While in New Jersey, I did an hour-long television interview with EBRU.tv, a Turkey-based satellite television network. I’m not sure when the show will air (after September 10th) but when it does, I’ll send y’all the webcast link. The show airs in Turkey as well as in the rest of the world wherever folks watch their tube via satellite. You may want to get into my good graces now before I become a star cuz once the hammer drops, I may not have time for you. I expect to be as big in Turkey as David Hasselhoff is in Germany. It could happen!!

While preparing for the interview, I bedded down at a beautiful KOA campsite and recorded some night sounds for your listening pleasure. (10 minutes). This is a great download for falling asleep at night in the big, noisy city. Think crickets and rain!
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There was a Leave It To Beaver episode where Eddie Haskell asserts that he has a girlfriend but no one can meet her cuz she lives in Niagara Falls. So I went there to see what the attraction was, albeit 50 years late. She wasn’t there but in her stead I found a force of nature so beautiful, enchanting and powerful that I quickly forgot my sorrow.

I spent an entire day sitting in different spots along the Niagara waters, inching my way towards the great falls. At first I heard gurgling whispers, but soon the waters turned into a complex symphony and finally a deafening roar. These are the sounds of the Great Lakes as they gravitate towards the sea. I recorded an audio podcast of this water’s journey to the frothing mouth of Niagara Falls. Download it to your Ipod - it makes great ambient music for bedtime, baths and other meditations. (44 min)

 

 Standard Podcast [43:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I discovered Buffalo was not named for those large, hairy mammals once found roaming North America and now taking wing in sports bars all over of America. Locals tell me it was some French explorer who proclaimed the local river to be a ‘beau fleuve’ or ‘beautiful river’. However, I prefer the idea of some mythical flying buffalo that tastes like chicken.

Buffalo is an interesting case. The city sits in an idyllic part of the country: Lake Erie to the West, Niagara Falls to the North, and the Adirondack mountain range to the East. Like most of the cities surrounding the Great Lakes, its growth was fueled by the Industrial Revolution and its close proximity to Lake Erie shipping. But much of the goods that use to move on the waters now move through the St. Lawrence Seaway, a channel built in the late 1950’s connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. And much of the manufacturing has moved overseas. Since the early 1970’s, population growth has significantly declined back to early century levels, with many of those people moving out to the suburbs. While unemployment is low, nearly a quarter of the residents survive under the poverty line and many of Buffalo’s beautiful houses and buildings lie vacant. Of course, the cost of living is low also and this has attracted significant investment in the city recently. You can buy a house for under $100k!

One such building is the Buffalo Central Terminal - the massive Art Deco railroad station which has been vacant for over 30 years. I had an opportunity to tour the facility, which is now used for parties and weddings. Thanks Pete.

However, there is one start-up company putting many of these old buildings and houses to good use…or reuse, that is. Buffalo Reuse is a building deconstruction and salvage company and a community-minded alternative to traditional demolition services that send good, often-vintage reusable building materials to the landfill. Buffalo reuse then sells these materials and in doing so, preserves a bit of Buffalo’s unique character. All in all its not a bad deal for everyone. Property owners help keep their air and water cleaner by conserving resources. The cost is a little higher but it is coming down and is partially offset by tax incentives. Work is created for local residents. Home builders and rennovaters have access to cheaper building supplies and inexpensive vintage fixtures. Thrifty artists can find art supplies that fit their budget. Yup, everybody wins.

In the following conversation, Executive Director Michael Gainer talks about who is buying reused building materials and what he sees for the future of hybrid deconstruction services and Buffalo Reuse. He also talks about how Buffalo Reuse is working to improve their price competitiveness with traditional demolition services through smarter deconstruction practices and an appeal to people’s nostalgia, conservation-mindedness and pocketbooks.

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Over two months on the road and I’m getting real tired of visiting a city without any cultural context from which to work. I have had a few tour guides during my journey, some familial and some happenstance. But I found myself in Ann Arbor looking for a hotel in Buffalo and unhappy with the decision. So I finally let down my guard and gave CouchSurfing.com a try.

