test driving the Zap Zebra electric car

This has been an eventful couple of weeks here. I had surgery on 11/25, 2 days later was Thanksgiving, 3 days later our daughter got cut off on the freeway and totaled one of our cars. Somewhere in there, my husband and son came down with a bad coughing cold but that's background. So, once we got past the immediate "are you okay?" panic (she's fine) and the initial insurance phone calls, we started thinking about what we really needed in a second car.

We live within 4-6 miles of Jeff's job, the grocery stores, the drugstore, and a small shopping center so the thought of trying out a neighborhood electric vehicle (NEV in the trade lingo) was just too tempting to pass up. So, this last weekend, jeff and I trotted off to the Green Car Company (now in downtown Bellevue) and test drove the Zap Zebra. It's a three wheeled vehicle, with a back seat, fully electric and recharged by plugging into a regular outlet. If I were even 15 years younger, I'd probably have bought it right then and there. Pro's: It's cute, zippy, fun to drive, all electric, and can go just fine in regular traffic around town. Cons: It's small, doesn't heat up the interior very well on a cold, wet day, can't handle really steep hills without upgrading some of the equipment, and the pedals are a little to the left of where both of us expected them to be. Jeff found it uncomfortable to turn enough to use the pedals. I was fine with it, but I'm shorter and that may have been a factor. Jeff was also concerned about the safety factor as it hasn't passed vehicle crash tests. Well, technically, it's a motorcycle so it doesn't have to. I do have to say, though, if we lived in a warmer climate, and we weren't living on an extremely steep hill, I'd have been tempted because the list price is $12,000.

If you've been thinking about it, go give it a test drive. For half a car, it's a good idea. And just think, no more gasoline, ever...

My life, new art, and relocalizing reference list

I'm through the first of the kidney stone surgeries I'll probably have. It went well, the largest stone was disintegrated but doing so required the maximum usage of the zapping machine so the smaller stones will have to wait for next time. After several days of sleeping and a nice thanksgiving dinner provided by the effort of friends and family, I'm raring to get back into my studio. I hope to have some new things to show by the end of the week.

Part of recovering from surgery is reading a lot. One of the blogs I follow (Relocalizing Vermont by Carl Etnier), posted a request for books to put on a reference list and gave a short list to start. I've read several of the books he mentions and thought the list was worth sharing. Click here to see it.

Hope & optimism

I go in for surgery tomorrow so I'm looking for hope right now. This quote is from the author of one of the most hope filled books I've read on the topic.

“Climate change says we should change, whereas peak oil says we will be forced to change.”
-- Rob Hoskins, author of The Transition Town

I also thought I'd share this link about health care myths. I firmly believe we should be copying the French or Canadian systems where the health care systems are designed to keep people healthy rather than make the insurance companies profitable. This is an article from the Washington Post, a very center of the road, fact-based paper. I found this very worth my time.

Read about the myths here.

Cars: green electricity, not natural gas

Today's email is from earthpolicy.org, an organization focused on building a sustainable future as well as providing a plan for how to get there from here. Maybe it's because I live in the Pacific Northwest where hydropower is plentiful, but I think they're right about going toward electricity which can be generated from wind, sun, and waves. To read their thoughts on why we should go toward plug-in electric cars rather than natural gas (which T. Boone is promoting) go here.

Transition Town: Sandpoint Idaho

Today's email brought a link to an article in the London Times about Transition Towns. This is a movement begun by a permaculture professor in Ireland (Rob Hopkins) that has grown to over 700 towns in 2 years. His book is a step by step handbook on building local resiliency and organizing the community to be as independent as possible.

Read the full article here.

I particularly liked the quote I've copied below because I'm a firm believer in doing what I can in my little corner of the world:

In Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia, people started readying themselves in June. Their two-year low-carbon diet is under way, they have met state Anna Bligh, the state premier, and are consulting on a Queensland Government report entitled Towards Oil Resilience. Bush tucker trees are to be planted around the city.

Maggie Johns, a Hervey Bay Transitioner, signed off her e-mail to me thus: “Before, it all seemed so futile. What was the good in changing a few light bulbs? There are ice-shelves breaking off, for goodness sake! But when you know that more and more towns are coming online with Transition, and each has an army of dedicated volunteers, it seems much more do-able.”

National Security & Oil

I know I'm always talking about going green and that's because I'm a long time tree hugger. Not everyone shares those values so for those who don't, here's another perspective on why reducing our dependence on foreign oil is a good thing. This is quoted from the Wall Street Journal, from the first in a series of articles about dealing with our oil addiction. The article continues with recommendations for action and is worth reading. The following is a quote from the article by Stacy Delo published November 12.

Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett
(R., Maryland)
Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Defense Energy Working Group and Congressional Peak Oil Caucus

DIAGNOSIS: American transportation is more than 95% dependent upon oil, a proportion virtually unchanged since the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Americans will have spent $700 billion on oil imports in the last two years. That is more than we spend annually on defense. If that money stayed here, it would generate $7 trillion in economic activity. Clearly, lower oil prices are better for Americans and worse for the governments of OPEC countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela as well as Russia's military resurgence.

If we reduce our dependence upon oil imports, we eliminate our greatest self-imposed threat to Americans' future economic prosperity and national security. Especially in the absence of price signals, we need leadership at all levels to inspire Americans to continue conserving oil and to innovate to shift our transportation and manufacturing sectors off oil.

The importance of green activism

I've read Bill McKibben's book, Deep Economy, and found it insightful and optimistic while discussing serious issues. So I'm pleased to post a pointer to a column he's written in Orion magazine, Multiplication Saves the Day. I'll also echo his plug for websites to pay attention to: 350.org, 1sky.org and wecansolveit.org. I believe president-elect Obama is correct in saying that we're just starting the hard work and I'm pleased to see someone laying out how individuals can contribute.

On a more personal front, I'm scheduled for surgery for the kidney stones on November 25, just in time to make sure I don't bake pies this year. Here's hoping this surgery resolves my medical problems.

Kidney stones, not much better the second time around

I haven't been blogging much over the last month. I thought it was because of a couple of kidney infections and then just an overwhelming sense of fatigue afterwards. My doctor, given my previous history of giant stealth kidney stones, thought it might be good to have a CT scan and see if there was any damage. So, I did that today, and I have a couple of good size stones starting to obstruct one kidney. Hence, the fatigue. I'll write about anything I'm actually doing, other than watching TV and sleeping, but for now, let me just remind everyone - nag your doctor until they find out what's wrong, especially if the symptoms are fairly subtle. Next week, I get to harass my urologist until he reschedules my appointment to sometime in the next month rather than the first part of December... Either that, or find a different doctor. I really don't want to spend November sleeping. Or have to start dialysis.

Grist.org reports new legal rights for Nature in Ecuador

from grist.org. What's next, legal rights for trees? *grin*

----------------

We Hold Its Value to Be Self-Evident
Ecuador approves new constitution granting inalienable rights to nature

Ecuador approved a new constitution this weekend that, among other things, grants inalienable rights to nature, the first such inclusion in a nation's constitution, according to Ecuadorian officials. "Nature ... where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions, and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community, or nationality will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before the public bodies," the document says. The specific mention of evolution isn't accidental; besides being an activity nature arguably likes to do anyway, evolution as we know it has close ties to Ecuador's territory of the Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin formed his famous theory. Ecuador's constitution grants nature the right to "integral restoration" and says that the state "will promote respect toward all the elements that form an ecosystem" and that the state "will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems, or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles."


sources: Nature, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Quilt Labels and clipart

I want to first off apologize for not blogging for so long. I have a good reason - I've been recovering from a kidney infection and haven't been up to much more than watching an excessive number of DVDs of television shows (Bones, StarGate, Nero Wolfe). I seem to be better now, so I'm back...

I'm almost a month late in shipping Quantum Lake off for its exhibit. The holdup was getting the label done and printed. I got the label(s) done today so I'm sharing my process as I've always gotten good comments about how nice my labels are. If you want to see a picture of Quantum Lake, I posted one on June 9 here on my blog.

I do my labels in Word using ClickArt from Broderbund to create the art around the label. Here's the 2 different labels I came up with for Quantum Lake so you can see what the end product is before I start talking about the details of the process. The backing fabric is various blue stars, so one version of the label is done on light blue fabric with stars around the text.





Quantum Lake itself has a combination of nature photos printed on fabric and a batik fabric that has spirals on it. So the second label echoes those design elements.



How did I create them? It's actually quite easy if you have some clipart borders available. The key thing to remember is that I create the text first in a Word document. Then I add the art that goes around it. I've never been able to edit the text once I add the art, so it's important to get the text done first. I often use a sans serif font because that's easier to read once it's been printed on fabric. I center the text, have the top line down about 2 inches from the top of the document so as to leave room for the surrounding border, and I generally size it at 18 or 20 for the font size. Once I've typed in the label text, I save the document so I can delete any art I add and get back to the basic text.

