TED talk, sustainable city

http://www.ted.com/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cradle_design.html

Spring GreenHouse Application!

There's one open spot in the GreenHouse for the spring semester of this year!  If you are currently abroad, or in need of a new room for second semester, we'd love to have you apply. This space is open to any student currently in the college. Applications are due by 12 noon, Thursday October 8th.

Living in the GreenHouse is all about making friends, caring about those around us, and living a more sustainable lifestyle. If you have any questions, or wonder if the GreenHouse is right for you, please contact any current GreenHouse member or Paul Dixon at dixonpe0@sewanee.edu.


(If you have extenuating circumstances and do not anticipate completing the application on time, please email Paul ASAP and we can work something out.)

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GreenHouse Application, Easter 2010
This is a paperless application. Please submit your application and resume as a single document to dixonpe0@sewanee.edu by Thursday. If you have questions, contact Paul at dixonpe0@sewanee.edu.



Name:

Class:
e-mail:
extension:

Major or Potential Major:

Faculty Reference:



Please include your current resume.



From the following nine questions, pick six and write a short answer for each one:
1. Imagine you are planning a large scale Greenhouse sponsored event. What is the event? What are your goals for the event? What steps will you take to accomplish these goals?
2. If you could make one change to Sewanee, what would it be?
3. Tell us about the development of your environmental ethic. What changes have you made in your daily life in order to live according to this ethic?
4. As a member of the Greenhouse, what challenges do you think you might face?
5. Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? Justify your answer.
6. Tell us about a time in which you had a falling out with someone and describe how you overcame the problem.
7. What are your interests outside of environmental issues?
8. What do you see as the role of the Greenhouse? What do you think its role should be?
9. Write your own thought provoking question and answer it.

9/27 Meeting!

chessie made brownies. it was delicious.
Read on for the details.

Garden Mtg, 9/22

Here is what we talked about on Tuesday (please excuse its being late in coming out):

1. Betas
- Angie has been talking to a Beta contact (Anthony) and they will be signing up to work in the garden
- We need to make a calendar of garden activities. That way, we will know when we want to work on big projects so the Betas can sign up to help

2. Pea trellis
- A preliminary version went up on Thursday, with fencing running in the middle between the two pea rows
- We need to reinforce it with bamboo, which should happen today

3. Sowing
- We will sow some of the new seeds, like salad mix, in the beds that have
been prepared (where the cantaloupe and cucumbers were)
- Sow cover crop in empty rows

4. Blue Chair
- Compton brought basil, mint, oregano, arugula to the Blue Chair (!)
- They want things like more herbs (cilantro), tomatoes, cucumber, squash, mixed greens, zucchini, carrot
- We should be sowing things that the Blue Chair could use, because this is awesome

5. Garden signs
- We should order small signs so we can label what is where and when it was planted
- Can someone help with this?

COOL PEEPS at the GREENHOUSE meeting

meeting minutes. READ IT NOW!

Greenhouse Meeting September 20, 2009

How was everyone's weekend?

kate is sick.
callie has some sweet callouses on her fingers from jamming out all the time.
compton: sweet concert.
Carson's mom had a great birthday.
paul had a great XC race.
Stella went home.
Keri is happy.

Kitchen Messy . . . what are we going to do about it?

Instead of having the big tub, we will have a little tupperware compost!
The big tub will be off of the porch.
make sure the dishes never have food on them. and rinse and put your own dishes in the dishwater.
flies will die soon, no worries.
let us not revert to the carson microwave fly horror story.
fly bloooooddd
no tea bags in the sink! in the compost.

McClurg Compost

Compost from kitchen at McClurg could be picked up by Greenhouse Members maybe three times a week.
Paul will talk to Scott Maino about it.
Greenhouse members think of your schedules and when you can commit to picking up the compost.

Chicken Blessing, 2pm Saturday

Official name of coop: HEN HALL
Kate and Stella will work on sign!
Carson & Compton (get list of people who we invited last year to house blessing)
keri & compton: invitations - regina.
armentrouts. registrar dude. smith.
Posters for Chicken Blessings: make one stella
Carson will bake bread
Callie and Keri ordering food for blessing
Callie doing facstaff and cstudent.
COOP CLEANUP maggie and angie, later part of the week.
Stella - Mountain Messenger - garden work hours and chicken blessing. Do by tmrw .

Reed Biodiesel

Let's do it guys! Not very expensive. his donation ought to cover all/most the cost. $250.
60cents/ gallon. can sell to community members, use the money to expand greenhouse
he would help us get oil form sonic etc.
how is it done? - filter oil and add lye, and little bit of fuel. high octane, appleseed setup, cycling and drying by itself.
Reed will send information about how to build it.
keri and carson to help biodiesel. meet with reed later this week. email him. get information from him.
tax concerns?
cstudent for blackmarket diesel.
talk to roco about dinero!
Kate- talk to rob bacchmun

How we can be more "green"

missionary shower. self timers covered in plastic bags and duck tape.
tally keeper .. . .poop chart! and when you flush the toilet, turn off and on the lights.
fires. . . ?
keri coming up with a system to measure our energy/resource use.

