by Kim Weir

One scene in Chris Paine’s film The Revenge of the Electric Car  is worth the price of admission.

The occasion is the big spring New York International Auto Show. Paine, behind the camera, is chatting up Elon Musk, CEO of the upstart Silicon Valley electric car company Tesla Motors. Serial entrepreneur Musk has ruffled the feathers of auto industry pros by betting his entire PayPal fortune that he can beat them at their own game.

Into his reverie wanders legendary General Motors “car guy” Bob Lutz, Detroit daddy of the Pontiac GTO, Chevy Camaro, Cadillac Escalade, and Hummer, but also officially responsible for pulling the plug on GM’s innovative EV1 all-electric vehicle. The EV1’s traumatic corporate death was the subject of the filmmaker’s 2006 Who Killed the Electric Car? But in Revenge, the sequel, Lutz is one of the good guys, the film’s most unlikely hero—a man using his considerable political capital inside GM to make sure the Chevy Volt makes it into production. Lutz’s change of heart is not because he was wounded by all the “you-killed-my-grandchildren-may-you-rot-in-hell” emails he received after he killed the EV1, though the fact that he even mentions his hate mail reminds us of his humanity. No, Lutz is a good businessman, and cars are his business. He has built his career on knowing what Americans want to buy before they know it themselves. It was Lutz who insisted that GM unveil the Chevy Volt at the company’s 100th anniversary party. He has risked his entire legacy at GM on the Volt, betting it will be a commercially viable plug-in electric car.

Together Musk and Lutz, the vocal industry rebel strolling alongside the consummate insider, glad-hand their way through the New York auto show. Suddenly they come upon the all-electric Nissan Leaf—the well-designed cool blue sedan-style electric vehicle (EV) that gets more than 100 miles per battery charge. Their virtual silence is instructive. Both are clearly impressed as they study the exhibit. This car comes from Nissan CEO and President Carlos Ghosn, who has bet the company’s fortunes (some say very existence) on electric vehicles.

Greg “Gadget” Abbott is a talented shade-tree mechanic determined to demonstrate how almost any car can be transformed into a plug-in EV. Abbott is the one “star” of Revenge who doesn’t have a pony in the corporate contest. But he has is also a gambler. He has staked everything he owns on his own plug-in electric projects—custom EV conversions including a Triumph Spitfire, a Camaro, and a Porsche. Experimenting with battery configurations, Abbott needs to build cars that consistently get 100 miles or more per electrical charge, the mileage range that meets the daily needs of most U.S. drivers. The magnitude of his personal risk is all too clear when a massive fire incinerates his cars and his uninsured tools and shop.

What is so compelling about electric cars that makes otherwise sane people risk so much on their behalf? Why do naysayers still scoff? And why should the rest of us care?

As California Goes, So Goes the Nation

By 2025 at least one of every seven cars sold in California will run on electricity—just one goal of new policies adopted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) but a powerful national and international boost for electrical vehicle manufacturers.

In Chris Paine’s Who Killed the Electric Car? the California Air Resources Board (CARB) was portrayed as one of the bad guys—accused of gutting its own early zero emission vehicle (ZEV) standards at the behest of the auto industry and the hydrogen fuel cell lobby. (See last issue’s sidebar Who Did Kill the Early EVs? for a political recap.) But CARB was wearing a white hat again by January 2012 when The Bay Citizen and other media announced California’s new vehicle emission standards.

Starting with the 2017 model year California’s Advanced Clean Cars program begins to go into effect, gradually increasing the number of zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) of all stripes and phasing-in other emission standards. When the rules are fully implemented in 2025 all new cars in California will emit one-third fewer global warming gases than they do now and 75 percent fewer smog-supporting emissions. Consumer fuel savings are expected to average $6,000 over a vehicle’s lifetime—more than offsetting the projected average car price increase of $1,900.

Like so many car standards adopted by California—which, by virtue of its huge population, can essentially dictate terms to the auto industry—many other states will probably also adopt these stricter standards.

Why Doubters Still Doubt

Change is hard. Most of us don’t like it, and go to great lengths to keep things just as they are for as long as possible.

Concerns about how easily and quickly you can recharge a plug-in electric vehicle turns out to be one key reservation. Sure, with most EVs it’s easy to plug in at home—with most cars you can use a standard 110-volt outlet, though there are faster charging 220-volt options too—but what about while at work, darting around town, and heading out on the open road? Commercial and public charging stations are on the way but aren’t widely available just yet.

The high cost of electric car batteries is another worry. Battery quality is also a concern—as well as battery range, or how far you can drive a plug-in before needing a recharge, the power equivalent of filling a gas tank.

Overall out-of-pocket cost is another issue keeping electric vehicles out of the auto industry mainstream, the high sticker price largely due to steep battery costs. The battery outlay for plug-in EVs adds up to about one-fourth—25 percent—of their total cost. For plug-in gas-electric hybrids like the Chevy Volt the battery cost is even higher, given the greater power-to-energy performance required.

The advent of lithium-ion batteries suitable for powering cars is slowly changing things, even—at least temporarily—putting some downward pressure on prices. As has been true with almost every other technological change, coming technological improvements will probably drop costs and improve performance too.

The MIT-published Technology Review reported in February 2011 that even better batteries are already on the way thanks to Envia Systems, a California-based startup that has developed a new manganese-based battery cathode that allows EV batteries to store twice as much power.

Battery quality is also steadily improving otherwise. GizMag.com reported in December 2008 of Southern California Edison’s success in achieving EV battery life of more than 180,000 miles without significant performance deterioration, or at least 10 years of trouble-free battery life—more than enough to meet the needs of most American families.

Then there’s lithium-ion auto battery safety, a concern loudly pondered by U.S. media in 2011 after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into post-crash electrical fires in Chevrolet Volts after an accident-damaged battery caught fire three weeks after a government crash test. But as Joann Muller reported on Forbes.com in January 2012, EV batteries are safe.

What’s Right with Electric Cars

People who love plug-in electric cars are passionate about them and their prospects for saving us from our excesses. The actor Danny DeVito shares this absolute enthusiasm.

Early in Revenge of the Electric Car DeVito describes his grief when General Motors took away his EV1. He and others drove the experimental cars to assist with their ongoing evaluation, but GM still owned them all. “First of all,” he says, “it was the coolest car I ever had.” DeVito was crushed when the confiscated EV1s were literally crushed and electric vehicles in general were left for dead.

Interest in EVs is clearly increasing, that fact being the occasion for Revenge of the Electric Car. At film’s end DeVito takes the new Chevy Volt for a test drive. The Volt doesn’t disappoint. DeVito is sold: “That’s the most solid Chevy I ever drove in my life, seriously!” But his decade-old disappointment is still alive. “You’re not going to take this one away from me, are you?” he asks his driving companion, a GM employee.

The Chevy Volt and similar cars may be the ideal plug-ins for people who are sure they won’t like EVs. The Volt’s appeal comes partly from the fact that it’s not really a plug-in electric. As even GM explains, it’s actually an “extended range” gas-electric hybrid. The Volt has a plug-in electric battery that can go 25 to 50 miles (the distance depending on driving conditions) before it needs recharging. But because it’s also a hybrid, if you keep driving instead or stopping to recharge the gas-powered engine automatically kicks in to power the battery—and car—for up to 300 miles. The new Prius Plug-in is similar, though the range is much lower. In short, Volt and Prius Plug-In drivers never need to worry about how near or far an electrical outlet may be.

By definition true electric cars are powered by electric motors instead of gas engines, as HybridCars.com explains. An electric vehicle’s power is regulated by its onboard controller, which is in turn controlled by the car’s accelerator pedal. The considerable energy needed to propel EVs is stored inside powerful rechargeable batteries—now most commonly lithium-ion batteries similar to those used in laptop computers and cell phones—which are replenished with electricity.

The benefits of plug-in electric cars are fairly obvious. They can help reduce our national dependency on oil, because they don’t need gasoline or oil to run. Without internal combustion engines EVs don’t produce tailpipe pollutants—although, unless an EV is recharged from solar or other clean energy source, their emissions are moved “upstream” to a utility company’s power generation site. But because they are so efficient, even when powered by “dirty” electricity from a coal smokestack EVs help reduce the vehicular carbon footprint. And as the electrical grid gets “cleaner”—producing power from cleaner, greener sources—electric cars get greener too.

With a plug-in electrical vehicle you’ll never (or rarely, in the case of the Volt and Prius Plug-In) need to go to a gas station to fuel up. Just plug your car in when you get home, and/or when you get to work. The per-mile energy savings is substantial. And if you recharge your vehicle at night, during off-peak hours when energy rates are lowest, you can drop your fuel-equivalent cost even more.

Of course in the longer term, as oil supplies diminish and prices shoot up, plug-in EVs will be more affordable than gas-powered cars. Some observers say we are almost at that tipping point already, once you factor in the savings from low EV maintenance costs. With no moving engine parts to replace and no need for oil changes or emission checks, EVs need very little care—and they are fast and fun to drive, with amazing zero-to-60 mph acceleration.

