GreenGranny

Small home designers vs. what older people really want.

I try to avoid using my blog for venting, but after reading yet another article on small energy efficient home designs and living small, I've got to give these designers a few things to think about.

Let me say to them and their ilk, I applaud your effort.  More ideas, more creativity, more experimentation in simple living is a good thing.    The development of new forms of energy efficient homes and modular living quarters can't progress quickly enough.  But my message to them is this:  Before you get carried away with ladders to loft bedrooms,  mattresses on the floor, all-white no-clutter decorating schemes, and not one comfortable chair in sight, let me tell you I'm giving instructions to my kids never to place me in such a home when I'm in my dotage. 

One look at such a place would inform them of all the tasks THEY would need to perform on a daily basis to keep me there.   Changing the bed linens aside, most of these new designs are about as appealing to an older person as a prison cell. 

Since this is my opening salvo for more articles to come, I'm only going to provide a few examples of what does or doesn't make sense when designing living spaces for seniors--or anyone for that matter.  In this regard, recreational vehicle manufacturers and retirement homes have come a lot closer to getting it right, when it comes to making a small home or apartment functional, comfortable and a pleasure to live in.   The challenge is to add in the very features the designers are working on--energy efficiency and a smaller ecological footprint for the dwelling.  Affordability will come later I suppose.

In working the other way around, energy features first, the liveability of the place becomes an after thought.  That's ok for right now, but I hope to see both ends meet in the middle soon.

Revelation: Older people want to enjoy life.  They want homes that allow them to continue to do their favorite things without being dependent upon others.  That could range from quilting to woodworking to gardening to hosting family dinner parties with grandkids underfoot, to cycling or sightseeing or dining out.  They want to preserve their lifestyle, not make a huge change in it.

If they are home-based  hobbiests or crafters, they will want a smaller home that can accommodate these activities.  If they are used to going elsewhere for recreation and social life, a smaller dwelling may be just the thing--but access to the community remains a challenge.

Older people want to be comfortable, and that may mean a favorite old chair or handy bed for stretching out one's achy back in the middle of the day.  They often need to stay warmer than younger folks.   They want their favorite objects with them,  like family photos or their grandmother's China teacups or the old cabinet their uncle built and gave them for a wedding gift.  Continuity of past and present  matters.  Unless an older person has already chosen a glass and steel designer home with modern furnishings as their ideal, don't expect them to find much appeal in it.     

Most activities that I find fun are messy, and since most of them are multi-day or even multi-week projects, the mess is going to remain out or only be partially contained at the end of the day.  Such uses of a home seem foreign to designers.  They often provide a skeletal version of a home office, and yes I do need that, but it is only one of several functions that need space.  That pedestal table with a lone laptop atop it won't  suit me for a working office, let alone for sewing or crafting.   It is just a way of "staging" the home, you may say.  I prefer to see how real life plays out,  inside one.

Spaces in small homes have to be able to multi-task, but a Murphy bed seems to be the only idea I've spotted in new designs, and that's at the bottom of my list of tradeoffs.  Clever ways to use space are still in short supply, outside of the RV industry.  

Now consider what I've observed in actual model green homes and home designs:

1.  It seems obligatory to put in a wheel-chair accessible bathroom and a "wet room" type of shower.  However, there are no grab bars or other conveniences that would make a bathroom work for the infirm elderly who handle bathroom functions on their own--as most older persons would do.  How do they keep the soap in reach and the towel dry until needed?   I don't want to use a bathroom that is cold, damp,  and slippery from a recent shower--or have to dry it all off before using the room for its other purposes.   In our 23-foot travel trailer, one of us can shower while the other one uses the other facilities.  

2.  Aside from the bathroom, nothing else in the designed homes I've seen is wheel-chair accessible.  In fact,  little else is accessible at all to anyone not tall and physically fit--whose body works like a college student's.  I'm not saying the entire dwelling should be wheel-chair accessible.  Rather, there should be accommodation first for the way people will spend the most years living there, and design should allow for inexpensive conversions as they become necessary.   Part wheel-chair accessible and the rest not is impractical for all ages and capabilities.

3.  Storage walls are very popular with some interior designers.  These consist of a wall of cabinets, all flush from floor to ceiling with no distinguishing features. When my husband and I moved from one house to another three years ago, it took months for the different storage arrangements to become ingrained and automatic.  Imagine the learning curve if everything were behind a wall of identical cupboard doors?  Besides, I don't want to look at a blank wall.  

Not that going entirely with dust-catching open shelves or glass doors are preferable.  It's just that a couple of open shelves, a few doors in a contrasting style or pattern or color, a spot to  hang a picture or display a plant, or an area of counter top as a staging area on which to set the objects being removed or replaced into storage would come in handy and provide visual clues to remembering what was where.   In my experience living in small spaces, storage walls are simply a poor option for storage, and worse yet for older people.

In our 23 foot travel trailer, there are small cupboards and nooks  handy to every activity.  Extra bedding is stored under the mattress, night wear and sweatshirts above the bed (but still in easy reach), items needed while in bed stored bedside, office supplies by the table, grooming gear in open mesh baskets attached to the bathroom wall or in the medicine chest or under the sink.  All logical, simple arrangements that designers shun but everyone needs.   Even  those of us who simplify our lives still end up with more than a toothbrush to store in or near the bathroom.

4.  Many of the new "green" homes being designed in competitions manage to heat space and water from renewable energy sources. Often a clothes washer is included in the energy consumption calculations of the home, but I've never seen a dryer.  No problem with that, but one must then design for another way to deal with wet clothing.  It amuses me that designers prefer to ignore the issue rather than design solutions for it. 

Outdoor clothes hanging doesn't always work.  Before the days of clothes dryers, people used porches, basements, and attics to hang clothing and linens to dry during inclement weather.  They put drying racks up in kitchens and bathrooms for small items.  And they thought twice before tossing a barely soiled item into the laundry hamper.  Water for laundry did not come from wells but from rainwater collected in cisterns. 

It doesn't seem genuine to me to design for functional living in a small efficient space unless one includes all the functions of a household.

Designers repeat the mantra "form follows function" when in fact they are the group most likely to ignore it.  Ordinary people have been creating habitats to fit their functional needs for millenia.   

Yet I believe professional designers do matter, if only to present to us an ideal we might like to achieve however impractical.  Translation into real life is left to others to figure out.   Many of us enjoy the fantasy of relaxing in a living room devoid of all save a lovely view and an interesting play of sunlight and shadow on walls and floors.  Something as mundane as a place to store the dog's food and water bowl, or a place by the entry for wet shoes or muddy boots is not what we look for when dreaming of a new home.  That is why we continue to look at all the latest plans that feed our fancy more than our needs.   

