May, 14, 2013
we have been in ecuador for about a week now. So far it has been a good time. We arriver to Rio Muchacho farm and got a tour of the entire facility. The far belives in zero waste so every thing is used until it is gone. the river is teh main source of water for showers, laundry, and sinks. drinking water is colleced rain water which is then filterd.
We began our work on teh farm by hooking uo a drip system irrigation line. we also made many new garden bed by weeding, and turning teh soil. we added compost to enrich the soil and finally planted peppers, cucumbers, okra, and beans.  we worked in teh morning for a few hours and then break for lunch,  in the afternoon we work for a few more hours usually lighter work

Ecuador¨monday may 14 and tuesday may 14

 MONDAY MAY 13th
i had to leave the house early this morning, we have a full day of travel ahead of up. I met Paula at DIA and we quickly made it through security. Our first plane went to Miama, then from Miama to Quito, Ecuador. Once arriving to Quito it was already dark and going through customs was a little difficult. Neither of us speak spanish fluently and I can only understand verbs here and there. Everyone was so nice and helpful though so this wasn´t a huge problem. As soon as we left the airport we were able to find a really nice helpful taxi driver (who did not speak any english) but was still very bvery helpful to say the least. He took us to the bus station and also helped us purchase our tickets to Canoa. The bus ride from Quito to Canoa is a 7-9 and didn´t leave until 10pm. It was a long trip, and i tried to sleep as much as i could but it was also very uncomfortable.

TUESDAY MAY 14th
It was nearly 5´30 am when we arrived to Canoa and was a ghost town. We sat in a lit ally until the sun came up and then made our way to the beach where we laid down until the Rio Muchaco Farm office opened at 8:30. The beach was amazing, and the water was really warm as well. After such a long trip here it was very relaxing. After registering we were taken to the farm in an old red truck. The drive up to the farm was kind of far but so awesome. So many little homes all with some sort of garden or farm animals of thier own. Once getting to the farm i was amazed at this place i would call my home for the next month. I learned that this area used to be a desert when nicola and dario first purchased the land 30 years ago. Since then they have been planting over 400 trees a year to make it the paradise it is today. I also learned that Ecuador is nearly 95 percent deforested about only a few km of natural trees still remain.
The room the gave us to stay in is shared with 4 other girls. It´s on the top floor of the main house and basically the center of the farm which is 10 hecters big. Two of the volunteers are from Boulder, Colorado and know my really good friend Dax! Such a small world ¨:) They are both very fimilar with the gunnison and crested butte area giving us tons of commmon ground.Everyone here does their best to speak only in spanish, and it´s great! Only being here a day i feel like im picking it up again and am able to understand them since they aren´t as fast as the locals who are said to  have the coastal tounge. The do not pronounce thier s or z. Lunch consisted of rice beans and juice. all coming from the farm except for the rice.
After lunch i helped installing the irrigation system. At ths time of year in Ecauaor it is the end of the wet seasn going into the dry making irrigation needed. The water is pulled from the river. We worked on the irrigation of only about 20-30 of the 100 plus beds on the farm, so theres still tons of work to do on that.
After we were done working on the irrigation we all enjoyed an Ecuadoran orange :) it was delcious! We even ate it the way the locals do thwere they cut off the peel and slice just the top off, then you drink the juice out. Dinner was similar to lunch except we drank tea insted of juice. After that we went to a tienda down the street to have a few cervezas! SUCH A GOOD FIRST DAY!

(sorry for any mispelling and missing letters, the keyboard here at the internet cafe are old and quite different than those in the states!)

