I just got a notice about a speaking engagement featuring Michael Ableman this Friday evening , which I highly recommend for anyone in the area who can make it. Michael Ableman is one of those people who can be a bit hard to describe, but farmer-activist-speaker-photographer-storyteller sums him up to a small degree. I’ve had occasion to hear him speak twice at conferences in the past decade-plus and he remains one of the most inspiring, moving, engaging speakers I have ever heard. His book From The Good Earth: A Celebration of Growing Food Around the World had just come out before the first time I heard him speak, way back in 1994! More books since then, and you can learn more about his background and his work here.

If you love good food, care about the future of farming, are passionate about sustainability and sometimes tire of the doom-and-gloom perspective on things, get thee to Everett Friday evening for this presentation, which is being put on by the Cascade Harvest Coalition. One thing I loved about Ableman’s approach is that he’s more about solutions, positive change, making a different, moving forward. We need more of that.