2 posts tagged “st paul”

Wow, I guess this week really escaped me! I thought I'd be blogging every other day or so, but it's been almost a week. I can't believe it!

Well there have been some really exciting highlights to this week.

On Tuesday I did some research for the ARISE project about greenhouse gas calculations and ways of reducing greenhouse gases on site. It's really complex trying to figure out how we will estimate the emissions from our proposed mixed-use site, but I'm hoping to learn a lot about how to do these things because it will be incredibly important in development and planning in the future, as well as with what I would like to do. I'm reading and studying Life Cycle Analysis, which means calculating the energy used and the resulting carbon emissions from the whole cycle of something: what the raw products are, how they are collected, transported, and processed, what the manufacturing process is, how the product gets to the site where it will be used, how it functions on the site, how long it will last for, and in some cases, how it will be disposed or replaced. Yeah, that's a lot of pieces to consider! But it's important to take the whole Life Cycle into consideration when deciding on what is the most eco and climate-friendly product or building material to use.

On Tuesday we also had our first meeting about our public art project. We're hoping to organize an arts and music festival to creatively engage ourselves and the community. A lot of us are really into art or music in some form, so it's a really important part of us that we need to consider and use and develop! So our festival is going to be something that incorporates all of our different creativities and provides a way for others to be creative. It's going to be called Fest de Sol or Fest de Sol or Festi-sol or something like that. Should be exciting! I'm hoping to do some drawing in the coming weeks to see what I can contribute.

On Wednesday we worked a lot on Cooperative Energy Futures and did some real solid timeline planning for the project. Basically this summer we will be running a pilot project to show that there is need for or interest in this project of providing communities with energy efficiency upgrades in their houses in a cooperative and community-based model. We have a list of 20-30 homeowners in St Paul, organized

around Unity Church, who are interested in taking part in this pilot project! This coming week we'll be calling the interested folks and working on getting all the homes audited and scheduling 1-on-1 meetings with them to answer questions and get moving forward. There's a lot of work to do, but it's great to see that we're really laying out a timeline and getting the ball rolling!

Wednesday night we watched a really incredible Van Jones video about social justice and the environmental movement (or the broader movement for social change). Van talked a lot about inclusiveness, racism, privilege, class, and really paying attention to how we are transforming social structures and systems that have kept people divided based on race or economic status in the past. In the video he was speaking to a primarily white audience and really challenged them (and us and anyone watching) to really push ourselves to expand our comfort zone and change our own personal selves, actions, and thoughts in order to change society and work towards a more socially just and equal society. It was really intense and emotional and led to some great dialogues afterwards.

Friday my highlight was having lunch with the Environmental Justice discussion group where we talked about global environmental justice and some issues going on in specific places around the world, such as water issues in Lesotho, issues of displacement in South Africa, the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, and more.

Friday night I went to a barbecue at our friends' and fellow solutioners' house and had a great time just eating delicious food, hanging out, and dancing.

Today I had a beautiful day! This morning Ruby came over and we baked a cheesecake for her birthday. Not vegan, but I was still happy to help! After that I had a Cooperative Energy Futures meeting with a couple members of the Unity Church to talk about the project (and I had the most delicious falafel ever at Shish, the local restaurant we met at!) After that, Callista and I rode our bikes to meet a bunch of our friends at a Lake in Minneapolis. It was a beautiful (probably 40-minute) ride over the Mississippi River, through bike trails and parks, and past beautiful scenery to a beach on the lake! We had a great time lounging in the sun, swimming, and hanging out. The water felt like bathwater compared to the Atlantic Ocean!!

After riding home, Callista and I baked some incredibly simple and amazingly delicious vegan peanut butter banana chocolate chip cookies for Ruby's birthday party. We had dinner with our friend Laura who lives next door, then headed over to Ruby's. Everyone loooooved the cookies! They were so good!

We had a little scare tonight when the weather all of a sudden changed and it turned cold, windy, and stormy. Then the tornado sirens went off! I was scared, but everyone else seemed calm, so I stayed calm too. We just grabbed some food and games and drinks and headed down to the basement. A couple people called friends and found out taht that sirens were just a warning for severe thunder storms, so we headed back upstairs and resumed our game playing and eating.

