Massachusetts State House Visit, Dinner-Concert Saturday!

Hi again,

Today we had the honor of receiving the Secretary's Award for Excellence in Environmental Education at a ceremony in the Massachusetts State House! It's a great honor, indeed. The awards have been given for 15 years now and Carrick is the first homeschooler in all this time to receive this award, which is a great milestone! Our state representative Jennifer Callahan was on hand to help present the award, and after the ceremony we got a personal tour of the State House from Rep. Callahan which was a lot of fun. During our tour we had a chance to meet Governor Duval Patrick and talk for a few minutes:

Tomorrow (Saturday) is our big fundraiser dinner-concert so please come if you are available! We're holding it at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Grafton Common - spaghetti dinner is from 5:00-7:00pm, and the acoustic concert is from 7:00-9:00pm. This is going to be one incredible concert! We have 3 wonderful performers: singer-songwriter Katrin, another great singer-songwriter Greg Hare coming from New York, and Jubilee Gardens. Greg will be giving his public debut of his new song 'Tin Can' that he wrote about our cross-country eco-video project. Greg sent me along the MP3 of the song and it is just awesome - it's been in heavy play on my IPod for a few weeks now. The suggested donation for the event is $10 for the dinner or $10 for the concert, or $15 for both. A fun night out for food and a great concert to support your favorite cause, for only $15 you say? Yes, come and enjoy!

Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org

Need a GPS, Our New Roof Rack!

Hi friends,

Happy April Fools Day! One month left to departure time, and what a busy month it is going to be! Still many preparations to make before we leave, but the time is almost here.

A GPS unit will be an essential piece of gear for us to navigate the U.S. - if you have a GPS unit that you'd be willing to loan us for May and June, please let me know. I know they're not that expensive, but I wouldn't have any need for one outside our cross-country trip so I really don't want to buy one. It doesn't have to be a fancy one, but something made within the last few years would be great. Please send me an email if you have something we can use, at OurRenewableNation@gmail.com.

Speaking of essential gear, I just visited Evergreen Motors out in Greenfield, MA for a check-over of the veggie system for the Beetle to make sure we're all set for a 2-month trip. Daryl fitted us with a cargo carrier for the roof that answers the question 'where are you going to put all your stuff?' It's great - lots of room for storage and it looks like it was made for a Beetle! If I had more time I'd paint it to match the car, but with a month left to go we're a little pressed for time.

I do have a few contest updates: the $200,000 grant competition on JustMeans that I've been talking about is in the final round and our friends at Sea Change Radio did not make the cut. Thanks so much to all of you who went on JustMeans and gave a vote - the top competitors made last-minute appeals to their huge networks and got a ton of votes. Onward to another contest, I made a short video for the JustDoOne video contest with a suggestion for an eco-action: make a short video about an eco-action that you do and put it online for family and friends! That's how we got our start and it's been an amazing journey. The contest winner gets $5,000 which would go a long way to covering our project budget - they'll be judging the contest over the next month so we'll keep our fingers crossed. This was the first video where I was in front of the camera instead of Carrick, and I got a new appreciation for how hard it can be to get the lines right! Carrick makes it look so easy


Remember to save the date for our upcoming dinner / acoustic concert fundraiser on Saturday, April 25 at the UU Church in Grafton. The spaghetti supper will be from 5:00pm-7:00pm, and the concert will begin at 7:00pm, and will feature singer-songwriters Katrin and Greg Hare. I talked to Greg the other day and he played his new song for our project over the phone - it sounds fantastic! We're very excited to have Katrin and Greg play at the concert. We hope you can make it - we're asking for $10 for the spaghetti supper, or $10 for the concert, or $15 for both.

Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org

Our Fundraising Dinner/Concert on April 25

Hi friends,

One of our friends was pleasantly surprised to find out that we were actually going through with our cross-country eco-video project in the beginning of May. 'You mean you're actually going to do it?', and he meant it. For anyone else who thinks it's a great idea but isn't sure if we're actually going to do it, please let me assure you that it's very much going to happen, for real.

We are excited to announce an exciting dinner/concert fundraiser on Saturday, April 25. We'll be hosting a spaghetti supper at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Grafton Common from 5:00-7:00pm, with an acoustic concert to follow at 7:00pm. This dinner/concert will be a fundraiser to help cover the costs of our cross-country eco-video project - we're asking for $10 for the dinner, or $10 for the concert, or $15 for the dinner and the concert together. Directions are at the church website, www.UUSociety.net.

We are very fortunate to have two very talented musicians playing acoustic sets beginning at 7:00pm:

Katrin is a great singer-songwriter here in Massachusetts who plays shows regularly and has several albums released. Her website is www.Katrinrocks.com - she's got songs on ITunes you can hear and some videos on YouTube here and here. Katrin is a great musician and we're lucky to have her as part of our concert.

Greg Hare is a long-time friend from New York who deserves to be famous! He's a wonderfully-talented singer-songwriter. Hear one of his songs, 'The Present' here. It's a link to an MP3 that you can listen to or right-click to download. Greg has been inspired to write a song about our project for us to use, so come to the concert and hear the premiere of his new song!

OK, you've been so generous in spreading the word about our project when we've needed your help. We'd love to have you come to the dinner/concert on April 25 and we need your help to spread the word about the concert to your friends and family. This is our big fundraiser before we leave on our cross-country journey in the beginning of May, and to date we have raised $5,000 (thank you thank you thank you!) but we still need to raise an additional $7,000 and this dinner/concert will go a long way to helping us meet our goal! With your support we can do it! Please spread the word!

Speaking of support, thanks so much for your vote a few weeks ago for us as part of the Sea Change Radio grant proposal through JustMeans/Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Several other organizations pulled ahead of us in voting, but the decision is also based on the content of the proposal and the comments that people left in addition to the voting, so we'll have to see what happens. The finalists are being announced on March 28, and I'll let everyone know if Sea Change Radio gets into the final round.

Carrick and I are off to Maine tomorrow for the Maine Environmental Educators Association Annual Conference up at the Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset. We're one of the presenters for the conference and also we'll have a table to hand out flyers and let the all the teachers know about our exciting project. Then on Saturday and Sunday I'll have a table close to home in central Massachusetts at the Grafton Fine Arts Festival. We're doing what we can to be at the fairs and festivals - much more efficient to go where the people are at, rather then have them come to us!

You can read our latest interview at www.VegDining.com, which is featured on their homepage. VegDining is our official guide to vegetarian restaurants all over the U.S. as we travel, and as a reminder we are giving out free VegDining cards to anyone who donates $50 or more to support our project. The VegDining cards get you discounts at vegetarian restaurants - a must-have for travelers looking for healthy food on the road.

Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org