Then the Sun Came Out...! Waking Up to Imperviousness.

Annandale was brushed by the edge of Hurricane Lee, but the flooding, tree loss, and infrastructure and property impact was surprisingly high. The EPA has recently mandated that states reduce water volume to urban streams and waterways. Reducing impervious surfaces in the Big Picture - voting for state and county projects that use pervious paving for parking lots and roads, supporting research that seeks to advance impervious pavement ideas. In the Little Picture: handsome rain barrels and rain chains; rain gardens, mowing higher and not edging your lawn.

NOVA's Transfer Blog Zombie Brigadoon

 Like Brigadoon, that 1950s enchanted village that appears in an Scottish glen, once every hundred years,
 NOVA's Transfer Blog pops up for an encouraging paragraph once every 16 weeks. Different from green and busy Brigadoon, though, there is no happy dancing - no interaction at all.  On November 13, 2010, someone called "Sentinel", some hopeful, wide-eyed transfer student, stumbled upon this glowing little window of a  blog in that dark, lonely wilderness of a transfer-student's journey. Rushing to it, he  hammered on the door hoping for comaraderie and comfort inside, and typed:
"Hey I'm moving to Virginia for a new job, and am interested in attending NOVA. Do you have a database of accepted course transfer equivalencies, or should I just submit my transcripts and hope for the best?"
Did anyone answer? Who knows! You'd think there'd be plenty of comments. Plenty of answers. The road is crammed with people working toward two-year degrees, the glowing Oz of "Guaranteed Admission" at one of Virginia's fine four-year institutions drawing them ever forward! Bonking shoulders, slogging on, moaning things like: "Braaaiins"  ....but often:  "Hey, where is everybody?"
That's too bad. 

Running Austin: Progressive Urban Water Management

Our first conversation in Austin: "Uh....'rained around...July, didn't it? Yeah. It sprinkled in July. With the rationing, we've got the drip irrigation on the trees on Tuesday nights."

"Wow"

BYOB and Save the Planet

Bring Your Own Bowl: Save Green and Save the Planet


You Gonna Talk the Talk? Eat the Walk.

It's Tuesday at the office and it's time for lunch. You've got to get the MacIntire paper out by 3, write something clever about medieval aquaducts, you're not sure how to spell "medieval," and you've got to finish the Conics section in Math 164. Gak! Blood sugar plummeting. Damn MacIntire! Damn amazing innovation in ancient engineering! Damn parabolas!  So, you've run downstairs to the Deli, and you're back at the Mac swabbing unagi rolls in the wasabi-soy  swilling in the corners of your gaping styrofoam clam. In the monitor's blue glow you chew, happy now...mulling MacIntire, chuckling about latus rectum, but as you do, you know something's deeply wrong...Parasitic roundworms? No. It's something you can do something about!

Bring your own bowl, box, mug, jug, pot, plate, or jorrum to lunch, and ask the Deli to tare the weight. They'll be thrilled! They'll save up to 30 cents for every non-biodegradable styrofoam cup and box you don't buy (for a rather jarring markup, you know), and you'll save the Planet and all the unagis in it.

Plus, unless you're sitting in a '78 Skylark at 3 am staking out perps, eating just about anything troweled into closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam is fishy. And not the good kind.

BYOB

BYOB - Zero-ish Packaging

In the US, we throw away 1.4 billion pounds of trash, say the organizers of
 in.gredients, the first-ish (if you don't count the developing world) package-free grocery stores, basing their business model on "pre-cycling" and this:

• The US fills 63,000 25-ton garbage trucks every day; about 700,000 tons of garbage is placed in American landfills on a daily basis.
• Packaging makes up about 40 percent of that. The packaging we throw away, then, annually totals nearly 39 million tons of paper/paperboard, 13.7 million tons of plastics, and 10.9 million tons of glass.

Every day. That's 100 space shuttles. Every day.  Half that, 560 million pounds - 50 space shuttles -  isn't products purchased, but the wrappers that protect or advertise them. 560 million pounds of boxes, bins, buckets, sacks, bags, bottles, cups, and clams that, typically, we use only once.  On a global-scale, the numbers are mind-boggling. And quite scary. Not all packaging can be eliminated - you really don't want a handful of chicken thighs and a pint of frozen yogurt - but this simple strategy proposed by in.gredients will reduce waste tremendously!  :))) There is a better way!!!:)))

http://www.indiegogo.com/ingredients

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYkw7Jx6Xnw

Water Feature

Welcome to the Water Works

 Well, it's a Water World: two-thirds of it ocean, ten percent of it ice, one percent of it drinkable.

In a drop: the sea, they say, and that drop powers plenty: land grabs, scientific innovation, architecture, land planning, poetry....I'll write this blog while I'm a student at the (rapidly greening - we'll write about that) Annandale campus of Northern Virginia Community College.

I'll write about water locally and globally covering Water and the Built Environment, the Public Health of Storm-water Management, Agroecosystems and Water, and the Economics of Water.

I'm an engineering student interested in international development, so a lot will be about smart water conservation, cleaning, and management systems innovations that are being shoved by a wave of worry as water resources dwindle in developed and developing worlds.

