A Viking Doing Something

Every radio and television station is required by the FCC to provide some good to the community. There are specific rules about what can qualify as 'good to the community', but it mostly means they can't play Transformers cartoons all the time and rot kids' brains entirely. The cartoons have to have messages; the station has to broadcast news; the Sunday morning slot has to be given up to community programming.

I'll admit that I rarely tune into that Sunday (or Saturday) morning community programming unless I hear in advance that the topic will be something of interest to me. A week or two ago, however, Cincinnati Edition on WVXU interviewed a former PHS science teacher, Ryan Mooney-Bullock, who has gone on to greener pastures as the Program Manager for the Green Learning Station at the Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati.

The Civic Garden Center is, according to Ryan, eight acres of gardened land on Reading Road just north of William Howard Taft. It's been around since the 1940s, and their goal is to build community through gardening and the like. They hold classes and host field trips, and wander the city helping city folks get their hands a little dirty - even letting Cincinnati residents rent space in the forty-plus city gardens.

The Green Learning Center is kind of what it sounds like - a place where they encourage and educate city folks about 'greening up' their work and home life. It's a new part of the Civic Garden Center, and sounds like they have a ton of neat resources for everything from composting to gardening to green roofs and window boxes. Ryan describes the Learning Center as an 'urban nature center'. I think I'll head down to check it out.

If you wanna listen to her interview, check out the podcast and skip forward to 31:30 (she's on through about 41:40). Or you can check out the other Cincinnati Edition podcasts to see what else is happening around the city.

Oh, and Ryan was also in CityBeat a couple of weeks ago talking about the Green Learning Center.