This way to sustainability

This way to sustainability
Mark your calendars for the seventh annual This Way to Sustainability conference at Chico State, March 1-3. Three keynote speakers—marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols, corporate chef and culinary health educator Laura Stec and global-warming expert Peter G. Joseph—are the highlights of a three-day event featuring dozens of workshops, including “The School Garden-Kitchen Model,” presented on March 1 by Sherwood Montessori’s Richie Hirshen and John Howlett; “What We Are Leaving Behind in Iraq—The Environmental Footprint of War,” presented on March 2 by U.S. Army vet and Chico State student Michael Fitzpatrick; and Zen master Lin Jensen’s “Zen and the Return to Earth.” Yours truly will also be presenting on the morning of March 2.

Twenty bucks for one day, 50 for all three. Complete schedule and much more info at http://www.csuchico.edu/sustainablefuture/conference.

Backcountry book-reading
My friend, Chico State math professor Thomas Mattman, told me about this one: On Feb. 23, the university’s Writer’s Voice Reading series is presenting author Steve Edwards at 7:30 p.m. in Trinity 100. Edwards is the author of the memoir Breaking Into the Backcountry, about his seven months of solitude as a caretaker of a remote 92-acre mountain homestead along the Rogue River in southwestern Oregon.

Edwards, a former English teacher in Indiana, quit his job after winning a writing contest that offered as its prize seven months of living in a cabin on the homestead two hours from the nearest town, sans electricity or neighbors.

“In prose that is by turns lyrical, introspective, and funny, Breaking Into the Backcountry is the story of what he discovered: that alone, in a wild place, each day is a challenge and a gift,” is how the book’s publisher, the University of Nebraska Press, puts it. “Whether chronicling the pleasures of a day-long fishing trip, his first encounter with a black bear, a lightning storm and the threat of fire, the beauty of a steelhead, the attacks of 9/11, or a silence so profound that a black-tailed deer chewing grass outside his window could wake him from sleep, Edwards’s careful evocation of the river canyon and its effect on him testifies to the enduring power of wilderness to transform a life.”

More information at www.csuchico.edu/hfa/hc/calendar.html.

A hard-to-refuse deal
Chico Community Acupuncture (1057 Village Lane, 345-5300) just announced that it has hired a second acupuncturist, Hopi Wilder, to join Olivia Peters-Lazaro (who, I can tell you from first-hand experience, is wonderful at her job), as well as extended its hours. To give clients—new and current—the opportunity to meet Wilder, and to make use of the expanded hours, CAC is offering 2-for-1 Fridays and Free Treatment Wednesdays through the month of March. On 2-for-1 Fridays, bring a friend and you both get treated for the price of one; Free Treatment Wednesdays are just that.

CAC’s new hours are Monday, Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and Tuesday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Treatment is based on a sliding scale of $15-$35 per treatment. Learn more at www.chicocommunityacupuncture.com.