The Last Green Festival from Wirtalla Visual on Vimeo.

Celebration Time in the Last Green Valley.

In Heinlein’s classic science fiction story The Green Hills of Earth a blind song writer, “Noisy” Rhysling, struggles to return from a far away galaxy to the peace of his beloved earth.  Just as in Llewellyn’s How Green was My Valley the emphasis is on the green of nature that we so often take for granted.

So it is with The Last Green Valley where we are fortunate enough to live.  It’s always been a wide swath of forests and farms, and always will be green.  Or will it?

Today, if you fly from Washington D.C. to Boston at night, an unbroken chain of lights spreads out like glimmering pearls along the Eastern seaboard beneath you.  There is only one dark spot along the whole sprawling, luminescent chain – that’s us, The Last Green Valley.

Much as the trees of the Amazon jungle acts as the lungs of South America, this dark hole at night, this green valley during the day, acts like the lungs of Southern New England.  Here over a thousand square miles of forests, open fields and farmlands, help scrub the pollution generated by cities such as Boston, Hartford and Providence out of the air producing breathable oxygen for some 8 million people.

Because of its uniqueness the Quinebaug and Shetucket River valleys were designated an area of national significance by the U.S. Congress.  The politicians came up with the less than memorable rubric “Quinebaug and Shetucket Rivers Valley National Heritage Corridor” for the region.   To the rest of us however, the district has become known as The Last Green Valley.

To help celebrate the area’s environmental uniqueness, VegwareUS, a local Danielson based green company is sponsoring The Last Green Festival fund raiser at the historic Brooklyn Fairgrounds September 28^th – 30^th.  Filled with music, art, film and of course food, this rich Brugelian festival promotes a new awareness of green living, sustainability and preservation of our unique surroundings.  A thoroughly modern green celebration with the feel and wonder of a Medieval Fair, The Last Green Festival promises to be the unique entertainment weekend of the year.  To boot attendees will be doing good as well as having fun.

The bands and acts for this three day festival are truly too numerous to mention – but for starters – Third Eye Blind, Jeff Pitchell and Texas Flood, J. Geils, Paul Geremiah, Seed, Hans Chew, Too Late the Hero, Vultures, Speaker for the Dead, End of War, Yankee Dogs and dozens more!

Come wander the Brooklyn Fairgrounds September 28^th – 30th.  Enjoy the green buzz along with the potentially tens of thousands of other spectators.  The Last Green Festival promises to be natures own 21^st Century Woodstock.  Even “Noisy” Rhysling might make it.

By Erik Sandberg-Diment, former columnist for The New York Times.  He lives in and enjoys The Last Green Valley.

Visit  The Last Green Festival  for more including ticket info.

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