Ashley Trull's blog

Blogging in MA now too!

Today I decided to change my blog so I can write about the day-to-day stuff in my life, kind of like journaling, so people (specifically Ally, who is in Spain) can keep up with what is going on in my life! It's for my benefit too of course. Maybe if  I write things down, time won't seem to escape so quickly! We'll see...

Anyway, right now I am in the library getting ready to work on my first paper for my class Climate Change, Energy, and Development on a climate science article about anthropogenic influence on climate change. Exciting!

I will post soon!

Happy 4th of July

Wow, I can't believe it's 4th of July! That means the summer is really 1/2 over. It also means that I've been feeling really sentimental and a little bit sad because I'm used to traditions back home (hanging out with family, barbecues, and Frye Island) that I really miss and wish I could be doing. But I won't dwell on that. Instead, I'll talk about what exciting things I've done since I last wrote.

Last Friday we had a jam-packed day. I was doing research and going to meetings for over 7 hours! It was a really long and mentally draining day, but I had a great weekend to recharge. That night I had a great dinner with Callista, Rio, and Eric and then hung out with our neighbors next door: Austin, Kate, and Joey. That night we went to a party at Kate's friend's house, and then went out for some late night food at Neighborhood Cafe. It was really fun!

Neighborhood Cafe

On Saturday I slept in, then went to a coffee shop and read for a few hours (and got through half of a book-- Ishmael, it's really great!) Then that night we went to another of Kate's friend's house for an amazingly delicious Indian food dinner party. It was reeeeally good!

On Sunday, we did some neighborhood flyering and dropped off letters and brochures to 250 houses in the neighborhood where we are doing our pilot project for Cooperative Energy Futures. The letters were from a neighbor asking if people are interested in being part of the community project to work on energy efficiency in their homes together.

This week was a pretty standard week of regularly scheduled meetings and work and research. On Tuesday night we had our first community meeting for Cooperative Energy Futures, where we got together with 10 homeowners interested in being a part of the pilot project and talked to them further about details, questions and concerns they have, what they'd like to see happen, and how they envision making this work in their communities. It was really positive and we got a lot of feedback about what people want to see happen with CEF. The challenging part about is that people are at all different levels and experiences with working on energy efficiency in their homes. Some people have already done the CFL bulbs, weatherizing, caulking, etc and are ready to make larger changes with insulation, while others aren't ready to put in the investment for insulation yet and want to see what savings they can make from just doing small things first. We're going to have to think creatively about how to find ways of bringing people of all kinds and interests together to help eachother. I don't think it will be too hard, and will be very rewarding for all.

We've also been having an on-going conversation at multiple meetings/discussions this week about our "messaging" here at Summer of Solutions and in all the work we do for this movement. Basically this means communicating about what we're working on in a way that people understand and also in a way that inspires people to feel like they can be a part of it, or help people realize that they are a part of it. We're not trying to think of a script or a motto in particular, but just trying to think out how to clearly communicate about the work we're doing and finding ways of empowering people to do more. It has led to a lot of great, and challenging, conversations about the bigger picture of what we're doing and also the potential to connect with more people and inspire hope about the future in other people. We're really excited about what we're doing and need to find great, creative ways to express that! It's strange to be writing about this because in a way I've been "messaging" since I got here when I tell everyone back home about what I'm up to. I guess just having these conversations has helped me realize that when someone asks me what I'm doing, I shouldn't just say "oh, some environmental stuff" or "you know, just saving the world," I should try to communicate clearly about what I'm really doing in a way that isn't alienating and actually makes the people I'm talking to understand and feel more connected to it. I am definitely going to strive to do that.

So I think that's all the excitement I have to report for this week.

