Mission

Welcome to this blog which is dedicated to providing a forum for a civil discourse on a variety of issues to try and make our society a truly better place for all. While the views expressed are strictly my personal opinions, please feel free to join in on these conversations accepting the premises that every attempt will be made to ensure that nothing but the truth be spoken and the truth be heard.




Sunday, April 25, 2010

PSST: "GO GREEN"

Years ago the story was told of a mother who would whisper in her son's ear each night she put him to bed "Be a dentist", with the fervent hope being that such a repeated subliminal message would become a reality.  Whether true or not is unknown, but the method is one that has been used effectively by advertisers for ages, and is still worthy of applying to other more timely messages. While not whispered, the message I repeatedly received this past week was "Go Green".
First, this past Thursday former President Bill Clinton spoke to the Downtown Little Rock Partnership (http://arkansasonline.com/video) on a variety of subjects but it his remarks about the environment on which I wish to focus.  Since one of his foundation's missions is to address climate change (the subject of a previous blog), he was promoting the concept of going green as not only being good for business but also helping revitalize urban areas.  In fact he cited his own Presidential Library which enjoys a platinum rating under the LEED's design rating system as being a prime example.  In addition he mentioned another initiative between his foundation and the State of Arkansas that will retrofit state buildings to improve their energy efficiency.  His message came within the same week I received a catalog from Office Depot devoted exclusively to GROW GREENER products.  Next, I caught the appearance of Josh Dorfman on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program who was promoting his Lazy Environmentalist movement.  For anyone seriously interested in the environment and learning more about what part he or she can play to protect it, I strongly urge you to go to his website at http://lazyenvironmentalist.com.  I think you will be very impressed with the breadth of topics it covers, as well as the numerous links it contains to other interesting and relevant sites.
For instance you can link to a March 8, 2010 U.S. NEWS article by Maura Judkis entitled "10 Ways to Save by Going Green".  I won't list them all, but three of my favorites were Flip the Switch, Get Paid to Recycle and Conserve Water.  Picking up on the second point, another great link was to http://gazelle.com which specifies what products destined for the dump you can actually sell (e.g. cell phones, printers, etc.), calculates the prices and gives all shipping instructions.   And then there was a totally separate website I stumbled on at http://tightenuparkansas.org that gives a whole host of information about what one can do to make his or her home more energy efficient, and at the same time benefit from some immediate incentives to do so.  Finally, on a personal note, I want to mention a very special website http://brightbuiltbarn.com which chronicles the amazing story of a friend and her husband who joined with a group of other environmentally committed individuals in Maine to construct one of the world's only carbon neutral buildings that produces more energy over time than it consumes.  We all could learn from this cutting edge project, so please visit their site and begin your education now.  In short, it was a very "green" week for me.
Coming full circle, there is a ton of information out there to improve the environment just for the asking, but none of this is going to happen until the awareness level is raised in everyone's mind about the environment and what we can all do individually to make it better.  In other words, consider this week's blog my whisper in your ear:  "GO GREEN".

ARTISTS
Laura Raborn at http://paintingsofhome.com and http://claygifts.com


Jim Johnson at http://yessy.com/jimjohnson/gallery.html

Russ Powell at powellphotos.com 

Linda Flake at http://lindaflake.com

GALLERIES

Local Colour Gallery at localcolourgallery.com 

Chroma Gallery at chromagallery.com 

Cantrell Gallery at cantrellgallery.com 

Greg Thompson Fine Art at gregthompsonfineart.com