Saturday, February 28, 2009

 

Remnants: Piecing a Just, Sustainable Society from the Detritus of Empire

Come to our conference! Link to website justremnants.org March 9 for more details.

A Southern Appalachian conference working to fabricate a remnant quilt of community in the tradition of Isaiah's "just remnant," justice to the human community and crucially, the bioregion. At the end of the warm, stable, Holocene period, we are entering the "long emergency," an era of global warming, with accelerating species extinction and potentially rapid climate change. We trust deeply that our collective piece-work will inspire hope and action in these trying times. We will work together as a human community and earth citizens, but anchoring more deeply, listening for the divine source which alone can sustain us, and what emerges from us, through this interval of unknown duration and destination.

Where: Arthur Morgan School, Celo, NC
When: July 16-19, 2009
Cost: $175 ($135 for early birds), plus housing.
Scholarships and work-trades available.
Early bird registration deadline June 1, 2009

The purpose of the conference is to gather, energize and encourage networking among community leaders in the Southern Appalachians, encouraging bold thinking and courage to build a sustainable regional society in advance of the inevitable ravages of climate change and systemic economic downturn.

We invite you to join us in creating a remnant “quilt” of just, sustainable, hopeful practices to preserve and sustain the Katuah bioregion. The conference will feature presentations, experiential exercises, roundtable with representatives from a broad range of bioregional organizations, and field trips. These will all be anchored and woven together by small home groups, where participants will create a remnant epistle quilt at conference end. Poetry reading and contradance Saturday night with local musicians. Food will be local, mostly vegetarian and organic, and fabulous.

The great anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss spoke of human cultural activity as bricolage, the bricoleur being a scavenger, tinker, jack-of-all-trades, making his living by collecting society’s remnants. Our work of bricolage will include

ECOJUSTICE
the land ethic, wildlife corridors, buffers, healing forests
VIABLE, DURABLE SMALL TOWNS AND RURAL PLACES
sustainable agriculture, cooperative enterprises and small business development, distributed energy, community justice
PLACE-BASED CULTURES
Cherokee keepers of traditions
Appalachian farmers and crafters

PRESENTERS
*have already agreed to participate

*Thomas Rain Crowe, yeoman, poet/essayist/activist, bookstore owner, Jackson County
*Paulus Berensohn, artist/teacher working at interface of Deep Ecology and the craft arts, Penland, NC.
*Thomas Peterson, climate scientist, NOAA, Nobel laureate (IPCC), AVL. *Stuart Rosenthal- international consultant in cooperative business Chapel Hill
*Rob Messick – Researcher, regional old growth forests Rutherford County (field trip)
Jim Veteto - Heirloom vegetables. PhD candidate in Ethnobotany, Celo Community (field trip)
*Kevin Welsh - Cherokee native plants and stories. Bog Cove Community *Lee Barnes, history of Katuah, our bioregion
*Brent Martin, history of Katuah. Regional director, Wilderness Society, former president, Little Tennessee Land Trust, Franklin.
*Forrest Westall – North Carolina Environmental Management Commission, hydro engineer, author of Outstanding Resource Waters bill(NC), Celo. South Toe River was first to receive this designation, and remains the purest water in the state.
Joe Hollis - Yeoman, Paradise Gardening, Chinese herbalist, Celo (field
trip)
Patryk Battle/*Gaelen Corozine/Scott Paquin. CSA’s of South Toe Valley (field trip)
Yancey farm family (field trip)
PANEL connecting spirituality and ecojustice:
*Jill Rios, Director, NC Interfaith Power and Light, writer. Asheville
*Evan Richardson, past clerk, Asheville Friends Meeting.
*Nancy Hastings - Baptist Peacemaker, Circle of Mercy. Peace and justice activist, prison chaplain. Asheville
Representatives of DISTRIBUTED ENERGY (solar and wind), mostly local.

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