When I was a freshman in college, President Jimmy Carter, in a televised speech to the nation on April 18 1977, warned of rapidly increasing dependence on foreign oil and the resulting out-of-control trade imbalances and loss of freedom to act in foreign affairs. He declared the effort to respond to this threat “the moral [...]
I was turned on to the use of rain barrels and rain gardens by the Cannon River Watershed Partnership’s spring 2006 education/grant program supporting stormwater run-off reduction practices. I received a cost-share grant from CRWP to get a rain garden full of native species established in my front yard, was inspired to launch a crazy [...]
I’ve toiled in the energy vineyards since I did my first energy audit in St. Paul in the summer of 1984. I worked for several nonprofit organizations between then and 1991, doing energy conservation/efficiency work (residential and commercial energy audits for the general population, energy audits for the federally funded low-income weatherization program, neighborhood energy [...]
I was fortunate to connect yesterday with an interesting couple from Bloomington, Indiana who made a stop in Northfield. Andy Davis and Melissa Henige are in the midst of a cross-country bike tour from their hometown to San Francisco. Their trip is being documented on their website, Changing Gears: Shifting Into Sustainability. They describe [...]
No day is complete for me without bed-time reading. I like to keep my reading diverse: I’ll go on a fiction jag for awhile (I was introduced to TC Boyle a few years ago, for example, loved the first novel of his I read, and subsequently read all of his novels in short order), [...]