Suddenly there are plenty of electric cars to choose from. See Plug in America.com, HybridCars.com, and PlugInCars.com to see what’s coming and what’s already available, from the affordable Nissan Leaf sedan and the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt to the pricey Bay Area-based Tesla Roadster sports car. Toyota Prius Plug-In has finally arrived and is selling quite well despite the fact that its all-electric range is disappointing—testament, perhaps, to the power of slow but steady brand-building. Coming soon: the Honda Fit EV, initially available only for lease in both California and Oregon.

Lesser known options include mainstream newcomers such as the new Ford Focus EV, the plug-in version of the Ford Fusion Hybrid, and the all-electric Chevy Spark EV GM plans to debut in 2013 or 2014. And yep, plug-in SUVs are coming soon too.

Another American car—“semi-manufactured” in Southern California from Chinese components—is the Coda sedan. China may yet become a plug-in-electric contender. Savvy investor Warren Buffet is betting that China’s BYD (“Build Your Dreams”) e6 crossover wagon, with a reported range of 200 to 250 miles and a top speed of 100 mph, may be the EV that makes them mainstream. According to the company you can plug the e6 into a standard 110-volt household outlet for 10 minutes and4515++9harge the batteries to 50 percent capacity, or 15 minutes to reach an 80-percent charge. So far, however, even with an army of engineers BYD hasn’t delivered on its impressive promises.

Despite doubts and nay saying about electric cars, many in the industry believe that their time has come. As one commentator observes in Revenge of the Electric Car, all that’s needed for the success of electric vehicles is time—time for the price of gas to continue climbing and the cost of vehicle batteries to keep dropping, changes that improve cost-benefit calculations.

Time may also change most people’s personal perspectives on cars. After all, in a world increasingly concerned about the effects of climate change, a plug-in EV is the only car that gets “cleaner” the longer you own it, given the expectation that over time the power grid will rely more on renewable energy sources.

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 of you stinks, because your own car does too.”

It’s early autumn in Chico, a breezy blur of green lawns, brassy leaves, and cool blue sky. Alldrin is at the wheel of his all-electric 2002 Toyota RAV4 EV and we’re joyriding down West Lindo. He taps the “gas” and the silver Toyota zips down an open stretch. Alldrin backs off and the car whispers around the tight turns, as stealthy, sure, and silent as a cat.

The low hum of rubber on road is the only sound the car makes—because there is no engine, only a controller (“the silver black box”) and big-time nickel metal hydride batteries for storing electricity that are tucked away in the chassis. There are virtually no moving parts, other than wheels, windshield wipers, and brakes. Aside from occasionally checking wiper and brake fluid, the owner’s manual recommends rotating the tires every 6,000 miles. Maintaining a vehicle doesn’t get much simpler than that. As for the batteries, they’re designed to last 150,000 to 200,000 miles, in many cases the entire life of the car.

It makes sense that Chuck Alldrin would end up owning a total of five electric vehicles, or EVs, including the Chevy Volt he bought just last year. (His first electric car, no longer in the family, was an antique Fiat 600 he converted to electricity himself and kept running until he could no longer find basic parts.) Given his forward-looking tendencies, his wife Peggy often says he was born 20 years ahead of his time. Depending on how you count, though, Chuck Alldrin may actually have been born about 50 years too soon. Not that he’s complaining either way.

“I’m always thinking outside the box,” he says. “The worst thing you can say to me is ‘You can’t do that.’ There are so many ways of doing things. And it’s rewarding to see so many of the things I’ve done now starting to become mainstream.”

Educated in aeronautics and electronics, Alldrin has worked variously as a commercial pilot, flight instructor, airline mechanic, and crop duster. In the 1960s and 1970s alternative energy in all its forms captured his imagination, which led Alldrin, now semi-retired, to establish his own solar installation business, Energy Alternatives.

Chuck Alldrin’s home and workshop are solar-powered, of course, and he also powers his electric cars from the sun’s energy. “With electric cars, you can actually make your own fuel,” he points out. “You just can’t do that with gas-powered cars.”

The Miracle of Electric Cars

Alldrin is happy to share his enthusiasm for what he considers intelligent technology. When the documentary film Who Killed the Electric Car? was screened at the Pageant Theatre in Chico a few years ago, Alldrin and his friend Tom Dowling of Folsom parked their Toyota RAV4 EVs out front to demonstrate first-hand the simple genius of EVs, the cars the oil companies and automakers didn’t want Americans to have.

Carmakers, oil companies, and even politicians are changing their tune when it comes to electric vehicles, but things were quite different even a few years ago, when Who Killed the Electric Car? debuted.

That EVs even exist in America is almost a miracle, the film points out, because General Motors and other car companies made a concerted effort to destroy them, and to quash public demand for viable technologies. (See Who Did Kill the Early EVs? for some of the shocking details.) With the end of the oil economy clearly coming fast, proponents of electric cars point out that the essential infrastructure—roads, highways, and the electric power grid—already exist. Yet until quite recently the political winds were pushing hydrogen-powered vehicles, which are considerably less fuel efficient and assume hydrogen generating and storage technologies that don’t yet exist.

All things considered, it’s also something of a miracle that Chuck Alldrin has his Toyota RAV4 EV.

In 2002, after General Motors recalled all of its leased EV1 electric vehicle prototypes and crushed them, Alldrin and other members of the Electric Auto Association heard through the electric-vehicle grapevine that Toyota was willing to sell some of its electric RAV4s, also previously made available to the public only by lease.

In November 2002 Alldrin test-drove a dealer demo in Davis with just 104 miles on it. As a used car it was priced at $43,000 ($33,000 after rebate), and he debated whether to buy it or wait for the 2003 model. In the end he decided “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and bought the 2002 model.

That turned out to be a smart move. Just three weeks later, Toyota announced its decision to stop producing the electric car altogether. Only 340 all-electric RAV4 EVs are privately owned today, and one of them is Chuck Alldrin’s.

Charge Me Up

Before he bought his Chevy Volt, Chuck Alldrin didn’t hesitate to tell you that the all-electric RAV4 was the best car he’s ever owned. It’s powerful, reliable, energy efficient, virtually nonpolluting, and has a range of about 120 miles before it needs to be recharged, though over time that distance does slowly decline as the battery ages. As for “fuel” costs, it’s about $2 to $4 to recharge a fully electric vehicle by plugging it into one’s own garage or house overnight, which works out to about 3 or 4 cents per mile.

Electric vehicle owners can’t “fuel up” just anywhere, obviously, so at this point taking a trip out of town does take some strategic planning—pulling out maps and plotting routes that include preferred charging stations. (In a pinch, just about any RV park will do.) The Electric Auto Association (EAA, www.eaaev.org), of which Alldrin is a proud member, has compiled a comprehensive list of favored charging stops throughout the country, and works to regularly expand the electric car infrastructure in the U.S.

“Every trip is an adventure,” Alldrin says—not because it’s difficult, inconvenient or expensive to charge one’s car, but because factoring charge time into travel plans creates opportunities to explore new communities and attractions. “Like the olden days,” Alldrin points out, “traveling more slowly means you have to stop and smell the roses.”

The new Chevy Volt, though, is a game-changer. A plug-in hybrid with a strictly-electric range of 40 or more miles, the Volt also has a gas-powered engine that fires up to recharge the batteries when needed—extending the car’s range to 300 miles or so, making it a very convenient vehicle for long trips as well as short ones.

Photos 1 & 2 by James McQuaid: The very rare EV1 on display at the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum in downtown Lansing, Michigan.

Photo 3 courtesy Plug In America: Todd Fisher of Creston, CA powers both his ranch and his Toyota RAV4-EV with solar. 

Next issue: The Electric Car Rides Again

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 idea of buying a macaroon from the bakery where we sat. It was the tail end of the report that barged into my brain and preempted all pastry speculation: “Her daughter is two years old,” said my friend.

I just stared, scrambling to update brain circuits. Yes, I know that kids are vastly superior in technical know-how than I. I understand that their world is both enlarged and circumscribed by electronic options, and I read the story about the teenager in Sacramento who set a record for fielding 10,000 text messages a day for a month. But I hadn’t heard about this new step in our bizarre and ever-accelerating dance with information overload. Apparently, since recent reports seem to point toward the educational benefits of an early acquaintance with cyber-reality, parents are pushing mobile devices on their infants as acts of conscientious parenting.

That seems to run counter to another rumble heard elsewhere in the human camp. Or maybe it’s just the same story seen from an adult perspective: Many grown-ups would love to unplug but often find themselves hard-wired to compulsive, technocentric lifestyles.

Five years ago, an Intel engineer named Nathan Zeldes spearheaded a pilot project at the company that granted four hours of electronic freedom a week to a group of employees. During that time e-mails and instant messaging were turned off, along with the phones. Even face-to-face meetings were discouraged. The four hours were a gift of silence, meant to help the employees soothe frayed nerves and focus on creative tasks. At the end of the pilot, 45 percent of the participants described the approach as effective, and 71 percent said it should be extended to other Intel groups.

“Information overload has been making knowledge workers ineffective and miserable since the mid-1990s,” says Zeldes, who has gone on to start a forum called the Information Overload Research Group. “But until a couple of years ago, most organizations had been in denial about it. Now, at long last, we’re seeing interest, solutions, literature, and a determination to do something about this problem.”

