TALK: The Green Mountain College Blog

One of the most compelling features of this higher education bit is how it brings together so many distinct personalities with their individual agendas and ambitions in this neutral setting where the opportunities to face the opportunities and plights of our shared realities exist.

Above: the people of the Mid-Atlantic advocating a common reality of Peace in
Philadelphia. My roommate, Josh, and I made it out to this rally; a crew of GMC
visionary realists made it out to another rally on the same day in Boston.

The Energy Bill is the apparation of this struggle for a world where we don't deceive ourselves into wars for peace, one where we don't give our neighbors cancer by our very modes of mobility. Here's where the jigsaw protozoa that are you and me fit in....

Just one more thing I love about Vermont: all you have to do is show up. October 10th wielded the state's 3rd "annual" (the third in five years anyway) Biodiesel Conference. I made the trek in Vercedes to Burlington where the conference was being held in UVM's new Transportation Center, swank digs indeed.

July fourteenth and fifteenth made for one of those weekends. You know the ones I mean. Those little buggers that you never fathom ending, and when they do you wonder how you'll be able to tolerate the comparitively insignificant subject matter of all the ensuing days. It was passing through daylight as a volunteer at SolarFest, "New England's Renewable Energy Festival," that put those subsequent days in that humble context.

Here's a picture I stole: the crowd in attendence of Bill McKibben's keynote.

Just as Winter gave way to Spring, and Spring to an impromptu Summer, school is back and giving off an Autumn air. Now that I’m back, it seems as though there are a lot of blanks to be filled in since last I’ve soliloquized. It’s impossible to do this summer justice with a quick recap, but I suppose I’m just foolhardy enough to try.

A microcosm of a good portion of my summer as seen through the frame of Lou's snout.

My junior year at this fine institution has roundly come to a close and I quite frankley am dumbfounded. During these life moments my mind and sentiments are barraged with incessant streams of thoughts and emotion that I can never get my head around. It also happens that in these times, I am so unbelievably preoccupied that these undercurrents of sanity are forsaken and bide their time until I happen upon a moment of introspection. Enter that moment, stage right.

I always am somewhat welcoming to finals being that they signify the end of months spent cramming down information, feigning knowledge, scrawling papers, and fumbling through presentations. No more days blinked by trying to master five distinct areas of study and modes of thought.

The summer doesn't only bring UV rays abounding, sand, and the soothing buzz of insects inside your ears, but the fleeting opportunity to focus on just a few manageable pieces of the universe. Whether that be a waylayed book, new skateboard diddies, or instigating a grassroots industrial revolution, I love the summer for its bite-sized obligations.

But in order to get there, the dorm room needs cleaning out, and the belongings that have cluttered my room--all of which must have extremely assertive asexual dispositions to account for the exponential growth that transpired over these past two semesters--need to find new homes.

Men's soccer coach Ray Campanile, economics professor Paul Hancock,
and Student Life Director Bryan McGrath (seen R to L) were among the
ballers bringing the ruckus on this night of all nights.

I just finished reading an alarming article in National Geographic about how Saratoga Springs has been in the grips of a crisis at the root of which is an overabundance of Pteromyini--or the 'Green Mountain Flying Squirrel'. Apparantly the community is more or less fully recovered from the endangerment. The group of Skidmore College students who initially brought the overactive population of invasives into the area are being addressed by authorities.

I spent a good amount of words chatting up how grand Earth Week and its little treasures were going to be. Now that it has come and gone, it just feels darn appropriate to validate my hypotheses.

The week of April 16th is here at last. While it doesn't mean the dawn of seasonally scrumptious weather this year, it still gets to be the proud papa of Earth Week and all its glories.

What will I be doing for Earth Week this year? Glad you asked. Well for one thing I'll be looking forward to seeing more of these lil ladies out in the fields around Rutland County.

Sunflowers. Just, wow....

If I've learned anything over the years, it's we're never going to have truly sustainable mobility as a pervasive reality in this society of ours without friends being friends. It's the quality of people in my life that are directly responsible for my progress in terms of lightening my footprint--among all my other endeavors.

Here's just a short clip of how my friends have helped my veggie-powered Vercedes become even more sustainable. This was when Vercedes' twenty-year old electrical system was giving me some guff. One new alternator and battery later, she's as good as new.

This is the old girl and me back in her hayday in front of the Uinta Mountains, just outside of Salt Lake City.

Cerridwen Farm has just been graced with a beautiful, healthy baby lamb as of Saturday the 24th, just about four days to the hour after the first day of Spring.

So what does one do with years of angst, hope, and good intentions piling up on their shoulders? The best they can I suppose. In striving to do my best to make the world around me edge towards the potential resonating through it, I have alighted upon a plan that I think just might get us--at least the world within my realm of influence-- there.

I was going through my pictures and found the ones I took over my last pilgrimmage home. While I am very fond of the people and places that account for the vague geographical area that I call home, there are some aspects of it that I never could reconcile with.

This past Tuesday I was up to my typical rogue behavior and skipped all three of the classes I had. Not only that, but I was able to get the college to reimburse me for the expenses associated with my indecent sojourn that ended up taking me hundreds of miles away from campus. All those miles and all that scandalousness so that I could mill around beside the leaders of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and conservation in the northeastern US at NESEA's Building Energy 2007 conference at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston.

I had the pleasant experience of coming back from ‘Spring’ Break 2k7— which comprised of days on Sunday River, Killington, and meandering along the Maine Coast—to a planter overflowing with wheatgrass.

My little comrades as last I knew them.

The matured state in which we were reacquainted.

February 17th came and went, bringing and leaving with it Green Mountain’s very own Winter Carnival. Complete with bundled-up little kids, cocoa, teamsters, and sleigh rides, the day-long event drew in people from as far as Moscow and San Antonio (allegedly). Me and some other farm crew members helped out as the two two-horse teams and one single-horse sleigh tromped eager patrons through the backfield of campus in an awfully winter-esque blanket of snow.

I was sure to help meself to some of the homey baked goods and a jaunt in the field as well.

Wow. So there’s well over a foot of snow piling up outside my window. I should be at the mountain, but like a chump I’ve got this throat cold. Hurray for communal living. Nevermind though. The big deal that I’m sure you’re more interested in hearing about went down this past Saturday: the Northeastern Organic Farming Association’s annual winter conference.

Hello there folks! So I’m Joe Bossen, and this is where
you get to learn all about the rootin-tootin adventures and death-defying
exploits that constitute my life.

I was tempted to start things off with a little preliminary background blurb,
but no. I’m figuring everything you need to know about me will come through
in the ensuing capsulated life moments. We will just have to trust that all of
the tasty times that have since elapsed will find their way into future musings
and tangents.

Enjoy!!! Please….