Last week I announced Emily Wang’s Own Workshop on Sustainable Building 9/14. Today I attended it and learned more than I expected to, which happens when you get your hands dirty from digging into clay. Here’s Emily in the structure we helped build, a chicken coop at none other than Drew Gardens, where I hold my twice-annual cooking workshops in the Bronx. If you read Emily’s blog, which I recommend,[…] Keep reading →

UPDATE: Emily posted about the workshop. Check out A Smashing Week Building with Cob in NYC. Lots of pictures, descriptions of cob building, and matching my appreciation for Drew Gardens. I attended, though don’t appear in the pictures since I rode my bike there and knew I would ride back, about 90 minutes each way. The post referred to me, but not by name. See if you catch the reference.[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written before that to fix our environmental problems we have to change culture. Say you wanted to learn a culture to where you were fluent in its language and culture. Which would work better? Say you wanted to learn Nigerian language and culture Read books by people who haven’t lived in the culture or spoken that language, with the intent that only after you learned them fluently you would[…] Keep reading →

Few things have made me so grateful to live in a time when the phrase “not even wrong” exists. I’ve read parts of White Fragility and skimmed more. I didn’t realize how impactful she had become. I’m commenting today on this video of her I just watched: “One plus one equals three” is, in mathematics, wrong. It might be nice in poetry and you can find ways to make it[…] Keep reading →

I’ve been reading podcast guest Manisha Sinha’s book The Counterrevolution of Slavery, which recounts how slaveholders spoke and acted to justify and advance their institution of slavery. I know to expect it from having seen it before in podcast guest James Oakes’s The Ruling Race and Jenkins’ Proslavery Thought in the Old South, but I’m still shocked at how relevant their thinking is today. They treat a different institution, but[…] Keep reading →

Environmentalists call people who disagree with them “science deniers” and “climate deniers.” They get annoyed when people presented with the science don’t change their behavior when science shows it’s creating undesired outcomes. Meanwhile, I see environmentalists use ineffective techniques to try to change others’ behavior. When their techniques don’t work, they don’t change their behavior to ways that work. The science is clear that their techniques don’t work, yet they[…] Keep reading →

My friend who teaches kids sustainability, among other things, invited me to join her with some of her students and their parents sailing in New York Harbor. She had me speak to them about things like taking five years (and counting) to fill a load of garbage, not fly, and so on. They loved it. I loved it too. I enjoy being on the water, when the wind, currents, and[…] Keep reading →

When I started graduate school in physics at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the faculty members in the department confused the students. He didn’t confuse us with complex science. He was a world leader in his subject, but the subject was tennis—the physics of tennis. I studied there in 1993-94. When the professor, Howard Brody, died, the New York Times published his obituary, Howard Brody, an Expert in the[…] Keep reading →

Our environmental problems have become a politically polarized issue. Why? I don’t know values of any political tradition that oppose clean air, land, water, and food, while all seem consistent with stewardship. Meanwhile, the main political tribes seem to see their opponents as obvious enemies, blatantly exacerbating the problems. Liberals say conservatives and libertarians don’t care and are greedy. They say they prefer profit over helping other people or wildlife.[…] Keep reading →