Update: Giant Trucks

After posting yesterday, I thought I might as well copy the State Police on some of it in email form & send it on to them (seemed to be better than just complaining). 18 hours later, this is the reply I received:

Good Morning:

My name is Captain Wicks, I am employed by the Mass State Police and I command the Traffic Programs Section. Mr. Chipman was kind enough to forward your concerns to me about truck traffic on Rte-290. I wish to thank you for this advisory and to tell you what I have done about this serious issue. I have contact the Troop C enforcement team, known as the CAT Team and asked them to conduct speed enforcement on Rte-290 west, between Berlin and Shrewsbury, focusing on speeding trucks and those displaying aggressive driving behavior.

Again thank you for contacting us with this important issue and please feel free to contact me if you do not see improvement.

Seems as though I've done what I can do. It's better than sitting on my couch & complaining. Let's hope that a) this actually happens and b) it's effective. If nothing else, maybe the state will make a little money (not off of me, though).

I love the internet.

Giant Trucks

We've all heard how the truckers are having trouble affording the gas to put in their trucks (which comes directly out of their paychecks, I believe). After taking a ride on I-290 from Berlin, MA to Worcester, MA and back, I've suddenly noticed a really scary indication that this situation is getting really bad.

While going UP the rolling hills on my route the majority of the trucks slow way down - to about 45 or 50 MPH (in a 65 MPH zone). Which is fine, really, except that as soon as they crest the hill, it appears they may shift the trucks into neutral and coast down the other side of the hill, and they keep gathering speed until gravity slows them down when the go up the next hill - from what I saw, they were getting up to about 80 MPH or so, perhaps more (there were no passenger vehicles going fast enough to pass them) at the bottom of each hill. In theory, this is fine. Except that there are other people using the roads - and the smart people worried about fuel economy/speeding tickets using cruise control. So you keep passing and getting passed by the same truck. Throw into the mix the slowing of cars getting off the highway at exit ramps, and people merging onto the highways. Or the odd person going 55 MPH or so. And suddenly on the down hills you have these giant out of control trucks (weaving in and out of traffic). I saw one guy doing this using all 3 travel lanes (trucks are prohibited from left lanes around here), narrowly missing other vehicles on the road, tailgating, etc. Literally weaving in and out of traffic like some punk kid in a lowered civic - only these are 18-wheelers with full loads.

This wasn't one or two trucks. These were MOST of the trucks, with the exception of one or two normal driving guys (one of which was UPS - maybe any "fuel surcharges" we are paying are keeping the UPS trucks from endangering other people).

I was reading in the paper yesterday that some big trucking companies are holding classes for drivers on how to maximize fuel economy (they're starting this NOW?) and are installing governors on the transmissions to keep the trucks from speeding (which decreased fuel economy). Seems like a good idea, based on what I saw today. Scary.

Funny... I kept hoping for one of the many state police vehicles to pull these guys over. Did they? Of course not...

What If They Are Right?

Ran across a great article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times yesterday (thanks to the re-localization email list). The whole thing is worth a read, even if you have to register (for free) to read it.

In the article, Pollan discusses why he finds the little things he does to reduce his carbon footprint important, despite these personal changes of habit/sacrifice being only one drop in a very large bucket. He also touches on the whole confusion about the carbon footprint - for instance - is growing a greenhouse tomato in New England (with head & fertilizer) any less energy intensive than importing an organically grown tomato from California? (From what I remember, there is no easy answer).

Naturally, one of the main thrusts of the article is about planting gardens - be them container gardens in the window sill to tilling up your lawn or buying a multi-acre farm. He brings up Wendell Berry, which is someone I have just recently discovered and am completely fascinated with, although I have yet to track down certain works of his (mainly because I am still trying to find time to finish Heinrich's "Mind of the Raven").

It was a good read, and I don't want to give it away. Go read it yourself.

Which brings me to my second thought - doom & gloom. It's easy to shrug and say "we'll come up with something" and "it'll never get THAT bad" when talking to believers of peak oil and those preparing for a post-carbon society. But it COULD be that bad - most people would just prefer not to think about it because it's too big to wrap their minds around. It's hard to accept what the climate scientists are telling us because no one knows what to do, what they can do, when things suddenly get very, very bad. It's very much like burying your head in the sand. And as far as "we'll come up with something" is concerned: well, biofuels were a great idea. Even I was on board at first. But then we stopped growing edible food and converted productive land into growing GMO-corn for ethanol production, and that has helped push world food prices higher while simultaneously not doing a damn thing to lower the cost of fuel. (I will however, say that at least we got the MTBE out of gasoline by replacing it with ethanol, which is at least not contaminating the drinking water as easily).

So... what if they doomsayers ARE right? What if? What if? I once read Into the Forest by Jean Hegland. The basic premise was that the oil and fuel dried up, and society (as we know it) collapses, and follows these two sisters living in the northern California woods 30 miles from the closest town. It was a good story, and I remember much of the book (a miracle for me - after several minor head injuries in the past, I swear my memory is not quite right). Kind of puts the whole "what if" scenario into perspective. Gardening, or the ability to know the wild, edible plants (hunter-gatherer style) is key to the two sisters' survival in the novel.

It's very hard to think about life in a post-carbon society without quickly coming to the conclusion that you just might, finally, be loosing your mind.

