Asked to define sustainability, the activist, career counselor, workshop leader, and author on the subject Melissa Everett initially demurred. "It's a pretty big ball of wax," she admitted. Later she came back with as definitive an answer as she saw was possible: "Sustainable living is not one-size-fits-all. It's about living richly within our means in personal and environmental terms through ingenuity, cooperation, and taking a fresh look at what matters."

As the director of the new Sustainable Living Resource Center (SLRC) in Cottekill, which opened its doors to the public for the first time at its opening celebration on July 1, Everett considers sustainability to be both a communal and an individual concept. Naturally, she said, depending on where you live, a sustainable lifestyle "means different things to different people." For common ground, Everett tends to turn to the teachings of longtime sustainability educators and practitioners Dana and Dennis Meadows, who "suggest that [sustainability is] about 'meeting our material needs materially and our non-material needs non-materially,' such as our needs for the recognition of others, for stimulation, for expression," she explained.

The SLRC is a longtime project of the organization Sustainable Hudson Valley (SHV), of which Everett is a member. It is also the brainchild of Manna Jo Greene, a well-known environmental activist who makes her home in Cottekill and is the environmental director of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. "If someone comes to the building to learn about 'green building' or renewable energy, they'll discover information on their own local CSA or permaculture or sustainable building practices," says Greene. The multipurpose building includes space for meetings, workshops and seminars, as well as a sustainability resource library of books, videotapes, journals, displays, and databases on topics including sustainable buildings, agriculture, economics, health and healing, Internet access, and sample building materials for reference by building professionals and consumers.

SLRC was constructed largely out of the desire to "show what the average person can do with the average paycheck" in terms of sustainability, Everett said. "That's something that both SHV and Manna Jo Greene [founder of SHV] have been interested in for a long time."

Greene donated part of her land for the building of the SLRC. When her daughter died of AIDS about 10 years ago, Greene told the approximately 50 people who gathered at the SLRC's opening, she vowed to create a legacy in her honor. The SLRC has been built on the location of the cottage in which Greene's daughter lived. "For me it has also been a grieving process, a letting go," Greene announced while addressing the opening's crowd.

The SLRC building features a 30' hexagonal-shaped space with a cathedral ceiling which can accommodate up to 50 people. At the center's opening, the space remained cool and comfortable despite the humid weather, as well as light-filled even as the sun set-a testament to the soundness of the sustainable building principles on which it was created.

With a foundation made from salvaged concrete blocks, the building was framed using sustainably-harvested, local rough-cut lumber and super-insulated with cellulose fiber made of recycled newspaper. It is heated by a small propane instantaneous water heater via an energy-efficient radiant floor and passive solar gain. Throughout the building are double- and triple-paned low E windows and skylights for maximum natural lighting. A charmingly framed "truth window," featured in the center's foyer, reveals the building's double-studded and strapped framing that holds 8" of uninterrupted, densely packed insulation (which increases to 12" in ceiling). The center also features a radon ventilation system; a rainwater collection system is being installed.