Loose Leaf Notes

Being interviewed on WUVT radio reminded me of, but wasn’t as bad as, the time I testified in court. At that time, I had a story to tell and wanted to tell it, but once on the witness stand my mind went blank and I had to count on the lawyer asking me questioning me to ask the right ones.

All joking aside, in the case of the radio interview, there were four of us participating in the “Talk at the Table” discussion, so any pressure felt was shared. The subject of the day was environmental author Bill McKibben’s recent talk in Floyd and Blacksburg on sustainable local economy and global warming. Our gracious talk show host with a knack for gleaning meaning was New River Valley’s Community Foundation’s director Andy Morikawa.

Two of my fellow interviewees, Jerry Moles and Bo Abernathy, I hadn’t met before. Fellow blogger, local author and past member of the writer’s group I belong to, Fred First provided me with a sense of familiarity and an appreciation that I wasn’t the only one whose body language towards the end of the two hour session was saying ‘can we go out and play now?’

There was no script and no rehearsal, no chance for a do-over, no matter how many better answers I devised after the fact. But the good news was that Andy did a great job facilitating and framing the discussion and I only felt like Sarah Palin winging an interview on one occasion.

Jerry, Fred, and Bo are all more identified with and experienced as environmentalists than I am, and each is a member of Sustain Floyd, the group that brought McKibben’s to Floyd. I came to the table as a writer who covered McKibben’s Floyd talk and as one in the first wave of back-to-the landers who came to Floyd more than two decades ago to live more self-sufficiently and to raise our kids on homegrown principles.

Over the years, the Floyd alternative community has been sharing and trading resources, creating our own meaningful life passages, putting out a monthly newsletter, running a parent-run cooperative school, making our own plant medicinals, and growing children and food together – not so unlike the type of community that Mckibben recommends for developing the collective resiliency needed to make the transition away from fossil fuel and to cope with the extreme weather effects of climate change.

“Policy is important but we can do some of the work ourselves,” McKibben said about the challenges of global warming. Some of that work will involve lifestyle changes and simplifying our lives. Some will have to do with education and organizing and will be done by groups like Sustain Floyd. Forums for community building, story telling, and sharing resources, like the one Andy’s show provides, also play a role. I for one plan to stay tuned. 90.7 FM Sunday afternoons.

Post Note: Eventually the talk we recorded will be available on podcast. For now, you can listen to one of Andy’s previous shows on local food in which many Floyd friends show up HERE.