Central Kentucky house party addresses ways to live sustainably.

This past Sunday Tina and Kelly Kilgore hosted a house party for KFTC on their farm near Raven Run. There was really great turnout and most folks who came were not familiar with our work which meant lots and lots of awesome conversations.

The party's theme was about living more sustainably and transitioning away from our dependence on coal. After a delicious bbq potluck, folks gathered in their living room to watch Deep Down - a film about a community in Eastern Kentucky struggling with coal companies pressuring them to lease their land and dangerously hauling coal on tiny roads that cut right through the community.

The film led to really interesting discussion about what can be done to create opportunities for employment in eastern Kentucky besides working in the coal mines, and what people who live in central Kentucky can do to support a positive transition towards a greener and more sustainable economy. We talked about some simple things that KFTC members do like visiting their representatives in Frankfort and pressuring them to support new power policies.

One of the folks at the party, professor Richard Levine, is an architecture professor at UK and director of the Center for Sustainable Cities. He lives in a unique passive (meaning the design uses the sun's natural light and warmth) and active (which means mechanical devices capture and store it) solar home, which he designed and built during the 1980s and just so happens to be right next door to the Kilgores. He took a group of us over to his place to check it out and to learn about another way that folks can influence energy policies.

 Professor Levine explained how solar energy is captured and used in his home and how inexpensive it can be to live sustainably. "There are a lot of things that you can do to make your house more sustainable which make a big difference before going out and purchasing solar panels - that's actually the last thing you want to do," he explained. Inside his home he has a greenhouse, composting toilets and CFL bulbs. It was was really exciting to see this level of innovation right in our backyard.

Overall it was a great event where people learned a lot, where there was an appropriate amount of push and pull and where folks had a genuinely good time.