The nine students on my Project have established a comfortable routine. They stay up all night playing card games, listening to music, and soaking in the outdoor Jacuzzi. Ryan and I nudge them from slumber at about 10:30...the smell of pork products sweetening the process. This morning's fare featured French toast made with fresh baked baguettes. The eggs are from our neighbor up the hill. The syrup was boiled 2 miles away.

Today we set off for Amherst to visit Bioshelter, the extraordinary brainchild of John "J.R." Reid PA '80. Inside an immense plastic dome are two dependent farms. Below--in large tanks--John raises tens of thousands of Talapia, a fast-growing, high protein whitefish native to the Nile. They are sold to Asian restaurants in Boston.

(At the lower right is a close-up of my lens cap.) Upstairs is New England's largest indoor basil plantation...all irrigated hydroponically with water from the Talapia tanks. Aphids are kept in check by maintaining jungle-like habitats for beneficial parasitic flies. Get this: John hires mentally handicapped workers to harvest and pack the basil--work at which they excel. Oh yeah: the Chinese restaurants pay him to take the used vegetable oil they use, and he's having the twin "diesels" that power the entire place converted to burn vegetable oil! And the water expelled from Bioshelter is cleaner than that which is taken in. J.R.'s dream is to make Bioshelter so economically profitable that it will be duplicated around the world. A film team from Japan was shooting a documentary when we arrived....For the Proctor students who visited Bioshelter today, John Reid is an inspiration....a Proctor graduate who is working to make the world a better place.