Today has been a really relaxing day, I'm enjoying it because it is a holiday! A bunch of us rode into Minneapolis on the Greenway. I have to say, I really love the Greenway! We get to see all types of people out enjoying riding bikes and enjoying the beautiful weather. It makes me so happy to see old people, young people, people of all shapes and sizes, fast, serious, race-bikers, and slow, thoughtful, joy-riders. And we were really a Critical Mass of bikers today as we traveled in a pack of 9 to Minneapolis! So, we went out to lunch for our Environmental Justice discussion to a Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis and had some delicious food, but found it a little difficult to talk. So we postponed our talk about Food Justice to next week. Now I'm hanging out, getting ready to pit some cherries with Kate to make a cherry-strawberry pie, and in a bit I'll be heading off for a barbecue in Powderhorn Park, and then some fireworks! Yay! Hopefully it can make me feel a little bit like home, even though I know it won't be the same.

Environmental Justice Lunch

And here are some updated photos of what our apartment is looking like these days. Good news! We now have furniture (including chairs and a table, to all of you who were concerned). I have to say though, I miss the open space and lack of furniture. It was a nice change from the norm, and now I feel more normal.

Learning so much!

So I don't have many pictures to share for this post, but I do have some exciting things to share about what I've been learning and doing!

Since I last wrote, on Friday last week I went into Minneapolis for the first time in search of Mexican food! Me, Callista, Kate, Ruby, and Laura took the bus into Minneapolis and headed to Lake Street, a section which has a lot of Hispanic culture, markets, and restaurants. We had a lot of restaurants to choose from, so we walked into one that looked nice and small and interesting. So we walked in, and I noticed we got a couple weird looks from some guys sitting at a table. The place was small and there was no sign of a waitress or menus, so we just sat down. After waiting a couple minutes, no one came over, so I got up in search of menus to grab. When I started walking over, I was met by our waitress who was wearing a little cowgirl outfit and lots of make-up. Hmm....She then brought us our menus, which we opened to find lots of bikini-clad women showcasing food, which was all listed in Spanish, but from the pictures we could tell it was mostly seafood and meat. Considering 3 of us are vegan, we decided this might not be the best place for us and left. We walked down the street and soon found another place called La Poblanita which was a much better atmosphere and a great choice of food! I got a Gordita and we had some amazing guacamole and fresh-made tortilla chips!

On Saturday I went into Minneapolis again with Heidi and Callita, but this time I got to see more of it because we rode around on our bikes.

We headed into the city on the Greenway, which is like a mini-highway for bikes, and then rode the Light Rail (which is like the T) in the rest of the way. We got to see some great sights in the city! The only bummer was when Callista's bike broke down (her tire got messed up), but luckily we were about 100 feet from the only bike shop we saw all day when it happened! I don't think we could have been more lucky. We got some great food at a nice restaurant and then had a leisurely bike ride around and out of the city and back to St Paul.

On Sunday a bunch of us took a trip to Sibley's Bike Depot where we worked on our bikes and learned how to true a wheel and fix the brakes!

On Monday I went to my Experimental College class and learned a lot about energy efficiency and how much potential there is for easily reducing the amount of energy we use with pretty minor modifications and upgrades. Fun fact: most of the potential for reducing carbon emissions will come from increasing energy efficiency rather than generating clean, renewable energy. Also interesting to think about is the fact that more than half of the buildings that will exist in 2050 (a year that has been cited as a crucial point as far as reducing carbon emissions) are buildings that have already been built and exist today. So that really drives home the point that we need to focus on working with what we already have and not just thinking about how to build better buildings in the future. It was exciting because it's so relevant to the work we're doing with Cooperative Energy Futures, which is focusing on helping people make their homes more energy efficient!

On Tuesday, my excitement for the day was when I tried out a new Experimental College class called Body Appreciation through dance. It's a small class where we just do some exercises, stretches, and routines that draw from ballet, jazz, hip hop, and modern. It was so fun! And the instructor is really interested in eating disorders, so she teaches dance to help people love their bodies and not worry about what they look like but just be amazed at what they can do!

