Save our Greenhouse
George S. Davis
Reading, PA 19604
To many who It Does Concern
More bad news for the city the 5th street mall is closing. I helped build that mall when I was younger. Remember putting that big eagle statue on the one end. How shiny and new it was. Means that mall was less than fifty years old. I remember saying less than two months ago that, that mall would be closing. Sorry I was right. Now what happens to all that open parking space a mall uses. That’s squares miles of paved ground that won’t be collecting anything more than sunlight for years to come. Reading has a chance to break out of the slow moving economic Katrina moving across our country. Reading was once called the city of trees and it’s the trees that will save us. All this open space inside and outside the city can be used as orchards with New Age Urban Gardening. No complicated setups, pipes or electric. These ideas are “plug” and “play”, set an forget.” Not only that but you need fill them only once a year. Using Aquaponic’s to produce the “start” water it will only need rainwater after that. Rainwater you collect or start a city wide program for as “Save our Pond.” Jr. high students can learn how to do it in a year. To start the gardens doesn’t take any training at all. It’s a plug an play system of two parts. You just “plug” one part into the other an “forget”. Best part is it’s made from recycled materials you get out your trash or your neighbors
The “Quality of Life” has been an issue for the city of Reading. While the PMI’s run around reading looking for what side your trash can is on. Reading suffers from a large portion of it population being dependant on government programs for their “Quality of Life”. You can see the chronic long term disabilities among the poor , many which are caused by left over pollution of industrial past. Health services, visiting nurse programs and homes for the elderly are all be strained. Professional care, occupational, nurses that visit the elderly are understaffed in every part of the country so this isn’t just a local problem. Those who are in danger most, lack nutrition, care and widely unable to speak up about their need. I worked at the Labor and Industry for ten years and have a strong background working with the unemployed. Their mourning the loss of factories, steady work. This is an unwanted emotional breakup as real as with a loved one. Every thing goes. Your self esteem, monetary security, even your living conditions. It’s an emotional breakup where you don’t want to move on you like what you had. Not to mention the fears of not having the skills to learn new technology or move to another part of the country. The methods being taught at the greenhouse are about reducing the dependency by showing the able bodied self sufficient means to put themselves to work. Sounds so simple until you realize what people don’t know. Any Welfare reform doesn’t asks about it’s variables because most of the poor are working. Those variables when not taken into account cause any reform to fail. What about family care givers, single mothers or those who live in a job desert. Their trapped by Welfare unable to do much more than except. A dependency cycle that lasts generations because there’s no extenuating ways to get out. There’s no help finding jobs that are anything more than paying out a check in gas. What about those means tested programs tell you that most of those are children. But a child can raise a plant. So can many unable to work because of their disability or age.
Reading is lucky that it has three key resources in it’s Pond, Greenhouse and Park. A parcel of land so Spiritual that it was set aside for common use. A greenhouse to give direction and navigation into the living world. A Pond for the Natural beauty of flowing water. At the greenhouse we teach that people are valuable and labor has meaning besides the physical. Reading has been declared a food desert. So here we’re talking about destroying a food source. A multitude of food sources because the method allows you to grow tropical fruits. Bananas, coffee, these are three years at the Reading greenhouse producing both. So many children of all ages are thrilled to see food growing on trees. To taste fresh coffee right off the tree. There’s no food production in the Reading area. Things are so bad that school lunches are free because of lack of nutrition. Yet you want to denie a source that can provide each school the means to produce food for every student in the school district. This year. An I didn’t studder when I said that. We have a demonstration garden at 13th that have been in operation for three years without any aid or fertilization from me. Just like the greenhouse I spent five years doing research and proving the low cost and benefits of these systems. An not just one system but a whole range of containers not only to grow fruiting trees all year round in water but nearly 100% saving in water compared to ground. A system that’s “plug” and “play”. Not only that but people can make them themselves right out of recycling.
“Living in interesting times” I don’t like living in interesting times. Because they ask what side of history are you on. Are you even aware of the interesting times you live in? I don’t think Reading is. This area has been declared a Food Dessert. Employment wise the area has lost the 5th street mall. Bon ton has collapsed. How do you describe a Job Dessert combined with a Food Dessert. There’s more. Year before last the EPA did lead level tests around the city of Reading. The whole city . Because of past industrial practice the pollution levels in Reading are past dangerous. Yet here you are turning away from the pain and sorrow that causes. I can’t do that. It isn’t the way I’ve come to understand life to be. Wally what would have come to be if I turned away on those steps of Southern that day. Don’t you see here we are again facing bullies but it’s your choice now. Where’s your spiritual advisor? Don’t you remember what happened.
yes, I can tell you about all the things growing in the greenhouse. That you can see for yourself. But you got to let me know because it will just confuse you by yourself. Let’s just talk first about those two big elephants in the room. Two-2,000gal Aquaponic tables. Our methods allow you to grow completely Organic with out any chemical additives. For the plants or the fish. Even if you bring some one else because they know something about Aquaponic’s, who else knows Aquaponic’s and fish breeding. Who knows how to use Aquaponic’s, fish breeding, with tropical fruit production. With examples growing in the greenhouse now. Everything from Soursop Apples to Zinna’s. Yes, that includes Banana’s, Pineapples, Lemons, Sugar Cane, Lemon grass, Coconuts, Plantains, 7 Arabic coffee trees in fruit this year for a little more that a pound of coffee each. Their already re-flowering. I know everyone has seen Papaya’s but have you ever seen a Papaya tree? It’s amusing to see kids faces who haven’t. Or how about sugar cane. How many of you know what it looks like growing. How about Bio fuel. We have sixty plants growing in my Hydro-Pods. Bio fuel made from grape like clusters that just need to be crashed and filtered to use in a diesel engine. Who else has that for children and adults to learn from. That’s just inside. I bet they were shocked just walking to the front door. Who made this? What does this do? Who thought of it?
It’s not me simply creating a completely new means of agriculture.
No it’s the people who come there young and old who made that greenhouse. Those that came to learn. This is what you can get when you inspire. No more turning away from the weak and the weary the voiceless and unheard. What about the voices of the trees, plants and fish that live in this greenhouse. What about those that live outside. If the greenhouse goes, there goes the Pond. Then you just hope everybody forgets them. What kind of legacy in that to be remembered for. That’s why the City Park plan calls for community involvement. This is community property held by the city in stewardship. There are names on the outside door and on an inside wall of people who knew the value of a greenhouse in relation to the park. What an asset it was to the community. Those stewards worked with the community A community that felt that they could give trees with history unheard. There’s a cutting of a Oleander tree taken just before Castro took Cuba. Events that are just shadows in time now. History. Now when the greenhouse and Pond can answer so many of the problems that Reading has just by growing plants. The stewards say no? No to what, our helping the city. Not to be involved in what their doing with the park. Are we going to use the Pond as a starting example. Your letting that Aquaponic resource turn to a sink hole because you can’t figure out what to do with it but the I have. You did ask for suggestions or is that like that Pdf what ever you were to send me. Or you really didn’t mean that either. It’s called a Zen Water Garden. We already have a good size pond and that’s 80% of what we need. The rest is just decoration and content. Maybe a little fish food. Let’s talk about that word legacy. It that what your legacy will be that you had the answers to solve not only many of our problems but for many cities with the same problems Reading has and you sat on it. Thing about being on the wrong side of history is it tends to make you uncomfortable even when your dead.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
George S. Davis