[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKQw0-IlJiY[/youtube]
Archive for June, 2008
The Rise Of Disk Golf: A Greener Alternative
Golf as an American sport is in decline. According to the National Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association the number of people who play ‘ball’ golf has gone down from 30 million to about 26 million in the past 8 years. A New York Times article this year points to time as a critical factor. Walter Hurney, a real estate developer and golf aficionado said:
“There just isn’t enough time. Men won’t spend a whole day away from their family anymore.â€
Disc Golf however has been on the rise. Named the fastest growing sport in America, in the past 30 years an estimated 12 million people have played the game. The Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) has around 12,000 members, and disc golf courses are popping up in every state.
Created in the 1970’s, disc golf has inherited much of its lingo and rules from ‘ball golf’. The difference is that instead of a ball and clubs, disc golf uses a flying disc. The goal is to throw the disc from a tee, across a fairway to a ‘hole’, which is usually a suspended metal basket (as shown in picture). The player with the fewest strokes or ‘throws’ at the end of the game wins. Yet that is where the two sports begin to part ways.
“My dad can’t understand why I don’t play golf,†said Chris Aruin, the club secretary of the Richmond Disc Golf Club in an article this week from Eastern Progress. “He knows I like nature, but a golf course is fake nature. This is the real deal.”
Indeed, Golf courses can require tremendous upkeep, resulting in high ‘greens fees’. Disc Golf courses by contrast are adapted to their surroundings. An empty lot, a wooded park, or any other underused area of land is a potential disc golf course. All you need is a place to stand, a disc and a basket. In creating a disc golf course there is no need to water, fertilize, or change the landscape.
Take a walk in the woods along a disc golf course, and you might not realize you are in the middle of a playing field until you hear ‘FORE!’ and the sound of discs bouncing off of trees. The PDGA website serves as the primary gathering place on-line for disc golf information and has a comprehensive directory of disc golf courses.
Disc golf inherently has a low environmental impact, and the PDGA Environmental Committee works to organize potential impacts of existing and proposed courses. However, for such a green sport there is little in the way of ‘green’ gear, certainly an opportunity the entrepreneurial TreeHugger audience could fix.
From personal experience I can guarantee disc golf is just as challenging as the more traditional game. And with the low price of entry to courses (most often free), and inexpensive gear to get started, the game fits into any budget. Getting outside with the family for a game of disc golf is something everyone can participate in; it is easy to do, easy on the budget, and easy on the planet.
So, pick up a disc and give it a go. Don’t forget to learn more tips about going green in the outdoors with TreeHugger’s handy How To Go Green Guide for Outdoor Sports. Disc golf action image credit goes to formatc1.
Source obtained from Treehugger
Amazingness – An Exhibition About Urban Nature
What is Amazingness? According to photographer and environmentalist Anna Hillman it is the tiniest unexpected nuggets of nature that can be found in our urban environment when we chose to open our eyes to them. The concept of ‘Amazingness’ has been featured on these pages before with Hillman’s Goldsmith’s Design graduation project of the same name. Three years on and we find the Amazingness project still evolving in London’s Viewfinder Photography Gallery. This exhibition combines new work by Hillman, all shot in London three weeks before the opening, with photos of ‘Amazingness’ that people have sent into her from around the world and images taken by children in a series of workshops that the artist has led.
Collaboration
During the exhibition Anna Hillman has continued working with children, from 8-13 years old, with a couple of workshops called ‘Photography: Discover your Urban Wonderland’ and has even asked visitors to her show to participate with their own work. She says “I think the participation aspect of the exhibition is really interesting and people seem to really like it, and it’s really important to me in terms of the whole amazingness project… Also there are hidden photos in the exhibition to find – which make it look like there are little plants growing out of the inside of the actual building etc. And there is a map which shows where the photos were taken so you can go and look for them and check on the progress of the little plants for example”
Spreading Amazingness
Hillman would like visitors to take their participatory efforts into their own neighbourhoods and offers each person a little packet of wildflower seeds as they leave the exhibition which they can sprinkle in the cracks of walls and pavements on their way home.
Beauty is in the Details
We find Anna Hillman’s work so inspiring because it encourages everyone to open their eyes and see beauty even in the most delapedated of urban environments. There is a message in here for all environmentalists. While the bigger picture maybe be depressing and rather overwhelming there is always positivity and beauty in the details.
Amazingness – Viewfinder Photography Gallery
Linear House, Peyton Place, London, SE10 8RS
Through 6th July 2008
Source obtained from Treehugger
One World, One Dream. Free Tibet 2008
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Yvon Chouinard: Return To The Outdoors
[youtube width="497" height="425"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrYa3qkeu-I&eurl=http://ecoist.ca/?p=23&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
I love this video of YC. It shows him in his element — fly fishing and rock climbing at a secret spot in Argentina — and contains words of wisdom like, “[Fly fishing] is not about catching fish, it’s all about adapting yourself to where you’re worthy of catching a fish … it’s about the fish catching you.”
Obtained from The Cleanest Line.
June 18th Global Day Af Action
No Torch in Tibet! Stop the Crackdown! Media Access to Tibet Now!
