Dear Friends of Cull Books

Another “Talk That Talk,” coming up the first Saturday in August. Cull Books took a vacation in July. We are back and we are excited about Rjo Winch coming to “Talk That Talk,” as an author of three books.

Norman Nedeau is the author of “The Green Revolution”. By night, he is a renewable energy revolutionary. For years, the 43-year-old Willington, Conn., resident spent his free time designing and building the solar photovoltaic system now standing in his front yard, almost fully powering his ranch house. He tells time with a solar-powered watch. When he’s not doling out financial advice, he’s installing fuel cells in his family’s cars.

And if approved for a federal grant, he hopes to start turning the feces of his pet alpacas into fuel for a homemade power generator.

“This is my brainchild,” Nadeau said, waving a hand toward his alpaca farm, his converted cars and the solar panels towering over him. “This is my model, a model for everyone to see what renewable energy really means.”

To some, Nadeau’s pet projects might seem unusual, a long way from the massive power plants and petroleum that most of us still draw our energy from. But with U.S. environmental policies moving rapidly toward stricter pollution controls and “greener” power, offbeat grass-roots activists such as Nadeau who once led the development of renewable energy sources in relative obscurity be now at the vanguard of attracting attention to it.

Nadeau’s after-work hobbies mirror those of quirky green-energy advocates throughout Connecticut. There’s a man in Killingly who runs cars off electric batteries. A man in Middletown invents wind turbine systems out of his apartment. A family in Norfolk built a farmhouse powered by solar panels and heated with a radiant floor system.

They don’t do it for the money. They do it, they say, to show the world it can be done.

Nadeau’s introduction to the renewable energy field was a gradual one.

Seven years ago, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He underwent 12 surgeries to remove cancerous tumors.

To keep his muscles from atrophying, Nadeau’s doctor recommended regular exercise. He put his body to work in a decidedly nontraditional way — building an alpaca farm, which he had read was therapeutic.

Nadeau fenced off a part of his Willington property, cleared 250 trees off 2.5 acres and, over time, grew a herd of five alpacas and one llama. His favorite of the group is a young alpaca named Jack, who can be both fiercely territorial and surprisingly gentle.

“It’s just unconditional love and friendship,” he said. “That’s what I get from them.”

Continue reading Norman Nedeau’s Revolution

The Teen Read scheduled for October 22nd is postponed until further notice. The Cull Book Club will be held in its place.