Catch the Wind Harness the Sun

This is an excellent children's book by Michael J. Caduto. It's written with lots of pictures and projects elementary science classes could do. Early in the book, the author outlines a plan for children to have a day without electricity. Global warming hot spots are listed. Nothing is too small to make a difference, and Caduto lists many energy-saving tips.

Illogical Design Costs Us Big Time

Most illogical," a favorite saying of Star Trek's Mr. Spock, blared from my instant-on, remote-controlled television with electronic tuning. It was illogical, all right. According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, even when "off," my TV and others like it use more than 1/750th of U.S. electrical power. That's equivalent to the output of one coal or nuclear power plant, just to keep TVs ready for action when we're not using them. Idle TVs and VCRs alone cost us $1 billion a year, or $30 per household.

"Disposable diapers," answered my sister when I asked what to get for her new infant. Two hours on the baby and hundreds of years in the landfill – this is convenient, but also illogical.

According to David Wann, former policy analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency in Colorado, we don't need more environmental scare stories. What we need is to use our experience and imagination for new solutions. In his 1994 book, "Biologic," Wann says appropriate design simplifies our lives, while inappropriate design adds more stress. (Wann is now an adjunct professor, video producer, and public speaker, as well as author of "Deep Design: Pathways to a Livable Future" and "Affluenza," based on the PBS series of the same name.)

What is inappropriate design? It ignores the law of nature -- and the consequences. It is responsible for most of our environmental problems. It reaches into every aspect of our lives -- lawnmowers, throwaway products, and communities without bike paths. Poorly designed manufacturing processes discharge toxic waste into rivers and air.

On a grander scale, a petroleum-subsidized, poor-design spree created suburban sprawl, killed inner cities, dismantled mass transit systems and generated freeway gridlock. Cheap fuel, plus advertising hype, spawned bigger vehicles, bigger houses, bigger mortgages and bigger stress on families. As Winston Churchill noted, "First we shape our buildings, then our buildings shape us."

Are we really better off now than before?

Like the lumberjack too busy chopping wood to sharpen his dull ax, quick-hit consumption may seem convenient now but is not effective in the long-term. Threats of pollution, stress, cancer and lowered immune response lurk in the shadows.

So what is good design? Wann defines it as "bio-logic," an awareness of the processes of nature. For instance, during a summer class for earth-science teachers, I did an experiment marking the position of the sun on a small plastic dome. I discovered that the sun travels across the sky at a low angle in the winter and a high angle in the summer. This had tremendous applications for home design, I felt.

Seven years later, my husband and I built a passive solar home in Kansas using this knowledge. A two-foot overhang on the south side kept out hot summer rays, while lower-angled, direct rays of December sunshine reached 20 feet inside on our brick floor, dramatically reducing our utility bills. (Feng shui, the ancient Chinese art of living in harmony with your environment in order to enhance health, wealth, and happiness, promoted passive solar design 4,500 years ago.)

Understanding how nature works adds texture and meaning to our lives. It's also necessary to produce careful, thoughtful design. "We need," Wann says, "houses that face the sun, chemicals that decompose when their useful life is through, products specifically designed for multiple lifetimes, energy-efficient components in our appliances and industrial equipment, and transportation systems that really work."

Good design improves the quality of life. Even with Arkansas’ hot, humid summers, correct siting of homes to take advantage of natural heating and ventilation can dramatically cut utility bills.

Natural cross-ventilation dilutes the petrochemical fog outgassing from carpet, paint, plastics, pesticides, perfumes and modern building materials. The EPA calls home air quality one of the biggest ecological hazards in America. Staying indoors in tightly sealed, insulated homes may threaten more lives than toxic waste dumps. Wann and other forecast a demand for housing that is healthy as well as energy efficient.

We need more creative patterns. A friend who visited the Czech Republic commented on the compact cities and villages there. Being able to walk a short distance to work, shopping areas, museums, sports events and open-air concerts made cars unnecessary. What bliss to live, work and shop all in the same neighborhood!

We've sought convenience over sensibility for so long that our ability to think of creative solutions has been dulled. While teaching middle school science I used a film called "The Garbage Explosion." Students frequently begged me to run the projector backward at the end. Seeing garbage jump out of the dump back into the trucks fascinated them.
Let's make it happen in real life.

Here’s a link to an article on walkable communities:
http://www.walkable.org/assets/downloads/Aging%20and%20Age%20Independent%20Communities.ppt#981

I wrote this article 15 years ago for the Cleveland Plain Dealer Op-Ed page. Not much has improved!

Passionflowers

A few years ago in North Carolina, while mowing the part of our yard next to an overgrown vacant lot, my husband discovered a small vine with a very exotic flower. He carefully trimmed around it, and it grew larger and produced green fruit about the size of a chicken's egg.

Over the next three years, the vine popped up in new places on that side of the yard. Because the foliage and flowers were so distinctive, he let them grow. At a local nursery, I saw the same vine for sale in a large trellised planter. The name: passionflower --also known as maypop or the purple passionflower.

More research revealed that maypops are a common roadside weed in the Southeast United States, common because they spread by underground runners, which "pop up" in May, hence the name.

Early Spanish explorers were impressed by the plant blossoms, which to them symbolized the nails, the hammer, and the crown of thorns of the passion of Christ in a correct numerical relationship. They took the plant back to Europe and gave it a scientific name representing Christ's crucifixion -- Passiflora incarnata. In Japan, it's called the "clock" plant because the blossom looks like a clock face.

It turns out that there are more than 600 varieties of passionflower, mostly in tropical rainforest areas of South America and Africa. A Brazilian variety produces a fruit called the purple grenadilla that is widely sold and eaten. Its juice has a calming effect on hyperactive children. In Romania, an extract from another type of passionflower plant is used in chewing gum used for soothing nervous jitters.

For centuries, Indians have used passionflower tea as a sedative or calming tonic. Leaves from the common local variety have been used to treat coughs, stress, anxiety, and insomnia.

Could passionflower be a new cash crop for small farmers? In British Columbia, Canada, the vines are organically grown for sale to the herbal remedy market, bringing a price of $10 to $15 per pound for certified organic dried leaves. Seeds of Passiflora incarnata sell for 40 cents per individual seed on some Web sites.

The vine can get up to 20 feet long and has attractive leaves, flowers and fruit. It blooms from July until frost, and the fruit turns yellow when ripe. Break one of the fruits open and you will see a multitude of seeds in a yellow gelatinous pulp. It has a pleasant smell and can be mixed with sugar and water to make drinks, jam or jelly. It also makes a fine houseplant, requiring bright light but not full sun.

The passionflower is an important host plant (food source) for several butterfly species and their larvae. Seeds planted in early spring may take a month to germinate, but plants should flower in the first year. Cuttings taken in June root easily if kept watered. Flowers bloom on new growth, so older vines benefit from pruning while the plant is dormant.

Now that we live in Arkansas, I’ve seen the vine on roadsides growing among honeysuckles. It distinctive leaves and flowers make it easy to identify. Try some in your flower garden, and the butterflies will be grateful.

Simple Cheap Heat

A science experiment during a summer class for schoolteachers led to an "aha" moment that has changed my life. Most of us are too busy to notice what I learned: that the sun travels on a low-altitude path in the winter and a high path in the summer. So what?

Using this ancient wisdom from the past, you can drastically cut your heating and cooling costs without weird gadgets and stuff on your roof. It's a secret, though. If the word got out, certain houses would be very difficult to sell, while others would skyrocket in price.

What's the secret? Passive solar design. No, this doesn't mean odd-looking houses with too many windows, or expensive contraptions that nobody understands. It involves simply facing the long side of the house south, having minimal windows on the east, west, and north, and using good insulation. Ancient Greek cities were full of similar houses thousands of years ago.

Can something so simple really make a difference? Yes! When we had a big ice storm and power outage in the Carolinas a few years ago, sunshine streaming in from our windows on the south made our house nice and cozy while others struggled to fill their kerosene heaters. At night, we closed thick curtains to keep the heat inside.

Choosing between a cold, dark house with high utility bills and a warm sunny one with low bills shouldn't be so difficult, but there are several obstacles. First, there are very few of these good homes on the market. Checking the house orientation with a compass, my husband and I looked at more than fifty homes before buying our present one. Realtors claimed to have never heard of passive solar orientation.

Second, homebuilders still put up oversized McMansions instead of smaller, smarter houses like these. We think we need bigger houses as a status symbol and to hold all our stuff, but with rising interest rates and enormous utility bills, this trend could grind to a halt for all except the rich.

Third, older homes built during cheap energy times are hard to retrofit, and will be abandoned like gas-guzzling cars if home heating bills continue to escalate. Some energy saving strategies can only be implemented during the construction process. For instance, slab foundation homes are much warmer with below grade and perimeter insulation. Windows need good caulking and sealing with insulation before the sheetrock is installed. To retrofit these homes would require tearing out the insides of the home and rebuilding.