In “Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform,” a 2005 article in the Harvard Business Review, psychiatrist E. M. Hallowell coined “Attention Deficit Trait” to describe what Zeldes’ group hopes to combat:

“It isn’t an illness; it’s purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live,” says Hallowell. “When a manager is desperately trying to deal with more input than he possibly can, the brain and body get locked into a reverberating circuit while the brain’s frontal lobes lose their sophistication, as if vinegar were added to wine. The result is black-and-white thinking; perspective and shades of gray disappear. People with ADT have difficulty staying organized, setting priorities and managing time, and they feel a constant low level of panic and guilt.”

I wonder if ADT would be first cousin to the guilt that drives parents to provide iPads to two-year-olds.

While we’re staring down the barrel of self-generated stress, consider the measures that South Korea, probably the most wired nation on the planet, is taking to curb what it sees as an epidemic of Internet use. The country has established 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers, 100 hospitals to treat the problem, and most recently, the Jump Up Internet Rescue School, a sort of boot camp for the web-obsessed. About 90 percent of households there take advantage of the country’s inexpensive, high-speed connectivity, but it comes at a rather steep, nonmonetary price: An estimated 30 percent of its under-18 population is considered at risk for Internet addiction.

“Korea has been most aggressive in embracing the Internet,” says Koh Young-sam, head of the government-run Internet Addiction Counseling Center. “Now we have to lead in dealing with its consequences.”

I’m not sure that taking the lead with what could be called an after-the-fact reaction is really the way to go, although at least they are acknowledging there might be a problem.

Meanwhile, over in Australia, journalist Susan Mauhart decided to stage an exclusive boot camp for her three teenagers and herself. The Winter of Our Disconnect (Tarcher, 2011) chronicles their six-month experiment living through an enforced “screen blackout”—no cell phones, iPods, PCs, laptops, game stations, or television. Here’s an excerpt:

“There were lots of reasons why we pulled the plug on our electronic media… or, I should say, why I did, because heaven knows my children would have sooner volunteered to go without food, water, or hair products. At ages 14, 15, and 18, my daughters and my son don’t use media. They inhabit media. And they do so exactly as fish inhabit a pond. Gracefully. Unblinkingly. And utterly without consciousness or curiosity as to how they got there.”

It’s the last sentence of the quote that sums up the issue for me. I don’t really understand why we’re so passive about technology’s pervasive presence in our lives. We seem to accept as a given that we’re at the beck and call of our devices. We forget that our eight digits and two opposing thumbs give us a very real power over these really very powerful  tools: the ability to shut them off.

“We have become far more proficient in generating information than we are in managing it,” says Jonathan Spira with chilling accuracy in “Information Overload: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us,” a white paper recently published by Basex, the self-styled knowledge economy research and advisory firm. “And we have also built technology that easily allows us to create new information without human intervention.”

Mind you, I’m not proposing voluntary screen blackouts on a global scale. For one thing, it simply isn’t possible, and it’s certainly inadvisable. I couldn’t have written this article—or I couldn’t have written it in the slim margin of free time carved from my online work life—without using the very technology I’m suggesting we build a little downtime around. Believe me; I’m aware of the irony. I even considered scrapping this piece entirely, maybe offering instead a blank page with a short explanation: “This is a public service brought to you by Quality Digest and Up the Road. Spend the few minutes you’d normally take to read this article on walking around the block. It will do you far more good.”

So no wholesale blackouts, but maybe a few more strolls outside the office, leaving our smartphones behind.

A couple of summers ago, a handful of neuroscientists took a rafting trip down the San Juan River with a similar intent in mind. Tagging along, The New York Times’ Matt Richtel described the journey as “a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects.”

From the outset the scientists were divided into those who thought nature would prove a positive influence, and those who thought it would make no difference one way or the other. By the end of the trip, the skeptics, although not converted exactly, did find that the trip had changed the way they thought about their projects, and even how they thought about technology. It was as if the time away from their digital dramas had recalibrated their brains and allowed them to offer fresh insight.

A Google search for “unplug from technology” turns up more than seven million results. My commentary will now increase that figure by one. Reading all of them would be impossible in a single lifetime. What do you suppose we should do about these voices crying in the cyber-wilderness? Some of them offer ways to manage information overload; one reminds us that March 23, 2012, is a national day of unplugging.

Here’s what I recommend: Turn off your electronic keepers long enough to figure out how you might go about reducing, even if just a little, your dependency on technology. Then take a walk. Listen to your heart beat.

This article first appeared in Chico’s own Quality Digest online business magazine, www.qualitydigest.com.

Photo of techno-kiddos taken by Aaron Francis for The Australian.

After Nina Sankovitch’s sister died of cancer, she buried her grief in frantic activity. Until she sat down each day and simply read, she wasn’t able to come to terms with her sister’s death. As she read, she grieved not only her sister’s death, but also the family tragedies her parents experienced during World War II in Europe. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading (Nina Sankovitch) chronicles her reading, and lists each of the 365 books she read during the year she devoted both to mourning and to connecting with literature on all levels, from the most serious fiction to crowd-pleasers like murder mysteries. If you don’t already know how, you can learn how to read all day from Sankovitch’s blog. 

We all worry about overeating during the holidays. Maybe these urges to over-indulge can be satisfied by reading about eating. The Hanna Swenson mysteries (a series by Joanne Fluke) feature a cookie-baking detective and loads of excellent recipes. See the website for killer baking ideas.

The last Chinese emperor also had a cook. The Last Chinese Chef (Nicole Mones) describes Chinese cooking in exquisite detail. The reader will long to schedule a gourmet’s tour of China. 

Following the Occupy Wall Street movement? Get some essential background in Charles R. Morris’ lucid explanation of the financial crises in The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown, available as an ebook. 

—Linda Worden

Just My Type (Simon Garfield)

OK, all you font geeks, here’s a quiz to whet your interest in one of 2011’s most entertaining books of nonfiction:

1. Which type designer wrote extensively in his diaries about his incestuous affairs and zoophilia?

2. “Friends don’t let friends set [which font?].” –Frank Romano, type scholar

3. Which German font was in the late ’50s briefly and with no apparent sense of irony considered for use on roadway signage between London and Yorkshire?

4. Which font appears more than any other in posters for Russell Crowe movies?

5. Which of the Ten Commandments was printed with a most unfortunate typo in Christopher Barker’s Bible of 1631, and how did it read?

If fonts have a Chaucer, it’s Simon Garfield. Just My Type (Gotham Books) is his detailed, amusing collection of stories about the letters and symbols we are surrounded by—who designed them and why, which are most and least popular, and what they’re good or not so good for. You may have read that comic sans is loathed by more designers than any other font, but did you know that courier may be the best font to use in a break-up letter if you think your soon-to-be ex really needs to get the message?  Or that the ampersand in Garamond italics might just be the loveliest ampersand of all time? Go ahead and type it right now, then let Garfield tell you why that is.

With a lively foreword by acclaimed book designer Chip Kidd and a “periodic table of type” adorning the inside covers, Just My Type is just the thing for anyone who wants to know more about fonts.

—Beth Spencer

Answers to quiz: 1) Eric Gill    2) Souvenir   3) Akzidenz Grotesk   4) Trajan   5) The seventh: Thou Shalt Commit Adultery.

Of A Feather (Scott Weidensaul)

There is something like one bird book published every day in the United States. Look in your local bookstore and you’ll find a plethora of titles. I gave a quick perusal of Amazon.com and quickly found 432 books on hummingbirds alone. There were more; I just got tired of scrolling down the page.

There are a variety of books about birds – field guides (e.g. Birds of the West Indies), natural history (The Bird: A Natural History of Who Birds Are, Where They Came From, and How They Live), entertaining (my own Amazing Birds), art (The Art of Ornithology), scientific (The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong), major treatises (Handbook of Birds of the World, 16 Volumes), and a lot of minor and local publications (Birds of Bidwell Park, me again). I’ve read or at least consulted many, many bird-themed books over the years and can tell you that the quality of the writing and information varies widely, ranging from outstanding to what were the publishers thinking? Soaring With Fidel, about Osprey migration, gets some good reviews but I found it pretty darn boring.

In 2000 author Scott Weidensaul came out with Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds. Well researched and well written, it was a treat for me as a professional ornithologist to read but it is certainly accessible to anyone else. In 2008, he published Of A Feather, the history of birdwatching. From a review of this book in Goodreads.com:

“Arriving in the New World, Europeans were awestruck by a continent awash with birds. Today tens of millions of Americans birders have made a once eccentric hobby into something so mainstream it’s (almost) cool. Scott Weidensaul traces the colorful evolution of American birding: from the frontier ornithologists who collected eggs between border skirmishes to the society matrons who organized the first effective conservation movement; from the luminaries with checkered pasts, such as convicted blackmailer Alexander Wilson and the endlessly self-mythologizing John James Audubon, to the awkward schoolteacher Roger Tory Peterson, whose A Field Guide to the Birds prompted the explosive growth of modern birding. Spirited and compulsively readable, Of a Feather celebrates the passions and achievements of birders throughout American history.”

If it weren’t for the fact that this author had already impressed me, I would not have picked up this book. I’ve read too many dry tales of early ornithologists. But Of a Feather is exceptional and a treat to read.

