Last month, Sarah and I stayed in Ithaca while we were checking out the old adobe houses in New York's Finger Lakes region. Very kind Graham very kindly let us stay with her in the straw-bale duplex, which has turned out fantastically. Really, it's glossy-magazine-spread stuff, with heart and soul. While we were there, she and the Nolans (from the other side of the duplex) had a housewarming party. Michelle Nolan, an excellent storyteller who claims that she stops by this website now and then—but I don't really believe her (the gauntlet has been thrown down, Michelle!)—said that I "have to write a lot about it." Well, there is a lot to write about it, but I just haven't been able to do it yet. So, in the meantime, here's some photos of the beautiful, warm digs on both sides of the middle wall. (Click little ones to pop up bigger ones.)

Sarah and I have been looking for land, or even a house. (Have I mentioned that I've been offered an Associate Editor position? I may not have.) So we've started actively engaging to find a place to set up a permanent base camp. Property is expensive here, and taxes too, making it difficult. One of the places we've been most enamored with is a small, old quarry, which unfortunately is right on a two-lane highway and has a lot of traffic noise.


Another one I've liked is a plain-but-solid little box of a house in a quiet area next door to a gorgeous old cemetery (which happens to be the cemetery for some of the Cotton Mather family—though that coot Cotton himself is elsewhere), and is across from a conservation-held cornfield that will never be developed. Expensive, though.


Another chunk of land, wing-shaped and about ten acres, is a few miles outside of town; and just yesterday we stumbled across a curious lot right in town—the remains of an old stone foundation, and the mystery leftovers of previous structures farther back. Need to find out more.

Work leaves me brain-fried lately. We're putting together a homebuilder / remodeler / homeowner version of GreenSpec, and I've been soliciting images for it from about a thousand manufacturers. About a thousand, literally. They can submit up to five photos, and many of them are. These need to be processed for print and web. I'm also editing the introductions for each division and subsection of the book, which isn't at all bad—when I'm actually able to get at it. In addition, I spent a bit too much time last week writing a review for our monthly publication, Environmental Building News, of a breakthrough cold-climate air-source heat pump that delivers 120F air at 0F... which is unheard of. In between, miscellaneous projects as needed, mostly research. And to top things off, my favorite co-worker, Tori, is leaving in less than two weeks and a wealth of knowledge is leaving with her. I'm going to be attempting to cover some of that loss, but it clearly won't be easy. I've been trying to learn at least some of the basics of the things she does.

I was staffing a table for work with Willie and Sarah at a Renewable Energy fair at River Garden in downtown Brattleboro two weekends ago. Next door, there's a store called Save The Corporations (From Themselves). Sarah and I wandered over during the afternoon and found that they had some discontinued hemp shoes on sale at a good price. My sneakers had been falling apart for a while, so I bought a pair. They only had a few; the ones I got are about a size-and-a-half too big. Comfy!, plenty of room, kind of like wearing cloth sacks with soles. But I can't control them very well. I don't trip over my own toes, but when I take the wooden stairs at work, it sounds like a horse clopping up. Naturally, I'm preoccupied with this.

Recently, Jeremy sent a year's worth of CDs—each filled with songs specifically chosen to represent a particular month during a year of his life, plus a chock-full bonus disc of miscellania. Cripes, there's a lot of excellent music on those things that I've never heard, by people I've never heard of. They've spoken to Jeremy about his life... and in sharing them with me, I get a sense of what's been up with Jeremy. (Not to mention that it's just plain a shitload of great music. "Hey, that song's really good." "I know.")

It's busted. Now that it's going on summer, we can't just pop outside for bowls of snow to keep it at 'fridge temperature. We've moved the perishables from the 'fridge to a small cooler because the 'fridge gets way too warm when the sun hits the side of the house, and I've been buying blocks of ice as part of that process. Being a special RV thing that runs on AC or LP, it of course costs way more to get fixed than it ought to. And, of course, it crapped out just beyond the warranty. A reasonable person can't be expected to post to their website under these horrific conditions.

It's over two bucks a gallon now. It cost almost $50 to fill the truck this morning. But you'd think that would be a reason I'd be posting more, not less.

"Rachel Carson, The Writer at Work" by Paul Brooks. "Stone Work, Reflections on Serious Play and Other Aspects of Country Life" by John Jerome. "The Elements of Editing, A Modern Guide for Editors and Journalists" by Arthur Plotnik.

OK, this one's not a reasonable excuse, since it only happened a couple days ago. The Democracy Now! host was in town on a book tour for The Exception to the Rulers, and gave an excellent, moving, powerful, disheartening, encouraging, and free talk to a standing-room-only crowd about  1) the role of media in wartime, and  2) activism. She wasn't shrill, demanding, or antagonistic. She spoke in comfortably factual tones, but with earnest. She smiled a lot. (She'd also given the keynote address at Hampshire College's graduation ceremony earlier in the day.)

We get, like, one channel that comes in clearly on a regular basis. And still I watch too much.