Yesterday, on Wednesday, I think one of the best things I did all day was talking to Callista and starting to do research about how we can bring these awesome projects back to our homes and to Worcester! We are looking for connections between what we're doing here and what could be done over in the east. We're researching economic development, green jobs, transportation, history, and zoning in Worcester to see what there is for potential or where we can be inspired to work with other people and envision awesome things for back home. We're talking about doing something like ARISE in Worcester for re-vitalizing a lot of the manufacturing that has been lost over the years, working on creating an Experimental College, and seeing if there's potential for energy efficiency projects in the city. It's exciting to think of how we can be inspired by the people out here to do incredible, transformative, and positive things once we get back to Massachusetts.

Last night was also great when Callista and I hosted a group gathering at our house. We had most of the Summer of Solutions group over for some of our famously delicious Vegan Flourless Banana Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip cookies and a check-in discussion about how we all think the summer is going and what we  think about Summer of Solutions so far. It was great to get everyone together and really hear how everyone is feeling and hang out in a space that is not work or project-centered. It made me feel really happy and generated a lot of positive feelings about how things are going with Summer of Solutions!

Today I had my first 1-on-1 meeting with a homeowner interested in being a part of the Cooperative Energy Futures pilot project. I basically just went to her home and talked with her for a little bit about her thought about energy efficiency, if she's had a home energy audit, if she has insulation, if she has any neighbors who might be interested, and what she envisions for the project and building community around it. She had some great questions and input, so it went really well! It's great that people are so excited about really organizing their communities and getting people together to make their homes more energy efficient to save money and reduce their carbon emissions. I think it's just such a win-win, people really want to be a part of it!

Well I'm getting sleepy, and I need to rest up because tomorrow is a busy day full of meetings from 10-6:30. Being a part of Summer of Solutions has really been like a full-time job! We definitely spend about 40 hours a week working on and discussing our projects! It sounds like a lot but the reason it's really great is because I'm loving what we're doing, we mix fun in with work, and the people I'm working with are just incredible.

Getting into the swing of things

Today was a gorgeous day in Minnesota! And now it's a beautiful night! I thought I'd take a moment to catch my breath and reflect back on the day/week so far.

This week has been really intense as far as really digging into the projects we're working on. It's really crunch time for both ARISE and Cooperative Energy Futures. For ARISE, we're each really focusing in on our research sections and spending a lot of time reading, learning, and sharing what we learned. I'm really taking in a lot about sustainable urban planning, livable cities, and low greenhouse gas designing. I almost feel like I'm learning more doing this project than I have in many classes I've taken because I'm forcing myself to learn it for something that is a real life, incredibly important project. I guess it's just a different kind of learning where I'm learning a lot quickly to fill an immediate purpose; I'm really loving it!

For Cooperative Energy Futures, we're spending the week calling and getting in contact with the 30 or so homeowners who have expressed interest in taking part in our pilot project for a community energy efficiency. We're each taking on certain members to contact and set up 1-on-1 meetings with to really explain how the program will work and talk about next steps. Right now, the biggest part is getting everyone to get an energy audit to see where there is room for efficiency improvements in their homes, supplying people with direct installs as a first step (little things people can do themselves to save energy: CFLs, water aerators, etc), and setting up a community meeting for all the homeowners taking part in the project to come together with us to answer any questions and figure out what people want to see in the project.

Tuesday and Wednesday were a little bit of slower days for me, so I took some time for myself to go running, read, write, and explore new parts of St Paul. On Wednesday I went for a bike ride down to the Mississippi River and found a trail that led from the road down to the river's edge. It reminded me of home, going down the trails to the Merrimack River, so I really liked it! When I got down to the river I found a little mini-beach where I hung out for a little while, wrote in my journal, and drew for a bit. It was really nice to have some relaxation time by myself.

On Tuesday night we had our usual group potluck and we had a guest come join us named Mary Morse, who works with a local organization that does similar stuff to Cooperative Energy Futures. We talked a lot about generational differences, technology, and how things are changing over time for better or for worse. It was a great conversation and a great meal!

