Messenger

Just back from Slow Food's Terra Madre in Torino, after the Organic World Congress in Istanbul, after the GlobE in Witzenhausen, after the Tropentag in Prague... phew! ...  All the work there is to do and all the inspiring people there are to do that work with!

Tom, Roberto, and Jim said it best "It's a sad and beautiful world".

Helping to settle back into Kleve, I listened to Wes Nisker, a teacher at the Insight Meditation Center, open his talk with this poem 'Messenger' by Mary Oliver and wanted to share it again, even if you've read it a hundred times, enjoy it slowly and may it inspire gratitude as a central theme.

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My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam, deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth
and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all,
over and over, how it is that we live forever.

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The teacher repeated that line again for emphasis "over and over, how it is that we live forever"

Tropentag 2010

Another note about the Conference on Tropical and Subtropical Agricultural and Natural Resource Management (Tropentag). This year Tropentag is taking place in Zurich, Switzerland, 14 - 16 September 2010.

The Tropentag conference has just put out a call for papers. This years conference is titled: "World food system: A contribution from Europe" and will feature many young scientists from all over the world.

Tropentag is an annual conference for sustainable resource use and poverty alleviation. The style of the conference is interdisciplinary and involves people from a range of backgrounds addressing food security, sustainable land management among other things.

Tropentag has been called 'The most important International Conference on development-oriented research in the fields of Food Security, Natural Resource Management and Rural Development in central Europe' (CATST Hohnheim).

Tropentag will be a great opportunity for networking with professionals in sustainable forestry and agriculture, learning the 'state of the art' and meeting many of my professors and colleagues from Witzenhausen, Göttingen and Kassel.

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Tropentag

A quick note from a drizzling gray morning in the Rhineland.

I am preparing to leave Bonn once again and am breaking away to attend a conference in Hamburg before moving to Witzenhausen. I have been awarded CeTSAF support to attend the Conference on Tropical and Subtropical Agricultural and Natural Resource Management (Tropentag) Conference next week.

Tropentag is an annual conference for sustainable resource use and poverty alleviation. The style of the conference should be very interdisciplinary and involves people from a range of backgrounds addressing food security, sustainable land management among other things.

Tropentag has been called 'the most important International Conference on development-oriented research in the fields of Food Security, Natural Resource Management and Rural Development in central Europe' (CATST Hohnheim).

The DAAD Scholars (DAAD-lnternational Alumni Summer School) from the University of Göttingen will be there to present and take part after a semester long study focused on this conference.

Tropentag will be a great opportunity for networking with professionals in sustainable forestry and agriculture. learning the 'state of the art' and meeting many of my professors and colleagues from Witzenhausen, Göttingen and Kassel.