By Mae Lee Sun, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, July 03, 2009
The sun, the warm weather, golf and the arts are what typically attract retirees to Southern Arizona. For those choosing to live at La Posada in Green Valley, there’s a new consideration: green living.
“The average age of our residents is in the mid-80s. They are a very politically active and environmentally conscious population,” says Tim Carmichael, director of marketing for the nonprofit continuing care retirement community for people ages 62 and up. “Most of the changes we’ve been making at La Posada have come about through our residents suggestions who are concerned about water and energy usage. So we’ve taken that on and have hired Pepper Viner Homes as the developer for the planned Park Centre Homes neighborhood which we hope to break ground on by the end of 2009.”
None of the 35 homes to be built will be owned by residents. Instead they’ll pay an “entrance fee” that on average will be about $450,000 — 70 percent of which gets returned when the resident leaves. The fee, along with additional monthly maintenance costs also provides for of having medical staff nearby.
As for being green, all of the homes will be energey efficient and built with low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) in the cabinetry, paints and flooring. (VOC are carbon-based chemicals that evaporate at room temperature and can be harmful, especially from sustained exposure.)
Read more…link goes to Inside Tucson Business
Tech News Arizona
Published June 23, 2009
By Mae Lee Sun
TNAZ Regional Correspondent
The quest for optimum health and wholeness is an ages old endeavor. Throughout the centuries, seekers have journeyed far and wide to enlist the aide of shamans, spiritual gurus and herbalists who would prescribe everything from eye of newt to consulting the stars. As medicine and science took root, and gained power, that changed. Formalization and professionalization required different mediums and tools in which to address bodily issues and illnesses and treatment often came in the form of pills and surgeries.
The more things change however, the more they stay the same. We’ve come full circle in our knowledge of what total health represents and how to best address it. It’s simple, sort of. And involves something as old as life itself- heart rate and breath-although now measured through the use of hi-tech monitoring devices-otherwise known as “biofeedback.”
Ann Linda Baldwin, University of Arizona Professor of Physiology and Psychology and director of Mind-Body-Science, however, has taken biofeedback to another level. Through the application of sophisticated video game software, she along with Dr. Gulthan Sethi, a heart transplant surgeon at University Medical Center in Tucson is hard at work treating Parkinson’s disease and heart transplant patients.
Photo by Mae Lee Sun UA professor Ann Linda Baldwin is using a biofeedback video game to help people with Parkinsons disease
“Treatment for Parkinson’s disease is not ‘one size fits all.’ Some patients respond better to short periods of relaxation aided by Biofeedback, and some respond better to short periods of concentration, or focusing, aided by Biofeedback techniques. However, in all cases the patients significantly improved their performance of memory and fine motor control tasks,” says Baldwin, who tapes a stretch sensor around the patient’s chest to monitor respiration frequency and depth, and a heart rate variability sensor onto their middle finger.
They practice the two tasks – memory and fine motor control – until they reach a constant score and show no further improvement. They then place the three finger sensors for the Wild Divine, a fantasy-based biofeedback game, on their other hand and are instructed to play for 10 minutes. Such a game could be breathing in time with a tree that grows and shrinks. A bridge forms across a chasm if they can regulate their breathing and HRV to stay within the desired range. They repeat the memory game to see if performance improves and if they are less stressed than they were the first time. The whole process is repeated using a fine motor control task instead of the memory task. The experiment is repeated but they are instructed to play one of the Wild Divine games that requires focusing and concentration instead of relaxation.
Tech News Arizona
Published June 16, 2009
By Mae Lee Sun
TNAZ Regional Correspondent
First it was the West Nile virus, SARS, and then came Avian Flu. And after that, Salmonella hit the stage and a huge recall of tomatoes and spinach was in order. With the declaration by the CDC that ‘H1N1′ Swine Flu is pandemic, activities in the disease-tracking world of Mike Popovich, founder and CEO of Scientific Technologies Corporation, heated up.