Dessert Gathering-Solstice Celebration by the River

Today was a really hard-working day! I was in meetings from 10-5, with only an hour break for lunch, so it was a pretty intense and productive day. We really got a lot done with working on research for ARISE and really fleshing out the next steps for CEF and contacting homeowners.

Tonight after a hard days work we had a great night of fun! We all had dinner on our own, but then met up at 7:30 to head down to the Mississippi River and to have a dessert party. We set up on this great big rock overlooking the Mississippi and we had our amaaaazing desserts as we watched the sun set.

Dessert Gathering-Solstice Celebration by the River

It was beautiful and delicious! Then as it got darker we just hung around and then we danced and made music! Jason played drums on a bucket, while a bunch of the rest of us crafted instruments out of spoons, bowls, and water bottles. We danced for a while and had a great time! Then once it finally got pretty dark around 10, we all walked back home. What a beautiful day!

Week 2 come and gone??

Wow, I guess this week really escaped me! I thought I'd be blogging every other day or so, but it's been almost a week. I can't believe it!

Well there have been some really exciting highlights to this week.

Research

On Tuesday I did some research for the ARISE project about greenhouse gas calculations and ways of reducing greenhouse gases on site. It's really complex trying to figure out how we will estimate the emissions from our proposed mixed-use site, but I'm hoping to learn a lot about how to do these things because it will be incredibly important in development and planning in the future, as well as with what I would like to do. I'm reading and studying Life Cycle Analysis, which means calculating the energy used and the resulting carbon emissions from the whole cycle of something: what the raw products are, how they are collected, transported, and processed, what the manufacturing process is, how the product gets to the site where it will be used, how it functions on the site, how long it will last for, and in some cases, how it will be disposed or replaced. Yeah, that's a lot of pieces to consider! But it's important to take the whole Life Cycle into consideration when deciding on what is the most eco and climate-friendly product or building material to use.

Art Festival Meeting

On Tuesday we also had our first meeting about our public art project. We're hoping to organize an arts and music festival to creatively engage ourselves and the community. A lot of us are really into art or music in some form, so it's a really important part of us that we need to consider and use and develop! So our festival is going to be something that incorporates all of our different creativities and provides a way for others to be creative. It's going to be called Fest de Sol or Fest de Sol or Festi-sol or something like that. Should be exciting! I'm hoping to do some drawing in the coming weeks to see what I can contribute.

On Wednesday we worked a lot on Cooperative Energy Futures and did some real solid timeline planning for the project. Basically this summer we will be running a pilot project to show that there is need for or interest in this project of providing communities with energy efficiency upgrades in their houses in a cooperative and community-based model. We have a list of 20-30 homeowners in St Paul, organized

CEF Meeting

around Unity Church, who are interested in taking part in this pilot project! This coming week we'll be calling the interested folks and working on getting all the homes audited and scheduling 1-on-1 meetings with them to answer questions and get moving forward. There's a lot of work to do, but it's great to see that we're really laying out a timeline and getting the ball rolling!

Wednesday night we watched a really incredible Van Jones video about social justice and the environmental movement (or the broader movement for social change). Van talked a lot about inclusiveness, racism, privilege, class, and really paying attention to how we are transforming social structures and systems that have kept people divided based on race or economic status in the past. In the video he was speaking to a primarily white audience and really challenged them (and us and anyone watching) to really push ourselves to expand our comfort zone and change our own personal selves, actions, and thoughts in order to change society and work towards a more socially just and equal society. It was really intense and emotional and led to some great dialogues afterwards.

Friday my highlight was having lunch with the Environmental Justice discussion group where we talked about global environmental justice and some issues going on in specific places around the world, such as water issues in Lesotho, issues of displacement in South Africa, the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, and more.

Friday night I went to a barbecue at our friends' and fellow solutioners' house and had a great time just eating delicious food, hanging out, and dancing.

Mocha Cheeeesecake!

