Plenty Magazine Issue 19 Dec/Jan 2008 by Plenty Magazine

PLENTY

dinner with michael pollan | one man’s quest to save the mississippi

IT’S EASY BEING GREEN december/january 2008

Our 3rd Annual Holiday Special

79 eartH

friendly gifts For the >style savvy >tech geek >snowboarder >foodie >pet lover

Bison Conservation: Why We Failed KT Tunstall on Biodiesel, Guitars, and David Bowie

PLENTY IT’S EASY BEING GREEN

“The people loved it, dude. They were animals. They were freakin’ savages out there.” — page 56

To subscribe to Plenty call 800.316.9006 or log on to plentymag.com

Contents December/January 2008 features 43

GREEN GEAR HOLIDAY SPECIAL An extra-large guide to spectacular green gifts—from tech to style to home—for everyone, including kids and pets. By Jessica Tzerman

Animal Attractions Explore a predator-ridden savannah, stalk the elusive black rhino, dodge a charging elephant—eco tourism in southern Africa is one wild ride. By Kate Siber

The Unlikely Environmentalist How one skater dude stole an idea from NASCAR, created a

nearly million-dollar restoration project, and helped revive the mighty Mississippi.

By Adam Hinter-

thuer

Cover illustration by John ritter

ON THE COVER 2|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

The Next Great Hunt Reviving genetically pure bison and reintroducing them to their former home may be the key to saving both the species and the magnificent Great Plains. By Jim Robbins photograph by anthony verde

ÂŠ2007 Travelocity.com LP. CST# 2056372-50.

Sandcastles or houses. What will you help build? With Travelocityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Travel for Good, you can build more than castles made of sand. How about a schoolhouse made of wood? How about helping a village in Thailand become self-sustaining? How about protecting an endangered species? How about giving back to the world, one trip at a time? Well, how about it? www.travelocity.com/travelforgood

PLENTY

December/january 2008

FAST 15 The dinosaur-age Wollemi Pine hasn’t pined away after all;

Nell Newman’s eco New Year’s resolution; give green this holiday season; wintertime warmth that’s easy on the bank account; crops and robbers at Cedar Creek Corrections Center; how to build an igloo; get on board the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Life in the Green Zone Celebrated comedian Lizz Winstead goes on a green cleaning spree—and accidentally cleans out her bank account.

FORWARD 29 PEOPLE KT Tunstall dishes, from her most heinous eco sin to the ideal carpool buddy.

SCIENCE & TECH Torching trash for energy; vacuuming CO2

clear out of the skies; cell phones to track your carbon footprint; predicting La Niña’s upcoming season; eight great discoveries to boggle the mind.

BUSINESS A radio station in New Mexico rocks out on solar power; five credit cards to green your fiscal life; the carbon-offset market is off the charts.

MOTION This hot little car packs air and emits nothing but a

THINKING Michael Pollan’s defense of food; introducing the newest member of the global warming documentary club; into the wild with Craig Childs.

WILD WORLD Hibernating animals are waking up earlier and facing unfamiliar dangers; rising temperatures may be the culprit.

cool breeze. By Eric Mack

By Alisa Opar

CHOICES 71 HOME How thousands of pounds of Big Dig refuse became a house with a point of view.

By Mandi Wells

RETREADS Hannah Rogge fashions the ubiquitous freebie

T-shirt into homemade couture.

By Eileen Gunn

STYLE Soothe winter skin; ski special: clothes, gear, and our favorite spa treatments. By Bari Nan Cohen

FOOD Eco libations for the festive season; gifts for foodies; earth-sensitive tips for entertaining over the holidays.

The DIY Environmentalist In this inaugural edition of her new Plenty column, Annemarie Conte explores her dog doo disposal options ... and settles on composting.

THE LAST WORD A committed, one-bike man faces auto

temptation and lives to tell the tale.

4|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

By Ethan Gilsdorf

in every issue 6 8 10 12

plenty online from the editor contributors letters

top to bottom: courtesy of everything’s cool; dave zuckerman (left); illustration by nick dewar (right); anthony verde (left); courtesy of single speed image (right); perou

For the naughty and the nice, for the snack lover, the casual cook, and the adventurous gourmet, Eden has the perfect gift to delight and rejuvenate everyone on your list this holiday season. Each EDEN® Gift Basket is an artful arrangement of delicious, wholesome food, the finest that can be procured. Most are certified organic and kosher, and ALL are stress and shopping mall free.

See EDEN Gifts at edenfoods.com or call 888.424.3336 for a gift brochure.

1669-061_Wind Power PLENTY Ad.indd / Trim: 2.5˝ x 10.875˝ / Bleed: 2.75˝ x 11.125˝/Colors: CMYK / Proof #3 – 09/28/07 – neal PLENTY magazine PAGE + 1/3 LHP — 1/3 PAGE

PLENTY

december/january 2008 editor in chief & Publisher Mark Spellun creative director Tracy Toscano deputy editor anuj desai senior editors Alisa Opar, Sarah Schmidt associate editors Susan Cosier, jessica Tzerman deputy art director Richard Gambale editor at large cathy garrard assistant editors Sarah Parsons, Tobin Hack copy editor dave zuckerman editorial interns James Sherwin, Nicole Zerillo contributors Bari Nan Cohen, annemarie conte, Lisa Selin Davis, Robert Festino, Liz Galst, William Pope, kate Siber, camilla slattery, Felix Sockwell, adam stiles, lizz winstead

Advertising & Marketing asSociate publisher Lisa Haines |415.887.9574 | lisa@plentymag.com assistant publisher Morgen Wolf | 212.757.0048 | morgen@plentymag.com detroit ad sales Joe McHugh | breakthroughmedia | 586.360.3980 Published by Environ Press, Inc. | Chairman: Arnold Spellun 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403 New York, NY 10019 Tel: 212.757.3447 Fax: 212.757.3799

Subcriptions: 800.316.9006 Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, and other materials must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Plenty will not be responsible for unsolicited submissions. Send letters to the editor to letters@plentymag.com or to Plenty, 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10019. Copyright ©2007 by Environ Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Views expressed herein are those of the author exclusively. Plenty (ISSN 1553-2321) is published bimonthly, six times a year. The annual subscription price is $12 per year. Plenty is a publication of Environ Press, Inc., 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10019. Periodical postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Plenty, P.O. Box 621, Mt. Morris, IL 61054-7568 or call 800.316.9006. Plenty is printed on body stock that’s free of elemental chlorine and contains 85 to 100 percent recycled content (20 to 30 percent post-consumer). Our cover stock uses 10 percent recycled content, is FSC Certified and is made using green power. Plenty offsets its carbon footprint with eMission Solutions, a division of Green Mountain Energy (greenmountain.com). Please recycle.

Just can’t get enough of Plenty?

Check out plentymag.com to satisfy your craving for the latest news, blogs, and more.

In December The Gore Effect

First, Al Gore won an Oscar, then an Emmy, and then, drum roll please, the Nobel Prize. Plenty looks at the causes to which he’s directing his half of the $1.5 million prize money.

FEEL THE WIND

IN YOUR HAIR

our wind energy program helps keep 7.2 million pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for the full story visit aveda.com

In January Community Spotlights

People from New York to New Delhi are cleaning up pollution and advocating for the environment. Check out our series on a few places that deserve a spot in the limelight.

Extinction Blog

Several times a week, humorist and activist John Platt chronicles the plight of threatened and endangered species around the world, and the steps we can take to protect them.

In the Garden

Writer, beekeeper, and avid sustainable gardener Susan M Brackney digs up weekly advice on greener gardening. She’s also the author of The Insatiable Gardener’s Guide: How to Grow Anything & Everything Indoors, Year ’Round.

Recyclable Comedy

Barry Lank is a journalist and comedy performer, and one of the original writers for Air America Radio. His satirical podcasts are a scary lab experiment mixing comedy, news, and stem cells from a sheep.

* PER A REVIEW OF WWD BEAUTY REPORT INTERNATIONAL TOP 100 COSMETIC MANUFACTURER’S CORPORATE WEBSITES IN APRIL, 2007. THE WIND ENERGY GOES INTO A UTILITY GRID FROM WHICH WE DRAW POWER. YOU CAN FIND AVEDA TOLL-FREE AT 888.641.9202 OR VISIT US AT AVEDA.COM.

from the editor

Green Giving

Despite the color of all the decorations adorning stores, the holidays are probably the least green time of the year, given how much our overall consumption skyrockets. But one of the most amazing changes since Plenty launched three years ago has been the explosion in sustainable products available to shoppers. We used to struggle to fill our Green Gear section with ten interesting things that were good for the earth. Now we stretch to find room in the magazine for all of the inventive eco merchandise out there. ®

Introducing new Amazing EcoGlue, the super-strength, earth-friendly power glue. Finally, you don’t have to sacrifice your principles to have a flexible, incredibly strong adhesive that fixes just about anything, inside and out. • Less than 1% VOCs • Non-toxic • Water-based with excellent water resistance • Packaged in 100% recyclable material • Bonds wood, stone, metal, ceramic, glass, cloth and more! • No animal derivatives For more information about Amazing EcoGlue, call us at 800.767.4667 or visit www.ecoglue.com

From the makers of Amazing Goop

In our very first holiday gift guide edition of Green Gear®, we kept them all under $50. Since then we’ve loosened up because we didn’t want to exclude today’s stellar options, made of anything from bio-based plastics to 100-percent recycled content. Our special holiday edition of Green Gear® (page 43) has something for everyone, from the tech geek in your life to a chew toy for man’s best friend. And once you’re done checking those out, don’t forget our gifts for foodies (page 82); or the Wollemi pine, an ancient tree thought to be long extinct that we feature at the start of this issue (page 15, also pictured above). It’s useful for filtering the air in your home or office, and a unique, attractive link to an era when dinosaurs roamed the planet. (We just purchased one for Plenty’s headquarters.) Going green is certainly all the rage, but things haven’t gone so far that people are using CFLs as stocking stuffers. (Though

I’m sure many of you replaced your holiday lights with more-efficient LEDs, like I did at my in-laws’ place.) As you consider how to substitute more eco-friendly purchases for traditional ones this year, however, consider that a major part of sustainable living is simply getting by with a little less. We would love to hear about how all of you are making your holidays a little greener this year. Send an e-mail to us at gogreen@plentymag.com. The three readers who come up with the most inventive way to green their holiday will get a Plenty T-shirt and a one-year subscription to the magazine to keep or pass on to a friend. In the meantime, green tidings to all.

Same amount of cereal, less packaging. Before size reduction.

EnviroBox

After size reduction.

To lighten our footprint on the planet weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve reduced our cereal box packaging by 10% while delivering the same net weight of cereal inside. Our eco-friendly approach saves over 1,300,000 gal. of water, 942,000 KWh of energy, 144 tons of paperboard, and eliminates over 400 tractor trailers from our nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highways each year. Please recycle after use. www.naturespath.com

contributors Jim Robbins (“The Next Great Hunt,” page 64) is an author and journalist who resides outside of Helena, Montana. Jim has been a regular contributor to The New York Times for more than 25 years and has also written for Scientific American, Audubon, and Condé Nast Traveler, among other publications. Jim has also appeared as an analyst on NPR’s All Things Considered, NBC’s Today Show, and ABC’s Nightline. When he’s not writing or traveling, he hangs out in the Montana mountains with his wife, Chere, and dog, Ruby. Lizz Winstead is the author of the new Plenty column, (“Life in the Green Zone,” page 26), a humorous take on the follies of attempting eco living. Winstead is the cocreator and former head writer of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and a former Air America Radio host. Lizz’s talents have earned her recognition as one of Entertainment Weekly’s “100 Most Creative People,” and her stand-up act has been showcased on HBO and VH-1. Lizz is now starring in Shoot the Messenger, a satirical review of the media currently running in New York City. Camilla Slattery (“Holiday Gift Guide,” page 43) is a staff designer with Spaeth Design. She finds inspiration for her work in nature and the streets of New York City, using her creativity and knowledge of materials to design retail environments, jewelry, and furniture. Last year, Camilla created the awards given to our Plenty 20 winners with environmentallyfriendly materials. Now, she serves as our “eco stylist” on product shoots, incorporating lighting equipment, props, and backdrops that are also easy on the environment. Adam Hinterthuer (“The Unlikely Environmentalist,” page 56) lives in the land of cheese and beer (also known as Wisconsin) with his wife, Carrie. When he’s not writing, he spends time hiking and camping and complaining about how he doesn’t do either often enough. Although the Madison resident was tempted by the thought of abandoning his career as a writer and working on the Mississippi, he decided it wasn’t for him after he spent half a day hauling tires out of the muck as an honorary crew member on Chad Pregracke’s barge. Annemarie Conte (“The Green Fiend,” page 84), who has written for Jane, Men’s Journal, and O, The Oprah Magazine, never shies away from a project, no matter how challenging. “I’m always willing to try something out, even if it ends in disaster,” she says. For this issue, Annemarie shares her experience with composting dog poop. In future installments of her column, she promises more tales from her unusual attempts to do good in the world, letting you know if it’s really worth the effort. If there’s an eco task you’d like her to test, feel free to suggest away at annemarieconte.com.

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PLENTY

letters

DINNER WITH MICHAEL POLLAN | ONE MAN’S QUEST TO SAVE THE MISSISSIPPI

IT’S EASY BEING GREEN DECEMBER/JANUARY 2008

Our 3rd Annual Holiday Special

“Considering the magnitude of the global warming challenge, I believe that we can’t rule out any renewableenergy options.”

79 EARTH

FRIENDLY GIFTS For the

>STYLE SAVVY >TECH GEEK >SNOWBOARDER >FOODIE >PET LOVER

Bison Conservation: Why We Failed KT Tunstall on Biodiesel, Guitars, and David Bowie

What’s Old Is New Again I found the story about converting old airplanes (“Up, Up, and Away,” October/November 2007, page 34) into eco-friendly trains fascinating. I love the idea of recycling old pieces of technology to meet the needs of the modern day. It’s also great to see a plan that would provide more public transportation at a lower cost, both fiscally and environmentally.

Dermott Frisco Brooklyn, NY

Sandcastles or houses. What will you help build? With Travelocity’s Travel for Good, you can build more than castles made of sand. How about a schoolhouse made of wood? How about helping a village in Thailand become selfsustaining? How about protecting an endangered species? How about giving back to the world, one trip at a time? Well, how about it? www.travelocity.com/travelforgood

The Answer Is Blowing in the Wind

Mind-Boggling Birth Control

I am an avid Plenty reader and especially enjoy your articles that highlight current or upand-coming technologies. In this past issue, I was pleased to see an article about distributed wind generation (“A Mighty Wind,” October/ November 2007, page 30) and new turbine designs that make rooftop applications more feasible. The article was quite interesting, but after reading I was a bit disappointed. The author did not do more to address the issues raised in Paul Gipe’s comments in which he called rooftop wind generation “a distraction.” Considering the magnitude of the global warming challenge, I believe that we can’t rule out any renewable-energy options, but I would have liked more information about the role that rooftop wind generation could play in a clean-energy future. On what scale (ideally and realistically) could these be deployed, and what effect would that have on our greenhouse gas emissions?

This (“Bambi on Birth Control,” October/ November 2007, page 38) is a curious article to say the least. Unfortunately humanity continues to misidentify the “animals” running rampant on this planet—us!

I was introduced to Plenty through our local magazine exchange. Point Reyes, California is a village of about 800 people, and is very active in environmental, farming, and artistic activities. We’ve had Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan (see this issue’s“Pollan Account,” page 38), Gary Snyder, and many others to speak. A number of us are becoming aware of where our food is coming from, how transportation contributes to global warming, and climate change. Keep up the good work!

