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It’s the Ecology, Stupid
While many Americans are familiar with the environmental efforts of national non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as the Nature Conservancy or National Geographic, there is a growing emphasis—perhaps even a movement—toward grass roots, and individual efforts to design and maintain productive systems (gardens, landscapes, farms and urban spaces) with an emphasis on ecological balance and sustainability.
Local residents will have an opportunity to learn more about permaculture, a land use design discipline, by attending a “Community Training in Ecological Design” workshop starting Saturday, Feb. 4. The series of courses will be presented by the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute of Ithaca, the Alchemical Nursery of Syracuse, and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Onondaga County.
The training will begin with a two-day session on the principles of permaculture and ecology on Saturday, Feb. 4, and Sunday, Feb. 5, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Participants will then meet every Thursday from 6 to 8:30 p.m., from Feb. 9 to April 12, with a final session planned for April 14 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Sessions will focus on specific topics such as soil and compost, and community design (visit fingerlakespermaculture.org for a complete list). Tuition is $200 to $400, depending on one’s ability to pay. All sessions will be held at Cooperative Extension, The Atrium, 2 Clinton Square.
Cetera, who is also an adviser for the Onondaga Small Business Development Center at Onondaga Community College, said the training is designed to help private landowners, gardeners, farmers and small-business owners learn how to improve food production, conserve natural resources and save money. Participants will be required to select a project and apply the principles learned in the training to its design. They will also contribute to two projects currently under way in Syracuse: the Rahama Forest Garden on South Salina Street and a house renovation project on Otisco Street, which will serve as a demonstration base for the Alchemical Nursery.
Cetera said that with the “big picture” environmental concerns getting so much coverage in the media, now is the time to help people take action on their own. “It’s a good time for that kind of information,” he noted. “There is a great interest in urban agriculture—gardens are very popular. We help guide people through the process.”
Four primary instructors will lead the training; each is certified in permaculture design. Other local ecological design experts will be brought in to address specific topics. Cetera said that although this series of workshops does not meet certification requirements, it does offer a baseline on many of the same topics.
Organizers hope these training sessions will start something of a ripple effect in the community. Cetera said by doing some simple things on their own property to maximize natural resources, people can make an independent contribution to preserving the environment—without mandates or government initiatives. Cetera hopes that demand for the information will warrant annual workshops. Another possibility is offering workshops on individual topics as the need arises.
“People should take ownership of information like what we’re offering with this training,” Cetera said. “When they do, they are more likely to share it. With something like composting, people can sometimes be afraid to just try it. You don’t need to purchase special equipment to be successful. Sometimes we just need to observe and interact. Action is the result of interaction. We can take ideas and adapt them to what we need. People often know what’s best for their own {projects}. If you make a mistake doing something like composting, it’s not the worst thing that can happen.”
Even landscaping can be improved by incorporating permacuture principles. Cetera said homeowners can use the fallen branches from their own trees to frame garden beds. “You don’t need to break them down; they will do it over time.”
Steve Gabriel of the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute is another of the primary instructors. He said urban environments—even with their emphasis on services and culture as opposed to natural resources—can certainly benefit from ecological design efforts.
“Cities are unique landscapes that are ecosystems, though we may not think of them as such,” he said, adding that he sees reasons for optimism here. “Most problems are related to the lack of healthy ecosystems to keep air and water clean, and provide, more directly, many of our humans needs while supporting wildlife. Syracuse seems to be going through a revival of sorts, and the city is becoming more livable.
“Permaculture principles support cities and look for ways to integrate ecology into them,” Gabriel continued, “working against what commonly occurs in development which is people or nature, permaculture supports the idea that we need to have people and nature.”
While the principals of permaculture are based on scientific information, Cetera added that there is also a strong link to history, and the methods native cultures worldwide used to mange and preserve natural resources. By doing so, perhaps people can start to lessen their dependence on manufacturing and the goods produced as a result.
So why has it taken so long for the principles of permaculture to catch on? “Unfortunately, many people are stuck in the cycle of maintaining a modern lifestyle,” Cetera said. “Time becomes a primary factor. To incorporate ecological design into a project, you’re going to have to spend some time on it.
“Then there’s conspicuous consumption, the social norms on how a house and lawn should look,” added Cetera, a south Pennsylvania native who came to Syracuse to attend graduate school at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. “We get caught up in that, but the reality is that they’re not usually things that people truly believe. You see it in the number of people who are gardening now, and more people are letting their lawns develop more naturally. Farmers markets and consignment stores are more popular than ever. And we’re doing more cooking at home, eating in. So, I think slowly, over time, those norms will settle back down. People are motivated. They’re concerned for the future.”
And that’s exactly why Gabriel thinks workshops like this one can have an impact. “What I find inspiring about permaculture is that the solutions are on the ground, small-scale and community-based,” he said. “By examining our actions and taking steps to change how we live from day to day, we not only reduce our footprint but also actively participate in developing a new paradigm for living ecologically.”
