Wind Turbine Limbo 

A makeshift wind turbine erected on a wooden platform rises more than ten feet high and sways back and forth as the wooden propellers turn gently, reacting to a constant breeze blowing over the Quad at the University of Illinois. It is April 22 – Earth Day – and the wind turbine sits among a host of display tables occupied by student organizations to raise awareness about environmental concerns.

Students parade past the turbine and pause long enough to take in a sign mounted to its base that reads: “R.I.P. Wind Turbines 2003-2009.” Abby Toms, senior in psychology, and a member of Students for Environmental Change, a group whose mission includes informing students and community members about environments issues, said the wind turbine was there to serve as a reminder to students that the campus wind energy project was dead.

“(Chancellor Richard Herman) just pulled the plug on the project and decided that we weren’t going to do it anymore despite the fact that we spent $500,000 in legal fees, getting the contract from GE. We were going to sign it and then, all of sudden, we killed the project,” she said.

When Herman announced in December that he had postponed the wind turbine project, he abruptly halted an effort that began in 2003 to bring renewable energy, in the form of three wind turbines, to be located on South Farms; a 350-acre tract of land south of campus devoted to renewable energy research. 

As the spring semester winds down, members of student environmental groups as well as members of the Student Sustainability Committee, appear to be less than optimistic that the project is actually postponed and not dead. One of the biggest issues affecting the project is the escalating cost of wind turbines. In 2003, a University news release reported that the cost of the three proposed turbines was about $ 2 million each. According to information provided by the UI Office of Facilities and Services, the cost for one wind turbine currently is $4.5 million. The cost raises questions of whether or not there are other renewable energy alternatives to consider that would be more economically feasible for the University to invest in.

This escalation in price is related to increased demand as a result of growing concerns about global climate change that have inspired the federal government as well as the private sector to embrace the idea of renewable energy. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a commitment to boost wind-generated electricity by 20 percent by the year 2030. Reaching this goal would add between 180,000 to 500,000 renewable energy sector-related jobs to the economy and reduce CO2 emissions by 825 million metric tons, among other benefits, according to a report released by the department.

Though the administration cited increased cost as the cause for scaling back the original plan to buy three wind turbines from General Electric to one, before the deal was halted, student supporters remain skeptical of this explanation.

“Why did they put it off? You know we’re not quite sure. It may have come down to the agenda of the administration; it may have come down to that fact that gas prices were falling. Therefore, it made more sense to continue to use dirty energy because it was cheaper upfront as opposed to making an investment into renewables,” Toms said.

The timing of the Chancellor’s announcement to postpone the wind turbine project the week before finals caused the students to question the administration’s motives, said Anthony Larson, a junior majoring in economics.

“I don’t think the (move) was entirely intentional, but it sure looked like it. We had one day (to react) so we took time out of our studying and got about 75 people out yelling at the Chancellor (outside) Swanlund (Hall).” Despite having to scramble to deliver a response, the students were pleased to get media coverage of their protest, Larson said.

Now on Earth Day – four months after the Chancellor’s announcement – Toms and members of Student for Environmental Concerns are encouraging students to stop by their table on the Quad and sign a letter of support for the wind turbine project.

“This is the third letter that we have written to the Chancellor,” she said, “just to tell him that the students still demand what he said he was going to give us.”

While the student groups are intent on keeping pressure on Herman and the administration, he is focused on the larger picture, said Associate Chancellor Bill Adams. He also made a point to emphasis that the Chancellor stressed that the project is “postponed” and not cancelled, Adams said.

“What happened is as we went through the project approval process, turbines became a red hot commodity nationally,” Adams said. “Then the money we thought we could purchase three for would only purchase one.”

Not only did the administration have to contend with the rising costs of wind turbines, it is also facing a “utility deficit of more than $100 million that has to be dealt with,” Adams said.
Aside from the massive utility deficit, the University has not received consistent funding from the state legislature for several years, Adams said.

“The bulk of the budget growth since about 2002 has been on the backs of students in the form of tuition and fees. We just worry about how much can be put on the backs of students because at the end of the day that’s who is going to pay for some of this stuff.”

However, the enthusiasm newly elected Gov. Pat Quinn has shown for renewable energy initiatives as well as his stated commitment to higher education, gives the UI administration a cause for optimism concerning the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year, Adams said. Speaking of his desire for the Legislature to pass a favorable budget, he stated, “I hope that it’s good because we’ve been raising tuition about nine and a half percent per year for the last five or six years (and) we can’t continue to do that.”

