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Ask Andrew Sen­ner what he does for a liv­ing, and he rat­tles off an impres­sive, albeit for­eign-sound­ing, title.

“I work for a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy lab at Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty’s Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Sci­ences Depart­ment, and I’m going to school for a degree in micro­bi­ol­o­gy.”

But real­ly, what it boils down to, he says, is that he’s a prob­lem-solver.  He just looks for solu­tions at a mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el.

We’re delight­ed to announce Sen­ner as one of our speak­ers for this year’s TEDxSalem event, where he’ll be intro­duc­ing TED­sters to the con­cept of aquapon­ics.

Ever heard of it? Allow Andrew to explain:

“It’s the com­bi­na­tion between aqua­cul­ture, fish farm­ing and hydro­pon­ics or soil as crop pro­duc­tion,” he said. “It uses the waste stream from fish to feed bac­te­ria, which con­vert ammo­nia to nitrates that the plants can absorb. Then they fil­ter and oxy­genate the water back to the fish.”

It’s sort of a self-sus­tain­ing, minia­ture ecosys­tem. There are some places in Port­land and Bend in which peo­ple are already doing it. And Sen­ner has big ideas for its future.

“Aquapon­ics is pret­ty new,” he said. “Well, sort of. Peo­ple were doing it thou­sands of years ago but call­ing it some­thing else. When I heard about it, I thought, ‘Holy crap, this is a no-brain­er. Why aren’t we already doing this?’ It’s real­ly sim­ple and it mod­els nature and it has this res­o­nance, where you put in a lit­tle bit of ener­gy and get a lot more out of it every time.”

Sen­ner iden­ti­fies Coos Bay as where he is ‘from.’ But he’s lived, quite lit­er­al­ly, all over — Ohio, North Car­oli­na, Cal­i­for­nia, Wash­ing­ton, Ten­nessee, and even in Japan. He’s always had a pas­sion for sci­ence, start­ing with chem­istry.

“It’s the manip­u­la­tion of mat­ter that’s fas­ci­nat­ing to me,” he said. “I don’t know, I guess I could­n’t put my fin­ger on it but it’s a pas­sion I’ve always had and con­tin­ue to pur­sue.”

After enlist­ing in the Marines, where he was a data net­work spe­cial­ist in Japan, he returned to the States to pur­sue a degree at Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty.

Sen­ner is a new­com­er to TED con­fer­ences. He heard about the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak at TEDxSalem from his wife.

“She heard about it before I did, and I don’t think she expect­ed me to sign up to talk,” he said. “I want to get the word out about aquapon­ics. And I hope that when peo­ple walk away, they’ll be able to pick a prob­lem of their own and under­stand how that prob­lem occurred and what its caus­es are. Aquapon­ics takes its mod­el from nature, and peo­ple will hope­ful­ly start to do that more intu­itive­ly.”

When the speak­ers at TEDxSalem 2014 take the stage in Sep­tem­ber, they’ll become part of a lin­eage at the His­toric Elsi­nore The­ater that includes enter­tain­ers of every stripe.

“From Bach to rock and bal­let to Broad­way, we’ve pret­ty much host­ed it all,” said Stephen Mar­tin, exec­u­tive direc­tor of STAGE, the non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that runs the facil­i­ty.

Com­pos­er and con­duc­tor John Philip Souza once held court at the Elsi­nore, actor Gre­go­ry Peck made his final pub­lic appear­ance there, actor Hal Hol­brook (who you might know as the voice and face of Deep Throat in All the Pres­i­den­t’s Men) has made mul­ti­ple appear­ances on its stage, most recent­ly as part of his one-man show Mark Twain Tonight.

“This past sea­son we host­ed Mer­le Hag­gard and B.B. King,” Mar­tin said.

The the­atre opened its doors in May 1926 show­ing the silent film The Vol­ga Boat­man. It was envi­sioned by devel­op­er George Guthrie to resem­ble a cas­tle from the Eliz­a­bethan era, and much of that splen­dor remains intact after ren­o­va­tions that were com­plet­ed a decade ago.

“It’s meant to take vis­i­tors to a dif­fer­ent place in the way the­aters of that time peri­od were famous for. With the right light­ing, the lob­by is meant to evoke a cas­tle court­yard each evening,” Mar­tin said. “To our knowl­edge, the Elsi­nore is also the only Tudor goth­ic the­atre west of the Mis­sis­sip­pi.”

In 1980, the the­atre was sched­uled for the wreck­ing ball when a group of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers rose in an attempt to save it, but bal­lot mea­sures that would have autho­rized a city pur­chase and con­tin­ued oper­at­ing funds were both defeat­ed.

