Gift from Santa

Well Santa didn't bring me a roof yet, but Marla is working on it. Look what he did bring! It's a scissor lift!
If you have ever been at the top of a 12 foot ladder operating a sawzall over your head, you can appreciate the utility of this piece of equipment. It has a 20 foot working height and can easily lower heavy things that have been cut from the ceiling of our beloved textile mill. STARworks friend and CPNC board member Harold Vanderveer sold us this wonderful thing for almost nothing, he even threw in new batteries to boot. As I write this, Mac and Phil from Wet Dog Glass are using it to frame in the walls for our new bathrooms. It sure beats working on ladders.

Ahhhh water, the petroleum of the next generation.

This article in the New York Times discusses the difference between the legality of drinking tap water and its safety. Its 6 pages long so be ready if you want to read the whole thing. There are contaminants in the LA water system that form carcinogens when they are hit with UV light. The solution? Cover the reservoir with black plastic balls. Black plastic balls. The photo of the covered reservoir is awesome and disturbing. Its a little too Matrix for me. Related stories on the page tell of brown tap water that people are afraid to drink. I cant say I blame them, we are not strangers to brown water here at STARworks. Our situation has been improved, and most of our brown was rust from our pipes. But imagine having to fix a water system for the city of LA. It makes my brain hurt.

I always tell the kids that our generation is worried about and trying to change our ways about Petroleum and fuel, their generation will deal with water. It doesn't seem to scare them yet, but it does me. I think water purification or desalinization are the challenges of the future.

Here is our water tower, it's kind of an icon in our town, as I guess most water towers are. I don't know how many pictures I've taken of it. Our current water problems are mostly how to keep precipitation out of the building, how much it will cost to get the water to new bathrooms in building 6 and keeping the sprinkler pipes from freezing. Its getting real cold at night and threatening snow for tomorrow. My relationship with water has changed dramatically in the past years. How's yours?

The Roof

So here is the roof of buildings 2,6, 7 and 5. Pretty nice huh? it is almost 50,000 square feet of rapidly decaying foam under gravel. There are about 15 unused outdated a/c units on top of it and scads of unused conduit and wiring. It covers the north half of our building and is going to take about a quarter of a million dollars to replace. Wow.
Here is one particularly beautiful specimen that lives on our roof, the partially protected penetration. This cover consists of some rotting plywood "protected" by some spray foam roofing concoction from the 70's. You might see where I have squirted some caulk in the seams that have started to separate and deposit drips during heavy rains. Replace it you say? Pull it off and put a skylight there? Man that would be a great idea if it was not for the fact that nothing sticks to this foam stuff. Resealing the roof would be near impossible so I'm told. So, the whole thing needs to be replaced at once. If you have been to visit us here at STARworks, this roof covers our big room where we have our Annual Gathering as well as STARworks Ceramics. Santa, Please bring me a new roof, I've been as good as I could be this year and I promise I'll be good from now on!

Tree Trouble

Late this Summer, the 120 year old Turkey oak in front of STARworks was struck by lightning. It took out the top crown of the tree and needed some attention so we hired Total Land Care to come and do some pruning and tell us how to take care of the tree. While Chad Phillips, a certified arborist, was in the top of the tree making a cut to the damaged tree top, he heard and felt a loud POP. You can see Chad below pruning the tree about 40 feet in the tree top. Well, that pop was enough to make Chad stop his works and come down. The tree is heavier on one side and as he made the cut, the tree started to split.

At Chad's recommendation we contacted Guy Mellieur, a Certified Master Arborist that works with lightning damaged trees. Guy came out and climbed the tree and installed a cable to keep the tree from splitting down the center.
You can barely make it out in this photo. It is the thin white line that goes horizontally across the middle of the picture. Below the cable you can see the branch without bark where the crack originates. We think it would be a great tragedy for our tree to come down. It provides us a lot of shade and is truly majestic. Now we just have to wait till the spring and see if the tree makes it so that it can be treated further. If you make it out here to STARworks, hug our tree and hope for the best for it.

