Village Building Convergence and SBNP present: Salmon know it, going upriver. Monarch butterflies know how to find the pine grove in Michoacan. The doves that nest near my house in SW Portland know how to find this place in spring. And we humans--what question, story, song, lullaby, idea, or quest calls us here to Portland? Come join the Sustainable Business Network of Portland and writer/storyteller Kim Stafford as we invite you to relish the mix: taste, listen, remember, and follow for home. An interactive evening exploring this wonderful place we call Cascadia and giving voice to our stories, dreams and visions. Come learn why place matters in a truly sustainable economy. Local songwriter Timothy Hull will also perform songs of place. In its 7th year - the Village Building Convergence (VBC) is a ten-day community building and education event that incorporates hands-on natural building and placemaking activities on 30 sites across Portland. Coupled with daytime workshops and evening speaking and cultural events, the VBC connects over 100 speakers, presenters, architects and natural builders with thousands of community members from across the country. This year, SBNP is hosting one evening of the ten day event. Check out www.cityrepair.org to find out more about the rest of the VBC events. Kim Stafford is a Portland native, and founder of the Northwest Writing Institute, a zone for experimental expression about place, identity, and story.He is the author of "Having Everything Right: Essays of Place," and Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft." That book includes the following manifesto: "In our time is a great thing not yet done--it is the marriage of Woody Guthrie's gusto and the Internet. It is the composing and wide sharing of songs and stories by those with voice for those with need." Many of singer-songwriter Timothy Hull's songs explore familiar "folk" themes such as economic and social injustice, and ecological conservation, yet it would be inaccurate to say that they are really "about" them. Instead, Hull's songs are about life lived on a human scale, as captured in his vivid snapshots of playing and living on the streets or in a makeshift camp by a river, of wandering and rambling the roads and the rails, of making do in difficult circumstances. And in the immediacy and simple "dailiness" of these images, we feel the resonance of those larger themes more keenly. Timothy will share some of his songs of PLACE this evening. $15 at the door.