Sustainability and Renewables on an Urban Technology Farm

I gave a presentation yesterday that I am very proud of. In this presentation, “Sustainability and Renewables on an Urban Technology Farm“, I introduced a new and novel equation for sustainability. The presentation was presented this Saturday, 22 July, 2023.

3:8
—————-
1:1.618

Of Course I will expound on this. You can view the presentation here or on the link below. I designed this presentation to encourage young people around the world to rethink their idea of sustainability and renewable resources. It was very well received, so I thought I would share it here.

What We Know About Sustainability and Proportion

I built this presentation deck as a presentation to the Global Innovation Field Trip in July 2023. I knew I wanted to discuss what I thought was the most important aspect of sustainability. Understanding the inputs and proporations that nature REQUIRES for sustainability.

We know today that we cannot trust humanity to plan for sustainability. Humans fear change and they try very hard to avoid extra work. By combining the rule of 3 inputs to 8 outputs and the transcendental number Phi.

This is a part of the City of Columbus Parks and Recreation Summer Grant Grant #1521-2023

Summer Camp Launch 2023

It’s time for the Summer Camp Launch 2023! I am looking forward to it this year because I have been able to greatly expand my impact and mission. I am reminded of that mission with these amazing folks from National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) who showed up to help me get the Farm ready for primetime! This will also allow me to expand my teaching about the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals and expand my outreach even more.

More Expansive Programming and 11 Camps

Mezzacello Summer Camp Schedules

Traditional Camps and Maker Events

Jun 5 – Jun 11 – AM – Biotech Camp
Jun 5 – Jun 11 – PM – BioTech Maker
Jun 12 – Jun 16 – AM -BioEngineering
Jun 12 – Jun 16 – PM – BioEngineering Maker
Jul 10 – Jul 14 – AM – BioRenewables
Jul 17 – Jul 21 – AM – BioChemistry
Jul 24 – Jul 28 – AM – STEM of Tai Chi*
* At CAS Campus

New Camps at Mezzacello

City of Columbus Camps and Workshops

Jun 19 – Jun 23 – AM -BioTech and Life Sciences
Jun 26 – Jun 30 – AM -BioEngineering and Mechanics
Jul 5 one day workshop – Systems Integration
Jul 6 one day workshop – Power Generation
Jul 7 one day workshop – Soil Science and Water Purification
Jul 31 – Aug 4 – AM – BioTech and Animal Health
Aug – Aug 11 – AM – BioEngineering and Mechanics

It is sure to be a busy summer, but I am really excited to share my passion for sustainability, systems thinking, design thinking and gardening with a new group of kids. They make this a better world for me. I intend to return the favor and help them have a blast!

Spring is Sprung: It’s a Trap!

Written by Cora Riley and Jim Bruner, ages 10 and very old

This blog post is inspired by a post one of my interns made today regarding data collection, data models, weather, and it the area we live in. It’s “spring” and the weather keeps dropping to 3C. I bought flowers, but spring is sprung: it’s a trap!

We want to feature a lot of flowers in the gardens this year. So we bought a lot of flowers. Then, spring decided that it was going to be ridiculous.

Our Trusty Biodome

I’ve written about the biodome before. We are still relying on this to save our rebel forces from the power of the dark side of spring. We will persevere!

Hopefully by May 20th our weather in Columbus will have stabilized and then we can get other chores done. we still have to mow the grass, trim edges, and set out the flowers. luckily we avoided this trap this time!

Our Goal At Mezzacello Urban Farm

Safety grace and space for pollinators, plants and humanity

Sustainability, Applied STEM, Artistry, and Workforce Development

Welcome to our goal at Mezzacello Urban Farm. If you are not familiar with Mezzacello this is a good place to start. In the gallery above and the images below you can learn a lot more about us.

We focus on creating fun, technology and culturally-rich sustainable food oases in urban environments. Mezzacello, located in downtown Columbus, Ohio is the flagship site of our potential mission. We believe that with the right care, attention, and community input there should be more.