Kayje Booker via e-mail

Gail Greenlees Point Reyes, CA

Val Jasper and Ken Bronsing via e-mail

A New Fan

Write us at letters@plentymag.com

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fast igloo building

green prisons

draft dodging

puckering up

green zone

Fencing in a tree might seem like a strange thing to do, even in the United Kingdom’s Kew Gardens— but this is no ordinary tree. It’s a Wollemi pine, a rare plant that grew among the dinosaurs. Long thought to have gone extinct, a small stand of the trees was discovered in 1994 by a national parks and wildlife officer in Australia’s Blue Mountains. Today, scientists know of fewer than 100 mature trees in the wild. Wollemi Pine International, a nonprofit, devised an unusual scheme to conserve the threatened trees and boost their numbers in the wild: Sell Wollemi saplings propagated from seeds and cuttings of the wild stand. They thrive outdoors, but consider keeping one in a sunlit room inside: The family of trees that the ancient pine belongs to is especially efficient at removing toxins from indoor air (ancientpine.com). —Alisa Opar

photo courtesy of rbg kew

Pining Away

fast

Hut Hut if global warming continues at

its current rate, Frosty the Snowman won’t be the only cultural-icon casualty. Consider the igloo—this Inuit ice hut can only be built where thick layers of hardpack snow form, and that snow will be difficult to come by as temperatures rise. The weather outside may be frightful, but your cozy igloo will be a delightful 20–60˚F inside. It will also reinforce itself naturally, through constant melting and freezing, until it’s strong enough to withstand natural disasters ranging from hurricane-force winds to (legend has it) over-curious polar bears. Here’s how to build one. —Tobin Hack 1. You’ll need a sturdy stick. Find a clearing in hardpack snow. Make a circle where the base of the igloo will be. Tramp down the area inside for 15–30 minutes, then let rest for half an hour.

4. Cut second row of blocks beveled at bottom so that wall begins to climb and slant inward.

5. Fill final top hole with single block.

2. Grab a snow saw up to 20inches long. In nearby work area, cut blocks of hardpack snow 2.5-feet wide by 1.5-feet high by 0.5-feet deep.

3. Create base layer of igloo with blocks. One person works outside, one inside, to smooth blocks together and fill cracks.

16|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

6. After igloo is complete, dig out floor with a snow spade to increase area of inner chamber. Then, dig entrance and cut one or two vents for air circulation.

illustrations by jameson simpson

Dilemma

Q: Is there an

eco-friendly way to wrap and send gifts this holiday season?

A: Admit it—for years you’ve rolled

your eyes every time Aunt Mildred carefully unwraps a gift so she can save the paper for next year. But maybe she has the right idea. Americans throw away 25 percent more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Aunt Mildred-style recycling is one way to cut back, but there are other ways to make your gift-giving green.

Wrap it up Package gifts in newspaper; old magazines (even this one); elephant poo-poo paper—an odorless product whose manufacturers earmark a percentage of the profits for elephant conservation; a biodegradable plastic bag; or a reusable container (like a tin or Tupperware). The US Postal Service also sells boxes on EBay that have a Cradle to Cradle certification from architect William McDonough’s consultancy, which evaluates sustainability. Pack it in When it comes to shipping your surprises, resist the urge to cushion your carefully chosen gifts by packing them in a Styrofoam-filled box. “A complete no-no is polystyrene, aka Styrofoam peanuts,” says Julie Muir from the Stanford Recycling Center. If someone sends them to you, try dropping them at your local UPS store to be reused and recycled. To protect your packages, use shredded paper instead (you were going to recycle those old printouts anyway, right?). Send it over UPS has a “green fleet” of 1,629 vehicles that can transport your goodies using alternative fuel. Give it back Finally, don’t forget to recycle the boxes you receive (and regift any of those presents that weren’t quite your style)—make Aunt Mildred proud. —Susan Cosier

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fast

Burning Question

Q: “WHAT’S YOUR NEW YEAR’S ECO rESOLUTION?”

redirecting organic material improved wastewater quality so much that the prison scrapped plans to build a $1.3 million treatment plant.

crops and robbers wield hoes and rakes at Cedar Creek Corrections Center, they’re not digging their way to freedom or working on a chain gang. They’re working on green initiatives that make the prison more sustainable and help with their own rehabilitation. Located in Washington’s Capital Forest, the minimum-security corrections center’s unprecedented green efforts save it money, reduce its ecological footprint, and even help spark environmental careers for some prisoners (once they get out). The program’s founding scientist and the prison’s superintendent hope to implement similar initiatives in other prisons. “People here are exposed to sustainability in a way that’s pervasive,” says Dan Pacholke, who championed green efforts while he was prison superintendent from December 2003 to August of last year. Each month, Cedar Creek composts an average of 2,800 pounds of kitchen waste, which when prison inmates

18|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

nourishes the 13,000 pounds of organic produce grown each year; low-flow showerheads and toilets and rainwater catchments reduce water usage; there is a zero-waste recycling center; and the light bulbs are energy efficient. These initiatives cut garbage bills by about $500 per month and reduced water usage per inmate from 130 to 100 gallons a day. “Part of what we’re getting at is an overall context that hopefully lends itself to a more successful environment that reduces the likelihood that they’re oriented toward crime,” says Pacholke. For some prisoners, it seems to be working. Craig Ulrich, an inmate who heads up the composting program, introduced a method of using worms to turn raw materials into rich soils and tweaked the existing compost heap to make it more efficient. Today, he can turn your banana peel into black soil in 45 days. Redirecting organic material like kitchen scraps into the compost rather than down the drain improved wastewater quality so much that the prison scrapped plans to build a $1.3 million treatment plant. Ulrich recently submitted a research paper about his composting program to a scientific journal and is applying to a biochemistry PhD program, which he hopes to attend once he’s released next summer. Two other former inmates have entered landscaping and horticulture. “We educate as many people as possible on the program in order to get people to incorporate this type of lifestyle when they get out,” Ulrich says. As former Cedar Creek interim superintendent Mike Obenland points out, the green program is “just the right thing to do.” —Anne Casselman illustration by marcos chin

Gary Hirshberg

CEO, Stonyfield Farm, Author of Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World

I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds tomorrow— my kids and their kids and their kids. My 2008 resolutions are all about legacy: 1: In the 2008 presidential election, I’m voting for the planet. The candidate who earns my vote will tenaciously address climate change. 2: I’m also voting with my dollars, by supporting companies that reflect my own values on climate change (I’ll be using climatecounts.org, a nonprofit we helped start). 3: I’m taking my house off the grid by installing a solar photovoltaic system that will provide nearly 100 percent of our electricity needs. Nell Newman

Co-founder and president, Newman’s Own Organics

This year, drought conditions in California have inspired me to look into a rain-catchment system for my roof. I was amazed to learn how much water a 1,000-square-foot roof can catch. My New Year’s resolution is to collect as much as possible for plant watering, car washing, and whatever else the city allows. Water is such a precious and finite resource that it should be used as carefully as possible. Vijay Vaitheeswaran

Energy Correspondent, The Economist, COAuthor of Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future

My eco resolution is to shout from the mountaintops the need for Americans to end our addiction to cheap oil. That will mean convincing them to raise gasoline taxes as part of a broader, economy-wide carbon tax policy, and proving to them that this will not make Americans poorer at all. I advocate a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Ordinary folks can keep money in their pockets while changing incentives toward clean energy, creating a level playing field for the first time.

visit plentymag.com for more answers to our burning question.

fast going places: Chattanooga

River Town on a Roll Memphis loves to sing them blues, but in Chattanooga the tune is “go green.” The river town has come a long way since being designated America’s most polluted city in 1969. Today, 22 miles of once inaccessible riverfront have been reclaimed for public use, and revitalization projects have made this city a model eco town and a tourist hot spot. —Hilda J. Brucker see The Tennessee Aquarium showcases freshwater and saltwater habitats so visitors can enjoy creatures ranging from playful otters to colorful coral-reef fish and sharks. Behind the scenes, staffers work to restore declining populations of native species (tnaqua.org). At the Chattanooga Nature Center, hike the boardwalk that traverses an engineered wetland filled with local flora and fauna. The wetland also filters wastewater generated by the visitor’s center (chattanature.org). On a rainy day, enjoy paintings in the Hunter Museum of American Art and the panoramic view from its location on an 80-foot bluff above the river (huntermuseum.org).

Sleep Recycled buildings are Chattanooga’s forte. Stay at the Chattanooga ChooChoo, where a 1908 train terminal escaped the wrecking ball to become the opulent lobby of a Holiday Inn. Besides modern rooms, visitors can bunk down in refurbished sleeper cars from Victorian-era trains (choochoo.com). The Mayor’s Mansion Inn, once the private home of Chattanooga’s first mayor, has been rescued from years of disrepair to become a three-story, eighteen-room bed and breakfast (mayorsmansioninn. com). And the Stone Fort Inn is a cozy 1909 tavern furnished with antiques and claw-foot tubs (stonefortinn.com).

taste Local fare wins out over the national chains in Chattanooga. Enjoy gourmet dining downtown at 212 Market, Tennessee’s first eatery to be certified by the Green Restaurant Association—if you opt for takeout, you’ll receive to-go utensils made from a biodegradable potato product instead of plastic (212market.com). At Lupi’s Pizza, fresh ingredients come from local farmers whenever possible; choose from 30 toppings at three locations (lupi. com). On Market Street, Country Life Vegetarian Restaurant serves up lunches containing no dairy, eggs, or animal products, from 11am to 2:30pm daily.

buy It’s easy to spend a whole day browsing Frazier Avenue, a former warehouse district turned specialty-shop center featuring jewelry, pottery, hand-blown glass, botanical-based soaps and candles, toys, clothing, and more. Highlights include Frankie and Julian’s, a boutique that carries knitwear fashioned from organicallygrown bamboo. On the South Side, Rugina’s Afrikan Village sells imported jewelry, wooden masks, ceramics, musical instruments, and sculptures bought directly from the artisans, helping to provide a livelihood to some of the poorest villages in Africa.

also worth noting Using a process developed by local company Astec Inc., repaving projects are being done with “green asphalt”—a product that includes 50 percent recycled asphalt and is mixed at low temperatures in order to reduce emissions (astecinc.com). Solar panels on many of Chattanooga’s public buildings feed energy back into the grid. The Chattanooga Convention Center uses natural light, fresh-air ventilation, and a rooftop system that collects rainwater for irrigation (chattconvention.org). Construction is underway on the state’s first LEED-certified, mixed-use development, and plans are on the drawing board for a green roof on a Renaissance Park pavilion.

20|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

move Chattanooga is an extremely walkable city, with pedestrian-only bridges, trails, and passageways that connect previously fragmented areas and once more link the city to the riverfront. A free, zero-emissions electric shuttle runs between downtown hotels, restaurants, shops, and attractions. Commuting by bike is also a breeze, with an award-winning system of marked bicycle lanes and a Rack-nride program that lets cyclists go the distance by combining pedal power and public transportation along the city’s seventeen bus routes.

White men don’t vote Democrat. Is there a white male gap? “A brilliantly insightful analysis of American politics at the national level. Every Democrat should read this book.” —Gen. Wesley K. Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO

“If you follow politics, you already think you understand the ‘gender gap’—but you’re wrong. You won’t really comprehend its massive implications until you read this book. We know a lot about why women vote disproportionately Democratic, but until David Paul Kuhn undertook this sophisticated, absorbing study, no one had adequately explained why men vote disproportionately Republican.” —Larry Sabato, Founder/Director, University of Virginia’s Center for Politics

“The Neglected Voter is an original and insightful analysis of a great topic: the Democratic party’s White Male Gap in presidential elections.” —Merle Black, co-author of Divided America: The Ferocious Power Struggle in American Politics

www.TheNeglectedVoter.com • www.DavidPaulKuhn.com

n the 1960s, the Republican party won over a crucial demographic: white male voters. Electoral demographics were transformed for a generation. David Paul Kuhn explains how Republicans came to dominate Washington, D.C. and reminds Democrats that midterm victories (1986, 2006) do not equal sustainable success. In revealing, lucid prose, Kuhn explains what Democrats can do to continue their efforts to turn the Red tide. Grounded in practical politics, The Neglected Voter presciently reconfigures the American political landscape. Equipped with rare access to historical exit polls, unprecedented research data, and exclusive interviews with such figures as Jimmy Carter, Norman Mailer, Mark Warner, and Pat Robertson, Kuhn examines the role of gender and racial identity and each party’s gains and losses through the social changes of the last fifty years. Distributor of Berg Publishers, I.B.Tauris, Manchester University Press, and Zed Books AVAILABLE IN BOOKSTORES • www.palgrave-usa.com

fast

claim check

Draft Dodgers

by the numbers

No Business Like Snow Business 11.5 Millions of skiers and snowboarders in the US. 0 Number of Australian ski resorts that

75 115.6 Average inches of annual snowfall

Percentage of water supplied to the West most of the year by melting snowpack.

will remain economically viable by 2070 if global-warming trends continue.

in Syracuse, New York, the snowiest city in the US.

Vermont’s Killington Resort uses every hour—at peak production—to make snow.

Colorado Rockies in 2006. The dust, which comes from the drought-ravaged Colorado Plateau, melts the snowpack.

720,000 Gallons of water

113.6 Height in feet of the world’s largest snowman, built in Bethel, Maine, in 1999.

10 15 Length in inches of the largest

Percent decrease in the Northern Hemisphere’s snow cover since 1966. snowflake on record. The flake, which measured eight inches thick, fell out of the sky and into the history books on January 28, 1887, in Montana.

the big picture

Re-gift it By Jessica Hagy

keeping warm air inside and chilly winter winds outside can be tricky, especially in older homes. Improper insulation can also rack up the bills—the US Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that poorly insulated windows account for 10 to 25 percent of your heating bill. To keep warmth in and costs down, many people weatherize windows by sealing them with plastic sheets. We checked with the experts to determine efficient ways to keep your home warm and toasty. —Sarah Parsons

The Claim: Putting plastic on windows is the best way to keep heat from escaping during winter.

8 Number of dust storms to hit the

500 Pounds of salt needed to melt

snow and ice to keep it from bonding to one mile of a two-lane road.

5 Number of primary active ingredients in products used to melt snow and ice— all five damage the environment.

8 Number of pesticides detected in high-elevation snow in the US, four of which are banned.

The Facts: Covering drafty windows with plastic can help keep hot air inside. It can also help you use less energy. But, warns Ed Pollock from the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, you have to make sure you cover windows correctly. Gluing plastic directly onto the glass won’t work. Pollock recommends taping plastic onto the window frame instead. If plastics don’t provide the look you desire, Pollock suggests buying shades or thick drapes, which work almost as well. The Conclusion: Though plastic can help keep windows airtight when cold winds howl, heavy drapes and other methods can be as effective. Open shades on south-facing windows during the day to let sunlight in. At night, draw drapes to trap heat and keep cold air from sneaking in. Other energysaving tips include checking your furnace filter each month to make sure it’s clean, caulking air leaks, installing storm windows, and hiring a technician to seal heating and cooling ducts.

22|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

ead about the history of the snowman now, before he becomes extinct.

The History of the Snowman: From the Ice Age to the Flea Market recounts Bob Eckstein’s quest to solve the mystery surrounding the first snowman. By traveling back in time, this book sheds new light on its enigmatic past— beginning in the present-day, an era in which the snowman reigns as King of Kitsch, and ending in the Dark Ages with the creation of the first snowman.

