Jane Goodall @ Hanover College, 03/27/2008

I got to go and hear a presentation by Jane Goodall last Thursday evening. Quite an experience :) The opportunity just fell in my lap when a friend of mine got ahold of a couple of tickets and invited me along (tickets were free, but there was a very limited number of seats and it was PACKED.)

Dr. Goodall spoke on a variety of topics. She started out with giving up the chimp versing of "hello" which got quite a chuckle from the audience. Then she spoke about her own career, starting as a young girl in war-time England. The most amazing part to me was that when these old respectable men could not have a girl running around by herself in the jungles of Africa, she was required to have a companion in order to stay there. So her mother actually came from England to live out in the wild in a leaky tent for about 6 months, if I remember right. LOL There is what I call supporting your kid's dreams.

Of course, she did talk a bit about chimps. But I'm not going to reproduce it all here and I would not do it justice if I did.

What seemed to me to be the most important point made was the need to live and promote environmentally sustainable lifestyles. A major point being that even if we do get the warring factions in places like Africa to put down their guns and make peace, but their environmental issues are not addressed, they will end up just picking those guns right back up again. What good is peace if your land can no longer support crops, and your water supplies are dry or polluted? So the whole idea of envronmental sustainability is a major piece in promoting peace in troubled areas.

After the presentation, my friend and I headed for the book table, where we couldn't resist getting a few books (different ones, so we could borrow off each other). Then, since I decided that I just could not buy a book at a book signing and not get it signed, we ended up waiting about an 1 1/2 to 2 hours in line. It was well worth it.