but this route has been free in the past).
• Local Investing: Need to provide additional education to our community about investment modalities—what is available, how do they work?
• Emergency Preparedness: Every business needs to conduct a disaster preparedness assessment and put a plan in place so that in an emergency, we can rely on ourselves, not on government.
• Water: Align the farmer and their land and the available water with the optimal crops.
• Energy: Focus on residential energy efficiency upgrades.
• Waste Reduction: Work to reduce paper and plastic waste in our community.
• Healthcare: Simply a question… How can we have a for-profit entity standing between people who need healthcare and healthcare providers?
So there you have it!
Click to view a PDF file of the notes from all the table scribes: RoundtableReport_1121_11.
VIDEO: Local Investing (Presentation to Chamber of Commerce, 11/14/11)
This video excerpt focuses on successes in local investing, including those initiated by the Local Investing Opportunities Network (LION), the Quilcene Conversation, and our community banks. Specific projects cited are Mt. Townsend Creamery, Finnriver Farm, Quilcene’s Village Store, and the forthcoming Quimper Mercantile.
This first clip is just 7 minutes long — for a variety of reasons, one being that only my dear parents are likely to listen to all 40 minutes of my talk last Monday to the local Chamber of Commerce (see recent post).
So I’m slicing and dicing my presentation into manageable chunks, and video excerpts on other talk topics will be posted here in the weeks to come.
>>>Many thanks to friend and colleague Jessica Plumb of Plumb Productions for taping the entire presentation for archival purposes and performing the technical wizardry to compress her HD footage into a form I could upload into a free video-sharing account for your viewing pleasure.
DESCRIPTION: Independent sustainability reporter Shelly Randall gives an overview of the diverse sustainability initiatives in Jefferson County that are drawing regional and national attention.
This excerpt from her presentation to the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce on Nov. 14, 2001, highlights successes in LOCAL INVESTING.
The book she refers to is Locavesting: A Revolution in Local Investing by Amy Cortese. (For more, see Cortese’s recent guest post, “Community Capital,” for American Public Media’s Marketplace blog.)
Learn more about Jefferson County’s LION investing network at l2020.org/lion.
P.S. One factoid I didn’t mention is that Small Business Saturday, coming up Nov. 26 and promoted nationally, was test-driven here in Port Townsend last year. Ours was one of three Main Street communities in the nation chosen to roll it out in 2010. The promotion is a partnership between the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street Center and American Express.
Click here for more video clips from the Chamber presentation.Round Up for Sustainability Roundtables
Want to talk about solutions?
Then you’re invited to join a roundtable discussion on one of eight sustainability topics on Monday, Nov. 21, noon-1 p.m., at the weekly lunch meeting of the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce.
[Yes, the roundtables are this coming Monday, the 21st. Apologies for incorrectly posting the date earlier. -SR]
If you heard my presentation on “Going Sustainable Together” to the Chamber on Nov. 14, you’re probably all fired up for the Sustainability Roundtables coming up next Monday.
If you weren’t there, or if you’re having trouble deciding which topic to explore in this special hour-long program facilitated by table hosts from Local 20/20, here are some teasers for each of the eight roundtable topics.
Pick a topic, join a table. You can just listen, ask questions, or share what you know.
Although you will sit at one table, you will have access to what happens at all of them. There is a “scribe” lined up for each table, so we will be able to capture, and report back to the Chamber membership, all salient concepts that were discussed. (I’ll probably be drafting this…) The Chamber and Local 20/20 want to hear and engage with your ideas!
Please arrive promptly to purchase your lunch (optional sandwich or salad bar) and be seated at the table topic of your choice.
Waste Reduction
Of the “3 Rs” (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), which one most impacts your business’s well-being? We’ll debunk the recycling “myths” in Jefferson County and trade tips on how to move toward zero waste.
Water
You’ve heard of a “carbon footprint,” but do you know what your “water footprint” is? What actions can you take in your business to steward Jefferson County’s shorelines, rivers and aquifers?
Healthcare
When your employees get sick, your business suffers and so do they. What can you do to influence the health of your employees? How are you addressing rising health insurance costs?
Transportation
How do your customers travel to you? And how can we put more money in your customers’ pockets by supporting alternative transportation options that reduce the expense of owning or using a car?
Energy
How can energy conservation and the shift to renewables buffer our businesses and the local economy from the double challenge of climate change and the decline from peak oil production?
Local Food Resiliency
How can the push to achieve 20% local food purchases by 2020 have a positive ripple effect in our local economy, and how can your business be involved in the shift to a more local, secure and just food system?
Emergency Preparedness
Did you know 100+ neighborhood groups in our county have organized around emergency planning? How can businesses do the same, and promote community resiliency through self-sufficiency?
Local Investing
Learn more about the Local Investing Opportunities Network (LION) and the ways money circulates most effectively in our local economy. How can we make a habit of thinking “local first”?
Judith Alexander of Local 20/20 will facilitate the program. Hosting the table discussions will be Local 20/20 “action group” leaders who have been working for years to engage our community on these topics.
Having worked hard to coordinate this community outreach (see previous post), I’ll be there in the role of roving reporter!
The event is free and open to the public. I really hope you can join the conversation.
Be Careful What You Wish For: My Chamber of Commerce Dream Come True
I’m feeling justified. A few weeks after I followed my gut and launched a blog calling for “going sustainable together,” Occupy Wall Street started (finally!) making headlines. I’m not alone in thinking global corporatization is the downfall of so many American communities, even if I happen to live in a fairly resilient one.
But even sooner than that, my phone rang with an invitation I couldn’t refuse. My blog went live on a Tuesday; our Leader newspaper ran an article about it on Wednesday, and that Friday the local Chamber of Commerce called asking if I would present at one of their weekly member lunch meetings.
I’ve just begun this journey! was my first frantic thought. What do I have to talk about—yet? My next rational thought was, This is about going sustainable together: it’s not about me. What if I highlight the diverse sustainability initiatives in Jefferson County that are drawing regional and national attention? I think a group of local business leaders could be interested in that. And a plan to raise my profile as an independent sustainability reporter began to take shape.