Let's get a little more harmony going between aesthetics and functional efficiencies, designing for energy and resource-efficient function of the interior spaces we need for enjoyment as well as for comfort and security.  And above all, if we seniors are a group targeted for placement in granny flats and pre-fabricated bedrooms set in a corner of our kids' backyard, then please heed my advice.  Ask us first.   

What to do with that giant veggie that grew unnoticed in your garden

An amusing thing about a backyard garden-- even if you check your plants every day to harvest what is ready, a sneaky veggie or two hides under leaves and grows large--even gigantic.   When you finally notice it and pick it, you set it on the kitchen counter wondering what to do with it.  Even the people who enjoy your gifts of surplus produce won't want it.

This season that happened several times with my two varieties of summer squash plants and my single cucumber plant.  I could have composted those giant vegetables, but that would be no challenge.

How to prepare something edible with them? 

The zucchini could be shredded and used in zucchini bread, so I set that giant aside for later.  The only trouble with my zucchini recipe is the calories in it, but one big Z per season I can deal with.  My intention is to pick all of them very small to use raw in salads or added to stir fry.

The cucumbers and yellow squash were another matter. Last week I found five oversized cukes the same day.  I guess I hadn't paid enough attention to that plant, and it was taking its revenge.  I was watching some smaller cucumbers develop in clear view, not realizing that underneath another section of the vine, major production was going on.

I managed to give away most of the large cucumbers, telling people that they might want to peel and seed them first.  One of the primary reasons to harvest some vegetables while small is to minimize the seeds and get a tender, edible skin.   Here are two dressings that work well with fresh home-grown cucumbers regardless of size before slicing:

Dressings for fresh cucumber salad.

1.  Sour cream stirred with chopped sweet onion and celery seeds (or create your own additions).  You may spritz the sliced cucumbers with wine vinegar or cider vinegar before adding the dressing.

2.  Lime yogurt.  Just spoon it over the slices,  right out of the carton. 

Nothing goes with a hot summer like cool, crisp cucumber salad. 

I like them sliced thin and layered on a sandwich in place of store-bought lettuce.  However, once cut, a cucumber doesn't last long in the refrigerator.  Better to slice it all and add a little vinegar if you want to refrigerate it for later use.

On to the challenge of the overgrown yellow summer squash. 

First, here's what I do with the small and medium sizes.  The little ones go into salads and stir fry as do the small zucchini.  The medium ones are hollowed out and filled with other ingredients, then baked with a cheese topping.  Once cool weather has come, the summer squash are sliced and baked into a casserole with more hearty vegetables and topped with cheese.   In all of these recipes, if there is any pithy seedy interior, that  is scraped out, but the skin is left on.

With a really large yellow summer squash, the skin is about like the strings in string beans.  I haven't arrived at the best way to remove that very thin outer layer, but partially cooking large sections, then peeling with a knife does work.  Then you can slice them further to the desired size.  Once the seeds and skin are removed, the flesh of a large squash is especially tasty and holds up well to all cooking methods without getting mushy.

While the olive oil, garlic, onion, oregano-saute is my favorite seasoning for summer squash,  I have experimented with others.   One that has promise uses a fruity base such as orange juice or the liquid from canned fruit like pineapple.  To that I add a little soy sauce and plenty of Five Spice.  The longer the cooked squash pieces soak in this brew, the better they taste.   Adding the zest of a citrus fruit is a great addition, but if I'm lazy I just add a big spoonful of orange marmelade.   

I'm thinking of trying this squash recipe with coarsely chopped bok choy or kale and a handful of red raspberries, and whatever else needs to be cooked up that day.  But that may have to wait until next summer and the next discovery of a giant yellow summer squash hidden under the leaves.

We have grown abundant thyme, basil, and sage this year and find almost anything tastes better with one or more of these herbs, if we can just remember to step outside to pick it.   The Head Cook (my husband) has started drying experiments in the garage.

Our little backyard garden, mostly of the no-dig style and including one raised bed, has provided us with a whole season of enjoyment that we never expected, given the rough start in the spring.  Next year we hope to add one or two dwarf fruit trees and expand the cultivated space to include a few cabbages, beets, carrots, and beans.   Even at that, our yard won't appear to contain a vegetable garden until one looks more closely at the plantings.  There will still be marigolds scattered among the food plants.

Next year's cucumber plant will get pruned so its production better matches our need!

Every time I give away a sack filled with cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, and broccoli, I am reminded of  how heavy it is and how much fuel consumption has been eliminated from its cultivation and transportation by being grown in my own back yard garden.   

What you can do with a handful of raspberries from your back yard garden

Back yard gardens often yield small quantities of produce that provide a challenge to traditional recipes and food preservation methods.  Such is the case with our backyard raspberry bushes. 

We planted a row of tiny raspberry bushes three years ago along the  back fence, and only a few of the red raspberry plants survived the first winter.   We carefully tended the few small plants hoping they would eventually thrive.  The second year we got a few berries, and this year the bushes filled in 12 linear feet along the fence and produced berry-laden boughs for months.  But even then, most daily pickings yield a handful of berries, for they are an everbearing variety that keeps on going until frost.

My husband had enough berries at the height of production to bake one cobbler.  And one cobbler per summer is probably one more than we should eat, though we did enjoy it.   

When we lived on a wooded acreage, wild black raspberry bushes filled every sunny glade and lined the driveway.  They would all ripen within a week, so I'd be out picking in the heat of summer wearing long pants sprayed for ticks, a heavy long-sleeved canvas shirt to protect against scratches from wading into the thorny thicket, and a prairie bonnet to keep the mosquitoes off my face and neck.  Often my fingers got mosquito bitten while I picked, but I didn't want to transfer insect repellent onto the berries.  I'd come in from picking soaked with sweat.  Why I loved harvesting the berries each year I'll never know. 

We'd quick-freeze the berries on flat baking sheets and then bag them up.  Some years we got many quarts of berries into the freezer and baked far too many pies.  They were some of the best pies I ever ate.  We also used them in muffins and pancakes.  

Picking our raspberries now is by contrast a most pleasant task.  To retired people looking to spend some time outdoors, even picking the Japanese beetles off of the tips of the raspberry canes was hardly a chore.  

 Although I still prefer wild black raspberries for flavor, the red ones can be eaten raw as well as cooked, making them more versatile in the kitchen.  We don't try to freeze them and they don't store for long in the refrigerator, so they get eaten by the daily handfuls that we pick.  Here are the ways we like to use them:

1. Tossed on top of breakfast cereal.

2. Crushed and cooked into a quick syrup for pancakes or anything that gets more interesting topped with  fresh raspberry syrup.

