"twenty-fifth annual e.f. schumacher lectures"

October 17th, 2005

Dear Friends,

On Saturday, October 22nd, the E. F. Schumacher Society is holding the Twenty-Fifth in its prestigious Annual Lecture programs.  The lectures bring outstanding environmental, social, and economic thinkers and activists to the Berkshires for an all day event. 

The lectures will be held at the First Congregational Church in Stockbridge beginning at 10:00AM and featuring Nancy Jack Todd, Thomas Linzey, and Christopher Houghton Budd. 

A co-founder of Ocean Arks International and of the New Alchemy Institute, Nancy Jack Todd continues to be the recorder of the innovation that has come from these two groundbreaking institutions.  As editor of the journal Annals of Earth, a publication of OAI, Todd guides readers to an understanding of ecological design science and practice.

Her new book, A Safe and Sustainable World: The Promise of Ecological Design, tells the story of the founding, growth and continual development of the New Alchemy Institute, and its mission to provide basic needs of food, shelter and energy in sustainable and ecologically responsible ways. The Christian Science Monitor has compared the book to Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us.

She and her husband John Todd have received the Bioneers Award, the United Nations Award, and the Swiss Threshold Award for contributions to human knowledge.  For more information:  www.oceanarks.org

Thomas Linzey is the co-founder of and staff attorney for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. CELDF (www.celdf.org) provides free and affordable legal services to grassroots, community-based environmental groups, and rural municipal governments. Established in 1995, CELDF  assists organizations in asserting direct, local, and democratic control over corporations. Linzey has special expertise in the history of corporations and organizing tactics to help local communities take a stand against corporate power structures. He has worked extensively with the Franklin County (PA) Coalition -- an association of community-based organizations seeking to build a sustainable county in South-Central Pennsylvania. 

Linzey is also involved in Democracy Schools,  which are weekend workshops held in cities across the country, addressing why "democratic self-governance is impossible when corporations wield constitutional rights to deny people's rights, and how we are able to rectify these wrongs."

Christopher Houghton Budd has spent his life researching the nature and purposes of economic life. His experience includes green businesses, organic farming, local politics, and academia. His formal studies were at the John Cass Business School in London where he researched central banking practices and the financial markets. Informally he has specialized in the economic contributions of the Austrian philosopher, Rudolf Steiner.  Christopher Budd is director of the Center for Associative Economics in Canterbury, England which promotes an associative approach to modern economic life.  In that role he travels widely, consulting and giving workshops. He has authored several books including his latest, Rare Albion: the Further Adventures of the Wizard from Oz, A Monetary Allegory which tells of the inner journeying that can be associated with modern finance.

Registration for the Twenty-Fifth Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures begins at 9:30 at the First Congregational Church, Main Street, Stockbridge, Massachusetts.  The program lasts until 5:00PM with a break for lunch. Tickets are $20 per person.  An optional box lunch is $12.  Pre-registration is recommended by calling the E. F. Schumacher Society at (413) 528-1737 or by registering online at www.smallisbeautiful.org.