The view from my classroom. Yes, life was good.
So yeah, I went to one of those “liberal New England colleges” that connote images of foliage and cute boys in tartan plaid scarves…but most of the 250 kids on my campus were sporting threads from the “free box” or swimming naked off the pier during lunch break. College of the Atlantic is not like other schools…at all. It’s more of an experiment in what happens when you mix education with extreme environmentalism. Recycling, composting, making fuel from veggie oil, eating local food, building sustainable structures — it’s all old news for them. For almost 40 years they’ve been practicing and preaching so much of what’s encompassed by the year’s biggest buzzword — “green.”
Plenty (It’s easy being green!) Magazine just profiled my alma mater, and as I was scrolling through the article online, up came an advertisement for Pacific Gas & Electric. “We can do this” it read, with a cute little wind turbine graphic.
What business — I ask you, I deeply ask you — does a Northern California utility company that gets most of its energy from burning fossil fuels and nuclear power have advertising in a New York-based magazine profiling a miniscule hippie school in downeast Maine?