The Visionary's Birthday

Today is our leader Nancy's birthday. Nancy really is the reason that all of these things are happening at STARworks and the start of this whole thing. Once I told her that she "birthed" this place and it kind of creeped her out. But really, she is the one that was crazy enough to take on this building and bring all of the money to our county to fund these projects. If it weren't for Nancy, the Central Park NC offices would probably be in some boring office building and STARworks would not be here. Wet Dog Glass would not have relocated here from New Orleans, and Eddie Bernard would be a building contractor and house remodeler. The Glass Lab would not be here providing the only community access glass studio in North Carolina and one of five high school glass classes in the country. STARworks Ceramics would not be providing technical assistance and making local clay bodies for area potters, or selling materials and tools. Our building, including the old school building would have been torn down, and the place where I am sitting would be in a field of weeds. The STARworks garden would not be here and there would be no place for the elementary school kids to come and learn about how food comes from the ground without chemical fertilizer and that worms eat our garbage. Our Biodiesel facility would not be around to produce fuel from waste products and provide a solution for local disposal of cooking oil. I could go on and on, but since I can't type, this is taking me forever. The short story is that Nancy was born today, and the world is a better place because of that.

Here she is mopping the floor in the kitchen, doin' it the STARworks way. Do Executive Directors do this at all Non-Profits?

Whiter Toilets come to STARworks

Our plumbing reroute is finished! Roger Miller and his crew just finished routing the entire building’s plumbing around the planned demolition area. This also helps us with the rust in our lines. After the guys cut the old five inch lines I got to look inside and all I can say is ewwwwww. Also there were some nasty rusted spots in the building that threatened to pop at any moment. Our water is much cleaner now and our toilet bowls look a little better. The pipe we used to run the new lines is two inch galvanized pipe from the old compressed air system in the building. We pulled about 500 feet down and it was really clean inside. We also had all of the valves and fittings we needed. Recycling material from our building saves us money, shipping costs and pollution and energy usage involved with forming metal.

Here is a nice blister just ready to give way if it is ever bumped. This pipe serviced the old bathrooms in the portico on the back of the school building.

Heres one from the basement of the school building, it supplied water to the offices in the front and our little kitchen. You may be able to make out the "W" from the word water and the direction of the flow, it's pretty dark down there.

Here are a couple from the basement where the big pipe comes from the town. This pipe is 5 inches wide. Can you see why the water is cleaner?

I'm not even going to suggest what this might look like.

Instead of going through the Wet Dog fabrication space, the new line is routed in the glass lab. I took a picture but the line is kind of hard to make out

amongst all of the other stuff on the ceiling. It starts just to the right of center top in this picture and goes the length of that room. It's much more impressive in person.

Central Park NC Annual Gathering a success, STARworks Blog, not so much

Wow, the annual gathering is over and now what will we do? Well I guess we will start by cleaning up. Actually the clean up began the day after and hopefully I will get the rest of the chairs out of the big room by the end of the week. I think we sold most of the STARworks beer glasses the guys made and we certainly ran out of beer. We had about 200 people for the party and almost one hundred for the Michael Shuman workshop. The tour was great, the most people I have ever had. I think people were the most impressed with the way we are reusing this building especially the reclaimed parking bumpers that make the raised beds in the STARworks garden. The guys from Wet Dog did a sweet job of turning my vague ideas and crude sketches into some gallery walls that really fit in the space. On top of that they helped me hang a pretty nice art show that’s showcases the work of some of the artists that work at STARworks and in the building. This event would not be possible without the help of so many talented people both paid and volunteer that busted hump in the weeks prior to make the gathering an awesome evening.

If you didn't see the span of time covering these last two blog posts, it's huge. My usual excuse is that I'm too busy doing stuff to blog about doing stuff, so that's what I'll go with this time too. After that I always promise myself that I will get better and then fail miserably. This is how all of my journals ended up as a kid too. About ten pages in I lose it. Now it's part of my job. Weird how that happens huh? Well I promise to get better, How many people actually read this any way? Hello? Is this thing on?

Central Park NC Annual Gathering Oct 29th

Our Annual Gathering is less than a month away. We are scurrying around here inside our old textile mill building trying to transform manufacturing space into a party place. Oops, it's not just a party, but it's not a meeting either. We've started calling it our Annual Gathering instead of Annual Meeting this year, let's keep the bullet points to a minimum. We will have food, drink and live music and a keynote address by Michael Shuman, the author of The Small Mart Revolution. Michael Shuman will also present an afternoon workshop on how small communities and locally owned businesses can grow a healthy and dynamic economy, followed by a question & answer and discussion session. $15 Central Park Stewards/ $25 general public.

Though there is no registration fee for evening event; RSVP is required for both events. Please register at www.centralparknc.org or by calling

(910) 428-9001.

