Hidden in plain sight

They’re less like National Treasure and more like The History Detectives. Their magic is less epic than cerebral, but they are subtly powerful. They are the fail-safe protection on our governments, enabling citizens to petition their officials for the redress of grievances. They are temples of secrets.
I’d venture to guess that the reader has likely passed their local or state archives or even a branch of the National Archives without realizing it. They are frequently crowded into basements, or are sometimes overshadowed by a single exhibit. Most people don’t have a good sense of what they are or what they’re for.
Archives answer questions. For those who work for the community, they are a means to understand complex issues involving our government or other institutions. Archives contain the reasons and the politics behind the establishment of a park or state forest boundary, document legal battles between citizens and government agencies, record what some parcel of land was really intended for, and chronicle how communities have succeeded or failed when faced with all manner of environmental problems. More generally, archives are home to records of the decisions an institution makes and to the evidence of the actions it takes. Sometimes they’re even a place to make a point.
Archives offer something to people who want to understand the past- their own, their family’s, and their community’s. They contain snapshots of the places people connect with the government- the ubiquitous census records, land patents and deeds, marriage licenses, birth certificates, and the oft-overlooked prison records. (Everyone wants to discover that they are descended from royalty. It’s more likely that you’re related to horse thieves and other nogoodniks.) Sometimes, you can even find a picture. These records, together with the recollections of other family members, can help you to uncover where your family is really from, where and how they lived, and even paints a picture of what they wanted out of life. Archives build a human story.
In creating and answering questions with these collections, you’re doing the impossible. You’re creating something of expanding value without expending anything. This value has the potential to grow without limit as you learn more, make new connections, and share all of this with others.
Perhaps the best part about an archive is that you get to touch most if not all of their collections. While museum objects are safely sequestered under glass, archival documents are handed-over by the Hollinger box-full. You can hold in your hands Ralph Waldo Emerson’s sermons, a century-old photograph of the wild mountains that would become Shenandoah National Park, or your grandfather’s enlistment records, revealing that he lied about his age in order to join the Marine Corps. Some archives or manuscript collections contain maps of places you know, made before you knew them, or hand written notes about the way a classic book was originally going to end. Some contain sound recordings and moving pictures. They establish a tangible connection to history and make it relevant to the present.
Obviously, this tip is more complicated than carrying a bandana to reduce the number of paper towels you use or buying local beer to save energy. But, whether you need resources to make your community a better place or you want to put stock in something of enduring value, archives offer a way to be the solution.

Author's note: The people pictured above are committing a crime. They are highlighted here not because I agree with their sentiment (I don’t think there is a constitutional basis for their assertion), but because a friend alerted me that this demonstration was unfolding at the National Archives earlier this week. It seemed fitting to include it.

Image sources:
Anonymous photographer, undisclosed stack location, Washington, DC
Veterans for Peace
National Park Service

Green Hour 101

Forget the research that shows that people heal faster after surgery when they spend time in the woods, and forget the articles that highlight the link between hours spent inside and childhood obesity, diabetes, and Attention Deficit Disorder. It's common sense that people, especially kids need to spend time outside. It's equally clear that as parents and children become increasingly scheduled into structured activities and spend more and more time in cars communting to those activities, we have a lot of pressures that keep us from spending time outside.
Beyond the health and psychological benefits, spending time outside builds an understanding of how natural systems and processes work. We have a better knowledge of the relationship between plants and insects, the way water conspires with sunlight and wind to create the local weather, and all of the ways people impact their local environments, if we see these things for ourselves.
Parents have some help with this. Largely in response to Richard Louv's 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods, people all over the country have been working to address this problem through an initiative called The Green Hour. Obviously, encouraging our children to spend time outside and educating them about nature is a tall order. The Green Hour organization (and several others: National Wildlife Federation, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Take a Child Outside Week) offers some suggestions for how parents and children can experience nature together at their website.
Family walks, free play in a backyard, keeping an outdoor journal, sketchbook, or photoblog are simple ways to get started. You can check out books about bugs or birds from your local library or invest in a magnifying glass so that little ones can investigate lichens and starfish. If you don't know a tiger swallowtail from a mourning cloak, don't worry. You can learn about these things with your kids, and your own interest will encourage them.
There are opportunities for this all over the place. The local playground or the grounds of a public school or library may be bordered with grass and trees. There may be a thicket, a publicly-owned, unimproved no-mans-land, just down the street. Or, you may be fortunate enough to live close to a state or national park or a public beach.
As summer gives way to fall, this is a great time to start getting outside and observing the changes. It also happens to be Take a Child Outside Week (September 24-30) (Who knew?). Climb some trees, write about a preying mantis, watch the red-tailed hawks. Ask questions. Learn.
More to come.