Earlier that very busy week, I had committed to joining the steering committee of our county’s umbrella sustainability organization, Local 20/20. Everyone was very excited about my publicity skills and my enthusiasm for increasing outreach. This fortuitous opportunity to speak to the Chamber called for folding Local 20/20 into my plan.
“Togetherness” firmly in mind, I invited Judy Alexander, a longtime Local 20/20 leader, to join me in a meeting with the dynamic new Chamber director, Teresa Verraes. The three of us talked for two and a half hours—no doubt wreaking havoc on Teresa’s schedule that day, but she honestly seemed as enthused as we did.
The more-than-we-wished-for outcome is that the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce—a group not historically known for progressive thinking, but that’s definitely changing—is dedicating two of its weekly meetings in the month of November to the topic of local sustainability.
Yours truly has the Nov. 14 slot!
OK, now I just have to prepare my presentation—and it’s only a scant week away. So is the deadline for a paying client project (of course).
Be careful what you wish for, my hubby Jeff has gently chided me. He’s right. I did wish for this. And got more than I wished for.
Concerned with the current circumstances of our economy? (And who isn’t?) You are invited to attend two upcoming luncheon meetings of the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce focused on sustainable solutions.
On Monday, Nov. 14, independent sustainability reporter and communications consultant Shelly Randall gives an overview of the diverse sustainability initiatives in Jefferson County that are drawing regional and national attention. Her talk previews the eight topics that will be explored in a round-table format at the next Chamber meeting. (Thanks to Jeff’s company, Power Trip Energy, for stepping up to be the business sponsor for my presentation!)
The following Monday, Nov. 21, a special hour-long program hosted by Local 20/20 and moderated by Judy Alexander features roundtable discussions on the following topics: local investing, energy, transportation, waste reduction, local food resiliency, water, emergency preparedness, and healthcare. Local 20/20 is lining up table hosts and facilitating the discussions.
Pick a topic. Explore how it impacts the economic well-being of your business, and share your ideas for how our community can move toward greater sustainability and resiliency.
Both meetings run from noon-1 p.m. and are free and open to the public. Lunch is available for purchase. Location: Elks Lodge (555 Otto Street, Port Townsend, in Glen Cove).
For more information, contact the Chamber at 360-385-7869 or admin@jeffcountychamber.org.
See also the preview article I helped prepare for the Chamber’s newsletter, on page 5 of this PDF.P.S. I joined the Chamber last month. Their leadership is taking a chance on me; I’m going to take a chance on them!
P.P.S. If you can’t make my talk on the 14th, Jessica Plumb of Plumb Productions will be taping it and I’ll post video excerpts here soon after. VIEW VIDEOS.
Featured photo by Darren W. ~ Flickr Creative Commons
When We Have Grown it, a Gift of Food is a Gift of Ourselves
“First we fed the chickens, now the chickens are feeding us.”
My toddler’s chant became a mantra, a blessing, as we scrambled the dark yellow yolks in the pan, cooking up a dinner of the freshest eggs possible. That afternoon we’d made our first visit to Valley Rock Farm, one of our county’s many small-scale egg producers. It was also a long-overdue visit because it is owned by part-time farmer friends of ours, and every time they see us in town, they invite us out.
Soren’s recent obsession with farm animals (maybe the veterinarian gene skipped a generation, from my father to my son?) encouraged me to call Mark and Tami, and they were thrilled to have visitors.
Mark is raising two fine sons, so he knew just how to engage Soren. We toured all the barns and paddocks with a bucket of multipurpose grain. To make friends, we offered food. (Just as I brought a loaf of my banana-zucchini bread for our farmer friends.) We fed the sheep (a mixed flock for both wool and meat), the solitary goat, and the fowl—oh, the birds! I tried to keep count: about 35 chickens and 25 ducks of various species, and two huge geese leading the pack.
And oh, the poop! Good thing Soren and I were both wearing boots. I am so grateful to farmer families for putting up with livestock on their lawns. I’m just not prepared to deal with poultry droppings in our yard. That’s why I’m prepared to pay $5.50/dozen (the going rate here) for local eggs. It’s one of my top food commitments for my family, and once you’ve switched, there’s no going back! (Full disclosure: I keep some lesser-quality eggs—but not the worst factory-farmed ones—in my fridge for baking. My motivations are health, taste and local economy, with ethics lower on the list.)
Valley Rock Farm poultry have the run of a grassy barnyard so large I couldn’t see its fenced edges over the lay of the land; this is what free-range, pastured birds look like. But they have been trained to lay in the nesting boxes inside one of the barns, and that’s where Soren “discovered” half a dozen of their most recent gifts. Mark boosted him up so he could feel around under the straw and unearth each one with a triumphant grin.
Of course, these six eggs were sent home with us, along with another six to make an even dozen, plus two pumpkins, plus a frozen package of salmon that Mark caught and smoked himself (can’t wait to try that!). Producing food makes us generous. Food wealth is somewhat perishable, that’s true, but that can’t account for the impulse to share foods that can be preserved or even sold for cash.
We wouldn’t think of gifting departing guests with bags of potato chips or breakfast cereal, even if pantry was overflowing with these rather nonperishable, commercial items. But when we have grown it, a gift of food is a gift of ourselves, of our talent, of our dogged persistence to keep those plants or birds alive and productive. We can be so very proud of that, and the receiver so grateful.
Gratitude for the people who grow our food is sorely lacking in our culture, and we need “the good food revolution” to bring it back.
On the 35-minute drive home from Valley Rock Farm, I felt overflowing with fall bounty, and with excitement about our friends’ parting offer: to join them next August or September when they “harvest” their roosters. If I want a roasting bird from their flock, I have to earn it, Mark said. Since reading about poultry harvest in Barbara Kingsolver’s food memoir, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I’ve been wondering how I could experience this cycle of life-giving-life that she describes so beautifully. I’ve been handed my opportunity.
