Monthly Archives: April 2014

Places and People We Encounter

Posted on by
Reply

by Molly Trueblood

575248_10102433597058918_1805685920_nAs much as I try to keep my life spontaneous, I tend to fall into patterns. Wake up at the same time, bike the same route downtown, mow the yard on a certain day each week, eat at the same restaurant over and over. Sometimes it’s easier to do just what I’ve done before.

But recently I’ve been apt to explore new places I’ve never seen before, like the Burdsall Parkway fire station, or the Eagledale neighborhood. As I bike through these unfamiliar streets, I wonder, where do folks who live in these neighborhoods gather? How do they build community and ensure cohesion? Where are the hidden gems in this neighborhood?

Ray Oldenburg coined the concept of the “third place,” a gathering place that isn’t home or work. This is a place where folks go in their neighborhood to relax and connect with neighbors such as a park, a pub, a library, a community garden, or a religious institution. These spaces create opportunities to encounter folks we may or may not have met before, to have discussions and to spark new ideas. They help forge new and stronger links between individuals within a certain location.

There aren’t many third places in my neighborhood. There are a few churches, a great park, a few places to eat, and a soft-serve ice cream shop. But wouldn’t it be great if there were a place where activities were going on almost all the time? Music shows, art classes, dances, spoken-word performances and poetry readings, cooking demonstrations, a community garden, activities for the kids in the neighborhood.

Places like these exist around Indianapolis – some great examples are the Harrison Center for the Arts, Murphy Arts Building, the newly opened Grove Haus. In all of these places, arts are the sturdy backbone of the location, encouraging experimentation, exploration and creation in and around their physical walls.

The arts have a proven track record of successful revitalization, from community-centered art galleries in Detroit to economic development in California. In fact, the idea of creative placemaking is taking off around the country. Art seems like a good place to start if we want to encourage participation by neighbors, community ownership, and creative expression.

Reconnecting to Our Waterways has received a grant to encourage creative placemaking in Indianapolis, particularly in neighborhoods like Mapleton Fall Creek and West Indianapolis. Indianapolis waterways have been both integral and overlooked in our neighborhoods and it’s time that we encourage people to creatively reimagine their waterways as places for art, nature, beauty and recreation.

You can help in the planning process by participating in a waterway committee. Check out more information here. How will you transform your neighborhood’s overlooked assets into destinations for gathering, encountering, and creating with your neighbors?

Molly Truebood is community organizer with the Center for Urban Ecology working on the the Indianapolis/City as a Living Laboratory (I/CaLL) project.

(Accidentally) Saving the American Chestnut

Posted on by
Reply

by Tim Dorsey

Burrs of the American Chestnut

Burrs of the American Chestnut

Recently I had the chance to intervene and save what might be an extremely rare specimen of an almost completely decimated population. It wasn’t due to my forethought or activism, but a case of extremely fortuitous timing.

My wife and I had just moved into our new house and our next-door neighbor was casually mentioning that his other-side neighbor was going to have her chestnut tree cut down over the coming weekend and he was going to salvage it for firewood. Apparently, the falling burrs (which contain the nuts) had become a nuisance to our neighbor each autumn when they fall.

My first thought was indeed to protest and try to save the tree—but not for what would prove to be the most important reason. I was excited about the nuts as a source of locally available protein and deliciousness, and proposed to take over the duties of collecting them when they fell, and not-so-urgently asked my next-door neighbor to pass on the offer.

The very next day I was giving a tour of the CUE Farm to several visiting students on Butler’s campus for an undergraduate research conference. Two of them happened to mention work they were working with one of their professors at Hanover College to breed a strain of chestnut tree resistant to blight. Immediately I recalled that chestnut trees had been severely affected by disease over the last century. I noted the unbelievable timing and mentioned that my neighbor was planning to have one cut down and was met with a collective ghastly outcry! They insisted I needed to make sure, but that there was a 99% chance that the tree in question was the entirely different species Horse chestnut, which folks also commonly refer to as “chestnut”.

