A few weeks ago I told you about my friend, Chris and his business, Salvage America, a local recycling company located on Holt's Chapel Road in Greensboro, North Carolina. Well now Chris is recycling the Blogosphere.

I'm helping Chris out with the Salvage America Greensboro blog and will be doing part of the posting there as Chris has lots of great deals in things you need for your home and business.

Remember, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

Jennifer Worrells of the Greensboro Public Library has taken it on her own to revive the Greensboro Bloggers MeetUp Group with the first meeting being tonight at the Central Branch of the Greensboro Public Library. She's reached into her own credit card to pay to bring back this once very popular group so I hope lots of Greensboro, North Carolina bloggers will support her by showing up on short notice.

For more info and to rejoin the group go to the Greensboro Bloggers MeetUp Website.

Children in the Piedmont Triad Region of North Carolina can now submit their art for publication in Piedmont Parent.

Join us for another traditional and cultural experience Saturday March 29th  2008  from noon until 6pm. We have 4 performance areas with 12 bands!!! Enjoy performances from African Reggae drummers AnKaTaa, Blues, Jazz and Americana musicians as well as Mediterranean styled music and belly dancing performances. Over 40 fine arts and craft vendors will be on display along with Carnivale games, street performers and surprises around every corner.
Join us for this FREE event and be part of this eclectic afternoon. A complete line-up and more details can be found @ TheSpace340.com
                                    
Tate Street East
                             
12 -12:45   Hammer No More The Fingers
1:00-1:45   Old Stone Revue
2:00-2:45   The Bronzed Chorus
                                                 
3:00  THE PAPERHAND PUPPET INTERVENTION w/ CAKALAK THUNDER
                             
3:30-4:45   The Holy Ghost Tent Revival
5:00-6:00   Thacker Dairy Road
 
 
On The Hill
 
12:30-1:15  Capoeira :: Brazilian Martial Arts
1:30-2:45    Songs of Water ::
2:00-2:45    Studio 318 :: World Dance performance
                   
3:00  THE PAPERHAND PUPPET INTERVENTION w/ CAKALAK THUNDER
 
3:30-4:00    Torque :: Fusion Bellydance
4:15-4:45    Three Graces Entertainment :: Serpentine Dance
4:45-5:00    The Emberellas
5:00-5:30    Astrodan and the Dreamgate Frontier        
5:30-6:00     Morose Ghost
               
GROOOOOOOOVE Alley West
 
12:00-1:15 Hot Politics
1:30-2:45   The Mantras
 
3:00   THE PAPERHAND PUPPET INTERVENTION w/ CAKALAK THUNDER
                                  
3:45   AnKaTaa :  African Drums
 
 
Play area for EVERYONE!!
 
12:00-1:00  Decorating Tate Street with Sidewalk chalk
1:00- 2:00   THE LION DANCE by Pai-Lum KungFu school
3:00- 4:00   Dancing with the PAPERHAND PUPPET INTERVENTION!!!  

 

 

Chris Triolo is the future of recycling in Greensboro, North Carolina. A graduate of Page High School, Chris has learned how to profit from things others throw away and does it without any expense on the part of the taxpayers.

Click on the pictures for a better view.

One product of interest to homeowners, landscapers and gardeners is wood mulch made from ground wood. With a shredder on site that can also be towed to other locations, Chris and his team of 10 employees can supply mulch, compost, topsoil and fill dirt to fit the needs of consumers without having to travel all the way across town. Salvage America even separates pressure treated wood laden with poisonous copper arsenic from the regular wood so that gardeners need not fear contamination of their garden soils. As a matter of fact: because I've seen what goes into Chris's shredder and because he is so close my next load of mulch will come from Salvage America.

Chris, a husband and father of 2 children under 3, is the owner of Salvage America located at 3001 Holts Chapel Road near my home in East Greensboro. His business is that of C&D (construction and demolition) recycling. Chris and company accept construction and demolition debris by the truck load then separate, sort and grade the various materials so they can be resold to contractors, home owners, gardeners, surveyors, scrap metal buyers, plastics recycles and others. As a matter of fact: Salvage America manages to recycle many products the Greensboro City Recycling Program refuses to recycle.

Check out the monster shredder.

