The Living Green Kern River Valley Festival committee includes, from left to right: Jenny Hanley, Richard Cayia Rowe, Katie Olivares, and Valerie Casity. Photo by Louis Medina

At the last Living Green Film Festival, Rebecca Rozenberg raffled off a box of produce from AbundantHarvestOrganics.com, an alliance of small family farmers in Central California that grows and distributes “hours fresh” organic produce. Delivery locations in Kern County include Bakersfield, California City, Frazier Park, the Kern River Valley, Rosamond and Tehachapi. Photo by Louis Medina

By Louis Medina

“To facilitate the social, natural, and financial health of the Kern River Valley for this and future generations,” is a pretty lofty mission, but with the help of dedicated volunteers, the grassroots nonprofit Kern River Valley Revitalization, Inc. (also known as KRVR) is working to do just that.

Take a scenic drive through the gorgeous Kern River Canyon and see it for yourself at the 2010 Living Green Kern River Valley Festival happening March 17 to 21.

There will be a Living Green Film Festival, children’s environmental awareness activities, a town hall meeting on water in the Kern River Valley, a Green Fashion Show & High Tea, native plant sales, a Green Expo and workshops, a Run for Living Green, and more. As of this writing, there were more than 30 events scheduled, most of them free and child-friendly. Wofford Heights, Kernville, Lake Isabella, French Gulch, Keyesville, and the communities in between are all freshening up for the occasion.

If you can’t wait until St. Patrick’s Day to go green, and just have to have a sampler beforehand, head to Wofford Heights this coming Sunday, March 7, for the fourth round of free screenings that are part of the Living Green Film Festival, an assortment of films about conservation and humans’ relationships with the environment. The program begins at 10 a.m. at the Reel Cinema Movie Theatre in the center of town.

Film festival committee member Katie Olivares said the films chosen are always recent, not more than a couple of years old, and “of current interest to Kern County, with accessible solutions that we can implement tomorrow.”

“Not everybody can invest in a $10,000 solar system, but they can buy organic foods right now. They can recycle right now. It’s about voting with your dollars,” she said.

“Living green is something all of us should be doing for the sake of where we live and the whole world,” said Chuck White, who was president of KRVR from 2002 to 2007. “The 2010 Living Green Festival will offer resources for us to move in these important directions.”

Roy Walp, CEO of CA Green Team, provided an example of resources and ideas that will be available to the public. At the Green Expo, Walp will be selling a wind energy product called Windspire, which looks like a long hair curler on an axle. It stands upright and rotates, generating energy.

“It’s bird-safe, silent, and it spins very easily in the wind,” Walp said about this product designed to power homes and small businesses. “There’s room for growth in this valley because it’s always windy here.”

The price for a Windspire with installation is $12,000, a long-term investment that decreases your energy bill by about 30 percent, Walp said.

But even if you’re not looking for an energy-generating wind turbine for your home, there are other reasons to attend the festival.

According to coordinator Richard Cayia Rowe, the festival is “a series of mostly free community events about living well and responsibly within your means.”

For example, the Green Fashion Show & High Tea is largely about how to shop for fun, fashionable, vintage (read recycled) clothing and accessories, as well as natural fiber clothing, according to the events list.

A 59-year-old retired Los Angeles City planner, Rowe has lived in Wofford Heights since March 2004. Before that, he said, “I had become disenchanted with the Palm Springs area overdevelopment and vacuous values.” He had retiree friends in the Kern River Valley area. “I visited them and each time felt more and more like I wanted to live here.”

He joined the KRVR board in 2005. “I started their website, www.krvr.org, and a weekly e-mail newsletter,” he said. His interest in “living green” issues stems from his desire to find alternatives to “the life of consumption and almost greed” that he found himself living.

Some 3,000 to 3,500 people attended the first festival in 2009, according to Rowe. “This year, we’d like to greatly increase that” to 5,000, he said.

Former KRVR president White, a retired Presbyterian minister who has lived in Wofford Heights with his wife for 18 years, sees the green movement as a kind of spiritual calling he believes everyone needs to fulfill.

“As a person of faith, I believe God wants all of creation to be more green,” he said. “I find this in the Bible and scriptures of other religions.”

Living Green Festival

When: March 17 to 21

Where: Communities throughout the Kern River Valley

Details: For the full schedule, visit www.LivingGreenKRV.org

Living Green Film Festival

When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, March 7

Where: The Reel Cinema, 6742 Wofford Heights Blvd., Wofford Heights

Schedule:

10 a.m. – Earth Dance short films: Assorted animation, documentary, comedy and fantasy films from the 2009 Short Attention Span Environmental Film Festival.

11: 50 a.m. – “Simple Question: The Story of Straw”: a 35-minute film, this documentary tells the story of a class project in the early 1990s that eventually became a restoration project for 20 miles of native habitat. It won the Spirit of Activism Award at the 2010 Wild & Scenic Film Festival.

12:30 p.m. – “The Yes Men Fix the World”: An 87-minute “screwball true story” about two political activists who pose as top executives of giant corporations and pull off pranks that expose and ridicule corporate greed.

Raffle: Tickets will be sold for a drawing of various goods, from organically grown vegetables to home baked organic loaves of bread, as well as coupons at local shops and restaurants.