Dr. Xiaohui Zhang, Chief Scientist for Scientific Technologies Credit: Mae Lee Sun
Located in the Bank of Tucson tower on East Broadway in Tucson, Ariz., Popovich’s company developed the web-based disease surveillance and Immunization Information Systems software used by multiple state and federal agencies that help the CDC identify and characterize the epidemiology of a disease outbreak. Once identified, the government can implement control and mitigation measures to protect the public. The technology specifically responsible for flagging H1N1 says Popovich, was similar to that of West Nile virus years ago in New York.
“It’s common for health officials to become aware of new disease or possible outbreaks through laboratory test results first. In the case of STC’s state disease surveillance clients, automated electronic laboratory reporting is a central feature. This function of the software allows rapid, integrated reporting of laboratory results that may be of public health significance,” he says. “We employ a group of seasoned public health and technical application developer professionals who are experienced in creating, deploying and supporting a variety of disease surveillance management systems according to end-user needs.”
By Mae Lee Sun, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, June 12, 2009
Already a month into their new season, the Tucson Toros have exceeded expectations.
The independent league baseball team has split their first 10 home games with an average attendance of 4,000 fans and has sold their first player to a major league team.
Earlier this month, the Toros sold right-handed pitcher Andrew Romo to the San Francisco Giants.
The Toros began their season in mid-May and will play home games at Hi Cortbett Field in Reid Park through Aug. 27. The team is due back in town Friday (June 19) for a three-game home stand against the Yuma Scorpians.
It was 1997, the final season for the Toros at Hi Corbett Field. The team had been a Triple-A minor league baseball franchise since 1969. The next year, after affiliating with Major League Baseball’s new Arizona Diamondbacks, Tucson’s minor league team became the Sidewinders and started playing at Tucson Electric Park. That ended last year, after owner and native Tucsonan, Jay Zucker, sold the team because it was an ‘underperforming’ market Pacific Coast League standards and new owners wanted to take it Reno.
Technically, though, when the Toros moved out of Hi Corbett, the team went to Fresno, Calif., where the team is now known as the Fresno Grizzlies, the Triple-A team for the San Francisco Giants. The Sidewinders were actually birthed from the Phoenix Firebirds, who had been the Giants’ minor league team.
Read more…link to Inside Tucson Business
By Mae Lee Sun, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, May 08, 2009
Back in the day, Eric May, now director of stadium operations for the Tucson Toros, was amazed at how much trash was left behind after every baseball game. There were plastic bottles, aluminum cans, cardboard and cups that all got tossed into dumpsters and taken to the landfill to be buried. May, who has worked the baseball scene for the Toros, Tucson Sidewinders and the Arizona Diamondbacks, says he wants all that to change. He has made it both a personal and professional initiative to turn the Toros operations green.
Photo by Mae Lee Sun Eric May, director of stadium operations for the Tucson Toros has dedicated his time to greening the Toros operation both inside the offices and Hi Corbett field with the help of the City of Tucson and Tucson Clean and Beautiful.
“We are a throwaway society and I’ve been aware of this ever since I was a kid. It always bothered me, so in my personal life I’ve made it a point to be conscious of what I’m doing to not create unnecessary trash. So when I became facilities manager at Tucson Electric Park, which was prior to the Toros coming back, I tried to implement a recycling program. I tried for three years to no avail and was told it was too costly, took too much labor, too much time and there were too many perceived barriers to get a recycling program going. The push for green wasn’t there like it is now. In coming over to the Toros operation this year, I decided it was that important that I was going to ram it through no matter what anyone else thought. Because the timing was right, we’ve now got the City of Tucson and Tucson Clean and Beautiful on board,” he says.
Read more…link will go to Inside Tucson Business
By Mae Lee Sun, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, April 17, 2009
The newly formed Green Media Alliance, a partnership of media related firms, will hold its first-ever business-to-business event, “How to Survive in Tough Times” Friday (April 24).
