Water Chestnut Pull August 9th, 2014

Water chestnuts are an invasive species in the Mystic River.  This means that they are not only not native to the river, but they are causing harm to the river by being there.  The Mystic River Watershed Association, the City of Medford and the MA Department of Conservation & Recreation have been working together for several years to remove these plants.

Among other problems, the most visible problem is that they clog the river and boaters can not get up and down the river.  Less visible is how they choke out other species and if allowed to grow too thick, can even make it difficult for fish and other aquatic life to live in the river. You can read more about this problem on MyRWA's website.

Many organizations have contributed money to hire mechanical harvesters to remove the water chestnuts.  However, the machines are not able to get all the plants out of the river and some areas must be cleared by hand. This year, as part of its care for creation mission, Grace Church has decided to participate in the efforts.  Volunteers go out in small boats and pull the plants up by hand, depositing them in laundry baskets in the boats. Volunteers on land empty the baskets into a dumpster for proper disposal. The process is a lot of fun, like weeding a river!  However, you should come prepared to get very wet and dirty.

If you would like to join Grace Church at the water chestnut pull on August 9th, please sign up below. We need to know how many people will attend.  There is no age limit and children enjoy the activity, however, children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult in their boat and have a parent or guardian sign the waiver when they attend.



You can see photos from other MyRWA water chestnut events here: mysticriver.org/events-photo-galleries/2014-water-chestnut-removal-events/

Call to Moral Action on Climate Change

On March 19, 2013, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) made a call to action from the Senate floor that all faith based communities rise up to address climate change.  Please watch this 17 minute view into our national dialog on climate change.

Time to Wake Up: Faith Organizations Weigh in on Climate Change

What are we going to do to answer this call?

Front Yard Task Force Presentation

On Sunday, February 24th, the Front Yard Task Force presented their plans for rejuvenating the front area of Grace Church to be:

• Welcoming
• Easy to maintain
• Support the mission of Grace Church
• Environmentally Sustainable and
• Provide a green space for rest & recreation for all.

Here are the slides from the presentation. We want to hear from the members of Grace about our plans for the front lawn.  Please leave comments below or speak to a member of the task force with your ideas and thoughts.

or download as a PDF.



During the presentation we also asked those present to answer the following question:

What is the most important consideration to me in rejuvenating our front lawn space?

Please share with us your response to this question or other thoughts you have.

Peace!
Jonathan Hunt on behalf of front yard task force

LEDs Lighting Our Way in Prayer

Did you notice that one of the hanging fixtures in the sanctuary was not as bright as the others?  Up until last week, the hanging fixture closest to the baptismal font was using the old 300W incandescent bulb and had not been upgraded to the new dimmable LED solution we created.

The Building Committee is also working with the National Grid Small Business Program to upgrade the lights on the altar and improve the efficiency of many of the lights throughout the Wiles Hall, offices and classrooms.

Happy Greening!
Jon

Just in time for Christmas

When we upgraded the lighting in the sanctuary with dimmable LED bulbs we hit a snag, flickering lights.  To stop the flickering, we replaced all the dimmers with new modern LED certified dimmers which actually made the problem worse.  The electrician put in simple on-off switches until we could figure out something better.

Now we have.  We now have non-flickering dimmers that work beautifully with our LED lights and just in time for Christmas.  Why Christmas?  Well, that is the one service at which we really use the dimming of the lights during our worship.

While I would not go so far as to call this a Christmas miracle, it was much harder than it should be so we want to share our solution.  After trying numerous electricians and lighting retailers, we were finally put in touch with a senior engineer at Philips who recommended the dimmer that worked with our setup.  Months of various failed attempts all changed in one day with a few emails and a trip to the local hardware store.

Our setup is 8 hanging fixtures, each with 6 Philips 10W L-Prize winning A19 lamps, on 4 switches (2 fixtures per switch).

• 48 Philips 10W Dimmable LED A19 lamps bought from Energy Federation Incorporated (EFI) with MassSave discounts
• 4 Lutron MACL-153M-SW Maestro 150-Watt Multi-Location CFL/LED Digital Dimmer
• Custom lamp parts
• One historic H.H. Richardson's oldest standing church

We had tried several previous CFL/LED dimmer switches that did not work.  One was the Lutron CFL/LED Dimmer CTCL-153PDH-WH which flickered at every setting level.  A second was a Leviton vizia + #VPE04 which is an expensive ELV dimmer that should work with LEDs but requires 4 wires to work (2 hot, ground and neutral).  We only had the two hot wires and ground available and rewiring the fixtures given the ceiling height is out of the question.

Now we are waiting for the lighting audit to come back for the Wiles Hall (our parish hall) where we have the remaining 9 @ 300W incandescent bulbs to replace with something more efficient.

Peace & Joy!
Jon