The perfect quirky wintertime book to give or get Available wherever books are sold H>BDC HEDIA><=I :CI:GI6>CB:CI • LLL H>BDCH6NH 8DB • LLL =>HIDGND;I=:HCDLB6C 8DB H>BDC H8=JHI:G • A CBS COMPANY

fast plenty labs

Pucker Up Winter may offer scenic snowscapes and holiday fun, but it’s also the season of harsh weather and chilly winds. And when we must brave the outdoors, our lips are sure to suffer: Lip skin is thin and prone to injury, says dermatologist Sonia Badreshia-Bansal, MD. “Generous application of lip balms can help trap in moisture and aid in healing and preventing dryness,” she says. Traditional balms often contain un-eco ingredients like oil-derived petroleum jelly. But there are also many all-natural options to keep your kisser smoochable. Here are our picks for the best balms your bucks can buy. —Sarah Parsons Badger Cocoa Butter Lip Balm Twice as wide as a typical stick, this big boy’s made with organic ingredients and comes in five scrumptious, all-natural flavors. $5, badgerbalm.com Kiss My Face Lip Action As well as making lips kissably soft, the company donates one dollar from the sale of each tube to the Alliance for Climate Protection, an environmental nonprofit. $3.49, kissmyface.com Shea Terra Organics Lip Butter The longlasting moisture comes from the namesake shea butter. Each of the five flavors pack a powerful punch. $3, sheaterraorganics.com Eco Lips This brand offers thirteen different balms to suit all tastes and terrain. The company also donates one percent of their profits to environmental initiatives. $3–$5, ecolips.com Max Green Alchemy Chap Defense Lip Balm This organic formula is made with peppermint and tea tree oils that freshen breath while soothing chapped smackers. $5, maxgreenalchemy.com Earthlight Organics With cranberry-seed oil as the main ingredient, the texture is emollient and keeps lips silky smooth for hours. $8.50, earthlightorganics.com

Paper Trailers last april, nonprofit ForestEthics launched a campaign that put catalog companies on notice: Get out of endangered forests and adopt more environmentally friendly practices within 30 days—or be exposed through protests, press releases, and newspaper ads. Now the group is going after catalogers that didn’t comply, including Sears Holdings Corporation, one of the worst offenders.“We want to totally transform the industry,” says Michelle Medeiros, ForestEthics’ managing director. They seem to be on their way. After two years and more than 750 protests, including ads criticizing Victoria’s Secret, the lingerie 24|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

seller’s parent company, Limited Brands Inc., agreed in December 2006 to phase out catalog paper from endangered forests like North America’s Boreal Forest. ForestEthics celebrated another success in August when J. Crew agreed to print a percentage of its catalogs on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), post-consumer, recycled paper. After taking on Sears and rolling out a scorecard this holiday season, which will rate catalog leaders and offenders, ForestEthics plans to launch an attack on the direct mail industry next spring. In other words, junk mailers beware—you’re next. photograph by anthony verde eco styling by camilla slattery

fast | life in the green zone

The ongoing eco follies of Lizz Winstead Over the past decade, I’ve been slowly (read: lazily) transitioning to a greener lifestyle. I am a fascist about recycling, I always try to buy locally-grown-and-raised foods, and when I smoke outside, I don’t toss my butts on the street. But before firing off a letter to the editor for giving a half-assed environmental slacktivist and smoker an inch of space in this magazine, hear me out. One afternoon about a month ago, after looking at the array of orange, purple, and blue liquid chemicals I was using to clean my house, I finally said to myself, “Clear out that rainbow of environmental catastrophes that live under your sink. You know better.” few clicks. I even bought carbon offsets to I fired up my computer (it runs on clean compensate for the shipping. coal), and began scouring environmental Over the next month, my new greenery websites, gleefully ordering the green counterparts to everything I had lined up trickled in. When I replaced my light bulbs and washed my clothes with biodegradable before me. First it was cleansers, laundry detergent, it felt good. I was finally on my soap, and even organic tampons. I drew the line at the menstrual cup. Seriously, even way to being a proud steward of the earth. Then I got my credit card bill in the mail. female polar bears would say, “Fuck the sea Yes, I still get the paper bill—I’ll wait while ice—I am not using one of those things.” you gasp in horror. Are you done? Not yet? But then it was fluorescent light bulbs, solar chargers, and all the requisite green How about now? As I looked over my bill, I was overwhelmed bags—shopping, produce, garbage, and dog-poop (deal with it, Edie and Buddie). by how much stuff I actually bought to reduce my dependence on, well, stuff. I was committed to ridding It seems that in one day of myself of all the impertinent rapturous reducing mania, I crap in my life. Whether it had spent more than $500 in was a product that was toxic, just twenty minutes on my new or just something that was responsibility starter kit. And wasteful excess, I kicked it here’s the kicker: Now I have to the curb. Faster than a twice as much stuff. Republican chipping away at Only after buying new stuff did I discover the Constitution, I scoured cupboards and drawers and gathered up everything that how hard it is to get rid of the old stuff. When I Googled, “How do I responsibly I knew was anathema to caring about the planet. I lined up all of it and surfed for get rid of old cleaning supplies?” the first entry I found was about getting rid of cat the alternatives. My carbon footprint went urine. (White vinegar, if you’re wondering.) from a size nine to a size five with just a

My carbon footprint went from a size nine to a size five.

26|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

The other 1,060,000 entries gave me ways to get rid of everything but old cleaning supplies. Books, toys, tools, vinyl siding— it’s covered. For me, it was maddening. Each day as I go through my new clean routine, I still have to look at the plethora of old plastic bags and creepy colored liquids the new found greeniac in me so desperately wants to lose. It’s turning me into an environ-mental patient. Staring at that disgusting bottle of Formula 409 is like staring at a box of your ex’s junk that was never picked up—it just reminds you of all the bad choices you made in the past. Luckily, when you Google, “Throwing out my ex’s stuff,” there are 2,140,000 entries. Maybe I’ll just add all the old cleaning supplies to the box of the ex’s stuff and use one of those ways to dispose of it—even if that much toxicity in one container could violate the Kyoto Protocol. Wait, the United States didn’t ratify that one. Hmm—not a bad idea. Lizz Winstead is co-creator of The Daily Show, and former co-host of Air America’s Unfiltered. She currently stars in Shoot the Messenger, a satirical review of the media world running in New York City (www.shootthemessengernyc.com). illustration by michael byers

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FoRward people

technology

business

motion

thinking

wild world

Eco Star

KT Tunstall

Fifteen questions with the singer we like calling Wolfhound West Acres

photo by perou

By colleen kane

Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall, as the saying goes, seems to be everywhere these days, so it’s a good thing she gets around in a biodiesel tour bus when she can. The 32-year-old—who moved millions of copies of Eye to the Telescope, her late-2006 debut, and is now globally promoting her second album, Drastic Fantastic— also has a carbon offset that runs 6,000-trees strong. Come early 2008, she’ll be filling the tanks for a stateside tour. A vegetarian and dedicated eco promoter both on the road and at home, Tunstall converted her house into an energy-efficient sanctuary this spring with the help of Global Cool, whose fans include Orlando Bloom and Tony Blair. (Her favorite feature recommended by the enviro campaigners is the sheep’s wool roof insulation.) But even if her career reads like a rousing success to date, it’s far from over—Tunstall believes the title to her memoirs, if she wrote them now, would be “I Am Aware I Haven’t Got Enough to Say Yet and Should Wait at Least 30 Years.” Until she gets around to writing that book, though, Tunstall helps debut our Eco Star segment with fifteen facts on her story so far. * * plentymag.com

| december / january 2008 |29

forward | people and the story goes... Her future Eco Star name (favorite animal plus childhood street): Wolfhound West Acres. The hotel that knows her best: The Hotel on Rivington in New York City. On childhood: I did a lot of writing and drawing. I really liked writing rhyming poems and plays. That one indispensable album: Hunky Dory [by] David Bowie Her biggest environmental sin: Flying. Her dream carpool partner: Sir David Attenborough (the naturalist). The merch she hawks on tour: I use a company called Sandbag, which was partly set up by Radiohead, and do a complete set of eco-aware merchandise. Her favorite place on Earth: The Isle of Skye in Scotland. What road meals on the biodiesel bus look like: We use recycled plates and cutlery and eat Soya hot dogs. They taste exactly like real ones. Her favorite eats in Scotland: You can get the most amazing veggie haggis, neeps, and tatties at the Ubiquitous Chip on Ashton Lane in Glasgow. Such a gorgeous place to go and eat dinner. Her tattoo count: A winking cat on my left shoulder. The environmentally friendly product she can’t live without: Ecover laundry liquid.

Toys she used to make the new album: They are both vintage Gretsch electric guitars. Let’s face it—the electric guitar is way sexier than the acoustic. My little Silver Jet hasn’t got a name yet, but my big White Falcon is called Daddy. Because it’s totally the Daddy. Her self-penned fortune-cookie wisdom: Enjoy eating this with all your heart, then follow your own path with cookies in your teeth. 30|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

kt tunstall photo by rahav Segev

The sustainable fashions she most likes to wear: Katharine Hamnett T-shirts, Linda Loudermilk dresses.

"T QBHF SFWFBMT UIF #JH "QQMF BDUVBMMZ CFDBNF UIF #JH 0SBOHF JO

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ith all they need to teach you in school, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s easy to see how they might have missed a few important historical details. Like the fact that the Dutch took New York from the British for a year and renamed it for the royal familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s color: New Orange. America has a fascinating and colorful history. Packed with 365 daily readings, The Intellectual Devotional: American History raises your intellectual stock while shedding light on the history-making decisions of today.

Learn more at TheIntellectualDevotional.com.

Available wherever books are sold.

forward | tech

CO Sucker 2

Can we vacuum carbon dioxide from the air? By Jennifer Nelson

vacuum that sucks carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere might sound farfetched, but the device already exists, and you may see one in your neighborhood within in the next five years. Scientists at Global Research Technologies (GRT), an R and D company in Tucson, Arizona, have joined forces with Columbia University researchers to create a giant CO2 vacuum that removes the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. “About 30 percent of the CO2 that’s up there is from the transportation industry— cars, ships, airplanes, trains,” says George Grimm, research director at GRT. The electric power industry, meanwhile, is responsible for about another 40 percent of CO2 emissions. Capturing the gas directly from tailpipes isn’t yet possible, and retrofitting power plants to trap gases will take time and

money. And, as researchers reported in the journal Science in March, even reducing emissions might not be enough to stop global warming. Making a real dent in the problem will require pulling CO2 out of the air, says Klaus Lackner, a geophysicist at Columbia who is involved with the vacuum project and has been toying with the idea for years. The machine uses an acid-based chemistry that attracts CO2, dissolves it into a water-based solution, and then separates it into gas. In a test run last spring, the collector was more efficient than researchers anticipated. “Everything went right in the sense of each of the individual unit’s function, which is why we’re calling this a successful prototype demonstration,” says Grimm. Researchers found that they had to stop collecting and send the material to the separator themselves.

They’re now working to create a stand-alone CO2 device that captures one ton per day. Grimm estimates it will take two years to get a system that doesn’t require human assistance into the field. Researchers already have a few suggestions for what to do with the end product, CO2 gas. It could be sold to oil companies, which use the gas to extract additional oil from depleted wells, or used for food shipping and dry ice production. Or it could be

Smoke and Mirrors While political leaders, industry gurus, economists, scientists, and other experts figure out the best ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions—the cause of rising temperatures across the planet—a handful of researchers have come up with some wacky-sounding ideas for mitigating the effects of global warming. Here’s a look at a few of their suggestions:

☩Some are hitting heat at its source: the Sun. Astronomer Roger Angel proposes placing trillions of disks in space to deflect light; and another plan would place a 150-mile mirror between the Earth and the Sun. ☩When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, the sulfate particles it spewed into the atmosphere reflected some sunlight, cooling the planet for nearly a year. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research suggest mimicking the event, using airplanes or balloons to release sulfates into the air. ☩Like trees, algae feed on CO2. Unlike trees, however, algae multiply quickly, particularly in an iron-rich environment. The “Geritol solution,” named for the iron-rich supplement, proposes dumping tons of iron dust into the ocean to bolster the proliferation of algae, which will, the theory posits, rapidly consume large amounts of CO2. —Jim Sherwin 32|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

injected deep into the ground, where it would naturally convert into a harmless solid over time. The vacuum, about the size of a 40-foot shipping container, could even be located at these geological storage areas. Grimm estimates that within five years, about 100 vacuums will be parked around the country, each sucking up a ton of CO2 per day at a cost of $30 to $100. Worldwide, he says, it would take 250,000 to neutralize the CO2 currently being emitted.

From the Drawing Board

In the future you might track your environmental impact on your cell phone. Intel is developing UbiGreen, a mobile device that will use radio frequency identification tracking and other sensors to measure greenhouse-gas producing activities such as driving. Your greenness would be updated continually and graphed on the device.

illustration by nick dewar

tech | forward Ask a Scientist

Ditching the Dump

everal north american communities are considering losing their landfills and instead turning their trash into energy. Supporters say the process, known as plasma-arc gasification, is an emissions-free way to vaporize most trash into gas and other usable byproducts such as metal alloys. Plasma-arc torches heat waste to more than 10,000˚F, causing trash to break down molecules into atoms that recombine into harmless gas; that gas can then be converted into fuels such as methanol and ethanol. A facility currently being tested in Ottawa will process about 85 tons of municipal solid waste daily, producing enough electricity to power 3,600 homes. And an operation in St. Lucie County, Florida, slated to go online in two years, will be the country’s first to eliminate millions of tons of municipal solid waste while producing electricity.

Findings >>>

Arctic sea ice reached an all-time minimum of 1.59 million square miles on September 16—a decrease of about one million square miles, or an area the size of Alaska and Texas combined.

“There are little plasma plants all around the planet, but they’re only doing two to five tons a day,” mostly of hazardous waste, says Ron Roberts, St. Lucie County’s assistant solid waste director. The facility will handle 3,000 tons of waste daily, generating 160 megawatts. A quarter of the energy will run the plant, and the rest, enough to power 100,000 homes, will be sold. The technology is generally considered to be cleaner than traditional incineration. But it isn’t completely emissions free, because as the exhaust cools, molecules can recombine to form pollutants, says Marco Castaldi, a wasteto-energy expert at Columbia University. To keep pollutants in check, officials in Ottawa continuously monitor the plant’s levels of nitrogen oxides, hydrochloric acid, and sulphur dioxide. The Florida facility will take similar precautions. —Susan Brackney

A condor baby that ingested 15 metal, 27 glass, and 34 plastic items.

Climate change may decrease locust plagues because the insects proliferate after cooler periods, when damper conditions create an environment more favorable for their eggs to grow.

Japanese scientists have bred the very first see-through frog. They say the transparent amphibian will allow researchers and students to observe internal structures and organs without resorting to dissection.

Junk could hinder the recovery of California condors: Adults have been feeding their young metal springs, glass fragments, and other trash they find while scavenging.

Counter to climate-model predictions, parts of the Amazon forest grew vigorously during a drought in 2005. Scientists are uncertain how the forest will respond to long-term droughts, but say it’s still vulnerable to deforestation and forest fires.

Vernon Kousky Research meteorologist at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center

How will La Nina affect the weather this winter? Because the tropical Pacific is getting colder, we’re anticipating that the La Niña will be in force this winter, so we expect conditions opposite to what El Niño would produce in the US. El Niño, an abnormal warming of the tropical Pacific, generally causes a strengthening of the jet stream across the North Pacific and a pattern of storminess that affects much of the southern United States. When you have a La Niña, the jet stream tends to be weaker—it’s shifted northward, and the southern part of the US is generally drier. There’s a tendency for more cold air to come into the northern Great Plains and the Pacific Northwest. There’s a lot more variability with La Niña, too; there are more ups and downs during the course of a winter season. I would expect the southern states would be warmer than they were last year, and the northern Great Plains and the Pacific Northwest would be somewhat cooler. There is a tendency for the Pacific Northwest to have above normal precipitation—that would bode well for the ski areas of the Pacific Northwest as well as the northern Rockies. For the Southwest, though, it looks like it will be on the dry side this winter. We can’t say too much about what will happen in the eastern half of the country as far as precipitation goes. From the Mid-Atlantic on up to New England, you get almost anything. —as told to Sarah Parsons

DNA profiling of meat sold in Korean shops between 1999 and 2003 revealed that endangered minke whales may be at increased risk—twice the number reported are sold for consumption.

If verified, the recent finding that a molecule in chlorofluorocarbons might not break down as rapidly as thought would mean that 60 percent

of ozone depletion is due to an unknown mechanism.

Tankers and container ships pump 50 percent more CO2 into the atmosphere than previously thought; the shipping industry emits 1.2 billion tons— nearly twice the emissions of the aviation industry.

december / january 2008|plentymag.com

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forward | business

Heating Up the Airwaves

A radio station in the Southwest uses solar power to rock out by ross burns

perched atop new mexico’s 10,800-foot Picuris Peak are 160 solar panels. Contrary to what you might expect, they don’t crown an isolated home or even a ranger station—they power the transmitter of the world’s largest solar-powered radio station, KTAO. 34|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

The transmitter beams news, community affairs, and rock music across a nearly 100mile radius around Taos, where the station’s office is located. KTAO’s transmitter hasn’t always been located on a mountaintop, or run on renewable energy. Until 1991, the station broadcast to a much smaller area illustration by lauren berke

business | forward The solar-powered transmitter beams news, community affairs, and rock music. from a trailer just outside Taos. When the FCC granted the station permission to increase its strength, the only suitable site for the necessary transmitter—the peak—had no power. “I knew it would take years to run power up the mountain. Solar was the only way we could do it,” says KTAO owner and deejay Brad Hockmeyer, who says the station saves thousands of dollars each month on utility bills. “I’ve been preaching its benefits ever since.” Only a handful of other stations in the US run on renewable energy. One of them, KZMU in Moab, Utah, purchases enough wind credits from Rocky Mountain Power’s Blue Sky Program to meet all its energy needs, and the station plans to go mostly solar when it receives $60,000 in seed money from the program. Blue Sky director Christy Williams is optimistic other stations will do the same. “Offsets are an easy way to get started, and I’m sure the smaller, grassroots stations that have more creative latitude will be coming along quickly,” she says. Back on Picuris Peak, KTAO’s transmitter site is completely off the grid; it uses solar power for both electricity and heat. Fifteen miles away in Taos, the KTAO Solar Center, which houses the station’s offices, studios, and outdoor performance venue, will also be powered entirely by solar energy. The funding for the project comes from an $800 million IRS bond to pursue alternative energy sources. Installation of the more than 100 panels that will line the perimeter of the station will begin once the government releases the funds. KTAO takes its music seriously, as well as its responsibility to inform and connect the community with local government, businesses, and organizations. The new panels will allow the station to fulfill its duties on a day-to-day basis, but also in emergency situations. “We’re designated as a first responder, so if you-know-what hits the fan, we can still get important information out to the community,” says Hockmeyer. graph by jameson simpson

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Greening the earth is as easy as mince pie when you use your GE card on your holiday shopping spree. Funnel 1% of the value of your total spending into projects that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions; or contribute 0.5% to climate projects and get the other 0.5% as cash back. No annual fee, initial APR 0%; in partnership with AES Corp.