For Central Park NC Annual Gathering sponsorship opportunities, please contact Beth Throneburg via e-mail at beth@centralparknc.org or by calling (910) 428-9001.

Workshop with Michael Shuman 2:00-4:30 pm

Registration is required

Tour of STARworks businesses 4:30-5:30 pm

Central Park NC Annual Gathering 5:30-8:00 pm

Tax credits and Incentives for green upgrades available through Comfort South

Need a new heating and cooling system for your home or business? There has never been a better time to buy a geothermal system from Comfort South! There are renewable energy tax credits available to individuals and businesses through the state of North Carolina equaling 35% of the cost new energy efficient equipment. There are also green building incentives and a sales tax holiday for Energy Star rated equipment. There are federal incentives too. For more details on any or all of these programs, click here to read all about it on the Comfort South website. Get valuable tax credits while reducing your energy costs and your carbon footprint, that's good for the bottom line of any business or family!

Michael Shuman to speak at STARworks Annual Meeting.

We at STARworks are pleased to announce that Michael Shuman has agreed to be the speaker for our Annual Meeting on October 29th. Michael Shuman is vice president for Enterprise Development for the Training and Development Corporation (TDC) of Bucksport, Maine. A noted economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur, Shuman is widely recognized for his research into the economic advantages of small-scale businesses in an era of globalization as well as the often over-looked benefits of building local economies in an era of big-box chains. He has authored, coauthored, and edited seven books, including The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses are Beating the Global Competition (Berrett-Koehler, 2006) and Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in the Global Age (Free Press, 1998). The Small-Mart Revolution was just awarded a bronze medal for best business book by the Independent Publishers’ Association. Mr. Shuman will also be leading a pre-Annual Meeting workshop (space limited, pre-registration required) the afternoon of the Annual Meeting. Save the date!

Central Park NC and STARworks on UNC TV North Carolina Now

Central Park NC and STARworks were recently featured on UNC TV's program, North Carolina Now. Click here to see it! The piece features STARworks movers and shakers including Kenneth Cagle, Takuro Shibata and Eddie Bernard, not to mention the visionary herself Nancy Gottovi explaining exactly what it is we do here. If for some reason the link does not work, go to http://www.unctv.org/ncnow/features/august_09_01.html, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "play video" next to Central Park NC. Enjoy!

This week at STARworks

A fury of activity this week at STARworks, lots of running around chasing pipes, wires and conduit, not to mention Nancy and anyone else that needs to weigh in on a given subject.  We have been busy planning the new gallery and graphic design space in our building.  The gallery will cover about 1000 square feet of one of our nice hardwood floored rooms and will give us a place to show artwork by STARworks artists.  In a nearby space we will build a graphics design studio that will provide graphic design services to area businesses and train ambitious local high school students to work in a creative environment.  The task of transforming the space involves clearing out old hardware and air conditioning units suspended from the former factory ceiling and rebuilding the area to suit its new use. 

 Here is a shot of the space as it exists now.  Something also has to be done about the battleship gray and blue racing stripe that Renfro painted on the walls.  We will also replace 4 old windows that used to be in front of the building so that some natural light comes into the space.  

There is an open house at STARworks Ceramics this Friday from 5-7 pm.  They will have new cone 6 clay available to sample in white and brown.  Click here to see their posting and a great pic of Santiago and his super cute assistant.

Nick has been busy in the hot shop working on the furnace and preparing for his High School art class from East Montgomery High.  He's bummed that the furnace is off and he can't blow glass, but he'll get over it.  I mean, doesn't this look fun too?

Tony is sweating every time I see him, working hard to get the bio fuels building ready for equipment delivery in late September.  If you see him, make sure to remind him to drink lots of water.  Click here to read about the progress he has made.

Of course our resident organic goddess is hard at work as well.  Anne has started seeds for the fall garden and assures me that salad days are soon to return.  We are trying to figure out landscaping plans in the back of the building so that we have a great space shared by our garden, the deck and the bio fuels area.  Her blog is great for all stuff related to gardening, veggies and food.  Check it out.

STARworks to Form a Biker Gang!

Well not really, but we do look really cool on our new bicycles that we received on Thursday, July 10, 2009. The bikes were purchased for Central Park NC and STARworks NC staff to use for errands, exercise, and to commute to work. The bikes were personally delivered by Middle Ring Cycles owner, Brian Bristol.