As it happens, the once mighty American chestnut—comprising perhaps 25% of our Eastern forests—had been decimated by chestnut blight introduced in the early 20th century following its introduction through the importation of an Asian chestnut species. The American chestnut just hadn’t developed a resistance to the disease. Over the course of a few decades nearly all the American chestnuts in its native range were killed, and by some estimates there may be less than 100 specimens remaining (out of perhaps 3 billion!) at a diameter of 24 inches. [The species is not extinct in the native range, even other than the handful of larger specimens left, due to the fact that the stumps of the killed trees continue to send up sprouts, but these never reach reproductive age before succumbing to blight.] The chestnuts sold around the Holidays are usually from a European cousin or possibly from successfully grown American chestnuts grown out West where the organism responsible for the blight doesn’t survive.

I did in fact confirm from an old fallen burr and some fallen leaves that this was indeed an American chestnut. How or why it has survived is unknown but it may be valuable in breeding efforts due to the fact that it obviously has shown resistance to the blight. I feel privileged to live in its neighborhood! And I’m still looking forward to collecting those “nuisance” nuts in the fall.

Tim Dorsey is the CUE Farm manager.

Experience Nature Through Our Waterways

Posted on by
Reply

by Kelly Harris

Waterstride

Waterstrider

As the sun filtered through the leaves warming my back and the cool water flowed around my ankles, I stooped to watch water striders dance along the surface of the stream – this was a common occurrence in my childhood. I grew up on a 400-acre dairy farm that has woods with a spring feed stream flowing through it. I would spend all my free time outside and it was here that I my love affair with nature began.

I nurtured this love through school. I earned my Bachelors of Science in Conservation Biology and then a Masters of Environmental Science in Applied Ecology. Now, I work at the Center for Urban Ecology (CUE). I could have gone down a much different path if it wasn’t for all the opportunities I had as a child to explore nature.

However, you don’t need to live out in the boonies or in the woods to experience nature, it is everywhere, even in a city (see Tim’s post for a more in-depth look into the ecology of a city).  Along waterways is one of the best places to interact with nature, especially in an urban setting, for waterways are a mecca for wildlife. Waterways provide water, food, shelter, and corridors for wildlife. Indianapolis has a multiple waterways flowing through it that are brimming with life and possibility.

Indianapolis’ waterways have been overlooked and neglected for years. They have been hidden by invasive plant species, used as dumping sites and polluted with sewage. Over the last several years, the Indianapolis community has join together to change the perception and treatment of the waterways through the formation of the Reconnecting to Our Waterways (ROW) initiative.

ROW seeks to make Indianapolis’ waterways a community asset by “helping neighbors strengthen waterways, and in turn, helping waterways strengthen neighborhoods.” ROW is currently focusing on six waterways and their surrounding neighborhoods which are:

ROW takes a holistic approach to its work around Indianapolis’ waterways by integrating six elements. These elements are aesthetics, connectivity, ecology, economics, education and well-being. These elements function as lenses to craft solutions to problems and to developing projects and programs around the waterways. ROW’s holistic approach is essential to making Indianapolis’ waterways vibrant, safe and healthy destinations for people to experience nature in our city.

I feel providing people opportunities to experience nature no matter where they live – be it a city, the suburbs or a dairy farm – is a critical educational and developmental opportunity that could lead to better environmental stewards. As Baba Dioum says:

“In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we have been taught.”

So much of learning is through experience; you can’t learn about nature only through the Discovery Channel. You have to get out in it. Go explore one of Indianapolis’ many waterways and you might just see a heron, turtle or water striders. I have seen them all and more in Indy’s waterways!

Kelly Harris, MSES/ MPA, is an Americorps SPEA-VISTA Fellow at the Center for Urban Ecology.

The Future is Bright for Food System Change

Posted on by
Reply

By Nic Mink

ifcapple

Late at night, when I’m the last one left at the CUE office (heck, I’m the last one left in Gallahue Hall!), I crank music on Spotify. Loud, cheesy music. The type of music you sing along to by yourself, late at night, in the basement of an academic building, bathed in the blue hue of fluorescent bulbs and surrounded by piles of half-graded papers.

Tonight, the Five Stairsteps are in heavy rotation. They’re the group behind the funk-it-out, soul bending 1970 classic, “Ooh Child.”  Its political message is now largely lost, but its lyrics still resonate with people who recognize the tremendous opportunities that the future holds.

