Today was the first day of the actual sessions here at Terra Madre. Our group gathered early for breakfast at the hotel (You’ve GOT to try the Hot Chocolate! It’s like drinking fondue!) and headed out for the hour-long drive through the countryside and into the rush-hour traffic of Torino. Sheila and I played bell-tower bingo on our way in as the country churches zipped by.

Once in the arena, which is the stadium used for speed skating at the 2006 Olympics, we all scattered to find sessions, a place to sit, or to cruise the amazing bazaar of crafts that people brought from all over the world to sell. After four completely different answers to my question about getting internet access, I am finally wired and in communication with the rest of the world. One of the strange aspects is running into people that we know from home, either from North Carolina or from other areas of the south. There is a strange quality to bumping into Charlie and Emily Jackson from Asheville, or Anthony Flaccavento from Appalacian Sustainable Development and chatting as though we were at the CFSA conference while half way around the world.

Today I had the opportunity to hear Vandana Shiva speak, twice. Bumping from session to session is like a list of heroes; Vandana Shiva, Alice Waters, Gary Nabhan (a writer on ethno-botany who wrote “Enduring Seeds,” a book that was a huge inspiration to me back in grad school days). The sessions are listed in the program, but not the list of who is speaking, which, rumor has it, was changing right up to the start of the sessions. With 5 or 6 sessions happening at a time, it is a lot of bumping around to do and there were frequent disappointments as people realized that they missed a hero that they did not know was there.

Right now, the last session is ending, and my brain is on overload. Negotiating through the crowds (the lunch line alone was about 45 minutes, although the 3ft long, 14 inch in diameter mortadella alone was worth the wait), dealing with multiple languages (including very hard to hear translation headsets) and the echoing of the Olympic Speed Skating arena gets to be a bit much after awhile.

I had two highlights of the day. First a quote from one of Vandana Shiva’s talks, where she said, “The purpose of the state is to limit the power of corporations for the public good, not limit the power of the public for corporate good.” That quote resonated as I remembered our struggles with the GMO pre-emption bill in the NC legislature last year. Second highlight was getting to meet and briefly chat with Gary Nabhan, who I found very warm and friendly, and whose writings about the relationship between people and plants are very inspiring.

After our second day in the Terra Madre building, many of us are looking forward to slipping into town for at least part of tomorrow to check out the farmers market and see something other than this one building.

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