3. Added to salads.

4. Added to stir fry and casseroles.  Red raspberries add color and taste to a huge array of dishes, we've discovered.  They can be side dishes or main courses.

5. Added to baked goods like muffins in the traditional way.

This list is surely going to grow much longer in coming years.  

But my favorite way to use a handful of berries is yet to be told, and it does not involve eating them myself:

6.  Take a young grandchild out to pick the berries with you.  They love to find the luscious deep red ones that slip right off into their hand...and into their mouth. 

"Look Grandma!  This one's ready!  And this one...and this one!"  says the three year old, her mouth soon full of berries. 

Is she even taking time to chew them, I wonder.  No matter, they are nutritious and she hasn't yet developed a jaded sense of what is good to eat.  Seeing her natural love for the berries makes me smile.  

Warm summer days have departed and now the air is cool and crisp.  The bushes have stopped producing flowers and the bees have turned their attention to other plants.  Frost may be around the corner and put a stop to the many berries still ripening.  I'll be sorry to see the end of the back yard berry season, but all the more will I look forward to its return next July.  

The Garage Sale

I was sitting on the front stoop of the house with five little granddaughters watching people come and go from our family garage sale.  They weren't allowed around back, where the open garage and driveway were filled with their outgrown clothes and toys on display to shoppers, along with other items no longer needed.  Mom and Dad had decided what toys weren't being used and needed to go, and they didn't want any of the kids putting up a fuss.   Space had to be made in their small home for the things growing children need.

Kept away from the real action, we could only wonder what was happening  just out of our sight.  Still, my flock and I had an interesting vantage point watching both  jalopies and shiny late model cars park and disgorge their occupants headed for our sale.    One young couple arrived on a single bicycle with the girl sitting on the handlebars! 

To stay busy, my grandchildren were selling cookies they had baked, from a folding table at the foot of the front stairs.   They caught sight of a man walking away from the house with one of their old stuffed toys he had bought for his own child.  "Oh look, he bought your stuffed doll!" one girl exclaimed to another.  Overhearing this, the man held the toy up and made it wave goodbye to them.  A peal of laughter erupted from the girls as they waved back. 

Letting go isn't as hard for them as it is for me, I thought. 

When I was a child growing up in a single family home deep within a major metropolitan area,  no one in my neighborhood tried to sell used things from their homes--outgrown clothing and baby furniture went up on the attic to be given to family members when the need arose, even many years later.   A family's attic storehouse of used items was precious, because of the expense of buying new in those days before manufacturing moved overseas. 

In my current hometown, a small city, garage sales sprout up all over town on Fridays and Saturdays.  Sometimes it seems like everyone not holding their own sale is out shopping at them.  For some people it's a necessity and for others, a pastime.  For our family, it is a way of giving back to the community some of the charity that has been shown to us.  We price items far below what local thrift shops would charge, and towards the end of the sale, we take whatever people are able to offer.

I remember one sale in which almost everything had been sold, and we were packing up what remained to donate to the local thrift store.  A young couple drove up and got out of their car.  They were upset that the sale was essentially over.  "We tried to get here sooner," they apologized.   I glanced at the stuff in the back seat of their vehicle, purchased at earlier garage sales that morning, no doubt.  My evaluation:  They are new university students from an Asian nation, and they really want to get their nest feathered from garage sale finds.  

"Well, I have one picture there on the lawn that hasn't been sold yet," I said.  I thought of how much we wanted someone to carry the thing away and added,  "I can sell it to you for 25 cents."   They immediately brightened up.  Apparently the old hand-painted graphic, nicely framed, was to their taste.  They produced the quarter, loaded it into their car, and drove off with big smiles.  We were smiling too.  

Another time a family showed up just as we were closing up a sale, saying their little girl "wanted to go to a garage sale."  My daughter said,  "Go ahead and look, there are some great finds on toys still left."   When the girl admired a toy, my daughter just gave it to her.  The parents (grandparents ?) didn't offer to pay, but gladly accepted the gift, and I rather think they were flat broke. 

But nothing makes us feel as good as when disabled people come to our sale, usually with the help of relatives, and find  things they really like.   My daughter was able to assist one girl in a motorized wheel chair to find a pretty outfit in her size, from the granddaughters' outgrown clothes.   At 25 cents per garment, a lot of children got nice school outfits that day.    

Our family garage sales are less frequent now that the grandchildren are older.  At the big sale we held this summer, they were old enough to help set up the goods and young enough to delight in selling lemonade on a hot day.   My thoughts drfted back to those fond memories on the front steps a few  years ago, when they still needed Grandma to sit with them.  

We Americans have too much stuff, to be sure, but garage sales help insure that it gets reused, re-purposed, and remains out of the waste stream a while longer.

It takes a lot of hard work to organize for a home sale and have everything clean, neat, and ready for others to use.   For the time being, it is one strategy to compensate for our over-consumption of material goods while being a great way to develop a spirit of sharing in the community.

Score for the family gardens: Nature 9.6, Humans 0.4

Spring 2009

 Early this spring I noticed our little raspberry patch had sort of...well...disappeared.  On closer inspection I found all the canes eaten down to the snow line by rabbits.  

A cool rainy spring made for short windows of opportunity for preparing the ground and planting.   I was late getting my row of sunflowers planted and when they finally came up, they were promptly eaten off by rabbits.  It was too late to replant.  Last year the sunflower seedlings hadn't been bothered at all.   They had grown well in the dappled sunlight along the fence, and we enjoyed the antics of the goldfinches and other birds coming for the seeds.

I was struggling to make a very small raised no-dig vegetable garden in my backyard, using two-inch thick cement blocks to build a low retaining wall.   I was racing against the next barrage of rain as well as the calendar, to get a few vegetable plants into the ground while there was still time to grow them to maturity.

A five minute bike ride away at my daughter's much more ambitious gardening enterprise, Nature  played havoc as well.  Rabbits managed to get through the new chicken wire fence and eat the tiny broccoli plants and the tops of the grape vines.   Hole in fence found and closed.    The newly sprouted beans were next to go, as the rabbits found another way in, but the onions and tomatoes were passed over--not preferred bunny food. 

It's not like these urban rabbits have any shortage of food--they are enveloped in it this time of year.  They just prefer tasty young vegetables humans want to eat. 

 I quickly bought more broccoli plants to replace the eaten ones.  Last I looked, my daughter was still battling crafty rabbits, and the sad little plants languished in their tiny plastic compartments.   In an ordinary year one of us would have found time to re-pot the little plants to insure  survival until their final place in the garden was secure.   And the rains keep coming.

There are a few bright spots to report, however. 