Did you know that every time you buy a gift with your WWF card, a penguin gets its wings? Okay, life’s not that wonderful. But 1% of every purchase will help protect endangered species. To date the card has raised more than $10 million to help save endangered species and protect threatened habitats around the world. No annual fee, initial APR 0%; in partnership with Chase.

WORKING ASSETS VISA CARD

Founded in 1985, Working Assets has raised more than $50 million for progressive causes. With every purchase you charge to this card, 10 cents will go to your choice of one of 50 nonprofits, including the National Center for Science Education and the Rainforest Action Network. No annual fee, 9.9% APR.

SALMON NATION VISA CARD

You don’t have to be a salmon fanatic to carry ShoreBank Pacific’s card; you don’t even have to have an account at the bank. ShoreBank splits its earnings from the card with Ecotrust, an organization that works to protect Salmon Nation, the region from Alaska to Oregon where wild salmon live. No annual fee, 12.9% APR.

NATURE CONSERVANCY VISA CARD

Most “free gifts” are junk, but this card comes with the gift of a one-year Nature Conservancy membership, plus a subscription to the group’s magazine. For every card account opened, NC receives an initial $65, and 0.65% of all net purchases subsequently charged. No annual fee. —Tobin Hack

On the Market If you’ve ever considered offsetting the carbon footprint you made by driving your car or taking a vacation, there’s never been a better time. The number of suppliers in the carbon-offset industry has grown by 200 percent since 2002, according to a 2007 report from the consulting company New Carbon Finance. Voluntary offsets bought from companies, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), and conservation organizations could make 2007 the most lucrative year yet. CCX alone saw more than twenty million tons traded in the first half of 2007.

* *Year to date; company and conservation offsets not measured

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forward | motion

The Air Car emits nothing but cold air and zips along at more than 60 miles per hour.

Driving on Air An emissions-free car that runs on air is poised for mass production By eric mack If someone tried to sell you a zero-emissions car that costs around $10,000, you might think he was full of hot air. Turns out it’s the car that’s full of it: The vehicle runs on and emits nothing but air. Now, after more than fifteen years of languishing in automotive obscurity, it’s heading for mass production. The Air Car is the brainchild of Guy Negre, a French inventor and former Formula One engineer. In February, Negre’s company, Motor Development International (MDI), announced a deal to manufacture the technology with Tata Motors, India’s largest commercial automaker and a major player worldwide. “It’s an innovative technology, it’s an environment-friendly technology, and a scalable technology,” says Tata spokesperson Debasis Ray. “It can be used in cars, in commercial vehicles, and in power generation.” Though Negre first unveiled the technology in the early 1990s, interest has only recently grown. In addition to the Tata deal, which could put thousands of the cars on the road in India by the end of the decade, 36|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

Negre has signed deals to bring the design to twelve other countries, including South Africa, Israel, and Germany. But experts say the car may never make it to US streets. The Air Car works similarly to electric cars, but rather than storing electrical energy in a huge, heavy battery, the vehicle converts energy into air pressure and stores it in a tank. According to MDI’s Miguel Celades, Negre’s engine uses compressed air stored at a pressure of 300 bars to pump the pistons, providing a range of around 60 miles per tank at highway speeds. An onboard air compressor can be plugged into a regular outlet at home to recharge the tank in about four hours, or an industrial compressor capable of 3,500 psi (likes those found in scuba shops) can fill it up in a few minutes for around

two dollars. Celades says optional gasoline or biofuel hybrid models will heat the pressurized air, increasing the volume available for the pistons and allowing the car to drive for nearly 500 miles between air refills and about 160 miles per gallon of fuel burned. Early media reports speculated that Tata could have an Air Car on the market by the end of 2008, but Ray says it’s likely to be a couple of years before the technology is available. Until the Indian models hit the streets, the best way to see an Air Car in action is to cross the pond and check out Negre’s prototypes in France— a trip entrepreneur J.P. Maeder says is worthwhile. “It’s not fantasy,” he says of the car. “It can make a real impact in how personal transportation will develop from here.” In 2003, Maeder formed ZevCat, a Califonia company that aims to bring the Air Car to America. So far, however, he says his plans have stalled for financial reasons: Without enough money to build and crash test prototypes, he can’t demonstrate the technology for investors who might be willing to fund more prototypes. The car might garner more attention in the US if it makes it to market in India or elsewhere before other burgeoning technologies like pluggable hybrids or fuel-cell electric cars. If that were to happen, compressed air could become the “next big thing” for green-minded drivers, says Larry Rinek, an auto analyst with the international market-research firm Frost and Sullivan. But Rinek questions whether the car will have mass appeal. Another unknown is whether the vehicle could pass crash tests. “This is an R and D novelty; it’s a curiosity that is nowhere near ready for primetime,” says Rinek. “It’s unknown and untrusted, particularly here in North America” where, he says, adoption of new technology moves “very slowly.”

improving life for all migratory animals.

The bike paTh. Your office. The backYard. The environment isn’t just some far off place. It’s the asphalt beneath your bike, the coffee that fuels your commute, and the park where you walk your dog. And it’s why the Natural Resources Defense Council is working to protect the most important places on Earth. For easy ways to help protect your environment, go to NRDC’s how-to website, SimpleSteps.org. Because the environment is everywhere.

forward | thinking Pollan Account

Park City snowgroomer Bish Neuhauser converted all the vehicles at The Canyons ski resort to bodiesel fuel.

book In Defense of Food:

An Eater’s Manifesto

by michael pollan The Penguin Press, $21.95

Don’t Dispute the Messengers film Everything’s Cool directed by daniel b. gold DVD in stores December 11, 2007; $24.98

eep Throat’s deadpan admonition to “follow the money” in the film All the President’s Men recurs in the new documentary Everything’s Cool. But it illuminates a different scandal: the financial collusion between the coal industry and the government—a relationship that has obscured the truth about global warming. Faced with a nation of skeptics, the film confronts viewers with the question: Do Americans care about global warming?

Do Americans care about global warming? The reference is to a 2004 poll claiming we don’t and suggests that the film will spiral into a bleak examination of how government officials eroded the credibility of scientific evidence for warming. Instead, it addresses this unsettling development through a range of opinions that are at once scary, hopeful, and biting with wit.

38|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

The film follows seven “global warming messengers” who run a gamut of expertise, from a snowgroomer in Park City, Utah, to author and environmentalist Bill McKibben. Their transparency and earnestness allows them to be defeatist one moment, passionate the next. The film advises following the messengers’ leads: Take initiative, learn the facts, struggle with doubt, but let even the smallest sparks of hope pull you from despair. —Jim Sherwin

When I was a kid, my parents were pretty savvy about the latest nutritional trends. “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead!” my mom would cheerfully recite as I drifted toward the pale supermarket loaves. We never ate butter— only margarine. At the time, it was thought that the “old-fashioned” fats in butter were basically a heart attack waiting to happen. Modernmanufactured trans fats, health experts told us, were much better. Whoops. Mom was right about the bread, but she totally missed the mark on the margarine. “Nutritionism”—the dubious branch of food science from whence came the margarine myth and many others (remember the low-fat diet?)—is the subject of Michael Pollan’s new book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Pollan describes how, in the past 50 years, nutritionists have transformed how we think about what we eat: If we could just figure out exactly what is healthy and unhealthy about a particular food, their reasoning goes, we could take the bad stuff out, put more good stuff in, and presto! A wonder-food! But nourishment straight from the garden, it turns out, is almost always superior to the tinkered-with “foodlike substances” (think low-carb pasta and whole-grain sugar cereals) that line supermarket shelves. Fans of Pollan’s last book take heed: In Defense of Food is not groundbreaking like The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In essence, it’s about the importance of eating foods that aren’t too heavily processed. This philosophy is by no means radical—in fact, it harkens back to a time before the organic and local movements, when labels at health food stores simply said, “all natural.” But the fun is in following Pollan to his conclusion. Perhaps the most rewarding section of the book is the last, where he offers a list of rules to eat by. This is no dull nutritional litany; Pollan’s instructions are witty, and they pithily make the point that how we eat may be just as important as what we eat. The rule “Do all your eating at a table” has only seven words of explanation: “No, a desk is not a table.” Now there’s a lesson that won’t go out of style. —Kiera Butler

thinking | forward Self-taught naturalist Craig Childs leaps into the wild.

Beastie Boy book The Animal Dialogues:

Uncommon Encounters in the Wild

by craig childs Little, Brown and Company, $24.99

tanding ten feet from a mountain lion, his knife drawn, all Craig Childs could think was, “No, this is not supposed to happen. This is not how I die.” Stifling his fear, Childs was transfixed by the animal, captivated by the stillness of its gaze. “I remember just staring into the eyes of this lion as it’s pacing

back and forth in front of me, looking for a way to get to my spine,” he recalls. Though the encounter happened a decade ago, Childs paints it with the vivid detail of a day-old memory in his new book The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild. A self-taught naturalist and author more at home in the volcanic mountains of Arizona than in any city, Childs has always written about his interactions with animals. Now 40, he still has steno pads from his childhood, filled with notes about red-winged blackbirds. Childs’ new book, written in easily digestible chapters, lets us eavesdrop on his conversations with the animal kingdom. Childs also recounts a brush he had with humans when hiking through the bombing ranges of Arizona, a landscape marred by the twisted metal of old military targets. An F16 jet came upon him rapidly, flying just 30 feet above the ground and firing Childs’ own animal instincts as he fled the plane’s path to avoid its shock wave, which can knock a person unconscious. It’s telling that this particular passage highlights the scarring of the earth, since man’s impact on animals is always on the author’s mind. “I’d like for there to be an understanding of what is really out there, that the world is not just ours to consume,” he says. If there’s one point Childs hopes to get across in The Animal Dialogues, it’s that humans occupy just one of many realms

I’d like for “there to be an

understanding of what is really out there, that the world is not just ours to consume.”

on the planet. “I spend a lot of time in the wilderness, and I’ve come to realize there are many worlds happening at once that I wanted to portray in this book.” Most of his adventures take place in the American West, where Childs has spent a lifetime exploring deserts, canyons, and forests. He walked 1,100 miles following prehistoric migration routes from the fourcorner junction of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah into Mexico, turning his trek into a book on southwestern archaeology called House of Rain. Though he doesn’t go on as many treacherous rock climbing escapades as he once did, Childs has no plans to give up adventure. He just returned from a first descent down the Salween River in Tibet. “We never knew what was around the bend,” he says. “It turns out there’s a lot, a lot of big water. It was pretty dangerous.” —Joshua Payne

New and Noteworthy > > > Raising Baby Green: The EarthFriendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Care

Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves

Terra: Our 100-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem—and the Threats That Now Put It at Risk

Thrillcraft: The Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation

by michael novacek

edited by george wuerthner

by Andrew Szasz

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27

Chelsea Green Publishing Company, $60

Jossey-Bass, $16.95

University of Minnesota Press, $24.95

Eco advice abounds in this comprehensive guide for prospective parents. It covers everything, from eating a healthy diet during pregnancy to creating a safe environment for your baby to choosing the best green products; so mothers- and fathers-to-be can make sure their bundle of joy is a true eco activist from conception onward.

Instead of just buying organic produce and green cleaners to avoid chemicals and pollution, try pushing for stricter governmental regulations on the environment, says Szasz in his new book. He argues that citizens should be less concerned with shopping their way to a healthier earth and more interested in banding together to achieve tangible environmental reforms.

In his latest book, Michael Novacek, provost of science at the American Museum of Natural History, blends evolutionary biology, paleontology, and environmental science to describe how human activities are moving the world toward a “mass extinction event.” But it’s not all gloom-and-doom: Novacek emphasizes that action combined with science can ensure the future of our globe’s ecosystems.

Recreational vehicles like ATVs and dirt bikes have long satisfied motor enthusiasts’ need for speed. But Jet Skis, snowmobiles, jeeps, and other thrillcraft take their toll on the environment, too. Captivating photos and essays written by scientists, economists, and activists highlight how tooling around on a four-wheeler can alter the American landscape. —Sarah Parsons

photo by Regan Choi (top)

by alan greene, md, with jeanette pavini and theresa foy digeronimo

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|december / january 2008|39

forward | wild world

Waking Up Early Rising temperatures are nudging animals out of hibernation and into peril By alisa Opar

When the yellow-bellied marmot woke one spring morning in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, he set out on what shouldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been a routine day, rousing his family from their seven-month slumber. He toddled through the sleeping chamber where his mate and children dozed, made his way to the front door, and dug through three feet of snow to get outside. Then he started off across the snow-covered field to uncover the homeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second entrance. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s when the coyote charged. 40|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

wild world | forward The marmot ran to the second burrow entrance, but he couldn’t get inside. He turned and faced his pursuer, fighting valiantly for several minutes. Focused on the battle, he didn’t see the second coyote sneaking up behind him. “There was blood and fur all over the place,” recalls Daniel Blumstein, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles who found the marmot’s remains at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, in 2005.

he trend toward warmer winters is changing hibernation patterns for many species that live at high elevations and northern latitudes—and the consequences can be deadly. If global temperatures continue to rise as predicted, some animals may become fatally out of sync with their environment, especially those in the Northern Hemisphere and those that live at the lower range of high-altitude ecosystems. If the marmot’s hibernation had ended a month later, he might have survived. Less snow coverage could have made it easier to get into the second burrow, and the vegetation that likely would’ve sprouted by then might have provided him some cover. But everearlier emergence has become the norm for the marmot. Thirty years ago, the animals woke up mid-May; now they come out in mid-April. At the lab over that same period, the average low temperature for April has increased by 6.6˚F. Most research linking changes in hibernation patterns to global warming has focused on marmots, ground squirrels, and chipmunks. But other animals also seem to be responding to early wake-up calls spurred by warmer weather. In Europe, zoos and hunters have reported bears emerging from hibernation sooner than expected. Last January, rattlesnakes slithered about in New York’s Taconic State Park, and tree frogs in Canada that should’ve been frozen were hopping around calling for mates. “We’re seeing dramatic changes,” says David Inouye, a University of Maryland biologist who has worked at the Rocky Mountain lab since 1971. Nonetheless, Inouye adds, “I don’t think you can generalize how all hibernating species will respond to global warming.” Milder weather might sound pleasant, but for animals that have to hibernate, it can interfere with feeding and breeding, says illustration by josh cochran

Gregory Florant, a biologist at Colorado State University. Hibernators fatten up in the summer and then use their energy reserves throughout the winter. But when ambient temperatures rise too quickly, animals may burn off stored fat faster and emerge from hibernation sooner. “Unless the ground has warmed enough that plants are coming up at the same time, the animals might not have anything to eat,” says Florant. So far the early wake-up call probably hasn’t hurt yellow-bellied marmots. “Our population is exploding,” says Blumstein. “Everybody is fat and happy,” because vegetation starts growing rapidly after snow melts. But if marmots keep waking up early, there might not be enough food; or males—they arise first to rouse females from sleep and could be picked off by predators, impairing reproduction. Because hibernation is such a complex process, some scientists, such as Blumstein, don’t attribute early emergence entirely to climate change. “Climate is clearly an important part,” he says, but social factors could also be important. For instance, getting up early could be a way to get a head start in competing for a mate. “I’m trying to tease out how important climate is versus social factors.” To Inouye, “Global warming is the most reasonable hypothesis.” Inouye says he wouldn’t be surprised if rising temperatures are affecting marmots in mountainous regions across the globe. As for other species, scientists are already seeing shifts. Ground squirrels are hibernating at higher elevations every year, says Kenneth Storey, a biochemist at Carleton University. In addition to seeking higher, colder climes, hibernators will also move to higher latitudes. Wood frogs that Storey studies, for example, currently extend from South Carolina to northern Canada. The amphibians are obligate hibernators—they must dig into the earth and freeze solid to survive. Their distribution will creep northward as permafrost melts and the region becomes habitable and snowfall in the south declines. The same will hold true for other species, too, according to Storey. “Some animals will make out like bandits,” he says, “just not those with a southern drawl.”

