Grow Where You Are Planted ~ Using Online Resources to Find Your Place to Thrive

This post will grow as I re-edit it.This is the place I've put notes from a workshop I've developed called Grow Where You Are Planted ~ Using Online Resources to Find Your Place to Thrive.

It's written for Rhode Islanders, but you could extrapolate to your own neck of the woods if you live elsewhere.

If you're not at the workshop, you'll be missing discussion and a lot of useful information. Here's a basic script that I try to follow:

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I’ve assumed we’re all like plants for this presentation, maybe somewhere between seaweed and oak trees, (or maybe a potted plant that is often moved, or a transplant) and I’ve assumed we all live in or near Rhode Island. We sometimes talk about ourselves as though we’re plants, putting down roots, being uprooted, and so forth, so let's follow that idea along and think of what we need to grow.

We’ll consider:

1. Who we really are and what we need to grow, the kind of soil, so to speak in which we’ll reach our full potential
2. Where we are ~ Rhode Island's figurative “soil” for us plants
3. Who else cares about Rhode Island’s environment and what they’re doing about it – what figurative Gardeners are tending this place called Rhode Island.

Then we’ll:

1. Explore the informational forests of RI's environment ~ and probably discover we could really use some travel aids
2. Learn to use some online tools such as electronic calendars to continue our explorations and to keep growing

First of all, let’s consider ourselves.

Take a moment to consider the following in relation to our natural environment, because we are living beings. It's not US right here, and the ENVIRONMENT over there. We ARE the so-called Environment, we’re only alive as long as we breathe AIR, our bodies are mostly WATER, and the rest of our physical bodies is minerals – EARTH.

• What are your interests and skills?
• What do you want to learn?
• What do you want to do?
• What are your concerns/needs?

WHAT DO YOU LOVE? WHAT ATTRACTS YOU? WHAT DO YOU NEED TO LIVE, TO GROW, TO THRIVE?
It may be a circular process, a gradual unfolding, if things don’t seem clear to you right now. Even more reason to get out and explore, taste, experience the endless variety of nature.

Next, let’s consider where we are currently rooted – in Rhode Island, the smallest state in the US. There are many ways of looking at the state – some maps I show are of state parks, of the main rivers and large bodies of water in the state, of the watersheds, and of the bedrock geologic.

Rhode Island’s size is the stuff of legends – well, at least it’s remarkable, and almost a standard of measurement, as a linear foot is. Its total area is 1545 square miles, which is about 3 times the size of either New York City (469 sq miles) or the City of Los Angeles (498 sq miles). It’s a bit more than one and a half times the size of Cook County, Illinois (945 sq miles). Its about 37 miles wide and 48 miles long, and about one-third salt water (Narragansett Bay). This means no resident of the state is more than a thirty-minute drive from the water’s edge. And it also means each of us mortals can attend a meeting anywhere in the state --- even an all-day conference or an evening meeting --- and still go home for the night. You can't do that if you live in Long Island and the meeting's in Albany ~ unless you have a private plane.

We do have a lot of towns and cities (39) for our size, but four of us could count them on our fingers. It would take more than 35 people to count Massachusetts’ cities and towns (351) on their fingers, and 48 people to count those of California. You can really get your hands around this place.

And although Rhode Island is the second most densely populated state (after New Jersey) with about one million people, we do have lots of beautiful nature preserves. Compare RI’s population to the crowd at President Obama’s inauguration (maybe about 1.8 million). We could all show up at the National Mall simultaneously and have lots of room to spare.

What this means is that it’s relatively easy for us to have a shared sense of place and to know each other. Twenty-one of the 39 cities and towns have harbor commissions and almost everyone else is connected to the Bay through the watersheds. We  have our own dictionary and even a dialect.

It’s a no-brainer to dream up a comprehensive environmental calendar for this place and to think of it as a whole, as more than the sum of its parts. The systemic nature of nature is manifest here.

With a sense of what we’d personally like to do and learn, and a sense of where we are in the natural world, let’s now consider who else does what about Rhode Island’s environment. Who tends this place and cares about it? In the actual workshop, we talk about our own environmental interests and concerns, and then about what interests us about Rhode Island – why we live here and not in some other natural environment, what attracts US to this PLACE. At this point, we go on an exploration of Rhode Island’s environmental information terrain. We make a list of the organizations and programs and events that the attendees care about. I display a Selected RI Environmental Organizations, an incomplete, alphabetized list, and we skim though it while talking about what we know about some of these groups and what they say about Rhode Island’s environment. We also explore a set of List of Online Environmental Resources.

By then, we’re probably overwhelmed with too much information. It’s time to figure out how to make sense of all this.

We ask and answers such questions as, What do we know about using online Calendars and RSS feeds?

Take a look at What Grows On in Rhode Island. There are at least four ways of sorting the information in that calendar so you can find what you most want to see easily. The SubCalendars are based on EVENT TYPE. You can also sort on CATEGORIES, and on AUDIENCE, as well as LOCATION (our 39 cities and towns).

We also discuss some of the things to do with the Calendar. Look at the Event Actions list, which includes adding events to your own online calendar (we demo this), subscribing to a calendar, and setting up an RSS Feed. People can ask questions and try using the Calendar themselves (we always hope there’s a good internet connection wherever this workshop is given!)

 Ideally the workshop is interactive and the examples are tailored to the interests and knowledge of the attendees.

To Sum it All Up in Some Three-Sums:

You / Me  ~  RI  ~  Others
We  =  Air  +  Water  +  Earth  =  RI
Sort Event Information:  Event Type  ~  Category  ~  Location
Online Info Actions:  Send Emails  ~  Subscribe  ~  RSS Feed

Pace yourself ~ “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” – Emerson

Have Fun Exploring Rhode Island!