The raspberry patch grew in more full and lush than it ever had been since we started it four years ago.  There should be good berry production all summer from this ever-bearing cultivar.  My three broccoli plants grew large enough to tolerate rabbit nibbling on lower leaves, and the plants aren't even fenced.    The rest of my tiny garden is exploding with growth as well.  

 I planted the tomatoes too close together, thinking there would be time to move a few later when I had more space prepared, but their roots may be intertwined by now.  Besides, when would I do that work?  It keeps raining.

A couple weeks ago our neighbors that back up to our property decided to remove all the damaged branches of a tree that overhung our yard.   I watched them work all day, realizing that the result would be sunshine,  glorious sunshine most of the day, along the back fence.  Forget the sunflowers.  It was not too late in the season to set out more vegetable plants, now that sufficient sunlight was assured.

After another grueling (for me) couple of days--because digging was necessary here--I had the new area of full sun planted with one tomato, one broccoli,  one zucchini squash, one yellow squash, marigolds,  and a trio of cabbage.   I used two old window screens to make a tent for the squash, hoping to keep them free of stem-boring insect larvae this year.  When the egg laying time for the offending moth is past, I'll take off the screens.  Last year's single zucchini bit the dust after producing three squash.  Hard to believe, but I struggle just to grow zucchini!  Who ever heard of such a thing?

I am no Pollyanna when it comes to growing food. 

I remember the days when my husband and I grew a respectable garden plot in our backyard, when our daughter was a child.  It was hard hot work.   We both worked full time outside the home, and a goodly portion of our free time was spent in that garden, or shelling peas, snapping beans, or blanching and freezing....   

I felt a connection with the land and took pride in a little self-sufficiency.  I even tried making jam from the ornamental plum tree growing on our lot.   Back then, my husband was the driving force behind the garden--the one who had been raised in the country and had grown his own vegetables as a boy.  During a drought year, we rigged up a way to pump laundry water from the basement up to a barrel outdoors, and from there into the garden.  It kept the plants alive until the drought broke, the  first of August.   Then it rained like crazy for weeks, and we had bountiful yields.

My own parents grew a victory garden during World War II.  A favorite story is how my mother anticipated I was going to be born very soon, and decided she'd better can the tomato crop.  She did, and I was born the next day.  Having had a baby myself, I wonder how she was able to work so hard the day before giving birth. 

Once the war was over, my parents' gardening ended for good.  They avoided doing anything at all in our little backyard, and the open prairie next to our house was built up with 1950s homes.  I didn't get to grow a single thing until I was married and had a place of my own.  But thanks to my Aunt Rose, I knew from my girlhood days that time would come. 

How I discovered my gardening instincts

Among my many aunts and uncles, Aunt Rose lived a bit differently from the rest.  She had Better Homes and Gardens  magazines laid out neatly on her living room coffee table.   As a young girl,  I was impressed just by the cover photographs.  Aunt Rose had a beautiful home, and right there on that table was the information on how to do it.   I was going to learn how to make my home lovely too, when the time came.  This is not to say my childhood home wasn't wonderful in its own way, but artistic it was not.

One very warm sunny spring day my family paid a visit to Aunt Rose.   We found her busily digging in her garden, muddy and sweaty--and having fun.   Aunt Rose of the beautiful tastefully decorated home was out digging in the dirt!  I saw the band of black earth she had cultivated, awaiting her plantings, and the area she'd just completed, with flowers arranged in patterns by color and shape.  So that was how it was done! 

I knew right then and there,  I was going to do that as soon as I had my own dirt to dig. 

Garden ambitions to suit my senior citizen status

My husband and I are both retired now, or at least partially so.   Our home is attractive and comfortable, but it doesn't look like something out of a magazine.   For quite a few years, the only vegetable gardening going on in our family was at our now-adult daughter's home.  She turned out to have the green thumb in the family, and in exchange for buying garden supplies and helping with weeding and picking, we enjoy taking part in her harvest.  

She decided to plant less of the two family favorites, tomatoes and broccoli, after last year's excessive supply.   Concerned about getting a surplus for myself, I figured if she can do it,  so can I.  Besides, I was reading up on new techniques like no-till gardening, raised bed gardening, square foot gardening, and so on, and was eager to try these different approaches.  In particular, these methods might let me pursue this hobby on my own, without bothering my husband too much.  He had other DIY projects going on. 

The raised garden near the house was planned a year ago, in a small space that managed to avoid the shadows of trees for most of the day.  I followed the no-till compost-layering approach over the turf grass, finishing up before winter with a final layer of leaves and pine needles.   This spring I moved back the top dry layer and plunged my spade into the ground to see what was down there.  The lower layers were not fully decomposed, but the spadeful of earth was black and moist and full of earthworms.  No more grass.   OK,  on to the next step.

I found the cheapest concrete patio blocks that I could handle by myself (although my dear husband helped load and unload them from the back of our vehicle).  It took three trips because of the weight of the loads, but the store was close by.  I used a level to lay them flat and end to end along the lengthwise outer edge of the plot, just one stone deep at one end, four deep (eight inches) at the other, lower end-- for there is slope in both dimensions of this garden plot.  Using that slope to my advantage made the raised aspect a little easier, actually.  Then I emptied bags of soil into the plot and spread it to the top of the blocks.  Now I was really having fun!  

The strip is narrow and runs parallel to a wooden deck built about two feet off the ground.  I left the dry mulch on a strip between the plot and the deck, so I could easily access the planted area  from either side.

At the deepest, sunniest end of the plot I planted tomatoes, in the middle a pair of broccoli and a cucumber, and at the shadier end some marigolds.   I stuck onion sets along the edges,  and on top the row of blocks we set planters filled with herbs my husband had started from seed inside the house:  thyme, sage, and lots of basil.  Planters of perennial chive and garlic chive from last year joined them.  

Not perfect to be sure, but not bad for a first effort!  My hands are stiff, my back is sore, and my knees aren't going to work right for the next month, but I'm happy.  Every morning we walk out on the deck to count heads (each plant is an individual that I know)  and check progress, and so far all present and accounted for.

I subscribe to only a single magazine--I'll bet you can guess which one. 

For the sake of thrift and a greener lifestyle, I reduced my magazine subscriptions to a single one: Better Homes and Gardens.   I keep the the issues to re-read again, and save back a few for yet another review while taking the rest to the public library magazine exchange. 

I know that other magazines contain more examples of the kinds of crafts and DIY projects we actually do in our home, and more examples of green lifestyles and how to re-purpose old things.  I don't want a magazine that is as practical as I am, but one that lets my imagination roam and takes me to places I will never go.   I enjoy seeing colors and styles I would never want in my own home for the pure novelty of it.  But there are also many ideas I can put into use as well.