The trend toward warmer winters is changing hibernation patterns for species at high elevations and northern latitudes— and the consequences can be deadly.

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WE LIVE IN THE

HOUSE WE ALL

BUILD.

Every decision we make has consequences. We choose what we put into our lakes and rivers. We choose what we release into the air we breathe. We choose what we put into our bodies, and where we let our children run and play. We choose the world we live in, so make the right choices. Learn what you can do to care for our water, our air, our land and yourself at earthshare.org. Earth Share supports more than 400 environmental and conservation organizations that impact you every day.

Visit us at earthshare.org

green gear

plenty’s rd 3 Annual Green Gift Guide

Whether you’re shopping for your gadget-loving friend, your style-savvy daughter, or your decorating-obsessed mom or dad, you’ll find something here for everyone on your list—and yourself. photographs by anthony verde

All Aboard

photo by achim hehn

Bordbar’s reclaimed airplane trolleys, once full-service global refreshment bearers, make a smart tchotchke holder, tool caddy, or wet bar. If the character-lending dents and scratches—not to mention the funky design choices—aren’t original enough, the German company will customize the cart to each purchaser’s specifications. $1,300–$1,600, depending on shipping and configuration, bordbar.de

icon by christoph niemann

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|december / january 2008|43

green gear

Necessary Object

Primus’ Easy Fuel camp stove weighs less than two pounds and burns at an 80% energy efficiency level (most camp stoves burn at only 40%). $110, primuscamping.com

Lights Out This seriously green Skinny Fish sleeping bag is made almost entirely of recycled material and has a wind-resistant, ripstop shell to keep you cozy and warm. Sleep tight. $179.95, bigagnes.com

Swiss Sipping

Phone Tag

Major props go to the top-secret scientists at SIGG Switzerland, who developed a recyclable, eco-friendly alternative to the noxious plastic bottle. Entirely residue- and crackresistant, this reusable bottle is so high style, you’d never know it was high tech. $24.99, mysigg.com

With Credo Mobile’s plan, receive ten tons of carbon emissions offsets, and one percent of every charge goes to a select nonprofit. Starting at $29.99 per month, credomobile.com

Ready, set, charge Power everything from your mobile phone and mp3 player to a GPS device with Solio’s newest solar charger. User-friendly extras include a handy built-in carabiner. $79.95, solio.com

Twist the Night Away

33 Arbor Sports teamed with surfing legend Kelly Slater to release a signature Slater skateboard. The pin combines eco-friendly materials with the performance-focused construction of a surfboard. The result: one sleek set of wheels. $229.99, arborsports.com to find a dealer in your area

Mod rider

Board Short

Let’s be honest—handlebar streamers and wicker baskets aren’t for everyone. But this super-sleek Dutch bike, with its mod design and sustainable production process, has universal appeal. $495 for a one-speed, $595 for a three-speed, jorgandolif.com 44|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

Storage Unit Kelty’s aptly named Kitchen Sink, part of a new, 100% PVC-free line of basecamping organizers, holds everything except, well, you get the picture. $60, kelty.com

That persistent fear of being stuck in the dark with a dead flashlight or radio can finally be put to rest thanks to Richard Solo’s windup flashlight-radio. And with you-generated power, no batteries are required. $29.95, richardsolo.com

Green Sleeves

green gear

Buckle Me Eco Wrangle up these cool belt buckles, featuring uncommon vintage photos and nature motifs. Made of 100% lead-free pewter and ten layers of nontoxic sealant, these beauties will transform typical Western wear into edgy, green looks. $98 each, theurgetoadorn.com

Solar Time The luxury of limitless electrical power can be found in this stainless-steel watch, powered by a solar conversion panel and energy cell. Extra features such as a 22–time zone calendar and three world-time alarms make the Skyhawk the perfect gift for a guy or gal on the go. $375, citizenwatch.com

Twinkle, Twinkle

Sparkly studs are always show-stopping numbers, and with Brilliant Earth’s commitment to fair labor practices, percentage donations to Diamonds for Africa, and strict environmental mining standards, you can be sure your gift will keep on giving. $850 for the pair shown, brilliantearth.com

Geek Chic

Too embarrassed to break out your circa-1988 keyboard tie? Well, here’s the next best thing: cufflinks made from recycled computer keys. Designed by Acorn Studios, these smart accessories express your geeky leanings on the down-low. $14.95 for a pair, acornstudios.ca

Sole Mate Still stuffing your kicks in Ziploc bags when you travel? This reusable cotton bag, handmade in Tennessee, adjusts to fit various shoe sizes and comes with optional shape-maintaining inserts in matching patterns. $29 for the bag, $10 per pair of inserts, shubilove.com

Executive Timber

Store your greenbacks with pride in this kitschy, one-of-a-kind wallet. Handmade from recycled sacks of rice and feed, these unique wallets are definite conversation starters and benefit the Cambodian workers who made them. $25, uncommongoods.com

For the professional in your life, ties and fountain pens are foregone conclusions. Beat expectations with this lightweight, sleek, and ecologically thinned cedar briefcase by Takumi Shimamura. $325, momastore.org

green gear

33 33

Warm Wishes

This light-filtering tin star lamp, a natural for the holidays, is actually a welcoming, decorative gift that can be used year-round. It makes a brilliant alternative to the often-fussy chandelier, yet it’s lightweight enough to use for extra wattage on the porch. Best of all, each lamp is an original, because they’re all hand-produced in Mexico by a single family of artisans using reclaimed scraps of tin. $104, shopbluehouse.com

Short Circuit

Starry Night

Pied à Air

These throws are woven from recycled cotton and come in organic colors and styles like ebony zebra, pond paisley, and tealeaf butterfly. You can also have one monogrammed. We love our rust branches and letter P (for Plenty) blankets. $125 each, in2green.com

Top Chef This artsy cutting board is almost too cool to put a knife to: Each shadowy illustration is hand-positioned on the surface so that the skier’s motion follows the natural grain of the board. But, since it’s made from especially dense Acacia—a non-endangered, durable, and sustainably harvested wood not found in rainforests—you can be sure it’ll withstand all your cuts. $38, elsewares.com

Dream Weaver These colorful baskets are made from recovered bits of plastic-coated telephone wire material, woven together into psychedelic patterns by Zulu wire weavers in South Africa. Known as imbenge, traditional South African bread baskets are said to lend dignity to a home; sales of these nontraditional imbenge baskets are the main source of income for about 120 people. $135, eco-artware.com 46|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

The Writing’s On the Wall Equal parts fun and function, this blackboard wall clock is simply made from natural Pennsylvania slate—no high-emissions manufacturing process—and looks cool anywhere you hang it. And since you can use chalk to write your schedule right on the face, there’s no need for paper. $80, eco-artware.com

Recycled circuit-board ornaments might not scream “traditional Christmas decoration,” but they’re a great way to give new life to computer cast-offs. We particularly love this geeky-chic, be-ribboned set from Acorn Studios. $19.95 for a set, acornstudios.ca

Made from sustainable SmartWood teak, this sophisticated birdhouse is one of three models designed by Chapel Hill–based architect Dail Dixon and inspired by Arts and Architecture’s famous Case Study Houses. Each design is named after a study participant, including the Ralph (after Ralph Rapson), pictured here. $195 each, modernbirdhouses.com

green gear

Don’t Sweat It

Two of a Kind

Fashioned from discarded tires, these durable swings come fully assembled in a range of styles—from the classic horse to a motorcycle to the seasonal reindeer model featured here— and look equally natural hanging from a sturdy branch or ceiling beam. $80 for model shown, closetheloop.com

Gettin’ Twiggy With It

Best in Show Kiehl’s collection of luxe products for canines and equines is the perfect way to pamper your little—or bigger—friend. The plant-based shampoos and conditioners, spritzes, and grooming aids are never tested on animals—prior to purchase, that is. Starting at $12, kiehls.com

Think of Binth’s Matching Game as a way-cooler version of Classic Concentration (that just happens to be made from 100% recycled paper). A toy that keeps kids entertained for hours and looks like art scattered across the floor? We call that a perfect match. $44, binth.com

Thanks to a chunkier build and its FSC-certified, natural-wood body, this modern version of the old-school wax crayon is strong enough to withstand even the most enthusiastic coloring. Available in red, blue, green, and yellow. $4.50 each, shopbluehouse.com

Made in Bangladesh using natural dyes and super-soft fabrics, these fair-trade toys are a great alternative to the dizzying array of commercially-produced options. In addition to the vegetable rattles pictured here, Yellow Label Kids offers an assortment of peel-away cupcakes, knit donuts, and ice cream cone rattles. vegetable rattles, $45 for a set, yellowlabelkids.com

Go Fetch

Re-tired

Animal House

Made with your pup’s health in mind, OrbeeTuff’s chew toy has a built-in Treat Spot to help you sneak healthy snacks and supplements right into your pet’s mouth. And since it’s also completely nontoxic, recyclable, and rinses clean, this artichoke is almost as wholesome as the real thing. $11.95, planetdog.com

Cat Fancy These adorable, produce-themed toys are filled with high-quality, 100% organic catnip and nothing else—no pesticides, no unnecessary additives, and nothing that might harm your precious feline. $6.25 each, catniptoys.com

Available in three sizes and color combinations, each Bella dog bed is super soft, fully washable, and made from 100% hypoallergenic materials. And because the filler is crafted from 100% recycled consumer products, you and your pooch can both rest easy. Starting at $80, uncommongoods.com

animal Travel

As the pilot tilted the nose downward to descend, the rough smears of greens, browns, and blues became a metropolis of life. What looked like rocks became hippos heaving or a trail of migrating elephants, infants in tow. Hundreds of specks blown across the landscape became herds of darting impala. Finally the ground rushed to greet us. We bounced like a marble on the rock-and-dirt airstrip and rattled along in a clamor until, just when it seemed like the plane would burst into a heap of scraps and bolts, we came to a halt in a puffing cloud of dust.

by kate siber

PHOTOGRAPHs By ken feisel

ATTRACTIONs

Explore a predator-ridden savannah, stalk the elusive black rhino, dodge a charging elephantâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;eco tourism in southern Africa is one wild ride

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Travel

protecting the land and wildlife. When completed, it will house the largest population of elephants on the planet. Africa’s lucrative safari business has evolved to make conservation one of the continent’s bright spots, particularly in southern countries. A male leopard Successful anti-poaching surveys his territory in strategies and a transition the Linyanti from big game hunting to Wildlife Reserve in Northern more live-animal viewing Botswana (this has allowed native page); a mother elephant leads species to thrive, and tour her charges from operators are learning the Chobe River to grazing ground that a healthy ecosystem (opposite). can lure big-spending tourists. Governments, conservationists, and development specialists are now hoping to take full advantage of this lucky market niche, by working with these companies to set aside protected land like the Kavango-Zambezi park. “Tourism is a very, very important component of the overall conservation strategy in Africa,” explains Craig Sholley, senior director of the Africa Wildlife Foundation, an international conservation organization.

Northern Botswana is one of the few landscapes in the world that retains its magnificent megafauna. To get there, I flew over the sprawling tract of land at the convergence of Namibia, Botswana, Angola, Zambia, and Zimbabwe that will, in three years, be designated a transfrontier park under an agreement the five countries recently signed. Until fifteen years ago, the land I was standing on had been largely the domain of poachers and big-game hunters. It is now used mostly for wildlife viewing, as part of the soon-to-be Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, whose Okavango Delta I had come to visit, along with South Africa’s Phinda Private Game Reserve. The park will encompass an area roughly the size of Italy, and was planned with the help of nonprofits and NGOs to promote sustainable tourism, bring much-needed jobs to the area, and 50|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

My first camp, a series of tents pitched near the Linyanti River, was one of a network run by an outfitter called Wilderness Safaris. Like other tour operators in Botswana, the company leases large tracts of public land from the government, in exchange for doing an astronomical amount of conservation work. I arrived just in time for dinner—baboon steaks and pap, a traditional dish of maize or cornmeal, cooked over an open fire. While sipping South African vintages with a handful of other guests, I admired southern-hemisphere constellations I had never glimpsed before, like Scorpio and the Southern Cross. And before bed, half a dozen staff members, all from a nearby village, sang in Setswana harmonies. The next morning, I set off with my guide, Thuto Moutloatsi, a 29-year-old South African. We drove for hours through forests of wide-leafed mopane trees and then crossed the Kalahari sands, a sparse desert where the only visible life were steenboks, which looked sort of like miniature deer. By afternoon, we arrived at the Savuti Channel, a dry riverbed

Botswana now has

the largest elephant population on the continentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;more than 133,000, or 55 percent of southern Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s total population.

Travel

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guests around campfires or long tables decked with candelabras. The dinner conversation each night was like a biology conference, as we all compared notes and described sightings with wide-eyed enthusiasm. My own best stories were about watching a pride of lions devour a zebra and seeing a leopard teach her two cubs to hunt by coaxing them to chase her long, flicking tail. One night, a Los Angeles lawyer who grew up in Botswana in the ’70s said that when she was a child, she and her family would wait in a Jeep at a watering hole for hours and see just a few impala. Things had clearly changed. More responsible hunting practices and a shift to live-animal tourism have been key factors in the return of the wildlife, says Chris Roche, ecologist for Wilderness Safaris. “After twenty years of hunting, the game levels were so low it was not conducive to tourism,” he said. But the new approach is already working wonders. “In some places, we’ve only been in there

photos by kate siber (this page and opposite right)

that hasn’t flowed since 1982, but is still packed with wildlife attracted to the wide-open grasses. In a matter of minutes, I watched male giraffes fight for dominance and a mischievous, young elephant chase a couple of black-backed jackals for nothing more than amusement. An endangered kori bustard, the world’s heaviest flying bird, bobbed its head as it searched for ground-dwelling insects; and a warthog with a corkscrew tail chased his chosen mate in an attempt to mingle DNA. Later that night, we arrived at our next camp. I joined the other guests for a savory meal of vegetables and homemade bread, eaten alfresco amid the cacophony of the delta—the twitter of insects, the tink-tinktink of bell frogs, the unnerving roar of elephants, and the sound of hippos grunting in the swamps. I continued south over the next six days, hopping between Wilderness Safaris’ camps and lodges, which ranged from tents with cots and bucket showers to an exquisite wooden suite on stilts with floor-to-ceiling windows, a mosquito-netted canopy bed, and carved wooden sculptures. The days’ game drives and nature walks were punctuated by meals with fellow

sunset over southern Africa (above). Many species are thriving in the area surrounding Wilderness Safaris’ camps (opposite, clockwise from top): Zebras and impala share a watering hole; a young giraffe in the bush; young baboons groom each other in the morning sun.

for eight years, and we’re very shocked that they’re proving to be fantastic game-viewing locations.” The government’s antipoaching efforts have also had an impact, as evidenced by the dramatic resurgence in Botswana’s elephant population. In the 1980s, poachers reduced the animal’s numbers to alarmingly low levels. On my trip, I saw elephants everywhere: wading through the Linyanti, marching in lines across the road, lazily but methodically defoliating forests. While I sat in a specially designed, ground-level viewing room, they came so close that I could study the arc of their eyelashes, the maze of veins on their cabbage-leaf ears, the map of wrinkles on their skin.

Botswana now has the largest elephant population on the continent—more than 133,000, or 55 percent of southern Africa’s total population, according to a recent report by the World Conservation Union—and with the help of some neighboring countries, can claim them as one of conservation’s greatest triumphs. In fact, now they are so numerous that they are disturbing local communities, a problem that may be alleviated when they spread more widely throughout the new park. Graceful, sensitive, and socially complex, elephants are the park’s calling card. At one point, I was so engrossed watching a large female with her infant, I didn’t even notice the signs of her hostility. After spotting us, she flapped her ears, which sounded like sails beating in the wind. Then she stomped back and forth branches, moved quickly through tall grasses where lions could and charged, raising her trunk to the sky with an ear-shattering call. have been hiding, and trained our senses on the signs of the Terrifying, sure, but also thrilling. animal world. I learned to identify the different tracks—rhino,

For hours, we ducked under

porcupine, impala, leopard—and to manage my fear of a landscape I had only experienced from the safety of a truck.

