Newsletter Friday July 21 2007
From GreenWiki
Letter from Pete asking for support for the Water's Ecology Program, his work, and The Fieldhouse
Hey all! Attached is a letter that was initiated by a group of local neighbors. We keep hearing threats that the Fieldhouse will be torn down. The letter makes the case for restoring it to glory. Let me make the point more dramatically. Tearing down the fieldhouse means the end of the garden and ecology programs at Waters. It neglects a central reality about the origins and continuation of these two programs: they depend on the goodwill and volunteer hours of our gardeners and parents. The good spirit, the willingness to work in the heat and the cold, year after year, is a result of the welcome that people have felt at the school. Smashing down the fieldhouse, with all that it represents and the shelter it provides, including the greenhouse, hand built by volunteers and donated by the Botanic Gardens, and replacing it with some nebulous pre-fab attached to the school, will be the end of the garden and ecology program.
First amoung the volunteers is myself. I have invested a lot of time and energy in the garden project over the past 15 years. I find it appaling that the Board, the Alderman, and members of our own community feel free to endorse the destruction of the Fieldhouse without considering its effect on the garden and ecology programs. We have received lots of awards, grants and recognition for this work. But who actually does it? Who hauls the chips, and turns the soils, and pulls the weeds and builds the compost? Who volunteers to take the kids out to the woods and river and lake? Who pays for the buses? Where is the Board or City money that pays for this? If you are interested in continuing the work we have done here over the past decade, please contact me to sign the attached letter, or use your own initiative to stop the destructive chatter about demolition. It hurts me. It would not only be the Fieldhouse that was destroyed. Pete 463-8968
Here's the Letter to save the Fieldhouse and protect Water's ecology program
Organic Mosquito Management News: Repellent is in. Over $300 collected so far!
Thank you to everyone who sent money to help us buy the mosquito repellent! It arrived yesterday. Our interns have been going door to door reminding everyone to check for standing water so we don't let mosquitos breed and give the city reason to spray the pesticide which raises so many environmental and health concerns.
Please do remember to clean your gutters. Mosquitoes definitely do breed there. Please email us if you know of any standing water in the neighborhood. We'll leave a note and see if the property owner needs help cleaning it up. Also, if you have a referral for a good service for cleaning gutters, we'd like to know.
We can still accept donations for another order of mosquito repellent and to support our summer internship program.
Thanks for all of your wonderful support. Especially Pensacola. Three neighbors there donated when the interns went door to door!
Thank you to everyone who donated to help us buy the mosquito repellant, including: Lynn Peemoeller, April Jean-Baptiste, Craig Close, Tom Gianni, Beth Sholtis, Jerry Jaecks, Desi Leyba, Margaret Littman, Nancy Friesen, Anne Nolan, Mary Sullivan, Rachel Collins, Linnzi Hodel , and Sue Davenport. I hope I didn't forget any one.
Best wishes, and let's hope we can get through the summer as an organic neighborhood!
The Best 100 Reasons To Support Waters School!
Hello Everyone! I'm putting together a document for us to use to support our "Not One Cut" presentations to elected officials and decision-makers in the upcoming weeks. I'm thinking about utilizing "The Best 100 Reasons To Support Waters School..." format. I'm asking everyone to share some of the student achievement, community-building, personal stories, parental involvement, environmental stewardship and marketing successes that you've experienced to use as "proof" in this document. We need everyone's voice and talent in order to make this a truly impressive demonstration of all we do here at Waters. The bullet points will be a variety of award statements, informational facts and testimonials etc. Even if we end up with 50 reasons that will be good too. I'm going to try to have it completed for Tuesday's community meeting (at 6PM in the field house---come if you can!). Do you think you could share some Waters School success stories from your perspective? Examples: • 2007: Waters School Fine Arts Team presented Model Parental Involvement at the District-wide Fine And Performing Arts Magnet Cluster kick-off seminar at the Chicago Cultural Center. Waters teachers championed the merits of genuine parental partnership as a way to create thought-provoking curriculum rooted in students' everyday experience. • Waters School students' artwork is frequently displayed at community venues. Currently, 5th grade students' multimedia community-based artwork is exhibited at the Cambodian Heritage Museum, 2831 W. Lawrence Avenue, Chicago. • 2007: Hewlett-Packard Technology For Teaching Grant. Teachers garnered over $30,000 in new technology to utilize the most current methods to enhance student learning. Waters School was one of two Chicago Public Schools to obtain this national award. • Waters Teacher: "Waters School embraces innovative teaching practice that asks the children to create and interpret their own learning through cross-curricular explorations. Team teaching is encouraged and flexible scheduling is the cornerstone of our most successful programs." • 2007: Waters School Students collected over one ton of electronic waste from the school community in partnership with Computers For Schools. Students engaged the community in an advocacy campaign to inform their neighbors of the environmental dangers of electronic waste, both at home and abroad, especially in countries such as India, Nigeria and China, which receive the bulk of the world's obsolete technology. • Waters Teacher: "I love coming to work every day! Every day I create something new and meaningful with the children. Many days I walk home thinking, "This is why I became a teacher." • Waters School students participate in Chicago Metro Bilingual History Fair each year. Students have documented oral histories of family emigration from Guatemala, Bosnia and Mexico. Last year twenty-five students danced a Mexican polka as one of twelve cultural performances at this event.