Thoughts about food have been gathering in my head this week, and they coalesced yesterday at (where else?) our Saturday Farmer’s Market. I had $45 in my wallet and toward the end of my shopping, I decided I’d rather have a 10# bag of carrots for $10 than hot soup for lunch. So I blew my lunch budget and lugged the beautiful bag to the playground, where a friend was watching my son. I was suddenly the object of carrot envy! Three acquaintances confessed they had eyed the carrot bargain but had been unable to commit. What was I going to use them for?
As I passed out carrots to all their children for snacking, we had a great conversation about the merits of cooking from scratch, eating organic produce, supporting our farmers, and not busting our food budgets. I feel it comes down to changing your habits, and knowing what healthier behaviors can replace not-so-healthy ones (like shopping trips to Silverdale—our closest big-box nightmare of a town, which fortunately (and very unusually in our nation of sprawl) is an hour drive away—from whence you return with more packaged crap than you ever intended). It’s not about simply substituting local, fresh, organic food for the cheaper produce you purchase from a chain store that was shipped from California or Mexico.
It’s about changing how you cook and eat, and discovering how food shopping, preparation and ingestion can become more of a force for goodness and happiness in your life, your relationships and your community.
This is the precise topic of a forum coming up this Thursday, Nov. 3, which I am interested to attend. It’s called “Making Local Food Affordable,” is moderated by our newspaper publisher Scott Wilson, and is held from 7-9 p.m. at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Port Townsend. There will be info tables and people to chat with starting at 6 p.m. Free and open to the public, so hope to see you there!
P.S. You can buy Valley Rock Farm eggs at the Port Townsend Food Co-op, and maybe you’ve eaten their duck eggs on the menu at Sweet Laurette’s Café. Support our friends!
Sustainable Together TIPS
Forgetting the Pie We Paid For
& Other “Money Fast” Anecdotes
Money… Ah, it’s more intertwined in my day-to-day life than I imagined. And awfully hard to disentangle from.
That realization was driven home during my 5-day “money fast” Oct. 1-5 and a subsequent “money scrutiny” phase Oct. 6-15—both intended to foster sustainability through frugality, and to explore non-monetary transactions within my community.
For the two weeks of the Northwest Earth Institute’s annual EcoChallenge, I originally planned to split the 14 days down the middle and undertake a spending fast for the first seven. But my husband’s work schedule shifted and his string of vacation days started on Thursday instead of on the weekend, so I just went with the flow and started re-spending then.
The first five days (the intended money fast) were also complicated by external forces. Read on…
FOOD
This was the most difficult area to cease spending in. Although I was prepared to follow Jeff Yeager’s “Ultimate Cheapskate” advice and eat for five days from our garden, freezer and pantry, the rest of my family was not adequately prepared to follow me.
This was partly my fault; I confess to downplaying this EcoChallenge to my husband, who thinks I’m slightly crazy anyway for all the new sustainability initiatives and volunteer commitments I have recently layered on our busy family life. I didn’t want to stress out Jeff about my money fast, which ideally would be our money fast, but in reality was neither. I couldn’t make it through five days without opening my wallet and neither could he.
My spending lapse came on Oct. 3, from a perceived urgent need for nighttime pull-up diapers for my daytime potty-trained son. In retrospect, I could’ve probably polled my mama friends and scored a few free diapers to make it through the fast, but time was tight, bedtime was approaching, and my excuse was that I wasn’t being dogmatic about this!
Background: We had finally made time over the weekend to disassemble Soren’s crib and swap it out with his “big boy bed,” and then he wanted to forego tabbed diapers to be able to use his potty in the middle of the night. Well, Night #1 in just underwear resulted in a wet bed and middle-of-the-night bedding change. I decided that sleep for the rest of the week trumped the money fast, so…generic-brand pull-ups from Safeway it was!
Spending on the food front was 
complicated (and breached) by the Oct. 1-3 visit of my in-laws. They enjoy eating out in Port Townsend, and I didn’t have the fortitude to insist on exclusively home-cooked meals. (Especially since guess who would be cooking them?) So does it count if your in-laws pick up the check for Sunday brunch during your spending fast? What about if they take pity on you and purchase a half-gallon of milk to replace the one that ran out two days before the spending fast is over?
GENEROSITY
It felt good to be spending money again after Oct. 5, I have to say. I love shopping at our farmers market and at local businesses where I know the shopkeepers and they know me. I feel like “shopping local” is an act of love for this place and its people, and it fills me with gratitude that I am able to support my neighbors’ enterprises and get high-quality, easily accessible products in return.
I really look forward to an afternoon downtown with Soren in the stroller, popping into the different shops where I regularly purchase tea, post-it notes and socks. I enjoyed such a shopping trip on Oct. 10, spending about $20 at three places and stopping to chat at three more. Soren is at the age where he wants many of the things he sees in stores, and my pat response is, “Do you have enough money in your piggy bank for it?” He pressed hard enough for a croaking frog toy at Olympic Art & Office that I bankrolled the $3.26 purchase and he paid me back from his piggy bank when we got home. But before we did, it just seemed right to treat ourselves at the end to a nutella-banana crepe and coffee, totaling $7, at the Water Street Creperie. Yum!
Similarly, our regular visits to Aldrich’s Grocery near our home in uptown are wrapped in gratitude, good feelings and familiarity. We focus on the market’s convenience and great selection over its prices (which are actually very competitive) and give them as much of our business as we can. Soren and I were treated to lunch there on Oct. 15 by a new friend from Local 20/20, which left more cash in my wallet to spend at the Saturday Farmers Market.
I brought home meat from cattle raised in Quilcene and all the vegetables needed to make a beef stew, and that evening shared a karmic meal with a traveling bicyclist from Ohio who was only two days from his Pacific Coast destination. Ryan had found my parents through the (free) touring cyclist hospitality site WarmShowers.com and stayed with them in Anacortes the night before.