Scholarship assistance is available thanks to support from Home Headquarters and the Gifford Foundation. For more information about Community Training in Ecological Design, and to register, visit fingerlakespermaculture.org
—Tammy DiDomenico
Missing Melo
It has been nearly two weeks and three games now since the Syracuse University men’s basketball team lost starting center Fab Melo, apparently because of an academic issue. And while the Orange is 2-1 in those games, it could be 1-2 if the refs had properly called goaltending on SU’s Baye Keita at the end of the Orange’s 63-61 win over West Virginia Jan. 28 at the Carrier Dome.
Clearly, SU misses the big guy. The Orange is getting hammered on the boards, and its 2-3 zone defense isn’t as strong without the 7-foot, 245-pound Melo clogging the middle and serving as a safety net for a guard or forward who wants to gamble on a steal.
“We are totally different,” SU guard Scoop Jardine said. “No one can deny that at all. We have two wins without him. But with Fab, we are rebounding and blocking shots and we become a much better defensive team.”
Melo, who’s averaging 7.2 points per game, leads SU with 5.7 rebounds per game and 60 blocked shots. It has been reported in several media outlets that Melo has an academic issue, but citing student privacy policies, SU has not commented publicly. After the West Virginia game, Orange coach Jim Boeheim sounded somewhat optimistic that Melo will return soon. “He’s working through his issues,” Boeheim said. “We’re hopeful that this week we’ll find out.”
But what if that means they’ll find out that he can’t play for a few more games? Or, perish the thought, the rest of the season? If that’s the case, the Orange players will need to step up in several areas if they want to go deep into the NCAA Tournament without Melo. Here are five areas SU will need to improve:
1. Rebounding. Melo wasn’t exactly collecting rebounds like Dennis Rodman, or even Rick Jackson. He wasn’t even among the top 20 rebounders in the Big East Conference. But in the 20 games with Melo, the Orange outrebounded its opponents by an average of 36.6 to 35.3 per game. Without him, SU has been outrebounded 119-85 (39.6 to 28.3), including West Virginia’s whopping 41-20 advantage Jan. 28.
“We just haven’t been doing a good job on the boards; we really haven’t all year,” Boeheim said. “And it is not the center position. Everyone is going to look at that, but Fab was averaging six rebounds a game. It is really about our guards and forwards doing a better job rebounding the ball. That is imperative. We can get out-rebounded, but not by 20-something.”
2. More specifically … the guards’ rebounding. Against West Virginia, the three Orange guards—Scoop Jardine, Brandon Triche and Dion Waiters—collected a combined one rebound. The four WVU guards gathered 16 rebounds. With Melo, the three SU guards were averaging a combined 6.6 rebounds per game. Without him, they’re at 5.0 per game, although that stat is skewed by the WVU game.
“We do need to get more rebounds,” Waiters said. “It’s our job to go down there and battle and get rebounds. We are all big guards so we have to go help the big guys with Fab being out.”
3. Shooting the ball. In the 20 games with Fab, the Orange shot .486 from the field and .357 from 3-point range. In the three games without him, SU is shooting .421 from the field and .255 from beyond the arc (14-of-55). “We really haven’t shot the ball well from the three since the {Big East} started,” Boeheim said. “We are getting good looks; you’ve got to make some of them because we are going to get beat on the boards a little bit.”
Added Jardine: “They are the same shots that we are getting when people talk about how great our outside shooting is. We are getting the same looks. We just have to calm down and knock them down. You will go through stretches like this in the middle of the season; you aren’t worried about it.”
4. Keeping the centers out of foul trouble. With Melo out, 6-9 freshman power forward Rakeem Christmas has been starting at center with the 6-10 Keita continuing as the backup. Opposing teams are taking it to Christmas and Keita, and SU can’t afford to lose both during a game unless it wants a 6-7 or 6-8 center. Against WVU, Christmas fouled out in just 14 minutes of playing time and with 4 minutes, 58 seconds left in the game. Keita played the rest of the game with four fouls, and it’s safe to say that if he had fouled out, no one else for SU would have been able to block—or goaltend—on that last-second shot.
“If two people get in foul trouble, it’s kind of hard to adjust to that,” said SU forward James Southerland. “Fab is an extra body and he’s an experienced player. If he gets in foul trouble, we have Baye and Rock. Now with him out, we have just Rock and Baye and that could create some problems sometimes.”
5. Hustling and scrapping. It’s the Big East, and the easy wins were going to be few and far between even with Melo. Led by veterans Kris Joseph, Jardine and Triche, SU showed a lot of heart to overcome its deficiencies against Cincinnati and West Virginia.
The trick is to keep that mind-set whether Melo returns or not.
—Matt Michael