So... lets just say for a second that our energy supply becomes intermittent. We have power for a few days, then its out for a week. We have power for a few hours and then it goes out for a few hours. Let's say it's summer. Then let's think about all of the insulin-dependent diabetics out there - including two of my close family members. That insulin requires cool storage. I can live without a refridgerator easily enough. But my father cannot. What about the people who require dialysis, or a respirator, or any other sort of medical device that requires electricity to run and can't survive power interruptions? I know, I know, this is America. But think about it - much of the rest of the world is already living like this. At some point, this could easily happen as the oil dries up. As the countries that have it stop selling it to us and keeping it for themselves.

There are thousands of somewhat plausible (plausibility varies depending on what you know or who you talk to) scenarios you can mentally run through in order to keep you up at night. Thousands.

So I garden. This is my approach. I garden because I can, and because I find it fun to put these little itty-bitty seeds into soil, apply varying amounts of water, light & heat, and see what happens. It's one thing that I can do, that I know I can do, in the face of uncertainty. Not to mention that it saves gas (not driving to the store to buy veggies that have been imported from somewhere else), thus saving money. And I have control over what goes into my food. And who knows - with the climate changing, our growing season just might be getting longer. Might as well use it to my advantage.

Not My Imagination

It wasn't all in my head - we are dryer than normal. According to this Boston Globe article, we are running a little dryer than usual, with very low humidity levels. Of course, because of this, we're starting to have brush fires.

We went for a walk with the dog in the woods yesterday, and couldn't get over the feeling that it was a warm fall day, and bitter cold was coming soon.

I'm glad I've ordered a second rain barrel this year. Looks like it'll come in handy.

Yet more sun.

Ahhhh so. It's now April 19, 2008, and the forecast for today is 74 and sunny. Yesterday it was 80 and sunny. Day before that it was 75 and sunny. Day before THAT it was about 70 and sunny. It's been sunny & dry since the beginning of last week. Which is fine. It's GREAT. BUT (there's always a "but") - I'm a little worried that its too dry. I shouldn't have to be watering seedlings outside this time of year. The garden, instead of being a mushy boggy mess as it usually is this time of year, is actually, well, perfect. Which is wrong. I'm starting to worry about drought. And it's APRIL. We had a ton of snow, and then a ton of rain, and a huge melt. The rivers are still high/normal for this time of year. But still, in the back of my mind, I'm wondering if its a tad too dry & I'm concerned about this weather pattern holding (overall).

It's funny. We had a long warm/hot fall. Then winter came on very suddenly & intensely. And then it started to get warm around the end of February, and I started telling people that "this is it, winter is done." No one believed me. But it makes a little bit of sense, if this is a climate shift. I know, I know - one weird season does not indicate climate shift, much like how one warm year doesn't make global warming. I'm not saying it does. But I am wondering if the warm long falls and springs might become the new "norm" - and if so, is that SO bad, as long as we still get a few months of hard cold & a snowpack? We had record snows last winter, despite the late onset & early retreat of winter. It was plenty cold, and the plants that needed to go dormant, did.

I remember that 10 years ago, it wasn't that unusual to get a major snowstorm (measured in feet, not inches) in late April. I simply don't see that happening now.

My allergies are awful. Absolutely awful. I'm trying to not take anything (medicine) for any reason, and it's getting hard when I can't breathe so well and have headaches for days on end. A little rain might help that - the air is so DRY.

We picked up the Local group's potato order yesterday up in Maine. The potato warehouse was dark (not all dark, but definitely hard to see when coming in from daylight). It was about 55 degrees and humid. And suddenly I could breathe. It was great.

So these are the potato varieties that I'll be growing this year: All Blue & Butte. For the record, seed potatoes appear to be the small potatoes that were too small to be eating. I'm assuming they were treated with some sort of innoculant to have not sprouted by now. So now I have to try and get them to sprout. Judging from the issues I've had with store bought potatoes this spring, it should be fairly easy. We'll see. For now, they just look like potatoes.

200 pounds of potatoes was not all that impressive. I was expecting a giant civic-trunk FULL of potatoes...but no. Not even close. It was a little disappointing, really. Hopefully next year I'll have my own seed potatoes and we wont have to order many at all.

I might start planting other vegetables early this year. It seems to be warming up pretty early - theres no frost expected in the forecast for the next week - highs in the mid-60s and low-to-mid 70s. Lows in the 40s. The sun, I think, is plenty strong enough & the photo period is long enough. If I plant the seeds & then cover them to protect them, we might be OK.

BPA

An article in the Boston Globe today revealed that a US Agency has FINALLY come to the conclusion the bisphenol-A (BPA) - a chemical commonly found in polycarbonate plastics - and closely mimics estrogen. Why should we care? There is some evidence that it may produce early puberty in girls, and fetus and baby exposure to BPA may cause prostrate or breast cancer later on in life. BPA is used as antioxidants in food and cosmetics. It also may be linked to obesity and schizophrenia.

According to the article, BPA levels in adults aren't thought to be anything to worry about. I wonder whether that applies to woman who are pregnant or may become pregnant...

How best to avoid BPA, if you believe the research? Don't eat canned food - BPA is in the plastic that lines the cans. It's in PET plastics (soda & water bottles) - don't put hot liquids, acidic or basic substances in PET bottles; it's in PVC; and it's in some dental sealants.

Coca-cola products have a pH range of 2.5 -4.2. Coke classic has a pH pf 2.5... so if BPA is released from the PET when it comes in contact with an acidic liquid - guess what is in your soda? This is the point where I am very happy I don't drink soda. Or bottled water (I carry my own stainless steel canteen around).

