Mark your calendar and come join a pioneering celebration.
"Portray, Preserve, Prosper: The Florida's Eden Heritage Springs Region"
October 3rd: Public Forum 9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. with Guided Gallery Tour 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.
Santa Fe College Art Gallery
with a special "One Region / One Book" Signing: Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of
the Eastern U.S.
Come meet author, Cynthia Barnett and have your copy autographed.
September 17th
Preservation is Prosperity!
This is a big week for us. We've been hanging an exhibition at the Santa Fe College Gallery
and readying everything for the formal kickoff of
our One Region One Book project. As the show has been coming together and the pieces
are set up and arranged; we are all astonished by the sheer beauty
and surprising qualities we've created. Jacqui Collett and Peg Richardson are masters of
arrangement! I hope this show will attract a wide audience as we have gone way beyond the
normal art show parameters and brought in some fun and unusual pieces including a light
box by Margaret Tolbert, Florida Furniture by Ty Tyson,
a Springs film by the Suwannee River Water management District, Callie Thompson's
spoken word performance of her "Open Letter to all Floridians", rare first edition books, a
dive suit, and a wooden canoe designed and built by 8th graders at Fort White High School!
These very different pieces complement the photographs, paintings, sculpture, glass, clay
and fabric art.
Friday's Opening has been receiving good press. The word is out and so we're hopeful of a
healthy turnout.
Cynthia Barnett will be signing copies of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the
Eastern U.S at the Opening in the GAllery. Its our debut for One Region One Book, a
project we've created to invite 30 counties of north Florida's Eden to join the region focus
and build citizen awareness toward protecting the water resources. Florida's Eden is
partnering with Cynthia who's book came at an ideal time and serves as the prime vehicle in
this next stage of our water awareness campaign. We're looking forward to introducing her
to the cultural community on Friday. Our hope is that everyone will purchase 2 paperback
versions of Mirage; one to read and one to give as a gift. As our members and friends, you
can help this effort to launch by engaging your book clubs, home owners associations, civic
organizations, local libraries and friends to buy and read this comprehensive and interesting
book. Cynthia has created discussion questions which you'll find front and center on our
website, www.FloridasEden.org
Stewart Thomas, our super human Creative Director has been working overtime to ready
our site's new format for the fall events.
Please do check it out and email it as a link to your friends. You'll also see that he's
arranged for the Heart of Florida Scenic Trail Guide to be completely virtual!
This is pure magic to me!
Go check it out...you can turn the pages and email or print individual pages. With the Guide
you'll also be able to view our latest creation; a short video where we
suggest area venues to visit. Its a fun project we did last spring with our Alachua County VCB
and Visit Florida.
This fall you'll hear more about our major project, the Florida's Eden Water Awareness
Campaign and more ways you can help us lead the way.
As we build capacity to become the regional organization which will unite north Florida; we'll
be needing more volunteer participation.
Peg Richardson, our Volunteer Coordinator will be introducing a new program called Friends
of Florida's Eden. We're excited by the prospects
this new volunteer program will offer you.
Friends of Florida's Eden will work closely with our current Membership program. Jacqui
Collett , our Membership Coordinator and Peg Richardson are
teaming up to produce some engaging ways for you to become more involved. The very
nature of what Florida's Eden is now initiating is volunteer and citizen based.
We believe that all real change happens as a civil action from the grass roots up and your
participation is needed more now than ever before.
Please join this pioneering effort to command our regional future.
I hope we see you at Santa Fe College Gallery Friday night from 7-9.
You can also check the website for our next happenings...www.FloridasEden.org
These are hopeful and high energy times.
Annie
September 1
Florida's Eden
Annie's Blog
The first of September offers a whole new energy...which is a mighty relief after the dog days
of August.
As a once-upon-a-time northerner; I always think of our August here, like we did February in
Maine.
August is our 'dark moon, low tide, wait it out time.'
How many ways can you still eat eggplants and zucchinis?
Cat's belly up in the flower pots...heat!
Leggy zinnias in the dried up old garden plots and finally... out of sheer need...turning the
soil.
Then we round the corner and voila! There's a whole new energy.
The kids go back to school, football starts, the cultural season opens and we replant for an
entire new harvest.
That's how we're so very different here.
While practically the entire rest of the country prepares to enter a dormant growing season;
we replant!
We are Florida's Eden. We enjoy a perennial garden with a year round harvest.
We have whole new blooms from plants just waiting until winter!
Birds begin to migrate in...along with snow birds. For most of us; its our favorite half of the
year.
However invigorating; this year is different.
Tomorrow Florida's Eden goes public with an exciting new venture.
As our membership; we want you to be the first to know.
We truly are a living Eden. The natural assets we enjoy are remarkably our own.
Its like you come to the end of the mainland and then enter this other place...
Mysterious, wilder, strange and sometimes quirky...
once connected to Africa; we have a primal, ancient heart beat which feels closer to the
source.
They call us the sunshine state...but its water that defines us.
Water. Its water that defines us and its water issues which have moved to the front of
everyone's agenda.
We have been working solidly all summer on a Regional Water Awareness Campaign.
Tomorrow we'll issue a press release announcing our plan to initiate a citizen's call to action.
We have created a way to invite and engage each of the 30 counties within our Florida's
Eden to read one book,
Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. by journalist, Cynthia Barnett.
Last spring we read Mirage and were so impressed with the book's content that we
contacted
its author, Cynthia Barnett and asked her to partner with us to offer a One Region One Book
reading campaign to the citizens of Florida's Eden.
She graciously accepted and we've been working together on it ever since.
Even before its debut; Mirage and the One Region One Book Campaign are a run away hit.
Mirage won the Gold award as best non fiction book in the State of Florida
and in August, Marion County announced its intention to be the first county to lead the way.
Then Santa Fe College came on to become the first college to commit to an all campus read.
You can go right now to our website www.FloridasEden.org
We ask for your help.
Our goal is for the region to attain a real awareness of the water issues and the challenges
we face and then
join together to engage in the very practical, innovative and beneficial solutions.
Even as we work to partner with our Florida's Eden Heritage Springs Region, county by
beautiful county;
we need you to help us get the word out. We invite every individual to read Mirage. If you
have a book club; please suggest reading Mirage.
Home owners associations, churches, businesses, schools, chambers, libraries, civic
organizations and private book clubs...
we need all of you to read the book. Cynthia has posted discussion questions on the site
under One Region One Book and linked her own website which
is a great additional resource offering information about Florida's water issues.
Cynthia Barnett is a senior writer for Florida Trend and an award winning journalist.
One more thing. Mark your calendars for Friday, September 19th, 7-9 p.m. That's the day
Florida's Eden opens a pioneering exhibition at the Santa Fe College Art Gallery. Our
region's leading cultural and natural ambassadors will combine their work to inform and
astound the public and celebrate the kick off of our
Water Awareness Campaign and One Region One Book. Cynthia will be signing copies of
Mirage. Come meet her, pick up a copy of the book and join the
movement!
I'm going to keep blogging these journal entries every couple of weeks and report about the
Campaign, our partners, and give you the exciting developments
from our end. Please email me back awpais @ aol.com
Together we'll make a real difference.
Annie
