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The GoodLetter Thursday, August 29, 2002
GoodThings, Inc. :: Stories, actions, ideas, and greeting cards that connect us.
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Greeting Card of the Week
Send GoodThings Holiday Cards this year!
There's never been a better year to share your love for the good things in life with the people in you care the most about. Why not take advantage of our volume discounts and send a uniquely positive message for the holidays this year? With GoodThings holiday cards, you can help increase exposure for progressive actions and ideas around the world with every card you send. (We print all our cards on recycled paper using soy ink.)
If you think customized GoodThings Greeting Cards would be perfect for your non-profit organization or company -- or even your family -- to use for the holidays, send an e-mail to cards@goodthings.com and ask us about our card customization program and volume discounts.
Please visit our online store today
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Click the card to see it enlarged or to order
Inside: wishing you much happiness and hope for the new year
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This Week's Feature
Hot in the City
by Wood Turner
Take a diverse urban neighborhood in one of America's largest cities. Combine it with a sweltering summer, a community-based organization with a great idea, a local utility with heart, and a few thousand air conditioners, and what do you get? Maybe a graceful, human solution to an energy crisis.
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Dear GoodLetter readers,
The Pilsen district is Chicago's largest Mexican-American neighborhood and the heart and soul of a growing artists' community. Rich in history and full of spirited people, radiant murals, and abundant garden patches, its residents are finding themselves at the scalding center of this summer's hotly debated American energy crisis.
Literally, the scalding center. Chicago, infamous for the bone-chilling bluster of its winters, also has unbearably hot summers, so much so that energy demand doubles between June and August. Blackouts are commonplace. And it's the older central neighborhoods like Pilsen -- with its creaking utility infrastructure and rattling, obsolete air-conditioners of its lower-income residents -- that bear the brunt. The city's slow-moving approach to blackouts, especially in poorer neighborhoods with less political power, has long left Pilsen residents in the dark.
But thanks to an unlikely convergence of interests, Pilsen may be moving away from melt-down and on its way toward cool-down. Three years ago, Commonwealth Edison (or ComEd), under new leadership, promised -- with the support the city's Department of Environment and the mayor, an avid bicyclist and a champion of the roof gardens adorning City Hall -- to provide portable generators to help sustain Pilsen residents' electricity needs during outtages. Admittedly, the generators provided only a short-term solution.
The Center for Neighborhood Technology entered the picture, having worked on improving quality of life in Chicago's neighborhoods for two decades. The organization, which has its roots in the city but now with offices nationwide, had a plan that made sense for ComEd and for the neighborhood. If ComEd would support the CNT's Community Energy Cooperative program, CNT said the utility would not only save the hundreds of thousands of dollars it was spending on generators for temporary fixes, but it would also begin the process of reducing long-term demand on the power system. And how would the Co-Op do this? By trading out low-efficiency window-unit air conditioners for state-of-the-art models, everybody would win. Pilsen's low-income residents would save money on their electric bills, ComEd would reduce demand on its energy resources (and scores big in public opinion), and the environment would get a break. Sure enough, the Cooperative received a CoEd grant and launched the program last July.
Nearly a year later, the program is a huge success that's spread to three other neighborhoods -- Chicago's northwest side (near O'Hare Airport), Elgin on the far west side, and Park Forest far to the south. Last summer, the Community Energy Cooperative became a major presence at community festivals and fairs to spread awareness of the program, soliciting interested individuals and families to become invested in the program's success by buying into it. The Co-Op has been able to offer its 3,200 members (1,500 of them Pilsen residents) as much as 80% savings on the cost of Amana's top-of-the-line Energy Star air-conditioners. Last summer, the Co-Op actually delivered and installed the units. This year, folks from the neighborhood are doing it themselves. When something good is happening, says Ramiro Borja, the Co-Op's senior community development specialist, "Word of mouth just takes over."
From ComEd's perspective, the Center for Neighborhood Technology has shown results, delivering an approximately four megawatt demand savings to the utility system (enough to power 4,000 homes). From Pilsen residents' perspective, there's excitement around an issue where once there wasn't even awareness. This winter, the CNT began another version of the program, offering Co-Op members an opportunity to trade in old refrigerators for newer high-efficiency ones. They're also working with ComEd and BP Solar to begin installing photovoltaic panels on the roofs of Pilsen's public schools and to tie it into the curriculum. As Borja acknowledges: "It's the kids who have gotten their families into recycling. Now, we're trying to do the same thing with lights and energy."
:: Wood Turner
Editor/Publisher, GoodThings, Inc.
