environment Gardening Personal: DIY Gardening sustainability vegetables
by Warren
4 comments
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
My Big Fat Garden Project
It’s Independence Day! And I’m just going to brag on my garden a little.
Our little household will never be able to get off the food grid entirely (can’t grow rice in the Boston suburbs! No room for the spaghetti trees!) but we’ve been getting better at it every year.
Let me describe our layout. We live on the side of a hill. 47 steps lead from street level to our front door. When we bought the house, the front yard was a very steep slope, covered with weeds and debris. There is a garage at street level, inset into the hill. When we bought the house, the garage had a peaked roof in wretched condition.
I started a garden four years ago. It took a lot of work. The weeds and debris had to go — and individual planting beds had to be made out of rock, rubble, and concrete. I mastered the technique of building a leaky stone structure (dig shallow ditch & fill with gravel; plop rocks and rubble on top of gravel; slap concrete on top of rocks and rubble; allow to dry; add more rocks and rubble; add more concrete; repeat until you’re at the height you want, then add soil) and at this point have fifteen or sixteen fully operational planting beds in my front yard.
My front yard during the off-season. Note the drip-irrigation hoses.
environment: Boston Herald economic justice economic recession economics
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 7, Day 4: Independence From What?
The Boston Herald ran an AP story noting that there was no increase in CO2 emissions in 2009, due to the worldwide economic slowdown. Well, that certainly links the good news and the bad news in an arresting way.
If increased greenhouse gas pollution is correlated with economic growth, there are two ways to interpret the news that worldwide recession has held atmospheric CO2 emissions steady for the first time since 1992. Either global warming is a welcome indicator of financial well-being, or our growth-fixated economy is literally killing the planet. Growth has its place. Rapid doubling of weight is healthy — if you’re a baby. For an adult? Not so much. With over six billion people living on a finite world, we need a new way of economic thinking that doesn’t require constant expansion to survive. “Growth for the sake of growth” brought us the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico; gutted our national economy to line the pockets of wealthy speculators; increased global warming emissions without thought to the consequences. It’s an economic idea that is actually destroying the place we live! For all our sakes, we’d better find another way.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan solar panels
by Warren
1 comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 7, Day 3: I’m Gonna Make Him An Offer He Can’t Refuse.
I mean it. If he does it, I’ll do it, too.
Dear President Obama —
I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. Your predecessor left things in a hell of a mess and you’ve got a lot of cleanup to do.
And it wasn’t just your immediate predecessor. Every Republican president since Reagan’s election has left a mess behind. So you’ve got thirty-year-old messes to clean up.
When Jimmy Carter was in office, his ideas about energy and the environment were far ahead of the conventional wisdom. A family friend, an elderly gentleman in his 80’s, told me, “When Carter put those solar collectors on the White House roof, I got inspired, and I made a solar water heater and put it on my roof. And that was thirty years ago and it’s still working just fine, and it’s saved us thousands of dollars.” Carter’s ideas may have been ahead of their time, but if we’d followed his example and his advice, we wouldn’t be in this predicament today, for we would no longer be dependent on oil and coal for our energy needs.
Of course, when Reagan took office, he immediately removed those solar panels. They’re probably in the White House basement somewhere.
I think it would be a nice gesture to put them back, don’t you? Or perhaps you could get some newer, more efficient panels. It would also be a nice gesture to invite President Carter to help with the re-installation. Maybe you’d pound a few nails yourself?
And it would be a really nice gesture to acknowledge that when it came to energy and the environment, Jimmy Carter had it right all along: we need clean, decentralized energy from multiple sources, and we urgently need to get off fossil fuels. If we had stopped our dependence on oil and coal back then, the world would not be reeling towards a climate crisis now.
Tell you what: you get solar panels up on your house, and I’ll get solar panels up on mine. Deal?
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
humor Personal Politics: Richard Nixon
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
A Message From Tricky Dick
As far as I can figure out, my maternal grandparents must have written to Nixon, telling him they supported the war. He sent back this postcard, which they kept. At some point it fell into my hands, whereupon it disappeared for decades. A recent digitization push has brought it to light again…and now it’s readily available on the Intertubes.
environment: climate change Michael Mann newsweek Penn State
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 7, Day 2: All The Specious Equivalence That’s Fit To Print
Newsweek has treated climatologist Michael Mann pretty shamefully. After Penn State’s Inquiry Panel completely exonerated Mann, Newsweek finally printed a pathetic excuse for a retraction, without acknowledging their own part in defaming his reputation.
It would be great to have actual journalism in this country, wouldn’t it?
It isn’t just the newspapers that have to retract their misleading reports about climatologist Michael Mann, whose work was unfairly maligned and misrepresented. Newsweek itself, which accused Mann and his colleagues of “massaging” their data, has some apologies to make and a retraction or two to print. Newsweek’s earlier articles on the “climategate” non-scandal were factually flawed, riddled with omissions and decontextualizations, and written carelessly and sloppily. So-called “journalism” of that standard is more appropriate for the celebrity beat; when reporting on science, it should be the first thought of a responsible news writer to make sure the truth is conveyed accurately. By hewing instead to a policy of spurious equivalence, where a fact from a scientist is “balanced” with a lie from an industry-funded spokesperson, Newsweek has helped damage the reputation of a man whose work on the science of climate change is (as PSU’s Investigatory Committee stated this week) beyond reproach. Michael Mann has been working to help all of us understand the facts of global warming, the greatest existential threat humans have ever faced. Newsweek has been obscuring the facts and aiding the forces of denial. We are all diminished by such irresponsibility.
Warren Senders
India Indian music Jazz music Warren's music: Ajit Soman Antigravity Ashish Manchanda Atul Keskar Indo-Jazz Ramakant Paranjpe Sudhir Parkhi Vijaya Sundaram
by Warren
4 comments
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Antigravity — The Indian Group, 1990-1991
Here are the pieces which make up the first Antigravity CD, released as “Antigravity — The Music of Warren Senders” (Accurate AC-4307), along with scans of the complete CD booklet & tray card. These were recorded at Ishwani Kendra Studios in Pune in 1990 and 1991.
This has been out of print for years. I only have a few mint copies left.
more »