The green festival had lots of interesting stuff. The crowd was full of thoughtful polite people. In the booths were interesting products of many kinds. There was a whole sector of groups that organize volunteers. The silver and gold giants were from the Art And Revolution booth, which was dominated by a DANCERS WITHOUT BORDERS banner.

I took a number of pictures of famous speakers holding forth, but for some reason the floppy I had them on decided to die before I could read them. All I have left is Medea Benjamin facilitating a discussion about how we can organize across borders to change the system. She was also a major force behind the event itself. I saw her introduce several speakers as a representative of the host committe.

These two stickers I got by trading MEND YOUR FUELISH WAYS even for them. The California Department of Conservation had a booth next to the EPA booth, but the EPA guy was gone before I discovered the location. The PeaceProducts.org booth had so many interesting stickers it was like a sand trap.

One of the tables in the nonprofit sector had these two women sitting at it, and they would do a Haiku for you on any topic in nothing flat for a small donation. This was the one they did for me. Best value I've gotten in ages!

The green festival was something else. Usually when I go to something like that I'm not inspired to pull out my wallet. This time I remembered that last year I had seen lots of stuff that is not available at the malls in Santa Clara County I know, so I brought an empty backpack and spending power. The things I got say as much about the state of the art as anything else.

This is the first jar of Hemp Seed Nut Butter I've ever bought. The stuff works a lot like peanut butter, right down to the mouth feel. Right now the show price is about two or three times that of my favorite convienence food, and I've yet to see it in a store where I shop regularly. But knowing that the Canadians at Manitoba Harvest have made it into a real product gives me good feelings about the stuff I read in Jack Harar's The Emporer Has No Clothes.

The guy at the EarthJustice booth that sold me this CD explained that whereas their first benefit album, "Fish Tree Water Blues" was focused on salmon habitat in the Pacific Northwest, this one is a benefit for global air and water protection. (Two of the songs have "change" in the title.) Listening to the thing I can report that the song selection bears that out. I was glad to get the opportunity to tell them I liked their previous album a lot.

Not shown are the organic Peruvian olives, the organic towel, the fair trade organic rooibos chai tea, the Trinity Springs Idaho water, and several other things I also got.