This is part 2 of a three part report on a major Earth Day conference held in Madison WI on April 20-21, 2010.  I am using that conference as  an eavesdropping opportunity:  What is the larger environmental movement discussing today?  Rather than go talk-by-talk, I’ve pulled out four major themes from my pages of notes.  Here are the first two:

[Bios from the speakers referred to below are available here.]

1.  Think local. Act global.

Yes, it’s the familiar bumper sticker saying turned on its head.   An estimated 10 million people celebrated the first Earth Day but this was not an organized campaign.  There was no internet to coordinate events.  There was a small office in Washington DC with a miniscule budget – but the 1500 colleges and 10,000 plus schools essentially organized themselves.

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I ‘ve had several opportunities this summer to enjoy some quiet moments on porches.  Not too long ago, I sampled my brother – -in-law’s porch in Bethesda, Maryland, not far from Washington DC.  The day was just right – not too hot, not cold, not very humid.  The porch furniture was just right – lovely couches that allowed me to sit up or lie back,  tall glass of sweet-tea close to the elbow.  The surround-sound soundtrack gave me birds, lawnmowers, airplanes, and an occasional car wandering down the street on the outdoor channel, while the murmur of voices reminded me of family members busy at various tasks inside the house.  Light patterns shifted with alternating clouds and sun, punctuated by an occasional summer rain shower that left almost as soon as it came.

It was a perfect place and a perfect time for reading – and I made the most of it. Read more »

I grew up in the country of Pakistan, with goats as a normal part of life.  No, we never had our own, but neighbors did.  Flocks of goats wandering the fields, eating anything they could get their teeth on to, were just part of the landscape.

And now we have Google, arguably the poster child for modern corporate technology, using… goats… to maintain part of the landscape at Google’s corporate headquarters in Mountainview, CA. Read more »

“Half of the apartments in New York City are occupied by single individuals.”

"Modern Loneliness" - from Flickr (Le Pere, Creative Commons License)

Listening to To the Best of our Knowledge on NPR this morning, that phrase jumped out at me.  The topic for the morning was loneliness and solitude, and for the most part, the comments were interesting if predictable.  Yes, our culture has made us lonelier than we’ve been in the past.  No, there is no difference between men and women – both genders are equally lonely, though (again, predictably) men tend to be less likely to admit to loneliness. Read more »