The CDC has said that in a study of samples from adults in developed country, 95% of the samples contained measurable BPA. 95% of us are walking around with BPA in our systems. Not too surprising, but how many of those samples were from pregnant or nursing women?

How is infant formula sold? in a can... how to get that formula into the baby? a bottle...


The BPA issue isn't new. This is just the first time a US government agency has accepted that it may be unsafe. And then there was my surprise at finding the article in the Boston Globe, which - lets be honest - isn't the greatest of all newspapers. I think they are owned by the New York Times now. It's hard to respect a publication with such poor grammatical editing. But the dumbing down of America (if there is such a thing) is another topic for another time.


Post Script: I've just read in "Chews Wise" that Canada is supposed to BAN BPA this week. Yet another reason I wish I really HAD moved to Canada back when Bush was elected the first time around.

Doing a happy Sun Dance

It's sunny out. Yesterday was sunny. It's supposed to be sunny until maybe Monday. This is making me incredibly happy.

I ran across something interesting today in an email from the re-localization group: Blackle. It's a search engine. A google-powered search engine, only the background is black, which saves monitor/display energy. They have a little counter under the search bar that tallies the "watt hours saved". My only question is this: if it's just google, only with a black background, then why doesn't google go black? I believe I have a partial answer: 1) people would freak out if they went to google and it was suddenly looking very different, which might hurt google's business; and 2) the people with eye strain issues might really have a problem with it. It doesn't really bother my eyes until AFTER I follow a link, when suddenly the background is white again. But then again, I've been in the darkroom all day, which tends to give me headaches and cause eye strain anyway. The letters are nice and soft, though - not hard-edged, which seems to be a bit easier. I'm sure the letters are gray, not white, which helps a bit as well.

564,529.087 watt hours saved. what IS a watt hour? A Watt hour (Wh) is a unit of energy equivalent to one watt of power expended for one hour of time. Apparently, that's 3600 Joules (J) of energy. [A joule is one watt second (Ws). 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and POOF suddenly you're up to 3600 Ws or Joules or a Wh. Go figure.] A kilowatt hour (kWh) is 1000 J per second expended over an hour, or 3,600,000 J. So... a kWh is a 1000 Wh... all pretty simple.

so thats an energy savings of 564 kWh... the new boiler/powerplant system I'm looking into for the house generates 1.2 kW (not per hour, or per anything...). According to my latest utility bill, I pay about $0.10 per kWh - not including all the fees & add ons. And I use under 500 kWh per month (good to know, since I'm looking to Freewatt). Please note that I have spared you all the mental gymnastics that I went through yesterday in calculating how much propane we might use if we had a 95% efficient liquid propane boiler versus how much oil we use in our 83% efficient oil boiler. But here's the outcome: the oil boiler lost. Duh.

So basically, Blackle has offset my energy usage for the month since it went on line during that one-hour of no electricity thing a few weeks ago. Somehow, I am under impressed. Maybe they just need better exposure.

So I went to Blackle looking for a button to add to my tool bar. No button. I went to the support section of my browser to try and add Blackle as a search engine. No support. I went to the "about Blackle" section of the search page... and they suggested I reset my homepage to Blackle. For some reason, this really made me mad. I LIKE my home page, and I'm not going to reset it to Blackle.

So Blackle, at this point, seems like a good idea gone horribly under exposed, under promoted and under supported.

Pawtucket Red Sox

I went to the PawSox game today. It was a 12:05 start, and it was sunny & 63 down in Pawtucket. Beautiful. A friend & I sat on the grassy, basked in the sun, and watched the game. Completely relaxing.

Reasons why I prefer minor league games: it seems more baseball-ish. There are more kids. Tickets are $10 or less. You get closer to field & its more intimate. You can see everything & hear the players talking (I swear the outfielders from the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs were throwing grass at each other). You could have a picnic and watch the game. It reminds me of a game I saw in Cooperstown once - real baseball, the way it's supposed to be.

These guys aren't making ridiculous amounts of money, and it's nice to know that. They're on the road all the time, and I bet life is miserable for them at times, and yet they keep playing year after year.

Fenway is great. But you can't GET tickets. You can't enjoy the game because you can't see it, there are loud obnoxious people all around & they are all drunk. It's dirty, it smells bad, and its so loud it gives me a headache. The energy is different, thats true, and the big stars are there. But 'd rather watch the big games on TV at home.

I want to watch Bull Durham now. It struck me how easy it would be for someone to slip their phone number to a player (not that I ever would, but the availability of it is noticeable). How if I were to yell something mean, not only would the players have heard me, but so would the whole stadium, and I would be embarrassed. It's nice. In fact, one of the things you can be ejected for at McCoy Stadium is "Roudyism" - I didn't know that was a word, but they'll throw you out for it. Makes me happy.

Amtrak

I didn't post yesterday - I spent HOURS on Amtrak & Canada's VIA websites, trying to plan a trip. Hours. Lost about half of my day, really. I forgot to eat, even.

First off, for those of you who complain about Amtrak's website being difficult to use, you've obviously never tried to navigate VIAs website. Amtrak was a no-brainer in comparison.

