Nice timing. Had the following in the works when Terry's announcement came. Should be in the Wednesday edition: UrbanGreen We look down from the eleventh floor of the FriendshipVilla residence of foreign faculty members and students to a four-storybuilding that stands between us and the six-lane traffic near ShenyangAerospace University’s south gate. Welamented last year’s start of construction when what used to be a grass-coveredlot the size of a football field fronting our building suddenly got the wholecomplement of earth movers, scoopers, bulldozers, cement mixers, and twotowering cranes that moved workloads around. That would have been about the time our Belgianteacher colleague handed us a paper cup with water and a floating sliver ofgrass that, he said, “will thrivewithout requiring much attention.” We decided that we would at least add plants to ourwindow ledge and get some oxygen processed back into the air. We have since expanded our repertoire ofgreens and have made the tending of them an integral part of our daily play-attentionexercise. Worked stopped at the construction site over thewinter allowing for the cement to mature, and this week, the crane startedmoving again. Styrofoam was laid on therooftop covered with what we thought from a distance as black tar. I assumed the addition would control indoorclimate in insulating the building from the six months of cold as the heat-absorbentblack tar blankets the warmth inside. The construction that includes two five-story towers atthe south gate blocks traffic but the ever enterprising Chinese students alwaysmanage to find a short cut, if they have to down a temporary fence to createone, so we follow the beaten path when we exit by foot from the dorm to theroad. Cutting across construction yesterday revealed thatthe “black tar” on the roof is actually rich loam of soil spread over theStyrofoam to grow a rooftop lawn and garden. WOW. Not that it should have surprised us. After all, we are a new satellite city andplanners often get extra credit for adding a touch of urban green into theirplans. Which is just as well. The garden aesthetics will make the new building tolerable for we notedthat buildings in China are not built to last a century. They tend to deteriorate fast. The dilapidatingUniversity Design Department building two blocks west of us have byzantinefeatures, possibly a leftover from the days when Marushka with the babushka and Boris with the shapka-ushanka helped design campusstructures. It will soon come down. We do not have any complaints with the systemic greencare of the common grounds as workers these spring transfer potted plants ofyellow carnation and marigold, tulip and daffodil, lily and gardenia, iris andviolet into planters along the pathways and the road. We already noted the instant forest that isby the soccer field in anticipation of the athletes’ practice during August’sChina Games. It is our care indoor that need some attention, notjust by the hired maintenance help but the “stakeholders”, the ones who use thebuildings, the offices, and the classrooms. (I recall former PSS Commissioner Liz Rechebei savedfor us from her yard a dozen seedlings of ilang-ilangwhile we taught at SVES, which we grew on a hallway corner before transplantingthem into the ground. I know of at leastfour of them that survived; at the time, the plantings were intended foraesthetics and fragrant flowers, as Saipan can be naturally green if we do notmess 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 inintentionality as the doing itself becomes a part of our “spiritual” exercise. No, we are not talking about fuzzy-hairyweird religious practice here. We arereferring to the human practice of playing attention to one’s consciousness,the same that we prescribe in our oral English classes where students areenabled to “describe their sense experience, express their feelings, articulatetheir thoughts, and formulate their intentions.” The spirit exercise in this case is the silence beforethe spoken word. Specifically, on theeleventh 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 myinhaling and exhaling rhythm, then pulp and dry all the organic leftovers byhand, the fruits providing pleasant scents in the room, mix and compost the lotinto 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 theplanet, in my former home Uptown in Chicago, residents of the GreenRise Intentionalresidential community in the old 8-story Kemper Insurance building on 4750North Sheridan Rd. are keeping the place urban green by Chicago standards. A 20-yr old resident just won a grant todevelop the building’s roof gardens; this, while the roof also will beoutfitted with renewable energy panels. We are clear that there is no stopping climate changein a planet whose humans consume 1.5 times more than old Gaia’s holdingcapacity. We will be content withadaptation measures, whether in Dong Bei or the north shores of LakeMichigan. The systemic care is afunction of our politics; individual care is a function of our spiritexercises. Om! 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 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 You can reach the person managing the list at 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> To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe@wedgeblade.net>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@wedgeblade.net> Subject: [Oe List ...] GreenRise successes at 4750 Message-ID: <CADJX7K_AgZyWho2jpi5f2ivaq=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