Image sources: E.R. Dunhill

Creeping Socialism

It would appear that the Bush administration is moving the country closer to socialism. One of the nations largest insurance companies has now been eighty percent nationalized. Since one of the insurance products of AIG is health insurance, it would appear that the Bush Administration is preparing us for socialized medical insurance.

more on that cup of joe

E.R. Dunhill has offered us a great post this morning on the complexities of choosing a container for one's coffee (and I offer a photo of my personal collection of handcrafted pottery coffee mugs, the average age of which is 15 years).

Even more perplexing than the container is coffee itself. There are many good health reasons to avoid caffeine or at least to reduce substantially the amount we ingest. We can sleep better, avoid caffeine withdrawal headaches and migraines, women can avoid breast pain from fibroadenomas, and many people can solve the problem of "overactive bladder" by just cutting out that troublesome caffeine. These and other reasons are why over a decade ago I went from being an eight cup a day coffee/caffeine addict, to being a two cup of decaf a week person -- because after all the smell and taste of coffee is just too, too good to give up completely.

Then there are the environmental and humanitarian issues. Coffee, unless you live in Hawaii, comes from great distances. Unlike winter blueberries from Argentina, of course, coffee can travel by ship rather than plane to its destination, but nonetheless long distance travel in petroleum powered transport is behind every cup of coffee we drink. Coffee has traditionally been grown in partial shade of existing forest, providing an incentive to protect tropical forests. But in recent years, more and more coffee is grown in full-sun, resulting in destruction of forest cover to expand coffee plantations.

There are other issues about human welfare in how coffee plantations are owned and managed. The blurb on my morning coffee says "Coffee grown on farms that meet rigorous social and environmental standards earns the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal. The Rainforest Alliance works to conserve biodiversity, protect ecosystems and ensure sustainable livelihoods by transforming land-use practices, business practices, and consumer behavior. Rainforest Alliance certification assures that forests and wildlife habitat are protected, local waterways are kept clean, and farm families have access to education and healthcare."

Certified coffee costs more, but if you make the change to drinking less for health reasons, you can afford to pay a little more for coffee that will be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. And if you're not drinking on the run, you can invest in a handcrafted cup from which to drink your occasional cup, thus savoring the process even more.

Reduce, reuse, reuse, reuse, reuse, reuse… recycle

Disposable cups and bottles are everywhere. If you’re in a city or in the suburbs, you can probably find some within a few yards of where you’re reading this. If you live in the country, you doubtless know of a heap of them (along with tires, part of an AC window unit, a broken fishing pole, and a pair of rabbit-ears) at the end of a local road. You've no doubt heard or read the caution that paper cups contribute to cutting trees and that these cups decompose to produce methane in landfills. You've also probably heard that polystyrene foam cups are a bad idea, because they're made from petroleum, they leach toxic chemicals into beverages, they're hard to recycle, and they don't biodegrade for a very, very long time. (Dunkin Donuts: Styrofoam is no good for beverage containers. Welcome to 1989.) Reusable cups can be a good solution to reduce demand for forest products and petroleum, while reducing the solid waste stream.
But be careful. Studies about the life cycle energy costs of reusable cups tell us that this is not a casual investment. That steel cup requires a good deal of energy to manufacture and a little on an ongoing basis to stay clean. One study (whose authors escape me, but rest assured that when I read it, it sounded terribly authoritative) suggests that a reusable steel cup needs around 300 uses to beat the energy usage of an analogous supply of single-use disposible cups. Not until after that magic number, are you enjoying a net-energy savings as compared to paper. If you’re prone to losing things or if the vicissitudes of fashion mean you won’t be caught dead with that steel cup in a year, stick with paper.
Be the solution. In the long run, that reusable cup does prevent waste and save and energy. (It also saves water over paper cups, but keep in mind that it’s saving water at a papermill somewhere, while using water in your neighborhood. This is important if you live somewhere with water issues.) If you have the moxie to invest in a reusable steel cup, E.R. Dunhill suggests a few tips to help you reach that lofty (and terribly authoritative) 300th use:
-Buy a quality cup. Before you purchase, make sure it seems solidly put together. Avoid plastics, because many of them degrade faster than you’d think, especially when filled with hot liquids. Besides, someone is bound to find something else toxic (phthalates, bisphenol A, partially deweaponized poisonium) in whatever polymer you choose. It’s also easier to recycle steel when that cup reaches the end of its usable life span, than a cup that could be made of several different plastics. Pay particular attention to the lid, any places where parts are joined or sealed, and any moving parts. Avoid anything with a spring-loaded closure or with a cumbersome twist-apart lid (for cleaning). These parts seem to fail a lot, and if they break, it’s almost impossible to replace them.
-Buy a container with simple aesthetics. That stencil may be hip now, but know the perils of the insidious hip life cycle: “Hip” downgrades to “popular” to “overdone” to “tacky” – then it gets better for a moment with “ironic” – then back to “tacky” and finally “what were you thinking?”. You can’t count on the possible graduation to “retro” or “vintage”. Instead, be gently boring, like E.R. Dunhill or be prepared to carry your tacky cup with pride.
-Clean your cup regularly. If you decide that your cup has cooties, you’ll stop using it. If your cup contracts cooties because you didn’t clean it regularly, get rid of the cooties and get over it.
-Bring your container with you (or, explain beverage-telekinesis* to me). Keep in mind that you can fill what is sold as a coffee cup with something other than coffee. This revelation makes your reusable cup even more useful.
-Estimate when the cup will reach 300. (No, don’t make a spreadsheet. Just use rough numbers.) If you use it instead of paper twice per week (about 100 times/year), you’ll need to have it at least 3 years. When you arrive upon your magic day, have a celebratory café au lait and blueberry bagel.