That morning, my mother had called wondering if we would host this interesting young man on his continuing journey. I had a zillion things to do that day and wasn’t sure if Jeff would appreciate having a stranger for dinner at the end of his long work day at the Kitsap Solar Tour, but I repeated my mantra of “if you have a generous impulse, give into it,” and agreed. It was absolutely the right thing to do. Conversation with the indeed-fascinating Ryan kept us going till 10 p.m. and we felt blessed by our contact with his adventure and the opportunity to support it. His blog reports he made it to the coast midweek!
More generosity…in the form of the second bagel put into the paper bag at Metro Bagels even after I realized I only had the money for one. That made my day!
ENTERTAINMENT
For his first day off on Oct. 6, Jeff had been looking forward to a family day in Seattle. It’s nigh impossible to travel from Port Townsend to Seattle without spending cash, mostly because there’s a large body of water to cross on a state-run ferry.
We economized by packing homemade zucchini bread and fruit leather for snacks, and spent our lunch budget ($24) before we left Jefferson County on delicious sandwiches, pastries and local kiwi fruit at the Chimacum Corner Farm Store and the Farm’s Reach Cafe next door. So much tastier (and healthier) than relying on the ferry cafeteria or the cheap eats in downtown Seattle.
It cost $11 to park our car in the lot at the ferry terminal, $15 for two round-trip walk-on ferry tickets (Soren is free). The 90-mile round-trip drive in our Toyota Matrix that gets (a disappointing) 30-35 miles/gallon used about $12 in gas.
We took a stroller and once on the city side, walked for 30 minutes to reach Seattle Center and our destination, the Pacific Science Center. It was Soren’s first visit, and at age 3, he was most excited to see the dinosaur exhibit. He was absolutely engaged the whole afternoon. We also bought tickets to see the IMAX film on Canada’s Rocky Mountain railway and steam train. Admission totaled $45 and included our AAA discount.
At 5 o’clock, we paid $4 to ride the monorail’s too-short line back into downtown, spent $26 on noodles at a Vietnamese restaurant, then walked the rest of the way to the ferry dock. Adding in the $5 donation for the totem pole carvers on the waterfront who kindly answered all our questions, the Seattle day cost a grand total of $142.
Whew! What a way to break a spending fast.
I should say that we are saving hundreds of dollars this month by stay-cationing over two long weekends rather than embarking on a road trip to Colorado as initially planned. But by keeping track of every penny for our Seattle day, we were surprised at how many elements added up to more than we anticipated. Jeff had claimed a day in Seattle would not cost much more than a day of camping on the Olympic Peninsula (closer to home), but he was wrong.
Our next three days were spent recreating at Salt Creek near Port Angeles. A camping site with power for our VW van cost $25/night for two nights, a provisions stop that included firewood and s’more fixings ran $50, and round-trip gas for our 20 mpg vehicle cost approximately $35. Do we count the $17 tarp Jeff bought in case of rain, but we didn’t use? If we don’t, then our three days could have cost a minimal $45 each.
But we did add in a day trip to Sol Duc Hot Springs, admission to which cost $25 for two adults (again, Soren was free) and required a National Parks pass, which we hadn’t purchased in the last 12 months. Assuming we will visit Olympic National Park again this winter, it made sense to purchase the annual pass for $30.
We spent another $25 on food-booth lunch fare at the Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival on our return trip eastbound, and that same day collected $11 in baked goods we had purchased and abandoned when westbound two days earlier.
Here’s the forgotten pie anecdote, and it’s a good one. On our way to Salt Creek, handpainted signs advertising “probiotic bread” at a rural roadside stand caught our attention. We did a U-turn and found a banjo-playing health-nut baker awaiting customers. Although we had enough food in the van for the weekend, we got excited about adding his cinnamon rolls and berry pie to our camping menu. We carefully selected some bread, pie and cookies, chatted up the shopkeeper and after dutifully paying him $11, we drove off without our goodies! Although I pulled out my notebook in the van to record the monetary transaction right away, my husband and I didn’t realize the other hadn’t grabbed the goods until we were miles away. Thankfully, the “bread wagon” was in the same spot two days later on our return trip, and the baker was very glad to see us again and to make amends. And his pie was delicious. A happy ending!
In summary, three days of camping, eating and soaking ran us $226, which is still only $75/day by comparison to our $142 Seattle day. I rest my case.
PHILANTHROPY
The EcoChallenge fell during KUOW’s fall pledge drive, and we were due to make our annual contribution to public radio. And we did, at the same level as last year. When Jeff asked me about upping our donation, I argued instead for making the additional commitment of becoming first-time members of Port Townsend’s brand new public radio station, KPTZ. $60 to KUOW, $60 to KPTZ.
The collective power of many, many individual donors is inspiring to me. I’m proud to be a part of raising more than $1 million for KUOW and $24,000 for KPTZ. Our family has a short list of about 10 nonprofits we donate to every year, and one of the benefits of being strategic with our philanthropy is that it allows us to honestly say, “We plan our giving and do not respond to telephone or direct mail or door-to-door solicitations.”
During the EcoChallenge I also responded to the creative fundraiser of a nonprofit dear to my heart: Sound Experience. (I crewed aboard their schooner, Adventuress, in 1999 and served on the board from 2000-2003.) Their “29 dollars, 29 days” campaign continues through Oct. 22 and as of Oct. 19 it looks like they’ve raised $49,065 toward their $52,000 goal. I rounded up and donated $50. If you can spare a minimum of $29 to get kids out on the water for Sound Experience’s awesome environmental education programs, please join me!
THE BIG DECISIONS
Housing. Insurance. Childcare.
We certainly didn’t delay our mortgage payment during the spending fast, and that’s our biggest monthly expenditure. Do the math, and we pay the bank $40/night to stay in our own house. Of course, we don’t really own it yet—that’s the point. At least we refinanced last fall from a 30-year to a 15-year fixed mortgage. Paying it off seems much more real.