Next, I browse my clipart disk. Once I select a border or other art that I want to use, I insert the art by clicking on Insert on the top menu bar. I select Picture, and From File, then click on the image I want. (Side note: I got ClickArt 125,000 as a Christmas present years ago and have never felt the need to upgrade. There are several versions reviewed on Amazon and available for quite reasonable prices. ) Once I've inserted the art, I click on it and select Format, then select Picture. The options I always use are Behind Text, and Center because I center my text. Invariably, the art is the wrong size, so at this point I click on the lower right corner and drag it the right size. Then I reposition it if needed. If I like the result, I save the file and I'm done. Otherwise, I delete the added art and go look for something I like better.

This time, I did 2 versions and I'm still deciding which will actually go out on the quilt. Total time today to create the 2 label files, fuse the fabric to wonderunder and print, then blog about it: 2 hours 45 minutes.

Yes! magazine for Fall 2008

I'm back from a two week vacation, out from under the accumulated pile of mail, chores, and souvenirs, and I ended up taking a week to recover from a kidney infection. Not fun. The last couple of days I've felt good enough to get caught up on reading the magazines that have been patiently waiting for me and I wanted to recommend this issue of Yes! magazine. From the many articles dealing with Purple America and where we can agree on many things to the final tidbit about how to pick an electric bike, it's packed with interesting and informative and upbeat, even optimistic, good stuff. Check it out online if you haven't looked at it yet. Go to http://www.yesmagazine.org/

Wind power in Colorado

Having just returned from a 2 week vacation in Colorado, I was pleased to see this article about renewable energy, specifically wind power, becoming mainstream there. That the power company not only met the 10% renewable energy goal but urged the governor to double it for them says a lot to me. I think this quote sums it up:

"We've reached this critical point where we're seeing the deployment of these technologies accelerate," said John Nielsen, an energy analyst with the nonprofit environmental group Western Resource Advocates. "There was slow progress over the last decade, and you're now seeing this tipping point."

To read the full article, go here.

Do-it-yourself Electric Cars

Today's email had a report from EVWorld about the Plug-In 2008 conference and, as usual, there were little articles mentioned along the side. One caught my eye - the DIY Electric Car options. Turns out these are pay someone to do it for you options to convert your gas car to electric, but hey, it's a start. If you're interested, read the article here.

YouTube ad on going green

I get a weekly email from TerraPass (among many, many others) and today's had a story about an ad on YouTube from wecansolveit.org, a national organization that's pushing for all of us to unite in getting clean energy as soon as possible. I liked the ad so I'm making the link available here.

Slow Food Nation coming up

I'm digging myself out from under all the mail, email and chores that accumulated while I was on vacation (why does it take several days to recover from a vacation? but I digress...) when today brought a link to a SF Chronicle article about the Slow Food Nation expo coming up. We already get almost all of our produce from a local CSA, and most of our meat from a local ranch so we're way ahead of most Americans in eating locally. And given that a huge amount of the fossil fuels used in the US are used in producing or transporting food, I can only hope more people make the transition to locally produced food (simultaneously eating healthier, reducing climate impact and reducing our reliance on foreign oil. Serious multitasking!). The article has a short list of things to do and links to lots more internet information on this issue. I'll just note that while prices have gone up at our CSA ($1 per box of produce), the price increases I'm seeing at the supermarket are higher.

Denvention3 - The World Science Fiction Convention

If you read science fiction, you've probably heard of the Hugo Awards. They're given out by The World Science Fiction Convention, henceforth called WorldCon, and this year, my husband Jeff and I were 2/3rds of the subcommittee that administered the awards. We were part of the Hugo subcommittee this year with Mary Kay Kare being the head of the committee. Yes, this meant she had minions.

As Jeff is fond of saying, the Hugo Awards are one of the 3 officially required things done at a WorldCon. (The other two are holding the business meeting and the site selection balloting for the convention to be held in 2 years.) So there's a big ceremony on Saturday night for presenting the awards. And a practice run through for the volunteers doing the work on Saturday afternoon. And a large group of volunteers carrying the awards from Mary Kay's room through the convention center to the theatre somewhere in there. Basically, it took all of Saturday for us but the people attending the con got a nice show on Saturday night.

Here’s a picture of the artist who designed the base for this year, Lee Kuruganti, and Mary Kay (to her right facing the camera) in the Green Room at the reception before the ceremony. The other people in the picture are some of the nominees, socializing and sharing their nervousness.