—Roger Lederer

The Help (Kathryn Stockett)

The year is 1962. Miss Skeeter Phelan has graduated from Ole Miss University and returned home to Jackson, Mississippi for the summer. Her mother is nagging her to find a respectable job and/or a husband. Being a writer is Skeeter’s aim—to her mother’s dismay, much more important than a husband.

To escape her mother’s criticism Skeeter gets a job writing the household hints column for the local newspaper, this despite the fact that she has never done even one household chore. She turns for help to the Black maid of one of her best friends. From this unusual relationship comes Skeeter’s idea for a book: What do Black women think of the white families they work for? Skeeter at first does not realize how dangerous her project will become—both for her and the Black maids she enlists to share their stories. But at least such an idea fits what an editor at Harper & Row has told her:

“Don’t waste your time on obvious things. Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.”

So this is the premise of Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel. Skeeter is writing a book about Black maids in the South in the 1960s, a book to be titled The Help. Stockett is writing her novel (The Help) about Skeeter’s experience. This double layer gives the novel extra complexity: When is Skeeter speaking? When is Stockett? And why did each choose that title?

For Skeeter, it’s because that’s how she naturally views maids, including her family’s “help” Constantine, nanny as well as maid, who raised her from birth. These women are not defined by their characters or their spirits, but by their general job description. Stockett’s identical title choice is not so naïve. Rather, she is examining how White families of Jackson, Mississippi (and many other Southern families of that era) viewed their servants. Not as individuals worthy of respect and concern but as solutions for a family’s needs—“the help.”

What does it mean when we reduce people to their function? In Stockett’s novel, Skeeter is astonished to discover that Aibileen—the first maid to help her—has read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, a book she herself has not yet read. We learn about another maid, Minny, who twice saves her boss’s life even though originally she had no respect for this woman, who she viewed as lazy white trash. These invisible women, “the help,” and others like them are brave enough to risk their jobs and even their lives to tell their stories. Skeeter’s book powerfully supports their individuality. Even though they must remain anonymous, they are no longer just “the help.” Ultimately, this is the message of both books.

—Jo Ellen Hall

The Ecology of Hope (Ted Bernard and Jora Young)

Hope and Hard Times (Ted Bernard)

Two books “speak to my condition” as a person who cherishes both the earth’s natural webs of meaning—creatures, forests, rivers, and seasons—and its human inhabitants.

In the first book, The Ecology of Hope (1997), authors Ted Bernard and Jora Young seek out and report on inspiring developments in eight locations across America where communities have undertaken to “Collaborate For Sustainability,” as their subtitle declares. The narratives are compelling, well written, and accessible. Extra helpful are the maps.

Eight collaborations, from Monhegan Island, Maine and Menominee, Wisconsin, to Chicago and northern California, show how groups holding differing views and values and conflicting agendas somehow manage to sit down around a table of “gathered stakeholders to put aside historical differences, to work collaboratively, and to arrive at decisions consensually.”

The inclusion of a foreword by Wes Jackson signals the holistic sensibility adopted by Bernard and Young in their study. Two of the eight situations they report on are literally “up the road” in northern California: the Mattole Watershed on the “lost coast” of Humboldt County and the by-now well known efforts of the Quincy Library Group (loggers and environmentalist) to talk across economic and ecological interests toward collaboration. Jackson says the stories reported here “describe small and modest efforts—exactly the requirement for getting something done.” The authors’ informed and sensitive work in the field lays a solid foundation for the thesis of their book. Including epigrams and brief quotations by eloquent poets and thinkers enriches their narrative immensely.

The second book, by Bernard alone, follows up on the earlier study and reports on some added ones. Hope and Hard Times (2010) reports Bernard’s sober appreciation of the complexities and accidents that test the hopefulness and tenacity of good-hearted agents of change “when faced with ‘perilous voices’ of destruction, angry protests and legal action.” The agents of change Bernard values are “an unexpected collection of everyday Americans—folk from the nonprofit world, householders, working people, business people, bankers, farmers and ranchers, Native people, local government folk, even resource professionals from federal and state agencies.”

He is clear-eyed about the challenge of remaining hopeful given “the incredibly volatile situation in which we seem trapped: a scary combination of ticking environmental time bomb and a world financial meltdown.”

“My own sense is soberly sanguine,” Bernard confesses. “It derives not only from the hearts and works of the people in these stories but also from my long engagement with young minds who continue to come up with brilliant ways to tackle problems bequeathed by my generation.” He draws hope from “such visionaries as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, and, I will say, some of the unheralded dreamers in the stories that follow.”

Dreams are what we live on, what impel us up the road to better, healthier ways of living on the land, with the land. Castles in the air? That’s where they belong, Thoreau reminds us in Walden’s concluding chapter; “Now put the foundations under them,” he advises.

—David Wilson

Money and the Meaning of Life (Jacob Needleman)

I know, I know. What a grinch I am to even bring up the subject of money in December, the height of America’s materialistic merry-making. Hasn’t it been a rough enough year already money-wise? you no doubt ask.

Well, yes, it has been rough for some of us, including me. That’s precisely the reason for mentioning this book, and doing it now. Money and the Meaning of Life by Jacob Needleman, published 20 years ago, offers some precious insight into where western civilization went so wrong in weighing up the relative worth of money and meaning. Not knowing, then, what we now know—again—about this country’s eagerness to dive headlong into greed, Needleman is free to explore the underlying reasons without having to spend half the book on current events.

You might blame it on the Protestant Reformation—or what came after, to be fair about it, how those new ideas played out culturally. This territory is probably old hat to many of you, but science and English major that I am, it was news to me. Good news, really, because his explanation makes so much sense. It’s not as if western values only recently became unhinged.

As Needleman explains it, early medieval Christianity was clear on the concept that money and material concerns were not evil so much as they were secondary, commerce being a natural outgrowth of man’s interdependent community relationships. But to value money beyond that—and to seek to acquire vast wealth, to view oneself as autonomous and self-sufficient—demonstrated the sin of pride, believing that one could live without breathing “the air of God.”

Protestants put forth the radical notion that humanity no longer needed to pay homage or bow down to earthly spiritual institutions and their rules. People could instead be guided by their own reason—and the word, the Bible, which believers could read and interpret for themselves. The whole world was declared holy, and any man’s calling in life as sacred as any priest’s. Money, along with whatever one’s work was in the world, were the tools of holiness. In Protestantism money and one’s work in the world were intended to be servants of the spiritual.

Yet the material separated from the spiritual yet again. Modern capitalism, science, and psychology all grew from this new, reason-based spiritual root. According to Max Weber, early twentieth-century sociologist, this new form of Christianity was partially responsible.

There’s more here, too, much more, from Maimonides to samsara. If you can find this book, I highly recommend it for kick-starting some deeper thinking about connections between the spiritual and material. If you can’t find it, maybe I’ll lend you my copy.

—Kim Weir

While it’s true that the most dramatic and horrifying mountain gorilla deaths have been due to poaching and civil war violence, intense human competition is primarily causing the population’s decline, often the case with endangered species. The two main reasons behind the decline of the mountain gorillas are disappearing habitat, as desperately hungry people push their cornfields into the gorillas’ very limited territory, and exposure to human diseases for which the great apes have no immunity. Because they are so closely related to human beings, gorillas can get measles, strep throat, tuberculosis, polio, and even herpes from human contact.

The $500 fee charged for each tourist viewing the mountain gorillas now pumps millions of dollars every year into surrounding local economies. The “gorilla levy” funds national parks and veterinary disease prevention efforts. Communities can also apply for and use these funds to train guides and trackers, develop safe village water supplies, support new local businesses—such as community-owned tourist accommodations—and build secondary schools for girls.

Up the Road board member Roger Lederer, former dean of the CSU Chico School of Natural Sciences and well-known local author and birder, recently returned from a gorilla trek in Uganda and shares that daunting yet very amazing experience.

Uganda Ecotourism Trek: Gorillas and Guerillas

By Roger Lederer

Recently I fulfilled a major wish—seeing mountain gorillas in the wild. There are about 100,000 lowland gorillas living in equatorial Africa but only 790 mountain gorillas, which are restricted to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda. My wife, Carol Burr, and I went with three others from Chico (Michael Abruzzo, Janet Brown, and Marcia Moore) to Uganda for a gorilla trek.

After two weeks of traveling 1,800 miles, primarily on dirt roads, we arrived at the day of our trek. There are five groups of gorillas that are habituated to humans. Each trekking group was restricted to eight tourists, eight porters, a guide, and a guard with a machine gun, who said he was there to protect us from elephants, but I think he was there in case of the other guerillas, as we were very close to the Congo. None of us thought we needed a porter because we were only carrying backpacks, but mine, the only female porter, proved invaluable to me, as I’ll explain. The real reason for porters was to spread the wealth around the native community; porters only serve as such twice a month. We tourists each paid $500 for this one-day adventure. The money supports Ugandans and of course helps to protect the gorillas and their shrinking habitat.

