Our FAIRS bring living wisely to life with hands-on workshops in organic gardening, country skills, renewable energy and more.
So, I’m now back in Baltimore (B-more) and my head is swimming from all the activities and people and demos at the MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR.
And my biggest question to all of these incredible innovators of these approaches to sustainable/wise living, all of these inventor types, farming practices visionaries — all of you is: How come you cannot come up with a cloning machine?
Seriously. I wanted to be in at least three or four places at the same time all weekend long. One of those places was my bed, since I was rather exhausted. But never mind that.
There were beekeeping workshops I wanted to attend. There was a demonstration on fermentation I never made it to. (Anyone ever think of offering a workshop on rumination? I would take that also. Thank god, that was not one option that I tried to get to but was pulled in another direction.)
There was the sheep dog demonstration that I caught part of it. But that is only because my friend and I were headed to the chairlift to have a fun ride up in the sky on the last afternoon to clear our heads from all the inspirational frenzy at the FAIR.
But because we took the chair lift ride, we missed about 34 workshops and demos. Two sessions, only two out of 10 held over the weekend. One of which was on Greening Funerals. Which is something that I’m not really thinking about right now, so I probably would not have attended that one. (Throw me in the ground and plant a peach tree. Thank you very much.)
We also missed Root Cellaring. I would have like to have gone to that one too.
So, come on all of you brilliant, back-to-Earth, incredibly innovative types out there who are very aware of the needs for our society to be far more Earth-friendly: How come you can’t come up with a cloning machine?
And while you’re at it, can you come up with a machine that takes care of your sleep needs while you have other things to do, like write and play and attend workshops on Funeral Greening?
Or … how about this:
How about a machine, really, a machine that teaches people how to love the Earth. You know, helps people really feel that deep caring and compassion for the Earth, really connecting to the Earth so that they are hard-wired to take care of it, and live wisely and sustainably, and well … Well.
But that would be an oxymoron. A machine that teaches love for the Earth. The problem is that there are too many machines already and we love them more than we love the Earth. And honestly, people think the Earth is a machine already. That’s a big part of the problem.
And so, forget the machine idea. Yeah, forget it.
Let’s just focus on spending some time hugging a tree. Sitting on the ground. Getting some dirt under your fingernails from the soil around your house.
Or maybe even just sitting outside and doing nothing. Absolutely nothing but sitting there. I mean, we are ‘Human Beings,’ not ‘Human Doings.’ You could even try a chairlift ride too. Far from the madding crowd.
Thanks, MOTHER EARTH NEWS, for a really, really amazing weekend. It was beyond words wonderful.