New Web Site!

Some of my street kids are on the video on this new web site…check it out!~

New Web site links local energy efforts

 By RICHIE DAVIS Recorder Staff

There are so many great stories to be told about the ”greening” of Greenfield and other local towns, thought documentary filmmaker Carlyn Saltman, that she wanted to use her professional skills to spread the word.

Saltman mentioned the idea to Greenfield Web site designer Richard Roth at a meeting of a Greenfield-based ”creative cluster” she’s part of, and out of that was born EarthThrives.com — a Web site, dubbed ”a virtual neighborhood of the Pioneer Valley.”

On it, Anne Perkins tells about Greenfield’s planned Wisdom Way Solar Village and other sustainable-energy homes on Hillside Road in Montague, as well as how fly ash from coal-burning plants can be used in building foundations to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

In another video, Piyali Summer of Ashfield shows how she’s converting a one-third-acre lawn into a vegetable garden instead of burning gasoline and producing fumes by mowing it.

Then there are ”Webisodes” showing how Jonathan von Ranson builds his composting toilet, a video showing the ice cream social that the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee hosted in October to celebrate raising $12,000 for the New England Wind Fund, triggering matching money to the town.

”We want this to be a local gathering place,” said Saltman, a Turners Falls resident who has worked with Roth to build the site into a source of information and inspiration to show people around the Pioneer Valley and beyond that real people are already doing real things to reduce the region’s ”carbon footprint.”

Each town may be making its own efforts, through energy committees and through organizations like Perkins’ Rural Development Inc. and Greenfield-based Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, said Nancy Hazard, the former NESEA ”Tour do Sol” coordinator who is now working on the Greening Greenfield campaign.

But the site — acting as the county Renewable Energy Task Force did 25 years ago — brings those initiatives together in a patchwork to provide a boost for people who want to do likewise.

”There have been a lot of interesting examples I’ve heard about recently,” she said, ”of how other people doing things is more effective than the intelectual-ness of what you might do,” Hazard said. ”It goes beyond weird and just becomes mainstream.”

Saltman, who included on the site the ”Enjoy the Ride” video she co-produced for the Franklin Regional Council of Governments to promote bicycling — said that as the site expands and tells more real stories about local people, that should draw attention so that it isn’t simply a matter of ”preaching to the choir.”

”It gets the ball rolling,” she said. ”Having more local people on it, more people will want to tune in.”

EarthThrives.com includes a blog — with topics so far including ”building/housing,” and ”food/agriculture” — and invites people to ”tell us what you’re doing to make the earth thrive,” with their own video clips and stories, Saltman said. ”We want the site to be inspirational.”

Among the most compelling documentaries on the site — all of them three minutes or less — is an interview Saltman did with teenagers in front of Veterans Mall about environmental issues.

To questions about climate change, global warming and greenhouse gases, the teens admit they’re totally ignorant, while one responds that when it comes to doing anything to take care of the environment, that’s for ”hippies” and people with money.

Hazard, who now runs an environmental consulting business, EarthSustain, said she and Saltman hope to work with students in the Greenfield schools to help them make their own documentary films about how they think about and act on sustainability issues in their own lives.

Roth, whose Greenfield-based TnR Global firm helps provide data solutions for companies around the world, said his hope is for the site to help local communities make an impact in turning toward a more sustainable energy future.

”The strategy is that you can’t solve these problems with grand solutions,” said Roth, who has been funding the site so far but added that grants or sponsorships may be sought down the line to help defray costs. ”They have to piecemeal, incrementally. I think we can help in that arena, that’s our primary goal.”

With what they see as a leadership vacuum at the national level dealing with energy and environmental issues, Roth and Saltman believe community-building locally is the place to make a difference.

Building on the ”local hero” campaign of Deerfield-based Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, Roth said, ”We’re trying to contribute at the level we can. Just thinking about this is not enough. If we can get people to act on it, that will make a change.”

On the Web: www.earththrives.com

You can reach Richie Davis at: rdavis@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext. 269