CouchSurfing.com is the second generation of travel web sites to connect travelers who want to experience their travel locations from the comfort of a home, as opposed to a hotel/motel. You are the guest of someone with roots in that place so they can clue you in to the best flora and fauna that city has to offer. The site also acts as a social networking site and while reviewing my prospects in Buffalo, it became clear to me why all these people were opening their homes to complete strangers - they too were traveling the world sleeping on the couches and spare beds of complete strangers. There’s some security measures that give you more confidence your guest, or host, is not an axe murderer. And on top of all that - it’s free. Couchsurfing.com hosts are paying it down, creating karmic opportunities for their future travels and building a better travel experience. Well, at least that’s what the brochure said. Here we go…

On my way to Buffalo, stopped by the Burch Farmers Market in North East, PA to buy some fresh, local produce for my hosts…just in case they had me in mind for dinner. I met Tim Burch, a sixth generation apple/grape/peach farmer, who just opened a market along Sidehill Road, less than two miles from busy Interstate 90. But it might as well have been 200 miles - it was grapevines and little pastoral farm houses as far as the eye could see, the sound of cicadas and no freeway to be heard or seen. Of course, I never would have found the place had it not been for the I-90 road work stopping traffic and sending this grid-lock evading tourista in search of alternative roots. And boy did I find them. Besides local fruit, the Burch Farmers Market featured yummy-looking pies, local Amish crafts and some tasty wines made with local apples, peaches and grapes. I bought the Reflections of Lake Erie table wine for my hosts, along with a basket of peaches and some white corn.

I talked a little conservation with Tim the farmer, here is the audio clip of our conversation.

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I had the pleasure of meeting the engineers behind Simply Living, a non-profit based in Columbus who help people do just that - live more simply. I sat down with Marilyn, Sarah and Suzanne to talk about how they live simpler lives and how they find their joy without consuming copious amounts of natural resources.

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I spent some time out at the Olentangy River Wetlands Research Project at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. You always hear that the wetlands are important. What’s the big deal? Besides looking beautiful and being home to a variety of animals, birds and marine life, they have a pretty useful function in our lives.

One, they purify our drinking water at no additional cost to the consumer - you don’t need to buy water filters, plastic bottles or import water from other parts of the country. When wetlands are working properly and defending a water source in sufficient numbers, they filter out the pollutants from farms and urban waste that gravitate towards the water source during rainstorms and the spring melt. They keep a lot of the dirt from clouding our waters as well. For our water quality, wetlands are the last line of defense! Check out that dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico to see just how well-defended is our water.

Two, they keep the flood levels lower. When floods come, these areas act as flood reservoirs, capturing flood water that might find its way to your front door. I know floods are a natural occurence but I didn’t know they could be reduced in this way.

In Ohio, as it is in many other states, 90% of the wetlands have disappeared over the last two centuries of development. However, in 1988 it became U.S. policy that there shall be no net loss of wetlands forevermore. And if a wetland is lost or developed, one of equal size or bigger must be created somewhere else. However, despite this control, wetlands are still disappearing. Oh well, we can always get our drinking water from somewhere else, right?

For all my grousing over climate change and global warming, what could be more important than our drinking water? And yet, this seems to be a most difficult problem to combat. I don’t live near a river where I can affect goverment policy. I don’t know how to alter my consumption decisions to protect wetlands. I’m sorry I don’t have an easy solution for this one. I know that organizations like The Nature Conservancy buy property and work with property owners and local governements to protect wetlands. Perhaps contributing money to these organizations is a good start. Or identify a local wetlands project by contacting the local chapter of The Nature Conervancy. Many of these projects are donation-driven and can use your help. Besides, what better way to protect your tap water than supporting local wetland conservation efforts?!

At the end of the day, I slowed my motion and rested my elbows on the railings of a bridge arching over the Olentangy. As the sun set, the geese landed in the nearby waters for their nightly repose and the cicadas came out to play.

Here are the sounds of the Olentangy River at dusk in Columbus, Ohio. Expect to hear a gurgling river, crickets, cicadas and an occasional goose! This is a great download to help you fall asleep or surrender to your meditation (12 minutes).

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I did, back in Coon Rapids, Iowa. Funny thing is, I didn’t know I was missing it. It was one of those things I saw all the time as a kid and not just when I was camping with the other cub scouts. Now it’s tough to see it at all, surrounded by all the city night lights.

Just before I left Coon Rapids, I had the opportunity to interview Liz Garst, the grand-daughter of Roswell and Elizabeth Garst, one of Iowa’s deep-rooted farming families. The Garst family is better known for pioneering the production and sale of hybrid corn seeds and for hosting the visiting the Soviet Union’s Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev in 1959 at the height of the cold war. Liz has degrees in agricultural economics from Michigan State and an MBA from Harvard University. Liz has worked for the Peace Corps, the World Bank and the Garst Seed Company as Business Manager. Liz is now managing the farm and the Whiterock Conservancy where 4500 acres of Garst family property is transforming into an experimental farm and visitor resort. Here they are growing a new hybrid where farming, conservation and capitalism work together to feed America and keep her beautiful as well. In this interview, Liz talks about the conservation improvements being made to the land…and to the skies through the reduction of light pollution. Conservation in the skies? This I gotta see…

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“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”
- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

To call Iowa a flat, corn state is easy from your hard-driving perch atop Interstate 35. After 2 hours of corn rows, occasionally interrupted by clusters of gas stations and motels, I thought I spotted the Rocky Mountains to the West but they were only storm clouds. The mind loves its tricks. My friend Annie had warned me of this and I probably would have left Iowa with this impression if it hadn’t been for a bit of serendipity. I got tuned into a place called Whiterock where a group of folks were trying to conserve what was left of wild Iowa. Wild Iowa?