To take a trip from coast to coast on Amtrak will take 3 full days one-way. We're planning a holiday trip next fall, as my sister-in-law will be back in the states briefly. We usually fly, but I have so turned off by the whole flying/airport experience, that the idea of traveling on a train for 3 days is actually appealing, if it means that I can avoid the airport, parking, traffic & delays. If we pack just right, we'll require no luggage, although there is a checked-luggage service (I'm not yet sure exactly what that means - whether they'll handle the transfers for you or not). There's an outside chance we might bring some snowboards, but its not likely.

I once took an around-the-country (kind of) trip on Amtrak when I was about 10. We went from Boston to SW Kentucky, up to Michigan and back to Boston. I thought it was great, but then again, I was 10.

The appeal of this trip is this: if I can convince someone (my neighbor, my mother, a friend) to drop us off at the local commuter rail, which is about 10 miles away, we can get door-to-door from our house to Tacoma with about 20 miles of car driving, which is really kind of cool when you consider it. To get to the airport, we have to drive an hour & on the other end of our trip, we have to drive 40 minutes from the airport to my in-laws. There is the hassle of getting to the airport, getting home from the airport, and the $80 or so for parking at the airport (IF you can find a spot) or the same amount for a shared-van service, which may or may not make you miss your flight. Then there is the traffic. The security lines. And the fear of falling out of the sky.

Which brings me to the gas mileage issue. Somewhere on their website - I can't find it now, of course- was a little table comparing the carbon emissions of train travel to the carbon emissions of air travel for traveling between a few cities. Apparently, the carbon emissions for rail travel were approximately half of what they are for air travel. There is no comparison to motor vehicle usage - which is even worse than air travel.

It'll be interesting. We've flown this route many times. Each time it's miserable in its own little way. We've driven cross country, although not directly from Boston to Tacoma, which always has its own set of stresses (and frequently involves dogs, which is fine, except when booking hotel rooms). My only concern is that there is no wireless service on the train. Which seems odd - if they could get wireless service, then my spouse could work during those 3 days of travel, cutting down on his vacation days required for the trip. He get's 6 weeks and can never use it all, so it's not THAT big of a deal. But still.

Amtrak vs. VIA: Amtrak made it relatively easy to plan trips as compared to VIA. The original thought was to take Amtrak out, and then take the train back through the Canadian Rockies on the way home. However, it looks to be roughly double to triple the cost for taking VIA back. And there was a bit of an issue getting from Toronto or Montreal back to Boston. All the maps SHOW routes going this way, but it's difficult to book, and the train schedules were off just enough to necessitate staying overnight not only in Toronto or Montreal, but also in Albany, which would turn the return trip into a 6-day trip, and much more expensive. Not really worth it, all things considered. So we'll take Amtrak both ways.

Cost: The cheapest flight I found on Orbitz for 2 people involved one layover, and a 6am departure from Boston (which means we'd have to either get up at 3 am, or stay over at the airport hotel - which adds $100), and the round trip tickets (alone) for two ended up being $100 less than the round trip tickets for 2 on Amtrak, including a roomette on the 2-day leg from Chicago to Seattle.

If we had decided we didn't want a roomette, it would have been several hundred dollars cheaper. But alas, I like to stretch out. The roomette also includes all meals (for the leg we order the roomette for), a picture window, 2 reclining seats (that turn into a bed), a bed that folds down from the wall, electrical outlets, climate control, a fold-down table, a small closet, bed linens & fresh towels, soap & shower anemities, bottled water, coffee, newspaper, and they'll make the bed at night, and fold it away during the day. No bathroom/shower in the room, though - those are shared facilities within the same car. We could upgrade to a proper bedroom, but that adds an additonal $250 each way, I think. Might be worth it though. A bedroom has all the stuff above, with the addition of a sink, a toilet & a shower, and an arm chair and a sofa. AND it holds 2 suitcases, not just 2 totes. But with a total additional cost of $250, it's probably not worth it. Maybe if I had small kids and didn't want to take them to the bathroom in the middle of the night - and if we had a baby, then diaper changes would be easier. Interestingly, there is a shared bathroom on the top floor of the superliner car, and a shower & changing area on the bottom of the car (with a baby changing area), as well as a luggage storage area. So I guess if you had a roomette, your luggage could go in there, although it's a shared area, and thats a little creepy.

So basically, as long as we don't mind adding 6 days to our trip, it looks like rail travel might fit our lifestyle better. I mentioned this to a friend, who replied I must be nuts. But then again, she's not fond of the outdoors, or any little inconvenience really, and has lived a very comfortable life (only child). Since we've car-camped our way across the country with 2 dogs, rail travel seems like a step up. No tent. No cold. They feed us, even if its bad food. No rain. Takes half the time compared to motor vehicle travel. No traffic. And we can BOTH nap when we want to - no one is driving.

You know it's spring when...

I spent all day in the yard. Or someones yard, anyway - some of it mine, some of it was someone else's. We clipped & dug up black raspberries from a woman in town who didn't want hers anymore. We took about 20 plants. We've planted 10 or so. They were just going to get composted, and now I have to either find room for the remainder that I took, or give them away.

We built a terrace for one set of the plants (4 or so) in the side of the septic system hill. When we dug the plants up, it didn't appear that the roots ran very deep or spread much via roots, so I think it'll be OK. We also planted a set between the yard and the street in an area of the yard that didn't get used but should be perfect for black raspberries. There were already some scraggly wild-sown raspberries growing there anyway. With the compost I added during planting, hopefully these guys will do better. Thus completes step one of my evil perennial fruit garden plan. Step two: find some blueberry bushes. I'm trying to remember whether I ordered some from the annual spring plant sale at the local soil conservation service - I have the paper work on my desk, but its all the way across the room and I am tired. Not used to this kind of work.

