Help a Neighbor

Poetry Contest to honor Black History Month

In honor of Black History Month, we wanted to share this announcement that was shared with us.  What a wonderful community building event! Background: The Mary C Jenkins Community Center (MCJCC) Board is sponsoring a community-wide poetry contest to honor Black History Month and recognize progress re-establishing the MCJCC. Poetry is IT right now. Amanda Gorman, our first National Youth Poet Laureate, 22 years old, moved us deeply with her inauguration poem, The Hill We Climb.    Also in January, Kwame Alexander (poet who visited the Transylvania County library in April 2019!), crowdsourced a poem to offer people a way to “write our way out of the unprecedented events of the past year and into a space of possibility.” Kwame and National Public Radio received 2,500 entries from people of all ages for the crowdsourced poem. Less than 50 were crafted into the final poem, This is Our Dream, which includes a submission by teacher Jeanne DeJong, from 5th graders at Brevard Elementary School! https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/960688815/this-is-our-dream-a-crowdsourced-poem-to-inspire-hope That Brevard is represented in this poem, [...]

By |2021-02-01T12:05:57-05:00February 1st, 2021|Categories: Help a Neighbor, The Gift of Time|
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Gift of Time holiday pop-up will not happen this year

One of my favorite events we host is the annual Gift of Time Pop-up Coffee house. We gather for food in downtown Brevard, share conversation and focus on the gift of sharing our time instead of material items.  It always warms my heart when strangers who are walking by join us and share.  The day has filled my heart with gratitude and I will miss it dearly this year. We look forward to bringing the event back next year and hope everyone has a wonderful, safe and blessed holiday season.  Our community is amazing and our love runs deep.

By |2020-11-23T08:57:33-05:00November 23rd, 2020|Categories: Food, Gatherings, Help a Neighbor, The Gift of Time|
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How would you re-purpose campaign signs? We are about to get a bunch. Help us find new uses for them!

Soon the elections will be over and all the campaign materials will go where?  A couple of political parties in Transylvania county are interested in keeping their signs out of the landfill and we have offered to help. I ran for office in 2012 and served for 4 years.  I decided not to seek another term so my stored campaign signs needed to find a new purpose.  They have since helped prop up bean crops, provided backing for a bench a friend made, and been turned around and used for new signs.  They are still with us and going strong. We need help collecting signs and finding new homes and uses for them.  Have thoughts and ideas?  Please share them.  We look forward to hearing from you.

By |2020-10-19T08:02:58-04:00October 19th, 2020|Categories: Help a Neighbor, Moving to Zero-waste|
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NCEJN’s 22nd Annual Environmental Justice Summit (2020) registration open

Registration is open for the summit!  Looks like a great event.  John and I have enrolled and are looking forward to learning together. I took the following from their website: We Can’t Breathe: Policing, Pollution, Public Violence, and Pandemic This year, we are focusing our hearts and attention on the multiple crises that harm our communities – namely the public violence of policing, pollution, and the pandemic – and how our collective struggle can transform that harm into wellbeing for our communities.   To promote the safety of our community members, we have planned for this year’s Summit to be held online for the month of October. We will be gathering via email, social media, on Zoom, and by word of mouth to continue to practice solidarity and prove that our strength in numbers is not changed by any force! In addition to the virtual events, for the month of October, we will be asking our members and others to join in completing weekly action challenges as well [...]

By |2020-09-22T11:57:30-04:00September 22nd, 2020|Categories: Connecting with nature, Eating Consciously, Food, Gatherings, Growing food, Help a Neighbor|
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There is definitely an interest in our community for prepared plant-based meals

Thanks to everyone who responded to our question about providing plant-based meals in our community.  We had a great response! We would love to have a community conversation on the topic and get more feedback.  Please answer this short survey so we can explore our next step.  

By |2020-09-14T09:48:56-04:00September 14th, 2020|Categories: Eating Consciously, Food, Help a Neighbor|
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Why focus on zero-waste when there are so many more pressing issues?