These past few months I’ve been scrutinizing our insurance coverage, looking for savings but in actuality only finding gaps we’re not comfortable leaving. We even added life insurance policies (but not disability insurance—just too expensive). Add health insurance premiums to this mix, and we pay hundreds of dollars each month to insure ourselves in case of crisis or catastrophe. It’s one of the most puzzling facets of modern life. It seems we can no longer take care of each other.
And we have a child who will not be eligible to start publicly funded Kindergarten for 2-3 years, so we are paying for a private preschool. Unexpectedly, we had to switch preschools for my son during the EcoChallenge. What with the enrollment fee, the annual art supply fee, and a pro-rated month’s tuition for just two mornings a week, I had to write a $500 check to the new preschool provider. This initial investment must be off limits to many families. I worry about the children who do not have access to early childhood education—they will be my son’s classmates in public schools. If a society doesn’t invest in prevention, we have to pay more to remedy its problems.
CONCLUSIONS
As a mom and wife, it’s not just me I’m depriving of money’s usefulness during a spending fast, it’s my whole family. This would have been a very different (and easier?) exercise if I was single. However, this EcoChallenge has really focused my thinking about spending, in a new and good way.
That said, I’m chagrined I can’t tell you how much money left my hands during these two weeks, much less how much our family unit spent. I would lose another late-night hour that should be devoted to sleep to coming up with even a round figure. That tallying is much harder than I thought.
I want to try a money fast again, but I’ll definitely look for a clear week on the calendar without the distractions of travel or visitors.
And when I return to spending, I want to try the cash envelope system. This is working well for an acquaintance, who says it is helping her family slash impulsive spending.
How do you track and budget your family finances? Any effective tips to share? Leave a reply below.
Thanks to the EcoChallenge folks for selecting me as one of their Featured Bloggers!
NWEI Conference Wrap-Up:
The Conversations Continue
Salutations from Port Townsend, a community that is still reverberating with the excitement of hosting NWEI’s biannual North American gathering last month (Sept. 15-18, 2011).
The “Will Allen buzz” has yet to wear off, and every one of the 500-odd people who attended his public keynote address seems to still be talking about it. Everyone else in town is eagerly awaiting the video that was shot that night to be edited and released.
Port Townsend’s grassroots efforts to create a more vibrant and sustainable local food economy have gained visibility and been bolstered by the opportunity to host “If Not Me, Then Who? Building Healthy Communities and Local Food Systems One Conversation at a Time.” (Thanks to NWEI for offering reasonable day rates that made it possible for many locals to attend the conference part-time.)
In addition to the conversations that start, “Did you hear Will Allen?”, conversations here in Port Townsend are spinning off everywhere:
- Through new NWEI discussion courses that are starting up this month, in homes and churches;
- At a talk this week on reconnecting urban consumers to agricultural producers, presented by the director of our state Department of Agriculture and hosted by Port Townsend’s Citizens for Local Food;
- At this week’s kick-off event for Our Watershed, a NWEI-style, 7-week course being offered at no charge to participants, and available in two geographic versions: the Pacific Northwest and more specifically Puget Sound. Learn more.
- At meet-the-candidate events with conference attendee and local economy advocate Deborah Stinson, who is running for City Council;
- Between my 3-year-old son and the 4-year-old son of a climate researcher I met at the conference whose family just happens to live four blocks from mine!
Best yet, our local Chamber of Commerce has invited me and Judy Alexander (chair of Port Townsend’s NWEI steering committee and Local 2020 leader) link to present back-to-back in November, and is dedicating two of its weekly meetings to the topic of local sustainability. The Chamber director was inspired by local media coverage of the NWEI conference, and her phone message was waiting for me at the end of the day Friday. What a wonderful and direct outcome!
Before my inspiration from the conference is redirected to these worthy conversations, I want to present some easily scannable conference highlights from sessions I attended. Below, please find short summaries and relevant links to more information. The conference schedule, contains details on all the presentations held Thursday-Sunday at Fort Worden State Park.
THURSDAY
Singing In the Great Turning
The introductory musical program was presented by Gretchen Sleicher, a singer/songleader who lives at the Port Townsend EcoVillage and leads workshops around the region that combine group singing and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects. She explained the Great Turning as the shift currently underway to a more life-sustaining society and soon had us singing simple but moving songs that illustrated the concepts. Read my blog post on this opening program.
FRIDAY
Community Building, Sustainable Food and Neighborhood Activism: A Port Townsend NWEI Case Study
Imagine if every Menu for the Future course had a farmer or food producer at the table? That was the case for the 28 NWEI discussion courses organized in our county in 2010. Judy Alexander and Peter Bates (both NWEI organizers) and local Grange President Dick Bergeron shared how they found common ground to pull off this ambitious, and how it helped grow the customer base for local food.
It was an inspiring first session, notable for its outcomes (our county now spends 4% of its food dollars locally, compared with less than 1% nationwide, and there is a push to get that to 20% by 2020), its specificity (how a Google Docs spreadsheet enabled course coordination), and its enduring themes (partnerships, identity politics, how food brings people together).
Peak Moment TV interviewed these three in Fall 2010, and the interviewer’s notes nicely summarize this Town Mouse/Country Mouse collaboration. Click here to read them, and click here to watch the 28-minute video.
Accelerating Community Capital: Developing a Local Investing Ecosystem
I heard this called “the most paradigm-shifting session” of the weekend, and with the Occupy Wall Street protests now in full swing, learning how to promote local investing seems more relevant than ever.
One of the key factors driving Port Townsend’s relatively thriving local economy is the Local Investing Opportunities Network (LION), a clearinghouse between business owners who need capital and potential investors in their community. It’s not a pooled investment or a loan fund, and business owners are not making public offerings—transactions are based on one-to-one personal relationships (which gets around SEC restrictions). Since LION formed in 2006 (it was formalized in 2008), it has facilitated more than $2 million in local investments—primarily loans—with an average investment of $132,000 per active investor.