Now here I am. Tomorrow holds some grocery shopping, research, book club reading, potlucking, and book discussion in store. Should be great!

So here I am in Minnesota for the Summer of Solutions program! It's been an exciting first few days! I can't believe it's only been 4 1/2; it already feels like I've done A LOT. But I decided that it's really important for me to write down what I'm doing not only so I can remember what I've done, but also so that others know what I'm up to and the amazing work that's going on out here! So I created this blog for that purpose. I'm going to try to write a little bit every day and also include lots of photos!

The first few days we've spent really getting settled in Minnesota and doing all sorts of introductions and meetings and debriefings and updates and catch-ups and explanations, so those of us who came from elsewhere know what has been done so far and also what we will be doing for the next two months! And these are big projects! My mind was blown when I heard what the college kids out here have been up to. The main project I'll be working with, ARISE (Alliance to Re-Industrialize for a Sustainable Economy) was introduced to us yesterday in a couple meetings. First we met with Lynn Hinkle who is a long time worker at the huuuuge Ford manufacturing plant here in St Paul and union leader at the plant. He explained to us how the plant is being planned to be shut down in 2009. This is a major issue for St Paul, because the facility currently provides jobs for 2000 people! So, Lynn and others have stepped up to provide a positive solution to this problem, using a vision of sustainable community development. They told us all about their plans to create a mixed-use site on the huge lot that will combine housing, clean energy manufacturing, clean energy production, green architecture, public transit, retail, jobs, child care and elderly care facilities, etc. Basically they are designing a model sustainable community for the site! It's really a win-win-win situation because it's good for the city, good for the people, and good for the environment!

So we will be working on helping to design this project, doing research about community development, clean energy installations and possibilities, environmental and social justice, and holistic communities to try to make this plan as awesome as possible and a great opportunity that the city of St Paul could not pass up!

If you can't tell, I'm INCREDIBLY excited about this project! I got really excited and energized and even emotional hearing them talk about it because I know these types of projects are what we need. Also, it's nice to be a part of a project with people that have such vision and imagination that is so in line with what we all want to see our future look like.

So that was the big news yesterday! Today we worked on a couple different things. This morning we talked about another project called Cooperative Energy Futures, which is the proposal to create a business which will link up investors with community energy efficiency projects in the Twin Cities (and eventually beyond). The idea is that energy efficiency is REALLY helpful for people, but most cannot afford the upfront cost. So this business would be organizing communities of people and their homes to get efficiency future-fits (as opposed to retro-fits) in a more efficient and cost effective way since there are more people getting them done at the same time in the same location. Also, a big part of this project is getting investors to pay the upfront cost and the home-owners would pay back the loan over time (with interest) as they save money on energy bills. So we'll be designing a business plan to make this happen and work on getting some pilot projects off the ground to figure out the best way of organizing communities and attracting investment.

After the Cooperative Energy Futures meeting, one my fellow solutioners Kate ran a skill-share on public speaking. I'm really excited for her skillshare/classes because public speaking is one of my major weaknesses and I definitely need to improve. So 5 of us did the skillshare and she ran us through different exercises to work on diction, projection, and posture. It was so helpful! I learned a lot from this first class already, I can't wait for the rest!

Later this afternoon we went to another meeting for another one of the projects, WeCAN. WeCAN is going to be a web-based networking resource for environmental activists. The idea is to create a web site that combines ideas from Facebook, Google, Wiser Earth, and other networking sites to create a place for the environmental movement to quickly share resources, information, and connections! It's going to be really great and an important tool for finding people working on similar things or interested in joining together! I don't know a lot about computers and websites, so this one was a little harder for me to follow, but it should be really exciting to learn more about it!

Lastly tonight is one of our three weekly potluck dinners (they're on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays) so we all met at the house next door for dinner at 6. It was great! We had veggie stir fry, a beautiful salad with strawberries and blueberries in it, delicious baked tofu, a mushroom and veggie curry stew, and then for dessert a pineapple blueberry upside-down cake and nectarine rhubarb pie! It was so good!

After dinner we had a m eeting with the whole group to talk about scheduling, then when the meeting ended around 9, we all hung out and had a music jam session.

A great day! Even though it was really rainy and stormy with downpours, thunder, and lightning.