Buckminster Fuller

Before we moved to New Bern we lived in Colorado.

Michael worked for John Denver and we got to meet many very interesting people, Buckminster Fuller was one of them. He died shortly after we met him.

Michael was the land manager for the Windstar Foundation just downvalley from Aspen. Bucky did quite a lot of work around Aspen including designing a biodome at Windstar.

We are looking forward to seeing an exhibition about him and his work at the Whitney in NYC.

The things that impressed me and that we participated in were his world game that we played with students from across the country. "World Game Workshops put participants in charge of the world for four hours, arming them with information they need to become global problem solvers. During a fast-paced global simulation, participants become regional leaders, news reporters, and representatives of international organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations. Work together to identify global problems and develop sustainable solutions.

Participants are armed with the latest data and equipped with natural resources, money, energy, technology, military expenditures and food as they are actually distributed in the world today. Played on top of the world's largest and most accurate map of the planet, participants negotiate with other regional leaders to find global solutions for local problems."

And the biodome that was built at Windstar, which was passive solar greenhouse with integrated growing system. "The purpose of the “Biodome Project” was to design and construct integrated fish and vegetable producing micro climate systems, in a range of sizes, that could be transferable to a variety of climates and utilized in rural or urban settings.

The essence of the Biodome Project was to demonstrate practical, local, organic methods of producing food through stand alone, self-sustaining, affordable systems that conserved water, land and energy. The Biodome concept was a much needed model for an agricultural system that embraced sensible food production from the small backyard plot to large scale farming.

One of the things Michael is intrigued with is the Dymaxium Car. More about that later.

It was an exciting time for us! For another blog, other things we did while we were in Aspen. Going to this exhibition has sent me down a path of memories.