We love the bikes and look forward to reducing our carbon footprint by using them.

Old Glory flies over STARworks

You know what's cool? Watching the American flag fly in front of your place of work. Thanks to the guys at Comfort South, we have the colors flying again in front of our building. For the longest time we had bare flagpoles behind our sign on the front lawn with neglected ropes broken and flapping in the breeze. I asked Kenneth Cagle how we could thread new lines through the pulleys and he said all he needed to do was tell two of his guys that they couldn't do it and it would be done in about five minutes. Sure enough they delivered, I was impressed but not surprised. That business is populated by can-do people that accomplish a lot with very little. Thanks to all of them especially Brandon and Brian Moore for polecattin' up those flagpoles so that we can fly our colors. You have to check out the video.

STARwalks trail completed

The STARwalks trail has been installed.  We recently finished pouring our recycled rubber walking trail last week.  Star Heritage Day participants got to walk on the newly poured surface on June 6th.  The STARwalks trail is a 1/8 mile loop that is made of recycled truck tires.  920 tires were saved from the landfill in constructing this low impact walking surface. The forgiving surface lessens stress and impact that occur while walking on concrete, asphalt or other hard surface.  It also lets water pass through eliminating water runoff associated with paved surfaces.  Those who walk on it say a variety of things, but one word heard often is "wow".   Future improvements include benches, picnic tables and a bulletin board that will include information on walking programs offered along with other happenings at STARworks and in the community.  Come by STARworks and check it out!

The STARwalks trail was made possible with a generous grant from The North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund and partnership with The Troy/Montgomery Senior Center, Montgomery County Council on Aging, Montgomery County Health Department, the Town of Star and Montgomery County Parks and Recreation.

Anthony Schafermeyer Visits STARworks Glass!

Anthony Schafermeyer with Nick Fruin

From April 2-9, glass artist Anthony Schafermeyer was the STARworks resident artist. While at STARworks, he worked on a furnace with Wet Dog Glass and on April 7, he worked on a glass piece in the STARworks Glass Lab. Anthony creates vessels using his Graaled Cane technique, which contains Swedish and Italian elements. He makes the cane with several layers of color then he engraves away some of the layers to achieve an asymmetrical pattern.

Anthony Schafermeyer has been a professional glass artist for fifteen years. He has taught, extensively throughout the country including but not limited to Pilchuck Glass School, Haystack mountain school of crafts, and the Corning museum of glass. Anthony has also lectured, and demonstrated abroad, including The University of Segovia, Spain. Niijima Glass school, Japan, The Riitveld Acadamy of Art in Holland, and Kittengela Glass in Kenya. Anthony has a studio in Millvale PA, and is currently working on an installation project for the new Fairmont Hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh. He is currently represented by Habatat Gallery, in Boca Raton FL. and Dane Gallery in Nantuckett MA.

We thank Anthony greatly for his visit and welcome him in the future.

For more pictures of Anthony at work, please visit the STARworks Glass website.

GLASS OPEN HOUSE A SUCCESS

The open house hosted by STARworks Glass on April 18, 2009 was a success. Over 70 people came to see glassblowing demonstrations by Mike Linzy, Nick Fruin, Stephen Protheroe, and Eddie Bernard.

Guests were able to ask questions about the glassblowing process and about the artist's themselves. A great time was had by all.

STARworks Glass Open House - April 18

STARworks Glass Lab welcomes the public to come and experience the wonderful art of glassblowing. Our artists will be doing live glassblowing and artwork can be purchased.

Refreshments will be served.

April 18, 2009
5-7pm
STARworks Glass Lab
100 Russell Drive
Star, NC 27356
(Building under the Star water tower)

STARworks Glass MArch 28 Open House Cancelled

The March 28, 2009 Open House for STARworks Glass Lab has been cancelled.

Please join us for the April 18 Open House featuring live glass blowing demonstrations, videos, and artwork. You will get the opportunity to purchase beautiful pieces by our experienced artists. Food and beverage will be served.

Play Work!

For the Past week Adam, Eddie and I have been installing a glass chandelier show in Pittsburgh, PA at the Carnegie Museum of Glass.  It took several days to hang & tweak the glass installation of Venetian artist Maria Grazia Rosin.  We had a fantastic time and met some great people.

Adam & Eddie,

Thank you so much for making this happen!

Steveo