Darby Strong

Playing point. Delivering the rock.

Green is the New Black

My first visit to Palmetto Bluff served up amazing views and good food, but it was mostly the opportunity to get behind those gates and see what the hell was going on behind them that enticed me. The extremely subtle signage and rumor that last year’s Oscar attendees received a weekend visit in their luxurious gift bags added even more interest. Finding out that Auberge Resorts was behind this Lowcountry treasure was icing on the cake. But the piece de resistance is this: Palmetto Bluff is a leader in sustainable and green building practices, as evidenced by their work with Southface and gracious hosting of the Lowcountry’s first Earth Craft House training seminar, which I had the pleasure of attending last Wednesday.

Let us start at the beginning. Palmetto Bluff is owned and developed by Crescent Resources, a division of Duke Energy. From the Palmetto Bluff website comes the vision of Crescent Resources’ philosophy:

By allowing the land to guide us rather then imposing a “developer template”, we have crafted a plan that respects its physical form — the topography, the wetlands, the diverse maritime forest and the miles of undulating marsh and river edge. This vision of Palmetto Bluff as a place, rather than a project, is a more challenging path. It requires that we remain authentic. That we un-learn much of what the last thirty-five years of development in this region has taught.

Palmetto Bluff is working to qualify each home in its community as an Earth Craft House. The philosophy behind the Earth Craft House is simple and feasible. The concept deals mostly with the process and materials used to build a home, creating a process that is efficient and smart, with the environment as its guide. Points are given within each major category in order to certify each home as an Earth Craft Home. The program is completely felxible and works with each builder to develop their “sustainibility quotient,” with Southface acting as a consultant with each build.

Common sense strategies are part of the point system, like having a central cutting site, which enables the builders to recycle perfectly useable wood throughout the project. More technical aspects, like the building envelope and correct and adequate ventilation, add not only to the homeowner’s improved indoor air quality, but a more efficient, and therefore more affordable, home.

One needn’t be purchasing in the exclusive enclaves of Palmetto Bluff to enjoy what is now the luxury of well-built, healthy homes, but it seems it takes these artisans of the building industry to take this painfully obvious next step within our built environment. Working against this natural progression towards a better and more profitable building process will force the cut and paste schlock of unconscious production builders to their inevitable extinction.

Absurd is an Understatement

Most of me wants to save my energy for more important matters, like breathing. This one, I can’t seem to shake, or allow to float on by with the rest of the atrocities in the river of outrage which I am nearly drowned by on a daily basis, thanks to the present administration our country has voted, er…allowed, into office.

Amnesty International has issued a report on U.S. “policy” in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, citing human rights abuses carried out by the United States and its military. Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the traveling circus have begun its smear campaign against one of the most respected human rights watch groups in the world. Respected so much that this same administration, who is presently denouncing the report as “absurd”, uses Amnesty reports to their advantage to further its own agenda against Cuba and China.

Worst of all, we accuse Amnesty of terrorist group affiliations. The neo-conservative Wall Street Journal stated that Amnesty’s latest accusations ”amount to pro-al Qaeda propaganda,” while the Bush/Cheney carnival infers that terrorists are using the agency as a means to spread their anti-American hate campaigns.

Are the people of this country truly going to snuggle up to this plate of bullshit like it is our Thanksgiving dinner, or our we collectively becoming suspect of an administration that outright lied to begin this war in the first place? Let me see…believe Amnesty International, an independent organization that has successfully worked to help human rights across the globe for over forty years, or the government that acts with an imperialistic psychology, which is presently at war, and is already guilty of atrocities at Abu Ghraib?

All I can do is laugh, but maybe what I need is a good, hard cry.

Memorializing War

CBS evening news reports tonight that space is running out at Arlington National Cemetery. The two-minute segment, brought to you as a Memorial Day feature, focused on the sacrifices made by our dead American soldiers, with high honors bestowed as lots of Arlington dirt.


The Seed of Human Race by Yangzi Sima

To me, the field of over 260,000 white crosses represent valuable lives lost due to lies told and perpetuated in order to benefit the rich and make them richer. We should be considering WHY our space is running out at our national cemetery reserved for slain soldiers, instead of where we will place them 20 years from now when they will not have the option to share this sacrosanct dirt.

When war was honorable, as in, the leaders of nations were on the frontlines with the masses – white or black, educated or disenfranchised – perhaps a ceremonial plot in which to lay our dead together as one had more meaning. If we care to honor our young men and women today, best to not honor them to death.