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Forest Jam 2008 has come and gone.

Organizers had billed the three day outside music festival as a celebration of nature and environmental sustainability.

And they promised 2 dollars from each ticket would be donated to groups working to protect New Hampshire Forests.

Correspondent Sean Hurley went to all three days and has this report:

Today on Word of Mouth, scientists are experimenting with ways to amplify the way food tastes – making dishes taste sweeter, or saltier, than they really are. And, we’ll hear from wine connoisseurs who say boxed wine has a bad reputation in the States, but you can actually find some primo vino in those square containers. Plus, searching for the solution to global warming in the guts of termites, and how high gas prices are affecting indie rock musicians.

(Photo by Stanley Sparks)

In the world of social insects, the lowly termite gets no respect. Sure, ants and bees have their champions and are lauded for their social cohesion and industriousness. Termites, on the other hand, are the bane of homeowners everywhere. They eat up about $11 billion in U.S. property each year. Some species also have the rather unsocial habit of snapping the heads off of invading ants.

But termites may have gotten a bad rap. With rising oil prices, their ability to turn wood waste into fuel has sparked the interest of researchers, who have struggled to turn wood and grasses into biofuels. As part of our “next green thing” series, we wanted to find out whether we could harness the termite’s efficiency, to run our economy on sawdust, lawn clippings and old magazines.

Lisa Margonelli is a fellow at the New America Foundation, writes about global culture and the economy of energy, and is the author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long Strange Trip to your Tank. Her article "Gut Reactions" appears in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly, and she agreed to lead Word of Mouth into the mysterious third gut of the termite.

(Photo by Steve Ryan)