2007 November archive at the BioTour Vagabond Journal

Six months and 15,000 miles later we pulled our faithful ship back into the driveway of Ethan’s family’s home. We would be back in New England for a month, roaming on familiar turf, spending time with our families and running into old friends, but never in the same spot for long.

Days later Ethan and I, along with honorary crewmember Big Mike Curry were, in New York State. We visited Oakwood Friends School near Poughkeepsie and delivered a presentation in the Quaker meeting hall. Later, we stopped by Hudson Valley Biofuels Coop to see some grassroots Biodiesel production and accept a generous gift of waste vegetable oil from the engineers.

The morning we drove into New York City for CMJ Music Festival. Our friend, traveling partner and BioTour crewmember Fernando Ausin, met us in Manhattan. Just liberated from a desk job in DC, Fernando is now a full time grease pirate. Our job in New York was to park in front of CMJ Music Festival headquarters in Greenwich Village, exhibiting the bus and talking to artists, musicians, and curious pedestrians. At night we took our free CMJ passes and explored the city as live music seeped from 50 or so venues around Manhattan.

They say New York is the city that doesn’t sleep, and in experiencing it we didn’t either. In our final 24 hours in New York City we saw live performances ranging from a heated DJ scratch battle to some whiny EMO, to danceable Norwegian techno rock. After a quick nap and a cup of coffee Ethan, Fernando and I were at the recording of Democracy Now (democracynow.org) at the Firehouse Studio at 7:30 AM. And that afternoon we had the privilege to meet hip-hop legend KRS-ONE after he spoke to a small crowd in an NYU classroom. It is inspiring to meet people who are working tirelessly to make the world a better place (Amy Goodman and KRS-ONE being the most renown of the many people we met in NYC) by speaking truth, and sowing inspiration.

That evening we participated in a networking event at NYU, followed by an informal talk and demonstration at another New York University residence hall. On our way out of the city we picked up friends and BioTour allies Teagan in the East Village and Maya in New Haven, then drove through the night back to Massachusetts for the Bioneers by the Bay Conference at UMass Dartmouth the next day.

At midnight somewhere between New York and New Haven I completed my 25th revolution around the sun, and fittingly, greeted the dawn from behind the wheel of the bus on I-95.

After shutting people from the train station to Bioneers we retreated home to finally and gratefully sleep.

We returned to the Bioneers Conference on Saturday and received wisdom and insight from speakers Ra Goddess, Bill McKibben, Van Jones, John Perkins and others, and inspiration from the spoken word artists and the musicians. The conference offered multiple workshops, discussion panels and provided local organic food using only reusable or compostable materials. It was rejuvenating to be around so many passionate and talented people directing their energy toward the same end—creating a just, stable, and sustainable world.

But as Alan Watts said “No viable plan for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now,” on Saturday afternoon the BioTour crew slipped away from the conference to the shore of Rhode Island to experience some beautiful fall surf. And that night we brought the bus to downtown Boston for a celebration at the Irish Times pub where Brian Burke the spring 07’ Outreach Coordinator had organized a party with some good people and visionary music from BioTour favorites Iyeoka and Wombaticus Rex.

On Sunday we were back at the Bioneers where we participated in a renewable energy panel, and interviewed former economic hit man and author John Perkins.

Monday brought us from the sanctity of the Bioneers back into the wilderness of ideas, presenting to hundreds of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at Whitman Middle School.

“What else besides petroleum can we use to power a vehicle?” Ethan asked the 6th grade.

“Electricity?” offered one girl.

“Right good, we can make electric cars. What else? Yes, you in the red shirt.”

“Crayons!”

“Umm…I don’t think so, but I bet you could draw a cool vehicle,” E responded kindly.

Throughout the week school visits and bus work kept us busy. We participated in a small sustainability fair at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, and gave presentations and talked with students at Southeastern Technical high school, and at Tufts University, hosted by the Tufts Eco Club.

(Environmental Conscious Outreach at Tufts has made great progress in their community, bringing local organic food to the dining hall, pushing disposable water bottles off their campus, purchasing renewable energy, and signing on to the President’s Climate Commitment. The club is now working toward getting their shuttle buses to run on Biodiesel made from the dining hall’s recycled vegetable oil. The group attributes much of their progress to cooperating with other campus organizations whenever their interests overlap).