Public perception is another problem. Early solar home designs were too extreme for easy resale. My husband and I built a "direct gain" home in 1979, with 34 windows on the south, and enjoyed living there almost 10 years. We loved how the low-angled, hot winter sunshine reached at least 10 feet inside on our brick floor when temperatures were below zero in the harsh Kansas climate. After a job transfer, it was on the market three years. Our pleasant home finally sold for $30,000 less than it cost.

The next home we built 20 years later was a small ranch style with 2x6 walls loaded with insulation and low-e double-paned windows, mostly on the south side. When we moved, it sold in one month despite a very poor real estate market in that area.

Affordable, conventional appearance, efficient windows and superinsulation are the future of passive solar design if it is to become more widely accepted. Taking advantage of free sunshine during the winter and using better insulation and window coverings can lower heating bills. With the popularity of mobile homes, maybe we should start by taking the simple step of making sure they all face the right direction.

Nature Connections Vital

My parents used to tell me to go outside and play, but nowadays children are playing indoors more than ever.

Computers, television and video games, plus the fear of perverts and threats like skin cancer, Lyme disease and West Nile virus have drastically curtailed children's access to nature.

What happens when children lose their connection to nature? A 2002 British study reported that 8-year-olds could identify Pokemon characters far more easily than they could name "otter, beetle and oak tree." An awareness of and appreciation for the natural world is turning out to be more important for children than we thought.

Today's kids are increasingly disconnected from the natural world, says child advocacy expert Richard Louv, even as research shows that "thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can ... be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorder and other maladies." Louv is the author of the new book, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder."

New research shows that getting outside and interacting with nature can offer powerful therapy for such maladies as depression, obesity and attention deficit disorder. Environment-based education is thought to stimulate creativity, improve test scores and develop problem solving skills.

How did we get so disconnected from nature? Blame it on the media, which overwhelms us with horror stories on the nightly news. Louv talks about the mythical "stranger danger" missing children issue, pointing out that about 200 incidents a year happen, about the same as before the whole media frenzy on missing children began.

Children are being scared away from playing in the woods, walking to school or biking alone in their neighborhood. Terrified parents are just trying to protect their children, but in the process, nature deprivation is wreaking havoc on physical and psychological wellbeing.

"I like to play indoors better 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are," reports a fourth-grader.

For 10 years, Louv traveled across the country interviewing children and parents in urban and rural neighborhoods about their experiences in nature.

Children study the Amazon rain forest in school, but don't know names of plants in their own backyards. Nature has become an abstract subject instead of a multisensory experience.

Gathering thoughts from parents, teachers, researchers, environmentalists and other concerned parties, Louv argues for a future in which parents help their kids experience the natural world more deeply -- and find the joy of family connectedness in the process.

In "Last Child in the Woods," Louv talks with parents, children, teachers, scientists, religious leaders, child-development researchers and environmentalists who recognize the threat and offer solutions. Louv shows us an alternative future, one in which parents help their kids experience the natural world more deeply -- and strengthen family ties during the process.

Richard Louv has been a columnist and member of the advisory board for Parents magazine and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor. He is an adviser to the Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World award program and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. He founded Connect for Kids, the largest child advocacy Web site. He writes a column for the San Diego Union-Tribune and is the author of six other books about family, nature and community.

Purple Coneflower

After living in Kansas almost ten years, I learned to love the tallgrass prairie and its perennial wildflowers. Millions of buffalo once roamed these prairies, grazing on grasses and flowers almost tall as a man. One of these native prairie plants, the purple coneflower, has been successfully exported to North Carolina.

With the appearance of a large, magenta-pink daisy with an orange-red center, purple coneflowers are not really purple. They have long-stemmed blossoms and lance-shaped, dark green leaves. Long-lasting as cut flowers, the center cones look good in arrangements even when the petals fall off.

Beautiful yet resilient, the coneflower is easy to grow from seeds or root divisions. I started mine from seed saved from my original plants in Kansas. Being a prairie native, it is also drought resistant, making it ideal for low-maintenance flower gardens. Attractive to wildlife like butterflies and bees which feed on nectar from the daisy-like flowers, small birds also enjoy feasting on the mature seedheads.

Native Americans used the dried roots of coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, for medicinal purposes, and now echinacea has once again become a popular ingredient in over-the-counter cold and flu remedies.

Reaching three to five feet tall, coneflowers do well in sun to partial shade in well-drained soil. In the fall, the tops of these perennials will die down to the ground, while the root system persists through the winter. In the spring the plant grows a new top from it roots, and this is the best time to divide a clump of coneflowers.

