Portland, OR – May 1, 2007 – The City Repair Project is proud to welcome Paul Stamets as it’s featured speaker for the night of May 25, 2007, at 8:00 p.m. Paul Stamets will speak on the subject of how microremediation fits into urban green spaces as part of The City Repair Project’s 7th Annual Village Building Convergence (VBC). He will speak at Disjecta, VBC’s evening events venue, located at 230 E. Burnside in Portland, Oregon.

aul Stamets has been a dedicated mycologist for over 30 years. He has authored six books on mushroom cultivation, use and identification. His latest book is Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. Mr. Stamets lives in the Pacific Northwest and runs a business called Fungi Perfecti, a family owned certified organic business specializing in using gourmet and medicinal mushrooms to improve the health of the planet and it’s people. A significant percentage of the proceeds from Fungi Perfecti are directed to research projects conducted by Mr. Stamets.

Mr. Stamets sees the ancient old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest as a resource of incalculable value, especially in terms of its fungal genome. His passion is to preserve, protect, and clone as many ancestral strains of mushrooms as possible from this pristine woodlands. He believes the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest harbor mushroom species with profound medicinal properties and as such, protection of this last refuge of the mushroom genome should be at the top of the list of priorities for society.

Each year, the VBC is held to promote human-scale community action. Over 30 private sites, institutions, schools, and neighborhoods will create community-based projects for community improvement, which will be implemented during the Village Building Convergence. This year’s Village Building Convergence will include feature projects ranging from building ecoroofs to garden construction in locations in all quadrants of the city. In addition to the site projects, the VBC includes workshops, speakers, live music, and entertainment.

The City Repair Project is an organized group action that educates and inspires communities and individuals to creatively transform the places where they live. The City Repair Project facilitates artistic and ecologically-oriented placemaking through projects that honor the interconnection of human communities and the natural world. The Village Building Convergence is primarily planned, designed, organized, built and run by volunteers, and on a minimal budget. We are honored to share this framework for running a large, non-corporate, ecologically-sustainable community event with other organizations in Portland and beyond.

Please help us keep this event fabulously community-supported by volunteering or donating. For additional information on volunteering, please contact Maralena Murphy at 617-406-8299 (cell) or vbcvolunteer@cityrepair.org. For general inquiries, please contact Meghan Crane at 301-580-3554 or vbcpublicity@cityrepair.org.

2007 Village Building Convergence Featured Speakers and Entertainers