Sustainable Living--It may not be so hard

Technology can be frustrating. That being said, my first draft of this post was erased when there was a glitch with the site. There is really nothing more frustrating than losing information you spent time recording. I am no stranger to this feeling—my computer crashed in January and I lost pictures, music and most of the papers/new stories I had written and maintained in a portfolio.

Moral of the story: Always back up everything on your computer with an external hard drive.

Anyway, my original intent was to talk about sustainability from a new outlook I discovered last week. In addition to interning with Greenville Forward and being a Furman student, I am the student editor for Furman’s online news source, FUnet.

My most recent story was a profile of the house manager for Furman’s Southern Living Cliffs Cottage model home. If you are unfamiliar with the purpose of the home, I am providing a link to the website below, but here is a quick summary. As part of Furman’s efforts to be a forerunner in the sustainability movement, the university partnered with Southern Living and numerous other vendors and donors to create a showcase home.

The Cliffs Cottage was fitted with the most innovative and recent developments in green building technology to form a completely sustainable home. Furman and its partners wanted to show the ability to be environmentally conscientious without losing any sense of luxury, comfort or aesthetic appeal. The Cliffs Cottage will be open for touring and visiting for a year before it is retrofitted and transformed to be the new Center of Sustainability. If you are interested in learning more about the house and its partners, or if you would like to sign up for a tour, visit the website: http://www.furmancliffscottage.com/

My interview with Brett Rayl, former Furman student and new house manager, became much more than a discussion of his daily activities. It resonated with me because Rayl expressed his former misconception that seemed to be like one I have struggled with in the past. This idea is that you dramatically have to change your lifestyle to live according to the principles of sustainability. Or, there is the notion that it is incredibly expensive to truly achieve that goal when building a home.

Rayl explained to me that the intent of the Cliffs Cottage is to provide an example of the ultimate ways you can build a home that is completely sustainable. From there, Rayl hopes visitors will take away an understanding of the ideas behind the materials used and modify them to their own lifestyle. For him, this means washing his clothes in cold water, using his leftover water bottles to water his plants and buying locally.

As he was talking, I thought, “I could do this.” That evening when I was taking a shower, I looked at the shower head and was appalled by how many gallons of water per minute I am using. I cannot remember the exact number now, but it definitely has made me adjust my shower time--even just one or two minutes can make a difference.

But, these small changes are what will really matter. It is a gradual process and is much less daunting than many realize. In the end, it is all about being conscious of the energy you are using and finding ways to curb it just a bit. I think we could all do these simple things and would find the impact to be greatly significant.

Artistically Young...

So, almost a year ago, my mother passed along a report, commissioned by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, that set out to examine, study and provide a call to action for generational succession in the arts sector nationwide. All arts organizations and individuals are dealing with the issue of renewing audiences for sustainability and growth. Where are our next patrons coming from? Who will be our audiences? How do we build programs to attract our ever-growing young population?

This is a national question, but one that our own arts community asks itself each and every day. How can we sustain and compete in today’s environment when the competition for young attention grows more and more diverse by the second? This study offers some solutions and, if anything, very interesting reading. As stated in the report:

“As a whole, the nonprofit arts sector faces formidable barriers to bringing more young people into its sphere, most notably its limited financial resources. Budget constraints and revenue stagnation continue to impede the ability of all organizations to compete for young people’s interest and involvement. Given the decline in dedicated public and corporate support for the arts, identifying and securing new sources of income will be difficult. However, perhaps the most significant barrier is a lack of awareness and sense of urgency that the arts need to start moving to address the challenge. Leaders across the field must come to a collective recognition that involvement of young people is critical and that ever organization must make that involvement an immediate priority.”

The report offers recommendations, albeit on a national scale, of ways the nonprofit arts sector can meet this challenge.
· Launch a national dialogue about youth involvement in the arts
· Develop a strategic plan to, 1. Aggressively market the benefits of involvement with the arts to young people, and 2. Create a nationwide, grassroots corps or young activists and advocates for the arts.

I am particularly interested in this section, simply because it speaks directly to the Greenville Forward Arts Task Force. It talks to, not just one organization, but the arts community and addresses issues that concern us all.

As a personal advocate for the arts in Greenville, I see the audiences skewing older with less coming in the back end. How do we cultivate a community of arts patrons? How do we engage our students? Our young professionals? Our children to embrace the arts in our community? What are the pieces that we can put in place to help create a community where the arts are not only appreciated, respected and fully funded, but are a part of our everyday life? A community where artists, of all kinds, can work and play as artists. They can make their living as artists. How that could shape our community.

I invite you to read this report and assess its information. Not everything here is applicable to our community, but much of it is food for thought.


http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/PerformingArts/Publications/YouthReport.htm

A "Fair"ly Excellent Night

Last Friday, when the Greenville Forward team was feeling the Friday blisters and wanting to head out for the weekend, I got a bee in my bonnet about going to the Upper SC State Fair. I did my research online and became instantly sold...knowing I would get the chance to eat some cotton candy (a personal favorite) and see some local flavor that you can't find anywhere else.

Russell and Brock seemed almost shocked that I would want to go. Why would a Furman senior care to go to local fair? They both could not remember the last time they ventured out to the fairgrounds.

When I first pitched the idea to my friends, some were very excited like myself and a few were less than sure that this was a good idea. Perhaps a little too hung up on our supposed "maturity," it took some arm twisting to get a group to go. However, as often happens when I convince my friends to do something abnormal, they had a great time and thanked me for convincing them to go.

After getting lost along the way, we all started to feel the return of juvenile enthusiasm when we saw the lights of the ferris wheel and the sky exploding with fireworks. As soon as we got out of the car, our senses were overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and smells.

My good friend and talented photographer, Jonathan, immediately got out his camera and began to capture shots that provided an excellent representation of an iconic county fair. I have included a few of his favorite photographs with this blog post. If you want to see more of his work, you can visit his website, http://jonathanandersen.com.

Definitely the highlight of our evening was the scariest fair ride I have encountered...the Fire Ball--12 minutes of pure, unadulterated terror. We saw two people throw up while we waited in line. I think we all wanted to prove to ourselves that we could actually ride this thing that mimics what it must feel like to be inside of a washing machine.

Despite the feeling that my stomach was hovering outside of my body for most of the ride and screaming so much that I was hoarse immediately after, we all laughed so hard watching each other scream and cling to our seatmates out of complete fear.

You may be wondering why this experience was significant. The lesson I think I learned (and my friends, in particular, who did not want to go) is that you are never too old to act a little ridiculous and cling to youth. In fact, I believe that the attitude that you are never "too cool" or "too old" to enjoy a simple pleasure like the fair is what really helps to keep us all young.

So, enjoy the pictures that accompany this post and I encourage you to do something random and fresh the next chance you get. Even if you think you might not enjoy it, just go for it and I guarantee you will feel rejuvenated and refreshed.

How Do They Learn?...

I recently wrote a blog about my participation in Graduate Greenville’s Opening Doors to Success day. In the blog I discussed my experience as I went out and knocked on the doors of those students that didn’t come back to school. It was a very amazing feeling to help bring one of them back to school. I am really looking forward to keeping up with Matt and tracking his progress.

But, in the interim, I have really wondered what it would take to keep more kids in school. How do kids today learn? I mean, I’m not too far removed from High School. Okay…College days. It wasn’t that long ago that I had to traipse across campus with my books and a desire to learn. But, for the life of me, I can’t remember how I learned. What were the tools I used? What was effective for me?

So, as I asked my question, I searched to see if there were some answers out there. And, I came across a couple of video’s on YouTube.

Enjoy…