Last night, about 10 of us got together for a small bonfire... Fiona brought bread (I think she learned to make it during her time in Sierra Leone) that you wrap around a stick and hold over the fire to bake; I brought the makings for s'mores, and Merlina brought an apple cake in celebration of David's birthday. After that, we went to Michelle and George's and Dan's and Richard's and Jeff's and another's (Ian, I think) apartment for a party... it was a wonderful couple of hours of meeting, greeting, and getting to know several more people who are in the area.
Last week was a rather long week with exams and presentations... first an individual exam, then a group presentation, then a group exam. The individual exam went very well for me -- it was fairly straight forward regurgitation of the facts that we've learned over the last couple of weeks. My group's presentation -- something we worked on for a little less than a week -- was about making western weddings more sustainable... so we talked about all of the things now that are typically involved in a wedding, and how a wedding that is in compliance with the four sustainability principles might be different. It's a very interesting exercise in coming to understand the process of moving from current state to sustainable state... and thinking through how to make that happen. Most weddings today have aspects of them that are indeed sustainable, and certainly the celebration itself -- the social gathering of family and friends -- is an important piece of our society. But a wedding that is completely in compliance with the four principles probably would not fly in general society just yet... so there needs to be a strategy for moving the wedding industry slowly -- in baby steps -- toward sustainability.
It is exciting to see how many people in the US are beginning to slow down -- to excuse themselves from the rat race, visit the farmer's market, eat good food, and generally be more healthy. As cynical as I often am, I also know that we're nearing a tipping point. There's a business book with this title "Tipping Point" of which I've only heard the audio summary... but it talks about how new technologies typically follow a trend in which there is slow, hard-fought growth for some period of time, followed by a huge boom in which a product or service comes into great demand. Fax machines are a wonderful example; in the early 1980's fax machines were invented. Few people had them for the first few years, and since there weren't very many people to whom you could send a fax, you didn't have a great reason to have a fax machine of your own. But as the popularity of these machines slowly increased, eventually their use reached a point at which it made sense for every business to have a fax machine... and the industry boomed. Internet providers and email have experienced similar tipping points...
All this to say that I'm very optimistic about the coming tipping point in the US... the tipping point that says big business is necessary at some level, but must be done with a far, far greater level of integrity and responsibility than as ever been done before. A tipping point in which politicians are held accountable for their decisions -- brought on by both frustration with corruption AND by the incredible communication technologies that have come into existence over the last decase. The tipping point in which people stop settling for the crap for food that is being provided by so many grocery stores and fast food joints, and instead demand local, organic foods that taste good and create jobs.
I hear laundry calling...
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