hay time (July 8th)

More on spring flowers

OK, those are mustard, honeysuckle, choke cherry, and Golden Alexander. I was stuck on the later. Zizia Aurea, "leaves 2 to 3 times divided" was what clinched it. Not many plants have variable numbers of lobes/divisions. Didn't get a great shot, but you can see it to some degree.

Spring meadow flowers

Can you identify these flowers? 4 from the lower meadow this morning. Click on the images to enlarge.

Spring. Earth Day.

Spring is coming along; the forsythia is in full bloom, the red maples are red, and the sugar maple is showing life for the first time today.

Yesterday was Earth Day. Michele drove the speed limit, to the ire of her fellow drivers, and took her lunch to work. This inspired me to turn off the electric power for the day, with the exception of the refrigerator, freezer and one phone. The house got very quiet. Can one 'hear' electric power? I was faced with a lack of water, and broke into our very dusty cache of spare water in bottles and jugs. It takes 3 quarts to wash a kitchen floor. I did not attempt to wash the flannel sheets by hand. After a bit I thought that the solar water heating panel wasn't working without a pump, and turned that on. Michele came home and thought of turning everything back on, then noticed how quiet the house was. She turned on the main water pump and electric supply to the water heater. We had dinner and talked until we couldn't really see each other, then took the dog for a walk. (Normally we tend to split, she to the ABC news on tape, and me to my internet reading). Then we read for a bit, she got in bed with a flashlight and a candle and I sat next to the kerosene lamp. Altogether in 24 hrs we used 9 kwh, instead of the usual 30 or so.

Meanwhile I made a list: manual laundry machine (I read about these somewhere), solar shower, alternatives for food preservation, light, solar power for computer/iPod, humanure compost system, dish washing set up, radio, oven. Fix the upper well for easy access. Water tanks. But am I looking at emergency preparedness or current civic duty in light of global warming?

Today I'm really enjoying this electricity business.

Pix

The other day a lot of weather came through that was a lot more like summer. We woke up to thunder and lightening, and the whole sky flashed orange and then red with the lightening. Later I realized it probably had to do with the rising sun. In the evening we saw a rainbow.

Craigslist; laptop batteries

I hooked up with one of my employers via Craigslist.com (worcester) and realized how useful it is.  Once we posted a size 24 wedding dress for free and it found a new home within the week. 

Today I'm listening the Personal Computer Show from March 26th.  That's one of my podcasts from WBAI.  They're conducting an interview with the CEO, Jim Buckmaster.  Craigslist has 24 employees and gets 10 billion page views per month!  He says that while they do make sure they run a financially solid business, their underlying purpose is to maximize the social good that they can do at the site, and to be as useful as they can be to as many people who want or need the service.

On another topic, there was a big fire in Korea at a factory (LG Chem) which produces many of the backup batteries for laptops.  Turns out there are some very tight supply lines for computers so when something like this happens it can really affect a lot of people.  

Letter to the Editor

Look, my first ever letter to an editor.

To the Editor:

Waking up Easter morning to a taste of Swiss chocolate, I am reminded that our economy is still quite intact. The cocoa beans were grown in Africa, the sugar in South America. Making the bar of chocolate required complex machinery and expertise born of years of schooling. The end result: an Easter treat at a cost of what I earn in about 5 minutes.

Change is on the horizon. Oil and natural gas production is leveling off, and the costs of extracting what's left are rising steadily, plus the competition to use these materials is growing. Our local economy is going to evolve quite soon into quite a different beast.

We need to look around a little further than to question whether to buy a Prius or a car that runs on diesel. Used anything plastic today? Eaten anything not grown locally? Most of our food is entirely dependent on oil and related products -- not just to transport it or run the farm machinery, but to supply all the fertilizers and pesticides. Don't forget the toiletries, medicines, synthetic fibers, or the energy embodied in anything made of metal in your home.

We need to take the time to understand the ways cheap energy and petroleum-based materials are intertwined with the world we live in: the layout of the land, how we do our shopping, where we go for medical care, what the roads are made out of, how far away our loved ones live. The amount of cheap energy available to us equates to each of us having few hundred personal slaves doing extra chores. The resulting disposable income (aka extra energy) has enabled us to fund education, a big government, $500 billion international expeditions, and a fancy entertainment industry. The energy in a gallon of gas, at a whopping $4, is equal to about 120 hours of human labor.

Let's enjoy the chocolate, and everything else we take for granted, but at the same time let's begin to envisage a world radically different, and plan accordingly. It can all work out for the best, but only after many of us awake to what we have, what we could or will lose soon, and what the alternatives will be.

Rebecca Hyde
Woodstock