Be A Part Of Our Mission

Our Mission: Grow, Maintain, Sustain, Explain, and Entertain around sustainability.

Our Vision: Create frictionless opportunities for people to explore relationships between ecologies, farming, robotics, automation, and applied STEM in a densely populated urban environment.

Mezzacello is a Non-Profit!

Mezzacello Urban Farm is a ag career and applied STEM learning lab dedicated to building a sustainable future for all of us. As a non-profit 501(c)3 we are depending on you to help us realize that mission. We’ve made a good start, but now we need to amplify that mission.

All donations are Tax Exempt and we promise to be good stewards of your trust.

We need you – all of you – to understand exactly what Mezzacello wants to do with our community. It is going to be an exciting journey! But it needs to start with us – all of us – supporting each other.

Public Speaking About Sustainability

This week I had the pleasure of speaking with the Olentangy Berlin High School Environmental Club. They were an amazing group of like-minded and committed kids and advisors. It got me thinking I should be doing more public speaking about sustainability.

More Than Just Tit For Tat

It’s important that as a society we start to reframe what it means to be sustainable. You do this for me and I’ll do this for you (or vice versa) is noble, but not ultimately sustainable. For me sustainability means you are willing to give 20% back without concern, and that you will get that back in other, diverse ways.

We forget that we live on a planet with a finite amount of resources. It’s convenient to think we are at the center of everything. But this is wrong and certainly the polar opposite of sustainable.

UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals

The reason I like the 17 UN SDGs is that it tells the story of sustainability so well. It scaffolds actions, intentions and impacts of our presence on this planet and makes it seem real. Of course we also need real and meaningful action.

This is where I want to do more work. Showing kids, communities and businesses how I strive for sustainability here at Mezzacello. Offer real practicable, replicable and contextual lessons through tours, camps, workshops and speaking engagements.

This presentation on Wednesday at OBHS Environmental was really enlightening for me. I learned more of how I felt about the topic, and I learned how the next generation is feeling about the topic. They need a road map and I can help build that.

Heading Back to the Zoo

I first gave my talk about sustainability at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium’s Teen Eco Summit. I was not prepared. I didn’t even think I was presenting, but I did.

I spoke my truth and I gave a primer on what I had come to realize about the goals of the SDGs. It was well-received. I couldn’t remember most of it, so my friend Sean helped me remember it and commit it to a blog.

At that affair is where I met Izzy from OBHS. She asked me to come to her school and speak about sustainability. So I created a slide deck called Making the UN 17 SDGs Local. Izzy was the inspiration for this.

She challenged me and made me really think about how I felt and what I was doing. I admire her and her intelligence and passion a great deal. She is a great mentor in understanding what it is I really have to give the next generation.

The other fun thing about Izzy is how wildly creative she is. This was the most interesting way to share data. I love it because it reminds me to be resourceful and it brings back a fun memory.

My mentor, Izzy at the Columbus Zoo Teen Eco Summit

This Tuesday and Wednesday, I will be heading back to the zoo to see the results of the work the ecological teams have put in. I’m excited to return and to encourage these young passionate futurists to keep pushing! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Now that I am working at Mezzacello full time, I will devote more of my attention to public speaking. Let me know what you think. There are so many topics I could touch on, but this one will always be close to my heart.

Deciding To Live With Purpose

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on… So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything… The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all… We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors…but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal… Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life.

Hunter S. Thompson

This is the front screen from a presentation I gave to a global group of students from around the world on Saturday. I am building knowledge, insight, data, and lessons here. The biodome 2.0 project is as much about learning from failure as it is about learning to learn.

Here I am at a crossroads. A moment in my life where I get the chance (and the challenge) of deciding to live with purpose. It’s not that I have not been doing that, It’s that I am choosing to do it my way.

