Over-eager adopters of newness and supposed goodness

23 August 2010 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

An article I read this morning made me think of something I posted about a month ago:

It never ceases to amaze me how we’re such eager adopters of new technology ideas that we don’t stop and consider the ramifications of what we adopt — like 90% of soybean farmers planting one genetically modified soybean seed.

I eat locally when I can because, in general, the food is better and I have a better idea of where it came from. There are people who’ve made eating locally a religion, though, apparently in part because they think it a more environmentally friendly lifestyle. Writing for the New York Times, Stephen Budiansky informs us that’s bogus in a little article called Math Lessons for Locavores. “The local food movement now threatens to devolve into another one of those self-indulgent — and self-defeating — do-gooder dogmas,” he claims.

Budiansky enjoys eating from his own garden nine months out of the year, but he breaks the energy consumption of foods down for us into layman’s terms. Locavorism has apparently entered pharisaical levels of legalism, resulting in “all kinds of absurdities. For instance, it is sinful in New York City to buy a tomato grown in a California field because of the energy spent to truck it across the country; it is virtuous to buy one grown in a lavishly heated greenhouse in, say, the Hudson Valley.”

According to Budiansky’s math, driving to the grocery store and then refrigerating your loot consume most of the energy that goes into our food production, even if we can brag about our Energy Star appliances. The diesel fuel to truck or train it across the country uses little energy by comparison.

Guess we have to find another way to boost our own self-esteem.

Filed under Buy local, Consumerism, Disposable culture, Environmental stewardship, Live car free, Mass production, Mass transit, Modern culture, Sustainable living

The switch to renewables requires a redesign of American life

12 August 2010 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

On the way down to Nashville for the Hutchmoot we stopped for lunch at a friend’s home near Kansas City. While there I began looking at a magazine called World, as I recall. I glanced at an article in the publication pointing at holes in the recent plans for renewable energy.

The long and short of what my skimming told me — I didn’t have time to finish the article — Renewable energy such as wind and solar won’t work for the cars we drive. No kidding! The article also, if I recall correctly, pointed out that these energy sources won’t even provide enough electricity, even if they are developed to the nth degree, to meet our current electricity needs.

I’ve made the point on the blog before, as I recall, that we need to revamp the culture and our environmental design in order to get to where most or all of our energy needs come from renewable sources. We can’t work from the assumption that we can maintain the cultural status quo while at the same time switching over to renewable sources of energy. Instead, we must become creative in all aspects of our lives. Developing more efficient lifestyles seems like common sense to me — regardless of where our energy is coming from (Per my cursory skim the magazine article suggested nuclear, but I’d still rather see other avenues developed further along with more intentionally efficient living.).

Cameraphone capture of part of a wind turbine, going down I-80 on our way home from Nashville.

On our way down to the Hutchmoot last week, my wife and I were introduced to Rodney and Sidney Wright. Rodney wrote The Hawkweed Passive Solar House Book. He showed us around their house — inserting at least one pun into every sentence — pointing to all of the attention paid to making the home more energy efficient. The energy bill for the home was less than $50 a month for the 1,200 square foot structure in Paducah, Kentucky (a walkable community, he pointed out). The couple paid good money for energy efficient appliances, used prefabricated wall panels with dense foam insulation to build with and of course designed the home with climate and geography in mind, in a passive solar fashion.

It’s going to take this kind of intentionality in our design of life, I believe, in order to make renewables work. Sure some things might cost more now and then, but Wright made a point of saying that even though their uber efficient Swedish microwave/convection oven might have cost them $3,000 they built the home for only $85,000 (doing some of the work themselves, such as painting) just four years ago.

Wright also pointed out that we used to do better at designing our dwellings and communities as they relate to their local environments. What will it take as a culture to forgo the more common and under-considered living spaces we create in the United States?

Filed under Architecture, Basis for designing well, Community planning, Environmental stewardship, Interior design, Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Sustainable living

Why I root for the little guy in an industrialized society

14 July 2010 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

I’ve been watching a few odds and ends in the Netflix instant watch queue this week [no] thanks to being too sick to climb up and down a ladder with a brush in hand. Just finished the documentary called Food, Inc.

The only way this really relates to this blog is that the documentary is about the industrialization of the food supply, and industrialization (or mass-production) is a recurring theme on The Aesthetic Elevator. It’s interesting to me mainly because I live largely on the opposite end of the spectrum, spending a lot of time creating one-of-a-kind objects, and because it never ceases to amaze me how we’re such eager adopters of new technology that we don’t stop and consider the ramifications of what we adopt — like 90% of soybean farmers planting one genetically modified soybean seed.

