Sustainable West Seattle Festival report #2: Video, more photos

(our first SWS Festival report, with as-it-happened coverage and photos, can be seen here)

The second annual Sustainable West Seattle Festival closed Sunday afternoon with a singalong chorus of “This Land Is Your Land,” mostly in honor of folk-music legend Pete Seeger‘s 90th birthday (celebrated a short time later at the Admiral Theater a few miles north), but also as a reminder of what the festival was all about: This peninsula is your peninsula — and while it may still be a place where many people leave to go to work, ultimately we need to keep building a self-sustaining, resilient West Seattle economy and ecosystem. SWS president Bill Reiswig expounded on that theme in his opening remarks Sunday morning:

WSB was among the co-sponsors of the festival, which included more than 75 organizations as well as dozens of speakers and musicians, even Green Living Workshops at the nearby Senior Center of West Seattle. Back on the festival grounds, a “green living” theme even extended to real estate, with GreenWorks Realty‘s Wendy Hughes-Jelen (and CityDog Magazine cover dog Sophia) on hand:

More photos and video from the festival – just ahead:

Sustainable living goes hand in hand – foot by foot – with sustainable transportation, which was one of the topics for West Seattle-residing King County Council Chair and County Executive candidate Dow Constantine:

We showed you some of the other political visitors in our as-it-happened report; yet another was Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin (photographed with SWS president Bill Reiswig and others, preparing for a panel on “local food resilience”):

Another participant in that food panel was Galena White, who’s been leading the charge to create a Delridge Produce Cooperative – we caught up with her later at her table:

You can check in with Galena and others at the West Seattle Edible Garden Fair coming up May 23rd. Nearby, we learned about a food-delivery company we hadn’t heard of before – sharing a table/tent with West Seattle’s Alki Kayak Tours was Sail Transport Company, which delivers organic produce by sailboat (turns out our friends at MyBallard.com have featured them before):

By sail or by foot, fossil-free motion was an undercurrent for the day too – check out the jumping-for-joy toward the end of this clip featuring musicians $4 Shoe:

Even along the exhibit rows, some folks were on the move:

As were line dancers from the Senior Center of West Seattle:

Aside from the SWS volunteers, perhaps no one moved more than the Undriver License guy, who we saw roaming back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, more relentlessly than anyone:

The phrase “busy as a bee” came to mind elsewhere too, in the Puget Sound Beekeepers booth:

And it was undeniably cool to be at the SWS Festival – just ask Amy, Laura and Abby from West Seattle’s CoolMom group (which meets this Wednesday, 7 pm, at C and P Coffee):

Just steps away from CoolMom and neighbors, we were in the closest thing to a “media zone,” next to the folks from Yes Magazine and Reclaim the Media (which has been leading workshops on the digital TV conversion here in West Seattle, by the way; find out more about them here):

That’s our table at far right, with co-publisher Patrick Sand chatting with SWS’s Gary Lichtenstein. We wanted to thank the folks at BALLE Seattle (just off-camera to the left of the photo) for loaning us a beautiful turquoise tablecloth to make our table most festive as hundreds of folks stopped by to pick up West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day maps (or just to chat). Sustainable West Seattle meets the third Monday of each month at Camp Long Lodge, 7 pm. (Here’s our coverage of their most recent meeting, a multi-guest, multi-exhibitor presentation about bicycle transportation that could have been a festival unto itself.)

3 Replies to "Sustainable West Seattle Festival report #2: Video, more photos"

  • Marya May 4, 2009 (12:48 pm)

    Whee! I was in the Yoga picture!!! Namaste!

  • Bill \"Reiswig May 4, 2009 (1:20 pm)

    Thanks for the coverage WSB! I will note that “This Land is Your Land” was sounding better until the point the microphone was closer to my mouth.

    SWS is really thankful and appreciative of all the people in this community thinking creatively and seriously about local solutions to sustainability problems. Yesterday was inspiring to me, you never know how an event like this will look until it happens.

  • Stu Hennessey May 4, 2009 (5:40 pm)

    Thanks WSB for sharing a wonderful moment in our community and THANK YOU! all the great, hardworking volunteers that made this event such a success. Sustainable West Seattle is 100% a volunteer organization. If you were one of the thousands that enjoyed this years Sustainable West Seattle Festival, please become a member and help us put future hammers and shovels to use building a truly Sustainable West Seattle.
    Stu Hennessey, volunteer coordinator SWS

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