Friday June 30, 2006
Ashland, Oregon is a lovely town set against the Siskiyou mountains. We are here during the "Shakespeare Festival" summer season when the town is dressed up for the festivities--banners hung, flower pots full of vibrantly-colored blossoms. The heat was broken by a thunderstorm yesterday, cooling the streets and greening the parks.

This afternoon we set up to tape two Peak Moment conversations at Southern Oregon University (SOU). On the floor just below us, a 250-instrument concert band serenaded us with Star Wars and military anthems. Synchronistically, they took a break while we taped and resumed awhile after we finished. Thank you, universe!

Megan Quinn
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Our first Peak Moment was with Megan Quinn, a lovely 24-year-old who simply radiates--charming everyone she meets. DIrector of Outreach for The Community Solution, a project of Community Service of Yellow Springs, Ohio, Megan participated in videotaping in Cuba for the new film "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil."

Megan and I talked about what she's inspired by -- she sees Peak Oil as a great opportunity to create the kinds of communities we want. To be more connected. She also feels that 25-50% of us will need to be involved in food production post-peak. We talked about taboo topics in the broader Peak Oil community, about the need to get environmental groups from sending us astray by assuring us we can just fill in with biofuels and not have to change our consumption. Nothing will fill the petroleum gap, Megan points out: we have to reduce consumption.

The Cuba film is showing tonight at SOU. We returned to videotape Megan's wise and inspiring opening presentation, and the Q&A after the film. This film is making the rounds of relocalization and sustainability groups. It's a positive and uplifting model of how people responded to Peak Oil. If you've seen "End of Suburbia," you owe it to yourself to see this side of the picture.

The Cuban culture has a stronger sense of real community, and you'll see examples of people working together, helping each other, growing urban gardens and giving food to the handicapped, elderly, pregnant mothers. As one questioner pointed out, we're not used to doing that here in our individualistic culture. The Latino cultures are better prepared for Peak Oil and climate change events because of their community-orientation.

Megan's talk was co-sponsored by Mike Ruppert, who moved the offices of his "From The Wilderness" publishing business to Ashland about five months ago.

Mike Ruppert
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Mike and I had great fun during our Peak Moment conversation! He acknowledged his gratefulness that young people like Megan are coming up, readying themselves to take the reins from "old guys" like himself who've been on the front lines for decades. Quoting his statement, "until you change how money works, you change nothing," I asked for specific to-do's. Disengage from the corporate world, he said. Get out of Bank of America. Invest in your local bank or credit union that themselves invest locally. And more. Particularly in light of the imminent collapse of the U.S., and perhaps world, economy. Said by a man who's been watching that closely for a long while.

He spoke of the spiritual force that impels him to do this hard work of uncovering and telling the truth around Peak Oil, 9/11, the geopolitics of empire. His caring for future generations is absolutely palpable. This is a man with a huge, huge heart. I was so moved that I simply had to give him a big hug as we ended our conversation.

Recently we've begun asking our guests to give us a one-minute "nugget" after the 30-minute conversation. Often the passion that motivates them is what pours out: their love of gardens, or learning how to work in community, or green building. Mike's nugget felt totally inspired: the kind of message we've heard from Martin Luther King or other inspiring figures at their best. Just you wait to hear this!

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Sustainable Backyard Gardens, Community Gardens
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Saturday July 1
It was a serendipitous call several weeks ago from Matt Sheehan of Jackson County Sustainability Group that helped bring us to Ashland. Matt had partnered with Mike Ruppert to bring Megan to Ashland, and he paved the way for us to tape Mike and Megan.

Matt recommended a number of folks for Peak Moment, several of whom were unavailable. But the two conversations we taped today were gems. We were generously hosted by Kayla and Scott McGuire (and bountifully and beautifully fed!).

Patrick Marcus
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The McGuire's backyard garden was the backdrop for my conversation with Patrick Marcus, who worked with the Ashland Parks and Recreation Department to create a "temporary" community garden on undeveloped park land. Even more importantly, he worked with them to incorporate community gardens in their parks policy, which includes a plan to have a park within 1/4 mile walking distance for everyone.

Patrick cited studies showing how gardening ranks as the number 1 or 2 leisure-time activity for Americans. He also talked of gardens as community-builders. As people of different social strata work side-by-side on their garden plots, their shared enjoyment of gardening erases the boundaries between them.

Scott McGuire
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Scott's passion for sustainable backyard gardens is infectious! In the last five months he has transformed the large backyard of his family's rental home into a bounty of annuals: flowers for the soul, food and medicinal plants. A lot of his plantings are for seed saving: we could have water and land, but where would we be without the seeds?

This is not permaculture, he points out, because this "permanent culture" is for people who own their land. Scott has a deep relationship with the plant kingdom, and he also is creating insect habitat for these creatures we've been warring against.

His garden is full of experiments. He wants to know what feeding ourselves locally would look like: how much grain can be grown in a small plot, compared with how much his family of four eats? He is restoring the soil under the old fruit trees, fixing nitrogen with clover. I will be delighted to visit in another year to see what Scott the explorer has learned!

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Heading Home
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I sit in the back of our trusty vanagon as we turn south, towards home. Mt. Shasta looms before us. This has been an incredibly rich journey. We have met heartful, caring people doing important things. We've met localization groups just getting started, bumping along with issues of leadership and follow-through and critical mass and outreach. Here are groups of volunteers working part time to build lifeboats while the well-heeled crowd aboard the Titanic parties on.

I asked Robyn, my often-invisible partner who absolutely loves being behind the camera (and mixer and headphones) what she loved about this trip?

"The Adventure," she replied. You can count on it--adventure is her biggest dream. Travel, seeing how people live in other places and in other cultures. Seeing the world from different perspectives. Isn't that part of what Peak Moment is about?

The high points?
For Robyn, it was meeting such a dedicated person as Mike Ruppert, whom we both have a great deal of respect for for. This man is totally in his heart, we agreed. "Maybe painfully in his heart," Robyn mused, "feeling the pain in this world". What may seem like anger to some is really a deep anguish for what we're doing, for the impoverished world we're leaving to the younger generations.

I laughed uproariously watching Mike Ruppert impersonate Alvin singing "The Chipmunk Song" (takes us right back to our childhoods in the 1950's.) "Allllllllllllllviiiiiiiiiiin!" I hollered right back. Here's Mike "Alvin" Ruppert surprising Megan.

Fun. This trip has been SUCH FUN!

And oh so rich.
Pockets of tapes to edit,
packets of inspiration in our hearts.