The film makes certain accusations against certain companies, and in the case of at least one company whose website I visited they attempted to refute those accusations. I’m generally very skeptical when it comes to such giant bureaucracies in the first place — they’ve largely earned the distrust I have for them.

One of the examples in Food, Inc. talks about chicken farming. Northwest Arkansas, our former stomping ground, is all about growing chickens. The parents of a friend had land with three or four chicken houses. They recently sold the place on account of the exact same complications described in Food, Inc. My friend who shared with me — about four years ago now — how the contracts with companies such as Tyson work could have been in the film. The farmers end up more like indentured servants than independent contractors.

Why should I accept the refutations of the companies in the film when I’ve seen first hand the claims of the film? I don’t want to be the kind of person that has a knee-jerk reaction to every bureaucracy, but they just keep shooting themselves in the foot.

Filed under Buy local, Environmental stewardship, Modern culture, Northwest Arkansas, Sustainable living

Intentional Observation: Cell phones and drivers

10 January 2010 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

It’s funny how I can nearly always tell if a driver is on their cell phone. They’re half in their lane, half not. Realizing they’re only half in their lane and over-correcting. Sluggish to take off after a light turns green, or ignoring the light in the first place. The following is a friend’s Facebook status of gratefulness I noticed in my news feed this morning:

    . . . is grateful for the ice on Happy Hollow. If it hadn’t taken my car about 10 seconds to get some traction after stopping at a red light, I would have been broad-sided by the moron talking on his cell phone that blew through a VERY red light. I don’t think he even saw that there *was* a light, he was so oblivious. Never thought icy roads would help me *avoid* being in an accident!

Approximately 90% of the time I observe a driver driving distractedly and I come up next to or behind them they will have a cell phone pressed to their ear. A month or so ago I heard a news bit suggesting Nebraska may soon enact a law prohibiting cell phone use while driving (or at least requiring a hands free device). That’s all well and good, but I’m skeptical at how well local authorities will be able to enforce such a law.

Filed under Intentional observation, Live car free

Manly minimalism begins with goals

12 October 2009 by pcNielsen 7 Comments

“The things you own end up owning you.” — Tyler Durden, Fight Club

In high school I became a collector of stuff, mostly decorative objects found at garage sales or hauled out of trash heaps. This practice was in line with my architectural (slash interior design) aspirations, but after a year in college I realized the vanity of so many objects.

So early in my college career I began to cultivate a minimalist aesthetic that has largely stuck with me since graduation. It’s difficult to pull off, though, in a materialistic culture supersaturated with advertisements and run by Washington bureaucrats whose idea of good times seems to revolve solely around the health of a consumerist economy.

Materialism, stuff, a minimalist aesthetic remains on my mind after our move of three months ago. We went from 1,500 square feet of living space to around 500, not including a shared kitchen, bathroom and office. Every so often I find myself looking around again, wondering what we might be able to do without. A multitude of dishes and decorative items remain in boxes. How much of this stuff is worth schlepping around? How much of the unpacked stuff is worth keeping around?

It seems to me this is a more difficult question to answer for craftsmen and women. We are wired to create objects, thus objects potentially have more meaning for us than, say, accountants or fishermen. Furthermore, we often own a slew of tools related to our craft. In some ways these objects are in a different class than what we put in our house, except for the fact that many of us don’t have spaces outside of our home for a shop or studio.

This morning I read a good article on a blog called The Art of Manliness titled Go Small or Go Home: In praise of minimalism. The author quotes Leo Babauta’s answer to the question “What is the minimalist lifestyle?”

    It’s one that is stripped of the unnecessary, to
    make room for that which gives you joy.

    It’s a removal of clutter in all its forms,
    leaving you with peace and freedom and
    lightness.

    A minimalist eschews the mindset of more, of
    acquiring and consuming and shopping, of
    bigger is better, of the burden of stuff.

    A minimalist instead embraces the beauty of
    less, the aesthetic of spareness, a life of
    contentedness in what we need and what
    makes us truly happy.

    A minimalist realizes that acquiring stuff
    doesn’t make us happy. That earning more
    and having more are meaningless. That
    filling your life with busy-ness and
    freneticism isn’t desirable, but something to
    be avoided.

    A minimalist values quality, not quantity, in
    all forms.

The first and last points in Babauta’s list resonate with me. These are things I’ve realized, that overkill kills the potential for joy and quality is more important than quantity. Overkill I’ve yet to get control of in life, but the value of quality is already present.