The half-day of events will feature a morning workshop, Green Marketing 101, followed by networking and exhibits and then a luncheon with the aim to bring businesses together to share solutions capitalizing on growing consumer trends demanding a green marketplace.
Jacquelyn Ottman, a Manhattan-based consultant to Fortune 500 companies, is the keynote speaker. She is responsible for the EPA’s Energy Star program that has become a familiar signpost on consumer appliances.The move to green can be a significant financial investment for a business, especially in these recessionary times, but when asked if she sees it paying off, Ottman says, business should be able to more than recoup their initial financial costs.
Read more…link will take you to Inside Tucson Business
Tags: Add new tag, conscious leadership, green biz, green issues, politics, tucson
business, development, green biz, leadership, spirituality | maeleesun | 
April 19, 2009 3:15 pm | 
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Tucson Green Times - Issue March 15- April 15, 2009
Published March 23, 2009
By Mae Lee Sun
Yes he did and I was there. In that human sea of two million on a sunny, 20 degree day in D.C. to testify to the fact that indeed, a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens, neighborhood to neighborhood and email to email, can in fact change the world.
Although awe inspiring in it’s historic ramifications, as tiny American flags were waived in the air and babies of all colors were held to the sky in homage to a brighter, more culturally, racially and economically diverse future, and while I cried, my friends cried and the whole darn mass around us cried, the Inauguration of the first black president went far beyond a kumbaya moment. That would trivialize the power of the people who, one by one, felt they had voted for change, hope and what is in the best interest of humanity over self-interest, fear and planetary destruction.
Photo by Carrie Abels
So now that it seems we’ve picked the right person for the job, who and what is responsible for translating our voted for hopes and values into action? Action that will bring forth the dream of a sustainable future and green economy? And how long is this plan going to take? After all, our new president is just one guy, albeit a truly exceptional one. But he has neither the time nor ability to clone himself into a mass of thousands to execute the task at hand- putting one million hybrid cars on the road that get 150 miles per gallon on the road by 2015; to implement cap-and-trade to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050; to create five million new (green) jobs by investing 150 billion over the next 10 years into private business to build clean energy; and the list of initiatives he’s committed to goes on.
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Whole Terrain: Journal of Reflective Environmental Practice
Published July 2008
By Mae Lee Sun
At 5:20 a.m., an attendant walks through the Zen center, ringing a bell to wake up the day and the handful of sleepy students –already roused by the roosters-who chose to sleep on site. There was only thirty minutes to prepare for zazen, a practice in which we sit silent but attentive on our round black cushions meditating on koans (questions that can only be solved by circumventing logic) or following our breath for most of the day as a way to still our minds. Soon I am sitting with the rest of the students. The thick summer air in the room carries the foreign scent of the horse farm where the zendo is located. Despite the earthy immediacy of the smell, my mind is unable to get out of its own way to see life for what it is- that we, in essence, are the whole Universe. After fourteen years of practice, I am clearly still a beginner.
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By Mae Lee Sun, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Monday, March 02, 2009
For budding green entrepreneurs, it seems to start with an idea.
An idea based on connection with something larger than oneself, where values of sourcing materials sustainably, focusing locally and keeping ethics at the forefront translate into action- action which generates a product or service that will benefit the whole in the long rather than short term and tend to be free of any ties to the larger grid of business as usual.
Despite the state of the economy, the green industry and emerging technology fields are generally on the upswing, especially in Tucson and where down-home ingenuity, creativity and independence have come together in the creation of some cottage industries focusing on such things as landscaping, spices and interior design.
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By Mae Lee Sun, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, January 23, 2009
Just over fifty years ago, in 1957, Robert Norse, a CEO from Milwaukee, was quick to notice that it was ‘lonely at the top’. Few executives in C-level positions could argue against that notion, making it easy for Norse to gather together and find solace and counsel in the company of others who felt the same. This group of peers formally became known as the Executive Committee-TEC, and more recently, re-branded itself as, Vistage International, the world’s first and largest executive membership organization.
