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I was really sorry to miss ConvergeSouth 2006 and Daniel and Janet who were there and live blogging. I particularly relate to what Daniel says about the ideal behind his Xark blog vs “being your own niche” (your blog, that is):

I started that way [niche] with my media blog, but the thing I learned was that when you write about one topic you get exactly only those people who are interested in that topic to the point of fanaticism…So yes, it’s good to own a Google search term. But to me the magic is that this blog will surprise me. That makes it hard to “market,” and that’s really OK.

That’s similar to what I say on my “about” page (Though this blog has been described – and pleasingly so – as “a well-written blog with a literary bent,” I can’t and don’t claim that it is literary blog, or even that it is all that well-written. I highlight whatever interests me. More often than not what interests me is about all manner of things not literary…)

This blog reflects the (non-compartmentalized, non-niched — or maybe quasi-, multi-niched) wellspring that feeds the fiction (or poems or collages or painting or whatever it is that gets made). It’s why I can’t categorize the topics (also mentioned in the about page) — to partition it up makes it so much less, not more. (Probably, it’s also because my paying writing/editing work requires focus; I don’t want to have do that here — just want to do whatever I want.)

Though I missed ConvergeSouth, I did enjoy the D.C. Green Festival. If you can take in the San Francisco or Chicago festival and wondering if you ought to, I vote yes. My photos, as per usual, are not very good, but here they are nonetheless.

I mentioned yesterday that the highlights up to then were hearing Greg Palast and Tom Hayden speak. I’m still processing Palast’s film (Big Easy to Big Empty) on Katrina and the fact that he was arrested during its making and why (charges later dropped). The fact that 3.5 million votes cast in the last election were never counted, and the breakdown of the Harvard Law staticians’ findings on the provisional ballets rejected … bought Palast’s Armed Madhouse.

David Bender (Air America) talked a little about Al Franken considering running for the Senate, representing Minnesota, (as a Democrat) and answered questions put to him about the Green Party last election and Nader.

Erika Lesser spoke about how the Slow Food Movement is taking advantage of the public education policy, the “wellness act,” in which every public school was required to make and implement this school year its plan for making school lunches healthier, including time enough to eat them. (Google turns up (PDF) Section 204 of Public Law 108-265—June 30, 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004.) One more thing, having just moved, to check out the local (Charlottesville) convivia (chapter) (Note: there’s a new Terra Madre 2006 blog, as of just Friday, Oct. 13.) Though my Tempo Giusto blog inspired by my discovery of the Slow Food Movement has been ported into and become this blog (same blog you’re reading), I still hold to the underlying principle.

Tom Hayden most touched me, partly for ways more personal than I’ll go into here, an idea that sparked a good conversation or musing session, maybe better stated, at Coppi’s (yes, delicious) about “public figures” who seem to belong to us individually, somewhat in the same way that poetry seems to belong to its reader/s, but not.

My Tom Hayden, who I first became aware of, I believe, via Abby Hoffman’s Vote! — another paperback (I still have it!) on the shelf beside Orwell’s 1984 and Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions in my older brother’s bedroom, all of which I, age 8 or 9, precociously read but definitely did not comprehend — was not the Tom Hayden of the woman who stood up to speak at the Q & A session when Tom Hayden finished. She said she had read his Revolution when she was in labor with her first child and circuitously wound her way to ending with a question: who should we vote for; who do we trust?He read from his The Lost Gospel of the Earth (Sierra Club, 1996, reissued 2006) (which I also bought). He mentioned that the Inuit word for breathing also means “to make poetry.” And he talked about how he never got it, breathing; how he thought meditating was for those who didn’t know how to handle stress (and how he still sort of believes this).

Resounding is how he said that a series of murders (and quoting Shakespeare) “most foul”– JFK, MLK, and Bobby Kennedy — had robbed his generation of its potential. He made relevant and real his belief that NAFTA & WTO are robbing local, indigenous people of their resources; the indigenous cultures have no protections. That we must end the conquest or find ourselves the most isolated country on earth.

Sunday: Lester Brown, who (30 years ago!) pioneered the concept of environmentally sustainable development.

The Washington Post called Lester Brown “one of the world’s most influential thinkers.” The Telegraph of Calcutta refers to him as “the guru of the environmental movement.” In 1986, the Library of Congress requested his personal papers noting that his writings “have already strongly affected thinking about problems of world population and resources.”

Lester Brown’s talk, Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress, gave me the most hope: We have the technology to change quickly, he said.

Amy Goodman. Of Democracy Now! (Also bought her new book Static, co-written with her brother, David Goodman), started reading it on the way home. Amy Goodman was the most inspiring speaker of the entire thing. Independent Media in a Time of War, full of stories of real people, real lives, people living (and not living easy) Democracy. I could never do this talk justice — the GreenFestivals.org website will have audio coverage up soon. This would be the one to hear first and foremost.

There was so much else. Art and Politics. Organic wine and beer, food. Live music, one performance after the other. Exhibits and vendors, everything from education and finance, the best organic chocolate I’ve eaten, Sisa’s Secret — bought four bars — to paper made from wild elephant dung: Mr. Ellie Pooh. The key word here being “wild” as this is an effort, in Sri Lanka, where the animals’ “sheer size and gargantuan appetite mean that elephants and people cannot live together where agriculture is the dominant form of land use,” to compensate for the damage to farmers.

This little summary is seriously unbalanced. If you can go to one of the Green Festivals this year, go.