Neighborhood babies

It was so nice yesterday afternoon!  Calm and warm.  So I went for a little walk and got a picture of the two babies for you.  OOOOOOOOhhhhhh   they are soooooooooooooooo cute!

concerned and thankful ramble

Well, what's new you ask...  

Other than the fact that we have a pair of great horned owls roosting and I think two babies in the big hole in the tree?  Isn't that enough?  (When the babies are a little more visible I will share photos.  So far I have one pretty good photo of one eye with a bunch of dark grey fluff.  Not so impressive.)

I am fascinated by the fact that so many people are discussing different parts of the same issue.  Without even addressing any of the bigger (National, political) issues, the people around here are very concerned about How Ellensburg and Kittitas County will fare in the future.  With fuel prices skyrocketing, how will our local agricultural economy be affected... both in the cost to produce their crops and to get them to market, and what price is the market willing to pay?  How about the whole weird bio-fuel thing, which is great in that it reduces our dependency on fossil fuels, but the other, unforeseen, side of the coin is that we're now growing corn and other oily seed crops for that purpose, rather than using that space for growing food for humans or animals (that usually end up feeding humans).   How about the questions regarding delivering irrigation water to 33 individual land parcels that are 3 acres each, instead of delivering it to one (or maybe five) owners of that 100 acres?  

And this leads directly to a discussion of the future, where will we be in 10, 15, 50 years?  And will that be acceptable?  Who do you think will be county commissioners and city council members then?  Our kids?  Our grandchildren?  What are we teaching them?  Will they write letters to the editor, attend the meetings, get involved, become a fully participating member of ... whatever the community is at that time?  

This is turning into a ramble, but originally my point was to give kudos to EVERYONE that in some way is making a difference.  If you sit in front of the tube and play video games and eat junk food all weekend, you're not making any difference, and I'm not talking to you.  I'm talking to the people I see at the meetings, at the gatherings, the educational opportunities who are DOING THINGS and MAKING A DIFFERENCE!  It takes an amazing amount of energy for a few committed people to overcome collective apathy, and my hats are off to you.  You have earned my respect by continuing to model strength, perseverance and hope, setting a great example for many.   I hope you know who you are.  

Thanks tons.

Important Question #1

You guys are incredible.  We launched our monthly newsletter just yesterday and we have received a ton of email in response.  It's great to hear from you.

We didn't anticipate the need for a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page... but since there were several things that multiple emails wanted addressed, we decided that using the blog in that way would be one way of sharing information publicly.  AND we hope that it will start public discussion of assorted topics.  

Really, this blog shouldn't be all about me.  Except on alternate Tuesdays and Full Moons.

But to go ahead and clarify:

"What sort of activities do you list, and how do I get my stuff listed?" Events go in the EGP Expressions newsletter. Businesses that support the Expressions are listed in the EllensburgGreenPages directory.

In general, our listed activities focus around ways to improve the health of our little Kittitas County part of the planet.  We want to enliven the conversation started by others, the subject matter being environment, education and economy with a heavy frosting of "sustainable" and "community".   So, our EllensburgGreenPages events are pretty much about strengthening our community (the people and their connections to each other and this place), our local economy (which supports our community), and educating the public (informed is good). 

So far, almost all of our listed activities meet these criteria and are free to the public.  More or fewer events might be listed in the future, depending on space and timing.

But how...?  

Check out what's behind the "Get included" button on the header of the home page.  That explains a lot.  If you still have questions, then send us an email and we'll be happy to get you the information you need.  

Beautiful sunny day today!  I hope you all went outside and caught a sunbeam.  They are excellent for the mental health.

Until next time,

Peace out!

How's it going? Really good, only two glitches...

We recently sent an email to many of our friends asking them to take a look and send feedback about the EllensburgGreenPages website.  Thank you for your kind comments and to those who asked for specific information or had an event to contribute, extra kudos to you for getting involved! 

Our newsletter, EllensburgGreenPages Expression!  will be distributed in the next day or two, and has all kinds of fun and interesting information.  Connect to the links, get even more information, and in the case of local happenings, we really encourage you to participate.  Meet your neighbors, introduce your friends.

For those of you who would like to receive the free, paperless Expression! newsletter, send us an email.  We are temporarily having one or two technical difficulties related to getting a new thing up and off the ground, but the "submit" system glitches hopefully will be worked out soon.  If you sent a request through that system in the past couple of days, it didn't get here... and we don't know where it went.  Sorry.   So use the old-fangled email system to let us know about your events, subjects you'd like to hear about, swap stuff or green tricks of the trade.

We've also heard from a couple of people that are having difficulty reading the blog itself, because the text shifts, or spreads, or overlaps... somehow the lay-out goes wacky... which does not show on any of our monitors.  And seems to be temporary.  Never-the-less, we are looking into that, dealing with the eblogger folks and trying to fix that as well.

Did you notice that both of these malfunctions are due to mingling services/servers, and are out of our control?  All in all, things are going pretty smoothly.  

Despite the snow, it is spring.  Hurray for Spring!

Now get outside and do something constructive.  You can't sit here in front of the computer ALL day and expect to make a difference, can you? 

Have an awesome day, everyone!

Great e3 Experience

The Kittitas County e3 Regional Summit was wonderful. The point of the gathering was to get people involved in the process of making decisions regarding the future of our valley.  The three "e"s are:  Environment, Education and Economy.  All are critical to the well being of our society.  We met some really interesting folks, heard many, many viewpoints and were well taken care of during our seven-hour experience.  There were about 120 people in attendance, and after lunch we broke into smaller committees to wrestle with topics like "goals" and "action items" that would set the stage for getting to where we want to be in 2025!  The steering committee should be commended for all their hard work.  Just the fact that we were brought together here, now, working to make ideals into reality, and as a group, thinking this far ahead, is amazing.  Truly.  Good Job, E3ers!

What "green" means to us

It's amazing, really, when a business doesn't think they're "green enough" to be included. Well, of course, there are superior greens, and regular greens, and pale (aspiring to be greener) greens.  The thing is, that WE think, that if you are an established business person, who exchanges money for goods or services, and you do it here in Kittitas county, that makes you automatically more EllensburgGreen that a similar business, elsewhere.  Local counts when you have something wonderful to offer and it's home-grown.  We've also heard "I'm not downtown".  You don't have to be downtown.  You could be in Thorp, or Vantage or Cle Elum.

If you are in Kittitas County, if you are a local, homegrown business (not a chain) you don't have to be a superior green.  Your localness makes you greener, in our opinion.  You reduce the driving that customers have to do to find what they want. Just as important, it's likely that you support local causes (like sponsoring a women's softball team, or contributing to the Yakima River Clean-up, or organizing a food & clothing drive for the needy) that make Ellensburg the fine community it is.   

If you are some kind of chain, with a franchise here, then you do need to be really environmentally responsible to be thought of as "green".  Do the recycling, use recycled products, and support local environmental causes.  (So far, we aren't aware of national chains with a local franchise that meets our requirements...)

Of course, we encourage everyone to get greener.  It can only help. 

Hi, Welcome to the Grand Opening of the EllensburgGreenPages Blog.  Send us your events so we can keep everyone on the same page (the green one).