Based in San Diego, and operating under the original premise that it’s lonely at the top, Vistage now boasts 15,000 members worldwide in 15 countries including China. Collectively, member companies generate over 300 billion dollars and have direct access to one another via a secured website. Tucson came on board as one of four new markets Vistage opened in 2008, contributing to a record year for Vistage of 1,800 new members organization-wide—an eight percent increase over 2007. Gary Hirsch, an executive with an impressive corporate background in consulting and C-level management is Vistage’s first Tucson chairperson and there are more than 12 Vistage groups with over 150 members who meet regularly in Phoenix.
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Tucson Green Times
Published January 15, 2009
By Mae Lee Sun
Just before three-thirty on a Friday afternoon, in the middle of Tucson’s Sam Hughes neighborhood, Zhu Ping Hodge puts on a pot of boiling water in preparation for an open tea tasting that takes place at the same time every week. She’s recently returned to her shop, Seven Cups Teahouse, from China after spending several months there researching and buying new and varietals selections of high grade organic teas.
Having opened Seven Cups only four years ago, she is pleased at how popular the place has become. Like in China and other countries around the globe, the teahouse in Tucson attracts those who are looking for everything from a serene environment in which to contemplate and rest, or come seeking education on tea culture and a comfortable place forge meaningful relationships.
Simon Smith and friends Melissa Nagelspach, Lauren Woods, and Heather Wallace enjoy good conversation over a cup of tea at Seven Cups Teahouse in Tucson. Photo by Mae Lee Sun
“Ever since the emperors and high officials made it popular to drink tea in their palaces hundreds of years ago, the common people followed. At first, drinking tea was ceremonial, a tradition to show respect for your ancestors. But it was during the Tang dynasty in the 1300s that families adopted it as a necessary part of daily life,” She says.
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By Mae Lee Sun, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, December 12, 2008
Rick Rupkey, president of University Termite & Pest Control, one recent morning was along the perimeter of his office building, with business partner Ryan Horn, simulating what they look for as potential problem areas where pests, such as termites, might gather.
“You have to look closely to see if the downspouts are clogged with leaves or if there are gaps where the pipes come out of the wall. If rocks are butted up against the building, we’d have to suggest moving them out.” says Rupkey, who has learned addressing potential problems in simple ways is the first line of defense in upholding the National Association of Pest Management’s new green standard.
Rupkey, Horn and the 30 technicians they employ suggest things such as caulking and rearranging landscaping.
Although it can be more labor-intensive to be green, University Termite & Pest Control has been walking that sort of line for years. It was the first Arizona pest management company to be accredited as meeting the QualityPro Green service standard and one of only 19 companies currently certified by the National Association of Pest Management.
The certification requires extensive training and background checks for technicians, following regarding pesticides are applied and documentation and record-keeping of each inspection site.
The methodology harkens back to the 1950s use of Integrated Pest Management techniques used in agriculture. The focus then, as it is now, is on preventative maintenance by eliminating sources of food, water and shelter and looking at environmental factors such as light and humidity, as a deterrent to infestation. It also encourages the introduction of natural predators, such as praying mantis or spiders.
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By Mae Lee Sun, for Inside Tucson Business
Published on Saturday, November 01, 2008
For what many may consider to be a one (free-range) horse town, Tucson has managed to grow more than it’s share of green media venues. The growth mirrors the national green scene that’s continuing to blossom on the Web and TV, in newspapers and on the radio.
The local sampling includes Tucson Green Times (formerly Tucson Green Magazine), “Mrs. Green Goes Mainstream” radio program at 12:05 p.m. Saturdays on KNST 790-AM, “Green Tuesdays on The Mountain KWMT 92.9-FM and regular green living segments on KGUN 9 News.
Nationally, there’s the daily e-news source GreenBiz.com, Discovery TVs Planet Green channel, and National Public Radio’s “Living on Earth” that airs weekly on 300 stations (though not in Tucson).
