Wow
what an incredible turn-out for the first annual Frenchtown Green Fair
-- yes, folks, everyone involved wants to put it on again next year!
YAY!!! I was talking about EV's practically nonstop, plus a little bit
about my Montessori preschool since the Miata was parked right next to
that tent. We had beautiful weather & an awesome array of 60
vendors and hundreds and hundreds of visitors who spent a long time
taking in the educational lectures, arts & crafts for the kids,
drumming & mandala-making for all ages, plus food & free water
from the local artesian well across the street.
The
alternative fuel vehicle display featured TWO electric cars, our Miata
& thanks to Charlie & Catherine Reichner of the Heat Shed, a
Nissan Leaf! This allowed me to point out to everybody I spoke to that
you can build your own EV today, or buy one at your local automotive
dealer. What a change from 2006 when I first started spieling electric
cars in public at the Energy Fest in Kempton PA!
The
alt-fuel display also incorporated a veggie Mercedes converted by Bryan
Davison, formerly of Frenchtown Borough Council & the founding
chair of the Green Team; he towed his biodiesel-brewing set-up behind to
show it off as well, & had a lot of enthusiastic questioners to
engage with during the course of the day. A Chevy Volt rounded out the
show, & I took my usual pleasure in explaining to anyone who would
listen that properly it is not an EV but a
series plug-in hybrid. (Nomenclature is important folks!)
Even
more importantly, a range of solutions from the home-brewed to the
high-tech now exist to our transportation & foreign oil dependency
dilemma. It was awesome from the EV advocate perspective to have a
variety of vehicles
to point to at our little homegrown Green Fair. I'm hoping to help
mount an even bigger & better display next year.
We got a
nice letter from the mayor of Frenchtown, who was incredibly supportive of the Green Fair, as a thank you.
On Sept. 29 Frenchtown held its first Green Fair, dedicated to promoting environmentally responsible, sustainable living.
By
most accounts the fair was the best-attended event ever held at Old
Frenchtown Field. Residents and friends from neighboring communities
came away inspired to change the way we live and educated with the tools
to make those changes.
That was no
accident. The Green Fair steering committee of Frenchtown’s Green Team
spent 10 months creating and organizing the event. Kudos are due
Adrienne Crombie, who led the group, Cathy Leach, Dominikija Prostak,
Bonnie Pariser, Gerry St. Onge, Don Dalen, Richard Reilly, Jenny Isaacs
and MaryBeth Healy.
Thanks, too, to
Frenchtown Borough Council and the Frenchtown Business and Professional
Association for their support and commitment; to Gold Sponsors Stem
Brothers and Century Link; to sponsors ShopRite, Basil Bandwagon and
Brad’s Raw Chips; to John Gattuso Media Design for the fair’s graphics
and to Civilian for silk-screening the graphic onto T-shirts; to WDVR
radio, especially Jim Jordan and Melba Toast, for handling on-site
acoustics and a live broadcast; for Adam Blackburn for the musical
soundtrack when no presentations were under way; to Mike Reino and Mike
Roden of the borough Department of Public Works for getting the field in
shape before and after the fair; to the Frenchtown Police and the
Frenchtown Volunteer Fire Company, and to Anthony DeSapio, Clark Johnson
and Tim Fisher for allowing visitors to park on their properties, and
to the American Legion for managing the parking.
Anthony DeSapio also generously provided free water to the fair
and contributed Saturday’s proceeds from the Frenchtown Well to the
Green Team.
Thanks to the Lion’s Club for serving vegetarian
fare alongside the more traditional hamburgers and hot dogs; to the
Frenchtown Community Garden; to Man-E-Faces’ Eric Fiorito for seven
hours of non-stop children’s face-painting and Rosalie Justine Skakum,
Tricia Hurley, and Robin Reichert who entertained those children with
art projects & story-telling throughout the day; to the 19 bakers
who entered the pie baking contest (which helped raise $450 for the Fire
Company) and pastry chefs from Lovin’ Oven, The National Hotel, The
Bridge Café, Eat Cake and Milford Oyster House for judging it; to Dan
Mundy and the Hunterdon County 4-H for providing the petting farm; to
all the Frenchtown shops, restaurants and businesses who contributed
raffle prizes; to Sara Dalen, Morgan Fisher, Clover Stieve and Grace
Guggenheim for providing live entertainment; to speakers on sustainable
living: Mona Laru of Naked Nutrition, Bonnie Pariser of Yoga Loka, Jonah
Dabb of Hunterdon 4-H; Master Gardener Connie Hughes; Carol Ragucci of
Holistic Living; Laurie Fischer of Organic Plant Care LLC and Keith
Strunk of River Union Stage; to Dr. Jodi Dinnerman who provided gentle
chiropractic adjustments for a donation to the Green Team, and to the
vendors who provided visitors with environmental education along with
the products they hoped to sell.
The fair itself
certainly would have run less smoothly without the help of the more than
two dozen members of the Frenchtown Elementary School student council
and the Delaware Valley Regional High School Key Club. Throughout the
day, these young people demonstrated a commitment to the goal of “green”
living that bodes well for the future.
Thanks, finally,
to all who visited. You provided the energy and enthusiasm that made
the day so rewarding. We hope you had fun. We did. See you next year.
Warren Cooper, Mayor
http://www.frenchtownboro.com
Brief Political Blurb: EV's & Batteries in the Spotlight
It's
awesome to be on the forefront of personal, one-on-one EV advocacy at
events like the Green Fair -- even though it's kind of a bummer that
this kind of work is still necessary with gas hovering around $4 a
gallon. Last time I checked Democrats & Republicans were equally
affected by the price of gas! So it's funny that EV's or battery
manufacturers like A123 can become political footballs ... In the
immortal words of Doug Stansfield, central NJ EAA chapter founder &
national board member:
electric vehicles are good for both Democrats & Republicans!
Here
at Bucks County Renewables we believe that insatiability is not
sustainable, and that as a country we need to plan for the long term
rather than suck up all our existing resources in an energy frenzy.
Both electorally-validated parties seem willing to match each other in
commitments to drill, extract & deplete our continental supply of
fossil fuel, while all alternative propositions are marginalized ...
sigh ... lucky thing we're used to being out on the fringes and to
pulling the lever on Election Day for candidates who actually represent
our beliefs, instead of for business as usual. Hope you will be doing the same!
Our club was contacted around the same time as the cancellation by Mother Earth News about attending the second annual Mother Earth News Fair - Sustainable Living Festival which was to be held over the same time period that the event in Kempton was to take place. This festival would be held at the Seven Springs Mountain Resort, just off of the Donegal exit of the PA Turnpike. The event was free for our club to come and exhibit vehicles at, for the three days the festival was taking place. We were told to expect at most 15,000 people over that time period. This was based on the prior year's event and past events that Mother Earth News has sponsored. 
If you are interested in attending this year's event please let me know so that we can get in touch with Mother Earth News as soon as possible to reserve a display area. Our contact at Mother Earth News has not contacted us about confirming our attendance for this years event, but we would like to give them a tentative number of participants when they do. More planning needs to be done before the event but it is never to early to start that process. 