I have a collection of bells hanging from the low boughs of an ornamental cherry tree.  In the areas beneath,  I've arranged  among the astilbe some small garden scultures collected over many years.  A few of them are objects re-purposed from what might be called junk.   My eyes rest upon this scene, and my artistic spirit is nourished.   For woman does not live by vegetables alone.   

Required Reading for All Who Use Petroleum

Dusk gathers as I write.  The sounds of children playing on my street have quieted.  The robins are finishing their evening serenade.  As night descends,  I  turn the blinds in the new energy efficient window my husband has just installed in my office.  A CFL bulb lets me see the keyboard and softens the glare of the computer screen.  All is at peace on this street, on this night, but not all is well.

I've read yet another article that gives me a sickening feeling that our progress to save the earth environment for our descendants is far too slow, and the ways humans invent to destroy it even faster careen out of our control. 

I've just read the March 2009 issue of National Geographic Magazine that I picked up at the public library's magazine exchange.  The cover story is what attracted me-- "Saving Energy--It Starts at Home."  But it was another article that made me gasp. 

"The Canadian Oil Boom--Scraping Bottom" reveals  in words and photographs the devastation wrought by extracting petroleum from Alberta's oil sands.   As visually horrifying as mountaintop removal of coal in Appalachia, the sight of pristine boreal forest replaced by open pit mines and tailings  ponds for miles on end is a vision of how life on earth will end.   Not by an asteroid or super volcano, but by our own hand.  

I'd read recently that the United States imports more oil from Canada than from any other nation.  At the time it sounded reassuring--our money was going to a friendly nation on the same continent.  How bad could the oil sands extraction process be?  As it turns out, worse than I ever could have imagined.

In addition to complete and permanent habitat destruction, many hazardous pollutants are released into the water and air.  And extraction is a messy process involving high temperatures created by combustion of natural gas.  On the basis of total carbon emissions from the extraction process to the burning of the fuel in vehicles, the oil sands come out 15 to 40 percent worse than conventional oil wells. 

If the world economy recovers and can afford to pay the higher price tag for oil sands petroleum, Alberta is destined to become rich and destroyed at one and the same time.   Alberta's government owns the mineral rights to all the land and has encouraged the oil sands industry from its beginnings.  If Alberta citizens have second thoughts about the wisdom of prosperity by this means, it comes far too late. 

173 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil from the Canadian sands deposits are too tempting in a world that is running out of  it.  In the future, it is likely that even more of the estimated 1.7 trillion barrels in these deposits can be extracted. 

An environmental group is trying to devise a plan to save 50 percent of Canada's boreal forest.  They say that without a policy change, Canada's 2 million square miles of boreal forest could be gone in a generation.  Since the oil sands mining has destroyed a mere 150 square miles to date, they are expecting a lot of momentum to build from numerous types of incursions, and to continue.

Yesterday I worried about palm oil plantations destroying the Borneo jungle and cattle ranching destroying the Amazon rain forest.  Now I am destroying Canada by using my car.

Is there any hope for our planet?

The National Geographic article also revealed the human dilemma involved.  People have come to the Alberta oil sands to find work, to earn a living, to make a home, to raise a family.  These are basic human drives, and when they are thwarted due to environmental collapse in other areas,  people will migrate anywhere they can to find sustenance.  

My own ancestors joined millions of  "surplus people" pouring out of Europe at the end of the 19th century for just such reasons.  There was a young nation in the Americas rich in natural resources offering them a haven.   How much does the natural world have left to give our species?

The human population is considered by many to be well beyond a sustainable size for our planet.  What that sustainable population can be, as a fraction of the total earth population, is going to be shrinking as we degrade the planet further.   Human ingenuity will be tested as never before.  As human suffering increases, will we cease to care what the next generation will face?

I happen to think that even after several years of downsizing my consumption and pouring my resources into energy saving changes to my home and lifestyle, that my life is still pretty darned luxurious.  There is still room for changes that would little affect me, yet do much good.  Now that I understand the danger we face from extracting oil from such sources as the Canadian deposits,  I will renew my efforts to reduce and avoid gasoline consumption and work for public policies in that direction. 

Coal still trumps oil for carbon emissions by far, but we have to fight on multiple fronts.  For a website independent of National Geographic on this topic, go to http://oilsandstruth.org/

 I'd been lamenting the fact that I can't bicycle in cold or rainy weather, or even to the other side of town on a really hot day.    I'd meant to try out the city bus system, and this I have finally done just these past two weeks.  It runs on alternative fuels available from my own state, not ideal but for now, better than wrecking Borneo and Canada.   I will leave that experience for another post, another day. 

I will say this:   for years I had ignored a solution to reducing my oil consumption that was literally right in front of me.   Most of you are doing the same thing in one way or another.  We can't afford to stay in that rut any longer. 

I shut off my computer completely for the night.  The children and birds have gone to sleep by now.   I close the window against the coming rain, and turn off the light.  There is peace on this street tonight,  but I can't get the images of a destroyed forest  out my head.  All is not well with the world.   

Jesusita Fire in Santa Barbara--An Evacuation Story

May 8, 2009

The phone in my sister's home rang at 2:30 a.m. last night. The Jesusita Fire had spread in the night, fanned by strong winds, and they were to evacaute immediately.   Earlier fire evacuees from other parts of town were already sheltering at Jean's house:  an adult daughter and grandson and their three children, a friend of the teen boys, and a friend of Jean's.  The four  adults and  four young people grabbed what they had so recently brought into Jean's home,  jumped back into their vehicles with three bewildered dogs, and all of them headed to the home of Jean's friend  Nedra.  

This morning I got up in my Iowa home and checked the internet news and MODIS satellite fire maps.  I saw that my sister, once so far from the fire, was in a mandatory evacuation area.  No one would be home.   She has a cell phone but doesn't use it much.  I remembered I had Nedra's phone number and called at about 8 a.m. their time.  Nedra answered.

Yes, my sister was there, Nedra said with her usual chuckle.  She was surprised I had her number.  She said there was less smoke than earlier.  I had inquired because her home was likely to be downwind of the fire in an area between the major coastal  highway 101 and the ocean.

Jean got on the phone, explaining there were 10 people at the house.  They put the dogs in the garage and she and daughter Crystie had slept on cots there, to keep them calm.  The kids were still asleep, having behaved extremely well during the evacuation.  Soon however, they would awaken.  The return of typical teen angst was expected to descend upon the household.  My hope is that living in the middle of a crisis can shock even teenagers out of their inward focus and preoccupation with self. 

Further east in Santa Barbara proper,  another relative was also sheltering family and friends who had evacuated.  That area so far has escaped an evacuation warning. 

