Jeff Mapes - Author, Pedaling Revolution

Saturday, September 18, 2010 - 12pm

Jeff Mapes is the senior political reporter for The Oregonian newspaper in Portland. He spent more than three years researching and writing, Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities. A longtime bike commuter, Mapes decided to write his book after watching the growth of a robust urban bike culture in Portland. He visited cities around the country and in Europe and charted the growth of cyclists' political power. Pedaling Revolution was reviewed by The New York Times and numerous other publications and is now in its third printing. Mapes has covered numerous state, congressional and presidential campaigns as well as several sessions of the Oregon Legislature, and he is a former Washington correspondent. He lives in Portland with his wife Karen. They have two grown children and their last transportation purchase was a cargo bike.

Heather C. Flores - Author, Food Not Lawns

Saturday, September 18, 2010 - 2pm

Heather C. Flores is a certified permaculture designer and author of Food Not Lawns. This book combines practical wisdom on ecological design and community-building with a fresh, green perspective on an age-old subject. Activist and urban gardener, Flores shares her nine-step permaculture design to help farmsteaders and city dwellers alike build fertile soil, promote biodiversity, and increase natural habitat in their own "paradise gardens." Flores cares passionately about the damaged state of our environment and the ills of our throwaway society. In Food Not Lawns, she shows us how to reclaim the earth one garden at a time. Flores holds a BA degree in ecology, education, and the arts from Goddard College. She offers environmental landscape design and consultation services. Flores' next project is to use low-tech performance arts to bridge cultural and economic gaps in environmental education. She lives in Oregon.

http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/food_not_lawns:paperback

Andrew Harvey - Founder, The Institute for Sacred Activism

Sunday, September 19, 2010 - 12pm

Andrew Harvey is an internationally acclaimed poet, novelist, translator, mystical scholar, and spiritual teacher. Harvey has published over 20 books including Son of Man (Tarcher/Putnam) and The Return of the Mother (North Atlantic Books). Harvey is a Fellow of All Souls College Oxford from (1972-1986) and has taught at Oxford University, Cornell University, The California Institute of Integral Studies, and the University of Creation Spirituality, as well as, various spiritual centers throughout the United States. He was the subject of the 1993 BBC film documentary The Making of a Modern Mystic. He is the Founder of the Institute for Sacred Activism in Oak Park, Illinois, where he lives.

http://www.andrewharvey.net

Doug Fine - Author, Farewell, My Subaru

Sunday, September 19, 2010 - 2pm

They say it ain't easy bein' Green, but few have had it harder (at first) than journalist, NPR guy and former suburbanite Doug Fine. When the one-time fast food junkie vowed to purge petroleum from his life in 2006, coyotes ate his zero carbon mile chickens, his solar panels nearly electrocuted him, and his vegetable oil-powered vehicle (the now-famous R.O.A.T., or Ridiculously Oversized American Truck) gave him a bad case of the munchies (the exhaust smells like Kung Pao chicken). Plus, the goats he got off Craigslist couldn't be more mischievous, and often end up on his bed.

But Fine did it, and now you can laugh at his mistakes and at the same time learn how anyone can get very close to carbon-neutral without giving up email, appliances, delicious food, and, possibly most important of all, booming stereo sub-woofers. Prepare to laugh so hard at this slide show and talk that you'll forget you're getting valuable tips about how to be part of the Global Solution.

This is not a talk many forget quickly: come see and get inspired by how a regular Digital Age citizen, with less of a survival skill set than most, can actually get oil-free, today. All by making his comfortable lifestyle sustainable. Think "Green Stand-up" rather than a scary melting-ice-sheet talk -- this is Jerry Seinfeld meets Edward Abbey. Fine's bestselling book, Farewell, My Subaru, has been covered everywhere from the New York Times and Smithsonian to his hysterical appearance on the Tonight Show (info: www.dougfine.com). This site also has a short film about his book, his wild NPR work from five continents, a link to his Facebook Fan Page, and his popular blog of carbon-neutral misadventures.

http://www.dougfine.com