Ruby and Callista

Today I had a beautiful day! This morning Ruby came over and we baked a cheesecake for her birthday. Not vegan, but I was still happy to help! After that I had a Cooperative Energy Futures meeting with a couple members of the Unity Church to talk about the project (and I had the most delicious falafel ever at Shish, the local restaurant we met at!) After that, Callista and I rode our bikes to meet a bunch of our friends at a Lake in Minneapolis. It was a beautiful (probably 40-minute) ride over the Mississippi River, through bike trails and parks, and past beautiful scenery to a beach on the lake! We had a great time lounging in the sun, swimming, and hanging out. The water felt like bathwater compared to the Atlantic Ocean!!

Kate and me!

The Beach Crew

After riding home, Callista and I baked some incredibly simple and amazingly delicious vegan peanut butter banana chocolate chip cookies for Ruby's birthday party. We had dinner with our friend Laura who lives next door, then headed over to Ruby's. Everyone loooooved the cookies! They were so good!

We had a little scare tonight when the weather all of a sudden changed and it turned cold, windy, and stormy. Then the tornado sirens went off! I was scared, but everyone else seemed calm, so I stayed calm too. We just grabbed some food and games and drinks and headed down to the basement. A couple people called friends and found out taht that sirens were just a warning for severe thunder storms, so we headed back upstairs and resumed our game playing and eating.

Now here I am. Tomorrow holds some grocery shopping, research, book club reading, potlucking, and book discussion in store. Should be great!

Callista’s Summer of Solutions Blog - Vox

Callista’s Summer of Solutions Blog - Vox

http://www.callistarena.vox.com/

...are both excellent sources of energy, but I was actually referring to today's weather, which was absolutely beautiful. (If you really boil it down to the basics, all forms of energy on our planet are just sunshine in different arrangements. This is where the line between energy and matter becomes fuzzy and we begin to question all of reality. Intriguing.)

Pancakes, Books, and the World

Right now I'm just starting my day and it's beautiful and sunny out here in Minnesota. The weather has definitely gotten better recently, so we've been doing a lot more outside!

Rio and Timothy

On Sunday morning Callista and I rode to this cool local co-op called Mississippi Market which has all natural food for decent prices and it's a nice 1 mile bike ride away (and cheaper than Whole Foods!) After grabbing our groceries for the week, we headed over to our Ruby's house for a pancake breakfast. We got to hang out with a whole bunch of Solutioners/friends and make some vegan pancakes that were super delicious!

Kate Callista and Ruby after pancakes

Later that afternoon I took a walk with Kate and Cara to a small local library. It was reeeeally small, so it didn't have any of the books I was hoping to read, but I browsed around and found a couple good ones to occupy me. Later that night we had our potluck and first book group meeting where we talked about what we'll be reading as a group, so that should also give me more good stuff to read! We're starting by reading a couple chapters from the book Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken, which I've heard is awesome, so I'm really excited.

Potluck

That night we also had a serious post-dinner discussion about Safe Space in our group, talking about how to be inclusive, welcoming, and focusing on collective liberation (formally referred to as anti-oppression) as a group. It was really interesting and definitely a beneficial conversation to have.

Potluck

Potluck

Yesterday, we got back into our weekly schedule of meetings. Starting at 9:30, we had a meeting/info-share about national organizations, and most specifically Energy Action Coalition, which is a student-created national coalition that now is made up of about 50 organizations. It was very informative and helpful for thinking about how the projects we're working on may be tied in on the national level.

After that, we had a few other meetings about Cooperative Energy Futures and then also the Environmental Justice (which is going to be a dialogue/fieldtrip/action group).

 

Then yesterday afternoon from 3-5, we had our first working meeting of ARISE. In it, we all broke down into groups and decided which parts of the project we'd like to work on. The part I want to focus on is on-site greenhouse gas reduction and calculation. This will include researching options for residential density and design, roof design and ground level carbon sink grasses (grasses that take in carbon and can offset what is being emitted), and low greenhouse gas remediation strategies (ways of removing the toxins left over from the current land use that will not emit large amounts of carbon). We're also going to be trying to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from the proposed site with different scenarios and designs. This is a huge and difficult task because of the complexities with calculations and all the variables involved!! But I think it will be an incredible learning experience. I figure that soon everyone will be needing to calculate GHG emissions once reduction policies are in place, so it would be a great skill to learn and understand.
My second part of the project is to work on building community, within ARISE and Summer of Solutions, but more importantly thinking about ways the future community will incorporate gardens, wellness, skill-sharing, and sustainable labor and production. It should be really interesting!