After Botswana, I flew down to Phinda Private Game Reserve, South Africa, to see another example of successful eco tourism. Phinda is the flagship reserve of CC Africa, Wilderness Safaris’ fiercest competitor in the eco-safari market, but also its greatest ally in conservation. Both companies maintain a similar approach to the safari business, emphasizing low-impact use of land, direct conservation work, and community involvement. While Wilderness leases large tracts of land from the government, CC Africa has resuscitated a smaller piece of private land. When the company bought the 50,000 acres sixteen years ago, it had been degraded by big-game-hunting operations, cattle ranches, and pineapple farms. Since then, the company’s conservationists and scientists have worked to restore the land to its natural splendor and reintroduce indigenous species. Eventually, CC Africa hopes to buy more land and connect plentymag.com

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Travel

GETTING THERE Flights to Johannesburg International Airport are available from New York and Washington, DC, on airlines including South African Airways (flysaa.com), British Airways (britishairways. com), Lufthansa (lufthansa. com), and Virgin Atlantic (virginatlantic.com). Fares can top $1,000. South African Airways and British Airways connect Johannesburg with cities throughout southern Africa, including Cape Town, South Africa; Livingstone, Zambia; and Maputo, Mozambique. The national parks and reserves of southern Africa are open to do-it-yourselfers, but even seasoned travelers opt for local guides, who can expertly navigate back roads and track wildlife for the best sightings. These three guide services have exemplary environmental practices and offer pre-set and custom itineraries from the Seychelles to Namibia.

CC AFRICA CC Africa organizes its own field studies and species reintroductions and runs a foundation that benefits communities near its reserve. The company owns lodges in six countries. Stays in the Phinda Forest Lodge include three-course meals, lodging in glass-walled suites, game drives, and nature walks, and start at $420 per person per night. Call to create your own custom itinerary (ccafrica.com).

WILDERNESS SAFARIS Wilderness Safaris incorporates eco into every level of its business, starting with lodges, which they build and train locals to run. The company runs more than 50 such camps, ranging from rustic tents to lavish suites with queen-worthy canopy beds, in seven southern African countries. Book through Wilderness Safaris’ US-based partner, Natural Habitat Adventures, which can arrange custom itineraries but also offers group trips. Their thirteen-day Secluded Botswana itinerary hits the Linyanti region, Okavango Delta, and Victoria Falls and costs $8,995, including all accommodations, meals, and internal flights (wildernesssafaris.com or nathab.com).

AFRICA ADVENTURE CONSULTANTS A newer boutique–safari guide service, Africa Adventure Consultants employs local people, powers lodging with alternative energy, and offsets carbon emissions. The company also donates a portion of its proceeds to fund wildlife and antipoverty projects. Trips are prearranged and include treks through Kenya and Tanzania. The safari includes tours of the Masai Mara Game Reserve, Rift Valley, and remote Kenyan villages and costs $1,958 per person for two people (adventuresinafrica.com). The four-day Rwanda Gorilla Trek includes a chance to see the endangered mountain gorilla in its natural habitat and costs $1,742 per person for two people.

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it with the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park (an UNESCO World Heritage Site) to make a wildlife corridor. Though they estimate it could take 100 years to get back to its natural state, I discovered many signs of hope. Seven different ecosystems, from sand forest to broadleaf woodland, were in various states of thriving. Stunning creatures had returned to the area, including yellow-fronted canaries and cheetahs. I watched one of the cats wake from a snooze in tall grass, stretch with feline grace, and saunter off. Some species have been purposefully reintroduced and are closely monitored and studied. My last day on the continent, I set out to catch a glimpse of the elusive black rhino, a highly endangered species that the reserve is working hard to revive. According to conservation group Save the Rhino Trust, the species was hunted relentlessly in the nineteenth century and even more so between 1970 and 1992, when populations fell by 96 percent. Now scientists estimate that fewer than 4,000 remain. Poachers, too, remain a threat, collecting rhino horns to use as daggers in Yemen and medicine in Asia. Phinda has introduced a population of about twenty that is now thriving, and just a few weeks before my visit, the reserve’s first baby black rhino was born. Guests at Phinda can opt to follow the program’s rhino trackers in the field, and a portion of the fee goes directly to the conservation effort. Though the black rhinos suffered greater population losses than elephants ever did, I wondered if they too might one day flourish as the elephants now do in Botswana. Simon Naylor, Phinda’s environmental manager, and my guide for the outing, speaks Zulu and can communicate with the trackers, Thomas and Bheki. Every day, the pair, dressed in army-green pants and caps, travels the reserve on foot, looking for rhinos and taking notes. We all clambered into a Range Rover and departed from the lodge early, at about 6am. Naylor navigated the reserve’s tangle of rough roads as Thomas and Bheki looked for tracks and other signs of the rhinos’ presence. Meanwhile, Naylor briefed me on safety. Black rhinos are some of the most dangerous creatures in the bush. Only about five feet tall, they can weigh up to 3,000 pounds and are more aggressive than other species of rhino. You have to stay downwind of black rhinos; they chase humans at the slightest whiff. If chased, Naylor instructed me to hide behind a tree, because black rhinos see and hear poorly. If, however, I were to surprise one in the grasses, I was advised to dive to the ground, cover my head, and try my best to punch the snout. “There is a chance we’ll get chased, but, well ... hopefully not,” said Naylor, finally, as he stopped the truck in an area of mixed savannah. I wondered how I could have possibly thought this was a good idea. Nonetheless, I followed Thomas and Bheki as they tiptoed through the brush, exchanging elaborate hand signals like a pitcher and catcher. I anxiously wondered what they meant: Sleeping rhino around the corner? Rhino at two o’clock? You run that way, I’ll run this way? At first I felt like a tank stumbling loudly through the foliage. Soon, though, I learned

Contributing to the conservation effort can be a luxurious experience. In Botswana, Wilderness Safaris’ 50 camps feature fine amenities and are run by locals; CC Africa’s south africa properties include terraced lodges with river views (bottom left) and a swimming pool (bottom right).

SIxteen years ago, the land had

photos (this page and opposite) by kate siber

been degraded by big-game hunting operations, cattle ranches, and pineapple farms. Today it is a private reserve that boasts seven different ecosystems, all thriving. to move quietly so my pants didn’t swish and my toes didn’t disturb the branches. Every noise was strange, like the nyalas’ and monkeys’ alarm calls, which mean a predator is near. At one point, I heard a whumph, a snort-like sound that Naylor informed me minutes later, when we found a few fresh leopard tracks and scat, was likely a surprised cat trying to scare us off. For hours, we ducked under branches, moved quickly through tall grasses where lions could have been hiding, and trained our senses on the signs of the animal world. I learned to identify the different tracks—rhino, porcupine, impala, leopard—and to manage my fear of a landscape I had only experienced from the safety of a truck. The skills that have

allowed me to survive in the Western world were utterly useless, which was terrifying but also liberating. After hours stalking through the bush, we still hadn’t found the elusive rhino. Thomas told us the rhino we were tracking had covered ground quickly all morning, patrolling his territory, and was now likely snoozing somewhere in deep grass. That meant we could easily (and, perhaps, disastrously) surprise him. But we didn’t see the rhino. I was partly disappointed, partly relieved, and partly delighted that we had been outsmarted by the prehistoric beast on his home turf. He would remain sketched only in my imagination, and I loved knowing that I was irrelevant to him. But then, if tourists like me weren’t around, he might not be either. plentymag.com

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The Unlikely Environmentalist How Chad Pregracke went from skater dude to the Mississippi Riverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most impassioned caretaker is as odd a story as youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll ever hear along the banks of the mighty river. For starters? He gets a bright idea while watching NASCAR, turns it into a nearly million-dollar river-restoration project, helps rebuild New Orleans, and in his spare time, convinces bikers to recycle. By Adam Hinterthuer

Photograph by layne kennedy

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The thing you should know before meeting Chad Pregracke is that you’re probably going to get a pound. And you should blow it up. Which is to say, instead of a handshake, you’ll get his fist. Once your knuckles have tapped his, pull your hand back, fingers splayed, sound effects optional. This applies whether you’re a college student, grandmother, CEO, or factory worker. His enthusiasm is infectious. Around Pregracke, everybody wants a pound. Right now, Pregracke’s zeal is serving him well, because he’s trying to get a crowd of 200 people excited about hauling trash off the banks of the Mississippi River. As volunteers mill around our meeting site in Davenport, Iowa, the last pink remnant of dawn gives way to an uncommonly cool and blustery August day. The Mississippi’s murky waters are choppy, and rain is in the forecast, but to Pregracke, today is “perfect.” He’s excited to be back in his hometown and “in awe” that so many people sacrificed their Saturday for his cause. Pregracke hops onto a picnic table to tell everyone how “stoked” he is. Crystalline blue eyes glint underneath his worn, red visor as he launches into a speech reminiscent of the prelude to a wrestling match. At one point, he shoves up the sleeves of his T-shirt, referring to his arms as “thunder” and “lightning.” And, with that, all of us, aged seven to seventy, are cheering and laughing and wide-awake on this overcast day. We’re going to kick trash’s ass. Even once we march to the swampy depression where a previous flood left a couple thousand tires behind, people are excited. There’s friendly chatter and an exchange of encouragement as a human chain forms, running from the tires to dumpsters provided for the event. Everyone’s having a blast, which is weird, because hauling tires sucks. They’re silt-filled, and the work is backbreaking. The 58|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

“The whole thing started because so many people were calling and wanting to do something. So we found some spots, took them out in the boats to clean up, and the people loved it, dude. They were animals. They were freakin’ savages out there.”

rusted rims have dangerous, jagged edges, and oily, black water sloshes onto our shoes. Occasionally, a snake shakes loose and is greeted with shrieks somewhere down the line. But work never slows. Teachers and students stand side by side, along with floor workers and upper management, all rolling sodden tires through the mud and having a grand old time. Pregracke keeps the chain running: walking up the line slapping backs and cracking jokes, then marching to the dumpster with a tire under each arm. I’ve been invited to follow Pregracke around for the Fourth Annual XStream

Cleanup, an event he’s organized with other nonprofits and businesses from the Quad Cities—Bettendorf and Davenport, Iowa and Rock Island and East Moline, Illinois. There are 31 sites, and 1,500 volunteers have come to clean the Mississippi clutching trash bags in their gloved hands. It’s the biggest XStream Cleanup to date, and a fitting capstone to a summer that marks Pregracke’s tenth anniversary of cleaning the river. This small army is the result of a decision Pregracke made in 1997, when he looked out the window of his parents’ house on the Mississippi and was disgusted by all the trash

photo BY LAYNE KENNEDY (TOP)

Quad Cities volunteers removed 49,000 pounds of debris from the water during one weekend (opposite, bottom). All in a day’s catch: Pregracke with a typical haul (opposite, top), which he’s been fishing out of the Mississippi since age ten (this page, top left); and celebrating on his barge during his XStream Cleanup (this page, top right). HQ: Pregracke’s floating office, where he also spends many a night (this page, bottom).

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the river carried past the backyard. At the time, he was enrolled at Black Hawk Community College and a couple of classes away from his associate’s degree. But Pregracke had no idea where college was leading and had grown tired of remarking, year after year, about the sad state of the river. So he dropped out, got into a flat-bottomed boat, and began to clean. “I didn’t have some grand plan,” Pregracke says. “It was just something that I knew should be done and needed to be done, and nobody was doing it.” It turns out Pregracke didn’t need a grand plan. He was still working on his first mile of riverfront when boaters began to call the local paper wanting to know who the heck this kid was out on the riverbanks wrestling barrels into his boat and tossing beer cans into trash bags. The first local story got picked up by the Associated Press. That brought Tim Wall from CNN to town and put Pregracke on national television. Anderson Cooper and Time magazine followed, and Pregracke’s movement surged forward. Since that summer, Pregracke has founded Living Lands and Waters, a nonprofit with an annual budget of $800,000. He has twelve employees to help manage what has become 60|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

an armada. Three flat-bottomed aluminum boats are used to haul trash from the riverbank to three 100-foot-long barges, where junk is sorted into piles for either recycling or the landfill. A fourth barge resembles a floating dorm and boasts a living room, bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. The whole jumble is lashed together, forming a giant raft that’s pushed up and down the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, Potomac, Anacostia, and Illinois rivers by a whimsically painted towboat. Pregracke does his best to make the process fun, but the work his group does is serious. Throughout the last century, industries dumped scrap metal and used barrels into the water, while homeowners avoided disposal fees by tipping tires and refrigerators over the railings of bridges. Even today, every heavy rain flushes trash from city streets throughout the Midwest into the Mississippi floodplain. City garbage collection pretty much stops at the river’s edge. That’s where Living Lands and Waters comes in. The group docks at various riverside towns and organizes cleanups; on the days they don’t have events to oversee, crew members head out to clean on their own. All told, they’ve hauled in more than four million pounds of garbage. Aside from the obvious aesthetic

Inventory Check

Living Lands and Waters has pulled four million pounds of trash out of the Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Potomac, and Anacostia rivers. That’s 115 tons, including: 22,396 tires 4,412 55-gallon barrels 615 refrigerators 158 washing machines 73 duck decoys 33 messages in a bottle 18 tractors 8 motorcycles 1 1970s Ford Econoline Van 1 mannequin hand

To learn more about how to get involved, go to: livinglandsandwaters.org. But first you may want to check out Chad Pregracke’s new autobiography, From the Bottom Up (National Geographic) to see what you’re in for.

We march to the swampy depression where a flood left a couple thousand tires behind. everyone’s having a blast, which is weird, because hauling tires sucks.

improvement, this deep cleaning nurtures the health of the river. A tire contains up to five gallons of petroleum, and as it slowly breaks down, that petroleum leaches into the ecosystem. Countless barrels have been removed from the river, still half-filled with toxic oil or other industrial chemicals. The group has cleaned areas where trash literally clogged the water, once again opening bays and backwaters for plants and wildlife. Pregracke knows that cleaning himself out of a job is unlikely—every new rainstorm brings back at least some of the problem. But he is determined to get communities involved to a point where Living Lands and

photos BY greg boll photography

Volunteers removing hundreds of tires during the XStream Cleanup (opposite). The Living Lands and Waters fleet heads down the Mississippi (this page, right). Pregracke doing what he does best: pumping up crowds (this page, below).