And on that Note,

I am "ringing off" for the semester.  Thanks to anyone, especially people besides Dr. Coop and Dr. Sellen (not that you guys aren't great, I just figured from the start that you would be the most prolific readers of this blog) who took the time to take a few ganders at my rather wordy posts.  Just the thought that even one or two other people would read these posts has kept me writing them, however late and/or sporadically.  Even if you happen to find these posts months, semesters, or years down the line and decide for some reason to read them, even just to snicker at my own extremely lengthy ranting, thank you.  Whoever you are reading these, I owe you all my greatest thanks.  Most of all, I also owe Dr. Sellen, Dr. Coop, and everyone at ORE a resounding "thank you!"  Thanks Dr. Sellen for your continued encouragement, advice, and help with getting me started with this blog deal in the first place.  Thanks to Dr. Coop, who together with his wry humor and calm wisdom, even in the face of my often-worried insistence on doing things "right," helped me through this entire semester and this internship.  Not to mention, if it weren't for this gentleman, I wouldn't be going to school at Western in the first place, so thanks very much for that too.  Finally, and most of all, thanks to the whole crew of grinning people at ORE for their kind acceptance of my own work and my humble, yet hopefully important help over the last seven months.  Thank you Maya, Bart, Lindsay, Kristen, Kerri, and, last but not least, Luke for your continued help, support, and good humor.  You are all good people, and ORE certainly has its collective heart in the right place.  Good luck to you all, and may all of you and your families be healthy and happy.  Thank you all for everything.  I will leave you all to it; see you in the Fall, have a great summer, and go play outside!

Sincerely,
Josh

The Proposed DIY Auto Garage

Hail loyal readers.  As the final blog post of my own various musings and/or ranting, I thought it would be a good idea to spread the word about a certain project that me and some Environmental Studies comrades have started in Dr. Coop's ENVS 301 class.  Though Coop, who is more likely to read this than anyone else, already knows quite a bit about this venture, I am writing this to hopefully get the word out to even a few people who haven't heard something about this, as well as to the ENVS kids of next semester who may happen to stumble upon this handy-dandy blog.  Also, I think that the message and goals of this project relate nicely to the various principles of ORE that I have been rambling about for the past few months.  Anyway, our project involves establishing what we have come to call a "DIY Garage" on campus (or possibly somewhere else, depending on various location considerations) as a place where students would be able to work on their vehicles (or have someone else help and teach them how to) without freezing and while hopefully learning some important skills that they can carry with them and cultivate for the rest of their lives.  So, how does this relate remotely to what I've said about ORE's guiding philosophy?  I'll tell you how.  First of all, this project has the potential to save students a whole lot of money, as they wouldn't need to take their vehicles to a shop to have 'em maintained.  Furthermore, the education that they would receive at the garage would allow them to make wise choices in the future regarding repairs, and thus avoid being swindled by less-than-ethical repair shops.  Secondly, helping students to keep their vehicles well-maintained (similarly to ORE's EnergySmart program helping people to keep their houses well-maintained) and properly tuned would help them to reduce their vehicles' air emissions and improve their fuel economy.  Finally, there is the education piece of the garage.  I am most excited about the garage's potential to teach people a few things and inspire them to learn some other exciting stuff on their own.  Just as ORE's programs don't throw the education aspect out of the window, so can this garage maintain a focus on students' learning more than how to crack books and write papers.  My greatest hope is that the DIY Garage may inspire students, and even other people in the community, as to the possibilities of learning how to do many useful and peaceful things instead of being glued to their iPhones or whatever, so that we may, slowly at first, remember the greatness of not only learning, but also doing all of these different things.  With this in mind, I leave you all in peace for a little while.  If anyone who happens to read this can please spread the word around town and around campus, I will be forever grateful.  Over the next few years, I plan to work hard on this project, and will do my best to help this happen, so please get in touch with me if you would like to help in any way, however seemingly small.  Until next time, cheers!

The "EnergySmart Fun Facts" and Other Assorted Rants

Now that the booklet stuff has been taken care of, I can finally begin to yammer about a few things that, maybe by some miracle, a few other people will find interesting.  This time, for the sake of propagating some of the research that I did earlier in the semester, I will share some nifty stuff regarding turning off light switches, recycling, and a few of the other responsibilities that come with living in modern houses (or nearly anywhere, for that matter).  This stuff was dubbed "EnergySmart Fun Facts," and was compiled from various websites that I poured over, so much of the credit does not go to me.  One of these days, this information may actually appear on some pamphlet or the like, although ORE's Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency has a lot of these already.  Nonetheless, for your enjoyment (not to mention for the sake of irritating power companies), here they are.