*Author’s note: E.R. Dunhill will accept and, as appropriate, publicly display a diagram or other rendering of beverage-telekinesis. Stick-figures, crayons, children’s work, and other tom-foolery are strongly encouraged. Scan it or photograph it and post a link in the comments.
Also, the author will address the other Rs, "repair", "repurpose", and "rebuy" in future posts.

Image: E.R. Dunhill's ca 2002 Einstein Brothers double-walled steel travel mug, used more than 300 times (Courtesy of the author).

Drill pickle

More a matter of politics than government, the Congress is voting on a measure to relax the off-shore drilling ban in place since 1982. Under the measure before lawmakers (as of this morning), drilling would become legal at a distance of 50 miles from shore with the consent of adjacent states, or at 100 miles without such permission. The bill has already passed the House. I'm curious to see how the reader feels.
Is relaxing the drilling ban a good idea? Would lifting it altogether be better? Is the rate at which oil will be extracted too low to bother? Does the value of the oil outweigh the potential damage to fisheries and tourism? Do most people understand the issue? Should people in a landlocked state like Arizona be making this decision for people in a coastal state like Delaware?

Image source: Minerals Management Service

Number 2: The persimmon

The air turned suddenly cool yesterday and the dogday harvest flies are beginning to pack up. Several days ago, I wrote about having seen school buses out and about. This of course means that we’re now standing with our toes over the edge of fall. As it turns out, it’s also a great time to get out and have fun while serving your community.
Many of us think of conservation efforts (and outdoor activities in general) as something people do in the spring and summer. After all, environmental groups, Boy Scouts, the Izaak Walton League, trail clubs and their ilk tend to mobilize people for Earth Day and in preparation of the high use seasons.
For anyone who lives in the Potomac River watershed fall is also an important time to work for clean drinking water, clean air, and healthy fisheries. Growing Native is a program run by the Potomac Conservancy that offers opportunities to collect native tree seeds for clean water. After adequate time to grow at a state nursery or volunteer grow-out station, seedlings are then planted in area parks, stream-sides, and other sensitive areas in need of more tree cover. Trees help to keep the water entering streams and rivers clean, while reducing air pollution. This in turn makes for more productive fisheries downstream.
Native trees provide a number of advantages. First, their specific water, soil, and light needs are fine-tuned to the area. This means that when planted in appropriate places, native trees often need less maintenance than hybrids or exotics. Second, native trees invite native animals and plants, which need trees for food, habitat, or cover. Encouraging native trees from a variety of sources rather than artificial hybrids or exotics also contributes to a robust genetic database of wild plants that prevents genetic bottle-necking.
If you live in the DC area or anywhere else in the Potomac River watershed, I encourage you to check out the Potomac Conservancy calendar to find a local seed collection event.

Image source: Virginia Tech Department of Forestry, after Chapman, Cleese, Gilliam, Idle, Jones, and Palin