Here’s a word that’s been on our minds a lot lately – “Burner.”

No, that’s not sarcasm…lately, we wonder a lot about this nomenclature and how it’s applied all throughout the Burning Man community in different ways. In fact, there was a tiny flap a few weeks ago when the JRS referred to folks attending regional burns as “Burners (and wanna-be Burners)…” We meant to refer to people who hadn’t yet had the opportunity to attend a burn (either BRC, or a Regional event), but alas – it ruffled the feathers of a small group of our “I’m-happy-at-my-regional-and-I-ain’t-ever-goin’-to-Nevada” friends who took it to mean, “People who hadn’t been to Burning Man, but want to, and won’t be ‘Burners’ until they have. ” And in retrospect we could see why they’d read it that way, really. It just wasn’t what we meant.

But it got us to thinkin’…who “really” is a Burner? Read more »

Back in February we hosted a not-so-little event at Burning Man HQ in San Francisco called the Regional Leadership Summit.

2008 is the second year we have hosted the Summit, geared towards Regional Contacts and other community leaders. It provides an opportunity for Regional Contacts from around the world to get together face to face to share ideas, attend work shops and trainings, ask questions and spend some quality time in person with their fellow cohorts and colleagues from around the globe.

Read more »

Perhaps the latest Decompression event of the year, I have to say that attending London Decompression was quite a treat.

A long enough time has passed since we have all returned home from the playa that a good dose of Burning love was greatly appreciated. I don’t think I was alone, ask any one of the close to 600 participants what they thought and I bet you’ll hear similar words of appreciation.

Read more »

Green Man

from Alternet:
Can ‘Burning Man’ Become a Model for Green Living?
By Matthew Taylor, PeacePower Magazine. Posted October 23, 2007.

Can 45,000 people journey vast distances to a lifeless Nevada desert and participate in an environmentally sustainable festival devoted to burning stuff? As strange as it sounds, during the last week of August 2007, the annual hedonistic celebration Burning Man attempted to do just that: go ‘green.’

What has Burning Man done to merit its theme, The Green Man? Is Burning Man making serious efforts to green itself, or is it all a front, a form of greenwashing? How will the Burning Man experience affect burners, and will they bring it home into their lives? What does the Green Man art theme say about the state of civilization and its trajectory? It was in search of answers to these questions and others unimagined that the author trekked to the playa this year.

A certain segment of the Burning Man community has long made respect for the environment a high priority. For years, event organizers have promoted a “leave no trace” ethic and encouraged all participants to scour campsites down to the tiniest scraps.

The under-appreciated Earth Guardians work year-round to keep the playa clean and tidy, and ensure that “burn scars” don’t deface the desert. Burners Without Borders, a group of volunteers vowing to “bring it home,” journeyed to the Hurricane Katrina destruction zone in 2005 to provide an estimated one million dollars worth of free home demolitions to help property owners clear away wreckage from the disaster. Last year, the same group salvaged six semi trucks full of reclaimed wood from the festival and donated it to Habitat for Humanity. (This year, a Burning Man spokesperson says it was even more).

But in the past few years, participants have demanded a much higher level of environmental responsibility. Just keeping the desert free from “MOOP” (matter out of place) was not enough. Read more »

Six hundred tons of carbon have been offset so far! Read details here.

And for a reminder of how to not add to the carbon footprint, by recycling wood instead of burning it, check this photo I shot this morning: