I’ve written about Where to buy the best food around New York City and praised the system of CSAs and the incredible flavor, value, and convenience of the one I participate in from Stoneledge Farm. Every year they host a lunch and invite all subscribers. I think I’ve gone every year since I started, though they may have skipped a couple years during the pandemic. I forget. I don’t take[…] Keep reading →

This week, I charged my solar panel and battery on my roof for the first time for over 18 months. My building had to do maintenance during which no residents could access the roof. They told us the job would take 5 months, but it took over 18. They also didn’t say exactly when it would start until one day I got an email that said I couldn’t access the[…] Keep reading →

Emissions of greenhouse gases are measured and reported as major indications of environmental problems. Emissions aren’t the relevant measure. They distract us from what is relevant to human well-being. They lead people to say, “I exhale and poop. Life requires pollution,” and conclude action won’t work. To be more precise, they feel like they conclude, they actually just rationalize and justify the preconception they wanted. They miss that fossil fuels’[…] Keep reading →

I thought we’d have another day or two hitting 90 F (32 C), but the forecast for the next ten days shows the highest temperature will be 86 F, so I figure it won’t hit 90 again this year. I didn’t use air conditioning in my apartment for another summer. A few nights I woke up sweating in the middle of the night. I didn’t write the number down, but[…] Keep reading →

I joined a group trying to find ways to fly less. One of the themes of the group was to show that “taking the train is just as good as flying.” I found this approach counterproductive. It set flying as the norm and other ways of traveling as alternatives. I think some people saw flying as the best and other ways of traveling as trying to measure up as best[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written and recorded a bunch lately on the peaches and heirloom tomatoes I’ve been eating tons of lately because people don’t take them. Here are those posts: I took a picture of the tomatoes so people could see how some are bruised and the skin broken. Maybe many people would find them unacceptable. In the picture below, the one in the upper left is pretty bruised, but didn’t lose[…] Keep reading →

I value family. Extracting fuel and minerals leads to things that tear families apart, like making them refugees, child labor in dangerous mines, people living far from the homes they grew up in, causing people to die young, and more. Valuing family is one of the main reasons I don’t fly. I don’t want to tear families apart. Likewise with communities. I don’t want to fund tearing communities apart. Can[…] Keep reading →

I haven’t posted about the book The Once and Future World by podcast guest J. B. MacKinnon lately, but it’s one of the more eye-opening books I’ve found on the environment. He asked, researched, and answered how nature looked before modernity impinged on it. In case you worried, he qualified that nature didn’t exist in a perfect state, let alone a static one. It changed all the time. Still, he[…] Keep reading →

I’ve eaten ten or twelve juicy ripe peaches and about that number of bowls of heirloom tomato gazpacho in the past two days. I got them from volunteering. I brought food that a store was going to throw away. The store produce isn’t as flavorful as the fresh, local produce in season in the height of the summer from farmers markets. Other volunteers bring different things from different places. It[…] Keep reading →