A New Endowment Established at Columbia Basin College Celebrating Earth Day 2021

Earth Day this year is April 22

 

To achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and avoid catastrophic climate change we need to act with far greater urgency than we have to date. We must undertake climate change mitigation efforts now, not in the future, now, that are up to the monumental problems we face -- a rapidly warming climate, rising sea levels, more extreme hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods, mega droughts, and species extinctions that might one day include our own. On one front we see hope -- mayors of the world’s leading cities have emerged as strong and inspiring champions of the kind of ambitious climate action the world needs.

Richard Rogers, the multi-award winning architect, has talked frequently about sustainability and climate change, the growth and density of cities, and the architect’s role as problem-solver. He's said that, “The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved.”

It’s in this spirit that I recently endowed a scholarship at Columbia Basin College (CBC). Titled the “Badalamente Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES) Scholarship,” it recognizes the crucial role community colleges play in serving the higher education needs of an increasingly diverse student population, and the role CBC in particular can play in contributing to an increasing number of students studying and ultimately working in climate change and related fields, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. Student applicants must demonstrate an interest in topics surrounding climate change, with the expectation that they will go on to complete a 4-year degree, and perhaps graduate work in climate science.

I have established the initial endowment for the BEES Scholarship with a $25,000 donation. Investment earnings from the fund and additional donations will be used to award scholarships to students pursuing environmental education at CBC. The more funds that can be raised, the more scholarships that can be awarded.

If you’re interested in donating to the BEES Scholarship, go to the CBC Network for Good donate page, specify the amount, and frequency of donation, then pull down the “Please select” drop-down menu and select “CBC BEES Scholarship.” Alternately, call (509-833-5647) or email (efishburn@columbiabasin.edu) Erin Fisburn at the CBC Foundation and tell her you’re interested in BEES.

Columbia Basin College, Tri-Cities, Washington

An Orphanage in Brooklyn

Brooklyn Orphan Asylum

 

My wife's father, Bernard Joseph O'Brien, was a "half orphan." At age 7 his mother, Margaret, was forced to place Bernard and his older brother, John, in the "Brooklyn Orphan Asylum." Bernard's father had died suddenly, and his mother was unable to care for her three girls and two boys, so the boys went into the orphanage. It was an imposing brick and stone structure in the "Modern English Gothic" style that looked like a kid's nightmare vision of an "asylum."

Brooklyn Orphan Asylum sat on Atlantic Avenue, between St. Andrew’s Place and Kingston Avenue in what is now Bedford Stuyvesant. Brooklyn had a lot of orphans and half-orphans in the 19th century, the result of immigration, poverty, disease, and misfortune. Half-orphans had at least one parent, like Bernard, but that parent was unable to care for the child. Bernard and John entered the orphanage in 1902 and spent the next seven years there. They left as teenagers and rejoined their mother and sisters, went to work, and helped support the family.