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The Rappahannock Valley Garden Club's Energy Fair will be this Sunday, including keynote speaker Jeff Barrie of Kilowatt Ours Date published: 1/28/2010
BY RYAN MARR With national health care debates hogging the media spotlight, and the shocking novelty of a $3 gallon of gas wearing thin, the green movement has slipped, relatively unnoticed, into the shadows of America's conscience. That hasn't deterred Jeff Barrie and his team at Kilowatt Ours, a nonprofit dedicated to energy conservation, from their mission to enact a nationwide shift toward environmental awareness, one city at a time. On Sunday, Jan. 31, Barrie will bring that awareness to Fredericksburg as part of the Rappahannock Valley Garden Club's first energy fair at James Monroe High School. Featuring informational booths for Dominion Power, Friends of the Rappahannock and the Garden Club, among others, the fair should be a fitting complement to Barrie's speech, which will focus on conserving energy in the home. Growing up in Southern California during the oil embargoes of the '70s, Barrie got a firsthand lesson in environmental awareness at the gas pumps. Those lessons, coupled with Barrie's early love of film--he's an admitted "Star Wars" fanatic--led him to a career of environmental filmmaking. He picked up his first camera at the age of 12. "I wanted to be a part of the magic on the screen," Barrie said in a recent phone interview with Weekender. "But, for whatever reason, using a fictional narrative just didn't seem right to me." Now 40, Barrie has put out over 12 award-winning documentaries since 1993, including his latest, 2004's "Kilowatt Ours." The documentary, which mostly details Barrie and his wife's attempts to conserve energy in their own home, has sparked a grass roots movement nationwide. "My goal is nothing short of a cultural shift in our country," Barrie said. "I'd like to see us become good stewards of our natural resources. That's my dream." Barrie describes "Kilowatt Ours" as the first movie in which he not only explores the problems at the root of energy conservation, but also emphasizes their simple solutions. Last Saturday night, local residents, who came out to see the Garden Club's free public screening of "Kilowatt Ours" at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library, testified to the documentary's motivational power. "It definitely made me think more about turning our lights off and shutting our computers down more regularly," said Debbie Hamilton, a member of the Garden Club, after viewing the film. "I'm going to be much more conscientious."
Read more stories about Fredericksburg Date published: 1/28/2010
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