If you were interested in the work of artist Chris Jordan, featured in the News Feed earlier this month under the headline: Art as a strong environmental statement, then you might also be interested in “meeting” the artist via a You Tube video clip at the following link, and learning more about the intention behind and making of is art.

http://opaleye.blogspot.com/2009/08/intolerable-beauty-chris-jordan.html

Congratulations to Heidi Karo on winning the Advertiser Business SA Contemporary Art Award at the SALA Festival - what a wonderful achievement!

Read about it in Adelaide Now:
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,,25950008-5006301,00.html
and in yesterday’s Advertiser:
Heidi in Advertiser

Well done, Heidi. Your Village is proud of you!

Every year, farmers in the rural town Inakadate, Japan create rice field art by using red rice in with their regular rice in special patterns. A few others fields in rural Japan have also followed the trend of this beautiful rice field art. Inspiration for art on the Village farm perhaps? Could be quite a hit with a small-aircraft aerodrome close by!

To see more of the process, check out “Hemmy.Net” at: http://www.hemmy.net/2007/09/23/rice-field-art/

The answer it seems, depends on the angle at which the panels are mounted. In a nutshell: panels mounted on a steep angle are cleaned pretty well by the rain but those on a flatter roof may need occasional cleaning. Read more at:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/should-you-spring-clean-your-solar.html

[Thanks to Kevin C for the link.]

The residents of Daylesford and Hepburn Springs in Victoria are in process of funding their own private community wind farm. See the ATTACHMENT:

Could we look to using our abundant wind for something similar here in the future?
Hepburn Wind initiative

Check out the website below to turn an idle moment into someone’s meal:

It is a multiple-choice quiz on a variety of subjects. Every time you get an answer right you get a harder question. If you get it wrong, you get an easier question.

For each answer you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program.

WARNING: This game may make you smarter!
http://www.freerice.com/index.php

New book: “SpeakOut: the Step-by-step Guide to SpeakOuts and Community Workshops” - www.speakoutplanning.com

How-to manual for innovative and highly effective community engagement by authors:

Dr Wendy Sarkissian, widely acknowledged as a leading authority in community engagement, has co-authored seven books on community engagement, including Kitchen Table Sustainability (Earthscan, 2008) and SpeakOut: A Step-by-step Guide to SpeakOuts and Community Workshops (Earthscan, 2009). She is Adjunct Professor, School of Sustainable Development, Bond University, Queensland.

Wiwik Bunjamin-Mau, a qualified Indonesian-born community and social planner. After a career as a community facilitator who utilizes the arts as engagement tool, she is establishing a community engagement consulting firm in Honolulu.

Is Local Food Better?

This excellent article by Sarah DeWeerdt from the WorldWatch Institute looks at all the angles.

The answer is yes, probably - but not in the way many people think. See: 
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6064

Rent-a-Chook - some good laughs on this one!
www.rentachook.com.au

Grandma’s Bottle Village - look what creativity can do with junk - at any age!
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/08/03/grandma-made-village-out-of-tens-of-thousands-of-bottles/

Solar powered handbags - the solar panels on the front of the bag allow you to charge cellphones, cameras, and other small devices. On a bright, sunny day the battery should be fully charged in 6-8 hours. When fully charged, the battery pack will hold the sun's energy for several days.
http://www.inhabitatshop.com/home.php?merchant=NoonSolar

Renewable energy - Actually, Rudd DOES Break Promises! Despite proudly asserting that his Government mostly keeps his promises, Rudd's track record on climate change commitments is appalling. Mark Diesendorf lifts the lid on dirty dealings of politicians in cahoots with the fossil-fuel-based industries to limit growth of renewable energy! Read more at:
http://newmatilda.com/2009/08/05/actually-rudd-does-break-promises

Utne Reader online - US online magazine with plenty of “front” for the pursuit of controversial subjects:
http://www.utne.com/daily.aspx

EcoVoice - Australian ecoNews and product info free online:
http://www.ecovoice.com.au/index.htm

How I became a “Locavore” - the latest cool idea to find local seasonal foods (but probably not in Oz yet)
www.takepart.com/blog/2009/05/21/how-i-became-a-locavore/

Consumerism is eating the future - ‘New Scientist’ opinion piece by Andy Coghlan
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17569-consumerism-is-eating-the-future.html 

From the Indaily News - Creative cover story

The first general manager of the Adelaide Festival Centre, Anthony Steel, will feature on the cover of the 2009/10 Adelaide White Pages directory. Mr Steel, who was the artistic director for five Adelaide Festivals during the 70s and 80s and has a long history of involvement with SA arts orgnisations, was chosen under this years theme Creative Australians: Inspiring Our Communities.

Congratulations Anthony - it’s a significant recognition, well deserved!

Did you know that fluorescent energy saving globes contain mercury and so should not be thrown in your bin?  They can be recycled locally though, so store them away until you have a few and then drop them off at the:

• Environment Centre, High St, Willunga
• City of Onkaparinga Field Operation Centre, Railway Road, Seaford Meadows, 8.00 am to 3.00 pm Monday to Friday. 

Ordinary light globes can be wrapped in paper & put in your red-lidded waste bin.

Making the point about the nightmare of floating plastic trash and other human abuses of the World’s oceans, art doubles as a strong environmental statement.

See artist Chris Jordan’s creation “Gyre” made from a mind-blowing number of bits of ocean trash, and also the other works shown that make daunting statements about the human harvest of sharks and tuna:

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=9
[you will need to scroll down the page for the actual artworks.]