Waters can “clean ourselves out of an area.” Pregracke’s determination is fueled by his remarkable self-confidence and a passion born of his childhood on the river. I got a glimpse of this upbringing on a trip to the Illinois side of the Mississippi. It was the day before the annual cleanup. Pregracke had exactly two free hours in his schedule, so we headed to his house in East Moline to pick up his skateboard. Pregracke and his father just finished renovating the house, and it is a testament to their ideals of naturalistic craftsmanship and sustainable architecture. Its worn wood floors were salvaged from an old orphanage. The fireplace is made from

river stones and decorated with driftwood. Even the path leading to the front door is laid with bricks his crew found on a cleanup. But it has one major flaw: Unlike the house he grew up in, it isn’t on the river. As a result, Pregracke doesn’t stay there often. When he’s in town, he usually sleeps on the barge. “It’s hard for me to live over here, dude,” he says, as if he’s moved to the desert instead of a hundred yards from his parents’ place. We stay just long enough to grab his skateboard. Pregracke got his first board on a family trip to Florida when he was eleven, before anyone sold skateboards in the Quad Cities. His passion for the sport was immediate and intense, and a natural extension of an adventurous childhood with a river in the backyard. He could swim as a toddler and drive a boat by age eight. Friends brought their bikes over so they could set up a ramp on the backyard dock and launch themselves into the water. At fifteen, Chad helped his twenty-yearold brother, Brent, dive for mussels on the Illinois, a trip that, he says, opened his eyes to the “freedom” of working on the river. Pregracke’s mom, KeeKee, admits she and her husband, Gary, gave their two kids “a lot of leash.” So she wasn’t surprised when Chad announced his plan to clean up the Mississippi. But she wasn’t thrilled either. She worried about boat accidents and tricky currents. Besides, both parents worked in education. Gary taught high school drafting, and KeeKee worked at Black Hawk Community College. They saw a degree in their son’s future. But there were no lectures when Chad dropped out. Instead, Gary heard his son’s idea, and said, “This could be big.” Then he helped fix up the boat; KeeKee cowrote the business model. (Though she made sure Chad later finished his degree.) When asked if she was worried about her son’s career choice, KeeKee tells a story about a family ski trip to Colorado when Chad was eighteen. He fell in love with snowboarding and thought other Quad City teenagers needed diversions like it back home. After the trip, he drove back to Colorado to a snowboard factory, loaded his pickup with the nicked and scratched factory discounts, and brought them home. Then he put an ad in the paper offering parents cheap Christmas presents for their kids. “Everything he does is kind of out there and entrepreneurial,” KeeKee says. “He’s a risk taker. Chad sees something and says, ‘I can do that.’” On our way to the skate park, we pass the plentymag.com

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mile-long Alcoa aluminum plant. A decade ago, Pregracke walked through the tinted doors of the lobby, after badgering a secretary into an interview with a vice president. Pregracke was 22 and, to appear more professional, had tucked his long hair under his baseball cap. He went into the meeting with his homemade business model and photos he’d snapped to prove how trashed the river was. Although he rushed through his presentation and stumbled over his words, his enthusiasm won the day. Alcoa awarded him his first corporate sponsorship. The $8,400 was well short of the $77,000 he’d asked for, but it was enough to fund his first season on the river. Looking at the towering façade of the plant offices, I ask Pregracke if he was terrified stepping into such an imposing building. He looks at me with incomprehension. “Naw, dude,” he says. “I mean, you don’t have anything to lose.” I say I see his point. He’d already been told no countless times, he had no money in the bank … “No,” Pregracke interjects, “you don’t have anything to lose at any point. I wasn’t intimidated. I was stoked, dude. I got the meeting. I’m going in. I’ve got a good cause. I didn’t doubt it.” Pregracke is always “stoked,” possessing a conviction in his ideas that propels him into action. Ten years ago, he found inspiration for funding his cleanup idea while watching a NASCAR race on television. “If companies pay money to put their logo on a racecar,” he thought, “they’d put logos on my boat.” Pregracke grabbed a phonebook, thumbed to the business listings, and started with A. After Alcoa’s gentle push into the polluted waters and the media attention that followed, sponsors like Cargill and Anheuser-Busch became interested in the crazy, caffeinated kid who was now a legitimate public-relations move. Plus, the corporate suits seemed to find his attitude refreshing—to Pregracke, the CEO of a company is just another dude. Hugh Share, an executive with AnheuserBusch, says supporting Pregracke allows the company to feel directly involved in the cause. Corporate offices in St. Louis sit right on the Mississippi, and when Living Lands and Waters pulls into town for the annual cleanup, employees from all levels turn out to help haul trash. Share says the relationship works because Pregracke is so 62|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

sponsors like cargill and anheuser-busch became interested in the crazy, caffeinated kid who was now a legitimate PR move.

straightforward. “We love giving money to Chad,” he says, “because we know it’s going to go right to work.” In recent years, that money has gone into more than cleanups; things like environmental education workshops for schoolteachers and a river-bottom restoration program that clears invasive plants off the riverbanks and plants native hardwood trees. In conjunction with that project is a nursery Pregracke is building on a working hog farm, where “except the meat, nothing good comes out.” Soon that “nothing good” will fertilize thousands of saplings waiting to be planted in hopes of restoring a diminished floodplain ecosystem. Living Lands and Waters’ expanding budget allows the group to branch out whenever Pregracke sees a need. After Hurricane Katrina

in 2005, he cancelled the remaining summer cleanups so he and the crew could take barge loads of construction materials to Louisiana and help families there rebuild. Last August, he set up a recycling program at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, where tens of thousands of bikers now have a place to toss their empties. And then there’s Capital River Relief, an annual cleanup of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers in Washington, DC. Pregracke organized it in 2004 because, as he was flying into town to receive the Jefferson Award for Public Service, he looked out his window at the polluted Potomac and thought, “What kind of message is our government sending about our rivers?” When we get to the skate park, Pregracke rockets away, pulling off a couple kick flips to

photos BY mario almanza (opposite); greg boll photography (top left, right)

Volunteers young (opposite, bottom) and older (this page, left) get up close and personal with the Mississippi and its mud. Pregracke hauling tires (this page, right). The conspicuous Living Lands and Waters fleet is hard to miss when it floats into town (this page, bottom).

get into rhythm. It’s easy to see why he’s good at skateboarding. And it says a lot about why he’s succeeded on the river: To land a trick, you have to commit to it completely; doubt and hesitation just lead to a wipeout. Pregracke skates up to the lip of a drained swimming pool and pauses at the deep end. Someone has slapped a bumper sticker at the top. It says, “Don’t Do It.” But he slides out over the void anyway, his back foot anchoring the tail of the board to the edge. Then he leans forward and drops in. Mike Coyne-Logan calls this “Chad’s philosophy,” and it’s summed up in three words: “Action, not talk.” It’s the afternoon after the cleanup, and I’ve caught a ride back to the barge with Logan, one of the newest members of the crew. Logan is telling me about the challenge of keeping up with Pregracke. When people first see their floating living quarters, they always wax poetic about “life on the river.” But the reality, Logan says, is often twelve-hour workdays, aching muscles, and nasty weather.

It takes a certain kind of person, and there’s a pride knowing one has what it takes. It helps that Pregracke is a great boss, Logan says. “He’s just a genuine guy. He could’ve made a fortune if he went into advertising or something, but this is what he cares about.” Back on the barge, Pregracke tells me that some environmental groups have suggested his philosophy has him tackling the problem from the wrong end. They argue that pushing for legislation on trash and educating the public about littering would better curb the stream of refuse that pollutes America’s rivers. But Pregracke says his role is not to proselytize or hold political rallies. It’s much simpler. “You gotta create an opportunity for people to do something,” he explains. “You don’t want to roll into town proclaiming, ‘We’re Living Lands and Waters’ and try to fix everything. Nobody would work with you. You want to prop everybody up, because you’re leaving. You’re there maybe four days, and then you’re like, ‘Peace.’”

And people, Pregracke says, are often starved for a chance to get involved. He set out to save the mighty Mississippi by himself but, within months, was caught in a current he didn’t realize existed. Thousands of other people were disgusted by what floated in their rivers. Pregracke was just the first to get in a boat and start cleaning. But don’t expect him to take credit for what has followed. When he talks about the XStream Cleanup, he swears it wasn’t even his idea. “I didn’t do it,” he says. “The whole thing started because so many people were calling and wanting to do something. So we found some spots, took them out in the boats to clean up, and the people loved it, dude. They were animals. They were freakin’ savages out there.” I suggest they may have just been feeding off Pregracke’s enthusiasm, but he doesn’t want to hear it, and anyway, he needs to get back to work. He holds out his fist for a pound, and I remember to blow it up. plentymag.com

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by J i m Ro b b i n s photographs a n n e s h e rwo o d illustration ro b e rt f e s t i n o

THE NEXT

GREAT HUNT

The Great Hunt of the late 1800s eliminated tens of millions of North American bison, rendering the species nearly extinct. Years later, the population rebounded, causing many to consider bison the greatest American conservation success. But now, shocking news about the bisonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heritage and the endangered ecosystem on which the Animal roams is spurring a new kind of hunt.

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on the treeless plains of north-central Montana, hunters close in on their prey. Several bison and their calves watch nervously as a pickup truck slowly circles them, a rifle pointed out of the passenger window. A shot rings out, and a few minutes later, a young bison calf plops down on the ground, grunting and squirming. The hunting party—a team of biologists—moves in, warily eyeing the larger bison, eager to get a blood sample and move away from the agitated creatures. Once they fill a giant plastic syringe, they give the calf a shot, and it stands up on wobbly legs and staggers back to the herd. Welcome to the American Prairie Foundation preserve, the front lines of the efforts to save America’s bison and restore a large swath of the North American Great Plains. The bison is often heralded as the nation’s first and greatest conservation victory—in the last century the population grew from fewer than 1,000 to half a million—but the story is not that simple. In the late 1990s, James Derr, a geneticist at Texas A&M, discovered that most of the roughly 500,000 bison in North America have a tiny amount of cattle DNA mixed into their genome—the consequence of ranchers crossbreeding bison and cattle a century ago. The revelation that all but 10,000 bison are hybrids shook the conservation community. In 2004, the American Prairie Foundation learned that their bison, which today number 45, are among the few that are pure. Others haven’t been as lucky. When Derr’s discovery came to light, scientists realized that conservation efforts then underway wouldn’t ensure the survival of genetically pure bison. Extinction is still a threat. Now conservationists like those in Montana are hunting bison in a benign but urgent sense because saving them goes hand in hand with saving the prairie, the world’s least protected terrestrial ecosystem. So while the species was almost decimated by the Great Hunt, their survival depends on this Next Great Hunt. Curt Freese, a researcher who has studied bison genetics, is head of the World Wildlife Fund’s Northern Great Plains Program. Freese was instrumental in setting up the Foundation’s preserve. Though the long-term consequences of hybridization are unknown, he says, “if you have a chance to maintain them as pure, it makes sense. Once the genes are in there, there’s no getting them out.” Scientists say that only the purest bison—those most similar to the ones that made up the massive, rambling herds of yesterday—should be used to repopulate the Plains. (Though biologists are reluctant to use the word pure because genetic markers might be present at levels current technology can’t detect, today’s tests find some bison to have no cattle genes.) Maintaining the bison’s genetic 66|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

purity will help ensure the survival of the species and pave the way for the animals to reassume their historical ecological role. These herds are critical to rehabilitating large, landscape-scale prairie habitat because other species rely on their grazing for survival. Cattle genes, which make up less than one percent of the genome of most affected bison herds, could influence a multitude of traits, including the bison’s ability to resist disease, withstand cold weather, and migrate. The truth is no one knows what the effects of hybridization will be. But when it comes to the future of the bison, no one wants to be surprised.

Fort Peck Lake

Missouri River

0 10 20 30 40 50 Miles Public Lands

Alb.

Sask.

Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument

N. Dak

Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge

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The Nature Conservancy American Prairie Reserve Indian Reservations

Man.

Idaho

Yellowstone National Park

Wyoming

S. Dak Neb.

The American Prairie Foundation hopes to connect the 70,000 acres it controls to protected federal land, creating a refuge of several million acres—larger than Yellowstone National Park—for bison to roam (above). A bison rolls on the ground, creating a wallow, a saucer-like depression, once a common feature of the plains (below, left). A visitor overlooks a buffalo jump; Native Americans would chase bison off the cliff and harvest the fallen animals below (bottom, left).

he Great Plains is now considered one of the most degraded ecosystems on the continent. Cattle grazing under fence, irrigation systems converting grasslands into croplands—a century of these and other agricultural practices has taken a serious toll, depleting soil and aquifers. The wildlife hasn’t fared much better. Species such as wolves and grizzlies were completely pushed off the Plains and into the Rocky Mountains, and many of those that remain are dwindling: Approximately 128 Plains species are listed as endangered. The idea of restoring the Great Plains surfaced two decades ago. In 1987, academics Frank and Deborah Popper argued that the best use of the region was turning it into a vast Buffalo Commons, bringing back the great bison herds that once swarmed the prairie. This, they said, would reestablish biodiversity and create a sustainable economy, attracting tourists and hunters. The American Prairie Foundation is just one of the organizations working to reclaim the Plains. The Nature Conservancy, the World

map by ken feisel

On a cold, sunny day

Wildlife Fund, Ted Turner, and the Popper’s Great Plains Restoration Council, as well as state and federal agencies, have set aside vast acreages of grasslands in North America, especially in the northern Plains, and many are trying to bring back bison. “Of all the grasslands, the northern Great Plains stood out globally,” Freese says. “It’s one of the few places where most of the grassland hasn’t been plowed, and the native prairie is fundamentally intact.” In 2004, the American Prairie Foundation, which is affiliated with the World Wildlife Fund, bought its first ranch near Malta, Montana; it now owns five. So far the group has blocked up more

Bill Willcutt, the Foundation’s wildlife and ranch manager visits the recently restored, one-room Prairie Union School. Conservationists are focusing their restoration efforts on the northern Plains where grasslands are less degraded than in the south.

The Great Plains is now considered one of the most degraded ecosystems on the continent.

than 70,000 acres of deeded and leased land. The Foundation hopes to connect the acreage they control to protected federal land, creating a refuge of several million acres (larger than Yellowstone National Park). This contiguous stretch of land would allow bison to roam freely as they did in the days before the Great Hunt.

hen settlers came to America’s Great Plains, the grass was crawling with wildlife: bison, birds, antelope, deer, elk, wolves, grizzlies, prairie dogs. Bison, the most emblematic of prairie species, were present in numbers so great, they looked like a vast, brown inland ocean. Bison are more than symbols of the Plains: They’re a keystone species, critical to biodiversity. Herds of the wild, free-roaming animals mow the grass low in some places and leave it longer in others, benefiting a range of birds with different habitat needs. Prairie dogs follow the herds and graze the grass further to build elaborate, socially complex towns of thousands of individuals. By digging and aerating the soil—and creating habitat for burrowing owls, snakes, plentymag.com

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Tens of millions of bison had been reduced to fewer than 1,000, and insects—prairie dogs extend the ecosystem underground. The and the species teetered on the precipice of extinction. About two creatures also fill most of the shelves in the Great Plains grocery— dozen were hanging on in Yellowstone National Park, and another eagles, coyote, and swift fox hunt them. The highly endangered 250 survived in Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada. black-footed ferret depends on prairie dogs for shelter and food: the Some of the cattle ranchers who owned the rest hypothesized that ferrets live in prairie dog burrows and attack them while they sleep. a cross between native bison and Asian cattle would make a more “We need to let the bison graze on the landscape to create these disease-resistant animal. They began breeding the two species to complexities, this mosaic of grazing intensity,” says Freese. produce a cross they called cattalo, which has proven over time to be Bison also helped shape the landscape and cycle nutrients throughout a less robust animal than either of its ancestors. the ecosystem. For instance, the animals created wallows—saucer-like Today, many US bison are descendents of the original cattalo, depressions—by rolling on the ground. “These became mini-wetlands which agencies and individuals used to restore herds across the and had a diversity of species within them,” Freese says. When wild bison country. As a result, the vast majority of bison have a smattering died, they became food for scavengers that then scattered a nitrogenof cattle in the family tree. The few remnant populations of pure rich deposit, fertilizing the land and nurturing a diverse habitat. bison are scattered, from Ted Turner’s Vermejo ranch in New Mexico But the US government viewed the enormous herbivores, a staple for to Wind Cave National Park, where the American many Native American tribes, as a Prairie Foundation’s bison originated. But the extent barrier to western colonization. So it The Foundation’s lake-side yurt of the phenomenon was unknown until efforts got launched the Great Hunt. Bison were camp accommodates visitors underway to restore the Great Plains. hunted out of existence all across for three days at a time. the southern Plains by the 1870s. By 1880, railroads had pushed into the Northwest, and the hunters set to ison testing, like that done on the American work wiping out bison in Montana, Prairie Foundation preserve, continues to yield Wyoming, and the western Dakotas. surprising results. In September, DNA analysis In 1882, Montana and the Dakotas conducted by Derr confirmed that the bison of California’s shipped 200,000 hides to tanneries Santa Catalina Island, long thought to be purer than those in the East. By 1884, just 300 hides on the mainland because they have lived in isolation since were collected. the 1920s, are hybrids. A microscopic pinch of cattle

“If you have a chance to maintain bison as pure, it makes sense. Once the genes are in there, there’s no getting them out.”

68|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

The Foundation’s plan to restore the prairie includes bringing in genetically pure bison from Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. The 45 bison that roam the land today are seed stock for what may one day be a massive, roaming herd of tens of thousands.

