I'm writing you on behalf of the Local Alliance of Nature and Development for Hamilton County (LAND-HC) and thanking you for the recent article on the University of Cincinnati's use of "green building" techniques ("Building a Green Future," issue of March 15-21).
Members of the LAND-HC Committee on Green Building, which I chair, are working on balancing development and environment through promoting innovative green building practices that both improve the quality of the built environment and preserve and sustain our natural resources. The 12 committee members consist of several architects and planners, a builder, a member of Hamilton Environmental Services, a municipal planning commissioner, a director of a non-profit environmental agency and a UC professor of landscape architecture.
This committee embraces green building to promote the health of our community's inhabitants, enable strong economic growth and protect the environment. Green building is one important way to attract new residents, improve the image of the city of Cincinnati as a progressive city and contribute to the overall quality of life.
We appreciate Margo Pierce's article covering UC's exemplary practice of constructing sustainable green buildings on its campus. We hope to see more CityBeat articles on the topic of sustainable practices — printing them creates the opportunity to show that sustainability concepts and green building innovations are being incorporated in projects throughout our region.
These projects will serve as models to encourage others to raise the bar in building a bright green, sustainable future for Cincinnati and Hamilton County.
— Joanne Gerson, Local Alliance of Nature and Development
Inspired by Antonio
I wish to thank you for the cover story profile of Antonio Adams ("When Silence Becomes Singing," issue of April 19-25). Anyone who has met Antonio cannot walk away unaffected by his genius and kind nature.
The depiction of Base Gallery being insensitive toward disabled artists was unfortunately accurate as of five years ago. But for the past four years the gallery has practiced its mission of art education through community outreach by giving free exhibition space to the Peaslee Center, Visionaries and Voices, Media Bridges and the School for Creative and Performing Arts.
The insensitive comments made several years ago by a few of the Base cooperative were needlessly cruel. Fortunately, those artists are no longer with the cooperative.
My apologies to Bill Ross, Keith Banner and Antonio Adams for those incidents, which illustrated to me that people who have all their faculties yet do little with their lives and are prejudicial toward others who are different in any way are really the handicapped among us. Compare them with people such as Antonio who use their talents and resources and are kind-hearted as well.
— Tom Weast, Director, Base Gallery