We also built an 8' x 4' raised bed in front of the garden. It's about 20" tall. I've put down a layer of newspaper to keep the grass out, and have overlain most of it with one-quarter inch "hardware cloth" - I'll finish the job once I get some more of the wire mesh. This should do a sufficient job of keeping voles out from the bed. Tomorrow or Monday I'll add some 1" PVC pipe sections to the inside of the frame, so that I can insert 1/2" PVC to create a hoop-like enclosure for netting support over the bed.

It was a busy day. It didn't rain much and in the afternoon the sun even came out a little bit. I got a mild sunburn. Amazing how little melatonin I have in my skin this time of year.

It's beyond official - spring is here. I spent all day out in the yard, and it was great.

Oh, and the broccoli seedlings have started to sprout. Wahoo! I'm resisting the urge to stand there & chant "go, go, go."

Weekend, baby!

And what have we planned for the big exciting weekend?

uh.... we'll be digging up some free blackberry and catnip plants from a "neighbor" (using the term loosely - aka 'someone in the same town') who has too many - this person is also a member of the relocalization group. We'll be doing this in the cold rain. Oh boy oh boy. and then we get to plant them here in the yard. In the rain.

I'd LIKE to go to a sugaring shack for some maple syrup. There's really no reason to do this - I can get perfectly good, locally produced maple syrup here (at the farm up the street), but for some reason I'd rather go and buy a giant vat of it directly from the producer. Their business keeps getting harder and harder. With global warming, the sugar maple trees will be inching northward (or the habitat will be - the trees wont actually we running away - but if they could, I bet they would). And with the spike in fuel costs, it's costing them much more to transport the sap from the trees to the sugaring shack and it's also costing them more to boil down the sap to syrup. If I think my woes with home heating are bad - these people are getting hit all over the place. And since I'd rather their farms keep on being nicely wooded maple syrup farms rather than McMansions, I'll go buy some syrup. But it's got to be Grade B syrup. It tastes better & I can use it in cooking.

We were going to combine the maple syrup trip with a hike up Mt. Monadnock, but honestly, I've gotten over the 'climb it because its there regardless of the weather' stage. We climbed Mt. Washington in some nasty weather a year and a half ago, and I've climber Monadnock in the snow. I want a nice, sunny day next time.

Which brings up the 3rd thing I need to do this weekend: buy new hiking boots. I've been putting it off for 2 years now. they leak. I've worn those boots for years, I've worn them to work on caves in Texas and cactus surveying in the Mojave. I've worn them to the sites I've worked on in New England. They been to Yosemite, to Olympic Nat'l park several times. Death Valley, Volcano NP, northern Mississippi, the California coast, Oregon... Everywhere I've visited or worked in the past 7 years or so. They are beat to hell and one day their leakiness will become some sort of an emergency. So new boots it is. I've been looking for months, and it's getting desperate. I need to break them in now so I can start training for a multi-day hike in mid-August (more on that later).

i heart pandora

I bought a new car recently - an SUV (I KNOW. tell me about it. I don't drive it much, but I still love it, despite the guilt and the stupidity of it. When we have kids next year, we don't want to have to leave the 2 80-lb dogs home, and we need AWD/4WD to get our asses out of the driveway in the winter. That, and our subaru - a 2005 Legacy Outback turned out to be a complete & giant piece of crap. So we bought a honda. At least its a ULEV, which the subi wasn't. And compared with the subi, the mileage is only slightly less.) Give me a little credit - the other car is civic that gets 36 mpg. And I DID quit work (more or less), so I'm not commuting, and my hubby drives only to the train station. Total combined mileage per week is about 100 miles for 2 adults. In suburbia.

Anyway... I bought an SUV. It comes with XM radio free for 3 months. Great and all - I can listen to any baseball game I want. We've had XM in the past, and took it out of all of our cars because we didn't listen to it. So I'm not sure I'll keep it. What I REALLY wish the car had come with was pandora. I had somehow forgetten all about Pandora, but was reaquainted with it about 5 minutes ago. Although I haven't visited in months, it remembered me. I know I've erased all my cookies & such since then. But it knew who I was, and had all my stations there. Creepy. But handy.

I also wish I could get pandora on my phone. Alas, technology is not as fancy as I'd like it to be.

Sigh...heating systems

I'm the first to admit I know very little about home heating systems. But it occurred to me today while reading crunchy chicken's "freeze yer buns wrap up" (which I completely missed, yet fully participated in by sheer frugality anyway) that with the money I spent on fuel oil this winter, I could have made a huge dent in paying for a new system thats more efficient & less scary.

What I currently have: a Well-McLain "gold" oil powered boiler from at least 1998 - currently rated at 83% efficient, which I doubt. My house has what is called "hydronic" heat - no separate hot water tank. What I would like to do is somehow incorporate a propane tankless hot water heater into this system, or just rip out the furnace, boiler & oil tank and convert to a propane boiler system.

Oh, oil heat, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways...