EnergySmart “Fun Facts”

Light Bulbs:

- Incandescent light bulbs lose up to 95% of their energy to heat, with only around 5% being converted to light.

- Most incandescent bulbs last about 1000 hours, while florescent bulbs can last around 10,000 hours.

- One 60-watt light bulb uses enough energy in one hour to power a Super Nintendo for 6 hours.

- The amount of energy used by one 40-watt light bulb (in an hour) could power a CD player for around a half-hour

 

Computers:

 

- Setting computers to "sleep mode" will save a great deal of energy, as a computer in sleep mode will use anywhere from 0-6 watts of power.

- Computers even use energy, ranging from 1-2 watts, when turned off

- Many LCD monitors use almost no power when not displaying an image or when turned off.

- Laptop computers use less than 1/3 the power of some desktops.

- Screensavers that display any images do not save power.

Water heaters:

- Water heating accounts for about 18% of the typical household energy bill

- Cold water requires no electricity, whereas the average water heater uses around 2500 watts of power.

- The wattage of a typical water heater is equal to about 250 clock radios all blaring at once.

- Every 10* reduction in water heater temperature saves about 3-5% of power.

- The amount of energy used by a typical water heater is more than the power output of 3 1-horsepower small engines.

Recycling:

- Recycling aluminum saves up to 95% of energy and air pollution as compared to making new materials from Bauxite.

- Plastic recycling results in a 70% energy savings.

- Recycling paper results in a 73% air pollution savings.

- Recycling Steel results in a 60% energy savings.

- Being a "recycling role model" has been statistically shown to increase the rate of recycling among friends and neighbors (probably coworkers as well).

 

In other words, doing some of this stuff doesn't operate in a vacuum.  Live by example.  Recycle by example too; it can't hurt.  Being such a damn fundamentalist about recycling, I could probably stand to learn how to not enforce this sort of stuff so much.  Really, if people can stop for a single second before they pitch stuff and think about what the hell they are doing, I would be willing to bet that all of the ridiculous stuff in people's garbage cans - not to mention all of the crazy stuff that me and a few other people found in the dumpster outside of Mears the other day, which ranged from a working microwave to some unopened beer (which we did not drink, in a victory for good judgment) - wouldn't be so unthinkingly and unceremoniously winged out of the figurative (and sometimes literal, in the case of a television set, courtesy of a couple of kids in Ute Hall) window.  So, I will leave you all to it, and please, think what you can make out of stuff before just mindlessly pitching things.  Look up some "scrap jewelry" or something, and it is clear that there are a bunch of cool things that you can make out of so-called "junk."  I realize that people can't hang on to everything, but, at the same time, some of the things that can be made from supposed "garbage" are truly amazing, and if more people did stuff like that, we would be in a completely different world right now, where people's garbage cans wouldn't spill all over the street, but where some of that stuff may be used to beautifully adorn their homes.

The "Final" Scoop on ORE's Pamphlets

After delivering the last batch of those nifty little booklets, it seem appropriate to leave anyone who happens to care enough to go nab a few with a some handy little statistics.  And, although these are fairly accurate (there are a few math idiosyncrasies that I didn't quite figure out, as I can't account for somewhere around 20 pamphlets), it is handy to remember Mark Twain's wise statement that "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics."  On that note, here are those statistics, and, though I do like that quote, they are not overwhelmingly inaccurate.

Locations of ORE Pamphlet Stashes and Delivery Amounts as of 5/4/13 and 5/6/13

On Western’s Campus

Kelley Hall:

Main Recycle Bins:

-           4x EnergySmart + 1=5x

-           7x ORE Information +3=10x

-           6x Local Farms First

-           10x EnergyWise

-           4x Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency

-           7x Green Business Directory

Student Room:

-           6x Green Business Directory

-           2x Local Farms First

-           5x EnergyWise

-           4x EnergySmart +1=5x

-           3x ORE Information +2=5x

-           2x Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency

Downstairs Table #2:

-           2x Green Business Directory 4x?