Undaunt­ed, the devot­ed group of cit­i­zens orga­nized com­mu­ni­ty days with free shows at the the­atre that drew large crowds and kept the build­ing at the fore­front of atten­tion and off radar of the demol­ish­ing crews. In 1990, when the own­er decid­ed to sell his the­atre chain, which includ­ed the Elsi­nore, the Save the Elsi­nore Com­mitte joined forces with anoth­er group hop­ing to bring a large audi­to­ri­um into the city and formed STAGE – Salem The­atre Audi­to­ri­um Group Enter­prise, a non­prof­it char­i­ty for the per­form­ing arts. With the help of $400,000 from Mey­er Memo­r­i­al Trust, STAGE took own­er­ship in 1993.

Along the way, the Elsi­nore is also became home to a mas­sive 26 rank Wurl­itzer organ with 1,778 pipes (the largest in the Pacif­ic North­west that is able to mim­ic the sounds of trum­pets, oboes, harps along­side numer­ous oth­ers. The organ accom­pa­nies many of the reg­u­lar silent movie show­ings dur­ing the Elsi­nore’s sched­ule.

TEDxSalem presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to mar­ry some of the Elsi­nore’s his­to­ry with its future, Mar­tin said.

“TED’s focus on tech­nol­o­gy and the roots of our the­atre in the the high tech of its time, it will be a great jux­ta­po­si­tion. All among won­der­ful clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture,” he said.

 

It’s hard to believe it’s already August. On the one hand, it means that sum­mer is wind­ing to a close. On the oth­er, it means we are just that much clos­er to TEDxSalem 2014!

To get you through these last few weeks and make the most of your remain­ing sum­mer, we reached out to our bril­liant group of speak­ers from last year’s TEDxSalem, to ask them the very sim­ple ques­tion: What are you read­ing?

If you need ideas on the best books to feed your brain, look no fur­ther:

What Kel­ly Williams Brown is read­ing: Amer­i­can Nations: A His­to­ry of the Eleven Rival Region­al Cul­tures of North Amer­i­ca, by Col­in Woodard.

As some­one who has moved around the coun­try a LOT, I real­ly love this book — it’s a cul­tur­al his­to­ry of the 11 sep­a­rate cul­tur­al nations that make up North Amer­i­ca. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry book and, I think, does a great job of explain­ing how and why, say, Louisiana and Ore­gon are such dif­fer­ent places. I high­ly, high­ly rec­om­mend it!

(Revis­it Kel­ly’s TEDxSalem talk about mil­len­ni­als here!)

What Chris Hahn is read­ing: Cir­cuit-Bend­ing: Build Your Own Alien Instru­ments, by Reed Ghaz­a­la.

It’s about tak­ing old elec­tron­ics and hack­ing the cir­cuit­ry to make it do things that it was nev­er intend­ed to do, most­ly for the pur­pose of sound design and exper­i­men­ta­tion. The idea of pick­ing up used bat­tery-pow­ered toys at Good­will and then pok­ing around the insides with wires and con­nec­tors to make strange sounds is odd­ly appeal­ing.

(Chris Hahn and Dick­ie Adams intro­duced us to Luma Infi­na­ta, which you can re-watch here!)

What Elaine Sanchez is read­ing: The Hare With the Amber Eyes, by Edmund DeWaal.

It is a fas­ci­nat­ing biog­ra­phy of an extreme­ly wealthy Jew­ish fam­i­ly with roots in Rus­sia, Paris and Vien­na pre-World War I through World War II. It is long, dense and over­ly descrip­tive, but now that I’m more than halfway through it, I’m very inter­est­ed to see how it’s going to end. I’m read­ing it because it is one of my book club selec­tions.

I often read books I would­n’t oth­er­wise select because of the book club. There are a lot of books they chose that I don’t like, but I always learn some­thing new.

(Relive Elaine’s hilar­i­ous TEDxSalem talk, ‘Hav­ing the Sex Talk with Dad’, here!)

What Eric Howald is read­ing: The Mas­sive, by Bri­an Wood.

A post-apoc­a­lyp­tic graph­ic nov­el focused on a rogue team of envi­ron­men­tal­ists still fight­ing the good fight after cli­mate change has flood­ed much of the plan­et’s coastal areas and sunk entire nations. I love every­thing about this com­ic and each new col­lec­tion gets bet­ter and bet­ter as they explore aspects of human­i­ty as much as the threats of cli­mate change.

(Revis­it Eric’s TEDxSalem talk about com­ic books and social jus­tice here!)

What about you, Salem? What books have you been read­ing this sum­mer?