Stimulate This

Sometimes, I just can't help myself. Saturday's front page of the Boston Globe had two stories in juxtaposition that illustrate perfectly how screwed up we are. One article talked about a proposal to spend millions of our much-ballyhooed federal stimulus money for a footbridge across a highway to connect two parking lots operated by the multi-billionaire Kraft family, owners of the New England Patriots NFL football team and the new "Patriot Place," a collection of upscale shops,restaurants and entertainment establishments. The other article told how services for the homeless were being cut because of a budget crisis in the State House.

I fired off yet another letter to the Globe, but I needn't have bothered because it seems quite a few people were struck by the same irony and several letters were published today. Luckily, I know a blog that is very good about publishing my whinings. The "Tom" I mention is Tom Brady, star quarterback of the Patriots. The photos of the stadium and shopping areas were taken this morning as I biked by while doing my laundry delivery.

Here's the letter:


$9 Million for a Parking Lot?

On the same front page (Saturday, November 7, 2009) that presented a story about $9 million in federal stimulus money for elevators and a footbridge over Route 1 to an empty parking lot at Patriot Place in Foxboro (For the Krafts' Patriot Place, a golden gateway) was a headline about further cuts in beds and services for the most vulnerable among us (Budget trims lead homeless shelters across Mass. to cut services and beds). When will we have leaders with the vision and courage to take us into a brighter, more sensible future; a future where people and the environment matter and we stop worshiping personal automobiles? Patriot Place is a vast wasteland of asphalt and concrete. It's a billion-dollar shrine visited by those with the time and money to spend on idle entertainment, overeating and excess consumption. In no sense does Patriot Place contribute to a real community with real services like homes, schools and grocery shopping. It's not even close to any of those things. Virtually every visit to the mega-complex is made in a private car driven many miles.

It's time to spend our dwindling resources on living arrangements with a future. We are broke and running out of energy. It may not be fashionable to dismiss the work of Tom and the boys as anything but noble, and it may be difficult to admit that we don't need to buy more junk made in China, but do we really want to put our children and grandchildren into debt for the betterment of NFL Football and Christmas Tree Shops? We need to devote our efforts to building real communities where people can live, walk, bike and take public transportation to jobs that matter. We need to invest our shared resources in manufacturing, education, renewable energy, local food production and affordable housing. Let's build in a better world.

Marathons Not Required

The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner reports on a quest to find small pockets of extreme human longevity around the world. Dan and his team report on four places - Sardinia, Okinowa, Loma Linda and Costa Rica - where an exceptionally high proportion of the people live into their 90's and 100's.

What I find most interesting about these stories is the things these places have in common, and the things we can incorporate into our own lives to be healthier and happier.

Not surprisingly, there are no marathoners or triathletes among the longevity champions. That's not to say they spent their lives on the sofa searching for sit-com reruns with the remote while snacking on Pringles, but they didn't spend hours and hours working out either. Instead, all the old-timers lived lives that included steady, regular, moderate low-intensity exercise in their day-to-day activities. They walked or cycled to get around. They hiked to pastures to tend sheep. They worked on the farm or in the garden.

Eating habits seem equally important. Blue Zoners ate lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, usually grown or gathered personally. They drank lots of water. While they did eat meat, it was consumed rarely and usually on special occasions. Foods mentioned in the book that I hope to eat more frequently include: tumeric, fava beans, miso soup, tofu, sweet potatoes, ginger, nuts and tomatoes.

Family connections also seem essential to long-term survival. Many of these people live in multi-generational homes. In a tradition that is almost unknown in America today, children, parents and grandparents all live in the same house and support each other. The grandparents have something to do in helping with the children and the children benefit from the wisdom of the ages.

Whether it's watching the grandchildren or volunteering in the community, a reason to live seems extremely important in living a long and happy life. We all need love and companionship, and helping others is a great way to get it.

One That Got Away

Around the time of the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, an op-ed piece appeared in the Boston Globe extolling progress America has made in civil rights and social freedoms as a result of the spirit of love and peace that arose from the sixties as epitomized by Woodstock.

