GreenGeezer

Changing Gears Bicycle Tour to Document Sustainability

Just found out about a cross-country sustainability bicycle tour underway called Changing Gears.  Melissa Henige and Andy Davis will document their trip online, as a movie, and as a book.   They will be looking for ways that people in the U.S. are incorporating sustainability into their lives, and interviewing interesting people as they go.  From their home in Bloomington, Indiana  they will travel all the way to California.  Check out their blog here.

Photo Credit: Andy Davis

First Day of the Farmers Market

Today was the first day of the Oak Park Farmers Market, and we celebrated by buying early turnips, spinach, kale, and green onions.   The asparagus was also beautiful.  We ran into a friend, Bernell Loeb, who has put her wonderful art online, take a look.  We ran into other friends, which is the best part of the Farmers Market, after all.

William McDonough in Oak Park, IL

GreenSource has a short interview with William McDonough, the author of Cradle to Cradle and we (along with thirty other people) are going to have dinner with him tomorrow night right here in Oak Park, IL, where McDonough will keynote the Greentown Conference.   That's a lot of links for one sentence, and that's what will happen to you if you start reading McDonough and following his activities -- you'll start making links between how we consume things and how they are designed.   It seems fitting that McDonough, an architect, will be speaking here in Oak Park, the site of the first studio of that other architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.  And maybe it says that we are just a little over-immersed in this stuff when I confess that this dinner is my husband's 55th birthday present.

A good way to get an introduction to McDonough is through TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design.  This annual conference hosts the world's most fascinating people and charges them with using 18 minutes to give "the talk of their lives" -- then it shares the talks free on the web via the Creative Commons licensing agreement. 

    

   

New Green Resource Finder

Modern Green Living helps you find green architects, builders, remodelers, interior designers, realtors, and green building consultants by zip code -- perfect for green geezers looking for someone to help them do that green thang.  It seems to be just getting going....not a lot in our neck of the woods (Illinois) yet....

Try the Megabus Next Time

Megabus Logo
Originally uploaded by cgulyas2002

Comfortable, quick (three hours non-stop from Indianapolis to Chicago), and ONLY $22.00, the Megabus is steadily expanding its network in the U.S. after hopping the ocean from the U.K.  Since last fall this no-frills company (that's how they keep the prices so low) has finally installed a sign identifying WHERE the bust stop is!   Oh, joy!  But the buses are the real thing, comfy and clean, and it so nice to be able to read a book or sleep instead of nodding off to the sound of the droning highway as we drive....

Little Blog in the Big Woods

Just found a new blog called Little Blog in the Big Woods.  A self-described "GreenPa", this guy is really doing the green thing and has been for thirty years:

"58, kids from two marriages, currently with a 2 year old zooming around the house. The house is as advertised, a very small log cabin in the woods. Tiny. It's like living on a yacht; no closet space, which is maybe half of why #1 went away. I've been living "ultra" green for 30 years. Off the grid always, business too. Electricity from solar; and a little gas backup in winter. "

Check it out.

What is a Net-Zero Energy Home?

The Net-zero Energy Home Coalition in Canada offers this useful definition:

"A net-zero energy home (ZEH) at a minimum supplies to the grid an annual output of electricity that is equal to the amount of power purchased from the grid. In many cases the entire energy consumption (heating, cooling and electrical) of a net-zero energy home can be provided by renewable energy sources."

The Slow Home Movement

Many of my friends have been influenced by the Slow Food Movement which seeks to support sustainable food production and local/regional food traditions, while challenging the waste involved in the mass production of food.  Inspired by this movement, an architecture professor at the University of Calgary has launched Slow Home  It is full of videos, interviews, and designs of homes which value sustainability and challenge suburban home design, too much of which  is "too big, too cheap, too boring, too ugly, and too wasteful."  This month's special report focuses on the co-housing movement in Canada, and features an interview with the design firm Onion Flats, which is creating urban communities using the Philadelphia row house as a building block.