You Gonna Drink That? or A Glassful of Rain

Major Angst

In September 2008, just as The Big Toe of Inevitability had yanked the plug from the drain, and the global economy was being sucked, naked, twirling, and surprised, down the hole, CNN listed three jobs that earn "in the $50,000 range" and "are expected to increase in demand between now and 2016."  They were: "audiologist, criminal investigator, and streetcar operator." The first thing I thought was, "Alright! Streetcar operator!...." and then "What's an audiologist?" Two years later, the last of the global economy a cold puddle swilling around our backsides, I quit my job. I've started school.

People at dinner parties raise their hyper-employed eyebrows across the apple-grilled wild Alaskan King salmon and a Riesling described on the menu as "insouciant" and say, "Really? Helen! Listen to this. Brian's gone back to the books. That's great, man." Around the table, cheers go up.  My wife's nephew, a junior in Biotech at Harvard, handing me a basket of Afghani sambozas at big table full of family at Bethesda's Faryab says, "That's great, man. Hey everybody. Brian's gone back to school!"  Cheers go up. Pomegranate wine is sloshed into goblets. My neighbor, Pete, barely flinching as he bashes across the arrow-straight frontier separating his vast mower-hewn swathe of lawn from our clover and frog-filled yard, shaking hands clapping me on the back with a "Hey! That's great! Let's have a beer!" before something slides past his ankle and he hops back to safety.

And then. It's invariable. Those smiling faces swing to me shining - even the salmon grins, the Riesling, not so nonchalant now, twinkles expectantly, the thing in the dandelions beams  - and they ask in a chorus: "So, what's your major?" "Criminy," I think. "I have no idea," I think. "Well, I have some idea...but that's a big question, and...." I'm taking too long, smiles are sagging, arms holding glasses aloft are leaning on elbows. The salmon is staring. "I'm undecided," I mutter.  I don't know.   "Something environmental?" someone's wife suggests. "Uh Yes!" I say.
"Yes! Something that involves protecting...uh...things...people....Helping...um....the Earth? I think I'll do something with water." She beams triumphant, "Yes! Water's great!" Problem solved. Everyone cheers and fills glasses. I croak, "Yes. Water. I want to do something about water. I think. Something, um, environmental...um...Water." "Yes! Water." They nod to each other, reaching for the wine, climbing back on their lawn mowers, and turning to the dinner partner on their other side.

At dinner, undaunted  by my meandering plans, ordering more Grüner, everybody tells stories about what they'd studied - "Civil Engineering." "Industrial Psychology." "Communications." "Management." "Ewww," says everybody and laughs. "Agronomy," says my wife. "What's that?" says everybody. Then they talk about what they wished they'd studied. They ask, "When you picture yourself happy, what are you doing?"

Some answer quick: "Public Health." "Midwifery."
"Podiatry."
"Ewww!" says everybody and laughs.
"Really, Susan?"
"Yes, Derek. It's true. My secret's out. So there. Feet. I love them. 26 bones is all that stands between all of us and misery. You've got to follow your bliss. You can follow it a lot better in comfortable shoes." "To bliss!"says Derek.
"To bliss," says everyone.

A dinner party of 8 is a pretty skewed sample, but what people studied and what they wish they'd studied was sometimes the same thing. "I love Industrial Psychology!" says Amanda punching the air with her wine glass. "We are trained in the "scientist-practitioner" model!" "How awful," says someone. "Not at all! No nooo! Intrinsic motivation is associated with creativity. We can measure and influence both creativity and motivation! Simultaneously! Thus allowing employees to choose creative and challenging jobs-slash-tasks!" "How awful," says someone else, "Quick! More Grüner for Amanda!"  "I am miffed," says Amanda who looks it, holding out her glass. Oddly, the wives of two of my friends are industrial psychiatrists.

I can hear my own wife at the end of the table, sounding irked, "Agronomy. It's agriculture. Soils. Food. See this salmon? See these baby leeks? See this ridiculously insouciant Reisling? Agroecosystems. Think! Do you not eat?!"  


Many of the "I wish I'd studied"s are "Save the World"-noble: Public health,  emergency medicine, non-profit management, forestry, audiology. I listen to them talking clinking glasses and cutlery: ("Podiatry, eh?" "Yes...The foot. So many horrible things can happen to a foot! Worms. Rot. Wood-chopping accidents! How is your tartare?" and "....Dave always wanted to do something with boxes." "Boxes?" "Yes. Packaging. Too much and you've spent too much and it just ends up in the Pacific strangling seagulls. Too little, and you've got a box of smashed iPhones, and they end up in the Pacific strangling seagulls." "Well, you've got to follow your bliss." "But, that's just the thing. He didn't. Went into management. Made a mint. Retired at 40, and set up a little non-profit saving seagulls...." "Hahahaha! That's confusing.") and I think:

"My bliss...what's my hell is my bliss? I'm 48. Second half of my life. Water. Water. Water. It's everything. Ask that salmon, those seagulls, that Reisling, if she'll talk to you... When I picture myself happy. What am I doing? Am I standing in a village in Mali, pouring a head-wall to keep dirt and children out of the well? Am I working with the government of Khazakstan or Fairfax County to build a better storm management system? Am I the extension agent driving through the Sierra Sangre de Cristo teaching farmers and ranchers about vertical farming and aquaponics? Will Civil Engineering teach me how to do those things? Follow my bliss? Yes, I think, Yes. And I stand up, saying "Hey, Hey, everybody....." and raise my water glass.