The Lehrer Report: May 14, 2021
Monday, May 17, 2021
Garden report: The potatoes, green beans and cucumbers are in. Some of the snow peas have sprouted. This weekend the tomatoes go in. The Solomon seal has bloomed.
Avian report: I feel a wonderful vote of confidence that a bird has built a nest in my lilac bush. Unfortunately, it’s too high up to see the eggs. I will look for the initial flights.
The regular readers of this column know about the takeout meals offered by the South Church. Now there is a great collaboration between the church and the ARHS Sene-Gambian Scholars for a West African takeout meal on May 22 between 5 and 6 p.m.
Around Amherst: Barber-Just in running for Teacher of the Year
By SCOTT MERZBACH
AMHERST An Amherst Regional High School English teacher who pioneered a class on gay and lesbian literature in the late 1990s is one of 11 semifinalists to be Massachusetts Teacher of the Year for 2022.
Sara Barber-Just, the English Department’s chairwoman, was recently notified about the honor, and Superintendent Michael Morris informed the Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee about the recognition.
Morris called the decision “fantastic and well earned” and described Barber-Just as “a fabulous person,” noting she has been profiled in local and national publications for teaching the LGBTQ+ literature class and putting together the course curriculum.
Smart Ocean chair by Niels Diffrient for Humanscale
Dezeen Showroom:Humanscale has reimagined its Diffrient Smart office chair, created by the late American industrial designer Niels Diffrient, using plastic made from recycled fishing nets.
Called Smart Ocean, each of these chairs is formed from close to one kilogram of recycled nets, collected from the ocean and turned into pellets by California-based company Bureo.
Smart Ocean is an office chair
Since the design was originally released in 2019, Humanscale has recycled approximately 4,536 kilograms of nets into Smart Ocean chairs. Ocean plastic has become one of the greatest threats to our oceans and discarded fishing nets are the worst kind of ocean plastic, explained Humanscale founder and CEO Bob King.
Sustainable buildings, designed with eco-efficiency in mind, are nothing new. Architects, engineers and planners have been focusing on reducing environmental impacts and improving energy efficiency for decades.
As the urgency to address key environmental and social issues such as climate change and environmental justice has escalated, a broad spectrum of policymakers, regulators and companies are espousing 2030 goals and commitments tied to addressing these concerns. The UN has declared the next ten years the decade of action, amplified in this groundbreaking 30-minute documentary, and is beefing up its efforts to hold countries accountable. The UN reports annually on the world’s progress against the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Read the 2020 Sustainable Development Goals Report.
Systems within a highly efficient structure
Last month, crews continued to construct the five-story PAE Living Building in downtown Portland. The project team is on track to deliver the building in September. (Josh Kulla/for the DJC)
The challenge: construct a building to meet perhaps today’s most advanced sustainability metrics. The anticipated outcome: a self-sufficient building in terms of energy use, water use, waste, and more.
PAE Engineers,
ZGF Architects and
Walsh Construction embarked on this expedition nearly three years ago. Now the project team is just a few months from completion – the
PAE Living Building is on track to open in September.