One of the reasons for staying here, aside from the fact it’s half the price of rooms up closer to Amherst, and aside from the big white man presiding over it all, is the fact that its a short walk to Chicopee Reservoir. The coffee’s so bad here I had to go to McDonald’s (hey, the late Paul Newman says it’s organic) on the way, hoping for a peaceful walk by the water’s edge. When I arrived I found:

I was trying to come up with a good caption for this. Sustainable Beach Straightening- NOT!? Why we’re all going to die? Resource Use 101? Creating Disorder from Harmony? Your Tax Dollars at Work? This after the customer in McDonalds was complaining about the sales tax. “We call it Taxachussets” said the barista, or whatever they call burger-flippers nowadays. Notice the guy has a hearing protective device on. So much for quiet.

Well, on I go to the conference. I’m missing Dave Jacke’s talk on the spiritual side of forest gardening as well as David Yarrow’s integrated food and energy workshop. Luckily, Phil is giving his Two Faces of Money talk this afternoon, and there’s a workshop on legal barriers to sustainability. Then of course Paul Allen’s keynote tonight. More to come…

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Sustainability, Systems Thinking, Permaculture, Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.