We had a great January candidates forum at Blue Water Bay – thanks to Shawn Sheppard and Jason Fults, as well to all of you who joined us! And now it’s time for some more fun next week…

Green Drinks (www.gogreennation.org/category/green-drinks/) will be held 6 – 8 p.m. Feb. 1 at Cafe C, 424 Northwest 8th Avenue – opening this night just for us, so please come hungry and thirsty!

The UF Office of Sustainability is sponsoring Green Drinks this month as a kick-off event of their month-long Food For Thought series highlighting sustainable and local foods. The evening will be co-hosted by Cafe C, a sustainable restaurant owned by Celebrations Catering, in celebration of our partnership with Celebrations to use their lovely Villa East (301 N. Main) as our venue for Cinema Verde (Feb. 24 – March 2).

Cinema Verde NEWS

ATTEND AND ADVERTISE: Our plans for Cinema Verde are evolving rapidly. We’ll have fairs to “Celebrate Nature” and provide “Sustainable Solutions” Feb. 24 and 25, and we invite environmental organizations and sustainable businesses to participate. We’re also creating our program and Sustainable Business Directory, which we would to be as comprehensive a resource as possible – please let us know if you’d like to be included. Details on our schedule and program opportunities are here: http://www.verdefest.org/2012-cinema-verde-schedule/

CHECK OUT OUR FILMS: While we won’t be releasing our full film schedule until the end of January, we have posted links to a few films we plan to include. Directors and principals of many of these films would like to attend – please help bring them in by making a donation to cover their expenses! View the trailers for these films and donate here: http://www.verdefest.org/2012-cinema-verde-schedule/

FREE TICKETS!! Wear your Cinema Verde t-shirt around town, and if we see you we’ll give you a free ticket to one of our films! We’re selling tickets online and at the Wednesday Farmer’s Market, where you can get a shirt, too!

We welcome support of our 2012 festival, which is just around the corner, Feb. 24 – March 2, 2012. There will be tabling and booth opportunities for environmental organizations and businesses during our opening weekend and also during the week at individual films.

Please let us know if you’d like to let us help showcase your sustainable initiatives! Call Trish Riley: 352-327-3560… thank you!

Best,
Trish*–
Trish Riley, Director: Cinema Verde Environmental Film & Arts Festival
www.CinemaVerde.org, PO Box 358711, Gainesville, FL 32635, 352.327.3560
Cinema Verde is a Florida not-for-profit corporation designated as a 501(c)(3) public charity by the IRS: Contributions are tax deductible.Thank you for your support!
Publisher: www.GoGreenNation.org

Here’s another interesting story I wrote this year..what a cool biz: Recycling humans and animals!-tr

RTI Biologics employs 700 people worldwide, 500 of these at the Alachua headquarters. The spotlessly clean facility operates 24/7, with receiving facilities always ready for gifts of human donated tissue, which are quarantined in freezers on first arrival, while testing and screening is conducted to determine if the tissue is safe for transplantation. The tissue is shaped into its final form, then sterilized through one of RTI’s proprietary tissue sterilization processes before being distributed to surgeons worldwide.

via An issue of tissue | Evolution Online.

Sowing the Seeds of Ecotourism in Haiti’s Rugged Terrain

By Aleks Bacewicz

After last year’s notorious earthquake, Haiti’s recovery has been slow and riddled with setbacks, worsened by an allegedly preventable cholera epidemic. Fortunately, Gainesville hosts a variety of organizations that actively support Haiti, whether by raising money or sending medical volunteers. Jeff Depree, a doctoral candidate in Computer Science at UF, thought he could help in his own way.

Depree traveled to Haiti this year with nothing more than a backpack and some bare essentials. His goal, without the aid of an organized group, was to explore the landscape and interact with locals. He kept a detailed log of logistical issues that could be encountered by travelers and mapped out hiking trails in hopes of encouraging other ecotourists to follow his lead and visit the country’s rugged terrain.

The International Ecotourism Society defines ecotourism as a way to travel responsibly to natural areas while respecting the environment and local culture. It’s not a novel idea, but in Haiti, it’s uncharted territory. Haiti’s tourism industry consists of isolated resorts, providing foreigners with private beaches and bars but no glimpses into the rest of Haiti.

Despite the obstacles presented by deforestation and widespread poverty, DePree hopes ecotourism will eventually become a viable option for travelers, as well as a source of income for locals and an incentive to protect Haiti’s resources.