I worked backstage with Mary Kay, handing out awards and escorting nominees on and off stage, so I missed the speeches mostly but got to see the workings of the process. This was interesting to me as the first time we administered the Hugos, for the Atlanta WorldCon in 1986, the process was less elaborate.

Here’s a link to a close-up photo of this year’s Hugo award along with the list of awards.

http://www.denvention3.org/hugos/08hugowinnerlist.php

Vacation day #8 - green legislation in Boulder

While I was catching up on my online reading during a rainstorm here in Boulder, I ran across an article on worldchanging.com about legislation in California that will help homeowners finance energy efficient improvements such as solar panels, new furnaces or insulation, etc. The next day, there was an article about similar legislation being put on the ballot in Boulder county this fall. Since this is one of those ideas that seems obvious to me, I was delighted to see that some places are moving forward on this. You can read about it here.

Today we head to Denver and the World Science Fiction Convention, Denvention 3. Jeff, my husband, and I are 2/3rds of the Hugo Subcommittee responsible for running the Hugo awards. This makes the convention partly business for us, but the rest will be socializing with friends and enjoying a weekend without children. I hope your weekend is also fun!

Vacation day #3 - today's bird is a red-tailed hawk

Today was a relaxed and quiet day with 2 walks to see birds. The early morning walk went down the block, past the big vegetable garden of the neighbor who has a daughter at Bastyr in Seattle, and across a field and an irrigation ditch into an area that claims it's a park but doesn't seem to have a name. This was where my husband took pictures of hot air balloons and I took pictures of a red-tailed hawk sitting in a tree. I'm thinking I'll use the bird photos I take in future quilts, but then I always think that...



Later in the day, Mary (my sister-in-law) and I went for a walk on the Bobolink Trail. It goes along a creek that's pretty full right now so there's lots of cover. We were there just before lunch time so the only birds visible were swallows and flickers. I'm thinking I'll go back tomorrow morning and see what else is around because it's a wonderful bird habitat.

When the rain rolled in (while the sun was still shining, welcome to Colorado...) we headed home and after lunch, a group of us went to Barnes and Noble, and my teenage niece Amy and I hit JoAnne's for some fabric and other sewing needs. She's really into making purses and bags right now and I have promised her some help with a sewing problem she's experienced. I also worked out a quick pattern for her to use a leftover quilt block as the center of a triangle shaped pillow. It was fun to be the family expert on this stuff and I'm looking forward to spending tomorrow doing sewing stuff with her.

Vacation day #2 - Visiting with lifelong friends

We had brunch today with Chris and Barb who've been friends of ours for close on 30 years. We've always stayed in touch no matter where we lived, but we were in frequent contact when we lived in the same spot. Now, we're in Seattle, and they're in Boulder, so it's been mostly email, some phone calls, and annual newsletters. It was great to see them in person and have a chance to catch up on what they've been doing.

It made me think of how many friends I have kept over the years, and how much I value the people who have known me so long. It's easy to forget how much change there's been over a lifetime. These friends help me get the perspective I need to see the change and the continuity.

We're going to be visiting with other long time friends later in the week. Not to mention the number of people we'll see at the WorldCon. It's going to be an interesting trip down memory lane in some ways.

When we work out the cable connection to my husband's phone, I'll have a photo of the 4 of us outside the cafe we ate brunch at.

And we fixed the sending email problem. Turns out that connecting through the household comcast connection required a different port number... Technology, you gotta love it.

Colorado vacation - read only email (day #1)

So we're here in Boulder, Colorado visiting relatives before going to the Denver WorldCon next weekend, and I can read my email but haven't been able to send any mail to anyone. This is frustrating, as I have several people I chat with every day and I was counting on being able to do this even while traveling. That's the point of lugging the laptop and accessories along, at least as far as I'm concerned. Tomorrow, I'll try and debug the problem - whether it's the house network not staying up long enough, or my mail server being down with some sort of problem, or some other possibility I haven't thought of yet.

As for Colorado, things have changed a lot in the 10 years since we lived here. There are more houses, more roads, and more people. Other things I noticed: people riding motorcycles without helmets. That was a shocker, at least the first one I saw. Then I realized he wasn't wearing leathers either, and on a highway with a 70 mph speed limit. But, given that it was about 90 F at the airport when we landed, I can understand why someone would rather not.

Here's a view from the second story deck at my sister-in-law's house. They live near Baseline Reservoir so there's water nearby and mountains in the distance. Seems ideal to me at this point, but then I live in the PNW, with ocean and lakes nearby and mountains to the east.