I want to turn Mezzacello Urban Farm into a tool for good in the coming climate, food security, and water insecurity era we are in. I want to leverage my passion, my farm, my talent for Applied STEM and inspiration for others. And I want to commit to this full time.

Transition

I love my job. But I am also a dedicated and hyper-focused worker and I left Mezzacello languishing (except in summer when I ran camps). I attempted to balance it all, but I am incapable of doing that with a full heart.

Transitions are NEVER easy. I and I KNOW it is privilege and luxury to get to chose a life lived with purpose. I am hoping I can make this work, and I may need help.

Change The World

If we are going to change the world, we need to start with action. Action, attention, inspiration and experiences that empower, advocate, and inspire hearts and minds young and old to realize their value and power to solve these problems. My mission has always been grow, maintain, sustain, explain.

Let me in the next few days do all of those for this audience. I will be announcing this on Monday, 17 April, 2022. Follow along if you will.

Quality Education and Sustainability

This blog focuses on the role of quality education and sustainability at Mezzacello. The mission statement at Mezzacello is super simple, grow, maintain, sustain, and explain. Quality education is at the heart of explain.

you can’t do what you don’t know; you can’t be what you can’t see.

Annalies Corbin

I am super passionate about education. I also know that most people don’t know gravitate towards ignorance, but they often start there, by default. This is the way of the world around us.

Every human in this world starts as a blank slate. Quality education means we believe in these people as sources of potential genius and encourage them. To engage them to want to know more and reflect.

To quote my friend mentor and boss, Annalies Corbin, “you can’t do what you don’t know; you can’t be what you can’t see.” This is the model of teaching and learning here at Mezzacello.

The First of the Social Building Blocks in Sustainability

I think UN SDG 4 is supercritical. That’s because quality education is the lens for which all other goals should be viewed. It is the core of everything I believe about sustainability.

Without the ability to think critically, recognize patterns, or communicate clearly, the individual is at a huge disadvantage in any society. That is why I have placed hands-on Applied STEM learning at the heart of everything I do at Mezzacello around education.

It isn’t simply because I love STEM so much that it’s the only way I want to teach. It is because that’s the way children play and learn. They want to try new things and STEM gives them data, constraints, and knowledge on how to proceed.

Mistakes Will Be Made

Speaking of kids and learning, do you all remember how much fun it was to play as a kid? To not worry about what you were doing because everything was going to be OK and you learned from it. Having a safe place to explore play and learn with very low risk and no dire consequences is exactly the balance I want and seek at Mezzacello.

in the world today there are a billion kids who simply cannot imagine or even worse – risk – failing. But learning REQUIRES failure sometimes. How do we prepare for that?!

To model sustainability we need the grace to allow people to make inferences and then to be curious and test them. Then we can encourage them to understand what one thing is going to do or how it will impact another. That is quality education.

Fearless learning and the opportunity to do the learning and make an impact. Nobody wants to learn to do something just because they should or worse are required to. It’s far more powerful to give them tools, boundaries and trusting opportunity to do something and then ask them what would they do with it?

The Sustainable Sweet Spot

This is the sustainable sweet spot in a quality education. At Mezzacello one of the first rules kids learn is it’s OK to not know, but it’s not OK for the statement end there. The proper response is I don’t know yet.

Curiosity is in the OS of every human on this planet. At Mezzacello we present sustainability as a mystery to be solved. To be solved and then extended and pushed out into the bigger world.

Life is just a series of related gardens with relationships, inputs and outputs and constraints. When you frame a quality education around that framework, the curious mind builds the lesson. We just serve as guides in that journey.

Health and Wellness Through Sustainability

Addressing health and wellness through sustainability is actually easier and far more integrated than one might imagine. Health and wellness mean more than just physical or mental. Take for example during the COVID-19 lockdown.

…health and wellness and happiness are active choices. We seek them out and they sustain us so we can sustain others.

