Remember the New Alchemy Institute? Perhaps you heard of it. It was a thinktank/do-tank on Cape Cod where baby boomer idealists gathered to model the green future, with experiments in…
I didn’t really know Jaime Barajas, brother of environmental transformer/activist Babak Tondre. I met him briefly when Nik Bertulis and I visited Babak’s home in 2003 to view his back-yard micro-eden, with its chickens, gardens, and fruit trees. (Photos from that day are in my two later books.) Jaime, who was living in an art-filled loft over a utility shed, seemed to me a shy, lighter version of Babak. Babak worried a bit about his brother; after all, he was a Pisces.
Last week, just 10 days after spending an afternoon with Babak and his daughter visiting an eco-wastewater system and musing about the “public lore vs. reality” of the eco-activist scene in the Bay area, Babak told me by email his brother was hit by a car and killed in San Jose. Here is his obituary. On Sunday, he buried his brother in this Marin County cemetery providing “natural burial” options: Forever Fernwood.
Fernwood, according to its Web site, “uses no toxic embalming fluids, no vault, and only a biodegradable casket or a (more…)
Check out this story of two couples complaining about the whoosh sound of wind turbines recently installed on Vinalhaven, an island off Maine (click on headline): For Those Near, the Miserable Hum of Clean Energy
I love the 345 reader comments that follow the article. They run the gamut of opinions, but most suggest the buzz of local clean energy is a tolerable and necessary cost. I also like this use of the newspaper as a forum for input. (Two of my favorite comments are at the end of this post.)
In July, I sat under these turbines for an afternoon. They emitted a low machine hum and a breezy whoosh. ‘Hard to believe they can be heard half a mile away, but I can imagine it’s a new background vibration. Perhaps these complainers are lobbying for a settlement check or a home buyout by the electric cooperative (a few nearby homes were purchased before the project was installed).
Here’s a link to my photos of my afternoon at Vinalhaven’s wind turbines. Photos
Behold the near-perfect purse. I now can see the contents and readily find the ringing cell phone, the pens, the reading glasses, etc., that used to hide in the black…
Every day, Sally Ahnger plugs a cord from her electric Toyota RAV4 into a special outlet in her garage. Her house is powered in part by several photovoltaic solar panels…
Malcolm Wells, architect of buildings that harmonized with their surroundings—by being literally embedded in their surroundings—died in November. Or as a friend put it, "he returned to the earth." Here's…
Hello! I'm reviving this blog to chronicle the people, practices, and products I encounter every day that are just too interesting to go unshared. Given my interests and vocation, my…