Thank you for your help and support! Amy Vecchioni avecchioni@prodigy.net
Invitation from Pete Leki to help in Water's Garden Saturday afternoon and to come to the garden next Wednesday for a special event.
Hey All, Just to let you know that we decided to postepone the presentation of Bobby Sutton's retablo until two weeks from last Wednesday. The thunder beings suggested this to us and we thought it wise to comply. We hope to spread the invitation far and wide. The ceremony around it could help us focus our energy on protecting this sacred community space from some of the threats I have spoken to you about: demolition of the fieldhouse.
If anyone has time, I would like some help installing gutters (water collectors) on the fieldhouse this Saturday afternoon, at 12. There are other tasks as well, such as hauling mulch to the planting bed we dug up in the shade garden north of the auditorium. We will be planting some native banana-like trees there.
Kevin would you put this on the RN blast?
Cheers, Pete
Environmental Event in Lincoln Square: GREEN FEST AUGUST 4th: Volunteers needed
Coming up soon is the Green Fest. On August 4th people will be coming to tour gardens all over Chicago. We would like to offer people information on our group and some of the projects we are working on at information tables. Listed below are a few of our ideas. If any of these projects spark your interest, and you would like to volunteer your time to table for a three hour shift on the 4th, please RSVP and we will send you more information on times.
1.) Offering Raspberry Bushes A proposal from our recent “food issues” green dinner was to offer families raspberry bushes to families to grow their own food. We could get donations and public interest at a table offering a plant, information on its care, and on the local food movement. To make this happen we need volunteers to dig up and tray bushes from Water’s Garden at the next garden night.
2.)Mosquito RepellentWe will offer samples of DEET-free repellents and a sign up sheet to purchase them.
3.) Offering Native Seeds We will provide native seeds in packets and information on maintaining a native garden. Sign up sheets to join the native plant parkway pathway will be available as well.
4.) Sign up for our Contact List
Check our Calendar for upcoming events.
Friday night: Special event at the Nature Museum.
- Saturday: Food field trip to the Chicago honey co-op and City Farm AND Water's Garden workday (see above)
- Sunday: Free concert: neighborhood band: The Audians (Dorian's, Jonah's, Jake's, and Sima's band of original indie rock) is headlining (!) an all-ages show at the Metro on Sunday, July 29. Doors open at 6:00, the show starts at 6:30 with The Hedrons. The show is free with a ticket before 7:00, after 7:00 it costs $9; the kids are passing out free tickets or you can print them by going to www.theaudians.com. It's the first thing you see on the web site. If you have questions, call 773 561-5766. The band is hoping lots of people will come out to see them. It should be a really energetic, fun show. They have some new material. The Metro is at 3728 N Clark, a block or two north of Wrigley Field. Metro's web site is: http://www.metrochicago.com/.
(Dorian volunteered for Beyond Today a bit last summer.) For more information and many more events: visit the Calendar
More Activism Opportunities
This OxFam email is about how the Farm Bill will hurt farmers and rural communities and how you can help.
Time is running out for Congress to do the right thing on the Farm Bill.
If a few key representatives don't take a stand in the next few days, the House committee in charge of the bill is on the verge of selling out poor farmers at home and abroad with policies that could have devastating effects on rural communities. They could vote as early as this month.
