Joyful congratulations to ICA, young Joseph, Jaime and his university community. Jann In a message dated 5/20/2013 3:33:49 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, jrvergarajr2031@aol.com writes: Nice timing. Had the following in the works when Terry's announcement came. Should be in the Wednesday edition: Urban Green We look down from the eleventh floor of the Friendship Villa residence of foreign faculty members and students to a four-story building that stands between us and the six-lane traffic near Shenyang Aerospace University’s south gate. We lamented last year’s start of construction when what used to be a grass-covered lot the size of a football field fronting our building suddenly got the whole complement of earth movers, scoopers, bulldozers, cement mixers, and two towering cranes that moved workloads around. That would have been about the time our Belgian teacher colleague handed us a paper cup with water and a floating sliver of grass that, he said, “ will thrive without requiring much attention.” We decided that we would at least add plants to our window ledge and get some oxygen processed back into the air. We have since expanded our repertoire of greens and have made the tending of them an integral part of our daily play-attention exercise. Worked stopped at the construction site over the winter allowing for the cement to mature, and this week, the crane started moving again. Styrofoam was laid on the rooftop covered with what we thought from a distance as black tar. I assumed the addition would control indoor climate in insulating the building from the six months of cold as the heat-absorbent black tar blankets the warmth inside. The construction that includes two five-story towers at the south gate blocks traffic but the ever enterprising Chinese students always manage to find a short cut, if they have to down a temporary fence to create one, so we follow the beaten path when we exit by foot from the dorm to the road. Cutting across construction yesterday revealed that the “black tar” on the roof is actually rich loam of soil spread over the Styrofoam to grow a rooftop lawn and garden. WOW. Not that it should have surprised us. After all, we are a new satellite city and planners often get extra credit for adding a touch of urban green into their plans. Which is just as well. The garden aesthetics will make the new building tolerable for we noted that buildings in China are not built to last a century. They tend to deteriorate fast. The dilapidating University Design Department building two blocks west of us have byzantine features, possibly a leftover from the days when Marushka with the babushka and Boris with the shapka-ushanka helped design campus structures. It will soon come down. We do not have any complaints with the systemic green care of the common grounds as workers these spring transfer potted plants of yellow carnation and marigold, tulip and daffodil, lily and gardenia, iris and violet into planters along the pathways and the road. We already noted the instant forest that is by the soccer field in anticipation of the athletes’ practice during August’s China Games. It is our care indoor that need some attention, not just by the hired maintenance help but the “stakeholders”, the ones who use the buildings, the offices, and the classrooms. (I recall former PSS Commissioner Liz Rechebei saved for us from her yard a dozen seedlings of ilang-ilang while we taught at SVES, which we grew on a hallway corner before transplanting them into the ground. I know of at least four of them that survived; at the time, the plantings were intended for aesthetics and fragrant flowers, as Saipan can be naturally green if we do not mess up mother nature too much). It is altogether different in cold Dong Bei. Keeping our ledge on the 11th floor green with potted plants is an exercise in intentionality as the d oing itself becomes a part of our “spiritual” exercise. No, we are not talking about fuzzy-hairy weird religious practice here. We are referring to the human practice of playing attention to one’s consciousness, the same that we prescribe in our oral English classes where students are enabled to “ describe their sense experience, express their feelings, articulate their thoughts, and formulate their intentions.” The spirit exercise in this case is the silence before the spoken word. Specifically, on the eleventh floor, I have a cutting board where I chop fruit (e.g., mango, orange, banana) and vegetable (e.g., cucumber, carrot, cabbage) peelings while doing my inhaling and exhaling rhythm, then pulp and dry all the organic leftovers by hand, the fruits providing pleasant scents in the room, mix and compost the lot into the soil that we keep for potted plants. We get our composting and tai chi done in half hour! Fourteen time zones away on the other side of the planet, in my former home Uptown in Chicago, residents of the GreenRise Intentional residential community in the old 8-story Kemper Insurance building on 4750 North Sheridan Rd. are keeping the place urban green by Chicago standards. A 20-yr old resident just won a grant to develop the building’s roof gardens; this, while the roof also will be outfitted with renewable energy panels. We are clear that there is no stopping climate change in a planet whose humans consume 1.5 times more than old Gaia’s holding capacity. We will be content with adaptation measures, whether in Dong Bei or the north shores of Lake Michigan. The systemic care is a function of our politics; individual care is a function of our spirit exercises. Om! (javascript:void(0)) j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: oe-request <oe-request@lists.wedgeblade.net> To: oe <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> Sent: Mon, May 20, 2013 11:10 am Subject: OE Digest, Vol 14, Issue 15 Send OE mailing list submissions to _oe@lists.wedgeblade.net_ (mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net) To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to _oe-request@lists.wedgeblade.net_ (mailto:oe-request@lists.wedgeblade.net) You can reach the person managing the list at _oe-owner@lists.wedgeblade.net_ (mailto:oe-owner@lists.wedgeblade.net) When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of OE digest..." Today's Topics: 1. GreenRise successes at 4750 (Terry Bergdall) 2. Re: GreenRise successes at 4750 (Alan) 3. Re: GreenRise successes at 4750 (ANN SHAFER) 4. Re: GreenRise successes at 4750 (Joyce Sloan) 5. Re: GreenRise successes at 4750 (Randy Williams) 6. Re: GreenRise successes at 4750 (Randy Williams) 7. Re: GreenRise successes at 4750 (Ellie Stock) 8. Re: GreenRise successes at 4750 (Norm and Judy Lindblad) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 21:03:00 -0500 From: Terry Bergdall <_bergdall2@gmail.com_ (mailto:bergdall2@gmail.com) > To: Order Ecumenical Community <_oe@wedgeblade.net_ (mailto:oe@wedgeblade.net) >, Colleague Dialogue <_dialogue@wedgeblade.net_ (mailto:dialogue@wedgeblade.net) > Subject: [Oe List ...] GreenRise successes at 4750 Message-ID: <CADJX7K_AgZyWho2jpi5f2ivaq=_YDiLbG87jNAc4EEzfkBDiW8A@mail.gmail.com_ (mailto:YDiLbG87jNAc4EEzfkBDiW8A@mail.gmail.com) > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Last week, I invited folks to go online and vote for the rooftop garden project coordinated by a young 21-year old member of the GreenRise Intentional Residential Community at 4750, Joseph Taylor. I am delighted to announce that, with your help, this project won the Ford Community Green Grant today at the Chicago Green Festival, A Project of Green America and Global Exchange. There are similar Festivals happening in Los Angeles (Oct 19-20), San Francisco (Nov 9-10), Washington, DC (Sept 21-22), and New York (April 19-21). The prize was for $5,000. If my attachment is successfully transmitted, you can see a photo from the awards ceremony. Joseph is the tall one in the middle surrounded by supporters. On a related note, we also received notice last week that the GreenRise Building "solar project" has been awarded a $359,000 grant from the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation to install renewable energy panels on our rooftop. The building at 4750 Sheridan is becoming a VERY high profile embodiment of "green culture" to complement our neighborhood sustainability work across the 77 community areas of Chicago. Terry Bergdall