Gov. Quinn visited the campus in February to promote the Sustainable University Compact. The Compact is a plan that calls for colleges and universities to voluntarily work toward achieving 12 sustainable goals by Dec. 31, 2010. The goals include purchasing renewable energy, improving water conservation and implementing green building practices, according to the Standing Up for Illinois Web site.

The Daily Illini also reported that during the governor’s visit student activists presented him with 300 letters of support for the wind turbine project.

Across the country many colleges and universities are trying to initiate renewable energy projects in the face of soaring state budget deficits and shrinking state funding. The Association for the Advancement for Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), established in 2006, is an organization whose mission is to assist institutions to implement sustainable practices. AASHE initiatives include disseminating knowledge and best practices and promoting resource sharing; facilitating member’s efforts to integrate sustainability into teaching, research and operations; and influencing local, state and national policy so that sustainability is a focus, according to their Web site.

One institution of higher learning that has brought renewable energy to its campus is the University of Minnesota, Morris, a small liberal arts college located about 3 hours northwest of Minneapolis. In 2005 after a student-driven effort was launched, the campus purchased a 1.6 megawatt wind turbine that provides about 60 percent of the energy used at the nearly 23-acre campus, said Lowell Rasmussen, Vice Chancellor of Facilities and Finance. Because the campus is not located in a large urban setting, the University was able to install the wind turbine on land adjacent to the campus. This allows the transfer energy to flow directly from the turbine to the campus without needing to use the electrical grid to do so, Rasmussen said.

In order to finance the project, the University secured a Clean Renewable Energy Bond (CREB) from the federal government. CREB bonds are 15-year, interest-free loans, Rasmussen said. Reflecting on the process that eventually resulted in the installation of a wind turbine at UM Morris, Rasmussen stressed the need for patience.

“It takes time; these things just don’t happen over night,” he said.
Waiting for change is something that student environmental activists at UI understand all too well.

Night falls on the Quad and all signs of the Earth Day event have disappeared, including display tables and the wind turbine. But there are a handful of student activists milling around, not too far from a clump of sleeping bags they have brought along on this all-night protest. Larson said that he was disappointed that years have passed and the effort to purchase a wind turbine appears to have taken a major setback. Commenting on the administration’s in-action he stated, “Unless there is someone (in the administration) who is really all for the project, they’ll wait until students who care about the project are gone.”

While the wind turbine project is stalled indefinitely, there are other possible renewable energy projects proposed on campus that may be worthwhile for the Student Sustainability Committee and other activist groups to investigate. One such project calls for Noble Hall to be refurbished with a green roof and smaller wind turbines.

The plans to provide Noble Hall with a green roof were produced by landscape architecture students enrolled in LA 336/438, one of the department’s spring studio options. Students in the course, taught by Professor Dave Kovacic, were asked to incorporate a green roof into a redesign of Noble Hall, which is one of the least energy efficient buildings on campus, Kovacic said.

A design put forth by seniors Mike Darrow and Jacob Heck included solar panels, small-scale wind turbines and plants as a part of their green roof design. According to the details listed on their plan, the green roof would reduce the buildings heating costs, reduce storm water run off, extend the life of the roof materials and serve as a research demonstration space where researchers could measure how much rain water had been diverted from the storm drain system. The cost for this project is estimated at approximately $ 500,000, including installation, which is roughly 10 percent of the cost associated with the proposed wind turbine.

The project addresses the question of “how to retrofit an existing building on campus so that it is sustainable,” Kovacic said. Being able to utilize elements of wind, solar, vegetation and water retention to address renewable energy efforts is a growing need on campus, he said.

“We have 75 acres of building roof on campus that are old roofs like this. So, potentially, (that’s) 75 acres of roof that could be made reusable.”

Kovacic intends to eventually submit a proposal to the Office of Sustainability that incorporates the best elements of his students’ designs for Noble Hall. Implementation of such a plan would engage different disciplines in a collaborative effort between different departments, including horticulture, engineering and landscape architecture, Kovacic said.

Suhail Barot, graduate student and chair of the Student Sustainability Community,
responding to the Noble Hall roof redesign idea, he said, “I’d want to see hard numbers on energy generation, payback, budgeting, etc, before I 
could say anything.”

As the college careers of the class of 2009 draw to close, there is still no word on when the Chancellor will finalize a decision on whether the wind turbine project will move ahead or be put to rest permanently.