The Jesusita Fire began on May 5, 2009 as a small brush fire in the hills above Santa Barbara, California.  Wildfire in this area is always ominous, as the fire season in southern California now lasts the year round.  In just the past year, the Gap Fire threatened the western suburb of Goleta and the Tea Fire destroyed 200 homes on the eastern side of Santa Barbara.  The foothills between these two burned areas hadn't burned since 1964 and were full of fuel--the chaparral that normally grows in this area.  Abnormally low rainfall over winter months made the brush dry even in May.

Hot weather on the inland side of the coast range produced high winds, hot winds, blowing down through the canyons, across Santa Barbara and to the sea.  These offshore winds, unseasonable for May,  fanned the third fire, the Jesusita Fire, into a conflagration on May 6.    But the winds were not done. 

Mid-day on May 7 my sister sent me an e-mail.  The fire was at 500 acres and dozens of homes in the hills at the northern edge of Santa Barbara  had burned.   No one knew the condition of the Botanic Garden at the upper end of Mission Canyon--debris and downed electric lines were keeping everyone out of that area.    It's an incredibly beautiful area, or was.  But, nature can come back if we let it. 

Jean's note continued.  "Yesterday afternoon Eric (her handyman) and I went to a fellow quilter's home and evacuated her.  She's 87 and we had a time convincing her to pack up and leave.  Later in the evening I called her at her daughter's home and she was so thankful we came to get her.  They closed the area right after we left.   If we hadn't gone to her house when we did, we couldn't have gotten in to help her.  She would have gotten out with the clothes on her back when the police went door to door.  Her daughter was at work at  UCSB and didn't know her mom was in trouble because Evelyn told her kids she was fine!"

" Chuck Libbert, who taught in the room next to me for years, and whose late wife was one of my best friends, lives in the evacuation zone also and is staying in my guest room..."

"Yesterday was 103 degrees (F.) at my house at 2 p.m.  Today is supposed to be the same.  The winds come up about 3 p.m. and blow hard until sundown and then let up a bit during the night. "

Back to now, the morning of May 8.  Via the internet I'm listening to a local Santa Barabara radio station for fire news as I write this.   I know that the fire is now five miles long, running across the hills and canyons to the immediate north of the densley populated areas.  It reaches from Goleta on the west to Montecito on the east.  Damaged or destroyed homes are up to 75, but through heroic effort by firefighters, the fire has been kept out of the city proper.   Three burned firefighters are in serious but stable condition and are expected to recover.   

I want to wish the best to Nedra for sheltering my family and their friends: Jean, Crystie, Alex, Isabelle, Jeremy, Kevin, Tim, and Chuck.  All of them expect to return to their homes after the danger has passed. 

Sustainability and Resilience in Agriculture's New Age

That is a mighty title, but it falls to others to expand on that topic.  I am only going to comment on the process--the very difficult process--of letting go one's mindset about agricultural achievements and seeing with new eyes all its many impacts upon earth as of today.  Our planet's habitability over the next few centuries is going to be determined not only by windmills and solar panels but also by how willing we are to change agriculture.

Seniors who dedicated their lives to the improvement of the human condition through agriculture probably fall into two camps:  those who still believe that progress truly has been made, and those who realize what industrial agriculture is doing to the planet.  In feeding more billions of people with these methods, we've undercut the chances of future generations to eat and live as well as we do.  

Two characteristics the world needs now are sustainability and resilience, and agriculture is in desperate need of them.  

One of my heroes is Fred Kirschenmann, at 71 a long-time advocate and world leader in the development of sustainable agriculture.   Among other endeavors,  Fred maintains a pivotal role at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames.   I heard him speak here in Ames, Iowa on two occasions last year.   I felt myself to be in the presence of a great but humble man--a man full of knowledge, experience, wisdom, compassion, generosity, and love.  Yes, all those qualities came through as he spoke.  In that speech he introduced me to the term resilience and how that trait can help us survive and flourish in the difficult times of climate change ahead.

Resilience  helps us cope with unexpected and unpleasant changes.  As applied to agriculture, it means moving away from megacrops of identical genetics, that could be wiped out by one agricultural catastrophe,  to a greater variety of crops and a preservation of genetic diversity in our sources of food.   It means preserving the soil and not polluting the water.

Our Food is Becoming an Industrial Product--Why that is Bad

Changes in nutrients    Corn has become the basis of many food "products" today, skewing everything made from oil and sugars extracted from corn, plus eggs and meat from corn-fed animals,  in the direction of having the composition of corn.  That  changes the relative amounts of essential fatty acids we get from our diet, and the change isn't good for human health.   Look at the current fervor to get "omega-3 fatty acids" back into our diet via additives-- all because we took them out of our food by manufacturing so many of our foods from corn.   

Obesity and diabetes  Then there's the epidemic of obesity and diabetes that has paralleled society's industrialization of food and its distribution to us as "fast food".    Medical researchers are still trying to unravel what it is we are doing to ourselves in an attempt to stop it.  It may already be too late for an entire generation to enjoy the same health later in life that their elders did.  

Seniors, if you look in your school yearbook at young people in their late teens and compare them to their age-mates today,  the difference is shocking.  In our lifetimes,  a typical twenty-year-old has become taller but also far heavier.  In our day, an occasional person was obviously overweight.  Now, only an occasional person is of normal weight--and our idea of normal has even changed.  From a standpoint of population genetics, we could assume we have not changed in so short a time, but that environmental factors have changed gene expression and produced a different mix of phenotypes. 

If someone handed you, at age 20, a 30 pound pack and said you had to carry it everywhere you went for the rest of your life, and perform every life task while supporting it, you'd be pretty steamed.  But that is what cheeseburgers and soda pop are doing to our young people.  Teens always ate that, you may say, but what teens once consumed on Saturday nights cannot compare to the ubiquitous fast food restaurant food consumption of today.

Availability of Fast Food  A few years ago the food service at the Iowa State University Memorial Union, where many students got their daily meals, was discontinued.   Fast food franchises were allowed to replace the cafeteria with its traditional slow-cooked foods.   There is now a mall-style "food court" with five or six franchises to choose from.   While some of these franchises have a few healthful choices,  people don't have the will power to pass up the high-fat foods right in front of them, giving off enticing aromas.   Americans have the opportunity to overeat on unhealthy food everywhere, at any time.

New disease threats  We hear  a lot about influenza lately and how the virus mutates readily.  The more that susceptible animals or humans are crowded together and infected, the more potentially deadly mutant strains will arise.  But no one in the administration  speaks openly about this danger of confinement operations for raising hogs or fowl (although they understand it well).    We struggle to avoid E. coli contamination from strains that have become lethal to us.  At least in the new administration, there are people who will attempt to work behind the scenes for the greater good and not draw fire from special interests and powerful lobbies. 

