Green Sanctuary Committee Meeting April 4th, 2006 Attendance: Tom Swigart, Sandra Smith-Gill, Marney Bruce, Chris Hodge, Janet Ady, Marion Mason, Sam Norris Opening ------- It was suggested that it would be nice to light a chalice at committee meetings and to have an opening reading. Tom will look into this. Earth Day and Earth Month ------------------------- We are still low on volunteers for the month! Sandi brought a sparsely-filled-in printout of the volunteer activities. There were some sign-ups at the meeting. Thanks! Sandi will see about sharing the Earth Day services plate with UU Earth Ministries, the old 7th Principle Project. Janet Ady was there representing the Youth Group, discussing their participation in the Earth Day services. She will coordinate the children's story with Lora Powell. The youths will also make origami butterflies from recycled paper to hand out, saying "Every Day is Earth Day!" Roberta will be doing new member recognition on the 23rd. Lora is coordinating the rest of the service with Kathy Moser. Tom will fill out the invoice so Kathy gets paid. Janice Schlepp has received Kathy's tax info. Ed Rau will be bringing rainforest cactus to sell and/or give away on the 23rd. Chris reported about Earth Day in Frederick. Sadly, there is no organized day this year. Happily, the Sierra Club will be showing the movie "Kilowatt Hours" at the library and hosting a discussion from 10:30 to 12:30. There will be a hike through the Baker's Park area afterwards. All GS people are encouraged to come. Chris will have more soon. Marney would like to tell Simplicity Matters about the movie/discussion/hike also, so that they can bring info. We might want to give out info or samples of fair trade goods too. The Common Market should be sponsoring a celebration next year, after they have completed their move to a new (bigger) building. Wildflower Garden ----------------- Marney planted more in the wildflower garden. It looks like only the plots with cardboard or newspaper will be viable. We are going to stop for now to see how things work, before proceeding with new plots. Marney also planted Jewel weed in the retention pond. There are bluebirds in some of the birdhouses! Adopt-a-road trash pick-up -------------------------- The March 25th pick-up was well attended. Thanks to Carol A. for arranging for her Chalice Circle to participate, and thanks to all who helped! There was an incident afterwards involving someone who thought that one of our bags had blown on the highway and damaged a car. This was not true, but it seems prudent to better "protect" the highway. Tom will draft some rules for the next pick-up. The next pick-up will be June 10th, from 9:30 to 11:30. Chris will ask his Chalice Circle to participate. Table-top --------- Sandi is currently doing fair trade as the theme. May - farmers markets June/July - sustainable transportation and car pooling Aug/Sep - certification process GS certification ---------------- Sandi had handouts of our progress and a template from Annapolis UU. Tom will combine the 2 so we can begin to move forward again in May after all the Earth Month events are over. New chair-persons?/Recruiting ----------------------------- We talked about selecting new chair-persons for next year, but there do not seem to be any viable candidates. Tom and Sandi agreed to carry on, if we can recruit some new people and find identify some chair candidates for 2007. End of year report ------------------ We need to start work on this soon. Tom will lead. Compost ------- Marney brought up the compost issue. Dave H. has created the new compost areas so that he can drive up with the front loader and turn the compost. Cool! We need to be bringing compost for the bins. We need to tell the kitchen about it. Marney will write up a sign to post. We need to bring in brown leaves from home to help the process. We might want to have an insert for the Earth Day services. Paper Recycling --------------- Marney brought up the issue of paper recycling. We need to better advertize to the congregation that we do this. We need better bins in the office and in the classrooms. Catoctin Creek Park ------------------- Marion Mason brought up the issue of Catoctin Creek Park. There was County money allocated for the park with a badly-needed nature center. The money has now been reallocated to fund new ballfields in other parks. She would like for us to have a petition on the GS table for folks to sign, to urge the return the money to the nature center. We agreed to do this. Miscellaneous ------------- Jessica got a job at the new Common Market! Woohoo! There will be a MY Organic Market (MOM's) opening in Frederick soon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next meeting will be May 2th, 2006 at 7 p.m.