Which came first, the technocentric parent or her plugged-in child? During a recent holiday debriefing with a friend, I learned that a colleague of hers was feeling guilty because she and her husband were unable to afford an iPad for their daughter. Nodding and sipping tea, I was vaguely sympathizing while trying on the [...]
Stuff to read, stuff to give to others to read—let’s hope for a few moments of peace to enjoy a book during the holiday season, and then stretch that peace as far into winter as we can. One woman spent an entire year reading a different book every day. At the end of the year, [...]
Editor’s Note: If the world’s determination to save the imperiled mountain gorillas succeeds, it will be a sustainability success story—what the International Gorilla Conservation Programme refers to as “integrated efforts in enterprise, environment, and equity” based on ecotourism-funded community development work. Ecotourism, which offers economic development options beyond subsistence slash-and-burn agriculture, is generally considered to [...]
For me, an equivalent to the Pali Canon of Indian Buddhism is a canon of teachings in English that inquires into the human relationship to land. Of course, there’s always the traditional Buddhist lineage in which the Buddha mind is passed from teacher to student. This passing of Buddha mind is actually an acknowledgement of [...]
In An Era of Tight Budgets and Other Limits, Small Looks More and More Beautiful Once Jay Shafer gets done explaining the virtues of tiny houses, you feel embarrassed living anyplace larger than, say, an obscenely spacious 500 square feet. A key reason to live small – or at least much, much smaller – is [...]
All types of snazzy technologies are available these days to make buildings greener: automated shades, electrochromic windows that know when to tint, intelligent lighting controls and smart cooling and heating systems, to name just a few. But how do these components work with each other and with building occupants? What happens when more than one [...]
Cal-Organic. Earthbound Farms. Driscoll’s Berries. I often wonder whether the ears of folks involved in California agriculture are perpetually burning from the intensity of Vermont coffee-shop debate over the environmental, ethical, and economic value of left-coast commercial organic produce. Our sparsely-populated, Green Mountain-rippled little state has the highest density of farmers’ markets and micro-brewers and [...]
Bird watcher, naturalist, and busily retired American Studies professor from the University of California, Davis, David Wilson has been a solid citizen of Chico and environs for more than two decades now. He is currently at work on a collection of essays, poems, maps, and sketches that chronicle his journey from Minnesota boyhood to a [...]
In Fall There is a faint rustling at the top of the pines—just a teasing promise of winter rains to come. The September days are still hot in the mountains, but you can see that the season is about to turn. The green grass of early summer (wild oats, timothy, red clover) is browning. Now, [...]
© Up the Road 2011
Can Electric Cars Help Us Stop Paying Through the Hose?
Part 1: Considering the Electric Car Gasoline-powered cars stink. Just ask Chuck Alldrin. That’s no philosophical or political judgment. It’s simply an observation. It wasn’t until Alldrin started driving electric cars that he noticed how bad other cars smell. “You just don’t think of it,” he says. “You don’t notice that the car in front [...]