So what is unnecessary in my life right now that needs to be done away with? What is truly important? I’ve already culled a number of blogs from my feed reader in an attempt to refine my daily news and reading time. In place of that I’ve been trying to go through part of the Daily Office every morning.

Before doing away with too many things, however, I probably need to focus on setting some attainable short and long-term goals. I’ve never been good at this. I’m much more a live in the moment type of guy. I have come to realize the value of setting a certain direction for your life though. Our culture presents us with never-ending distractions that must be tamed. It also steers us into a certain kind of workaholism; productivity becomes a cult we’re expected to aspire to.

Setting [realistic] goals will help me determine what is unnecessary.

The author of the Art of Manliness post concludes by giving us

    Leo Babauta’s Principles of Living the Minimalist Life

    1. Omit needless things. Notice this doesn’t say to omit everything. Just needless things.

    2. Identify the essential. What’s most important to you? What makes you happy? What will have the highest impact on your life, your career?

    3. Make everything count. Whatever you do or keep in your life, make it worthy of keeping. Make it really count.

    4. Fill your life with joy. Don’t just empty your life. Put something wonderful in it.

    5. Edit, edit. Minimalism isn’t an end point. It’s a constant process of editing, revisiting, editing some more.

    I would add the following:

    6. Hold on loosely. Even to your prized possessions. At the end of the day its relationships, not possessions, that make life worth living.

Filed under Affluenza, Disposable culture, Mass production, Modern culture, Sustainable living

Artist colony at McCool Junction?

8 June 2009 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

On the drive home from Nebraska this weekend we passed McCool Junction, Nebraska. Our travels up to the Cornhusker state usually take us by this very small town (population ~ 385) which is for some reason very memorable to both me and my wife. She finds it a very, um, cool name for a community, as do I. The place is also burned in my memory after driving through a dust storm at night just south of town.

I’m impressed that a town of this size has its own website (as it should, just that so many still don’t) and that the site is actually clean and functional.

McCool Jct

I started daydreaming after passing McCool Junction, daydreaming that a retiring farmer was going to donate a few acres to me for a Christian artist retreat. Apparently none of his children wanted to farm corn, and he liked my idea and wanted to help get it off the ground. There were two barns, a modest farmhouse and another small outbuilding on the property. A windmill still pumped water out of the Ogallala Aquifer. The rest of his land was going to be sold or auctioned off, but 12 acres (or 8, or 23) would be donated to the nonprofit . . .

. . . wait, what nonprofit? This started me thinking about more of the administrative details caught up in the idea (brainstormed in GoogleDocs). If I set up a nonprofit beforehand, would it encourage this kind of donation? I suppose you could create an agreement with a landowner stating that the land would not be transferred until the nonprofit was established if you had to, but getting your 501(c)3 status earlier seemed the better idea.

The daydream continued in earnest until we neared Salina, Kansas. I wanted to recruit my friends from Germany to help out. She wants to move back to the States and he wants to work the land. I figured she could commute to Lincoln and teach at the university while he farms our small plot and, perhaps, keeps some chickens and goats (and alpacas and sheep if my wife had any say in the matter). The vegetables, eggs and cheese would help feed artists eager to learn how to live creative lives of service informed by their faith. The retiring farmer left an old pickup and small tractor toward this end, and the aforementioned outbuilding would be used as a barn for these agricultural endeavors.

I would task my architect friends with designing compact, sustainable and beautiful residences for the incoming artists. The barns would become studio and gallery space. The exteriors of the existing structures would be modified to match the new architecture (or vice versa). Power would ideally be solar, maybe wind. An abandoned church or schoolhouse on the edge of the acreage would serve as a chapel, and a walking trail would encircle the property.

My daydreams can be fairly elaborate, if you couldn’t tell by now, and are also fruitful in the scheme of things. While I may not be excited about administrative details such as applying for nonprofit status, they have to be done. And, just to curb any misinterpretation of this post, I am not planning to apply for 501(c)3 status this month. Or next. Probably not even this year.

But before I actually go out soliciting retiring farmers for a few acres on the corner of their spread, perhaps (assuming God leads me into ever actually establishing said retreat).