It's dirty, it's smelly, in my particular case it's unreliable, and it's recently very costly. I've spent a lot of time cleaning up sites contaminated with the very substance I have sitting in a 275-gallon tank in my basement. Seems wise, right, to let that stay? AND, my particular system has proved to be anything but reliable. I have anxiety attacks while on vacation over it - to the point where I don't really want to travel anymore (the system shut itself down once, in the winter, while I was gone, and the pipes froze in my bedroom, and burst... no major damage, but a giant PITA).

So if anyone knows of any good books regarding oil hydronic systems and how to incorporate a whole house instant hot water heater into the mix, by all means, comment away.

In the mean time, the hubby and I are headed to a geothermal heating and cooling seminar in preparation for the next house...

Community

I've just run across an interesting post on More Deliberate Everyday - a series of discussions on Wendell Berry, and references an interview from a book of interviews compiled by Professor Morris Allen Grubbs. Here's the excerpt that got me thinking:

"I mean the independence by which a person provides some of his own needs and which permits him to do what he sees to be right without the approval of a crowd. That's why Thomas Jefferson said you need to keep as many people as possible on the land. That's necessary for democracy. You need to keep people independent in the way that the ownership and care of a piece of land can make them.

If the ideals and aims of young people have lost energy, it's because they haven't the stability of a commitment to one place and one community. I think they're disposed to drift around until they find a suitable community. But no community is suitable. There's plenty wrong with them all. I could construct an airtight argument for not settling in my own community. The fact is that I'm spending my life constructing an argument for being here. [author's emphasis] "

There's a lot to think about in there. What resonated with me is the comment on drifting young people. I must be one of those people. Every time I visit a place, I become convinced that I want to move there. Every time I've been forced (thanks, military) to move somewhere against my will, I find out that it's usually a lot better than I had thought it would be.

Interestingly enough, when we went "home" (I have many places that I will at times refer to as home, which is an interesting concept in itself) to Kentucky for my Grandmothers funeral, I spent several weeks thinking about home. What makes a place home? It's where you learn skills, where you have memories of loved ones, where you know the smell of the changing weather, where the local dialect and idiosyncrasies are comfortable (even if simultaneously amusing). It's where you have a connection to.

The surprising part is that the fond memories that I have of rural western Kentucky are very similar to the memories that my husband has of rural Oahu. We had some long discussions about this, and came to the conclusion that it is the "rural" part of that statement which is so important. It was an "ah-hah" moment. We like rural places. We just didn't realize it.

During our discussions, we also realized that while we have these fond memories of rural life - summers with our grandparents - our children will not have that experience. Both of our parents live in suburbia (as do we, but we're more on the edge in a rural farming community that is currently changing). Both of our parents are the first generation to live where they live- my parents are about a thousand miles from where they grew up. My husband's parents are 2,600 miles from where they grew up. There is no depth of knowledge in these places, and I find it very sad. I'm sure that there are a great many families like ours with disjointed connections with place. It's hard to feel that need for community if your family has no history with a place. Our generation is the result of our parents drifting, and who, among my contemporaries, even thinks about community? I mentioned it to a friend the other day, and got a "what are you talking about" reaction - a complete blank stare followed by the unsettling feeling that she was questioning my mental stability.

The idea of community has been a common theme for me recently. Perhaps it has to do with the decision to have a child. Perhaps it's the re-localization group. Perhaps it's the passing of my grandmother and the drama that surrounded her funeral, or it could be what I am now referring to as "my wee-little cancer scare." At any rate, I've very suddenly realized how important community can be, and should be. I've considered going back to church (mainly for the yet to be conceived child) - I was raised a UU, so it's not quite as incongruous with my personality as you might think. I guess I'm finding that there is something that is missing, but instead of moving on to find it, I'm trying to built it where I am.


In More Deliberate Everyday, the author also posted another interview with Wendell Berry regarding old timers, and how they tell the same stories over and over again as a way to reaffirm their acquaintances from the past, and how the stories improve just a little bit with each telling. This is no small point - both my husband's & my grandparents were rural old timers in a farming community. No wonder we feel a connection with those rural places - we hung out with the old folks, and absorbed their connections, their stories. Which, in some cases, had grown to be preposterous.

So maybe we've ended up where we have not completely by accident, and maybe it shouldn't be so surprising that we're pretty happy here, despite my husbands long commute into the city everyday. Maybe I shouldn't be so shocked that we're actually considering staying here for a good long time. Have I just come to the conclusion that no place is fully suitable and the realization that I need to make do?


It occurs to me that I don't know who Wendell Berry is. Apparently, he's a Kentucky man, but from the north-central part of Kentucky, which might as well be a different planet from western Kentucky. He's a writer of various forms, but a common theme seems to deal with the connection on has to a place. He's also dealt with organic farming, and criticized industrial farming. An interesting guy, to say the least - go look at his wiki page for a better idea. I'm going to have to track down some of his work, I think.

End of March

This is it - the last day of March. Thank god. I'm hoping April turns out to be as "not like March" as possible.

It's 37 degrees Farenheit and raining - it was sleeting earlier, so we're making progress at least. I took Kiholo for a walk at the park, and about a half hour in she just turned and went back to the car. I'm not sure she's ever done that before, but she had had enough, apparently.

Here's a picture of the garden from today - I've played with the contrast & saturation a bit because everything is so washed out looking around here these days. The garden itself (within the fenced area) is a little small - I think it's about 144 square feet. You can see one raised planter near a chair and a birdfeeder - that's mainly for flowers, and was here when we moved in. There is another raised planter in front of the garden "proper" (the area enclosed by the falling down fence) - I've already planted half of that raised bed with lettuce & arugula. Last year I had beets & carrots in there & they did very well.


