This past summer, we got a nice note from freshly-retired Executive Director Barry Rosenberg mentioning that among other things, he was struggling mightily with a brand new retirement present from his son. Barry, our rugged and iconoclastic leader for about 8 years, had returned to live on his beautiful “off the grid” homestead nestled in the forest between Priest River and Priest Lake. His son gave him a solar powered refrigerator. Barry, used to regularly hauling ice to the house, explained that he was uncertain about the whole thing, and was wondering what he would do with such a device.
And so it is here at the office. We’ve begun to modernize our communications efforts – so as to preach more and to preach beyond the usual smallish choir. First it was a new email system. Then, Facebook. Recently, Twitter. And now, this blog. We’ve tried it out quietly with a few posts and we’re now going to be rolling it out to the more general public.
We hope to post here regularly, maybe a few times a week, about things of importance to our constituency of folks in the region interested in our mission – to conserve, protect, and restore the environment in North Idaho and particularly the Coeur d’Alene basin. We hope this is a useful tool in this new electronic age, and that we can maybe reach more people and do more good. But we’ll see. It all seems kind of like Barry’s refrigerator.
Glad to hear that you are “modernizing” at KEA. Must always be looking forward and staying up with events and technology.
But I am not too thrilled with the current focus of KEA. Seems like KEA has spent too much attention to what I think are social or cultural issues, rather than critical things happening in our woods, water, and natural environment. Our great lake is fragile, and KEA has given lip sevice to any lake related issues.
Past leadership has taken a “zero cut” position regarding timber management on the national forest, a foolish, unrealistic stance that cuts KEA out of any meaningful dialogue with the managers or industry. This needs to change.
Looking forward to some new direction and leadership at KEA.
Thanks for the comment, Ed. I’m not sure what you mean about “social and cultural issues” but we are re-tooling some of our programs for a new focus on Lake work. We just received a small grant and we are hoping for more funding to be much more active on behalf of the Lake’s water quality and shorelines.
We are also taking a careful look at the forests program. We are, and will remain hard-liners when it comes to exploiting our public lands for private gain, but we will keep an open door and open mind when it comes to collaboration and dialog.
Terry
Hey Terry, nice job on the new blog, remind me to send you a link to the new wordpress blog we have set up in DC–lots of gray matter being developed learning how to get it all setup for sure.
Nice that we can subscribe to your Real Simple Subscription (RSS) feed and have all your new posts show up in our google et al readers daily!
It would sure be great if you folks could update on on the blog when there are special events, meetings, etc. that you need our help with, sometimes the email slides by and it is more difficult to find some times at a later date.
keep up the great work, I am pretty curious how you got that solar refrigerator working on your north facing wall?
jeffrey
Thanks Jeff, good idea about posting the email alerts to the blog somehow. We’ll figure that one out.
And the refrigerator is Barry’s — up in the woods, not here in the office. Barry’s got his solar panels up a tree. (The not-even-Energy-Star mini-fridge in the north-facing office, by the way, has just gone to the appliance graveyard. We’re taking cast-offs and/or donations …)
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