Apparently it is a given, in today's economy, that jobs raising animals in huge confinements, slaughtering them, and processing them, are better jobs than the work once performed on diversified farms.   People like Fred Kirschenmann are developing models for modern day sustainable agriculture, for organic farming, and demonstrating it to prove its feasibility.   But the power of industrialized agriculture will continue to oppose it.  

Vulnerability of the Food Chain     As a matter of risk management, people are questioning the wisdom of something as basic as our food having to come from distant regions and even other continents.   When costs to the environment are added into the equation, it appears that a more diversified, resilient food growing and distribution system is in order. 

Holding On to the Past Versus Confronting the Realities of Today

Yesterday a letter appeared in one of our local newspapers by an 86-year-old professor emeritus of agronomy,  politely challenging the position of Fred Kirschenmann.  Apparently Fred had recently addressed some middle school students, saying he was sad because of the harm his generation had done to the planet they would inherit.   The elderly agronomy professor respectfully disagreed with Fred's assessment,  pointing out a number of ways that modern farming practices had made the world better than it was.

I felt badly when I read that letter, because we'd all want to believe, by the time we are 86, that our lifetime effort counted for something--that we were leaving behind a legacy.  During the productive portion of his life, this scholar did what seemed reasonable at the time, and he gave his best effort.   The handwriting was on the wall even then, but most people were not reading it--that is human nature.  People like Fred are expressing regret, not blame.  We are all in this together.  We need to see reality clearly and respond to it, rather than cling to past ideas. 

Damaging Aspects of Industrial Agriculture are Increasingly Severe

Over the last 20 years, however, the damaging aspects of industrial agriculture have come to light.  Manure lagoon spills spoil streams, drinking water is contaminated with nitrates, the stench of hog confinements deprives neighbors of enjoyment of their homes, the dead zone increases in the Gulf of Mexico from farm runoff in the Middle West, destroying the ocean ecosystem, and our population has serious health problems from our diet as well as enduring the threats of E. coli contamination and influenza from birds and swine.   Now we are aware that even the methane emissions of these millions of animals add greatly to the threat of massive climate change. 

The earth itself remains at the top of the list of harm done by poor agricultural practices.  In a commentary in today's Des Moines Register (page 15A), Kamyar Enshayan writes about " Iowa's abused treasure: The soil."   He directs the University of Northern Iowa's Center for Energy & Environmental Education. 

Solutions are Available Now--If  Only They Are Applied

Enshayan argues that we already know the agricultural techniques and management practices to bring to an end the soil erosion, water pollution, and threats to public health.  He says we already know how to maintain yields without leaking fertilizer and pesticide all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.  He points out that it is not farmers who are ignoring these solutions (although most are), but the economic system in which they must operate,  along with unwise agricultural subsidies, that ensure poor agricultural practices continue.

The 2008 Iowa floods "should have been a wake-up call"  Enshayan says.   These floods not only washed away topsoil over many areas of the state, but also destroyed thousands of homes as pieces of  cities disappeared under floorwaters.    He calls for immediate attention to Iowa's watersheds and flood plains to restore the land's ability to absorb and store rainwater, saying the cost would be "tiny compared to the incalculable costs of the 2008 flood."

Iowa Can No Longer Feed Itself

Iowa once had a canning industry for the abundant vegetables grown here.  Now there are no canneries in the state.   Crops are corn and soybeans, period.  Our vegetables and fruits largely come from California and other distant places.  It doesn't have to be that way, and a lot of people are choosing a different path, with the help of leaders like Fred Kirschenmann.  Small scale produce farms and backyard gardens are again proliferating, but there is a long way to go and many impediments to overcome.

Sustainability and resilience are the new goals for the next age of agriculture.   Let's get going! 

    

 

       

Outliers--a Best Selling Book About "the Gift of Opportunity"

One characteristic of a great book is how much it gets a person to thinking...to seeing the world in a different way...and ultimately to find new understandings. 

Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell: 2008, Little, Brown, and Company, 309 pages) started a major re-analysis of history in my family.  My sister bought the book initially, then my husband and I read it.  And we've been talking ever since about how we got where we are today, not only the three of us but our parents and grandparents, how we raised our kids, and what it portends for them. 

The book seeks to answer the question of why some people (the outliers) succeed far more than others.  As Gladwell points out, the United States leads the world in the cult of the individual.  By the same token, equal opportunity for everyone is a cherished ideal in a world where opportunity is mostly very unequal.  Even in a democracy, successful people typically influence circumstances to perpetuate their own success and undercut opportunities for success by competitors (anyone outside their circle of family and friends or political party, etc.).    

Gladwell reveals the "stories behind the stories" of successful people, coining the expression "the gift of opportunity."   I had long held the opinion that the good fortune of my own generation in this nation was not because we were somehow superior to previous or to later generations--that we were smarter or worked harder or were more virtuous--but to having been born in the right place at the right time to get educations and good jobs, to own homes, and to retire with some vigor remaining.  The pride revealed by many of my contemporaries seemed to me quite unjustified. 

Because of Outliers, now I am able to attach words and concepts to these vague feelings.  I am able to recognize gifts of opportunity that came to me by circumstances beyond my control, as well as when opportunity was withheld from me.  

I remember, over a decade back in my government career, a phase of institutional change in which all employees were taught Continuous Quality Improvement.  CQI was but one manifestation of a new management philosophy that swept over us and throughout the nation--bringing about immense good, by the way.   Employees were valued and the talents of all were tapped for improving the success of the organization. 

There was only one statement in our CQI training materials that made me choke:  that success was not so much attributable to individuals as to the total nature of the work environment--the culture of the workplace mattered most, and it was up to management to change it for the better.   I prided myself on my ability to take on any challenge, whether I was getting institutional backing or not.  I had broken stereotypes about women in academia and the professional workforce throughout my life, an uphill battle all the way, so this new idea seemed altogether wrong.   It would be a long time till I understood the truth in that CQI statement and how culture both enabled and confined me.

As Gladwell demonstrates, culture matters in ways we never anticipated.  This is not to say one culture is superior to another, but only that the cultural background of a person (or a larger entity) can, in any given situation, set them up for success, or set them up for failure.   The effect can be greater than that of IQ or other natural talents  on the success an individual achieves in life, and that is perhaps the major revelation of this book.

I always knew that having earned a Ph.D. by the time I was 30 years old opened a lot of doors for me.   I didn't always earn a lot of money, but I always found work that was intellectually stimulating and upwardly mobile.  After Outliers, I pondered the good fortune of being ready to pursue graduate studies while there was still such a thing as National Defense Education Act Fellowships.  I didn't have to work my way through my final degree because it provided not only my expenses, but a living stipend.  (Especially fortunate because my husband and I had a new baby to care for.)