The wood pile in the background isn't mine - I wish it were, or, rather, I wish I had a need for a wood pile, but I don't. THE house will have a woodstove. We spent about $2000 on oil this winter, and I'd like to avoid that in the future.

I don't know if you can make it out, but in the middle of the garden "proper" there is a black tarp looking thing. Under that is a pile of leaves & compostable stuff. The black tarp is actually leftover landscape fabric, which lets water and air through, and absorbs the heat nicely. I know it wont fully decompose within the next few weeks, but some of it might, and I'll move the rest before I put the rest of the garden in.

The green stuff you can see in the garden is a mix of garlic & chive coming up, as well as winter rye that I planted last fall as a cover crop. That seems to have more or less worked - the areas with the winter rye thawed first, and there are already all sort of bugs crawling around in the soil in that area. The garden is also not as soggy as it has been in years past, but our thaw seems to have come early this year.

There is a similar situation going on to the left of the garden (as in the picture - just on the edge). I wish I had thought to put the landscape fabric on last fall. It's really pretty warm under both of these piles, so all might not be lost. We'll be putting a raised bed in on top of this pile later this spring, parallel to the garden fence.

We'll also be putting a raised bed in front of the garden, to the left of the gate. Larger than it's "twin" to the right of the gate.

Our neighbor has 2 goats, and we'll be getting their manure in a few weeks, and adding it throughout the summer as it becomes available. This should help the soil out a bit.

In the bottom right corner, you can just make out some snow. We still have a bit of snow in the shady part of our yard. Maybe it'll all melt this week.

Re-localization

So last fall, hubby & I joined a local "relocalization" group. Unfortunately, our tiny little anti-social town didn't have a group of interested people that we knew of, so we joined the neighboring town's group. From which I have learned a ridiculous amount of information regarding gardening & food production.

And you know what? I no longer have serious long bouts of escapism fantasies. I'm actually happy to be living HERE. To the point where we are considering buying land to build THE house for ever and ever after. Passive solar at the very least. As housing prices drop, shouldn't land prices too?

At any rate, it has just occurred to me that as I have gained interest in re-localizing, I have been feeling more and more guilty about my ridiculous commute. And so after this week, I will largely be done with the whole 45-mile each way commute. This is also a bid to cut myself off from the steady feed of toxic chemicals absorbed through my skin & respiratory system despite the best of OSHA intentions. Accidents happen. Daily. Thankfully the stuff I dealt with wasn't THAT toxic. But Still. Not worth the risk.

Had myself a little cancer scare this month. I'm not fully through investigating it, but so far all the radiology tests are looking very good and benign. Hooray! (Understatement). I still hope to talk my doctor into an MRI, just to be as safe as possible before I go and fully move on. For those of you not familiar, learn to spot the signs of IBC. Seriously.

This is after joining in the Super Tuesday fun of the worst tornado outbreak in 20 years while visiting TN for my grandmothers funeral. Proof: we were near beginning of the red line labelled "3-Muhlenburg" - after the wake we spent some quality time huddled under all the bed linens in the bathtub of our hotel room. This was about 1.5 hours after the wake, and about 12 hours before the funeral of my grandmother, at which we were pall bearers. It was a little overwhelming. There's nothing like watching the news in a hotel room as the weather guy is rolling of city and town names in a panic, and you have no idea where those places are in relation to you until you hear the tornado sirens going off outside.

So recent events have caused a drastic change in how I look at life & what I consider important, and when you combine that with the effort to re-localize, it looks like I'll be staying home for a while. I'll miss the social interaction, but I'll find some other outlet, I'm sure.

SPRING

Spring is here. Know how I know? I'm awake & functioning.

I found garlic & chives growing in the garden. The daffodils & crocus are coming up. My yard is half thawed... I can actually go outside to putter. I've stopped wearing long underwear all the time. The ice cream stand opens on Saturday.

Before I forget, I wanted to tell you about a website that helps you opt out of catalogs. It seems pretty neat. I'm sick of all the catalogs we get, and I feel like they are taking over the house because I feel guilty recycling them. They pile up, and pile up. I never buy anything from them. So I've opted out. Less waste. Less guilt.

Back to spring: I'm redesigning the garden this year. More raised beds, and I'm doing away with the current garden configuration of rows. I will now have a keyhole like path to access the garden, which is far more efficient use of space. I'll post pictures when I'm done. Gotta get stuff to grow first, otherwise it'll require way too much imagination on your part.

We're also doing more raised beds this year. I've bought more seeds than I curently have space for. I'd love to simply plow up portions of the lawn, but then I'd have to keep the dogs out. So raised beds it is. Easier to cover, easier to fence off, easier on the back. I've become curious about SPIN farming this year, even though I'm definately not in an urban environment. I'm on a "small" rural plot (one-acre being relatively small where I am). SPIN = Small Plot INtensive farming. I'm not sure I really buy into the whole 'for-profit' thing, but I am interested in maximizing the productivity of my garden. The problem I have with SPIN farming is that it sounds, at least at first glance, somewhat like a pyramid scheme. You "have" to buy the SPIN guides, and they aren't cheap (and they are selling the PDFs - not even actual paper).