-           0x Local Farms First

-           4x EnergySmart +1=5x

-           4x ORE Information 5x?

-           5x EnergyWise

-           1x Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency

Upstairs Table #1:

-           0x Green Business Directory

Upstairs Table #2:

-           0x Green Business Directory 5x?

-           4x ORE Information

Upstairs Table #3:

-           2x Green Business Directory

Taylor Hall Downstairs:

Recycle Bins #1:

-           0x ORE Information + 5 = 5x

-           3x Green Business Directory

Recycle Bins #2:

-           4x ORE Information + 1 = 5x

-           3x Green Business Directory

Leslie J. Savage Library:

Main Table:

-           2x Green Business Directory + 1 = 3x

-           9x ORE Information + 1 = 10x

-           3x Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency

-           8x Local Farms First + 2 = 10x

-           10x EnergySmart

-           10x EnergyWise

College Center:

Main Booklet Table:

-           20x ORE Information

-           4x Green Business Directory + 1 = 5x

-           15x EnergySmart + 5 = 20x

-           23x EnergyWise

-           1x Local Farms First + 2 = 3x

-           10x Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency

Freecycle (Undetermined):

-           7x Green Business Directory

-           9x Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency

-           5x ORE Information

-           3x Local Farms First

-           5x EnergySmart

-           5x EnergyWise

Around Gunnison

Natural Foods Market:

-           3x Green Business Directory + 2 = 5x

-           5x EnergySmart

-           5x EnergyWise

-           6x ORE Information + 1 = 7x

-           3x Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency

Mocha’s:

-           5x Green Business Directory

-           5x ORE Information

-           3x Local Farms First + 7 = 10x

The Bean:

-           7x Green Business Directory

-           7x ORE Information + 3 = 10x

-           4x Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency

-           17x EnergyWise

-           4x EnergySmart + 1 = 5x

-           1x Local Farms First + 14 = 15x

PawsAbilities Thrift Store:

-           5x Green Business Directory

-           5x ORE Information

-           5x Local Farms First

Brick Cellar (undetermined):

-           9x Green Business Directory

-           10x Local Farms First (undetermined)

-           10x EnergyWise (undetermined)

-           10x EnergySmart (undetermined)

-           10x ORE Information (undetermined) +9x

-           3x Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency

Mario’s Pizza:

-           5x ORE Information

-           2x Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency

-           4x Local Farms First + 6 = 10x

-           8x EnergySmart + 2 = 10x

-           9x EnergyWise

-           2x Green Business Directory

 

Of all of these pamphlets, Local Farms First was undoubtedly the most popular.  The Green Business Directory and the Pocket Guide to Energy Efficiency were also reasonably well-received, and ORE's informational booklet did alright.  EnergySmart and EnergyWise weren't very popular at all, however, which leads me to believe that some people actually like exorbitant electricity bills.  Or, better yet, maybe people just like looking those programs up on the computer, instead of taking actual booklets, so that they can use even more electricity.  Who knows.  Anyway, as near as I can tell, the total number of ORE pamphlets that delivered is around 725.  A few of these booklets were already there when I came along, but the vast majority were hand-delivered by me.  My roommate also deserves some credit, as he occasionally tagged along for a bit of camaraderie-inspiring conversation.  I also have a few pages worth of the total numbers of booklets that were delivered and actually taken from all of those different places, although I don't want to usurp this blog's entire first page with more mumbo-jumbo sort of interesting records.  So, if you are one of those readers who actually likes picking up pieces of paper instead of staring at websites, or, better yet, even if you are someone who gets off on all those nifty little Macintosh gizmos, please take a moment to forget about the ridiculousness of the "21st century" and pick up a few booklets if you haven't already.  Also, for anyone who reads this blog next semester, you to are more than welcome to cruise around town or around campus and read a few of 'em, too, so please do!