On June 18th, Tibetans and supporters worldwide will participate in a day of action to protest the torch in Tibet, speak out against China’s ongoing crackdown, and demand immediate press access to Tibet. Join us.
Materials and Resources:
Download a poster for the June 18th Day of Action
View a sample media advisory for the June 18th Day of Action Get an image to post to your Facebook/Myspace/Hi-5 profile (right/control-click to save)
View confirmed locations and coordinators for the Day of Action
For more than a year, Tibetans and supporters have vigorously demanded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) do the right thing and cancel the torch relay through Tibet. But the IOC has stubbornly refused to heed our calls and hasn’t even pressed Beijing on the basic commitment it made to press freedom in its bid for the Olympic Games.
Even though we can’t stop China from provocatively parading the torch through Tibet under clampdown it’s critical that we SPEAK OUT when the torch arrives in Lhasa and display our solidarity with Tibetans in Tibet.
The torch is scheduled to arrive in the Tibetan capital Lhasa on June 18th or 19th. Chinese authorities have already escalated repression and tightened restriction of movement in and around Lhasa in order to prevent protests during the torch relay.
For the Global Day of Action:
We are encouraging protests and actions with a strong visual component to highlight what is happening in Tibet right now and what could happen when the torch goes there. Tibet activists are planning powerful political theater: Olympic torch runner over bloody bodies, die-ins, mock-beatings, people dressed as monks and nuns in chains, Chinese troops and police, and symbols such as the Olympic torch as torture device, Olympic rings as handcuffs, prison bars… click here for some helpful tips for staging your own political theater.
In New York in front of the Chinese Consulate, a group of New York-area Tibetan high school and college students are planning to ritualistically shave their heads in solidarity with Tibetan monks and nuns who have borne the brunt of China’s brutal crackdown in Tibet. Click here for a video of young Tibetans shaving their heads last month as part of a powerful solidarity ritual protest.
The torch will also stop in the following Tibetan areas:
- June 11th: Shangri-la (formerly named ZhÅngdià n, a town in Dechen Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture recently re-invented by Chinese authorities as a Tibetan tourist ‘paradise’)
- June 18th or 19th: Lhasa, Tibetan Autonomous Region
- June 20th-22nd (approx dates): Gormo and Kokonor (Ch: Golmud and Qinghai Hu – Tibetan regions in what China calls its Qinghai province) and the border town of Xining (only 2 hours drive from the town of Rebkong where on April 17th, over 100 monks were detained and beaten by Chinese authorities)
When the torch arrives in Lhasa, we want to make sure that we speak out strongly and in a compelling and powerful way. As Chinese authorities have pledged to be merciless to Tibetans in Tibet who dare to speak out during the torch relay, we must raise our voices even higher.
Day of Action Locations & Coordinators:
More locations, details, and Day of Action Coordinators will be listed soon but here some coordinators that are already confirmed. Get in touch with these people if you would like to participate in an event near you:
International:
Canada – Tsering: tsering@studentsforafreetibet.org
United Kingdom – Pema: pema@sftuk.org
India – Shibayan: shibayan@studentsforafreetibet.org
Jess: jessica@studentsforafreetibet.org
USA: New York – Kala: kala@studentsforafreetibet.org
San Francisco – Thupten: thupten@studentsforafreetibet.org
Boston – Jordhen: jorden00@hotmail.com
Washington DC – Rich: dalias@aerial.fx
Seattle – Karma or Tenzin Kalden: info@SeattleTYC.org
Los Angeles – Namgyal: namgyalkyulo@yahoo.com
Obtained from Students For A Free Tibet
Remove Stupid Rules For Going Green
Even Al Gore had to fight to put solar panels on the roof of his house, taking extra time, money, and a lot of abuse from the right whiners. In fact there are all kinds of zoning bylaws, condo rules, homeowners associations and even building code rules that make it harder to go green. In Arizona, with 300 days of sun per year, they just passed legislation to prevent homeowners associations from stopping solar panel installation. Illinois state Democratic Rep. Karen May, a sponsor of a “solar rights bill” says “If you’re going to have local governments and condo associations saying, ‘Solar panels are ugly,’ that’s a real stumbling block.”
USA Today tells of one family that wanted to outfit their roof with solar panels. The local homeowners association, the Burke Centre Conservancy, was “flat-out against it” because of worries about how it would look, James Draheim says. His reaction: “You’ve got this energy just falling on your property and you’re not allowed to use it because of aesthetics?”
Now eight states have “solar rights” laws to prevent lower levels of government from restricting the installation of solar power. But even in California, the first state to have such a rule, people are still fighting with buildings departments. Although the law says that local officials can only look at “health and safety” issues, planners in Pismo Beach say that nothing in the rules prevents the City from imposing height limits on solar installations.
In much of the world, every house has a solar water heater; here they are hard to find. No doubt if you went to install one, the local zoning examiner would question its height, the structural examiner would want a load calculation, the plumbing examiner would demand endless calculations and a separate conventional heater just in case the sun went out.
Big Step in Building: Let’s have national regulations that remove all restrictions and covenants limiting the installation of solar hot water and photovoltaic systems from housing. ::USA Today
Source obtained from Treehugger
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