My test scores were high enough to win a doctoral fellowship because I had the opportunity to study science and math without distraction for many years--my parents having put me through undergraduate school.  Even my passion for science was reinforced by Sputnik and the Cold War from my high school years onward.  I slaved away at my studies, but the fact that I could do so was a luxury denied to many others, girls and boys alike.

Just as I reached high school, classes were being formed to teach more advanced material in the sciences and math.  The United States was in a big hurry to catch up to the USSR in student science achievement.  I didn't make it into the specialized classes right away because neither I nor my parents were aware of their existence.  Despite my A's in science and math, despite owning my own telescope and displaying a rabid interest, kids with more astute, pushier parents got in.  But with a little help from my friends, by junior year I was accepted into "accelerated" chemistry class.  Excited beyond measure, I read the chemistry textbook over summer just to make sure I would fit in.  

At the beginning of the school year, an achievement test was given to the class--a class that had taken advanced science classes together for the past two years, except for me.   I achieved about a 67 percent mastery of the subject, ranking third behind my boyfriend and the boy who was the school genius.   Everyone else in the class scored like you'd expect kids to score who had never studied chemistry. 

From that moment on, I held my head high.  But I had learned another lesson too--it matters who you know.  My boyfriend had hounded the chemistry teacher for months, telling him that an exception to policy should be made, allowing me into the accelerated track as a junior.   I was a nerd to be sure, but I was a nerd girl with a nerd boyfriend and lots of platonic male nerd friends.  

It wouldn't be the last time my male confederates helped me break barriers and find opportunities, allowing me to become one of the "first women such and such" a number of times through life.   In Gladwell's terminology, I was building the practical intelligence I would need to succeed, for no one makes it alone.

Those stories, and those of my mother and grandmother, will be told another time. 

There is not much of an environmental perspective in this relation of Outliers to my own life, but every insight counts.  Eventually, better understanding of self, of culture, and of human behavior will help us cope with the challenges we face today.

From the ECO:nomics Event to Canceled Coal Plants--The Buzz About Environmental Capital

Environmental Capital Conference in sesson as I write.

Less that 15 minutes by car from where I write, a group of world business leaders and a sprinkling of environmental celebrities has gathered to talk about environmental capital--how to find the money to pay for massive changes away from fossil fuels that the world needs, and its alter-ego theme, how to make money while going green. 

No matter what you think of the Wall Street Journal, that is the newspaper sponsoring the ECO:nomics Event just west of Santa Barbara, California and the place to find some interesting reading.   The ideas of the participants are at times iconoclastic and address real problems, but others are the most extreme kind of anti-science and denial.   For the conference main page with agenda and participants, go to http://economics.wsj.com.  Scroll down and look left and you'll see the WSJ blog on environmental capital having detailed reports of what the presenters are saying, or go to http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/.  The reports are going on-line hour by hour as the meeting progresses (March 4-6). 

The ECO:nomics conference, by invitation only, is the second annual such event put on by the WSJ and other sponsors at the same location, the Bacara Resort and Spa on the Gaviota coast of southern California.  Yes, it is a beautiful and secluded setting.  I've yet to lay eyes on it, but I know a regular room normally goes for about $475 a night.   Like Michael Jackson's Neverland, also close by, local people around here sometimes are aware of the celebrity coming-and-going but pay little attention. 

Not being a regular reader of the WSJ, the only reason I am aware of this event in my backyard is because a local newspaper reporter made it inside and is putting out daily articles in the Santa Barbara News-Press.  Today's headline (March 5, 2009) on the front page is "Execs spar over energy independence."  You can read the bulk of it on-line at www.newspress.com.    

Speakers include the heads of Google, Ford Motor, and Deutsche Bank as well as names like Al Gore and T. Boone Pickens, to name just a few.  Al Gore was obviously invited for the sake of having someone to belittle.  Is that any way to treat a Nobel Prize winner, or for that matter, anyone?  I admire his courage just in showing up.

The next step should be a reality-check meeting where these same people are a captive audience for two-plus days to atmospheric and other scientists (having extensive data and published in referreed journals like Science.)  I realize that is not going to happen, but I wish it would.  We need the wealthy and powerful industry giants to apply all their smarts to solving the problem, rather than figuring out how to make money off of it only to enrich themselves.  

One item I've seen on TV in connection with T. Boone Pickens' energy plan (and used by others as well) shows a map of the United States with geographical areas neatly outlined as being suitable for SOLAR or WIND generation.  This promotes the misconception that photovoltaic only works in the southwest (note: Germany is a leader in photovoltaic power generation) and that wind power is only viable on the Great Plains (but off-coast continental-shelf windmills could power the cities of the eastern seaboard).   Why doesn't anyone call them out on this?

But environmental capital is a news story in the USA Heartland as well. 

The Iowa Power and Light subsidiary of Alliant Energy just canceled its plans to build a $1.8 billion/630 megawatt pulverized coal power plant in Marshalltown.  It cited the economy and uncertainty over state regulations, adding that even if economic conditions improve, the plant would not proceed.   However, the company is going forward with construction of a wind farm in northern Iowa.  Yes, I know wind power isn't a substitute for base load power yet, but the base load problem will be solved without coal in due time.

This comes two months after LS Power dropped a planned $1.3 billion coal-fired plant near Waterloo, Iowa.  In the case of this plant, the bulk of the power would have been sold out of state while Iowa got stuck with the air pollution--because our air quality hasn't yet been ruined to the degree it has further east. 

These headlines belie the enormous battle that pitted environmental activists against the business community in my home state during the last couple of years, a few letters in the newspaper from me entering the fray.  In the end, the two factions are finding common ground.  Not I, but hundreds of other Iowans, are the Green Heroes that held the brakes on these projects just long enough for the recession to finish them off.

Now we have to work on reducing coal use in existing power plants through conservation and techniques like co-generation, while the windmills keep going up.   Many of the dirtiest coal plants are already at the end of their use-life and will be closed sooner rather than later, or are being switched to natural gas, while new coal plants with 40-plus year life expectancies are being canceled.   All good. 

It is lamented by some green spokespersons that the recession has shut off capital to environmental projects.  More critical at this moment in history is that lack of capital is shutting down new coal power plants, and what capital there is, is flowing towards renewable energy.  

Note: energy conservation is more important than ever, and is recognized as an effective and vital strategy in achieving the transition to renewable power.  The daily changes that ordinary citizens make in energy use do matter.  We are the customers of both business and government and in the end, what we demand is what they must give us. 

There is a price to be paid by everyone for the transition to clean power, but we can bear it.  The price for continuing to use fossil fuel for an energy source is truly unbearable.