Paul Koppana Slide Presentation of Strawbale Buildings
Dear Friends...
November's meeting attendance was the highest in recent memory! I just re-added the total sign-ins and it came to 63! Although I don't have a specific count for the last AEA meeting with a similarly high attendance, I believe the last time an AEA meeting had anywhere near this large an attendance was the shared meeting with AIA/COTE at EarthConnection on Ecological Design in February of 97, when we filled EarthConnection's main room.
Similarly, this meeting yesterday drew much of its attendees from non-AEA eco-groups, including most notably AIA/COTE, Grailville, Michaela Farm and Cincinnati Earth Institute
I'd like to thank our lead speaker from Colorado, Paul Koppana, and all the local folks (Janet Kalven, Mary Meyer, Richard Cartwright, Andy Holyoke, Chris & Joe Stampers, Andy Corn and RJ Weber) for making their presentations and sharing their experiences with strawbale construction and their creative uses of local, natural, recycled and reused materials in their various projects. All the feedback we've received from our guests was how inspired they were and how information packed was your show. We very much appreciate your taking the time from your busy schedules and bringing such levening enthusiasm for our guests.
GrailvilleI'd like to offer a special thanks to Greg Ernst, Jeanette Raichyk and Joe Davis for their assistance in making this meeting such a success!
On a personal level, I'd like to share that I found it especially refreshing how all the projects represented, regardless of style, construction specifics and project cost, were superinsulated, passive solar and very low in their overall energy consumption compared with traditional structures and their occupants. These three design/ construction/ lifestyle basics have been the focus of so many AEA meetings, workshops and hometours since its founding over 20 years ago. As I drove home last night, I experienced a puzzled feeling I once felt after one of my earliest encounters with AEA in the early 80s, when I was still in college: astonishment about how and why the vast majority of new and existing structures in and around Greater Cincinnati continue to be designed, built and remodelled without application of these simple basics.... As Greg Ernst reminded me after reading through a collection of old AEA newsletters from 1983 to 2000, it seems that the same messages keep recurring again and again, over and over... He said he was referring to my own writings, but the more I thought about it on my drive, his remarks could be applied to AEA in general, from its founding to the present.
I, for one, am proud that AEA continues to push and present these and other related themes, and hope that what we keep saying over and over eventually catches on more in the mainstream.
Thanks again for a memorable evening!
John Robbins & Jeanette Raichyk, AEA co-chairs