Blog #5 - Favorite Place at Home or in Community

I'm a huge fan of libraries. If there's one place I always visit in every community I've ever lived in, it's the local library. I spent a moderate chunk of my early childhood living in and around downtown Orlando. Although there were some bright spots, most of the streets and parks were not safe places for kids to loiter, especially alone. Many of the community centers were dominated by local athletes and the state of their facilities varied widely. The public library was the PERFECT solution with it’s free after-school programs, tutoring/homework help, reading circles, screening stations for audio and visual media, computers, and helpful librarian and volunteer staff. Obviously funding can have a great impact on library facilities, collections, staff, and hours, but even at its worst, I’ve yet to meet a library I didn’t like.

The main branch of the Orlando Public Library is my favorite. It is currently the largest public library in the state of Florida, and the first to issue me a library card. When I frequented it’s stacks, the children’s department was located in the basement of the five-storey building, and housed a large piece of furniture we called the “reading tree”. It was something like an enclosed jungle gym with pillows tucked into every nook and cranny. We would climb into it with a book and promptly get lost in our imaginations. Sadly, the reading tree no longer exists, and the children’s department is now located on the first floor near the main entrance, but it is just as whimsically decorated as ever.



*Note: this is a picture of one of the pillar decorations in the new OPL children’s department. If memory serves me correctly there are three or four different pillar scenes. This photo was taken from a blog here, and its reproduction below constitutes fair use. All rights retained by original copyright holder.

Blog #2 - Sense of Place

Although it may seem counterintuitive to those who primarily think of Florida as a state of beaches and amusement parks, agricultural is big business here. For many students inheriting their family farms, or following their migrant-worker parents from harvest to harvest is an everyday reality, and the public school curriculum reflects that (or at least it used to). In the second grade and again in the sixth, my class tended a small garden of corn, peas, tomatoes and varied greens. In 10th grade home economics we each started a green houseplant from a cutting and had to keep it alive for at least one semester. The novelty of eating food that I grew myself, however, never seemed to extend beyond the schoolyard or last beyond the academic year. I have never grown any edible plants on my own. Flowers are another story.

I’ve always thought that a flourishing flower garden was the height of domesticity. Rows upon rows of brightly colored pansies, petunias, and peonies hedged in by smartly manicured roses (tea roses, not shrub roses). If the mistress of the manor had an especially green thumb, she might have a box of herbs growing under the window ledge where she cooled her homemade pies. This was not anything I witnessed growing up. It was more of a waking dream influenced by Martha Stewart and late 1980’s Independence Day TV commercials. To this day I find her television show awe-inspiring, and at the same time it always irritates me. Although I always wanted one, I was never able to maintain a home garden for long. We moved around quite a bit as I was growing up, and, like myself, my little flower buds were seldom able to put down substantial roots. Wildflowers and standard commercial landscaping were the kind of greenery lining the neighborhood streets of my childhood.

I don't know when I officially became obsessed with collecting flowers. More likely than not, it began when my dad gave me my first digital camera. With a nearly limitless supply of exposures, and a handy set of rechargeable batteries, I was finally able to amass all the flowers that I was unable to grow myself. And I’ve got quite a collection now that includes camellias shot in the USDA National Arboretum in D.C., desert lilies photographed on the edges of the San Bernardino National Forest in California, and a hundred other little blooms whose names I may never know. And that’s enough for me. It’s not exactly the height of environmentalism, but my sinuses are quite grateful.

Blog #1 - Expectations for Colloquium

This semester I am taking the University Colloquium... for the last time. Don't get me wrong, I totally respect FGCU's mission to instill in all its graduates a sense of place, an ecological perspective, and a working knowledge of sustainability (among other objectives). That being said, I believe there are a few bugs left in the system, and I say this as someone who has sat in on this course before, not just as a student made apprehensive by campus rumors.

Choosing the right professor can be an intimidating task. Most students choose their colloquium section based upon date and time, but this is probably the worst method for this course. Although the course materials are all (more or less) the same, the backgrounds (and teaching styles)of the professors are very broad. You could be learning about ecological sustainability and carbon emissions from an engineer, an attorney, a graphic artist, or an author. This makes perfect sense if your teacher turns out to be someone like Carl Hiaasen, but not so much if it's Judy Blume.

One of the course goals listed on the University Colloquium webpage is "to provide a 'sense of place' and an understanding of the unique ecological features of the Southwest Florida environment". This is generally accomplished by taking field trips to various local wildlife sanctuaries, conservation areas, agribusiness properties, etc. But an occasional acquaintance with the natural world will not necessarily engender any lingering affection for it, or even a healthy respect for that matter.

I am a former Girl Scout. I took AP Environmental Science as a high school senior, and spent many hours that year volunteering in Alachua county's Gum Root Swamp. I've lived in north, central, southeast and southwest Florida, but didn't truly appreciate the natural beauty of my state until I left it and spent some time trapped under the smog-choked skies of southern California. I think that embracing the "great outdoors" is something akin to spiritual awakening; a deeply personal experience requiring an individual commitment. It is beyond the scope of one class to create such a profound connection, especially when many of the students are resistant.

All negativity aside, I expect to encounter updated information about the state of the world on both a local and a global scale. And not just news about the natural environment, but about the inter-connected politics, and economics as well. I hope to be reminded of my personal agency when it comes the goings-on in my community, and I hope to be inspired to act in protection of the things I hold dear, be they people, places, or possessions. It's a tall order, I know, but preserving the Earth is a mission undervalued by so many people. Our planet (the air, water, plants, and animals) is an IRREPLACEABLE source of life, and that realization is a source of great power.

It's "flower power", but not in a hippie sort of way.