Memorandum

Date: April 23, 2009

Re: Visit to Champaign Court House

To: Shelley Smithson

From: Will Atwater  

One of the first things that I learned about the Champaign County Court House  is that criminal cases are heard on the third floor where there are three  courtrooms; divorce and traffic courts are held on the first and second floors.  This morning judge Thomas J. Difanis conducted four arraignment proceedings,  which involved the defendants entering a plea and either requesting or waving  their rights to a trial. We soon learned that in each case, the attorneys for the  accused had negotiated a plea deal, which involved pleading guilty to a lesser  charge with the expectation of receiving a lighter sentence.

I was struck by how subdued the proceedings were and how quickly things  transpired. Mary Schenk informed us about what the numbers an letters that  appear on file folder mean (CF-criminal felony, MR-miscellaneous remedy,  etc). She also informed us that a discovery affidavit is a document that includes  a list of witnesses and other information related to a case being built against  the accused. Both the defense and the prosecuting attorneys share the  document, and I believe the information collected in this file will influence  whether or not a plea bargain will be offered, or if there is enough evidence to  proceed with building a case.  

Another point of interest was learning that the only cases closed to the public  are ones involving juvenile delinquency and juvenile neglect. Also, I was not  aware that the News-Gazette has a self-imposed policy of not placing the  names of juveniles in the paper. However, I was surprised to learn that many  judges feel publishing the names of juvenile defendants would serve as a  deterrent.  

The thing that stands out mostly from my trip to court was hearing Mary  Schenk stress how important it is to establish rapport with all of the officers  and employees of the court. They are the gate-keepers in this arena and a  reporter must win their trust and respect in order to have long-term success.    

A Profile of Wes Jarrell

It’s 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 9, and Wes Jarrell, a faculty member in the University of Illinois’ College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES), looks down from the podium at the half-filled auditorium of the Beckman Institute. In its second day, the Human Story of Climate Change (Planet U) conference hosted by UI, is coming to a close. Following the conference agenda, Jarrell is to give a 15-minute presentation on the Environmental Change Institute (ECI).

Sporting a corduroy blazer and a red tie, the 60-year-old Jarrell stands before the podium and introduces himself as an educator, an environmentalist and farmer. What is not visible to the audience is how this man’s life story, starting as a boy growing up on the family farm in Bend, Ore., and shaped by a career straddling between academia and agriculture, has defined the man standing before them; a man who is on crusade to save the planet.

 Along with his appointment in ACES, Jarrell is also the interim director of ECI, which was established to raise awareness and to inform public policy on matters related to climate change. In order to achieve this mission ECI seeks to engage the public through research, teaching and public engagement, Jarrell said. Although he smiled, and he conveyed a relaxed tone, a sense of urgency was present in Jarrell’s message.

“Very importantly, a lot of us are near the end of our careers, shall we say, and (climate change) is a problem that is going to go a long way into the future. So, we need (to develop) highly motivated, broadly trained, ethical leaders for the 21st century and we want to do our part to make that happen.”

In order to cultivate future leaders equipped to address climate change issues, Jarrell used the ECI platform to develop a course in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES). The course titled NRES 199, was offered for the first time during the spring semester and is held on Thursdays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. The students range from freshmen to graduate students and the goal of the course is to develop a carbon registry and a business plan to address how UI can reduce its carbon footprint. The class will present findings to the campus administration on May 7.

To prepare themselves for this presentation, the students rehearsed during class last Thursday. The clean-shaven Jarrell was seated at a table with arm sleeves rolled up to his elbows, listening as students reported on group projects. This was a rehearsal for the upcoming presentation to the administration.  Jarrell served as co-facilitator for the meeting and gestered with his hands as he offered solutions to research problems identified by students. Each suggestion Jarrell posed was usually accompanied with a smile and slight chuckle.

Freshman Matt Rundquist said he "he enrolled in the  class because it looked like a good way to learn about carbon trading and that side of environmental economics in a real-world kind of way." Regarding Jarrell's teaching style he added, "He's been more of a manager than a teacher on this project, and really let us take the this thing where we wanted to."

During his tenure at UI Jarrell has not always been as at peace with his work as he appears to be now. From 2003 until 2007, he served as the director of NRES and faced what he described as a difficult time, as a result of his efforts to change the department’s culture. “I don’t see boundaries where other people see boundaries. And I didn’t appreciate how impenetrable some of these boundaries were, in terms of how people (viewed) what they did and what they thought their jobs were.”

Jarrell said that one of the major challenges in academia is related to the unwillingness by many professors to engage in collaborative endeavors that are not directly aligned with their particular scholarship.