Filed under Architecture, Art and faith, Christian art retreat, Sustainable living

On suburbia and sustainability

27 May 2009 by pcNielsen 2 Comments

The Passionately Alive entry I already cited this morning also contains two very interesting bits of media talking about suburbia and sustainability that are worth resposting. First, a trailer for The End of Suburbia:

And secondly, an excerpt from The Suburban Nation (pages 117-118):

    The plight of the suburban housewife was powerfully conveyed in a letter we received in 1990 from a woman living outside of Tulsa:

    Dear Architects:

    I am a mother of four children who are not able to leave the yard because of our city’s design. Ever since we have moved here I have felt like a caged animal only let out for a ride in the car. It is impossible to walk even to the grocery store two blocks away. If our family wants to go for a ride we need to load two cars with four bikes and a baby cart and drive four miles to the only bike path in this city of over a quarter million people. I cannot exercise unless I drive to a health club that I had to pay $300 to, and that is four and a half miles away. There is no sense of community here on my street, either, because we all have to drive around in our own little worlds that take us fifty miles a day to every corner of the surrounding five miles.

    I want to walk somewhere so badly that I could cry. I miss walking! I want the kids to walk to school. I want to walk to the store for a pound of butter. I want to take the kids on a neighborhood stroll or bike. My husband wants to walk to work because it is so close, but none of these things is possible…And if you saw my neighborhood, you would think that I had it all according to the great American dream.

Filed under Community planning, Disposable culture, Environmental stewardship, Furniture, Modern culture, Sustainable living

Building a green city from the ground up

6 May 2009 by pcNielsen 2 Comments

Greensburg, Kansas, a small plains community of 1,000 people, was leveled by a tornado in 2007.

greensburg_kansas_tornado1

The town is making the most of the rebuilding opportunity. New structures replacing the tornadic debris are being built in the style of green. “Greensburg GreenTown is a Kansas-based nonprofit organization, providing inspiration and leadership to Kiowa County in order to be a model of sustainable living for the world.”

Greensburg on CNN

I’ve hoped for a similar initiative here in Siloam Springs, although I haven’t yet taken the time to propose it to the city. Still, it wouldn’t be the same kind of opportunity that Greensburg has, building from the ground up. Props to Greensburg for making lemonade of the lemon it was dealt two years ago.

Among the new green buildings is the 5.4.7 Arts Center, which is the 1st LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum building in Kansas according to its website.

Image from GreensburgKS.org

Filed under Architecture, Community planning, Environmental stewardship, Sustainable living

First time home buyer credit bad for the economy?

24 April 2009 by pcNielsen 3 Comments

Real estate isn’t really what this blog is about, but it comes up somewhat regularly in relationship to my keen interest in both residential building design and community planning. And, as regular readers will note, my wife and I have recently been thinking of selling our home and buying another.

NPR’s Morning Edition made note today of the $8,000 tax credit Uncle Sam is offering to first-time home buyers. I’m not a first time buyer and, thus, haven’t given much thought to the offer. Quite a few people have though. According to the NPR spot, lower housing costs combined with the tax break have resulted in an upward trend among first-time buyers.

My office acquaintance who just bought a home — from the utterly inane and incompetent bureaucracy that remains of Countrywide — has brought it up in our conversations. For him it was an incentive; from what I can tell it wasn’t the deciding factor. He and his wife have been looking at houses for a while. On Monday, a friend noted over breakfast that he knows of two people planning to buy a house solely because of the tax credit, people who in his opinion have no business buying a home. I trust this friend’s judgment; he’s a financial counselor, in essence, for Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace program.

Could this be an unintended consequence of the stimulus, something the Obama administration failed to foresee? Will we end up with an entirely new set of individuals chained to mortgages they can’t afford, starting the vicious cycle over again — thanks to the federal government? The danger is real, although I hope it isn’t the case.

The Morning Edition spot pointed out that first time buyers’ ideas of what constitutes a starter home are less opulent than a few years ago. Wine cellars and the like have given way to practicality. “Peace of mind is the new must-have,” according to NPR.

Filed under Community planning, Modern culture, Sustainable living

On public transit and urban community

17 April 2009 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

Rebecca Tirrell Talbot wrote an article titled Of Public Transit and Human Nature for today’s issue of The Curator Magazine. Fascinated as I am by transit (and in some ways the city of Chicago) I read the whole article, not too long and not too short for an internet publication.

Talbot makes some interesting observations concerning the trains in Chicago and their riders, how different lines possess different personalities, how riders in general react (or don’t react) to certain behaviors. I’ll let you read the article (linked to in the first paragraph) for the details after saying one thing: People in the city really wear iPod earbuds like they’re implants. I noticed this on the trains in New York back in February. It’s something we — and by we I mean American culture — made fun of a few years back. Here in our tiny midwestern town you don’t see it very often, hardly at all actually.

cta_red_line_rerouted

Photo from Wikipedia by Daniel Schwen.

Filed under Living incarnationally, Mass transit

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