After a briefing about what to expect and how to behave, we drove for an hour, met our porters, and started uphill. Wearing a long-sleeved shirt and quick-dry pants in 80-degree heat with 90-plus-percent humidity, I was soaked with sweat after about 30 minutes. We walked past small villages and tiny roadside stands selling souvenirs until we entered the trailhead into aptly named Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. For three and a half hours and three and a half miles we walked up and down and up and down—mostly up—narrow, slippery, and muddy trails lined with dense vegetation. Earlier trekking guides had slashed down small trees in the trail so that there were short, thin, pointed stumps that not only made walking difficult but threatened to impale us like so many punji sticks if we fell. My wonderful porter, Regina, planted her foot behind mine when I started to slip, pushed my butt or back going uphill, pulled me up if she was in front, and carried my two liters of water, which was not enough.

Trackers, who leave three hours before the trekkers, had located the gorillas, which change nesting sites every day (and poop in their previous ones to keep out other groups of gorillas). The trackers radioed our guide, who then took us cross-country on a new trail for the next 45 minutes. We weren’t on solid ground but navigating a maze of large vines a foot or so off the ground. Imagine walking across a very large hammock made of slick wet rope. Swinging, slipping, penetrating the maze with wet feet, falling sideways, we found our walking sticks useless. We were beyond exhausted, panting and sweating profusely, by the time we met the trackers. They pointed to a clearing behind some trees; I expected to see gorillas.

We entered the clearing a few yards ahead, falling and crashing through the vines in the process, but I saw nothing. I thought the gorillas might be 100 yards away in the trees and I just hadn’t spotted them yet. Then, 20 yards away, the brush moved and out popped a young gorilla, maybe 100 pounds. Then another and another and another, five altogether in a ragged line, coming right towards us. The first one came within five feet of me, as did the others. They passed us by, giving us an “oh no, more tourists” look. Then they sat down to eat nettle leaves, all of them only a few yards away from us. The gorillas occasionally checked us out but basically ignored us.

After 30 minutes our guide moved us to the rest of the group in the next clearing a few yards away. There, lying on his back, was a huge silverback gorilla, flanked by three large females. He must have weighed 400 pounds, and stood six feet tall. His head was the size of a basketball. The females were shorter but still weighed about 200 pounds each. There was an adolescent gorilla of maybe 50 pounds and a cute young one about 20 pounds. The adults mostly ignored us, but when the silverback rolled over, yawned, and showed his teeth, I assumed the sprint position. The baby of the bunch looked at us, lolled on his dad, jumped around, and generally did what young animals do—play and look cute. Dad lazily played with him, much like any Sunday afternoon at home.

After our one-hour visit, the legal time limit, we headed back out, up and down and down and up, by a different route. Our group of eight, not counting porters and guides, was scattered and ragged. I had to stop frequently to catch my breath, talking to my porter about her ambitions to be a guide while I leaned on my walking stick. Finally we emerged from the narrow forest trails, but we still had half the distance to go back to our vehicles. And I was very thirsty and out of water. I saw the lead group way ahead and signaled to it. One of the porters ran down to me with water. These guys are in great shape, especially compared to this 70-year-old. After a very steep and treacherous walk I made it out. An hour later the remainder of the group arrived, one woman being supported by two porters. We all made it.

Read more about the plight of the mountain gorillas in the 2007 Smithsonian magazine article “Guerillas in Their Midst.”  Find out what’s happening now with mountain gorilla conservation efforts by checking in with ongoing conservation blogs sponsored by Wildlife Direct, a very creative conservation organization founded by Richard Leakey, best known for almost single-handedly saving Kenya’s elephants. Two WD blogs related to mountain gorillas in particular: the Uganda blog Conservation Through Public Health and the Rwanda blog Art for Gorillas. For a sense of just how difficult it is to save the mountain gorillas, see also the website for the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Virunga National Park, where rangers are still killed in the line of duty. Other groups well worth supporting: the International Gorilla Conservation Programme and the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project.

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 the presence of Buddha mind already residing in another. Soto Master Houn Jiyu Kennett, Abbess of Shasta Abbey, once bowed to me and said, “Buddha bows to Buddha, Buddha recognizes Buddha.” With that recognition, I’d inherited a lineage of Buddhist ancestry reaching from the time of Shakyamuni Buddha down through the centuries, where, by virtue of the Houn Jiyu’s acknowledgement, now included me. I was taken thereby into a family that extended beyond my own individual genetic one and was given a scroll, which when opened revealed in generational sequence the names of eighty-five ancestral teachers of the Soto Zen lineage. The last name on the list was that of Houn Jiyu, followed by the notation “Lin Jensen, New Ancestor.”

I’ve always treasured this little document, for I can recite any or all of the ancestors listed there, knowing that each of them has received the very same refuges and precepts as I have, and that they have held them in good order so that they might be passed on to others such as me. This lineage is called the bloodline of the Buddhas, the veins of which are the precepts of moral and ethical behavior. It’s no casual thing to receive the precepts, for they constitute a lifetime vow that can’t be fulfilled without the utmost sincerity and devotion to purpose. I’m humbled by the generations of ancestral teachers who, in an attitude of joy and gratitude, devoted themselves to the precepts long before I knew that such even existed.

What I want to acknowledge here is another lineage, an earth lineage that exists outside the formal framework of traditional Buddhist lineage and for which I’m equally grateful. Among these is a personal lineage of teachers who brought a knowledge of earth home to me. Many I’ve met solely through books they’ve written, though putting it that way suggests that an encounter by way of a book is somehow less intimate than an encounter in person. But anyone who has read much can attest to an intimate meeting of mind and heart between writer and reader that sometimes goes deeper than is reached in any other way, even in the daily exchange one has with family and friends.

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. It’s an ancestry of earth literature that includes writings as disparate in time and kind as that of the Middle English Piers Plowman, in which Piers, the humble plowman of the title, appears and offers himself as a guide to the truth, passing through such works as Henry David Thoreau’s mid nineteenth century Walden down to such contemporary teachings as those of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Just as every Buddhist scripture or koan, regardless of its discrete content, is invariably about what Buddhists term essential nature or Buddha nature, so too do these writers of earth scripture reach through and beyond the specific content of their works to give voice to the essential nature of our human exchange with earth.

Piers Plowman was written somewhere between 1360 and 1387 by a Middle English poet, William Langland, a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. I first read this long narrative verse poem at Stanford University while studying under a fellowship. I was still fresh from a life of farming, and perhaps that’s what accounts for my attraction to a poem that finds ultimate virtue in the life of the land. In the poem, Christ has reappeared as the humble plowman Piers.

Like Christ, Piers spoke on behalf of the poor: those who farmed the acres of the landed gentry, those who crafted the essential goods, swept out the stables and cleaned the houses of the rich, those who had little and made do with what life offered. I discovered Langland’s poem one afternoon in the rare books section of Stanford’s library and read it in its entirety seated at a little alcove desk by a window there in the stacks. Will, the narrator in the poem, along with a knight, and an assembly of townsfolk comprised of housewives, milkmaids, carpenters, wheelwrights, farmers, and such were on a quest for Truth with a capital “T.” It was a religious quest actually, and what they wanted to know was how best to conduct their lives so as to bring themselves in accord with what they thought of as heaven’s enduring values. It was then that Piers the plowman came upon them, and turned their thoughts from the sky toward the earth with which they were already so intimate. The little group questioned Piers regarding their quest for truth because despite his apparent lowly and common stature, he possessed a composed and assured presence of person that encouraged them to hope he might be the bearer of the very Truth they sought. So they asked for the Truth.

Sitting there in the Stanford library stacks that afternoon, I don’t know what heavenly advice I expected to hear from Piers, but what he told these truth seekers found its way into my heart and gave voice and shape to something I already carried within. Piers told them to “sew the sack to keep the wheat from spilling.” He told them to “spin wool and make flax.” “Conscience,” he said, “counsels you to make cloth to benefit the poor and for your own sustenance.” And then he added, “For I shall see to their sustenance, unless the land fail.” “Help him live,” he said, “who obtains your food.” The knight at this point spoke of his regret that he knew nothing of plowing and working the land. And Piers told him, “I shall toil and sweat and sow for us both, and labor for those you love all my lifetime.”

Piers Plowman, Langland’s Christ of fourteenth century England, was a common field laborer. The Truth he brought to those who sought truth was the truth of necessity, the truth of the essential interaction with earth. The scripture he wrote was the scripture of love’s labor, the back bent to task of bringing forth the miracle that springs from the soil under foot. Is this too simple a religion to credit with our salvation? Ask yourself that now when earthly disregard and misdirection threatens us on all sides. We could do a lot worse than adopt a religion that puts its faith in tilling the earth. Dirt is our proper heaven.

Thoreau, like Piers so many centuries before him, found faith in tilling the soil. In Walden, he wrote, “ I went to the woods . . . to front the essential facts of life,” and he found those essential facts in the cultivation of a few acres of beans, peas, and potatoes. When the weeds began to take hold, Thoreau realized he’d planted too many bean rows and found it to be a daily labor just to keep the weeds down. “What was the meaning of this, so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not,” he wrote. But then, despite the extent of the task, Thoreau confessed, “I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus.” Thoreau has got it exactly right here. Antaeus of Greek mythology was famous for the great strength he derived from his mother, Gaia, the earth. He could defeat even Hercules as long as he remained in contact with the ground.

