If he could have had them, would he? You better believe it.
Pretty much everybody knows who St. Francis is. If you don't, we're happy to take this opportunity to introduce you.
Here he is:
Look how friendly he looks! All surrounded by birds and flowers, chillin' in Heaven, praying for you. What a nice guy.
The basics:
-Born in Italy in 1181 to a reasonably wealthy family
-Had a conversion experience while a prisoner of war
-Embraced the Gospels and started imitating Christ as literally as possible....this included giving up his comfortable life in favor of begging and living among animals and that sort of stuff....which caused his family to disown him
-Cared for the sick, preached in the streets, composed hymns
-People started to follow him because he was cool....and eventually he got the Papal OK to found the Franciscan order
-Received the stigmata (wounds of Christ) in 1224
-Died in 1226 of natural causes....his relics are still in Assisi today
-Canonized in 1228 by Pope Gregory IX
-Feast day = October 4
So now that you know all about St. Francis....you might be wondering why we're ranting and raving about him, fangirl-style, seemingly out of nowhere.
He's the patron Saint of ecology, ecologists, animals, tree huggers, the environment....basically anything nature-related. And that pretty much describes not only us, but also our educational experience and this here blog. Therefore, St. Francis of Assisi is the official patron Saint of Okay Here I Go. w00t!
So let's move on to the wind turbine thing. Why would St. Francis have liked wind turbines? He loved, lived in, and respected nature. Wind turbines are good for nature. We think that sums it up pretty nicely, but we're willing to go into a bit more detail for the benefit of you good people.
To increase your eco-knowledge, we've included this great photo of some wind turbines. Tada!
Wind turbines are pretty sweet. Other than fuel used during maintenance, they're carbon neutral. They have very few other environmental impacts. Sure, there have been claims that they cause bird deaths. But then again, research has shown that these deaths are minimal, about the same as those killed by cars and windows each year. Besides, if you were a goose just flying around and then saw these big blades spinning in the sky, wouldn't you avoid them? Um, yeah...
Besides.....ain't they pretty?
Anyway, we wanted to tell you all of this because......we want to get the Catholic Center a wind turbine! Yes, the CC wants to go green! It's pretty sweet, because in a year or two, a couple wind companies in Vermont want to offer residential wind kits for under $15,000 (= cheap). We will admit that it probably will take a couple years to get it...between dealing with our incredibly bureaucratic university, fundraising, permitting, building the thing...Audrey would like to try to work on it as a senior thesis, which would be pretty sweet. Beats writing a paper about fecal pathogens!
Anyway, when (if) we get our lovely turbine installed, we would like to name it after Saint Francis. Because, like we said before, he rocks.
Oh, and Happy Belated Sts. Cyril and Methodius Day!!!!
(And St. Valentine too.....but he's not nearly as cool. Did he create a Slavic written language? That's what we thought. Although they're all in Heaven, so they're all pretty awesome in our book.)
And in honor of our friend St. Francis, who is consistently pictured with birds, here's a Bird of the Day!
Bird of the Day: Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)
One more thing: if you look to the right, just below our "About Me" section, you'll notice that we've added a poll. The idea here is to see which of these four topics you, our lovely readers, are most interested in reading our ramblings about. The poll closes at 11:59 pm on February 28, so get your votes in!!
(DISCLAIMER: We reserve the right to blog about any and all of these topics at any time, and we will probably cover them all at some point. The winning selection will merely have the privilege of being tackled first.)
The basics:
-Born in Italy in 1181 to a reasonably wealthy family
-Had a conversion experience while a prisoner of war
-Embraced the Gospels and started imitating Christ as literally as possible....this included giving up his comfortable life in favor of begging and living among animals and that sort of stuff....which caused his family to disown him
-Cared for the sick, preached in the streets, composed hymns
-People started to follow him because he was cool....and eventually he got the Papal OK to found the Franciscan order
-Received the stigmata (wounds of Christ) in 1224
-Died in 1226 of natural causes....his relics are still in Assisi today
-Canonized in 1228 by Pope Gregory IX
-Feast day = October 4
So now that you know all about St. Francis....you might be wondering why we're ranting and raving about him, fangirl-style, seemingly out of nowhere.
He's the patron Saint of ecology, ecologists, animals, tree huggers, the environment....basically anything nature-related. And that pretty much describes not only us, but also our educational experience and this here blog. Therefore, St. Francis of Assisi is the official patron Saint of Okay Here I Go. w00t!
So let's move on to the wind turbine thing. Why would St. Francis have liked wind turbines? He loved, lived in, and respected nature. Wind turbines are good for nature. We think that sums it up pretty nicely, but we're willing to go into a bit more detail for the benefit of you good people.
To increase your eco-knowledge, we've included this great photo of some wind turbines. Tada!
Wind turbines are pretty sweet. Other than fuel used during maintenance, they're carbon neutral. They have very few other environmental impacts. Sure, there have been claims that they cause bird deaths. But then again, research has shown that these deaths are minimal, about the same as those killed by cars and windows each year. Besides, if you were a goose just flying around and then saw these big blades spinning in the sky, wouldn't you avoid them? Um, yeah...
Besides.....ain't they pretty?
Anyway, we wanted to tell you all of this because......we want to get the Catholic Center a wind turbine! Yes, the CC wants to go green! It's pretty sweet, because in a year or two, a couple wind companies in Vermont want to offer residential wind kits for under $15,000 (= cheap). We will admit that it probably will take a couple years to get it...between dealing with our incredibly bureaucratic university, fundraising, permitting, building the thing...Audrey would like to try to work on it as a senior thesis, which would be pretty sweet. Beats writing a paper about fecal pathogens!
Anyway, when (if) we get our lovely turbine installed, we would like to name it after Saint Francis. Because, like we said before, he rocks.
Oh, and Happy Belated Sts. Cyril and Methodius Day!!!!
(And St. Valentine too.....but he's not nearly as cool. Did he create a Slavic written language? That's what we thought. Although they're all in Heaven, so they're all pretty awesome in our book.)
And in honor of our friend St. Francis, who is consistently pictured with birds, here's a Bird of the Day!
Bird of the Day: Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)
One more thing: if you look to the right, just below our "About Me" section, you'll notice that we've added a poll. The idea here is to see which of these four topics you, our lovely readers, are most interested in reading our ramblings about. The poll closes at 11:59 pm on February 28, so get your votes in!!
(DISCLAIMER: We reserve the right to blog about any and all of these topics at any time, and we will probably cover them all at some point. The winning selection will merely have the privilege of being tackled first.)
1 comment:
Just to say, the amount of bird deaths is probably equal or less to the amount caused by birds getting stuck in that chicken wire on the ceiling at the UVM farm. It's really gross -.o
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