Jim Bruner

Mental health is wildly important. That is one of the things I love about the ecosystems at Mezzacello. It afforded me a space and a safe place during COVID19 to keep my body and mind healthy. It also allowed me to help others do the same, which is a cornerstone of sustainability in my opinion, like teaching Tai chi.

The enclosed ecosystems at Mezzacello make it really easy to do a variety of different things all focused on health and wellness. There’s the farming, the maintenance, there’s the care for the animals, there’s the endless digging, and there’s the opportunity to exercise in an enclosed park. The sustainability allows for all of this.

Access and Action to Achieve Sustainability

I understand not everybody has this level of access. But health and wellness and happiness are active choices. We seek them out and they sustain us so we can sustain others.

In truth the real relationship between health and wellness is this ability to understand our role in the world and persevere. We are not victims of our happiness; we are authors. We may not be always happy but we do need opportunity, freedom, and perspective on what wellness means to us.

Creating a world where this choice is even an accessible is what we’re really talking about here. Purpose, health, love, dreams, desire, and opportunity. These are what we build sustainable health and wellness programs around.

Keeping the spirit and body strong when the world is unfair

What does this have to do with tai chi? The privilege I have I’m not only knowing tai chi but the opportunity to teach it gives me music and helps others build systems to manage their fear their anxiety their health and their body. It is my tool to keep my goals in mind and my spirit strong.

Pain is an evitable, suffering is a choice. Health and wellness are important individual and social constructs. The fact that I get to share something I love and help others is what makes this is sustainable goal for me.

it all goes back to my three and five philosophy. Whatever you put into a system should be designed and managed so that you always get more than what you put in. This is the core of sustainability.

For me tai chi is a sustainable goal. What I and others get from it is far beyond what has to be put into it. that is the lesson of tai chi; become the solution by being one with the issue. I think that’s why I chose tai chi for this topic.

and speaking of being more than just the problem or the solution. How cool is that photo ‘Chinese astronauts on Shenzou space station doing tai chi 180 miles above the earth. Regardless of where you are, the truth remains true.

Welcome Neighbors to 501C3 Day

Just a few of the magical memories from this night.

Tonight was a milestone for us here at Mezzacello. This was Welcome Neighbors to 501C3 Day — the first event we had as an official 501C3 non-profit. We have functioned as a non-profit in the past as a program of the extraordinarily generous PAST Foundation, but tonight we were flying confidently.

we love that we are starting to shift peoples mindsets towards a web of life and not a war of wills.

Jim Bruner

It’s been quite a journey to get here. It required rebuilding THREE times. So many lessons learned and insights.

WE know we are an ecosystem and we love that we are starting to shift peoples mindsets towards a web of life and not a war of wills. We are working towards a vision where people really begin to see they are part of a circle of life, and not just a circle of their life.

We worked hard to get here. The friends, neighbors, and family that were here on this fine Sunday in May know how hard we have worked. They helped with so much of the work themselves, or they donated biomass, materials, insight, money and most importantly, patience, hugs, and wise words when we needed them.

Mezzacello Is Gratitude

Mezzacello was founded in a principle of gratitude, grace, proportion, and sustainability. This part was a proof of that commitment. 100+ people and they did not destroy the place. They – like us – love this postage stamp paradise as much as we do. And they should – they helped us build it.

We’ll have another for the boards and friends and companies we have been graced to work with. Tonight was personal and local. Do not take offense that you were not here. We all of us were celebrating that we at last could be here.

Summer Camps 2022

I am happy to say that #UrbanAgTech summer camps are coming back in 2022! I have a whole series of camps planned around BioTech and Animal Vet Tech, Bioengineering and Automation, Renewable Energy, and BioChemistry and Composting.

Go To Summer Camps Page!

Register

Check out my summer Camps 2022 page here at Mezzacello.org under the events tab. Registration will be opening this month and the price is very reasonable. Until the registration link is live, register your interest here and the be the first on the list for these popular and exciting camps!

I will look forward to seeing you this summer at Mezzacello. You can learn all about last summer’s camps at the following links!