Langbahn Team – Weltmeisterschaft

User:Joel Russ

I'm in western Canada.


Career life: I've been a journalist, photographer, freelance general researcher, teacher of journalism, administrator, garlic farmer, ghostwriter, non-fiction author... not in that order. Have written for Canadian and American national magazines, as well as for regional magazines and newspapers, and for academic and business journals.


Projects: I'm a board member of our valley's Streamkeepers environmental society.

In the past, I've been a regional columnist on country living and food gardening, and prior to that had worked as an administrator of an agricultural association.


My degree is jointly in Psychology and Social Science. I took further education in Magazine Journalism, Ecology, and Experimental Design.


Interests include: Positive community interfaces with natural environments (especially forests, rivers, lakes). Hiking. X-C skiing. Building. (This is a covered, timber-frame bridge I worked on as a volunteer.) Gardening & trees. Bench-Carpentry & Mechanics (designing and building useful things of wood, metal, and other materials). Movies (including vintage and classic films).

I've been a traveller. I'm interested in technology, but don't feel that technology is the sole (or even the foremost) answer to the problems of humankind. “Tacking another billion transistors onto a CPU is not going to solve most of the world’s problems.” – Simon Clark, tech mentor, Guelph, Ontario.


Frequent reading: Biographies. Aspects of history. Various topics in botany, general biology, arboriculture, and gardening. Sustainability strategies. renewable-energy technologies. Successful projects for the public good (esp. at the community level).


Miscellaneous: Organized the first "third-party" forest-certification seminar in Canada's Columbia region, for lumber-industry professionals. Was awarded the "British Columbia Forests Excellence Award" 1999/2000.

Also, have done copy-editing for English translations from Far Eastern languages as well as editing of material to be presented in learning institutions in the Far East.

I believe in the importance of NGOs.


My longer writings:

The Chosen Spot - 2010 - Archive, Sonoma County Museum, Santa Rosa, California.

Paper - 1992 - Canadian National Exhibition Centre (Castlegar) ISBN 0-9696576-0-9 A brief international history of paper from ancient times to present; also, a guide to small-batch production of paper for teachers, students, craftspeople, and others.

Planet Earth Pages (writer/editor) - 1992 - Banyen Books (Vancouver)

Contemporary Stained Glass - 1985 - Doubleday ISBN 0-385-23338-8 A compendium of Canadian architectural glass and independent panels. Full-colour plates. Seventeen artist/deigners from six provinces.

A Bibliography for a New Library - 1979 - New Seeds Information, New Denver, B.C., Canada.

[Edited: two volumes in the series A Life in the Woods, oral histories concerning forestry and lumber milling in British Columbia; for the Nelson Museum. On-line: http://touchstonesnelson.ca/exhibitions/forest/ ]