Compared to some perennials, which flower for only a few weeks each year, coneflowers are hardy perennials which can bloom from May until frost. They are ideal as tall background plants in a perennial border next to a fence or hedge, in a butterfly garden, or as the center in an island bed surrounded by shorter plants. If you are planning a perennial border, space coneflowers 18 to 24 inches apart. They look nice with companions like black-eyed susan, coreopsis, Shasta daisies, salvias, butterfly bush, lantana, or purple fountain grass.

When deadheading the flowers, cut entire flower stems right back to the main growing part. Dried seedheads are also attractive left on the plant. Be patient: more flowers are produced the second and third years.
Periods of standing water on the soil are damaging to perennials both in summer and winter. In heavy soils, add liberal amounts of organic matter to ensure good internal soil drainage. If external drainage is poor, consider raised beds.

Maintain a good fertilizer program from spring to fall, heaviest during the flowering period. Use a formula high in Phosphorus or a Bloom Booster, every two weeks. Shorter varieties, as well as white and yellow coneflowers, are now available. Some of them are even more drought tolerant than the original prairie wildflower.

Baby Boomers on the edge of a cliff

How do you make retirement decisions in this economy? Do we dare consider doing without a regular paycheck?

Cohousing: Thinking out of the box

"Cohousing? Is that like a commune?" my friend asked. Like her, I grew up in the 1960's when communes were in the news. Both are ways to "think out of the box," with the box being the family home. Unlike communes, however, residents of cohousing own their own private homes and lots.

What is cohousing? Borrowed from Denmark, it is an innovative approach that fosters a truly cooperative, more sustainable community. Cohousing communities are springing up all over, with houses clustered together and connected by pedestrian pathways with a Common House often in the middle. Roads skirt around the edges, creating a central green space for kids. In some communities dinner is available at the Common House two or three nights per week.

David Wann, environmentalist and co-author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, began researching better design for communities in 1993. He helped design and build the cohousing village in which he now lives, Harmony Village in Golden, Colorado. In a recent phone interview, I asked him how this concept works.

"Because I work at home, walk to stores for exercise, and have friends and recreation (in the form of a large garden) right in my n I've had to borrow my neighbor's battery charger several times recently, because I'm not driving enough to recharge my car's battery. A few basic changes in my daily routine have saved me a lot of money on gas, parking, food, medical bills, insurance premiums, and other expenses, not to mention a lot of stress on the highways. Focusing on things in common creates a "we," not a "me," Wann says.

"Harmony Village has 27 households, with only three families moving out in seven years, not a high turnover. There is age diversity because it's better to mix up the ages. Heated issues for community discussion have been clotheslines, a big screen television for the community house, pesticide use on the community garden, and whether to buy water rights for irrigation. Conflict isn't scary. We find alternatives that make everyone happy."

Wann says he is an introvert who can be a hermit when he wants, but he also enjoys the common meals every week and a half. "Common meals are a great way to entertain guests and not cook." He's on the cooking team every two months and believes in simple, fresh food, much of which is grown in the community garden.

Sustainable Neighborhoods

Most of us will never live in a cohousing community, but we can still enrich our lives by making a few changes. Wann's upcoming book is Superbia! 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods. Co-authored with Dan Chiras, who lives "off the grid," this new book is about principles of cohousing applied to regular neighborhoods.

"The first step to creating a more efficient, friendly community is to get to know your neighbors,” Wann says. “Set up a neighborhood watch, have potluck dinners, start a community garden and a community bank account. Buy up an empty house in the neighborhood for a community house. Look at examples like Village Homes in Davis, Calif., a predecessor of cohousing and a good example of ‘superbia.

“We need to be wise with resources," Wann says. "Unite to approach city government for a pocket park to preserve land in the area." Urban sprawl has doubled the size of metro areas like Kansas City, Atlanta and Las Vegas in just the past few years. Besides making us more inactive, more obese, and more susceptible to chronic diseases like adult-onset diabetes, modern suburban design wreaks havoc on the environment and hits our pocketbooks in ways we don't realize.

Before you consider that beautiful new house in the outer suburbs, check out more than the price tag. Being unable to walk to shopping, school, recreation, or work may have hidden health costs. More time spent in the car means less time spent walking. Let's tune up our neighborhoods for a healthier environment.

These websites have more information.
http://www.terrain.org/articles/13/superbia.htm
http://www.ic.org/nica/Cohousing/Groups1.htm
http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/Articles/199015.htm
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC21/McCamant.htm

*** Shirley Fetherolf has built two passive solar homes, taught in public schools and colleges since 1970, and also worked as a reference librarian.