Recently I started building garden beds from old bricks but ran out of bricks before finishing. Chris has lots of old bricks, blocks and other masonry products. He also has roofing shingles, tar paper, framing lumber and more. Back in the back he has enough concrete pipe to build a culvert under your driveway. Much of what Salvage America recycles fits in the catagory of reuse instead of recycling. Need a short piece of PVC pipe or some firewood? Wood, steel and concrete are converted to products for the construction and transportation industries right on site while other products are converted by those companies who buy from Salvage America.

No, you can't borrow the track hoe.

Chris has had a few problems with the NIMBY crowd but most of the problems have been worked out and Chris welcomes anyone to check to make sure Salvage America remains in compliance with all local, state and Federal agencies.

I found it interesting that Salvage America even recycles old sheet rock. The gypsum is separated from the paper and used as an organic fertilizer and soil supplements. Gypsum is also an ingredient of blackboard chalk, plaster and portland cement. I don't mean to imply that Chris's gypsum is used in this way but did you know gypsum is also used in food products like Twinkies and tofu.? Talk about a food that sticks to your ribs.

Update: April 8, '08: Salvage America now buys copper, aluminum, brass and other scrap metals. For more info call 336 215 5228. 

Friday, March 7th, at 3pm, the Mo'Book Mo'Bike Mobile is coming to town! Offering free books for children and adults, and free bike repair for anyone, the Mo'Book Mo'Bike Mobile is a project of Books on Wheels, a Richmond, VA-based non-profit. The Greensboro event is being coordinated with Greensboro's own Bike Me! Collective.
 
So bring your kids, your bikes, and your kids' bikes, and come have some fun! (Donations of bike parts and books are also gladly accepted.)
 
What: Books on Wheels: free books, free bike repair, and free fun!
Where: The HIVE, 1214 Grove St., Greensboro (between Glenwood Ave. and McCormick St)
When: 3-6pm, Friday, March 7th
Who: Books on Wheels of Richmond, VA and the BIKE ME! Collective of Greensboro

The next stop for the Mo'Book Mo'Bike Mobile will be at 5PM. same day at the Glenwood Public Library 1901 W. Flordia St. in Greensboro before traveling on to Pensecola, Florida.

Be sure to check out the  Mo'Book Mo'Bike Mobile Blog and if you'd like to know more about bicycle safety, BicycleSafe.com is the best site I've found to date.

This message made possible by StreetPlanes.com, the 200 mile per gallon alternative.

It Takes A Village And Some Bails

Less than 1% of all the plastic bags used in America are recycled. Millions, perhaps Billions of tons of plastic bags go into landfills every year. And what about all the paper and old clothing that isn't recycled? That goes into landfills as well. America is quickly burying us in waste paper, plastic, fabric, construction debris and more but it doesn't have to be that way. What if I could show you a way the City of Greensboro could profit from that waste instead of using mine and your tax dollars to haul it away?

What if that waste could be used to build affordable homes for America's poor and homeless?

For well over 100 years some home builders have been building great homes of straw. Not houses like you imagine when you think of the 3 Little Pigs but strong houses that are warm, cozy, inexpensive to build and look like regular houses. And did I mention that some of the world's first straw bail houses are still standing and are in excellent condition? The Red Feather Development Group has been successfully solving the problems of homelessness on Indian Reservations since 1984, why can't Greensboro do the same?

"Pilgrim Holiness church was built by the churchless and penniless congregation in 1928 with rye straw bales donated by a local rancher and church member. The roof spans twenty-eight feet onto its load-bearing walls. Note the treeless terrain." More at The Last Straw

Did I mention straw bail houses withstand earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes better than conventional brick homes? Did I mention they're less costly to heat and cool and are among the most energy efficient houses in the world today? Imagine owning a home that is environmentally friendly, cheaper to build, stronger and able to outlast conventional houses with walls almost 2 feet thick to keep out anything you don't want inside including most of the sounds of traffic. Bail houses are among the quietest houses known to man.



A straw house built in Nebraska in 1928 that remains in use today.

Now imagine if that house was made not from straw but from stuff that goes into landfills-- plastics, paper, old clothing, scrap wood, Styrofoam, household plastics and almost anything else you can think of. Even waxed cardboard and old pizza boxes that aren't currently being accepted for recycling could be used in bail construction. Straw is proven to last over 100 years, plastic will last 10,000 years. Imagine villages built of bails of scrap that look like regular houses. Imagine people building their own houses, barns and stores, tending gardens and gathering fresh eggs from their own chickens and running their own businesses. Imagine roof top gardens that put healthy food on the table and oxygen back into the air.