 “Many people in academia are more loyal to their disciplines than they are to society and societal needs, in general.”

He added, “(Some people) tie up their identity so much with the discipline they got their degree in, that they have an enormous amount of trouble breaking free of it. I’m not that way, so that made for a disconnect (in my department),” he said.

Jarrell’s vision for how the department should function involved stripping away discipline boundaries that hindered collaborative research efforts and it encouraged the restructuring of certain course curriculum in order to better serve the needs of students.

One of the biggest challenges with NRES is that it consists of faculty from different disciplines, including horticulture, forestry, soil sciences, and human dimensions, among others, said Interim Director Bruce Branham.

“I think what got to Wes was trying to get everybody to buy into his vision of what the department should be because a lot of people felt they were comfortable with the old vision of how they were and did not want to change.”

After fours years of departmental turmoil, Jarrell resigned in 2007.

“My psychological makeup just wasn’t able to accept that, I guess, and just go with the flow, so I stepped down,” Jarrell said.

After he resigned, Jarrell spent more than three months away from academia and focused his energy on the 39-acre certified-organic farm that he owns with his wife Leslie Cooperband. Located about ten miles from downtown Urbana on North Lincoln Avenue, Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery is home to a herd of goats that includes 50 milkers and 350 fruit trees.

His wife describes a typical 12-hour day on the farm. “So, the day would (begin at) 6 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. and go until 6:30 p.m. or 7:30 p.m., depending on what type of cheese we were making,” Cooperband said.

The farm produce is primarily sold to customers through the Urbana and Chicago farmer’s markets, she said.

Prior to purchasing the farm land in 2003, the couple lived in Madison, Wis., where both were faculty members at the University of Wisconsin in the soil sciences department. Cooperband described herself and Jarrell as “two soil nerds” that met in Las Vegas at an agronomy conference.

“We’re both kind of dreamers and schemers,” Coooperhand said. “We were interested in applying science to good ends and not just doing science for science’s sake, but applying it to pressing needs of the day. I think that’s what attracted us to each other initially.”

Jarrell’s appreciation for the natural world stems from growing up on the family farm in Central Oregon, with a view of the Cascade Mountains, where he and his two sisters assisted with the chores.

“One of his responsibilities, when he was 11 or 12, was to get out and pick berries,” said Jarrell’s mother, Edith. “He was noted for the rows he picked (because) they were very clean – he picked the good berries and left the bad ones.”

Reflecting on her son's behavior as a boy, Edith stated, “He did what he was told. He was a very obedient kid (and) he didn’t need to be corrected more than once, if there was something he did wrong,” she said.

Among Jarrell’s earliest memories was attending Peter Boscow Elementary School located in Hillsboro, Ore. This is the same school that his mother attended, he said. Jarrell remembered that his mother taught him and his sisters to count by making flash cards from “old shredded wheat boxes.”

In high school Jarrell excelled in the classroom and in extra curricular activities. He was the student body president during his senior year, a member of the wrestling team and played the clarinet as a member of the band, he said.

            After graduating from high school, Jarrell attended Stanford University on a merit scholarship. As a freshman, Jarrell was interested in pursuing a law degree but Ms. Kinsella, his English teaching assistant, encouraged him to pursue another field, he said.

            “I came in as a pre-law (major) but discovered I didn’t write as well as I needed to.”

The switch from his rural community to the life of a college student surrounded by seemingly sophisticated peers, was a transformative moment for Jarrell, he said.

            “(Going) from the backwoods of Oregon to downtown Stanford, there were quite a few rich kids from cities. That was my first real jarring experience of rural meets urban.”

            While recognizing that students from urban areas dealt well with people, he also discovered that not many of his peers knew as much as he did about farm life, he said. Jarrell enjoyed the time he spent in the woods and in fields and decided to become a biological science major, he said.

Another transformative moment occurred for Jarrell when he realized he was more interested in focusing his energies toward a discipline that had practical applications. Intent on joining the Peace Corps and saving the world, Jarrell enrolled in a course titled “Physical Resources of the Tropics,” which was a course in soil science, he said.

            Reflecting back on the course, he recalled, “I was just blown away because as a kid I had worked in (soil) all this time and I knew nothing about it. And then I found out a lot about it was really fascinating.”

His mother Edith recalled that once Jarrell focused his studies on soil science, some of his dorm mates nicknamed him the “dirt doctor,” she said.

After graduating from Stanford, Jarrell took a job for one year delivering metal shelving in the San Francisco Bay area before attending graduate school at Oregon State University. There he received a master’s and a doctorate degree in soil science, he said.