It was from this same immediate contact with the earth, the literal physical proximity of seeding, hoeing, and harvesting, that Thoreau drew new strength. And this was not strength of body alone that the earth passed on to him, but strength of spirit as well. It led Thoreau to ask, “What shall I learn of beans or beans of me?” And then, perhaps unwittingly, he answered his own question, “I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work.” I ask myself, what sweeter consequence could there be than finding my day’s work?

Thoreau termed himself “a very Agricola laboriosus,” a field laborer, a tiller of the soil. He liked to walk his bean rows barefoot. He must have known a naked dependence upon earth of a sort that we, in our high-rise condominiums far from the fields that succor us, so often forget. We lose the connection because the essential labor is so often done by proxy in a field remote from our presence. And when that persists, we lose our source of strength like Antaeus who, when deprived of contact with the ground, was crushed by Hercules’ overpowering force.

In nearby Concord, Thoreau’s contemporary, Emerson, wrote his remarkable essay, “Nature.”

Here [in nature] is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find Nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men who come to her.

And then again in a later passage, Emerson acknowledges, as Buddhists have done for centuries, the seamless bond between all manifestations of being, human or otherwise:

We come to our own, and make friends with matter, which the ambitious despise. We never can part with it; the mind loves its old home: as water to our thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to our eyes and hands and feet.

Emerson would have us know that nature itself is the abiding teacher that ever brings to us the dharma of earth:

Every moment instructs, and every object: for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence until after a long time.

Perhaps it has been a long time coming, but there have been those, like Emerson and Thoreau, who did guess the essence of the moment in which wisdom is infused into form and have thus prepared for such as me an articulated dharma of earth as witness to what they found. Wisdom is manifest in the very stuff of the earth, and that realization draws our eyes back from the heavens to look out upon the surrounding landscape. We find our way through life by consulting what lies at hand. What can this rock, leaf, moth, field of grass teach me?

It was E.F. Schumacher in his book Small is Beautiful; Economics As If People Mattered who first taught me to see how critical the scale of our economics is to the relationship we humans have with work. He saw that the advent of assembly-line manufacture was a soul-destroying enterprise in which work was divided up into disparate and meaningless segments where no worker experienced the construction of the whole. Just hammer in your five rivets as the chassis passes by; never mind the hours and years that are spent without you ever witnessing the car take shape in its entirety; clock out, pick up your pay check; buy yourself some fun on the weekend. Schumacher grasped the heart of Buddhist economics, which honors all activity as Buddha’s activity, and sees work as essential practice. He would not have us expand an enterprise to the point where we can no longer bring the whole of it into view.

And then, as in any religious practice, Buddhist or otherwise, there’s an area of the unknown requiring of us a respectful modesty that acknowledges the mystery of our lives. I have among the books I keep at hand, a copy of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek so worn that the image on the cover of the book showing Annie seated at the creek side seems something of a mystery itself. But her whole book, every chapter, is rich with the wonder of an earth of unknown origin–not entirely unknown of course in its material origins, but an earth in which speculations regarding its spiritual origins leave us with more doubt than certainty. Annie’s words restore me to proper doubt and return me to the mystery of earth. “We don’t know what’s going on here,” she wrote. “We don’t know. Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it . . . Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”

Langland, Thoreau, Emerson, Schumacher, and Dillard are just a few of the generations of earth writers that figure importantly for me in my own personal earth lineage. Other writers and books are equally significant in their own ways: Colin Fletcher’s The Man Who Walked Through Time, Wendell Berry’s Home Economics, Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, and such fictional works as Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of The Pointed Firs and Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees. But there are other teachers of earth dharma that have simply walked into my life from the most unlikely directions and who are unknown as such by anyone other than myself. Some of their teachings are of so simple and literal a nature that they might seem of little or no significance. Yet the most unlikely person and event may occasion the very Dharma most needed.

One such occasion occurred when I was attempting to grow vegetables in Sierra Valley, a high mountain valley with a cold climate and short growing season in which a hard freeze could occur any month of the year. When the locals saw what I was up to, they told me, “Forget it. It can’t be done,” and in truth I couldn’t find a single garden in the valley that appeared even remotely successful. But when I voiced my disappointment to Ron McCaffrey who’d been born and raised in the valley, he said his mother, Edith, had been keeping a garden there for years. I checked it out, and sure enough, there was Edith McCaffrey’s garden filled with rows of lettuce, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, peas, potatoes, squash, and even a half dozen tomato plants hung heavy with ripening fruit. How had she done it under such difficult circumstances, I asked her. “I learned,” was her answer. Before I left, she handed me a worn and yellowed notebook with entries in it. “You can borrow this,” she said. “It might be helpful.”

That evening, when I looked into Edith McCaffrey’s notebook, I saw that it was a detailed journal of her experiences in gardening. The first entry was dated 1959. I was reading the journal in 1989. What I’d been given was thirty years of gardening in Sierra Valley. It was as if I’d found a previously unknown sutta of the Buddha’s teachings. Edith McCaffrey was the teacher I most needed at the time, the first teacher of the ancestral lineage of Sierra Valley gardening. I stood to be the second. Edith’s own teacher was earth itself. Everything she knew about gardening had been taught her by the dirt in her backyard. I may seem to be making a big deal out of a couple of inconsequential gardens in a mountain valley, but agriculture on any scale is an intimate exchange between teacher and disciple wherein earth itself is the ancestral teacher whose lineage dates back to the birth of a solar system.

“Earth Lineage” appears in the book Deep Down Things and is reprinted here by permission of Wisdom Publications. The photograph at top is “Hand Tools” by Karen Laslo.

Lin Jensen is Buddhist Spiritual Caregiver to Enloe Hospital and Senior Buddhist Chaplain to High Desert State Prison. He is founder and teacher of the Chico Zen Sangha in Chico, California. Three of Lin’s Books: Bad Dog!, Pavement, and Together Under One Roof were each selected for Shambhala Sun’s Best Buddhist Writing in 2006, 2008, and 2009 respectively. Lin’s latest book, Deep Down Things, was released by Wisdom Publications in fall 2010.

Lin, a child of the great depression and WW II, has seen the best and the worst that life offers. He writes with the wonder of how love and beauty take root in even the most barren places. His consolation is that no matter how difficult life can be its sweetness is always with us.

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 that it represents the biggest step most people can take to minimize their environmental impact and live more sustainable lives.

“The average American house consumes about three quarters of an acre of forest and produces about seven tons of construction waste,” says Shafer. “It emits 18 tons of greenhouse gases annually, and, at more than 2,349 square feet, it would most definitely not fit into a single parking space.”

Yes, parking space. Many of the charming natural wood hand-built homes Shafer designs and builds also have wheels – a practical fact that makes pulling up stakes quick, quite simple, and almost literal.

Shafer’s first three Tumbleweed tiny houses totaled just 70 to 89 square feet in size, and each easily fit into one parking space. The symbolism is particularly attention grabbing, given that the average U.S. home emits more greenhouse gases in a year than a car.

The largest two of the early Tumbleweeds consumed only about 4,800 pounds of building materials each. During construction each generated fewer than 100 pounds of landfill waste – 140 times less than most homes. Even with the need to overcome typical Iowa winters, Shafer says, each of those tiny houses generated only 900 pounds of greenhouse gases annually. He describes the evolution of his concepts of quality tiny house construction in his new The Small House Book, available only on the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company website.

Money – the desire to spend much less of it on housing – is another founding principle of the tiny-house movement. Owning your own home yet being able to live free of banks and mortgage payments is clearly a plus in such tight-fisted times. Young people who can’t yet manage buying a house can still “own,” plus move that home around as needed to follow job opportunities. Oldsters who have taken a bath in the national housing disaster or are otherwise underwater can start showering in their own tiny house.

The desire to enjoy quality hand-built housing is another factor. Travel trailers, mobile homes, and various pre-fabricated options can supply mobility or relative low cost but generally don’t offer all-natural materials, quality workmanship, and truly homey ambience.

Now married and a new father, Shafer and his family recently settled into a hand-built 500-square-foot home – one with room for family, friends, and just enough stuff for a comfortable, semi-minimalist life.

One secret to successfully living small is exceptionally well-designed space that provides everything you need (but nothing more). Part of that good design is making sure that most floor space is used for multiple purposes – a sleeping loft located above the tiny kitchen and bathroom, say, or a pull-down Murphy bed that tucks away in a “great room” cabinet during the day.

Keeping life simple and serene is the main reason for living tiny. Rather than spending free time and resources improving and maintaining a large home and yard, you can spend it pursuing cultural and outdoor interests.

As Shafer puts it, superfluous living space “gets in the way of contentment.” In a tiny house everything is within arm’s reach and nothing gets in the way of the life you want to live, “not even space itself.”

Living Large By Living Tiny
The time for even the most eccentric idea has arrived once it shows up in the pages of The New Yorker. And so it is for the tiny-house movement and its most notable celeb, Jay Shafer, featured in Alec Wilkinson’s July 25, 2011 article, “Let’s Get Small.”

But it’s not as if we haven’t been tiptoeing up to this idea for quite some time. Not long ago architect Sarah Susanka dazzled the housing design scene with her best-selling book The Not So Big House and its sequels, thoughtful work that demonstrates how well-planned smaller spaces create more intimacy and efficiency. And how many books about scaling-down, downsizing, and de-cluttering have made it to market in recent years?

