Good Fact – Page 75 – Things Are Good

Man Grows Furniture, Art From Living Trees

It’s called arborsculpture, and Richard Reames has been doing it for years. He plants trees in patterns, and uses bending and grafting techniques to form the saplings into benches, staircases, sculptures, and an assortment of other amazing living things.

I believe that if enough people put their minds to using living trees, we can learn to grow houses. I believe that if we put our minds to it, like going to the moon, there’s no reason we couldn’t all be living in houses where the walls and ceilings are composed of living tree material and there are leaves coming out of the roof. We could accomplish this in one generation. We’d build doorways and windows that the trees would grow around, and also plumbing and electrical conduits. The trees would just swallow all the pipes. We’re going to call this “arbortecture.”

You’ve just got to see the pictures in this article!

Students Cleanup Their ‘Hood

Students at Spain Middle School, which is nowhere near Spain, in fact the school is in Detroit Michigan. Detroit is renowned for it’s urban areas that are falling apart, well these kids had enough. For a school project they utilized technologies used by NASA and marketing corporations, GIS – also known as Geographic Information Systems.

They went around their neighborhoods documenting all things wrong. They plotted the location of say an abandoned car and took a picture of it and went on to the next sign of urban blight. After collecting all their data they took the next logical step.

“They students have compiled their material into Power Point presentations for Detroit city council members, highlighting areas that have been neglected and need improvement. They were able to show, for example, that the number of abandoned homes in one neighborhood had increased by more than 50 percent. The Wayne County prosecutors’ office began targeting the area.”

With GIS technology becoming more accessible hopefully we can see it used for more projects like this and maybe for tracking environmental damage too.

First Fair Trade Town in USA

Buying fair trade is increasing in popularity, as any ThingsAreGood reader already knows, but it has taken a little longer for the World Bank to catch on. On the WB’s private sector development blog they announced today that fair trade is popular. Even if they are a little slow, good for the WB for figuring things out.

In the United States of America, a town has proclaimed itself to be the first town to be a fair trade community. These communities have existed in Europe for years now, but now that it’s happening in America let’s hope the idea continues to grow. Congrats go out to Media, Pennsylvania becoming a fair trade community.

“The Media Borough Council unanimously passed a resolution on June 15th supporting the concept of Fair Trade and promising to serve Fair Trade products at its meetings and functions. The resolution was the last goal necessary to become a Fair Trade town. The other goals are that a certain percentage of retailers and institutions sell and use Fair Trade products, widespread support and media coverage exist for Fair Trade, and an ongoing steering committee keeps the Fair Trade issue vital. Since there is as yet no national Fair Trade town initiative in the United States, Media, Pennsylvania used the goals established by the Fairtrade Foundation of Britain.”

How to Train Your Husband Like a Dolphin

A brilliant animal trainer named Amy Sutherland has been using animal training techniques on her husband with great results!

She’s learned how to train wild animals, and is applying the same techniques to her husband Scott. She says her marriage is happier and smoother than it was before, and best of all, she doesn’t have to nag!

I hope this one helps smooth over a few rough marriages!

Guns for Bikes Peddling Works

The Democratic Republic of Congo has a program that allows people to turn in their firearms for some thing useful – bikes. The program has been so successful that it is being expanded.

A BBC corespondent proclaims that it’s more successful than a previous UN disarmament program. It’s so sucesful that tin roofs are being given out in places where they don’t have enough bikes to hand out.

“Ngoy Mulunda, a pastor in the south-eastern Katanga region, says he has been given some 6,500 weapons in the past year, which he has destroyed.”