As a professor, Jarrell worked for 12 years at UC Riverside before giving up his tenured position and moving back to Oregon, where he taught for 10 years at the Oregon Graduate Institute, he said. Jarrell decided to leave the security of his tenured position because he had grown tired of being in an environment where many colleagues abused the tenure system, he said.

“I grew up blue collar and I figured that if you weren’t carrying your weight, you should not be paid,” Jarrell said.

Jarrell’s journey would lead him to Madison, Wisconsin, where he joined the UW soil sciences faculty after spending a few years exploring business ideas, he said.

 In 2007, Jarrell met Joel Friedman, president of the Alvin H. Baum Family Fund based in Chicago. At the time, Friedman had contacted members from the UI Law and Business Schools and had expressed and interest in funding a collaborative project that would assist the current administration to establish policy to address climate change, Friedman said.

Friedman recalled being “impressed with Jarrell’s leadership” and with the contacts Jarrell had developed both within the University and the broader communities, he said.

Before Friedman would agree to allocate foundation funds for the project, he demanded that a collaborative team form that would include the Law School, the Business School and the College of ACES, he said.

“Lawyers can do some but they can’t solve the problem; The Business School could do some things, but they can’t solve the problem; The folks at ACES could potentially solve the problem, but communicated poorly with the broader community,” Friedman said.

Once the three entities agreed to work together and had showed initial progress, the foundation awarded ECI a $ 300,000 grant in 2007 and committed an additional $300,000 for the next two years. The College of ACES also contributed $100,000 to the organization. With the seed funding it has received, ECI has five years to raise a $5 million dollar endowment to sustain itself, Jarrell said.

Beyond the carbon registry course, ECI will host the Chicago Cap and Trade Summit May 28^th.  The conference will feature discussions about how to achieve an 80 percent reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by 2050. Among the presenters, students from NRES 199 will share the research they are conducting on how UI can reduce its emissions. To learn more about the conference and other ECI initiatives, log onto www.eci.edu.

  Back inside the auditorium, Jarrell’s 15-minute presentation is over and he collects his materials and prepares to exit the podium to make room for the next presenter. Pleased with the presentation, he will soon enjoy a silent moment as he drives north on Lincoln Avenue, where the urban landscape will quickly dissolve into open fields. Several years removed from the country boy of his freshman year at Stanford, Wes Jarrell the man, has become comfortable traversing between rural and urban settings.

Miss Nora

It's 5 p.m. and there's not a clean spot on her two and a half foot body -- the pigtails are speckled with sand and the tiny hands are painted black with dried mud. Nora offers a "hello" to passers-by, gripping my hand on the way to the car. Soon, the two-year-old's tiny voice will pierce the silence with questions: "Where's my sweater, can I watch a show?" But for now, I enjoy the moment as we walk hand in hand to the car.

I'm exploring the idea of writing about the famous stalled campus wind turbine project. I've been advised to follow the $ trail, so if you happen to come across a suitcase stuffed with cash and a note attached that reads: "wind turbine funds,"let me know. Or, if you come across any random wind turbine parts that look out of place, please let me know. Also, I'd appreciate any other ideas you might have.

A Garden to Come

Behind the Catholic Worker House located at 317 S. Randolph St. near downtown Champaign, lies a patch of dark soil that will be transformed into a community garden this spring. Produce from the garden will be used to prepare meals in the Catholic Worker House’s soup kitchen, said student volunteer Craig Kreutzer.

“Planting a garden is the best thing you can do to address the ills of the world,” Kreutzer said, as he surveyed the space.

A similar belief in the capacity of gardening has inspired a local eco-ecumenical organization to partner with the Catholic Worker House to start the garden. Group member Emily Laugesen sees gardening as a connection between their faith and the environment, she said.
Participating in this project will provide the group with a tangible way to “foster a sense of caring about the planet” and to also develop “a social outreach plan (to) benefit people who would otherwise not have access to fresh produce,” Laugesen said.

According to the American Community Garden’s Web site, there are18,000 community gardens in the United States and Canada. And there are signs that interest is growing, said UI Landscape Architecture Professor Laura Lawson, who dose research on community gardening.
“In the last eight months there has been an escalation in the number of calls and emails that I (have gotten) from people interested in community gardening,” Lawson said.

More people have turned to community gardening to strengthen their connection to the environment as well as to address social justice concerns such as access to affordable and fresh vegetables, she said.
In 2005 Lawson published “City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America,” which traces the origins of community gardening back to the 1890s and through phases of popular interest that include the War Gardens of World War I, the Victory Gardens of World War II, and up to today’s urban gardening movement.