At one of our potluck events (I sure do miss those), someone said to me, "Why so much focus on zero-waste?  There are more pressing issues."  I have thought of that a lot.  Of all the issues I can think of, they all are impacted by working to move to a zero-waste community. "Our goal is to eliminate the idea of waste from our mindset and to normalize a kinder existence without waste." John and I are moving to that mindset and it has impacted every part of our lives.  John and I have lived most of our life not thinking deeply about our waste.  Recycle, recycle, recycle and we were good citizens.  Items are disposable for a reason right? Well, right we have discovered.  What we discovered and what we continue to learn is that the thought of waste is privileged.  I visit the DrawDown Project website frequently, especially the solutions page.  Here is a paragraph from the page. Here, we present the individual solutions reviewed and [...]

By |2020-09-14T09:03:24-04:00September 14th, 2020|Categories: Composting, Connecting with nature, Eating Consciously, Food, Growing food, Help a Neighbor, Moving to Zero-waste, Sharing Club, Use Food Scraps, Zero-waste tips|
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Eating Consciously Podcast: Shane Bellinger interviews Jacqui Edans of Rooster Head Farms

Welcome to our third podcast in the Eating Consciously series.  In this episode, Shane Bellinger, owner of Green Go Cleaning and member of the Eating Consciously team interviews Jacqui Edans of Rooster Head Farms in Brevard, NC.  Our last episode was focused on systemic racism which included a conversation on factory meat operations.  This episode shows another side of the meat industry on a different scale.  Eating Consciously focuses on the impact our food choices have on others.  This episode continues to educate towards that goal.  Thanks for being here.  We hope you enjoy the show.  Many thanks to Shane and Jacqui for sharing this conversation with us. Farmer Jacqui Shane with her family

By |2020-09-22T11:59:05-04:00September 10th, 2020|Categories: Compost Drop-off Location, Composting, Connecting with nature, Eating Consciously, Food, Growing food, Help a Neighbor, Podcast, Shane Bellinger|
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New York Times article about sending our plastic to Africa and a carbon footprint quiz

Big Oil Is in Trouble. Its Plan: Flood Africa With Plastic. Faced with plunging profits and a climate crisis that threatens fossil fuels, the industry is demanding a trade deal that weakens Kenya’s rules on plastics and on imports of American trash. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I read this article in today's New York Times.  It speaks of fracking and plastic and the impact the industry is having.  It reads a lot like my interview with Naeema of the NC Environmental Justice Network.  This is another story of industry working to implement systemic change. There is a mini-quiz you can take that helps you estimate your carbon footprint on a few items.  You can find it here:  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/30/climate/climate-footprint-quiz.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage I keep asking myself this question:  Why is my waste permitted to impact your life? I am interested in your thoughts.  Thanks for being here. Love is the answer.  

By |2020-08-31T08:34:01-04:00August 31st, 2020|Categories: Eating Consciously, Help a Neighbor, Moving to Zero-waste|
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We need more community food scrap drop-off sites. Interested? We will help

Growing food usually requires soil.  Nutrients in the soil get used up when we grow food and luckily for us, an easy way to rebuild the soil is through making compost.  We have taken on a new community project with a few other groups that involves giving plant starts to those who are in need of food.  We usually have enough pots, plant starts, and volunteers but we usually need more soil. We currently have 2 publicized community compost drop off places in our community and we could use a few more.  If you are interested in helping us build more soil please let us know. Do you currently compost at home but have no use for the soil?  Let us know!  We could sure use it. Would you collect your food scraps for use if someone would pick them up and take them to a drop-off location?  Let us know that too. Send an email to [email protected] and let's talk dirt :)

By |2020-08-30T14:58:51-04:00August 30th, 2020|Categories: Compost Drop-off Location, Composting, Eating Consciously, Food, Growing food, Help a Neighbor, Moving to Zero-waste, Use Food Scraps|
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