“It has been not only a huge economic boost for us, but also a profoundly hopeful thing to be a part of,” said presenter Deborah Stinson. She was joined by fellow LION investor Michelle Sandoval and locally financed business owner Crystie Kisler of Finnriver Farm. “What we’re finding with LION investors is they have truly aligned their values with their actions and their bank accounts,” said Kisler.
LION’s website offers Local Investing Kits with templates of its legal agreements and forms. Peak Moment TV interviewed LION’s co-founder, an investor, and a locally financed entrepreneur in Summer 2011. Click here to watch the 28-minute video.
Becoming a Hyper-Locavore: Lessons from a 10-Mile Diet
I hadn’t read my conference schedule close enough to realize Vicki Robin would be here, and when I was casually introduced to the co-author of Your Money or Your Life—one of the most influential books of my past year—I couldn’t even speak, I just genuflected. So of course I had to attend Vicki’s presentation later that day.
Who knew it would be so funny? It turned out to be the trial run of her “relational eating” talk, describing her extreme eco-challenge to eat only what grew within 10 miles of her Whidbey Island home for one month in 2010—and she had us all laughing hysterically. Thankfully, she chose September. Thankfully her neighbors bootleg raw milk and cheese, and sell eggs and freerange chickens. But at a “shocking” $5/lb for those chickens, Vicki was forced to cut way back on eating the only meat available to her. In the midst of describing this protein dilemma to us, Vicki happened to look out the window and caught one of Port Townsend’s feral deer in her sights. Instantly, she leaped into a bow-and-arrow stance. “That would’ve been dinner,” she declared, to her audience’s great delight.
Look for her undoubtedly good-humored book to come out next year: Blessing the Hands that Feed Us: Lessons from a 10-Mile Diet (Viking 2012). Vicki blogs at ymoyl.wordpress.com.
The Practice of Homecoming: Harnessing the Power of Place to Build More Resilient Lives and Communities.
Friday’s keynote address was given by Kurt Hoelting, author of Circumference of Home: One Man’s Yearlong Quest for a Radically Local Life. Kurt graciously agreed to share his publishing story with me over lunch on Friday, and for a writer like me, that alone was worth my conference fee! I just finished reading his book, a finely crafted travelogue of the most unusual kind. I highly recommend it. Read my blog post on Kurt’s keynote address.
SATURDAY
Creating a Healthy, Wealthy and Wise Community through Walkability
This overview of our nation’s car-oriented transportation choices made the case for how improving walkability is a silver bullet and a “cheap fix” for meeting the myriad goals of personal and planetary health, personal and public wealth, personal satisfaction, and a more connected community.
Local resident Scott Walker (yes, that’s really his name!) is the chair of Port Townsend’s Non-Motorized Transportation Advisory Board and one of the reasons we have such a wonderful network of trails in city rights-of-way linking unconnected streets and neighborhoods. His presentation linked U.S. statistics on rising obesity rates, traffic-related deaths of children, and off-street parking requirements to the decline of American health and culture. It was a sobering call to action, tempered by the good news that the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute recently relocated its headquarters to Port Townsend, bringing Dan Burden and considerable resources with it.
“How did you get here?” Scott asked each of us at the start of his session. I was proud to answer “on bicycle.” Others had walked. Most had driven. “None of you mentioned walking,” he pointed out after everyone had spoken. “Every trip begins and ends with a walk.” Well worth remembering.
Tour of Port Townsend Farmer’s Market
We made the 1.5-mile trip on foot, on bicycle, or in carpools, working up an appetite for lunch from one of the many food vendors and produce growers. This is where Will Allen demonstrated that Milwaukeeans eat their brats with mayonnaise!
Good Food Revolution: The Power of Community Agriculture
The conference headliner was Will Allen, CEO of Growing Power, a farm and community food center in Milwaukee. His public presentation to an enthusiastic audience of more than 500 showcased the true heroes in the Good Food Revolution: worms. Yes, worms. Read my blog post on his inspirational speech.
SUNDAY
Too early in the morning, Deb McNamara (our intrepid conference organizer) added the cherry atop our overfull brains: a sneak preview of the new NWEI food course called Hungry for Change. Following small-group discussions of two sample readings, Deb rallied us to commit to concrete, achievable action items inspired by our conference experiences. We shared them with a partner, then called them out during the closing Elm Dance.
For my action item, I am seeking an online ride-share service for one-time trips and event carpools (to replace the pen-and-paper ride board at the Port Townsend Food Co-op), and will help promote it to gain wide local use and acceptance. Once conference attendee suggested icarpool.com. I’m still looking—any favorite sites out there you can share with me?
Our county’s annual Farm Tour was conveniently scheduled for this day, so amidst hugs and encouragements, the carpools departed Fort Worden for (literally!) greener pastures.
As it was impossible to attend all the sessions, if you want to add your feedback on any I missed, please leave a comment with your take-aways.
I’ll conclude with a telling comment from Sarah Heath, a 20-something conference attendee from Portland’s Planet Repair Institute: “I had no idea Port Townsend was such a beacon city,” she told me. What do you mean? I pressed. “You know, showing the way,” she said. Heck, I’m ready to paint that slogan on the city’s welcome sign!
So just follow the shining light, and y’all are welcome back to Port Townsend anytime.
This is the fourth and final post in my role as Guest Blogger for the conference, and it will be cross-posted on NWEI’s EarthMatters blog. Enjoy!
A Near-Emergency on Day 1
of My Money Fast
“You’re doing what?” my friend asked over the phone. “Well, can we still take the kids to the Farmers Market?”
“Of course,” I replied, “I just won’t be buying anything”.
Sorry, farmers. Sorry, local cash economy. I’m stepping aside for a few days. But don’t worry, I’ll be back—with a renewed respect for the role of money in my life.
A money fast. That’s what I’ve undertaken for my NWEI EcoChallenge, which starts today. Through Oct 15, I’ll be examining my behaviors, patterns and attitudes toward U.S. currency—which is really a proxy for the life energy it takes to earn it, and as such deserves our respect and stewardship. No frittering it away.