Lawson credits the renewed interests in community garden to the economic crisis and to food security concerns brought on by the recent recall of peanut butter, among other items. But to Lawson, this period of renewed interests also exemplifies a cyclical trend.
“My research shows that, historically, whenever our nation has been confronted by some sort of social or economic crisis, people turn to gardening -- in particularly they turn to community gardening because it satisfies so many things simultaneously.”

The benefits of gardening include a renewed sense of self-reliance that comes from “the ability to grow your own food,” a feeling of “community building” through interactions with fellow gardeners and “link(s) between the environmental, ecological and sustainable” movements, she said.

While the eco-ecumenical group is excited about the potential of the community garden project, they will need to help establish the garden.

“Ideally we would a have on a volunteer basis someone who is really knowledgeable about gardening who could provide expertise and practical advice,” Laugesen said.

When offering gardening advice, Lawson recommends groups to visit the ACGA Web site because it offers “a nice mix of hands on and practical” tips about how to operate a garden as well as how to manage the “people aspect of gardening,” she said.

“Garden(ing) is not just about growing food, it’s about organizing people to run the garden and to work together in common interests. And so, to build that community focus is something that the ACGA has looked into and they really support that concept,” Lawson said.

According to their Web site, ACGA’s mission is to “build community by increasing and enhancing community gardening and greening across the United States and Canada.”

Vicki Garrett, project coordinator for ACGA, fields calls at the Columbus, Ohio, office from people seeking gardening advice. Garrett cautions new garden groups to develop strong community partnerships before breaking ground on a garden.

“I get people calling here asking for a garden in their city because they’re desperate to plant something and can’t find one near them. And then, I get calls from the same city telling me that they can’t get anyone interested in community gardening. So, if you’re not reaching the people who want to garden it’s not going to work. And you also have to make (people) feel ownership,” she said.

For local people who are interested in renting an individual garden plot, there are two primary sites in the Champaign-Urbana community that supports community gardening. The sites are managed by the cities parks districts. In Urbana, for example, Meadowbrook Park, located in south Urbana along Windsor Road and Race Street, has provided organic garden spaces for community residents since 1974, said Park Coordinator Erica Schneider. Individual garden plot rentals range in price from $30 to $60 depending on the size of the space and require deposit of $15. Currently, there is a waiting list for spaces, Schneider said.

The Champaign Park District also offers garden plots at Dodds Park located at 1501 N. Mattis Ave. and as of April 1, there were 21 plots available. A plot rental ranges from $20 to $25 depending on the size of the space, said staff member Quandra Clarke.

Before the eco-ecumenical group begins gardening at the Catholic Worker House, it will conduct a planning meeting on April 7. The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. and will be held at the Wesley-United Methodist Church located at 1203 W. Greene St. in Urbana. A member of the Illinois Agriculture Extension Master Gardeners’ program will be there to answer gardening-related questions and to help the group map out an action plan for the upcoming growing season.

The eco-ecumenical gardeners are “an inner-faith religious group and people from any religious institution who want to get involved are welcomed,” Luagesen said.

“We envision this (project) beyond just putting some seeds in and getting food out of the ground. We think it’s more about nurturing respect for the land and what it provides us and (realizing) that we are not the only creatures that depend on it for survival.”

A response to the New York Times Portrait of Grief Series

The profiles of Edelmino Abad, Paul Acquaviva and Donald Adams were the three profiles that stood out to me from the series. The details and imagery presented in the descriptions provided a snap shot of how these men lived.

Beginning with Abad, he was portrayed as a man who adored his wife and children and who also treated his coworkers as a second family. The opening line provides you with an image of Abad—the proud father—attending his children’s dance recitals, and then we hear from one of his daughters about how he supported her dream to become a dance instructor. I felt like I knew this man by the way he was described.

The profile of Paul Acquaviva was moving because beyond stating all of his achievements, it offered a snap shot of a man who married his childhood sweetheart and cried at the birth of his first child. These are the details that give you a sense of the way Acquaviva lived.

Lastly, I was struck by the profile of Donald Adams. The piece had strong imagery of the connection Adam had with his wife and daughter. There was a scene of Adams walking toward his house and spotting “his girls” waiting on the porch for him. But my favorite aspect of the piece was how Adam’s wife, Heda, described their relationship. "I was H. He was D. Just the first letters. That's all we needed."