Canning workshop:

Compton in charge
happening in next 2 or 3 weeks.
similar to bread-making event.
weekend following that to take a tour of farm.
go to cool restaurants.

Blue chair

totally willing to get herbs: basil, parsley, oregano, mint.
paying for or trading desserts/coffee.

Food Waste Display

paul sending out email to ERs about food waste in McClurg.
Stella in charge.

classified CANDLES!!!

waking up at the greenhouse

Today Chessie & Callie woke up each person in the house with a beautiful rendition of "Here comes the sun." It was fantastical.

Meeting Minutes!

fashion shows & rollup hugs...

1 thing we're really excited about
what we're going to do this week for the GH

kate: chickens! hosting craft night monday, 7-9p
stella: charlie! write messenger re: garden hours, work in garden this week
compton: yoga! greenhouse cookbook
callie: chemistry! tuesday suprise!
carson: angie! "we're doing an awesome job!" will volunteer.
angie: hardcore climbing! no more dinosaur computers! will organize DIY workshops with google doc
keri: climbing! chicken coop blessing prep
maggie: great weekend! angie & maggie will clean out coop
chessie: chicken coop blessing! callie & chessie have love & joy ideas
paul: celestial bodies! garden internship & class projects.

Thursday's Dinner:
dixon & annwn; angela; tom & pamela; meghan & kirk.
compton, kate & chessie cooking.
pizza? chicken of the woods?

coop:
carson & kate: gutters / rainwater catchment for coop.
will postpone meat bird project til future.
keri & stella will make new sign for greenhouse. "Chicken of the Woods" ?
Brainstorm coop name & names for chicken

Our House:
carson will make chore list
discussed dishwashing: rinse plate & put in dishwasher.
freebox: kate will maintain.
Kate & Angie announce the GreenHouse Costume Shop (located in the Futility Closet). Modeling session followed.
carson: explained printer, need to start turning out lights. Chessie will bring up new light.
bike power: benson & rocco might sponsor bike power generator, antique/auction guy interested. Kate working on this.
compton will attend leadership workshop on tuesday.

events / projects:
coop blessing planning - invitations - need to go out ASAP. Chessie & Keri.
Angie & Mitzi will plan garden job event for end of semester (november)
Friday Night Music Jam - coming up in a few weeks.
email compton for recipe book.

Thursday is overall day.

ROLLUP HUG WITH ANGIE IN THE MIDDLE!

Greenhouse gardening, cooking, and chicken-care.

Link to GreenHouse expenses

Check your email for the link to the GreenHouse expense spreadsheet and please bookmark it! (Posting it on here isn't a good idea)

You will be able to edit it to add what you have spent. Please drop your request payment sheet by Kate so she can enter the codes before giving it to Dr. Zigler to sign and going to the accounts payable to receive your cash.
*It is very important to enter the amount in this spreadsheet!

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Music Jam!

We had a music jam, bonfire & s'more roastin' extravaganza last Friday night. 'Twas a great start to the year.

9/6 meeting minutes

9/6 meeting minutes

Chickens

• possibility of meat chickens in spring? Based on success of egg chickens this fall. House supportive of the idea. Callie willing to spearhead.
• Name for the coop? No consensus yet. Postpone until next year.
• Paint chicken coop fence? Maggie will talk to Julie about finding people to paint it.
• Angie is constructing chicken tractor. Angie & Carson will build soon. Paul will forward classifieds.
• Chicken manager duties will rotate each month. We need to feed chickens more food scraps to reduce feed costs; put scraps in bucket outside of kitchen.
• Maggie will talk to Julie & McCrady LLC folks about chicken chores

Saturday Potluck

• Stella has invited garden / brakefield community folks. Plates from GH/outreach. Table or to set things out. Kate will make drinks; Carson will provide coolers. Angie/Chessie will bake bread. Carson, Stella, Maggie, Keri will find tables, decorate & set up. Carson will bring candles. Keri will make sign. Angie will bring bio truck to GH. Ask families to bring blankets? Kate & Angie may go to Good Will to grab blankets. Everyone will hang around afterwards and wash dishes.
• get rid of trash party saturday 4pm

Thanks yous

• Angie & Kate will buy $5 or $10 gift certificate from Mountain Breeze.
• apple trees - paul
• Angie - will mail
• helen - angie/paul
• Keri will stop by ice cream maker man and say thank you.