There are thousands of bail houses in the world today in every climate imaginable.

Inside Carolyn Roberts' straw bail house which, by the way, has an earthen floor. While I know of no earthen floor houses in Greensboro I do know of one 3 story historic Greensboro house with rammed earth basement walls located near UNCG. Perhaps there are more.

Imagine that village with its own environmentally friendly factory making affordable vehicles that get 200 miles per gallon of gasoline. Imagine those vehicles being made from recycled materials. Imagine the taxpayers not having to foot the bill and money in the pockets of people who are sleeping outside tonight. As long as we have people walking the Earth we will have trash, why not build something good?

There is nothing complicated about bail construction-- anyone can learn it, any healthy adult can do it. Bails are heavy but they are cheap and easy to make-- farmers have been making bails for well over 100 years. Bailing machines are everywhere and can even be rented. Let 'em turn straw into Ethanol, we can build with trash.

Remember: Just because it has never been done does not mean it can't be done. Prior to 1968 the world thought Americans on the moon was impossible so what's so hard about building a village and bettering the lives of Greensboro's poor and homeless?

And the 200 mile per gallon affordable vehicles-- I drive one most every day.

References: Rural Studio Projects, Auburn University cardboard house.

Mark Your Calendar for Joetry!

Blogsboro's maiden event, Joetry: An Open-Mic Event of Poetry, Prose, Song and Coffee is Sunday, January 27, beginning at 4:00 p.m. at The Coffee Break, 1820 Spring Garden Street, Greensboro.

We have an amazing lineup of talent and performers including:

Billy "The Blogging Poet" Jones
Clement Mallory
Harry Furness
Dr. Linda Erday
Professor Eric Fink
Budd Wilkins (and possibly his wife Tina if she gets up the nerve)
Patrick Murphy

and hopefully more!  If you want to perform, just show up and sign up and we'll put you on stage!

The event is free, donations for the performers will be accepted, and you'll just LOVE the tasty offerings at The Coffee Break - wonderful coffee drinks, smoothies, hot cocoa, delicious pastries and desserts, and a terrific atmosphere (nice people running the place, too).  It's going to be a great time, guaranteed.  Team Blogsboro hopes to see you there to kick off our series of events!

It's not every day you come across a business that gives away the very thing that earns their paychecks but at Greensboro's JEM Watercraft that's exactly what they do. No, JEM Watercraft doesn't give everything away but there are several products they offer for free.

Did you know that Greensboro, North Carolina, a city with hardly a drop of water in sight, has for years been one of the hot spots in recreational boat sales? I can't explain it but that's the way it is.

Of course, not every boater wants to buy a ready made store bought boat-- some like to build their own and that's where JEM comes in. They've got free boat building plans. How would you like to own a pontoon boat or an 18' touring canoe for less than $300? Or a kayak?

They also carry everything you need to build your own recreational boat, kayak, or canoe, have technical support and even teach boat building classes for those of you who are smart enough to know you need expert help.

When I was in the Boy Scouts, several of us got together at my neighbor's house and built a canvas covered canoe. Looking back we sure could have used JEM Watercraft way back when.

A nod to Beth for the tip.

Brought to you by BillysToyStore.com-- All the toys for the good girls and boys. Toy boats too!

Muse on Greensboro - Greensboro Public Library's Bicentennial Poetry Contest

Celebrate the Bicentennial by writing a poem inspired by Greensboro’s past, present, or future. The winning poems will have a clear Greensboro connection. Poetic topics can be concrete in identifying Greensboro people and places or abstract in embracing emotions and understandings inspired by Greensboro events, such as topics about race relations and matters of faith. Let Greensboro become your poetic muse. What inspires and connects you and your family to the places and community life of the Gate City?

Poets may submit up to two unpublished poems.  First Place Prizes - $150; Second Place Prizes - $100.  There are four divisions for submission, so plenty of chances to win!

Visit the PoetryGSO web site for more information, entry forms and guidelines, as well as a place to submit your poem online.  Hurry!  The deadline for submitting your entry or entries is February 15!