“Ooh child, things are gonna get easier. Ooh child, things’ll get brighter”

For food and food system change, the future is bright indeed! Citizens, entrepreneurs, policy makers, farmers, chefs—all of those people who make up the “food system”—are collaborating like never before to bring healthier food into communities and to create more just and equitable food systems. In the process, food is quickly becoming a catalyst for meaningful and lasting transformation in American society.

Look around and you’ll notice the way that people grow food and eat food is transforming, quite radically, right before our eyes. Eating locally and organically are no longer just buzzwords, but are now commonplace activities for many Americans. The number of community gardens and farms in urban areas are exploding. National policy makers are reinforcing this change through large-scale public investments. In the most recent Farm Bill, for instance, seed money for farmers’ market and local food promotion quintupled.

Locally, citizens in Indianapolis just launched the Indy Food Council, an organization that looks to build community around food and advance food system ideas and initiatives at a city-wide level. The City-County Council recently passed a Healthy Food Resolution that commits the city’s resources to building a better food system. Organizations like Growing Places Indy, Fall Creek Gardens, Indy Urban Acres, and Distelrath Farm—to name just a few—are growing both food and community here in Indianapolis.

These developments represent a groundswell and a seismic shift, but brighter, still, we must become.

Nicolaas Mink, PhD is the urban sustainable foods fellow at the Center for Urban Ecology.

Raising Recycling Awareness at Butler

Posted on by
Reply

by McKenzie Beverage

greekrecyclingPulling the top of a recycling bin off and removing the contents in the busy atrium of Gallahue Hall is not an atypical sight. Butler’s custodial crew sweeps through the building daily, transporting our refuse to places unknown by most. But pulling the top of a recycling bin off with a class gathered around to inspect the contents and removing each item piece by piece will certainly catch the eye of passers-by.

“Ew, that’s disgusting!” one of my students proclaimed at the sight of a Gatorade bottle filled with chewed sunflower seeds. “Why would someone throw a Snickers wrapper in the plastic bottle recycling bin?” asked another. “Why is there so much trash in there?”

When we arrived back in the classroom I asked them to pair up into teams and sort through items placed on two different tables. I prompted them with the question, “What is recyclable?” Some of the items included: a dry erase marker, Starbucks bag with old food inside, balloon, push pin, paper clip, iPod, battery, book, small bits of paper, Solo cup, electronics charger, CDs, etc.

One team separated the items according to what they thought was recyclable on Butler’s campus. They included the iPod along with the other non-recyclables. Roughly half of their items were deemed non-recyclable. The other team separated the items according to what they thought could be donated or reused in some way. They only had one item in their non-recyclable pile—a beat up dry erase board eraser. When asked what to do with old batteries and iPods, none of them were sure. They knew they shouldn’t throw them away, but they didn’t know where to take them.

As the first sustainability coordinator for Butler, I am tasked with answering those questions and coming up with solutions to raise awareness. My job is to bridge campus operations with academics and create learning opportunities out of our waste, our buildings, our food, our trees, etc.

My first big push as sustainability coordinator is focused on trash and recycling on campus—specifically awareness. People have very emotional responses to recycling—it’s tangible and it’s ingrained in us from a very young age. Although most people want to recycle, many of them, like my students, are unsure what and how to recycle on campus. Signage varies, bins are not uniform sizes, and bin placement is inconsistent.

After discovering trash in the recycling bins, one of my students noted that there weren’t any trash bins nearby. In fact, there weren’t any on the entire floor. This may seem like a strategy to increase recycling, however it more often increases contamination (trash in the recycling). If contamination is too high, all of the recycling will be thrown in the trash. This is one of the biggest complaints I hear at Butler and it fuels negative perceptions of the way our building services team operates.

As part of Butler Earth Week programming, a student group from my class will be performing a highly visible trash audit. The contents of a dumpster will be poured out in a well-trafficked area and an Anthropology class will assist sorting through the garbage. Students will gather data to determine the percentage of recyclables and food waste in the dumpster while simultaneously raising awareness about waste on campus and educating my students. This data will help me understand what is being pitched and inform my decision about what to target in an awareness campaign and on signage. If we see those Google glasses that Tim Carter threw away, we will be sure to reuse or recycle them.

McKenzie Beverage is the sustainability coordinator for Butler University.