Between all those school visits and installing a bamboo floor in the bus during the night, we managed to make it to a couple political events on the Boston Common. After presenting at Lesley in Cambridge we joined approximately 10,000 people on the Common for a Barrack Obama presidential rally. Obama mentioned many of the things that concern us—ending the war, improving public education, health care, and building a renewable energy economy, though in the rally setting where every sentence was followed by cheers and applause we heard more enthusiastic rhetoric than tangible plans and goals. The most encouraging thing about the rally (and perhaps about Obama) was the diverse crowd of supporters it attracted, demonstrating the true the commonality on so many issues among people of the United States.

Check out where the candidates stand on energy and the environment at http://grist.org/feature/2007/07/06/candidates/

Saturday brought us back to Boston Common for a Peace Rally, the first of series of grassroots democratic actions that would take us through New England and down to the nation’s capitol. Thousands of people of all ages and walks of life, dedicated artists (including The Foundation (http://www.foundationhiphop.net/) and dozens of organized groups (including Veterans for Peace (http://www.veteransforpeace.org/), and other members of the United for Peace and Justice coalition (http://www.unitedforpeace.org), came together for a lively rally and march to call for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the one sided US military support of the Israeli occupation.

If the moral obscenity of a colonial war were not adequate justification to call for an end, according to the American Friends Service Committee one day of the war in Iraq costs 720 million dollars, enough to provide 1,274, 336 homes with renewable energy.

From Boston we head North to New Hampshire for a Sunday presentation and Step-It-Up rally at Phillips Exeter Academy. We wrote letters to our senators and congressmen, and spoke with students about politics, our environment, and about life on the bus and out in the world.

We drove on into chilly Western New Hampshire to visit Fernando’s alma mater, Dartmouth College. Nando introduced us to some old friends, showed us Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco’s The Epic of American Civilization (strangely found in the basement of the school library) and arranged for us to meet with Environmental Science professor Michael K. Dorsey, an outspoken advocate active organizer for environmental and international social justice.

We finished the Northeastern leg of our tour with a visit at The New School in Kennebunk Maine. After a morning presentation and bus demonstration the BioTour crew and a group of spirited New School students gathered for a Step-It-Up rally at Walker Point in front of president Bush’s family home. The students beat drums, waved signs that read “Cut Carbon 80% by 2050”, and chanted, “The Earth is getting hotter, your house will be under water!” We left just in time to see the sheriff arrive. Stopping again at the local Wal-Mart, we demonstrated in crowded parking lot. One sign read: “Vote with your dollars, you are what you consume!”

The next few days were spent hurriedly preparing to ship out and head south for the winter. Our first stops would be College Park MD, and Washington DC for PowerShift.
We left just in time to see the sheriff arrive. Stopping again at the local Wal-Mart, we demonstrated in crowded parking lot. One sign read: “Vote with your dollars, you are what you consume!”

The next few days were spent hurriedly preparing to ship out and head south for the winter. Our first stops would be College Park MD, and Washington DC for PowerShift.

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From Minneapolis we traveled north to St. John’s/St. Benedict’s College. Our host Danielle and the Campus Greens led us around the sister colleges speaking to classes of students, the transportation department, and high school students at St. John’s Preparatory School. Before leaving a couple of
students led us on a walk around the lake and arboretum through a forest of brilliant ashes, sugar maples, oaks and evergreens trees.

***

We drove through the night to University of Wisconsin at Stephens Point and spent the next day parked in the center of the campus talking to droves of enthusiastic students. At night we cruised around the mall town getting to know our hosts from WisPIRG and a fun crew of UWSP students.

***

Our next stop in Wisconsin was the Holstein Breeder’s Breakfast where there was plenty of cheese, beer and Amish made ice cream. We witnessed a dairy cow contest (the winning cow “held her udder well above the hocks” and was “more correct in the teats”), and saw canola seeds pressed into oil for fuel that powered two tractors and a Mack truck with straight vegetable oil. The engines were converted to run on SVO by our sponsor PrairieFire BioFuels and vegetable oil mechanic Luke Mathews.

***
We spent much of next week in Madison doing bus maintenance, putting in long hours in front of our laptops, and making time to visit friends and swim in Lake Mendota. We made a couple of excursions

into the country to interview and spend time with the president of the Family Farm Defenders, John Kinsman, on his organic dairy farm. Ethan, Jenny and I sat listening to this elder share his knowledge and wisdom of decades of farming and local and global activism. We followed John around his yard like as he picked us handfuls of the vegetables and grapes and helped him chase his cows home from the pasture. Pulling carrots from the ground, grapes from the vine, and climbing into apple trees to find fruit restores a feeling of gratitude to the earth and to plants

Primates after all (foraging for grapes in LimeRidge, WI)

for transforming the energy of sun into food that will become my body; that feeling of gratitude is easily forgotten when our food feeding on things that are distinguishable only by brand names rather than species.