I veered off the Interstate and took to the back roads to find this Whiterock and the scenery did indeed change. I met rolling hills and large stands of trees and rivers and still corn. And when I found my Whiterock in the small town of Coon Rapids, I saw something I had not seen in Iowa before: prairie land. I had found the Iowa more familiar to the author Laura Ingalls Wilder, before the prairie gave way to farming.

Coon Rapids, Iowa is a small but important agricultural town situated along the Middle Raccoon River, a tributary that ultimately feeds into the Mississippi River and blends into the Gulf of Mexico. This important waterway provides life to the surrounding farmland and drinking water to the city folk of Des Moines and other populations along its path. But this waterway is polluted by fertilizer run-off and livestock waste from agricultural operations along the Middle Raccoon River, resulting in cities like Des Moines needing costly nitrate-filtration systems for their drinking water and in their citizens turning to disposable, costly alternative water solutions. And because this is happening along hundreds of other tributaries feeding the river, the endpoint at the Gulf of Mexico is becoming a dead zone for marine life. This life-giving water source is unhealthy and threatening the availability of our most important survival tools: food and water.

However, one farming family decided to be the change and the Whiterock Conservancy was born. The Garst family has been farming the Middle Raccoon Valley for nearly 100 years - pioneering the use of hybrid seeds and feeding a growing America. But the Garst family also has a long-standing tradition of sharing knowledge with farmers near and far. In 1959, Roswell and Elizabeth Garst hosted the visiting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the height of the Cold War, a risky proposition given the political climate of the time. “Hungry people are dangerous people,” Roswell was often heard saying. Now that the Cold War climate has given way to a warming climate, the Garst family has stepped up again by gifting 4,500 acres of their best land to be used as an experimental farm and eco-tourism destination called the Whiterock Resort. Their goal: to show that more sustainable farming techniques can can still be profitable while improving air and water quality. One of these strategies is to reverse the decline of prairie land in Iowa, a perennial grass crop they believe holds the key to it all: cleaner air and water, less erosion, better soil fertility, more wildlife and sustainable profits for farmers. The Cropland Reserve Program (CRP) is also helping farmers to conserve bio-diversity by providing subsidy payments for planting these conservation grasses. If you are a farmer and want to learn more about this program, please contact the Whiterock Conservancy who are more than willing to help.

Check out my Interview with Elizabeth Hill, Whiterock Conservancy’s chief ecologist, who also wrote the book, “Hiking Iowa: A Guide to Iowa’s Greatest Hiking Adventures”.

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While in Spokane, had a chance to talk conservation with local cafe owner Jana Adams of The District @ Cafe Bella located at 917 W. Broadway. Here’s her take on global warming and what she does to reduce her footprint.

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Drove up to Seattle from Olympia around 3 P.M. yesterday and had my first taste of a traffic jam since I killed my commute several years ago. Apparently, Seattle is not immune to urban sprawl or bad rainy weather drivers as traffic snarled from Olympia, through Tacoma and finally relented just short of Seattle.

But this was just in time for me to catch up with a project management team renovating Garfield High School, where Bruce Lee, Jimmy Hendrix and Quincy Jones once schooled. I had a chance to talk with Steven Moore, the Senior Project Manager with Heery International who said that much of the used construction materials from the Garfield project went to reuse yards where other builders could reuse them at a lower price than if they had bought them new! We then talked about how geo-thermal energy technology was being used in lieu of boilers and chillers for the renovation of other schools in the Seattle area.

For a complete explanation of how geothermal energy heating and cooling works, download my interview with Steven Moore onto your I-pod or MP3 player (approx time 5 mins).

 

 Steven Moore Interview [5:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I also had a conversation with Lydia, a resident of North Seattle, who told me the City fines homeowners if they find recycleable items in the trash can! She also told me her garbage bill goes higher if she overfills either the recycle or garbage bins. Wow, that’s like an over-consumption tax! Better make sure to give those recycle guys more than just a six-pack of beer at the end of the year!

Conservationville USA 2007 contender: Seattle, WA.

What else could a city do to incentivize its citizens to consume and waste less?

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