What’s very different about the tiny-house movement is just how much the push for a new perspective comes from people at large – just plain folks – and not so much the professionals. The same is true about much of the innovation, too. Jay Shafer is tiny-house star, to be sure, in part to introduce and promote his own line of houses, DIY construction plans, and workshops. But he is the exception. The general rule is populism, people’s own hand-built homes and the creative companies that grow out of related innovations.

To experience this personally head on over to the The Tiny House Blog, which explores every imaginable approach to “Living Simply in Small Spaces.” The Tiny House Blog touches on it all, from young couples who get their start as homesteaders by remodeling chicken coops and grain silos to entire communities in rural England and elsewhere who are returning to the past and traditional low-impact construction techniques to create a more sustainable future.

Innovations may target particular challenges, such as garden sheds fashioned into well-built historically suitable backyard guest cottages, in-law units, and tiny primary residences so retirees can rent out the “big house” to generate extra income. Sometimes the tiny-house adventure continues over many years as several generations hand-build a shared getaway. Some tiny houses are boats, or are built on floating lakeshore docks. And some are becoming safe harbors for people who have lost, or will lose, their homes as part of the ongoing U.S. housing market meltdown.

Beyond the need for suitable and safe domestic housing, the tiny-house movement has broader moral motivations. Ingeniously designed tiny houses made of inexpensive and abundant local materials could house the world’s 2.5 billion poor people. The $300 House Project, for example, started out as blog post for the Harvard Business Review by Vijay Govindarajan and Christian Sarkar but has become a movement of its own that is now attracting powerful partners from the worlds of education and business.

Some tiny-house innovators showcased in The Tiny House Blog are working on more individualistic solutions to the same problem, such as designing mobile microhomes on wheels that are light enough to push around like shopping carts. One vendor cart-style design provides a business platform by day and safety and security at night.

Living tiny does not necessarily mean living tony, though some tiny houses are very upscale – including small guesthouse adjuncts to monster mansions.

That, however, is the least acceptable use among the many options embraced by the tiny-house community. Conspicuous over-consumption is just not OK, even if that consumption is “green.”

“Under no circumstances does a 3,000-square foot house for two qualify as ‘green,’ says Jay Shafer. “All the solar gain and reclaimed materials in the world can never change that.”

American homes are the world’s largest, he says, four times the international average. Large even in 1950, since then median home size has more than doubled while the number of people per household dropped more than 25 percent. Our houses now have entertainment suites, more bathrooms, more bedrooms, two- or three-car garages, and all the requisite stuff to fill them. Few of us ask whether we truly need, want, or will even use the heavy load of material goods we carry through life. Fewer still stop to ask whether “bigger” and “more” lead to human happiness.

Jay Shafer, however, is certain that extravagance and excess have no redeeming social value. Further, they block the road to a more sustainable future. Accountable consumption is a big part of the solution to many problems now facing the world.

“If you do only one thing to make your new home more environmentally sound,” he says, “make it small.”

Photos courtesy of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company

Two very different trends have arisen to radically revise this energy equation. One is pursuing new and improved building technologies, and weaving these into integrated systems that achieve dramatic energy savings — 80 percent or more in new buildings and at least 60 percent for remodeled or retrofitted buildings, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This week Northern California’s own Lawrence Lab explains its new U.S. Department of Energy green technology simulation center, where as soon as 2013 architects and builders can field-test new and combined energy-saving construction approaches and technologies.

The other response to our excessive energy and materials consumption is to “go small,” almost shocking to see after recent decades of notable excess. Very, very small, in some cases — as in well-designed homes or apartments downsized to a footprint of 100 square feet or so. Living on a scale closer to how people have lived throughout history offers a number of benefits beyond energy conservation. Next time, when we look at trends in living small, we’ll consider some of these.

Starting at the roofline is not how we planned to build Up the Road. It’s still a strange experience. Yet in these challenging times it’s good to be building at all.

At the moment we’re busy framing the overall structure, as we get ready to dig in and construct the foundation. It’s not the way we’d hoped to go. The standard ground-up approach would have been much easier. So have patience as we swing those metaphorical hammers and build bass-ackwards.

Even built backwards, by early next year it should nonetheless be clear what we’re building and just how beneficial it will be for Northern California — not to mention for you and all your friends. Fun, even. We think you’ll be at least a little amazed when we really get this show up the road.

At the apex of the roof is good journalism and great writing. That’s what we’re shooting for anyway. The need for new and independent sources of information has never been greater, given the continuing decline of U.S. media. How damaging consumerism can be when applied to information seems more apparent each day. Cooking up and feeding people only news that tastes like one’s existing political ideologies — is that any way to run a democracy?

And yet here we are.

Much has been lost in the immense shake-up of news media that’s been occurring since major news companies started to be viewed — and purchased — primarily as profit centers for investors. Good reporting, challenging cell phone-to-ear and boots-on-the-ground work, actually costs money. People who do it need to be paid. So reporting is the first thing to go when the bean counters start running the show, quickly replaced by endless infotainment and still more gasbags spraying the airways with inflammatory and often irresponsible statements of opinion. Talk is cheap, after all. And quite profitable — which is the new goal of most major media owners, certainly not generating credible information and thoughtful conversation as an investment in the public good.

Up the Road exists to challenge this scary new paradigm, albeit on a modest scale, as part of our mission as an educational nonprofit.

New technologies have challenged old media business models too, but they also make it possible for plucky start-ups like Up the Road to get into the game.

Right now we are building a complex and in-depth website that will take our educational program “up the road” and throughout Northern California, a daunting task but one well worth tackling.

Starting this fall we will be offering educational field trips and tours, and soon thereafter — we think — a public radio show. Covering three far-reaching topic areas — environment, economy, and equity, sometimes known as the “three Es” of sustainability — is the educational opportunity Up the Road embraces. We also hope to sponsor and co-sponsor special events to foster public discussion and debate over current dilemmas and possible directions.

Public interest reporting related to sustainability and survival, however, is first and foremost on the agenda for Up the Road, though it will take time and major effort to “build” to the point where our voice will even be heard over the current cacophony. But we think that effort is worthwhile.

As former Washington Post Executive Editor Len Downie points out, the economic decline of newspapers and for-profit media in general has led to a shocking drop in the educational, explanatory, and other public-service functions of journalism.

Consider these few facts from the Pew Report on the State of the Media 2010, researched and written by the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism:

• Roughly a third of the newsroom jobs in American newspapers in 2001 are now gone.
• In network television, the roster of journalists also continues to shrink. ABC News instituted three sets of cuts during the past year, NBC reportedly two, and CBS announced a big round in early 2010.
• At news magazines, Time’s staff of 147 is less than half of the 304 it listed in 2003. Newsweek’s 150 is 15 percent less than its 176 in 2003, and 57 percent less than the 348 it listed in 1983.
• For the third consecutive year, only digital and cable news saw audiences grow among the key sectors that deliver news. For cable broadcasting in 2009, those gains were largely captured by one network, Fox.

According to the Pew report, Americans are increasingly becoming media “consumers,” gravitating toward on-demand platforms “where they can get the news they want when they want it.”

But what about the news we consumers don’t want, or don’t know we need to know? As more news media respond to consumer demand for “news they want when they want it” to improve their bottom lines, who will birddog the news that citizens in a democracy need in order to be well informed about complex issues?

“What is paramount,” says Downie about the current media transformation, “is preserving independent, original, credible reporting, whether or not it is popular or profitable, and regardless of the medium in which it appears.”

We couldn’t have said that better ourselves. Providing some of that reporting here in Northern California is what we aim to do.

Kim

P.S. These long-winded emails from yours truly will now also be included, as separate blog entries, on Upbv the Road’s website under the apt title Road Noise. That should make it easier to keep track of where the conversation started and where it is going.

P.P.S. If you’d like to be included on our mailing list please say so:  editor@uptheroad.org.

But how do these components work with each other and with building occupants? What happens when more than one technology is installed in a building? Do current building energy simulation programs provide accurate predictors of actual energy performance? Unfortunately, these questions are rarely answered, because field-testing of integrated building technologies has not been a building industry focus.

Enter the new User Test Bed Facility at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, coming soon to the Berkeley Lab. Like a giant, life-size set of building blocks, the Facility will allow researchers and manufacturers to test buildings systems and components under “real-world” conditions by swapping out systems and changing configurations and then allow rigorous monitoring of performance of every key building element that impacts energy consumption. Construction will begin next year, and the Facility is expected to be open for use in early 2013.

“One can think of these test beds as kind of an erector set. They’re designed with extreme flexibility in mind,” said Berkeley Lab engineer Oren Schetrit, a program manager for the Test Bed Facility. “You’ll be able to change out the walls, windows, lighting, HVAC [heating, ventilation and air conditioning] system, external or internal shading and the configuration of the internal office systems. You can also lower or raise the ceiling height and floor height.”