We traveled on to Blair, WI, to visit our friends Marv and Janis (a couple of back-to-landers from the 60’s) on their farm. I strolled through the fields, sat on the porch swing petting their smelly old dogs, and felt feeling at peace on the farm (despite contrating lymne disease the last time I was there).

Before leaving Madison we saw Michael Franti and Spearhead perform at the Orpheum, rode out to the country with our friend Taavi McMahon (grease entrepreneur and public defender) and rode back into town, sharing the bed of his truck with a few bales of hay and a goat. On our last day in town we got in touch with our inner primates exercising at Monkey Bar Gymnasium and that evening interviewed our friend Hanah John Taylor. We listened as the jazz musician, and former black panther passed on the lessons he has learned in his 59 years of life, and his thoughts about what is next for humanity (stressing the urgent need to “get them [our leaders] away from the button!”)

***

We drove through the night to reach Elgin Community College in Illinois, where we presented to a constant stream of classes that left us hoarse. We left for Chicago that night to visit our friend Jill and see some live music. Living on a traveling land ship can be surreal, I remember listening to bluegrass in Chicago and waking up at an Indiana mini-mall to explain to hefty fellows in overalls why we were sucking grease from the dumpster of the Chinese Buffet. That afternoon we landed at Goshen College, and spent the evening sharing knowledge and ideas with the community at the small Mennonite school. I explained the bus and our project to an old couple who said that they would pray for me, explaining that they had connections. Later Jenny and I chilled with a girl from Oregon who explained to us that she was not religious but that she liked Goshen because at the parties everyone dances. Goshen has one of the only Community Supported Farmer’s markets in the country, and the College has signed the President’s Climate Commitment, pledging to work toward carbon neutrality.

Before we left Indiana we stopped at the Merry Lea Nature Preserve where Goshen College has built an eco-village and research facility. After seeing mile after mile of landscapes dominated by corn and dotted with mini-malls, it was rejuvenating to walk through the wild prairie, around the swamps and through the forests bustling with birds, bugs, and thousands of other living creatures.

***

Our next stop was Ohio State University in Columbus, for the Scarlet, Gray, and Green Energy Fair. There were about 70 different booths and tables of activist groups and “green” products. We powered the sound system with energy generated from our solar panels and vegetable oil, and listened to interesting speakers and a couple of great local bands. (Notably the creative funk of Bum Wealthy because playing music with friends in wrinkled clothes is more valuable than wearing the finest suit inside a corporate prison)).

We left Columbus around 3 am after a little urban exploration and some interesting conversations. Driving straight through the night, we arrived at Dysart Woods at dawn and walked into the last remaining patch of old growth forest in Ohio. As the sun filtered down through the emerald canopy, we sat beneath huge elms and oaks listening to the forests listening to the living forest—the whispered splash of an acorn on dry leaves, the scurry of curious chipmunks, the crash of a white tailed dear through undergrowth. Tragically there is a vein of coal running beneath the Dysart Woods, and the Ohio Valley Coal Company has a pending permit to mine beneath the forest. Coal companies have more money and therefore more legal rights than the forest or the people of Ohio (including people from Buckeye Forest Council who we met at OSU) ho have been fighting to save the forest. It is not tragic that human beings mine of burn coal, the tragedy is that we do so without restraint. Dysart woods is .004 % of the ancient forest of Ohio. Europe’s forests were destroyed centuries ago, and today the forests of Asia are rapidly disappearing. These trees have been breathing in Co2 from (and storing it in their bodies) and breathing out oxygen for centuries, literally breathing life into us animals; they convert sunlight into forms useful to us—food, fiber, and renewable fuel—more efficiently than any solar panel, and provide the foundation for entire ecosystems of species, each one a thread of the fabric of life of the planet, of which human beings are also a part.

We’ve met so many different places and faces in the first month of the tour. The task of catalyzing a cultural shift toward a society that will sustain is daunting, but people everywhere are taking action in their lives and communities and continuously reminding us that it is possible, and the magical places hiding down dirt roads remind us that is it worth it.

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