I walked into the class room which is now the permanent meeting
place of Greenthumb. The room is large, white and has no decorations on the
cinderblock walls. The desks were arranged in a large circle but not very
filled. They were expecting more people since the apparently record breaking
amount of people that were there last week but the size thinned out pretty
quick. A few more people walked in and take a piece of cardboard looking pizza
from the box, which actually smelled pretty good but didn’t look the part, and
sat down. Realizing the club is not as popular as last week we were all asked
to scoot in and form a smaller circle, that after all the screeching and
banging was over, was more tear shaped than anything. Everyone was different,
some nerdy looking, wearing collared shirts and glasses, some with a hippy look
with dreads and beards, and some what is considered normal looking for college
students, relaxed look with shorts and t-shirts. The girls were all in jeans
and t-shirts or dresses and the room felt very accepting of anybody who walked
through that giant door. The room was quiet and respectful giving it the
feeling of a real class it felt like I couldn’t even pull out my phone to check
the time even though there was no clock. Our guest speaker, who was talking
about an environmental protest march in Pittsburg, had no shoes on and doesn’t
wear them because to her it is a “whole sensory world we are missing out on”.
Her speech was very fast paced and contained a ton of information to take in,
which she noticed and apologized for “word vomiting on us”. The room was silent
except for her high pitched fast paced voice splitting the air. Later they
passed a sheet around so people can recruit or participate in the march. Since
it was so public there was a tension and pressure to put your name on the
sheet, you couldn’t just pass it on or everyone might notice and if they all
signed up so should you. Everyone signed up for the proposal but I’m curious to
see how many people actually go since most people looked bored especially the
kid next to me who was doing homework on his computer.
After more screeching of desks moving into small groups we
had discussions about the club including ideas about what should be done in the
club and a natural gas pipeline that is being laid through Kentucky. Natural gas
is not good for the environment they said and didn’t go to much detail for why
besides “fracking is nasty”. I knew why it is nasty though the workers pump the
ground full of chemicals and water and using pressure the blow up and fracture
the ground. This leads to environmental destruction and has a habit of leaking
and polluting ground water destroying more wildlife and poisoning people’s
water. Visions of videos of people lighting their tap water on fire comes to
mind. To others who might not know what it is or the consequences of it may be
confused and won’t know why they should join the cause and stop this pipeline
from being installed in Kentucky. The small groups started off awkwardly also a
returning representative came to each group to start conversations which still didn’t
start very quickly. When conversation started flowing better some kids in my
small group showed that they had some great contributions and ideas to add to
the club. Some were showing that they already had background experience with
the environment, at least more than I did in my high school environmental
science class. They already have connections in the area and are setting up a field
trip to a college with an almost zero environmental footprint. UK is very far
from that goal and is converting from coal to a more cleanly burning natural
gas, which is better but brings the evil of fracking to campus. The meeting
ended with confusion after a club representative struggled with words to bring
everything to a close and told us if we wanted more info to stick around but I don’t
think anyone actually did. The windows were dark now and we were finally allowed
to leave.