(Thoughts on this GoodLetter? Inspired by what you've read? E-mail us -- don't forget to tell us your name, where you're from, and if we can use your words in a future GoodLetter or on our Web site.)
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Readers Respond
Thanks to so many of you for sharing your positive thoughts about our plea to our readers' to help us stay in business. Thanks also for continuing to offer your thoughtful feedback on recent GoodLetters.
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Last week's letter from Oladele Oyelakin of The Gambia in Africa elicited an extraordinary response from one of our readers:
Dear GoodThings,
I love reading The GoodLetter. I read the letter from the person from The Gambia and wondered if it would be possible for me to buy some cards for them and send them to him in The Gambia, at my expense of course. I think they are worth sharing around the world.
Joyce
Delmont, Pennsylvania
***We were so moved by Joyce's extraordinary gesture and were thrilled to ship Oladele his own Colorful Voices greeting cards this week. Has Joyce started a wonderful chain of GoodLetter readers giving the gift of GoodThings to each other?
Have you shared GoodThings Greeting Cards with someone in a powerful way? Have you used them to connect with a loved one in a unique way? We'd love to hear and publish your stories!
:: Have you told a friend about GoodThings Greeting cards?
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Glenn Smith's GoodLetter last week about his heroes inspired letters from many of you about the heroes in your own lives:
Dear GoodThings,
I work at large pediatric cardiac intensive care unit in Atlanta and see children go through the most incredible life saving treatment that often enough do not work. I see heroes everyday, in the staff that work tirelessly and often tearfully to try to keep the kids alive for one more minute, hour, day, so their parents can have that precious time with them. I see kids beat seemingly insurmountable odds to survive and thrive, in spite of what we do to and for them. These kids are my heroes and the reason I have been doing this for 23 years. I love being amazed by the resilience and strength and joy kids have, no matter what they have been through. Believe me, we can really put them through some high-tech heroic treatments. The smile of a slobbery two-year-old we snatch from the jaws of death is very gratifying.
Phyllis Marchant
Brooks, Georgia
:: Did you miss Glenn Smith's GoodLetter [#102, True Colors]? Read it now.
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We love to hear from you about anything: ideas or situations that are inspiring you or challenging you to think, as well as organizations, programs, and people that contribute to your community and the world everyday. Please drop us a line.
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The Upshot
FightAids@Home, a simple software program by Entropia, can enable you to help find a cure for AIDS or cancer by letting your home computer do all the work. Much of the ongoing research to combat AIDS involves complex -- and extremely expensive -- supercomputer modeling, requiring more technological power than is available, given present funding levels. While your computer runs all day, it wastes processing cycles. In other words, most of the time you have more computer power than you need. The FightAids@Home software connects your computer to a vast Web of computers and enables your computer's wasted processing cycles to be used by AIDS researchers at the Scripps Research Institute near San Diego without affecting the operation of your computer even slightly. But don't take our word for it -- learn more on the FightAids@Home and Entropia Web sites and get involved.
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Good Gravy
Music, Books, Films, and Radio
Please click through to our Web site to see what we're reading, watching, and listening to and, while you're at it, let us know what we're missing.
Great Music!
Drum Hat Buddha Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer (2002)
A guitar, a fiddle, and voices of gold - Dave Carter and Tracey Grammer make music to listen to in special places. Read the review.
Great Book!
Running After Antelope Scott Carrier (2001)
Scott Carrier masterfully shifts his storytelling from radio's "This American Life" to the printed page in a new collection of essays. Read the review.
Great Movie Rental!
Calle 54 (2001)
Think you can lose yourself in a new movie about the energy and passion of Latin jazz? One GoodLetter reader says there's absolutely no doubt about it. Read the review.
GoodThings on Public Radio
Have you been checking out GoodThings on Public Radio? Here's a sample from Morning Edition on National Public Radio:
What Can Your Employer Do for You?
Childcare has increasingly become a serious issue for the American workforce, with 40% of working women raising children under the age of 18. Companies are beginning to provide thoughtful solutions because it makes economic sense. When Pittsburgh's PNC Bank relocated its offices, it looked for ways to maximize employee benefits. One such benefit is its back-up daycare program. Up to twenty times a year, employees are allowed to make use of a full-service daycare center. It doesn't replace regular childcare arrangements, but it's a major help in an emergency. And best of all for PNC, it keeps employees at work.
Visit our site to listen to this story and to see what else has been on the radio.
Talk to us:
What's the best public radio story you've heard this week?
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