Trust

I may be a bit late to the punch - a few weeks late - but I will say that something struck me about the Farm-to-Table conference in Taylor ballroom.  Namely, when Chris Sullivan mentioned a trust between farmers and their customers, I thought that he really touched on one of the underlying issues of our times.  Of course, trust between all kinds of "buyers" and "sellers" is certainly a good thing, and even something to expect in some circumstances.  However, what made Chris' statement, one that was later echoed by Bill Parker, really riveting was that he said, in essence, that it should not be up to some regulatory agency to attempt to substitute for this trust or impose this trust on people.  In other words, the USDA should not have to assure people who buy eggs that they are "Certified Organic," and people should not have to rely on otherwise-arbitrary regulations, certifications, mandates, rules, quality assurances, or any other stamp, label, or blue ribbon to assure them that they are not being swindled.  What Chris was implying, if I'm not mistaken, is that the relationships that are built between and among "sellers", whether they are farmers, cooks, janitors, pen-pushers, automotive technicians, or snow shovelers, and their associated customers should be the "certification," the "quality assurance," and the "blue ribbon;" these people need to trust each other as people instead of customers seeing business owners as "self-checkout" machines and sellers arrogantly assuming that their customers are ignorant of the intricacies of their businesses.  What an idea, especially in this day and age.  And that's not to say that there aren't a bunch of folks who have already taken this to heart, and trust the people who are behind their food more than the labels on packages, or place their credence in the wrench-spinner more so than in his ASE Certification.  However, a great many people seem to subscribe dutifully, if unthinkingly, to "Entitlement Magazine" or the like, and think that anyone who doesn't have some smarmy label, or, better yet, an endorsement from some silver spoon celebrity, on their goods is some know-nothing layperson whose products are probably dangerous because they haven't been probed by the ubiquitous fingers of the State Health Department.  This is not to say that the health-inspector types don't have their hearts in the right places; rather that there needs to be a realization of the injustice of this sort of "secret handshake club" of certifications.  How ironic is it that the businesses that are, at least by popular consensus, certified and "trusted" the most are some of the most corrupt and unethical organizations in the world, while the most noble, respectable, and dedicated people and their businesses are at best not recognized for their heroic efforts, and at worst stigmatized as "inferior" to the industrial giants?  People, namely so-called "consumers," have become so neurotic about their own "safety" and "convenience" that they have decided to foist off any "cost" or "risk" of buying products on the rest of the world.  What this means is that people in U.S. cities can buy all sorts of cheap and convenient plastic junk that, while it saves them time and money, has partially caused pollution and impoverishment in Beijing.  Buying food works on the same principle.  The local farmer or rancher, no matter how conservative, liberal, ultra-republican, or diehard-democrat they may be, is bound to have his or her heart in the work much more so than a gigantic "food production" farm in California would.  However, people are going to have to come to grips with changing the way they make choices if the realities of our times are going to change.  This isn't to say either that the world's factory workers, tractor drivers, and City Market deli men and women are bad people, because oftentimes they're worthy of the most admiration.  Furthermore, I realize that we're all, myself included, in the same boat, and there's sometimes just no way to completely work around the injustice of industry and impersonal "consumerism."  Also, I am not advocating that people and businesses, whether certified or not, just throw caution to the winds and forge recklessly onward with no regard for health, safety, or sustainability.  However, the least we can do is make our best efforts to not feel "entitled" to things that we often take for granted.  Indeed, we will all do well to at least learn a few things rather than looking at everything's "face value."  Many wiser people than myself have already figured this out, and are busy doing amazing things, including working to cultivate a real sense of community and of trust among people.  Even though these people, like Chris and Bill, may not have any sort of so-called "official credentials" in what they do, they are still extremely worthy of people's respect, especially since they have taken the risk of not being certified in any official manner.  So, without further ado, I will leave you all to it, and hopefully we can take at least this first step towards the frequently-referenced sustainability by recognizing some of the thoughtless impersonality in our daily lives, working around some arbitrary formalities, and getting to know and trust "sellers," "buyers," and all of the really important people, including, hopefully, ourselves, whose work, though sometimes unappreciated, is no less important or awe-inspiring.