The last thing I have to share is about my class last night. I'm taking an Experimental College class taught by one of the Macalester students in Summer of Solutions named Timothy. The Experimental College is a community-based "school" where anyone can teach or take a class, so every semester students, professors, community members, young people, old people etc teach a variety of courses (this summer there are about 20) on a wide range of topics from Climate Change to Health and Wellness to Bicycle Maintenence and so on.
 
So Timothy is teaching a class about climate change, development, and energy. I've taken a lot of classes on these topics already but I think it will be a new and amazing experience to learn from him and re-solidify what I know. So last night we mapped global warming and climate change on a large map, showing all the places that are already being impacted, what's happening, what is going to happen, and what certain tipping points are. It was incredibly depressing and overwhelming and horrifying, yet so important to know and understand! I've never had it taught to me that way before and it was great just to have that overview and the visual right there in front of me. Here, I took some pictures if you're interested:

Mapping Global Climate Change

Well that's all I have to share! Time to start today! I'm just about to head off to the library to start my research for ARISE about GHG reduction and calculation. I'm really excited!!

Finally some time to relax!

So it's been a crazy week, but these past couple days we've had a little more free time and time for fun stuff. Yesterday our day didn't start until 12:30, so I finally got to sleep a little more and I read for a while and finished my first book of the summer, Dharma Bums. Then we had a couple meetings. In the first one we talked about social movements, how to define them, if you can, if we are part of a social movement, and how we talk about being in a movement (if it's possible). It was really interesting and a little more theoretical than other discussions we've been having.

After that we went to another meeting with Lynn Hinkle from ARISE again to talk about specific projects we Summer of Solutioners will be working on. There are about 12 different categories of research and project development that are set out for us to take on this summer including working on on-site energy generation, building community, fundraising, public transportation, etc. I'm not sure which part I want to work on yet, but I'm interested in on-site energy generation as well as building community.

A bunch of Solutioners

Then following that we had a Cooperative Energy Futures meeting where we talked more about the proposed business model for the project and some organizational parts about the people involved and what different people are doing.
After 5 hours of meetings, we were finally on the weekend, yay!!! So Callista and I made dinner together: another delicious stir fry with black beans and quinoa! It was great! Then after that we headed over to our friend Ruby's house to hang out with some other Solutioners, just for fun! It was nice to play some games and just chill, especially since we've been seeing each other A LOT this week, but all in meetings.

Dinner time!

St Paul Farmer's Market

Bike ride to the Farmer's Market

Today we got up bright and early and met up to take a bike ride over to the farmer's market in downtown St Paul. It was awesome!! We had a gorgeous bike ride on some nice roads and got some great views of the city. And the farmer's market was awesome! It was huge and there were lots of great vegetables and plants and breads and people! It made me sad that there were so many beautiful plants and flowers, but I don't have a garden to put them in. Callista and I did buy some herb plants (cilantro-Mom's favorite!, curry, and parsley) so we're going to make a little herb garden on our back porch. After the farmer's market we rode around the city a bit and found some yard sales. We got a great planter for our herbs and a nice poster to hang on our wall.

It's been a great day! And the first day of nice weather we've had in a while!

Minnesota!!

Grand Ol Days

Our apartment building

Grand Ol Days

Riding bikes in St Paul

The Apartment!

The Apartment!

So here I am in Minnesota for the Summer of Solutions program! It's been an exciting first few days! I can't believe it's only been 4 1/2; it already feels like I've done A LOT. But I decided that it's really important for me to write down what I'm doing not only so I can remember what I've done, but also so that others know what I'm up to and the amazing work that's going on out here! So I created this blog for that purpose. I'm going to try to write a little bit every day and also include lots of photos!