Today’s buildings (residential, commercial and industrial) consume more energy than any other sector of the U.S. economy, including transportation and industry, and are responsible for 40 percent of U.S. carbon emissions. As of 2006, commercial buildings accounted for 18% of primary energy consumption in the U.S. and used 36% of the nation’s electricity. Yet most buildings have at best a single meter that reports energy use on a monthly basis; only slightly better are the new generation of “smart meters” which provide a continuous stream of total energy use but no understanding of the end-use breakdown by component.

With advanced building technologies that are properly designed into integrated systems, commercial buildings can achieve dramatic energy savings—up to 80 percent or more for new construction and 60 percent or more for retrofits.

The User Test Bed Facility will be a one-of-a-kind center operated as a user facility by Berkeley Lab for the Department of Energy. Each test bed will feature two side-by-side room-sized test cells, with one acting as the control and the other as the test condition. “We’ll be testing and optimizing integrated building systems, such as how does automated window shading impact heating and cooling loads. Those are technically challenging issues—hard to measure and hard to understand because they vary dramatically with weather conditions. This facility will allow us to accurately compare energy impacts side by side, including the effects of all major building systems,” says Steve Selkowitz, head of the Building Technologies Department and lead scientist on the project. “There’s really nothing like it in the world, operating at this scale.”

The Facility is being designed and built with $15.9 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The design is currently being finalized; construction is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2012 and finish in the spring of 2013. It will be open to qualified academic researchers and industry alike and will focus on testing commercial building systems. “We’re looking for public and private partners to collaborate with us on groundbreaking new research,” Selkowitz says. “That collaboration can take many different forms. We want to be flexible to accommodate the business needs of industry and the mission of the Lab.”

Stantec Architecture is leading the architectural and mechanical/electrical/plumbing design for the facility, which incorporates input on the functional requirements of the test beds from researchers and industry. “This facility is challenging in requiring a wide array of flexibility in changeouts of different envelope and system components, while maintaining tight construction tolerances, high levels of sensing and instrumentation accuracy, and a robust and flexible controls and data acquisition system for the experiments,” says Cindy Regnier, program manager leading the technical development of the facility.

All of the test beds will be located at Berkeley Lab’s main site in the Berkeley hills, replacing a set of trailer buildings used as offices installed more than 30 years ago. Each test bed will be 40 feet by 30 feet, and can be split into two 20’-by-30’ cells. One of the four and a half outdoor test beds will be a high bay, or two stories, to allow testing of lighting and skylights applicable to markets such as big box retail stores. Another one of the test beds will be located in a renovated occupied space of an existing four-story office building, allowing for occupant feedback on tests of lighting controls, light levels and plug loads.

Additionally, one of the test beds will have the ability to rotate 270 degrees, which will allow for testing systems under west- and southwest-facing exposures, the most challenging for controlling peak cooling loads. “One of big issues of energy performance is the impact of sunlight,” explains Selkowitz. “If we can rotate it to face the sun for more hours of the day, we can get more interesting conditions to test under.”

The facility will also allow users to test the energy performance of retrofits. Of the 5 million commercial buildings in the U.S. many were built without the benefit of modern energy efficiency codes and can thus be improved using retrofits or renovation strategies. “You can, for example, set up one of the facilities with the equivalent of, say, 1970s or 80s buildings code construction, then test how much energy an aggressive retrofit strategy would save,” says Schetrit.

Selkowitz and his team are already meeting with a plethora of manufacturers of glazing, windows, facades, building HVAC and control systems and lighting fixtures and controls. The group includes large and small firms and startups as well as market leaders.

Besides manufacturers, another group of interested users are architects and engineers, those who specify what kinds of systems go into new buildings. “Architects and engineers need to have confidence in an emerging technology before they specify it because if it doesn’t work, they’re on the hook for it,” Schetrit says. “This is a place for them to kick the tires, experience what new technologies look like and work like. We want to facilitate the rapid transfer of emerging technologies to market.”

Another potential users of the facility are utility companies. California utilities alone spend over $1 billion a year to encourage use of established energy-savings technologies, such as CFLs, according to Selkowitz. “But for a lot of the newer technologies, like automated shading and daylight dimming, they don’t have ‘hard data’ on what the savings are,” he says. “Of course we can calculate that, but they really like to see measured data from the field. The test beds are designed to provide these data and will allow utilities to target their rebate and incentive programs to be more cost-effective.”

Berkeley Lab’s research will have even greater impact if other building-science user facilities collaborate, something the DOE hopes to encourage. It has asked the Berkeley Lab to to help create a national network of roughly 20 other building science test centers, both public and private, scattered around the country to share data across climates, technologies and building systems. Collecting, integrating and extending data from multiple sources, including the use of advanced simulation tools, will extend the value of everyone’s data, Selkowitz says.

Berkeley Lab operates six national user facilities, including the Molecular Foundry, the Advanced Light Source and the National Center for Electron Microscopy. The Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division, which will be running the Test Bed Facility, also operates an Advanced Windows Test Facility, through which it has collaborated extensively with commercial companies and helped advance electrochromic glazing and other dynamic window control systems toward market applications.

“Berkeley Lab has been at the forefront of building science research since the program was started here over 35 years ago,” says Selkowitz. “These new test bed facilities will further enhance our capabilities, and we hope will launch a new era of scientific collaboration and accomplishment to help address the global problems of carbon emissions and climate change.”

For additional information, including a more detailed project brochure, see the Berkeley Lab site  User Test Bed Facility and the DOE’s site Buildings Technologies Program

Captions for illustrations, top to bottom:

An architect’s rendering of an aerial view of the User Test Bed Facility, with the existing Building 90 behind it. (Source: Stantec Architecture)

The User Test Bed Facility will include four test cells of 40′ by 30′ each. (Source: Stantec Architecture)

With that general observation we happily introduce our new Green Mountains correspondent, Cindy Hill, who sends her first Postcard from Vermont. There’s not much question that Cindy is a great writer. She’s also an obsessed gardener (her words), mom, and fiddle player, not to mention a respected environmental attorney who hails from Middlebury, Vermont. In this week’s issue she explains just why Vermont residents, not generally fond of big anything — especially big government, but big business also — are starting to feel genuine fondness for corporate California agriculture.

Given that “Buy Local is the official Vermont mantra” and that the sparsely peopled Green Mountain State “has the highest density of farmers’ markets and micro-brewers and the lowest density of McDonald’s and Walmarts in the country,” you may be as surprised — shocked — by Cindy’s discovery as we were.

Getting back to the Buy Local idea lets us pick up where we left off last week. At the Center for Economic Development’s annual CSU, Chico economic forecasting session a number of years ago, speakers predicted that tourism would be the number one industry in Northern California within 20 years.

“Aha!” I remember thinking, being a hardcore Northern Californian and also hugely invested in California tourism. As a travel writer whose primary focus was California I considered myself more a lifelong student — this place being one of the most amazing on earth — and as a result a dedicated Californiac.

The Californiac in me was intrigued by the notion that tourism could play a major role in Northern California’s future economic development. And there are certainly worse things to hang your hat on. Tourism supports mom-and-pop small businesses (restaurants, B&Bs, retail shops, guide companies) that can generate decent family incomes — sustainable and sustaining local and regional businesses, in fact, to the extent that tourism dollars stay within the region.

Tourism can be a viable add-on to other businesses too, including family farming and various arts-related enterprises. Put a B&B unit or two out by the barn or above the studio and it’s possible for visitors to relax in the country or small-town neighborhood and remember a way of life long gone elsewhere.

Considering that 85 percent of all travel in California is by Californians, it only makes sense to invite harried city folks to come visit rural Northern California.

Anyway, that economic development news was just the beginning of the rather roundabout process that finally resulted in Up the Road. Travel in general — the idea of getting up the road, or starting in one place and ending up in another — became the working metaphor that connected both purpose and place.

If we managed to put our educational program “on the road” we could point to specific projects and businesses along the way that demonstrate sustainability, some particular, often unique interweaving of economic development with both social opportunity and environmental awareness or protection. And make sure people had a good time to boot.

Which is why travelers will soon be able to go to Up the Road’s website for top-knotch Northern California travel information — close-to-home Road Trips, anyone? — and, alongside, place-related sustainability information, or places to go, things to see, and experiences to sample that demonstrate the concept in a particular area. We’re hoping you fellow travelers will thoroughly engage too, and share your own experiences. As we get this large and complex web construction job closer to completion we’ll have much more to say about the details.

We will also be announcing — very soon — a variety of Other Roadside Attractions, unusual guided educational outings that focus on different aspects of sustainability.

Two key points before signing off:

We want Up the Road to be both stable and sustainable, a nonprofit organization not dependent on any one source of funding. So we’ll be experimenting some, to figure out what works and what doesn’t. We hope you’ll let us know what you think while generally cheering us on.

We also want Up the Road to be sustaining in relationship to its Northern California community. Up the Road won’t be telling folks what to think or what to do. But we will be telling you what a variety of engaging and engaged people are thinking and doing. We expect that to encourage some good conversation — and still more innovative ideas and creative work.

Kim

P.S. I’m always forgetting something. One thing I meant to say last time was this: If you’d like to become a Founder but are challenged to come up with $100 all at once, no problem. Things are tight here too. Just let me know and we’ll work something out.

P.P.S. If you’d like to be included on our mailing list please say so: editor@uptheroad.org.