Depree’s journey began in Port-au-Prince, where he saw the reality of the earthquake’s devastation: a tent city had replaced the main square and most of the buildings were in ruins.

He continued, focused on reaching Haiti’s untamed landscape, and hopped onto a tap-tap, a brightly colored bus or pick-up truck used as a common form of transport.

After spending his first night in a church rectory in the southern town of Furcy, DePree awoke early to begin hiking. Markets and vendors lined segments of the ridgeline to the southern coastline. He picked out a lady with pots in the dirt alongside the trail and bought a cheap and filling meal: a hodgepodge of fried spaghetti, onions, tomatoes, ketchup, and mayonnaise. For the rest of the trip, DePree mapped out up to 50 miles of hiking trails.

“Haiti is one of the last places I would imagine as a destination for ecotourists,” said Dr. Gerald Murray, professor emeritus of anthropology at UF. Murray designed and directed an agroforestry project in Haiti over a 20-year period and conducted research on the country’s culture and religion. Murray attributes his lack of optimism to Haiti’s high population density and rapid deforestation.

[...]

Continued via The Fine Print: Uncharted Territory

Show Your Community Connections with the Chamber Video Challenge

The Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce wants to know what Gainesville means to you or your business. At the 2011 Business of the Year Awards, Chamber President and CEO Brent Christensen announced a video challenge to learn how a connected community not only supports Gainesville, but promotes individual success and economic prosperity.

The Chamber wants you to create a video, five minutes or less, that depicts the value of our community circle, the connections among businesses and the importance of being connected. Consider one or more of the following questions or ideas:

What is cool about Gainesville?
How does the community act together to encourage innovation and growth?
Why is it cool to work, live and play in Gainesville?
A look at the Gainesville Business Community.

Use words, images and/or interviews within the community to demonstrate how these crucial circles are created and help the community prosper. Videos will be judged based on:

via Community Video Challenge.

Green Drinks invites the community to attend a candidate forum for the upcoming Gainesville City Commission election. The forum will take place at Blue Water Bay (http://www.thebluewaterbay.com/), at its new Gainesville location (12 SE 2nd Ave.) on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 from 6-8pm.

Numerous candidates from both the At-Large and the District 1 races have already confirmed attendance, and each will be given several minutes to speak, in addition to a question & answer session. There will also be opportunities for one-on-one discussion with candidates both before and after the forum.

Green Drinks is a non-profit international organization that meets informally each month in more than 700 cities worldwide to bring together sustainable businesses, organizations and government leaders who are working to create an environmentally healthy and sustainable future. We meet in Gainesville the first Wednesday each month at different locations to provide the opportunity to showcase sustainable businesses and to connect those who are engaged in creating a healthy future for our community and the planet.

Green Drinks Gainesville is presented by www.GoGreenNation.org, an environmental news and resource website. Green Drinks has been a wonderful forum for discussion and dissemination of ideas, and was the incubator for the annual Cinema Verde Environmental Film & Arts Festival. Our meetings average 30-60 attendees each month; we recently celebrated our third anniversary with more than 150 attendees. Anyone interested in sustainability issues is welcome to attend Green Drinks; it’s a great networking opportunity.

For more information about Green Drinks, or to learn how we can help you showcase your sustainable business or organization at our community events, please contact Trish Riley (352-327-3560
Trish@GoGreenNation.org).

Please share our events with friends and in your newsletters: Green Drinks meets the first Wednesday of each month at varying sustainable businesses. For location information visit www.GoGreenNation.org.

Florida Organic Growers joins defensive lawsuit against biotech empire

For the vast majority of Americans, food is food. And corn is corn. And a soybean is a soybean. And a seed of either of these vegetables is, well, a seed.

Or is it? To the corporate eye of Monsanto, that seed looks more like one of its transgenic creations, and if they can fish a lawsuit out of it, possibly millions of dollars.

Transgenic seeds are simply Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Many crops and foods are genetically altered nowadays. Corn, alfalfa sprouts, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets and rapeseed are just a few of many GMOs being specifically engineered with Monsanto-manipulated herbicide-resistant DNA.

Taking into account all the products derived from GM crops, experts estimate 60 to 70 percent of all processed foods sold in the U.S. contain at least one GM ingredient. GMOs are omnipresent in the modern diet and lifestyle. Omnipresent; however, not omni-wanted.

Organic farmers are trying their hardest to retain at least some portion of our food in its natural state, with DNA unmutilated. This isn’t the fight many are familiar with, or at least expecting.

