Green Sanctuary Committee Meeting February 7th, 2006 Attendance: Tom Swigart, Sandra Smith-Gill, Marney Bruce, Dick Menzer, Bill Laughlin, Ginny Laughlin GS Acreditation: --------------- The charter is approved and on the website. We talked about the Annapolis UU GS powerpoint slides that Marney sent around. We will do some copying/editing of this for our own use. Earth Day and Earth Month ------------------------- The Earth Day service will be April 23rd. We have the whole service now. The Youth group has dropped out. We discussed how the service might proceed and what the themes should be. Hopefully, we can meet with Roberta and a worship committee person soon to flesh out some ideas. Tom will contact them. Tom is also contacting Kathy Moser, who performed at the church last year. She expressed an interest in returning to perform at our Earth Day service. We shall see if she is still available at this late date. Other ideas - Native American readings, volunteer simplicity, deep ecology, 7th principle, observance and appreciation of the natural areas around us. Any other ideas are welcome. Douglass Gill, Sandi's ex, will not be able to speak during April. Perhaps at a later date. Chris suggested by e-mail involving The Common Market and Community Commons, who sponsored the Frederick Earth Day celebration last year. Sandi is looking into having a E-partner sale in April with Global X or World Centric. People need to start signing up for April activities - cleaning, kitchen, ushering, greeting, flowers. Sandi is the lead for that in her copious free time! Work Parties: ------------ We will be having a work party on March 11th to restart work on the wildflower meadow. There will be a dump of top soil that day, and we will be starting the beds. Dick Menzer showed us the intended site and will provide a blow-up picture of the area soon. He will also put stakes around the area. Each dump (perhaps as many as 7 in all) will be 7 cubic yards of dirt. That's enough for over 500 square feet at 4 inches deep. The thought is to try to arrange these in a series of 10-foot diameter circles (roughly). There should be 3 feet or so between circles. This will allow people to be able to walk through the area without our having to make paths. It will allow the grass between to be mowed. And, it will also allow easy access for maintenance of the beds. We will start with one load, and add more in the future. We also talked about what to put down under the dirt (old cotton sheets, cardboard, newspaper) and on top of the dirt (wood shaving mats?) No clear concensus was reached, but we need to decide soon. Sandi suggested that a solar water fountain for the memory garden bowl could be nice. It would also keep mosquitos out of it. She will look into the cost. Adopt-a-road trash pick-up -------------------------- The next adopt-a-road pick-up will be March 25th. Tom will advertise soon. Irene Zmitrovis and her Chalice Circle (sounds like a band!) may also be interested in helping. Tom will contact her. Tabletop Ideas -------------- Along the line of the winterization theme, Sandi is going to try to get someone from Home Depot to come give a talk, possibly on Feb 25th or Mar 5th, after services. Sandi also has some info for the table, and maybe there will be more handouts at the talk. Perhaps we can repeat this next Fall, as well. Future tabletops: Apr/May - True Cost of Food/Farmer's Markets/CSAs - Jessica? *** Jun/Jul - Transportation/Car Pooling - Marney Aug/Sep - The GS Acreditation Process - Tom *** Further ideas for this are to show the animated video at various places around the church throughout April - Friendly Forum, GS mtg, youth gathering, after service movie (Scott Butki's group), etc. We are hoping Jessica can run with this also. Budget ------ Tom agreed to check into budget matters, specifically if we still have access to last year's plant sale money. We also have $400 available in our general committee budget. Coffee ------ Sales were $740 in January. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next meeting will be March 7th, 2006 at 7 p.m. unless we move it to accomodate a meeting with Roberta and the worship committee. Stay tuned.