So me, being the cheap bastard that I am, I'm just going to wing it and see what happens. I have the whole internet at my fingertips!

heh - look at that, it's almost March

I'm a deliquent. I know.

I ran across this article just now about how the Inuit village of Kivalina in Alaska is suing Exxon Mobil and 8 other oil/energy companies for contributing to the global warming that is causing their village to erode into the ocean (it used to be protected by sea ice, but the sea ice shows up later & leaves earlier every year). It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Apparently, there are federally generated documents (Army Corps of Engineers & the General Accounting Office) outlining the damage done to the village by global warming, so maybe it's not as much as long shot as you might initially believe.

It's a pretty interesting article, which I think everyone should read, but I am reluctant to repeat too much of it. The grounds for the lawsuit are pretty interesting - conspiracy to mislead the public about the causes and consequences of global warming and on the basis of public nuisance.

Wiki page about the village. Apparently the lawsuit was filed on Feb. 26 of this year.

Happy New Year

So it's New Years eve. I'm not out eating a fancy dinner, or at a bar, or even at Boston's First Night (my original plan up until this morning). I've found that as usual, I just simply want to say home.

There is something about New Years that brings peace to me. Perhaps it's the same feeling that some people get on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. But as we wind up one year, and look forward to the next, I find it to be a much deeper experience than writing a bunch of silly resolutions on a piece of paper (how many times have you written 'loose weight' or 'get in shape'? you people will hog the gym machines until March, until you forget about your resolutions).

It's time to look back over the past year and wonder what I wish I had done differently - and once those things are identified, I give myself permission for screwing up, and figure out how I could have handled the situation differently. I also think ahead to the coming year, and find a few important things to focus on - events I need to prepare for, changes I'd like to make (which sounds like resolutions, but aren't really - its not a "do it or else" kind of mentality), ways I'd like to grow. I think I do this same sort of analysis on my birthday, which conveniently makes it a bi-annual event.

New years is about light, and about peace - not world peace, as wonderful as that would be (on the other hand, what would drive our economy then? It would collapse, and the world peace would evaporate anyway) - but internal peace. My peace. Calmness. The absence of anxiety or worry. What has happened in the past year is past. What the future holds - who knows? It hasn't been made yet. But at this moment, this evening, I am at home. I have heat, plenty of food, and plenty of light. My family and friends are all safe and healthy. My husband and I are happy. We have warm clothes, a place to live. We all have more than we need.

New Years is also about rounding out the holiday season. In a way, it's the second coming of Christmas. One last holiday party. The final Hurrah until next year. The holiday lights are ablaze. Wishes of Happy New Year being tossed about. Final holiday gifts exchanged among friends. I can understand why people go out to party, but I have almost everything I need right here - and really, it's enough for me.

So Happy New Year. Hope you all have a happy, healthy & peaceful 2008.

Yay for shopping Local!

I know, I know... I'm behind. What else is new?

Hubby & I went holiday shopping today. We drove over to Maynard, MA to check out a new Jewelry store just opened by a friend of a friend called "Phoenix Rising". I picked up some fliers from the owner to distribute to some friends, family & neighbors to get the word out - it was a pretty cool store with some really reasonable prices. The owner makes her own jewelry, and it was beautiful. I purchased a really nice necklace for my mom which I really think she'll like (I'd describe it, but what if she reads this? It's unlikely, but you never know).

Here's their Open House flier - The open house was today & yesterday, but their logo is pretty cool, so I've included it. Linda was really friendly, and there were some great pieces in there...and I'm not a huge jewelry fan.

After that, we walked up the street to the Maynard Outdoor Store to purchase some more long underwear for me - I work outside, and it's now officially cold out (it's 17 degrees out as I write this - and our first winter storm is on it's way tomorrow night). I was actually pretty surprised by how much stuff they had and how reasonable their prices were.

Our last stop was Dunia. I hadn't been in there before, but I had seen their advertisements and they are a "Friend" of Harvard Local. I am SO glad I went in there. First of all, I liked just about everything that they had in the store (a rare thing - I'm pretty picky). I found a puzzle for my dad (of a Mandala - not sure he'll like it, but he goes through so many puzzles, he'll eat it like the rest of them and then donate it to the library, which I am OK with) that was made in Kula, HI - by my definitions, it's local, because I have a connection to that area. I'll admit my definition is a little skewed, but like it or lump it. I got a whole bunch of ideas for reusing all sorts of stuff that has lived out it's original life. I also found reclaimed cashmere yarn (not that I can use it, but maybe someday). Clothes, kids toys, home decorations, etc... but the best find was a "WrapSack" for my mom's holiday gift.

I know Steph is really going to like the WrapSack idea - it's just like "Where's George" only for these sacks that you give gifts in - and you don't have to use wasteful & expensive wrapping paper. I've logged in the wrap sack for my mom's gift and have started it on it's journey. I need to go back and get some more of these.

Dunia also had some furoshiki - same idea as WrapSacks, only not trackable, and more of a flat cloth than a sack (you can knot the corners of the cloth to make a sack, though, much like a bandana). I was interested in furoshiki years ago, and then completely forgot about them. But now that I have my very own sewing machine (that works), I hope to make my own - should be pretty easy, and the possibilities for personalization are endless.

Other than that, we're just gearing up for our first "big" winter storm... a lot of the ski areas around here are having a better-than-average early season, as far as I can tell, so I am really excited. I haven't been yet, but might go riding tomorrow night out at wa-wa.