Super Summer Update

There are going to be sooo many changes soon! One of the biggest is that I am going back to school! The Department of English at the Home of the Florida Gators has seen fit to offer me a teaching fellowship so that I might get a Masters in American Literature. And I accepted! That means, as of July 23rd, I will no longer be a library assistant at the university. I will be something else entirely. I'll have to change the "About Me" on the blog.

The other big news is that I have decided to put my blogging skillz to good use -- yes, even better than this blog! I have "adopted" Senator Bill Nelson of Florida as my senator to track as he comes up with a position on the Climate Bill sloshing through the Senate right now. This is all part of my participation with the DailyKos GreenRoots bloggers. I've been working with the NNSL Communications Committee helping to get the word out on Daily Kos about Netroots Nation in Second Life this August, and fell in with a great group of green bloggers. These people know what's the happity-haps about all this climate change stuff going down; I feel humbled and honored to help with their efforts to bring strong legislation to our nation, our children, and our children's children, to stem the rising tide (bad pun) of global climate change.

You can help by subscribing to my posts on DKos, where I blog as "sewenviro" and then, when you see a post come up, please rec and comment!

Need-a-Bag Project Update 07.11.09 Miracles!

Note: The Need-a-Bag? project was created to promote sustainable bagging at the Hwy 441 Alachua County Farmer's Market each Saturday morning. We supply reusable tote bags reclaimed from thrift stores and garage sales. The Need-a-Bag? project also utilizes old tank tops as tote bags by sewing up the bottoms (these are called t-totes). We invite you to read the other posts on the project by clicking the "Need-a-Bag? Project" label at the bottom of this post.

Of course, the one time I don't bring my camera, and we have a Need-a-Bag? project miracle! We were low on bags; I had dug into my stash of polyprop bags to add to the paltry amount we had, but knew it was not going to be enough. And then, to our great surprise, there were about TWENTY bags hanging on the fence when we arrived. I kid you not! I don't know who put them out, but they are a Need-a-Bag? project Angel! Bags were bestowed and multiplied and all shoppers were sated with their tote bag needs, and it was good!

The Kickstand Helping Hogtown!

On one of the few times during the summer when I read The Independent Florida Alligator in its dead-tree edition, I stumbled on an article that I was not only glad to read, but thought I'd swipe for the blog.

The Kickstand (featured in the Hogtown Links section of this blog) is an independent organization that helps people learn how to fix their bikes and does educational gigs around the city's public school system, teaching kids about bicycle safety and the value of wearing a helmet. They were featured in an article in today's Agitator, for their work with UF graduates to repurpose some old bikes they bought from the UF campus surplus, the deep abyss where all abandoned bikes and cars go when they're left on campus for too long. At around $5 a pop, the old bikes were refurbished, to be given to area residents who can't afford their own two-wheeled transportation. This is the kind of stuff that people go to heaven for, I think.

I've railed in the past about bike mechanics, but The Kickstand is one of those selfless, local-yokel organizations that makes up for every snarky mechanic in this god-forsaken bike town. Thanks Kickstand, thanks good-samaritan college students, and thanks to the Agitator for putting this on the front page!

Sierra Club Trails

Sierra Club is launching its newest online feature, Sierra Club Trails. I gave it a try, since I'm already a member of the Sierra Club, and added the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail State Park trail as the first local entry. It's a cool feature, and hope it gets more hits from our area. I thought it'd be like Bikely, where you can map your bike routes, but it's more of a straight-forward, here are the specifics of the trail, how to get there, etc. I like how it lists the difficulty level of the trail, the different ways you can experience it (bicycling or hiking), and differentiates different features you're looking for, like bird-watching or wildlife-watching. The site was fairly easy to navigate and I didn't have too much trouble getting the trail listed.