" I think it is a little alarming that we can see such changes in our lifetime. And just even in the last decade, I feel like there has been huge changes. I see far fewer birds, fireflies, even dragonflies." - Eileen Lewandowski
"There's also the other aspect of the community garden [which] is feeding people, the whole food security thing. Campus is doing a really good thing. They have a food pantry for students isn't it? Students and their families -- stuff that's, during the summer, stuff that they grow or that we grew when I was a student there we distributed to different halls where students could take whatever they needed. And sometimes they offer classes or lunch-and-learns about all like here's zucchini, here's easy ways you can make it or different recipes or I think there was one about canned goods. But yeah, it's really something special." - Kaitlyn Norwood
"I would have been dead long ago without [plastic], and yet, how much can we take?... Each patient, we custom build a profile of what they’re going to need. I take a particular type of tape. I take a particular type of needle and tubing. We do have, at the larger clinics, we have patients who cannot have anything with rubber in it -- they have to make that. When we started to go to, every healthcare worker had to have gloves, at the time they were all latex gloves and people had allergies to those. Some of our nurses still wear, have to wear a cotton under glove before they can use anything. If they couldn’t do that, they couldn’t nurse. They couldn’t provide any of the nursing services. So, it’s a frightening thing and yet, it’s so incredibly beautiful to see it take place." - Orpheus Allison
"It just seems to me that we're not always conscious of how fragile our food supply is.... If there was very much rain falling the way it did earlier today, too many days in a row and the spring with cold nights, and that little guy's not gonna make it. They're tough but they're not that tough. If their roots get rotted out, it just doesn't make it. If you know what you're doing, and if more people learn the skills or have practice, and people use every scrap of available land, we could probably produce a lot more of our food locally, and all this kind of stuff, but it's ultimately a fragile enterprise." - Stephanie Mattsen
"Let’s say you are a potato farmer. You are not a potato farmers that is growing millions of dollars of potatoes, but you are growing seed potatoes, and it’s the way you make your living, and the way your family has made their living for a long time. The way those potatoes are harvested; two days before you harvest you spray the field with a defoliate, the plants and foliage dies, and then you go in and rake the potatoes up. That’s the way it’s done. We eat the potatoes and the FDA or whoever says that’s safe, but the fact of the matter is that is how potatoes are being harvested. That is somebody’s livelihood, and it’s not 'big farm,' it’s not a mega farm, it is not a farm that is making -- it is not like the industrial farms in the Midwest. This is a family farm." - Lesley Fernow
"Well, the other thing about this is it isn’t just about extinction, I mean, extinction is one issue, but another thing it is about is the reality our impermanence. Everything is impermanent. And all of us will become cadavers and all of our animals will become cadavers, and all of our loved ones will become cadavers, and that’s a reality. And so, you know, that’s on [a] spiritual level a completely different conversation. Both of those conversations appeal to me." - Lesley Fernow
CHANGE is a climate change research project directed by Dr. Kati Corlew and is dedicated to reaching a better understanding of peoples' perceptions of climate change. Our research was conducted using a qualitative research method called PhotoVoice. PhotoVoice, is a method “by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community”. (Wang & Burris, 1997, p. 369) Our participants met in focus groups to discuss the research topics, and then went out into their communities to take photographs according to their conceptualization, values, and priorities regarding the topic. They then selected photographs to present and discuss in a final focus group (Gleason & Corlew, 2019). By placing participants’ photos, stories, and conceptualizations at the center of the study, we hope to expand the exploratory nature of this research to include themes outside of current climate change conceptualizations. For more information, please visit our Main Page.