Not surprisingly, I'm prone to looking at the world around me and wondering: "Where did all those hippies go?". I look at the miles of strip malls, the big-box stores, the ubiquitous Chinese crap, the suburban subdivisions grinding up forest and farmland, the religious right, wall street greed. Human nature being what it is, I'm not really surprised. People want to take the easy way out and do what feels good now without considering long-term impacts or affects on others. So what if shopping at Walmart puts Americans out of work and despoils China? I can save ten dollars on that plastic Santa to put on my brown lawn this year! So what if they pour tons of fungicide on the soil and pump fossil water from hundreds of feet underground? I want to supersize my fries at the drive-through!

I wrote this letter, but it didn't make the paper. I'm not surprised. Online comments show there were many responses to the article. When I told my wife that I wrote yet another letter to the paper, her basic response was: "Get a life. Nobody cares what you think." How can I argue with that?



August 29, 2009

Rene’e Loth goes a little too easy on the Woodstock Generation (“Woodstock pays dividends,” Op-Ed, Aug. 28). If body piercings, flip-flops in the White House and corporate branding of things like Woodstock itself represent progress, then those great leaps forward must be balanced against the accomplishments of the culture that also brought us SUVs, McMansions, lawn care service, high fructose corn syrup, an obesity epidemic, reality TV, NASCAR, cage fighting, liar loans, credit default swaps and the Iraq war. For every boomer that paddles a kayak or pedals a bike to work, there are thousands who drive alone in a car. For every hipster who lives in an integrated urban neighborhood or on a commune, there are scores who lust after gated communities.

We boomers like to pat ourselves on the back, but we had our chance and blew it. We talked about peace, love and harmony, but what we really wanted was just the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Let’s hope a new generation rises up to foment true revolution.

Burning Our Future Forests

A recent article in the Boston Globe about plans to build wood-fired power plants in Massachusetts made me worry that the voracious appetite these plants have for wood, and the scale of the machinery used to harvest the trees will make wise forest management that has traditionally been focused on high-quality hardwood logs impossible. Back in the 70's I observed one of these operations in New Hampshire. They gave lip service to setting aside quality logs for lumber or veneer, but we watched as one beautiful birch after the other went right into the chipper.

Proponents of these plants often make the claim that forests are renewable and that trees can be re-planted. Well, native New England mixed hardwood forests are never planted. They regenerate naturally after harvest, and to ensure that this regeneration happens properly, a trained forester should be involved to make sure harvesting operations are planned and conducted in a way that allows for good quantity and quality of regeneration. The kind of people that worry about delivering tons of chips to a power plant today are not the kind of people who dream about what a woodlot will look like 50 years from now.

My letter in response to the article appeared in the August 2, 2009 paper:

Beth Daley’s piece on proposed wood-burning power plants in Massachusetts ( “On wood, burning questions,” Boston Sunday Globe, July 26, 2009) prompts concern about the future of our forests. To feed the beast of a biomass-burning power plant, trees will likely be harvested by big, expensive machines on very tight production schedules. The pressure to constantly supply huge quantities of chips will prohibit much discrimination in selecting trees for harvest.

The most valuable trees in Bay State forests are high-quality hardwood sawlogs, typically red oak. Deciduous forests in New England are not planted, they arise from natural regeneration. High densities of quality sawlogs don’t just happen, they are nurtured by careful control of regeneration, species composition and stem quality by professionally-trained college-educated foresters known as silviculturists. This careful woodland culture requires thoughtful care over periods that span decades.

While the increased demand for timber that these power plants create may enhance opportunities for timber stand improvement, professional supervision of forest operations with equipment and techniques that harvest the right trees is essential. Biomass might help supply our future energy needs, but the harvest of that biomass must be done in a way that protects the character and value of our forests for generations to come.

Snow in August

Or: Where is Gary Larson when you need him?

So, on a recent Friday morning I'm riding along Route 1 South in Foxboro, right near Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, on my way to make a delivery with my bicycle and trailer. I'm minding my own business and am riding well out of traffic in the breakdown lane. I was lost in a reverie about dreams that do indeed come true when, from the passenger-side window of a speeding pickup truck, a skinny, shirtless tanned twenty-something hangs his head out, looks at me and yells "BLAAAAAAAH!" at the top of his lungs.