“Well, OK,” my friend sighed. “But can I buy Soren a cheese stick? Is that allowed?”
As much as I’d like to test whether my three-year-old will throw a tantrum if told he can’t have a cheese stick when his best friend is chomping on one, I have a hard time resisting Pane d’Amore‘s savory treat, and I’m not going to be dogmatic about this. I let her buy Soren a cheese stick.
Little did I know my pragmatism was about to be severely tested on Day 1 of my money fast. Would I stand at the doors to the emergency room and refuse to open my wallet? Read on to find out.
Knowing we wouldn’t be purchasing our own treats at the Farmers Market, I had packed homemade snacks for our outing: cheese and crackers and sliced apples from our one tree that has a bumper crop. We ended up sharing them around the playground as we discussed my money fast, prompting one parent to refuse the homegrown apple I was urging her to taste. “I don’t want to be taking food from your mouths!” she worried.
But with a pantry and freezer full of food, plus the fall bounty of our backyard garden, we’re not going to go hungry, I assured her. She took the apple.
PHOTO CAPTION: Soren and friend moments before the fall.
I didn’t overly prepare for this money fast, knowing I’d overthink it if I did. Last week, I did gas up the car, and I know we have plenty of toilet paper, but I didn’t stock up on anything in particular. Looking in the fridge this morning, I regretted not buying extra milk. We have less than a half-gallon on hand.
I mentioned this to the apple-refusing friend and she says, “Well, you can barter right? We’re leaving town on Wednesday. We’ll probably have extra milk you could have then. Wanna watch my daughter?”
Spending time with her sweet child would not even be a chore, but I relieved to know there’s that option—plus I recall there are two boxes of rice milk in our pantry for times just like this. When we run out of milk. When we choose to step out of our routines and see them for what they are: habits that can be changed, if need be.
Before I have too long to ponder whether our family could get by without a newspaper subscription, Netflix, or weekly infusions of chocolate chips, reality comes crashing down. Rather, my son comes crashing down, free-falling a good five feet from the playground structure where he has just started to attempt to climb outside the railing.
All of us adults see this at once, and no one is close enough to reach him. Soren lands hard on the woodchips on one side of his body. It looks to me like his left wrist has taken the brunt of the fall, but it turns out to be his left big toe. It looks a little swollen, but only a hint of discoloration. He’s crying hard and long, and snot is running everywhere. Fortunately my backpack is well-stocked with kleenex, and one of the parents runs half a block to the corner grocery store to beg a handful of chipped ice in a baggie. But Soren is not consoled. He won’t wiggle his big toe, despite many worried requests to try. We depart for home, me carrying him the six blocks, him still wailing.
It’s the grim truth that illness and injury are financial matters in this country. Money is certainly on my mind as I try to comfort my son, who seems truly in pain. He and I are self-insured, and we choose to carry catastrophic insurance to keep our monthly premiums low. Yes, we have an amount equaling our annual deductible ($7,000/person—gulp) stashed away in an accessible account, but am I really prepared to start drawing that down with a visit to the emergency room? I happen to know it costs you nearly $1,000 to walk in the door at our local hospital and register. This information from a family whose 4-year-old daughter recently broke her arm in the most innocent of situations. $12,000 later… (not kidding! And they really had to fight with their insurance carrier to cover the incident). [Cost fact-checked and updated 10/2.]
Thankfully, our traumatic incident ends well. Although my friends (including two medical professionals) gently encourage me to follow up with our doctor’s pager service or the walk-in clinic (it is Saturday, after all), I follow my mama’s instinct to “wait and see.”
Soren finally stops crying when we reach home. I get pain reliever and arnica into him and then all he wants to do is nurse, which is his comfort food. We lie down together, prop up his foot on a pillow, and within five minutes he’s asleep at noon, exhausted from the ordeal.
I leave a voice message for my veterinarian father (having fixed everything on most any kind of creature, he’s a good general medical resource) and google “children’s first aid sprained toe.” Ignoring warnings that X-rays may be warranted, I drink a cup of hot tea and start writing this. It helps to release the pain I, too, have felt, that of any mother whose child is truly in pain.
Two hours later I hear Soren stirring, and as I walk to the stairs, I am astonished to see him walking down. Holding onto the bannister and favoring his left foot, but walking—which he had insisted he couldn’t do before. “Sweetie, how is your toe?” I rush to ask. He smiles at me from under his tousled bangs and answers carelessly, though the word is salve to my heart—and wallet: “Good.”
P.S. Soren limped less and less as the afternoon wore on, and just before bed he was actually jumping on the bunk—so his toe is quickly healing. In retrospect, I think this was the worst injury he’s endured in his young life to date, and he wasn’t faking his response, he was simply shocked by the intensity and extent of the pain. His reaction was hard for me and the other adults to bear, but I’m glad we didn’t jump to the quick and expensive solution.
From this near medical emergency, I’ll draw the broad conclusion that “wait and see” is a good idea whenever large amounts of money are involved, especially when you’re urged to spend in crisis or very short notice.
Sustainable Together TIPS
Day 3: Will Power!
He came, he saw, he loved our farmers market!
“Genius” farmer Will Allen of Milwaukee, Wis. (he’s only the second farmer to have been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant), made a very special visit to Port Townsend Saturday to be the keynote speaker on on Day 3 of the Northwest Earth Institute conference.
The “good food revolution” founder‘s schedule was booked: first with an interview on KPTZ and then back-to-back Q&A sessions with a group of 20 young people interested in food activism, then with 65 local farmers—sandwiched around lunch at the Port Townsend Farmers Market. (He had a Bavarian bratwurst, with mayo, in case you’re wondering.)
The 500 people who filled McCurdy Pavilion at Fort Worden to hear his evening talk were delighted to hear Will compliment our beloved market.
“You guys are fortunate to have one of the best farmers markets I’ve seen—and I’ve visited almost every city in America!” Will said to enthusiastic applause.