In a way, this is the stereotypical “little guy vs. massive corporation” fight. But the “little guy” here includes more than just the “crunchy granola” organic farmers. Plaintiffs in Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association, et al. v. Monsanto also include non-organic farmers who simply don’t want to produce GM crops.

March 2011 marked the beginning of a preemptive lawsuit, with 83 plaintiffs joining forces against corporate giant Monsanto. Florida Organic Growers, a nonprofit organic certification and sustainable farming outreach group based in Gainesville, joined the fight in July.

The 83 plaintiffs, representing a coalition of more than 270,000 farmers, united together as the Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association (OSGATA), represented by the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), are filing this lawsuit against Monsanto out of fear.

Some of these farmers have forgone growing certain crops they feared could have the possibility of being cross-contaminated with Monsanto’s seed. They would rather lose money from under-production than subject themselves to the risk of being sued by Monsanto and potentially losing their farms.

[...]

Read more via The Fine Print: Where the GMOs Grow

Greetings Green Drinkers and Environmental Film Fans!

I hope you’ve enjoyed the autumn and had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday. Although I missed seeing my kids (Portland and Denver are too far away!), I relished the quiet chance to catch up on some work and enjoyed a delicious dinner with friends. I’ve made so many lovely friends since moving to Gainesville nearly five years ago – mostly through our Green Drinks. Thank you for welcoming me into your lovely community!

Thanks so much to those of you who came out to Prairie Creek Lodge for our November Green Drinks, and a special thanks to Hutch Hutchinson, Executive Director of Alachua Conservation Trust, for organizing the party and providing pizzas and libations, and to the Weeds of Eden for filling the night with music! The Genesis Group shared some very interesting information about landscaping while protecting the environment and Jason Fults brought us up to speed on mountain top removal – it’s still a big problem for those in coal country. Thank you all!

Join us on Wednesday, December 7th as we celebrate our 3rd anniversary!!

David Pais of Pais Realty is sponsoring the anniversary party on Dec. 7 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. It will be held at Randy Batista’s Gallery 21 downtown. Harry’s Seafood Bar & Grille and the new downtown Blue Water Bay will provide hors d’ouevres. David has sponsored all of our Anniversary parties, which fall near his own birthday ~ Thank You, David!

Gallery 21 is located just off of Main Street at 21 SE 2nd Place in downtown Gainesville.

I’d like to invite all of you to plan to share your stories about connections made through Green Drinks so we can reflect on the progress we’ve made toward creating a more sustainable community by getting together now and then. Cinema Verde is a good case in point: our environmental film and arts festival was born at our Green Drinks meeting in August, 2009, and we are working on our third festival now. We have so many of you to thank for helping to create this fun way to learn more about environmental issues. Please come join us so we can thank all of you who have helped make Cinema Verde a success!

I also have some exciting news to share: I’ll announce the location of Cinema Verde 2012 – I call it Chez Verde – and we’ll also show trailers of some of the films we’re considering as we narrow down our selection. Come and let us know which ones look most interesting to you.

Green Drinks Gainesville is presented by www.GoGreenNation.org, an environmental news and resource site to help build green communities, and www.CinemaVerde.org, Gainesville’s Environmental Film and Arts Festival, both of which are dedicated to educating the public about environmental issues and fostering sustainable solutions. Anyone interested in sustainability issues is welcome to attend Green Drinks; it’s a great opportunity to network with those interested in evolving a sustainable future. Please share our events with friends and in your newsletters: Green Drinks meets the first Wednesday of each month at varying sustainable businesses. For location information visit www.GoGreenNation.org.

Let us help you showcase your sustainable business or organization at our community events!
Contact Trish Riley, Director: 352-327-3560; Trish@GoGreenNation.org.

As always, bring your business cards, name tags, re-usable cups and news for sharing.

Thank you all so much for your support and interest in Cinema Verde and environmental issues!
Best,
Trish*–
Trish Riley
Director: Cinema Verde Environmental Film & Arts Festival
352.327.3560
www.CinemaVerde.org
Cinema Verde is a Florida not-for-profit corporation designated as a 501(c)(3) public charity by the IRS: Contributions are tax deductible.Thank you for your support!
Publisher: www.GoGreenNation.org

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As the weather begins to cool off, I find myself spending more time baking in the warmth of my kitchen. Lately, I’ve taken the opportunity to experiment with sourdough breads.