He was loud, but not very articulate, so I have no idea what his message might have been or what he was thinking. I'm pretty sure he didn't do that to every car they passed, so I'm assuming that my being there on bicycle somehow prompted his utterance. Was he trying to startle me? Did he think he was being funny? Was I annoying him? Was he feeling superior? I suppose trying to plumb the depths of a post-adolescent male mind is a pointless exercise, but I had to wonder.

One thing I'm quite sure of is that he wasn't upset because seeing a guy doing work on a bike suddenly made him realize that the power and joy he was feeling in a pickup today might be only a distant memory when he is an old man like me. He probably didn't suddenly understand that the world of his parents and grandparents would not much longer be his. He most likely didn't see that he had better get busy planning for a future world much different than the world of rock music, football and internal combustion that he now takes for granted.

A favorite old Gary Larson cartoon immediately came to mind.

Two long-necked dinosaurs are standing amid the prehistoric tropical plants. A small furry animal, looking something like a scruffy hedgehog, is passing by. One dinosaur is pointing at the proto-mammal with his dinosaur foot and laughing heartily at the silly little thing while the other dinosaur is looking at the sky with a puzzled and worried look on his face and is holding out his stubby foot to catch a snowflake.

From the Less is More Department

I suffer from commute envy. No, I don't long to be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours listening to bad radio and fighting off fits of road rage. Rather, one of the things I envy in those who go to the same place of employment every day is the chance to be a bicycle commuter. The chance to get fresh air and exercise twice a day while happily pedaling by those trapped in gridlock just seems cosmically correct.

Since I don't have a real job, a regular bike commute is not really an option. Much of the work I do involves carrying all manner of tools and materials, and while I may be a dreamer, I'm not yet crazy enough to start strapping two-by-fours and table saws onto my bike.

One of my business activities, however, does involve making twice-weekly laundry deliveries to a physical therapy office. This is a small account and the bundles are not very big. It always seemed a little unfortunate to be doing all that driving for so little and I eventually began to wonder if there was some way I could do it by bike. I got the idea to try a bike trailer and in the process of asking around about trailers, one of my biking buddies offered me a kiddie trailer he no longer needs. (Thanks, Harvey!)

My goal is to make the trip by bike about once a week, weather permitting. The weather has been abysmal so far this spring and summer, but I've been able to pull the load under my own power several times so far, and it's fun. It's about 16 miles round trip and with my heavy bike, the trailer and the cargo, the ride takes a bit over an hour - about the same as an exercise class at the gym. That's quite a bit more than it would take in the car, obviously, but in the way I measure these things, it still makes sense. Much of the ride is through nice streets in the community and along roads through the woods. I could even pedal over Moose Hill, but I don't want to get carried away with this. It is work, so I want to consider efficiency a little.

I have to ride along busy U.S. 1 for a couple of miles, but the shoulder is wide along this stretch, so it's not too scary or annoying. Plus, I've discovered that pulling the trailer has its advantages. When motorists see the bright yellow trailer, they think "Baby!" and give me more leeway than usual. If only they knew it was just an old guy with dirty laundry!

It feels good to get outside on a sunny summer morning and do some work, get some exercise, burn less gas, create less pollution and take up less space in the world all at the same time. Sometimes, less truly is more.

Turtlehead Boulder, Borderland

One of the traditions of bouldering is to name the rocks. It's a bit of a mystery to me who gets to name a boulder. Maybe it's the first climber to find a rock and bother to name it. Perhaps the honor should go to the first to climb it. Giving a unique name to a rock has obvious advantages, if for no other reason than to help other climbers find it.

Several of the boulders in Borderland State Park have names that have been published online on New England Bouldering and the Mountain Project. I've been able find - if not climb - a few of these rocks including the Ames Boulder, Hardly Working and the Ridge Boulder.

One rock I like may or may not have a name already, but for now I call it "Turtlehead" because it looks like the head of a giant tortoise emerging from the bowels of the Earth. It is right in the middle of the French Trail, not far from its intersection with the West Side Trail. This boulder is in an area with many other good climbing opportunities for beginning and advanced climbers.

This is not a large boulder - maybe 8 feet high - but it has a variety of climbs good for beginners. A few routes have generous handholds and footholds, and one side has a sloping slab with small finger-holds where a climber can practice trusting the grip of his shoes.