by Thomas Lawson

In the ’70s I worked with an engineer who was intensively into organic gardening. He had recently purchased an old home in Van Nuys that needed a lot of tender loving care. When he first moved in, he couldn’t get his shovel into the ground even by jumping up and down on it.

He started by building a rabbit hutch and bought a couple of rabbits (need I say one male and one female). He then built a worm pit directly below the hutch. The hutch had an mesh screen bottom and the “droppings” fell directly into the worm pit. He removed some of the native soil and mixed it in to the pit. Periodically he would remove 50% of the rich mixture from the worm pit and incorporate it into the area where he had removed the soil. He continued to repeat this process until he had completely replaced the top few inches of the soil in his back yard. Read more…

admin Organic Gardening

design by Mihai Stamati – Chisinau, Moldova

Why not? Stamati’s visionary “2030 Car” is a solar-powered, four-seater with green windows and plenty of visibility. A cylindrical add-on can be fixed to the rear of the vehicle for extra seating (complete with a bar-style desk). It’s powered by standard rear-mounted ‘wheel motors.’

.

admin Transportation

by Patrick May – Mercury News – 02/25/2009

From stem to stern across the continent, skirting blacktop and blue highway in his oddball little electric car, Marcelo da Luz has devoted the last eight months of his life to following the sun.

It keeps him going. It powers the silicon cells covering his three-wheeled roadster like a rattlesnake skin, bringing his record-breaking quest this week to Palo Alto, where he’s taking a break. And it fuels his solar evangelism, sharing with a fossil-fueled world his passion for sun power. Read more…

admin Transportation

by Anonymous

 

A silly young cricket, accustomed to sing

Through the warm, sunny months of gay summer and spring,

Began to complain, when he found that at home

His cupboard was empty and winter was come.

        Not a crumb to be found

        On the snow-covered ground;

        Not a flower could he see,

        Not a leaf on a tree.

“Oh, what will become,” says the cricket, “of me?”

 

At last by starvation and famine made bold,

All dripping with wet and all trembling with cold,

Away he set off to a miserly ant

To see if, to keep him alive, he would grant

        Him shelter from rain.

        A mouthful of grain

        He wished only to borrow,

        He’d repay it to-morrow;

If not helped, he must die of starvation and sorrow.

 

Says the ant to the cricket: “I’m your servant and friend,

But we ants never borrow, we ants never lend.

Pray tell me, dear sir, did you lay nothing by

When the weather was warm?” Said the cricket, “Not I.

       My heart was so light

       That I sang day and night,

       For all nature looked gay.”

       “You sang, sir, you say?

Go then,” said the ant, “and sing winter away.”

 

Thus ending, he hastily lifted the wicket

And out of the door turned the poor little cricket.

Though this is a fable, the moral is good:

If you live without work, you must live without food.

 

(From Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing: Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study - 1920)

admin Poetry