eighteen - the Green edition

1. SF Green Fest occupied all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It's the largest sustainability event in the world and brought together a ton of amazing speakers, vendors, and people into one place. There were so many amazing things I encountered, I am not sure I will be able to mention them all here.

2. Adelaide is an amazing person and I am extremely grateful to have her in my life. I could not have imagined going there all weekend with anyone else. She appreciates food, the environment, and politics all as much as I do, so we had the greatest time discussing ideas and getting psyched listening to some of the speakers.

3. Free acupuncture from the lovely folks at the ACTCM, which is where I used to go weekly, before I went raw. It was nice to get some free needling in my ears and sit and relax for 20 minutes. When work becomes more steady and I can afford to go back to their clinic, I definitely will. It's super affordable for people with low funds, the way all health care should be.

4. Body Bliss was the name of one of the booths, and among the people giving massages, I noticed one Thai-looking like guy who was kneeing his client in the back and pulling her arms behind her and twisting deeply. I said to my friend,"That right there is exactly what I need!!!" So I got a nice 15-20 minute massage for fairly cheap. It helped relieve a lot of the tension I have been feeling from being 'houseless' and running around like crazy.

5. CSAs are just fantastic. Supporting your local farmers is very important. Voting with your dollars daily is the best way to voice yourself in this capitalist society. I signed up for a Wednesday box from Farm Fresh to You to tide me over each week. It seems by Tuesday night, I am pretty much done with everything I bought at the farmer's market on Saturday, so this worked out perfectly.

6. Free schwag. I got tons of free samples of stuff I will actually use, and loads of really great free magazines and tons of free food samples all 3 days. I was concerned about the commercial aspect of the festival, but they had compost, recycling and trash bins and said 98% of their waste gets recycled or composted, so that was nice. In the dining area, all the plates, utensils, and packaging were all compostable and made of corn and veggie substances. Yay!

7. Raw chocolate is heaven. There were several different vendors giving out samples of their various makes and flavors and I was definitely riding a cacao high through all 3 days. My favorite was the raw lavender-blueberry truffles from Lulu's Chocolate Alchemy up in Oregon.

8. Chuck D dropped so much knowledge, it was amazing. I loved hearing him talk about taking over the radio and using hip-hop as a tool for social change. It seems to have gotten off course in the commercial world.

9. Reverend Yearwood of the hip-hop caucus also dropped crazy knowledge. Brother was intense and inspiring!

10. Winona LaDuke was another amazing speaker. I blogged about her a bit here.

11. Van Jones who made the crowd laugh so hard they almost cried when he put the truth in such simple works as he spoke about the green collar economy. It is so logical and sustainable.

12. Dr. Cornel West who dropped so much knowledge, it blew my mind. I will be posting his talk on here when the video is available.

13. Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange. He wants to do some really amazing things in San Fracisco and world-wide.

14. Rickie Byars Beckwith whose "In The Land of I Am" is still stuck in my head. This woman is all love. It was beautiful.

15. Food politics and the people who fight for what's right. I saw a great talk about Agroecology and Food Sovereignty by Miguel Altieri, Eric Holt-Giménez, and Raj Patel that was really inspiring.

16. Cabbage salad which is so simple and easy to make and fed me all weekend for super cheap.

17. Volunteering always makes me feel good. I love doing bike valet and meeting amazing people.

18. Free chai. Volunteering comes with lots of perks.

19. Promoting something you feel good about is nice. It's been a really wonderful shift doing raw food consulting and I definitely put a lot of time in this weekend to promoting, so a new client or two should come into my life very soon.

20. Maggie O who I ran into at the festival. She is just always such a bright, positive person to spend time with.

21. The World that we live in. This weekend touched on a lot of the problems we are having in these modern times and it was so great to see people address the issues and talk about positive solutions and taking matters into our own hands. Action is the only way we can change things. It's going to be lovely these next few years.