Eons ago while a student at MIT and working full-time to put myself through school, I saw the need in the copy/printing stores I worked in to get our waste paper recycled. As I set that up, I was hired by the recycling company to set up similar systems in apartment buildings etc. I’ve also worked in recycling in Flagstaff, Arizona.

While living in El Paso in the late 80's I was part of a small team of 8 people in a dusty warehouse who did the R&D for a novel type of photovoltaic panel (solar electric panels), using thin-film Cds/CdTe as the material. At that time the cost of crystal silicon PV was far too high for wide adoption and thin-film was seen as the future; we were considered the leading contender at the time and our work led to CdTe PV being used a good deal in Germany.

While at MIT in 1975, as a student I learned that the school planned to train 47 nuclear engineers for the Shah of Iran. With a handful of other students, we made this a huge issue on campus, educating a generation of students and ourselves on the politics and economics of how such an outrageous thing could be contemplated. With great respect for the intelligence of the MIT community, our organizing and my newspaper articles led to both students and faculty expressing a strong demand that the administration explain themselves; we were reported daily in press across the nation and world. The administration never explained, implying information was classified, and did train the nuclear engineers, though half as many as planned due to our organizing. I had transferred to MIT specifically to study the way society made long-term decisions about its future, and this experience was an explosion in my understanding of the connection among oil, militarism and money, and of the ways the world is shaped in the secretive halls of power. My life has taken a path of addressing these ever since.

I was one of the 1,414 people who were arrested for occupying the Seabrook nuclear power plant site in the 70s. Our affinity group, Shoes for Industry, was comprised of former MIT activists. Around that time I worked in several food coops (Massachusetts, Port Townsend WA and El Paso) and was the tofu-maker in two communities.

Locally, after taking the Environmental Forum training I was invited onto the EFM Board, and coordinated the Energy Days for the EFM classes for several years.

The Fairfax Climate Action Committee made it a priority to increase MCE Deep Green enrollment, so I have tabled extensively to talk about energy with citizens, and our committee secured a grant to offer the extra cost to be reimbursed for the first year for the first 100 Fairfax residents. Fairfax now boasts the highest Deep Green enrollment in the entire MCE territory. Our work with MCE has led to the creation of an ongoing community advocacy group. It’s pretty wonderful that our electric procurement is done by an organization that is open to our involvement.

I focused the town on the change-over to LED streetlights, doing the research and education that resulted in Fairfax specifying the new, warm-white streetlights that are superior to the older cool-white versions.