Happy Friday, UNP blog readers!

This weekend is the Lincoln Marathon, and a number of University of Nebraska Press employees are running either the full or the half. Most years I’d be out there, too, but alas, I’ll be out of town this weekend, so instead I’ll have to settle for checking my friends’ and co-workers’ times online. Another good substitute for running the actual race, though, is Rachel Toor’s book, Personal Record, which the UNP published last year. Rachel captures the moments of euphoria, despair, crippling pain and relief that come with running a race that long. She also describes (very accurately, this runner thinks), the effects a marathon has on one’s body (pros: toned legs, the ability to eat everything in sight; bad: disgusting feet, missing toenails, extremely prominent veins).  If any of you are running the Windermere Marathon in Spokane/Idaho Falls on May 16, Rachel is the keynote speaker (her talk is the evening before the race). I’ll bet she’s running too.

In other news, this weekend is the Nebraska Environmental Action Coalition Annual Conference, in Aurora, and other UNP author is the keynote speaker there. John E. Ikerd, author of Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture, will give a talk titled "The Local Food Revolution" on May 2. 

If you’d like a taste of the types of topics Ikerd addresses in his book, here’s a brief synopsis:

With the decline of family farms and rural communities and the rise of corporate farming and the resulting environmental degradation, American agriculture is in crisis. But this crisis offers the opportunity to rethink agriculture in sustainable terms. Here one of the most eloquent and influential proponents of sustainable agriculture explains what this means. These engaging essays describe what sustainable agriculture is, why it began, and how it can succeed. Together they constitute a clear and compelling vision for rebalancing the ecological, economic, and social dimensions of agriculture to meet the needs of the present without compromising the future.

And that’s it for today. Have a great weekend!