Events

• 70+ people came friday. WAY TO GO! (pictures in next post)
• Mon / Wed 7a Yoga on the porch led by Angie. may open up to campus if goes well.
• Talk to Angie ASAP re dates for workshops. Angie is developing schedule. Angie will present schedule by next Sunday. Angie is our official workshop co-ordinator. Tie Dye workshop - batik?
• update from chessie & callie on house dinners
• 9/8: House Dinner. Invite Sean? Try Kirk & Meghan again.
• 9/17: Dinner with Dixon & Angela
• Conference anyone? http://www.bsu.edu/ceres2/greening/greening5.html

Angie still investigating SERP.

Carson will make chore circle.

Stella will email list of of profs (provided by paul) of ENST - encourage garden/house participation

the Bicycle Recycler

Check out this article:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3055/

It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Oh yeah, you should check out this magazine in general because it's really amazing. There are copies in the library as well.

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Meeting Minutes

August 30, 2009 Minutes. Read on to hear about dinosaurs and potlucks

Leader: Stella Pfau

Recorder: Paul Dixon

• At the beginning of meeting everyone went around and said “the best thing that happened to them this weekend was . . .”
• Played pterodactyl game and Angie won.
• Pulled numbers and assigned chores/partners for the next month:

Angie and Maggie – Chickens

Paul and Stella – Leaders/recorders of meetings

Kate and Carson – Recycling

Compton and Keri – Kitchen

Chessie and Kallie – Emergency Cleanup Crew/ Weekly dinners

• For weekly dinners order from sewanee.locallygrown.net and use food from garden, and rest from the Pig. Professors and others invited to upcoming dinners include: Scott Maino (new Keith Davis), Kirk Zigler and his new wife, Julie Puttgen, Dixon, Darrel, Regina, Rocco, Shayne. Need to contact and confirm dates with these people pretty soon and alert greenhouse members what day and time they will be over for dinner. Chessie & Callie will organize.
  
• Celebrated Paul’s birthday!: yummy yummy cookie cake made by Kate in the shape of a heart. Carson tickling him was supposed to be a distraction. Ate ice cream as well, very soupy though.

• Talked about workshops: (need to partner with LLCs, ERs, Greeks, etc. to fund for some of these workshops)
1. Freshmen “Hang out at the Greenhouse” finalized: Friday at 8 pm at Greenhouse. Compton to get fire permit, Carson to make posters and send c-student, Stella to get smores supplies.
2. “Blessing the Chickens”: Keri, Callie, and Angie have that under control. Planned for Saturday the 26^th of September, 2:00pm.
3. Kate’s projects:

- fermentation and soap making Workshop– need to choose a date(s)

- Shed remodeling event at organic garden – need to choose a date

- Sewing day(s) – send c -student

4. Compton’s project: Canning Workshop – need to choose a date, maybe a Tuesday
5. Maggie’s project: Seed-paper/bookmark Workshop maybe led with your friend – need to choose a date
6. Angie’s project: Bread-making workshop, Zucchini and Sourdough – need to pick a date. Pumpkin pie/everything pumpkin event sometime in October, probably led by more people than just Angie.
7. Callie’s project: Old beer bottlecaps and soda bottlecaps collected in fraternities/sororities turned into beautiful quilt patterns and potentially hung up in the houses.
8. Stella’s project: Drying the gourds at the garden and contacting house on 41 that has the purple martin gourd bird house to see if they can help us make the bird houses . . . maybe invite elementary students to come help out. Date will be figured out once gourds dry.
9. Carson and Keri’s project: Haunted House!!!
• Other upcoming projects/to do list:
1. Community Garden Potluck organized by Stella, Deanna, and Chessie: Stella talk with Kirk to get list of neighbors and Deanna get another list of the rest of the gardeners. Make invitation and go door to door and invite them to Potluck. Figure out who needs to bring what, maybe by last name A-K main dishes, K-N beverage, etc. Do preferably by Wednesday.
2. Sustainability competition amongst frats/sororities. Can crusher? / garden plots (need to choose a fast growing veggie)
3. Compton and Keri get a white board out at the Garden so we can make a to-do list.
4. House expects everyone to get out to the garden at least for 1-2 hours/week. Times: Thursday- Deanna and Stella will be there from 2:00-5:00pm

Sunday- Angie and Deanna will be there from 1:00-5:00pm

5. Compton and Stella to check out house and make a proposal to PPS for water-catchment systems.
6. Angie get plaque that was at the Eco-house
7. Need to make a note for Regina
8. Thanksgiving dinner
9. Kate is the new Treasurer whoo hooo!
10. What are we going to do with screenporch?
11. Bio-diesel anyone?

