the Norman Sustainability Network

Via Going Green:

Most people want to save the world for their children, but Jim and Shauna Struby are making a point of including their children on that journey.

“You want your kid to balance a checkbook or sew on a button, and for me, it’s the same thing,” said Shauna Struby, 52. “The things we’re teaching them will last the rest of their lives.”

The Strubys grow much of their own food and also recycle, have a compost area and began collecting rainwater this year. Their 21-year-old son works on a relative’s organic ranch in California.

From the front yard, the Strubys’ Crown Heights home looks like any other house on the block, with no solar panels and no wind machines. But over the past seven years, Struby family members have layered several “small steps” into their lives to make a big impact.

Read the rest.

From the Edmond Sun:

In a remarkable turnabout, a federal agency has thrown a kink in the reconstruction of the I-40 Crosstown Expressway. The decision brings new hope for passenger rail service in Oklahoma, and headaches for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation in the face of soaring costs and dwindling resources.

The federal Surface Transportation Board, which succeeded the Interstate Commerce Commission in its 1995 reorganization, has jurisdiction over the railroad industry in this country, including line abandonments. In January 2007 the board was persuaded that the rail lines in downtown Oklahoma City had been abandoned for more than two years, triggering a federal regulation that allowed the lines to be expeditiously removed and clearing the way for the I-40 rerouting project.

As it turns out, the rail lines had not been abandoned. While construction began on the highway project, Ed Kessler of Norman filed a petition to reopen the abandonment decision. He presented evidence, including photographs, indicating BNSF and Stillwater Central Railroad trains still were using the line to serve businesses in the area.

Read the rest.

Thanks to Ed Kessler and all of the dedicated Oklahomans working to save Union Station for helping to make this happen!

Myrna Fletcher’s famous strawbale house is in the news once again:

Myrna Fletcher wants you to know that you, too, could build a straw bale house.

The energetic great-grandmother is closing in on her dream of living in an energy-efficient straw bale house — a dream that’s taken about three-and-a-half years so far to build, mostly by hand.

Outside it may be steamy, 90-plus degree July days, but it’s considerably cooler inside her Southwest-themed, 2,700-square-foot northeast Norman house. There a couple of layers of Oklahoma red mud mixed with sand and chopped straw cover the straw bales, lovingly applied by Fletcher, friends and family including several grandchildren.

“It has the heart of everybody who’s worked (on it),” she says, noting a hand print here or a grandson’s name there.

Read the rest.

From Indian County Today:

Seneca Scott originally moved from his job in Oklahoma City to north Tulsa to attend law school. Instead, Scott found his calling in neighborhood organizing, along with a passion for making Oklahoma a more environmentally sustainable state.

”Neighborhoods are an extension of family and community,” he said. ”I think that’s why I emphasize the neighborhoods so much. In an underserved area, you have to draw on what allows people to come together - a sense of neighborhood, a sense of belonging, a sense of community. There may still be problems and challenges, but there’s a common ground there.”

A Choctaw Nation tribal member, Scott’s interest in community service began while majoring in history and Native American studies at the University of Oklahoma. During this time, he worked with the Green Corn Organization, where the ”emphasis there was more with getting college students out to places like rural Indian reservations or African-American urban Oklahoma City, and find ways for us to contribute back,” he said.

After graduating and working three years with a federal ”empowerment jump” program for Oklahoma City’s economic development office, Scott and his family moved to the Kendall-Whittier area of north Tulsa, where Scott became active with neighborhood-based groups as well as organizations with the city of Tulsa.

In addition to neighborhood involvement, Scott has been active with pursuing renewable resources, serving as the immediate past president of the Oklahoma Sustainability Network. During this time, one of OSN’s accomplishments was to obtain a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant for the farmer’s market of north Tulsa, where people living in the area could buy fruit and vegetables through WIC and food stamp programs. Yet his interest in renewable resources is also multifaceted - Scott’s full-time job is in the oil and gas industry, where he has been an operations manager for Trivestco Energy for the past three years.

Read the rest.

From the Norman Transcript:

Ridership doubled for Cleveland Area Rapid Transit Thursday during its Dump the Pump initiative, despite threatening rain that canceled the evening concert.

“The Dump the Pump passenger totals are tallied, and even though Mother Nature canceled the concert, I think she must have ridden the bus … because everyone else in Norman did,” CART spokesperson Kris Glenn said in an e-mail.

CART doubled its average daily ridership Thursday by transporting 2,225 people.

The Main Street and Alameda/East Norman routes were the most popular, producing 170 percent and 239 percent increases, respectively.

Almost every bus was standing room only, but two runs specifically were almost unbelievable, Glenn said. The 1 p.m. Alameda/East Norman route transported 69 passengers, and 81 people boarded the 4 p.m. Main Street bus.

From CNN:

For many people in Oklahoma, life is built around the car.

With several refineries in the region, years of cheap fuel have made it possible for many people to live far from their jobs.

Now the situation is unraveling.

Read the rest.

In rankings of the 50 cities best and worst prepared to weather an oil crisis, Tulsa and Oklahoma City were 49 and 50.

From the Norman Transcript:

Public transportation users in Norman no longer have to rely on old-fashioned maps to tell them how to get from point A to point B.

Cleveland Area Rapid Transit is now featured on Google Transit, providing a high-tech alternative.

CART users can go online and type in their starting point and ending destination into Google Maps using the Google Transit feature. The program maps out several routes so users can choose the one that works for them.

You can find the new service at http://www.google.com/transit.

NSN member Myrna Fletcher’s strawbale home is featured in this Oklahoma Daily article:

When Myrna Fletcher decided to build a new house in Norman, she took an approach that was anything but ordinary: She decided to build it out of straw bales.

Fletcher, 69, said she always knew she wanted a nontraditional house. So when she decided it was time to move out of her 1905 farmhouse after 32 years, she chose straw bale construction because of its superior insulation.

She said she had prior knowledge of straw bale homes because they were popular in the Southwest where she grew up.

“Pueblo-stucco style appeals to me because that’s what I’ve always known,” she said. “I said, ‘that’s what I want to do. If I ever build a house, that’s what it’s going to be.’”

Read the rest.

Bring the kids and enjoy Sunday in Reaves Park for the 9th Annual Little River Zoo Kids for Kindness Earth Day Festival! From noon to 6:00 p.m. , April 20th , Little River Zoo and the City of Norman, along with many other local, county and state organizations will come together to provide FREE fun, hands-on children’s activities that focus on humane treatment of animals, renewal of our environment and kindness to each other.

Join in the “Mascot Mamba” with Prickles the Porcupine, Nuts the Squirrel, McGruff the Crime Dog,  Sparky the Dalmatian, ReCyclo Man & ReCyclo Woman and Clifford the Dog.  See the beautiful Los Ninos De Espana’- Spanish dancers, Tai Kwon Do and Tai Chi demonstrations, along with Thunderbird Karaoke and lots of loveable live animals too.   Kids participate in the activities and graduate to become “Official Kids For Kindness for Planet Earth” and are presented with a certificate and a cup of live lady bugs to set free in their own back yard.

As part of the Earth Day festival, the City of Norman is celebrating Recycling Day and Arbor Day and planting 50 trees in Reaves Park Arboretum.   Everyone’s welcome to help “ReLeaf” Reaves Park.

For further information, contact Little River Zoo at 366-7229 or Norman Parks & Recreation at 366-5472 or  Norman Environmental Services at 292-9731.