Unofficial Conference Blog | Society of Environmental Journalists

Getting to SEJ 2010 in Missoula

SEJ's 20th annual conference is less than two months away. Here are some links to get you to Missoula from Oct. 13-17, 2010 :

 2010 agenda

Conference registration

Lodging & transportation

City of Missoula official website

University of Montana, conference host

Download the conference brochure (PDF)

SEJ members: Find a roommate or rideshare

© Spanish Creek by Margaret Emerson.
© Image courtesy Margaret Emerson.

SEJ's 20th Annual Conference in Montana

Planning for the Montana conference is moving ahead like gangbusters! Here's where the post-conference tour is going:

That's right: Glacier National Park. Learn more about SEJ's conference here:

http://www.sej.org/initiatives/sej-annual-conferences/AC2010-main

See you in Missoula!

Reptile Palace Orchestra Rocks!

And folks, funks, jazzes, and klezmers. This eclectic band added a jolt of exuberance to the SEJ conference’s Saturday night party at the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center. When lead singer Anna Purnell described one of their numbers as a combination of bluegrass and klezmer, with a little bit of blues, I thought that this was surely a unique blend of musical styles, but apparently Reptile Palace Orchestra is not the only band playing this, as I found out serendipitously on Monday morning when I read this article.

 

 

(Photo from band’s Web site)

Be warned, though, that the music that accompanies that article is much more bluegrass-y and much less funky than what we heard at the Leopold Center. The band’s own Web site describes their style as Balkan rock or Balkan funk. You can find the Web site here. It includes music and video clips.

Photo Feature: Sunset at Aldo Leopold's iconic Wisconsin River shack

I was a lucky member of a sunset trip to "The Shack" -- the small house and farm where Aldo Leopold was inspired to write his book "A Sand County Almanac" -- on Saturday October 10, final evening of the conference. 

The shack sits close to the Wisconsin River near Baraboo, Wisconsin, near tall-grass prairie and the present-day Leopold Center, which hosted SEJ for the evening.

 The Aldo Leopold shack at dusk.

Robert McClure: Climate security all gloom and doom, no humor

Robert's posted another conference update at Grist, this time recounting Friday afternoon's session "on global warming as a national security issue." 

It was "an even darker affair than usual," says Robert -- an impressive accomplishment for the average SEJ annual confab, where confronting semi-apocalyptic facts about the breakdown of nature and society is something of a tradition:

Leading off was retired Navy Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, who's involved with a group of former generals and admirals known as the CNA Military Advisory Board: "What we're saying very clearly and very directly is 'This is a national security problem. ... Make no mistake, this is going to affect everybody in the world.'"

He continued: "Climate change is going to be a threat multiplier in unstable regions across the world."

Think about it: If you're in, say, Bangladesh and the ocean's rising and you can't grow food, where will you go? You might well try to get into India. The Indians don't want that, so you have a massive conflict there on the border.

Read it all at Grist >