The first few days we've spent really getting settled in Minnesota and doing all sorts of introductions and meetings and debriefings and updates and catch-ups and explanations, so those of us who came from elsewhere know what has been done so far and also what we will be doing for the next two months! And these are big projects! My mind was blown when I heard what the college kids out here have been up to. The main project I'll be working with, ARISE (Alliance to Re-Industrialize for a Sustainable Economy) was introduced to us yesterday in a couple meetings. First we met with Lynn Hinkle who is a long time worker at the huuuuge Ford manufacturing plant here in St Paul and union leader at the plant. He explained to us how the plant is being planned to be shut down in 2009. This is a major issue for St Paul, because the facility currently provides jobs for 2000 people! So, Lynn and others have stepped up to provide a positive solution to this problem, using a vision of sustainable community development. They told us all about their plans to create a mixed-use site on the huge lot that will combine housing, clean energy manufacturing, clean energy production, green architecture, public transit, retail, jobs, child care and elderly care facilities, etc. Basically they are designing a model sustainable community for the site! It's really a win-win-win situation because it's good for the city, good for the people, and good for the environment!

So we will be working on helping to design this project, doing research about community development, clean energy installations and possibilities, environmental and social justice, and holistic communities to try to make this plan as awesome as possible and a great opportunity that the city of St Paul could not pass up!

If you can't tell, I'm INCREDIBLY excited about this project! I got really excited and energized and even emotional hearing them talk about it because I know these types of projects are what we need. Also, it's nice to be a part of a project with people that have such vision and imagination that is so in line with what we all want to see our future look like.

So that was the big news yesterday! Today we worked on a couple different things. This morning we talked about another project called Cooperative Energy Futures, which is the proposal to create a business which will link up investors with community energy efficiency projects in the Twin Cities (and eventually beyond). The idea is that energy efficiency is REALLY helpful for people, but most cannot afford the upfront cost. So this business would be organizing communities of people and their homes to get efficiency future-fits (as opposed to retro-fits) in a more efficient and cost effective way since there are more people getting them done at the same time in the same location. Also, a big part of this project is getting investors to pay the upfront cost and the home-owners would pay back the loan over time (with interest) as they save money on energy bills. So we'll be designing a business plan to make this happen and work on getting some pilot projects off the ground to figure out the best way of organizing communities and attracting investment.

After the Cooperative Energy Futures meeting, one my fellow solutioners Kate ran a skill-share on public speaking. I'm really excited for her skillshare/classes because public speaking is one of my major weaknesses and I definitely need to improve. So 5 of us did the skillshare and she ran us through different exercises to work on diction, projection, and posture. It was so helpful! I learned a lot from this first class already, I can't wait for the rest!

Later this afternoon we went to another meeting for another one of the projects, WeCAN. WeCAN is going to be a web-based networking resource for environmental activists. The idea is to create a web site that combines ideas from Facebook, Google, Wiser Earth, and other networking sites to create a place for the environmental movement to quickly share resources, information, and connections! It's going to be really great and an important tool for finding people working on similar things or interested in joining together! I don't know a lot about computers and websites, so this one was a little harder for me to follow, but it should be really exciting to learn more about it!

Lastly tonight is one of our three weekly potluck dinners (they're on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays) so we all met at the house next door for dinner at 6. It was great! We had veggie stir fry, a beautiful salad with strawberries and blueberries in it, delicious baked tofu, a mushroom and veggie curry stew, and then for dessert a pineapple blueberry upside-down cake and nectarine rhubarb pie! It was so good!

After dinner we had a m eeting with the whole group to talk about scheduling, then when the meeting ended around 9, we all hung out and had a music jam session.

A great day! Even though it was really rainy and stormy with downpours, thunder, and lightning.

Here's some pictures from this week: our apartment, Big Stone (proposed) Coal Plant meeting, and the Obama rally