Sourdough is a game entirely unlike bread baking with active dry yeast or a bread machine – it requires a little more time and attention. But, once you learn the basics of keeping a sourdough starter you’ll discover an infinite world of bread making.

Sourdough bread has a rich history, dating back as far as the Ancient Egyptians of 1500 BC. Until only 130 years ago, all bread was leavened with a sourdough starter…

Continued via The Fine Print’s City Farmer: DIY Sourdough Starter and Chestnuts A’Plenty

I hope you’re enjoying the fall as we are. It’s a nice time to cuddle up with a good movie, eh? I’m enjoying rolling into fall. I just spent a week on the road – an odyssey that took me to Miami for the Society of Environmental Journalists conference, where I caught up with colleagues and told them about GoGreenNation.org and Cinema Verde. Then I (and Teddi) rolled on to Tampa, where I attended a conference put on by the Florida Department of Cultural Affairs, instructing us all on how to help our legislators learn about our cultural programs. It was time and 945 miles well spent, and I’m glad to be back home in Gainesville and behind my desk.

Green Drinks: We had a great meeting last month at The Midnight Cafe and Bar, thanks to Beverley Webb of The Midnight and Chris Cano of Gainesville Compost, who told us about his new compost-to-garden project. Thanks to all who attended; we had wonderful networking and discussions.

Our next Green Drinks meeting will be sponsored by Alachua Conservation Trust, and held at Prairie Creek Lodge as a fundraiser for Cinema Verde. Your donations will accrue toward a VIP pass for our upcoming film festival, February 24th to March 2nd, 2012. Join us at Prairie Creek Lodge, November 2nd 2011, 6-9 pm., 7204 SE County Road 234 Gainesville, FL. Come out and network with others who are interested in sustainability and environmental issues.

Saturday November 12, 7-9:30 pm Cinema Verde, our local Audubon Chapter and Paynes Prairie State Preserve will present a viewing of End of the Line, a film about overfishing that we showed at our festival in 2010. The film presents a hard look at how is overfishing impacting the environment, our food and our future. This is the first major feature documentary film to reveal the devastating effect that global over-fishing is having on fish stocks and the health of our oceans and is a wake up call to us all.
Following the film we’ll have a discussion with Cameron Jaggard, a speaker from the Pew Environment Group – the conservation arm of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Cameron will tell us about the issue of surface longline fishing in the Gulf of Mexico and discuss policy making with an interest in transitioning to more selective fishing practices.

Join us: 7-9:30 p.m., Saturday October 15, 2011 at Paynes Prairie Visitor’s Center, 100 Savannah Blvd. at Paynes Prairie State Preserve. South of Gainesville off US 441. Look for the park sign on the east side of 441. Be advised that it takes 20 – 30 minutes to travel through the park to the Visitor’s Center, so please plan to arrive early! There are displays and area walkways to explore before the film begins.
Free park admission for film goers! Suggested donation for the film $7; free film for campers!

More fun stuff:

Cinema Verde had a great day at Boo at the Zoo, Santa Fe College, 3-7 p.m. Monday, October 31, 2011. Thanks for all who came out and to Santa Fe College and the US Green Building Council for putting it together to provide a fun, safe Halloween for the kids in our community!

Cinema Verde will be in the University of Florida Homecoming parade with the bikers team on Friday, November 4th 2011; Come out and march with us (free t-shirt!)!

Plan to celebrate the third anniversary of Green Drinks with us on December 7… location TBA; sponsor, JDPais of Pais Realty. Please join us for fun and celebration of all things Green!

Cinema Verde and Green Drinks appreciate your support – would you like to help us? We are seeking partners and sponsors – please let us know how we can create a win/win with your organization to promote environmental education in our community!
Let us help you showcase your sustainable business or organization at our community events!
Contact Trish Riley, Director: 352-327-3560; Trish@GoGreenNation.org.

Please share our events with friends and in your newsletters: Green Drinks meets the First Wednesday of Each Month at varying sustainable businesses. For location information visit www.GoGreenNation.org — Thank you!

Thank you all so much for your support and interest in Cinema Verde and environmental issues!
Best,
Trish*–
Trish Riley
Director: Cinema Verde Environmental Film & Arts Festival
352.327.3560
www.CinemaVerde.org
Cinema Verde is a Florida not-for-profit corporation designated as a 501(c)(3) public charity by the IRS: Contributions are tax deductible.Thank you for your support!
Publisher: www.GoGreenNation.org