“I can see the closeness between the folks in town and these rural farmers,” he went on, emphasizing that strong relationships between eaters and their local farmers are the backbone of the new food system we need to build in America and around the world. His vision is that everyone in the world has access to healthy, culturally appropriate food.
Urban farming pioneer
In order to make that happen, Will says, we need to replace the industrial food system with strong, closely spaced networks of local food. This means growing food year-round in North America, by building hoop houses and heating them with composting hot mix and solar energy. This means training legions of new farmers. This means reclaiming farmland wherever we can. And this requires action today—not a few decades from now.
“We have to become less idealistic,” he urged. “There is no perfect time to start. You just do it.
“And you learn from it. And if you’re passionate enough to stay in the game, you can be successful.”
This former pro basketball player, ex-corporate sales leader and son of a sharecropper has found his lasting success as the CEO of Growing Power. As a pioneer in “urban farming,” he has successfully built small but diverse and intensively cultivated farms in the middle of Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland and many other midwestern and southern cities, and connected poor residents with fresh, healthy and really local food.
One of his distinctive techniques is planting right on top of pavement, by laying down 8 inches of wood chips and 18-24 inches of compost. “It’s all about the soil,” he repeated many times, and since urban soil is often contaminated, he always mounds up.
The descriptions of his composting and (worm-assisted) vermicomposting operations were truly awe-inspiring, and provide models I could see replicated in our community or any other. The techniques are simple, and sourcing nitrogen and carbon sources for composting (like coffee grounds, cardboard, outdated produce and brewery waste) is an opportunity for “building relationships that lead to partnerships,” as he puts it.
Food as social justice
Growing Power’s flagship Community Food Center is five blocks away from Milwaukee’s largest housing project. Before this retail food store opened, those thousands of people lived in a “food desert,” with the nearest grocery store four miles away. Convenience marts and fast-food restaurants were the only places to buy food, if you can call it that. That’s what Will means when he talks about fighting for social justice through growing food.
Part of his approach is hiring young people from the neighborhoods around his farms. As I learned from sitting in on his teen Q&A, youth are guaranteed a job for five years if they’ll stick it out, at the end of which time they are called “beginning farmers.” Their starting salary is $25,000.
After spinning our heads with photos and statistics from dozens of successful projects around the country, Will surprised us by admitting he feels his work is just getting started.
“We’re in just the infancy stages of this work we’re doing,” he said. “We have an awful lot of people to feed and infrastructure to build.”
His newest project is called “20,000 Backyard Gardens,” and aims to get that many going in his home region of southeast Wisconsin.
“We need 50 million new people growing food,” he asserted. And before we gave him a standing ovation, Will urged us to start gardening programs for our children as early as preschool, and to get busy planting our backyards and community gardens, wherever we can shoehorn them into our landscape, so we can access the freshest, most nutritious food possible.
Now, wouldn’t that patch of lawn behind City Hall make a nice vegetable garden…? Mayor Sandoval asked a question about the logistics of farming in public spaces, so I think she’s mulling it over.
P.S. Growing Power has branched out to create 15 regional outreach training centers for its farming methods, but as of yet there are none on the west coast (the closest one is in Denver). That could change, as one conference attendee from Oregon announced his goal was to open the first west coast Growing Power training center in his hometown.
This is the third post in my role as Guest Blogger for the conference, and it will be cross-posted on NWEI’s EarthMatters blog. Enjoy!
Day 2: If Not Me, Then Who?
If not me, then who?
It’s the conference theme and the rhetorical question we are all grappling with at the Northwest Earth Institute’s North American gathering at Fort Worden State Park here in Port Townsend. If we don’t step up to take action, how can we expect others to?
On Day 2, the first full day of the conference, we heard several inspiring stories from leaders who have stepped up to build coalitions around local food, to facilitate local investing opportunities, to create a lifestyle change action guide, and more.
Participants are appreciating the level of detail shared on how to replicate these actions in other communities. “A good mix of pragmatism and idealism,” was one comment. “The best feet-on-the-ground presentation I’ve seen,” was another. Snooze-inducing Powerpoint presentations these are not!
I plan to write detailed posts about the presentations I attended in the weeks to come, especially the success stories from Port Townsend: using NWEI Menu for the Future discussion groups to bring farmers and local-food customers together; and growing community capital with a membership group called LION (Local Investing Opportunities Network).
Right now it’s past midnight, and my head is swimming with “feelings of excitement, interest, intrigue, befuddlement,” as presenter/attendee Kurt Hoelting described it at the end of this long and mind-bending day.
But before I hit the sack, I want to share Kurt’s original and heartfelt response to the question, “If not me, then who?”
“It’s exactly the question that sent me on this journey. And it’s probably the most important question I live with every day,“ he said at the start of his keynote talk on how he chose to take personal responsibility for his role in global warming.
Kurt, a wilderness guide and meditation teacher who traveled all over the world for business and pleasure, decided to dramatically reduce his carbon footprint by giving up jet and auto travel for one year. He wrote a book about his 2008 adventure called The Circumference of Home: One Man’s Yearlong Quest for a Radically Local Life.
For that one year he decided to travel only within 100 kilometers of his South Whidbey home, within a circle that encompasses the stunningly beautiful Puget Sound basin. Tonight we enjoyed a slide show of images from his walking, biking and paddling trips, and considered his advice for avoiding despair or denial over the state of the world: “The question is not do we respond, but can we turn it into an adventure?”
Kurt asked us to tell the person sitting next to us the boldest thing we could imagine doing to address the current environmental crisis. Then he urged us to consider actually doing it.
“The invitation I leave you with is to really ‘up the ante.’ To dare one another, in a way, to move in the direction of something bold. Something that begins to match the scale of the challenge we face.”
What’s the boldest action you can imagine taking to move yourself or your community to greater sustainability? Leave a comment if you want to share.
After all, if not you, then who?
This is the second post in my role as Guest Blogger for the conference, and it will be cross-posted on NWEI’s EarthMatters blog. Enjoy!