Ladies of the Greenhouse get a haircut

All the lady chickens and even the rooster had a very big surprise this beautiful Sunday morning. With scissors in hand, greenhouse members snipped away at the primary feathers of the chickens to prevent them from flying away. Lately the chickens have been flying up and roosting on their fence, some taking the next step and actually taking little strolls around the yard. The Greenhouse decided, with Shayne's advice, to clip their feathers so we would not have dead chickens on Mitchell Avenue run over by cars or dead chickens in the mouths of Sewanee dogs or hawks. In less than 10 minutes the haircut of 11 hens and 1 rooster was completed . . . and hopefully they are not too ashamed of their new look.

Update from Mexico!

.

Hey guys-

I'm leaving in a few days to work in Chiapas, probably in the jungle, for three or four weeks, so I wanted to wish everyone a good end of the school year! And summer vacation, graduation, all that fun stuff.

I will be living in a community, not sure where yet, studying agriculture and self-sufficiency, not sure exactly what yet either. I hope to learn some Mayan medicine too! I'll be living with a family again, so I want to help out in the kitchen and learn how to make some of the food- like tortillas from scratch and tamales. Mmmm...

Here are some pictures: the first is the use of some bottles to line herb beds in a community we visited about 2 hours from Oaxaca City and the the second is some urban agriculture that we saw in Mexico city, planting in tires.

Take care everyone!

kate


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Meeting Minutes April 5

Solar installation went well.
We need to return the projector.

Need a list of everyone who has been to an event—just numbers

Not a second coffee house but a music night. Will advertise through word of mouth. This Friday the 10th. Emily would like to bake. Laura will get coffee from stirlings.

Chelsea will get egg dye and paul will get eggs from the farmers market so we can dye eggs this weekend.

During grad week sophomores will apply to stay—work in the garden.

We can work on the chicken coop during grad week too.

April 19 garden party- new house members will help. stay tuned for more information from Helen.

Bentley will talk to bands to see if they want to play on the 24th

Paul will talk to new house members about coming to meetings

On Tuesday there’s a gownsmen meeting where Paul and Elspeth are presenting a resolution regarding choosing the VC. Go to it!

Meeting Minutes March 29

Oreo Olympics
Combine with experience weekend bonfire
Jonathan will organize/ lead
Sarah butler has smores and drinks and will drop them off
Carson will get fire permit and make fire
Sunday at 8 pm
Helen will send out c-student

April 10 coffee house
Elspeth will send an e-mail to house members listing things she needs help with. Elspeth will register event.

April 19 garden party
Helen will ask new house members to help

April 24 concert
Bentley has contacted Chris and Wilson who can play if Swaneroo isn’t that weekend. More info soon.

Money? Helen will check to see how much we have in the account.

Garden
The compost is doing really well because it is disgusting.
Stuff is growing.
There is a really cool fungus. Carson will ask dean jones what it is.
Compost stays at the house this month.
Carson will keep sending e-mails. Thanks!

Carson and Paul planned the chicken house
They are going to buy supplies this week and will talk to us soon about building it.
Paul will talk to people in Monteagle to see if we can buy adult chickens from them and

Heidi-marie huber-feely wants to hold hypnosis classes here
Week of April 13-17
Elspeth will be contact person
Dinner with them on Wednesday- talk to Elspeth if you want to go.

Paul will send an e-mail to the new members soon with info for this spring. Let him know what worked and what didn’t last spring.

The Mysterious Garden Tunnels

We just installed a system of row covers to get a jump start on the spring. The 3-4ft wide tunnels are made from Agribon row cover fabric, PVC piping, and rebar stakes. It offers a temperature buffer of around 6 degrees Fahrenheit and shelter from wind, frost, and UV rays.
This makes for some pretty happy plants.

less manicured lawn at the White House!

The first family & a few school children are busying planting the White House vegetable garden, the first veggie garden at the White House in nearly 50 years. Cool.

Monteagle's effluent bath

Monteagle's sewage tank burst yesterday! Here's a brief article from the Chattanooga Times Free Press. That's almost 100,000 gallons of raw sewage flowing rampantly into the Elk River watershed. Several families in this area rely on well water, which is now seriously contaminated. Hopefully, there more information will be available soon.

In other news, Grundy County is requesting $1,000,000 to put in a pipeline connecting their water supply to the Tennessee River. They determined that the pipeline will have "no significant impact on the human environment." And so they claim that an Environmental Impact Statement is not required.

SUD proposes that funds be used "for studies that address regional water resource planning issues for the Southern Cumberland Plateau," which would be an astute choice before spending a million bucks hooking a city up to a river whose hydraulic load is already taxed by TVA’s twelve coal-fired thermal plants, two nuclear power plants at Sequoyah and Watts Bar and the three nuclear plants at Brown’s Ferry, each of which need about three billion gallons a day for thermal cooling purposes.

More information on SUD's water policy can be found here.

post-addendum: Another Times Free Press article.

A lengthier article, and a video from WRCB Channel 3 Chattanooga, updated on March 20.