Your representative is one of the critical few members whose votes will make a big difference. Can you please take a moment to call your representative today?
In order to make it as easy as possible for you to make the call, we have set up a toll-free 1-800 number with very simple instructions on what to say.
1. Please call 1-800-977-1912. 2. An automated message will give you simple instructions on what to say. 3. You'll be connected directly to the Capitol Hill switchboard. Please ask to be connected to your representative's office.
Be sure to tell the staff member who answers the phone that you are one of your representative's constituents and that you want a farm bill that reduces trade-distorting cotton subsidies that are driving African cotton producers and their familes deeper into poverty.
It will only take a minute, and a few well-placed calls from caring, honest people can have a tremendous impact.
Thank you once again for your support of poor farmers around the world.
Sincerely,
Tim Fullerton Oxfam America
This Environment Illinois email is about the recent dumping permit which was granted to BP. -J
I've received letters from many of you who were outraged to read this headline in Sunday's Chicago Tribune: "BP GETS BREAK ON DUMPING IN LAKE."
I want you to know that we're taking action to protect Lake Michigan from this needless pollution.
BP's oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana - located just three miles from the beaches of Illinois's Calumet Park - has been granted a permit to dump 1,500 pounds of ammonia and 5,000 pounds of toxic sludge daily into Lake Michigan.
For years, no other company has been allowed to increase dumping in the lake. It's essential - for the health of the lake as well as 3 million Illinoisans who drink its waters daily - that Indiana's Department of Environmental Management and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency withdraw this permit immediately.
We're calling on our Congresspeople to demand that these agencies withdraw BP's permit. You can help by asking your U.S. Senator and Congressperson to speak out for the Great Lakes.
To take action, click on the link below or paste in into your web browser: https://www.environmentillinois.org/action/protect-lake-michigan/bp-petition?id4=ES
BACKGROUND
Indiana's Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) has granted a permit to BP's oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana-located three miles from Chicago's south suburbs-to dump 1500 pounds of ammonia and nearly 5,000 pounds of toxic sludge into Lake Michigan daily. The ammonia's nitrogen will increase fish-killing algae blooms, and the sludge contains concentrated mercury, selenium, and other toxic heavy metals.
The agency will also permit BP to create the Lake's first "mixing zone," a dubious practice by which facilities directly discharge their pollution, dilute it in lake water, and call it cleaned up. Mixing zones are rightly banned on Lake Michigan. This exemption sets a terrible precedent and should not be allowed.
Lake Michigan's waters near Whiting and Gary are still healing from decades of abuse. Steel mills, a chemical factory, and the refinery-the nation's fourth largest- formerly enjoyed nearly unregulated dumping. Despite years of clean up, the area remains federally listed as an "Area of Concern" due to waters so degraded that beaches often close, the fish get tumors, and the water has an odor.
Since 2002, BP has used its "Beyond Petroleum" slogan and a new flower logo to sell itself as eco-friendly. Courting the Whiting business community, BP promised to conduct business in accordance with this aspiration: "no damage to the environment."
But BP is already one of the Great Lakes' worst polluters. And although a quarter-acre wastewater treatment plant could mitigate the new ammonia discharge, BP testified that there's no room for one at its 1700 acre refinery.
As the world's eighth biggest company, recording tens of billions of dollars in annual profits, BP shouldn't need unique exemptions from laws with which all other companies comply, and which were written to restore our polluted Great Lakes. Northwest Indiana is seeking investment, but BP won't even invest enough to avoid poisoning its water.
For the sake of Lake Michigan, for the health of its fragile ecosystem, and for the benefit of people in the four states that share its waters, BP must be denied its free pass to pollute. IDEM should reverse this decision or U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), should step in and stop it. Let's hold BP to its professed environmental standards.
We're calling on our representatives in Congress to demand that these agencies stop BP from despoiling Lake Michigan. You can help by signing a petition to your U.S. Senator and Congressperson urging them speak out for the Great Lakes.
To take action, click on the link below or paste in into your web browser: https://www.environmentillinois.org/action/protect-lake-michigan/bp-petition?id4=ES
Sincerely,
Rebecca D. Stanfield Environment Illinois State Director RebeccaS@environmentillinois.org http://www.environmentillinois.org
P.S. Thanks again for your support. Please feel free to share this e-mail with your family and friends.
