Today the cold harsh reality of my country’s cry for help came to full blows.  Today I was turned down for a story on what I do because of my “political ideology”.  I guess that my love for sustainability cannot be promoted if I love liberty and free markets. (SIGH) Oh wait a second, that is the ONLY way it would ever be sustainable – if we are free and able to make money!!

So apparently being grouped into the conservative camp bans one from loving recycling, clean energy, and organic food?  I don’t think so, but what do YOU think?  Can one love liberty and free markets and at the same time want to save the environment and support local food systems?

I have always believed that loving our country and loving sustainability go hand-in-hand – regardless of if you are liberal, conservative, or whatever is in between – has that changed?

We would like to hear from you…

This was the project we were given, to make something good. Our professor Val Veirs is the one who challenged us with this. Val is returning to Colorado College just to teach Introduction to Global Climate Change. As it turns out he helped build the first environmental science classes at CC and the environmental science major. Throughout the class we were asked to think of creative ways to communicate to people of our generation the concepts we were learning in class. At the end of our three and a half week block (CC is on the block plan as you may know), we were asked to implement as many of these ideas as we could. Our class project for a class of 24 people was underway. We wanted to create a way to bring all of our ideas together.

Thus we have a website devoted to creative communication of Global Climate Change. This includes a rap music video, as well as several other silly videos, a forum to discuss skepticism, information about what we can do to become greener, and several of the papers that we wrote for the class. The website is called Making Something Good: Walking the Green Talk. Every member of the class took part and it seems that we all were able to bring something different to the table.

We each had different interests, talents, and backgrounds. I was able to play a small role, but in the end we came up with a great product that seems so important. While this website may be the basis on which we build, our group has done other things to appear to our generation. This includes making a YouTube channel to display our videos, and a Facebook groups to gain more support. And to top it all off, we did this all in a week. If you want to find out more, please visit www.makingsomthinggood.com, or go to our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/coloradocollegeev128.

“Making Something Good” is dedicated to motivating the millennial generation via collaboration and education to become more responsible environmental citizens and providing practical solutions for a more sustainable tomorrow.

Come and check out the great lineup of vendors that we have for the 2nd Annual Loco for Local Evening Farmers’ Market at the Arts Center in Pueblo, Colorado.  We have delicious local food, music and entertainment, as well as local arts!

Check out the entire event-flier HERE—>>> L4L 2010_Event Information_5.9.10

Here are our vendors to-date:

It is that time of year when you are beginning to feel Spring in the air (except in Colorado where it was snowing today), and that means time for planting.  As I watch the baby calves, chicks, ducklings, and kids (goat-youth, that is) frolic around in the warm air, I am inspired to again try to grow something.

Hopefully you are too, and you are most likely better at it than I am.  So please send us your stories, as we would like to incorporate them here, and in our publication.

I had found a couple of websites dedicated to saving seeds, specifically heirloom varieties, you can read that post here: Seed Banks – Saving History & Agriculture.

It’s important to support local, and it is also important to support companies and businesses that garner sustainability.  Support companies and organizations that protect agriculture and embrace sustainability by avoiding practices that have to do with the genetic modification of our food.

-Tisha Casida

Wow, this health care reform bill is exciting, such big changes to our health care system. OH wait it really seems to be a reform for better ways to pay for insurance, not to really improve our Health and wellbeing. I am not sure, nor is any one else, what this reform will truly bring, we can theorize and debate until we are blue in the face, but the truth is we will not know how it will truly work out until it is implemented in to our lives. Then we will know. One thing I do know is that to really reform our health care system, we need to start at home, “We The People” are the only ones that can really improve our health care.

We need to start at home, we need to make the effort to make positive changes in our health and create a Wellness System not, a wait-until-you’re- really-sick system. What if we used our wonderful technology as the emergency backup system for our health and we depended much more on natural means for maintaining our heath? Mankind has used natural healing since he has been on earth, it obviously works, we are here. Ancient man has survived unbelievable health concerns and for the most part he only had the human touch and his healing intentions to help him get through it. Those benefits are still here today, most likely called alternative/complimentary medicine, (a more natural way of healing and maintaining our health). What if we all used all the natural sources of healing first, then if needed progress to the use of our modern technology.

Read the whole story on Page 7 of That’s Natural! Quarter 1, 2010 – here:  http://issuu.com/ThatsNatural/docs/tnq1_2010_web

“For children, nature comes in many forms.  Unlike television, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it.  It (nature) serves as a blank slate upon which a child draws and reinterprets the culture’s fantasies.”  This begins Richard Louv’s appeal in “Last Child in the Woods”  to recognize that children are losing their connection to nature through their increasingly limited experience of being outside.

Richard Louv received the 2008 Audubon Medal and has coined the phrase “Nature Deficit Disorder” to explain the effect less contact with nature has on children’s’ mental health.  Louv is the co-founder and chairman of Children & Nature Network, an organization dedicated to getting children back into nature.  As well, Louv’s writings have inspired the “No Child Left Inside Act of 2009”.  Imagine having to legislate that children have the right to be taught “environmental literacy,” nature and healthy living?  While mainstream education has all but eliminated any connection between students and nature, almost all “alternative” educators recognize the necessity of unstructured exploration at nature sites to insure that students are equipped with creative problem solving skills. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned here?

Find the rest of the review on Page 8 of That’s Natural! Quarter 1, 2010 here: http://issuu.com/ThatsNatural/docs/tnq1_2010_web