Are these media forways substantive? And what impact do they really have on changing sponsors, viewers or listeners’ habits of heart and mind? Does having a ‘green’ special section in a newspaper generate revenue for both the outlet and advertisers seeking to reach across the aisle? So much green, so little time.
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By Mae Lee Sun
Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, September 05, 2008
The Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona will be adding “green” coursework to its MBA curriculm.
Paul Portney, dean of the Eller College, unofficially made that announcement at a presentation he gave recently to the Sunbelt World Trade Association.
Read more »
By Mae Lee Sun
Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, August 22, 2008
Consumers are becoming more savvy about green issues. Al Gore and the support of Hollywood movies like “The Day After Tomorrow” and “WALL•E” might have something to do with it. Not to mention the decades of efforts on behalf of pioneering environmental organizations and growing scientific data that suggests we have no choice but to pay attention.
It’s no surprise then that when a movement becomes popular enough, corporate America takes notice. At least when it comes to turning the language, icons and products of it into marketable commodities as was done with the counter culture of the 1960s.
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By Mae Lee Sun
Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, August 22, 2008
By outward appearances Tony Vaccaro’s Brooklyn Pizza is a normal, successful, pizzeria. The storefront, at 534 N. Fourth Ave., is brightly painted lime-green, orange and black. A small group of hip-looking teenagers crowds around a few chrome café tables on the sidewalk, enthusiastically eating wide slices of thin crusty pizza. It’s a Friday night and Brooklyn Pizza is packed.
Inside, behind the counter, two white-aproned guys and a woman with flour-dusted faces are tossing dough, smearing sauce and dealing pepperoni as fast as they can to keep up with incoming orders. Some of those pizzas are about to be delivered by 21-year-old Fred Bohnen in Brooklyn Pizza’s newly purchased Smart car. Acquiring the car was a weighty financial decision for Vaccaro. As were other environmentally conscious changes.
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Downtown Tucsonan
April 2008
By Mae Lee Sun
Some people have an ear for music. Others, like Kim Fox, have an ear for corn. And kale. And tomatoes. As a small-scale urban farmer/food activist, she says it’s a skill that everyone possesses; you don’t have to be a green thumbed Mozart to create luscious and flavorful organic food right in your own backyard while also providing yourself and your neighbors with what she sees as long-term food security.
Read more…link goes to Downtown Tucsonan
Downtown Tucsonan
Published April 2008
by Mae Lee Sun
Gone are the days of conjuring up the image of the environmentalist as a tie dye and Birkenstock-wearing activist.
Green is now the new ‘blue’ when it comes to getting down to business and it involves people from both the public and private sector, students from Eller College of Business at the UA, local architects, builders, graphic designers and I.T. professionals.
Read more…page will link to the Downtown Tucsonan
Downtown Tucsonan
April 2008
by Mae Lee Sun
“Bicas is synonymous with sustainability and social justice,” says McKinley. “Reusing bicycle parts is ecologically and economically critical for the populations we serve whose main issue is affordable transportation and often only rely on a bike. We find it important to make those resources affordable in a hands-on sort of way.”
Read more (link goes to another website-Downtown Tucsonan)
Tucson Weekly
July 12, 2007
by Mae Lee Sun
Part-time Tucsonan John Brady has made a habit out of trekking on foot up steep mountainsides and bouncing around SUVs on rugged dirt roads in the Himalayas, battling harsh conditions and struggling with language along the way.
He does all of this while searching for sacred Buddhist books called pechas. In Ladakh, the northeast region of India bordering Tibet, he’s found some. They’re at Lamayuru, a spectacular Buddhist monastery built in the 10th century at an altitude of 12,000 feet.
The great mahasiddha (mystic) Naropa is said to have meditated here, possibly reading or writing the Kangyur, as some of these pechas are called, which contain the actual words of the Buddha; or perhaps the Tengyur, those pechas that possess commentaries.
Read more…(link will go to the Tucson Weekly)
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