THE PROFESSIONAL POOPER-SCOOPER

Scientist Flo Gardipee samples fresh feces to study bison DNA. Obtaining DNA samples from a 2,000-pound bison can be dicey work. Biologists must shoot the animals with a tranquilizer dart and quickly draw a blood sample before the subdued bison wakes. But some researchers

photos courtesy of flo gardipee

PhD student Flo Gardipee uses a non-invasive technique to collect DNA samples from bison..

are turning to an easier—albeit unsavory—method of getting the genetic material: scooping up poop. Flo Gardipee, a graduate student and researcher at the University of Montana,

started gathering bison feces in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks four years ago to study the animals’ population structure and diversity. She follows bison until they relieve themselves, brings the samples back to the lab, and gets DNA from gut cells present in the fecal matter. (Scientists have also scooped poop to obtain DNA samples from species such as bighorn sheep, dolphins, and elephants.) “We can stay at a safe distance, watch for animals to defecate, and get a higher

genes might seem unimportant, but it could result in the extinction of the North American bison. Even if thousands of bison remain, if they all have a sprinkling of cattle genes, there would be no pure bison genome—they would become what biologists call “genomically extinct.” While some might argue that it’s a question of semantics, the missing bison genes in the hybrids could have a real impact on the species. “You can’t see any difference visually” between bison that have the cattle genes and those that don’t, says Kyran Kunkel, a World Wildlife Fund biologist who works with the American Prairie Foundation. “But we don’t know what the long-term ecological or biological impacts would be.” Scientists do have a few guesses, though. They know that crossbreeding has led to less fit animals, rather than the desired “hybrid vigor.” The missing genes could affect the ability to digest certain plants or resist a disease, says Freese. “If cow genes became too common in the mitochondria of the cell, which affects metabolism, they could affect the adaptation to cold weather,” said Freese. Bison are threatened in other ways. Biologists say bison are in effect “ecologically extinct” because they no longer act in their former ecological role—migrating long distances, for example, or gathering in huge herds. That means that even if large numbers of the purest bison are restored to giant swaths of prairie, old behaviors might be absent, lost through generations. If restored bison don’t roam in massive herds, nourishing the ecosystem, it could make the restoration of the Plains incomplete. The widespread domestication of bison could also be driving these types of behavior changes, says Freese. Ranchers select for certain traits all the time, which is akin to man-made evolution. “Ranchers might get rid of a cantankerous bull, for example,” says Freese. “Breeding bison to be docile and meaty are the kinds of things that affect the wildness of the species.”

sample size than with tranquilizing and capturing,” Gardipee says. “There’s no harm inflicted to the animals, it doesn’t stress or cause mortality, and it’s in line with National Park Service policy to minimize human interference with animals.” The method has yielded some interesting results: The 3,000 bison living in Yellowstone actually belong to two genetically distinct breeding groups, rather than one, as previously thought. Researchers also discovered that the

groups remain separate because females return to their birth site every breeding season. Thousands of bison leaving the park have been killed because they carry a disease ranchers fear could be passed on to livestock. “The results,” says Gardipee, “suggest that the agencies involved in managing bison [on the border] should use genetic monitoring” to ensure one breeding group isn’t disproportionately affected by the slaughters. —Sarah Parsons

Dave Carter, executive director the National Bison Association, the trade group for people who raise bison, says that isn’t so. “The ranchers I know don’t want their animals to be docile. [The bison] are equipped to survive, and they want to keep them that way. They don’t want them just to be meat wagons.”

he Next Great Hunt—this time to save the bison species— is well underway. Across the country, biologists are testing bison and gaining a clearer understanding of which herds have polluted genomes. The challenges now involve separating hybridized bison from those with no detectable levels of cattle genes—and making sure they remain separate. Isolation is the best way to assure purity, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee the bison genome will remain cattle-free. Yellowstone National Park has the largest of the near-pure herds, with more than 3,000 animals, an invaluable genetic reservoir. Officials there had a scare when a lone bull from a nearby bison ranch wandered into the park, mixing with the herd. They removed him from the population before he could pass on his heritage. Now the American Prairie Foundation is working to ensure the bison and their offspring remain pure, as they are seed stock for what they hope will become a free-ranging herd tens of thousands strong. That massive herd may well one day roam the hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of acres the Foundation is buying and rehabilitating. It might be a pipe dream to think that the far-flung refuges currently being developed will connect, allowing the great herds to return. But scientists know the best bet for the future of the Plains lies in the tiniest of things—the genome of the purest bison. plentymag.com

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photos courtesy single speed image

Highway Robbery The Big Dig House turns thousands of pounds of refuse into a home with a point of view By mandI wells For years, a billboard reading “Rome wasn’t built in a day” loomed ominously on the side of Interstate 90 in Boston. The sign served as the city’s justification for its disastrously over-budget and wasteridden Big Dig, a public-works project designed to place Boston’s Central Artery underground. After 22 years, the Big Dig is now in its final stages. While the project may improve Boston’s roadways, it’s left a huge mess of metal and cement in its wake. Luckily, Paul Pedini, former vice president of Big Dig contractor Modern Continental, came up with an innovative method of getting rid of some of the project’s 100,000 tons of waste. Pedini diverted thousands of pounds of garbage at his disposal into an environmentally

friendly initiative, creating a house made almost entirely from Big Dig refuse. “It seemed illogical to pay to throw away the waste when you can just reuse it,” he says. The state had paid huge fees to have the garbage trucked to a landfill outside the city. There, contractors crushed and buried the materials, expending energy and resources * plentymag.com

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choices | home

It seemed ‘‘illogical to

pay to throw away the waste when you can just reuse it,” says builder Paul Pedini, former vice president of Big Dig contractor Modern Continental. 72|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

in the process. To prevent more material from ending up in landfills, Pedini contacted local architects Jinhee Park and John Hong of Single Speed Design in Cambridge, Massachussetts to help design the Big Dig House. “[Pedini] saw the innovations of what we’re doing in wood, and thought that we could be equally innovative using Big Dig materials,” says Park, a cofounder of Single Speed. “The concrete and steel roadways are difficult and expensive to recycle, so they would have ended up in a landfill or dumped into the water.” In 2003, Park and Hong began work on the home in Lexington, Massachusetts. With the exception of items like light-gauge metal framing, insulation, windows, and wood cladding, the entire structure of the house was built from Big Dig materials—some 600,000 pounds of salvage altogether. What were once concrete panels, steel columns, and beams that held up

Interstate 93 off-ramps in East Cambridge now make up the frame of the house. The residence, which measures 3,800 square feet, was completed in 2006. With no shortage of waste from the project, Bostonians can expect more Big Dig-inspired buildings—Pedini and Single Speed are currently planning two more homes. Pedini put the original Big Dig House on the market in late September and plans to live in one of the future editions. He’s also working to pass legislation that would make pre-cycling mandatory for large-scale projects like the Big Dig. (Pre-cycling involves keeping deconstructed materials in order to use them in future projects.) Mandating the practice would aid in the design of public works such as libraries and schools. “That way,” Park says, “you could really use the capabilities of the material as well as make some positive sustainable impact.”

home |choices

Digging Deeper

>Lexington, Massachusettsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Big Dig House consists of 600,000 pounds of salvaged material from the notorious Boston public-works project (opposite and page 71). >The gardens on premises feature water-storage cisterns made from reclaimed manholes and concrete jugs from a Big Dig drainage system (this page, top left). >Recovered concrete slabs and steel beams have been used for the floors and ceilings of the houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interior; the two-sided fireplace uses flue ducts instead of a traditional brick chimney (this page, left and above). plentymag.com

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choices | retreads T-shirt saviour Hannah Rogge models her latest designs in Brooklyn, New York.

Chic Revival

Update your look by tailoringâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; not tossing outâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;your old T-shirts By Eileen Gunn

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photograph by dave zuckerman

retreads | choices your shelves and dresser overflow with Tshirts. They’re mostly freebies, collected over the years at fun runs and new-product promotions, and occasionally bought at a rock concert or for charity. They’re all extra large—even if you’re not—and so instead of getting good wear out of them, you’ll sleep or exercise in them for a year or two before tossing them in the Goodwill pile or the garbage. if you’re like me,

Hannah Rogge has a much better idea. Her book, Save This Shirt: Cut it, Stitch it, Wear it Now (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2007), features 56 pages of projects that put those old knits to reuse in creative, resourceful, and even retro-Flashdance-stylish ways. Rogge’s guide features patterns to follow that include several shirt styles for men and women, a scarf, a handbag, and sets of non-matching place mats. A 29-year-old industrial designer with a strong creative bent, Rogge came up with her T-shirt rejuvenation projects out of necessity. By day she works on window designs for high-profile retail outlets like Lord and Taylor on New York’s Fifth Avenue. When do-it-yourself and news shows began filming her work a few years ago, her employer handed out T-shirts (extra large, of course) that featured the company logo and required employees to wear them on camera. Besides looking dowdy, the extra fabric got caught on tools and materials, and Rogge got tangled up as she tried to put window scenes together. In a fit of pique, she took up scissors and a needle and thread and downsized her T-shirt to fit her slim frame. “The first year we got the shirts, I just took in the sides to make it fit,” she says. But as she got new shirts, “I started to play around with the stitching and the neckline and the sleeves.” When coworkers started to emulate her styles and ask for advice on how to do it themselves, she knew she was on to something. So she turned to her collection of other disposable shirts to see what she could do with them. “It wasn’t my intention to be environmental; I just hate waste,” she says. “I enjoy making something pretty and useful out of something useless.” And when it comes to T-shirts, in particular, this a good instinct.

Clothing is one of the last consumer goods sectors to enter into the public’s environmental awareness. Goodwill estimates it amasses more than one billion pounds of clothes a year. Despite that effort, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that clothes make up the bulk of textile waste found in municipal dumps, and less than fourteen percent is recycled or put to reuse.

It wasn’t my ‘‘ intention to be

environmental; I just hate waste.” And chances are good that environmentally unsound practices went into making those freebie shirts. Based on numbers provided by the US Department of Agriculture, in 2005, cotton absorbed more than sixteen percent of the chemical pesticides allocated for US field crops, though it occupied only eight percent of total agricultural land. Then there are the dyes and wastewater needed to transform raw cotton into T-shirts—a process that often occurs in developing countries where environmental regulations can be lax.

that tell your story,” she says. “If you buy a rock concert T-shirt that’s too big, you can give it a personal touch and make it more valuable, maybe even wear it to a club.” As she began wearing more of her creations out in public, friends, family, and even strangers liked what they saw and asked her to do the same with their shirts—hence the book. “I’d rather show people how easy it is and empower them to do it themselves,” she says. Feeling intimidated? You don’t need to be a contestant on Project Runway to make it work. Rogge herself doesn’t even own a fullsized sewing machine. She sticks to the basics: scissors, needle, and thread. One design called Fit to be Thai-d is ornate enough to seem overwhelming, but other designs require little more than tracing, cutting, and hemming, maybe adding a button or two. She suggests starting your first project with a T-shirt you don’t care about (there’s a starter T included in the book), so you can get the hang of it before attacking your favorite college shirt. She also has great ideas for turning your leftover scraps into coasters and iPod cases. But, Rogge cautions, make sure to check with family, roommates, or significant others before taking a pair of scissors to their Ts. She spent one Saturday afternoon cutting up a T-shirt her then boyfriend had brought back from Thailand only to discover that he didn’t want it altered. Driven by guilt, she went out and bought a new, high-end T-shirt for him, then personalized it by patching on the best remnants of the souvenir shirt. “This shirt fit really well, which the old one didn’t, and it had this personal touch that I had added, so he ended up really liking it,” she says. “So I really did save that T-shirt.”

ogge’s innovations allow her to showcase her own personal sense of style. “I especially like making things with T-shirts

Pass it on Once you’ve finished reading Rogge’s book (and fueled your inner fashion designer), donate or sell your copy at alibris.com to help spread the word.

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Clear your head

Tara Bath Therapy Colds and Flu Formula opens sinuses with eucalyptus, rosemary, peppermint, and tea tree essential oils mixed with an extract of echinacea. $18–$24, taraspa.com

Sleep on it

Lavender-scented Collective Wellbeing Night Balm helps you drift off to dreamland. Their website lets you pick which nonprofit should receive a portion of sale proceeds. $25, collective wellbeing.com

Be razor sharp

Foams and gels are alcohol based and can irritate red, dry skin. Origins Blade Runner Energizing Shave Cream uses soybean oil and kukui nuts to both soften and smooth. $14, origins.com

Feel invigorated

Exfoliate scaly skin with LaLicious Peppermint Sugar Soufflé Body Scrub, which also moisturizes with sweet almond oil. The scent is like a wake-up call on dark winter mornings. $30, lalicious.com

style | choices Banish hat-hair frizzies

If your hair is suffering from the season of the blow dryer, Burt’s Bees Hair Repair Shea and Grapefruit Deep Conditioner restores shine and prevents breakage in just two minutes. $8, burtsbees.com

Giant vase Sponges courtsey of baudelaire

Breathe deep Badger Winter Wonder Balm is a chest rub that blends olive oil with an aromatic mix of eucalyptus, rosemary, and ginger to make coping with a cold much easier. $5–$9, badgerbalm.com

Snow-Season Soothers Protect your whole body from winter’s harsh elements

Get the red out

The Body Shop’s Vitamin E Sink-in Moisture Mask gives your face a tenminute quick fix, or try it as an overnight cream for deeper dry-skin therapy. $17, thebodyshop.com

with these healing, natural favorites By jessica hartshorn

Four Pantry Purifiers

Effective skin and hair moisturizers are already hiding in your kitchen HONEY works as an old-school facial mask. After cleansing your face to open your pores, apply a tablespoon and allow it to set on the skin for fifteen minutes before washing it off. Not only is it hydrating, but honey can also draw out impurities, says Janice Cox, author of Natural Beauty at Home. photograph by anthony verde eco styling by camilla slattery

OLIVE OIL is a moisturizing mul-

titasker. Before bedtime, work a half teaspoon into your hair from the roots to the ends, and shampoo it out the next morning. And to prevent dry, cracked heels, Joshua Onysko, founder of Pangea Organics, suggests rubbing it on your feet and covering them with socks before sleeping.

SUGAR can be used as an exfoliant for your body. Onysko says to mix equal parts sugar and a light oil (such as canola, safflower, or sunflower) so your skin gets immediate hydration, too. Salt can also work in a pinch, but our experts agree that both sugar and salt are too grainy and rough to be used on the face.

OATMEAL cleanses the face gently. Put a quarter cup into a coffee grinder or food processor for a few seconds to turn it into a fine powder, Cox says. Then pour it into a bowl, and mix it with one or two tablespoons of water to make it into a paste that you can spread onto your face. Rinse well.

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Bold Mountain

choices | style

Conquer the slopes in colorful style without missing an earthfriendly beat By bari nan cohen

hats off

The cost of this beanie goes to support a women’s knitting cooperative that spans 25 remote highland villages in Peru. $60, chaoshats.com

BE SEEN

Patagonia’s Down Sweater Pullover Hoody is made from 50% recycled polyester. $249, patagonia.com

bombs away

The Holden Pilot Jacket is made from hemp and has a water-based coating that makes it both waterproof and breathable. $355, holdenouterwear.com

soy solutions

ExOfficio’s men’s Tofutech crew tee boasts natural wicking properties to keep you warm and dry. $45, exofficio.com

cozy warmth

handsomely handmade

The Camila cardigan is hand-knit from hand-painted wool by a women’s cooperative in India. $129, indigenousdesigns.com

The Snowbird Mock Zip men’s dye-free sweater is hand-knit from different shades of natural alpaca and merino wool yarns. $150, indigenousdesigns.com

sweet relief

Earth Shoes’ vegan Lodge Boot can help ease your back and joints after a long day on the bumps. $159, earth.us

photograph by anthony verde eco styling by camilla slattery

wind to the wise

Patagonia’s Rubicon pants, made almost entirely from recycled polyester, will insulate you from the cold. $235, patagonia.com

clever carving See your way clear to powder-perfect days

BOARD GAMES Boasting a topsheet and core made from sustainably harvested wood, the women’s Arbor Cadence snowboard allows you to experiment with whichever spins or tricks you have up your sleeve. $460, backcountry.com SMART STICKS Movement’s Iki skis are crafted from certified-sustainable okoume, poplar, and karuba forests. Engineered to float in the most difficult snow and carve turns on the hard stuff, these Swiss freeriders are both versatile and eco savvy: The company is endorsed by the Forest Stewardship Council and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification. $675, e-omc.com CLEAR VISION Habervision’s high-tech Riva Goggles are only available online, so you’re using fewer resources to purchase them—and you’ll save up to 50% of what goggles would cost at a bricks-and-mortar retailer. Plus, if you request it, a portion of sales goes to support environmental charities, including the Waterkeeper Alliance. $55, habervision.com

Après-ski Indulgences Rejuvenate body and soul with an all-natural or organic spa treatment

By cathy garrard

WYOMING

COLORADO

VERMONT

UTAH

The Hawthorn and Mallow Body Glow at The Spa at Four Seasons Resort Jackson Hole uses locally-harvested berries and marshmallow leaves to moisturize and finishes with a barley body wash and whole-wheat lotion. The Après massage accommodates modest skiers, since you wear comfortable clothing during the rubdown (fourseasons.com/ jacksonhole). Teton Mountain Lodge’s new Solitude Spa uses only organic products or those made by green-minded companies. The Balance massage aids stiff skiers’ muscles by pairing warm stones with oil—ask your therapist to use locally produced arnica oil to further aid muscle recovery (tetonlodge.com).

The Spa at the Steamboat Grand Resort Hotel features all-natural and organic products. The Herbal Hibernation treatment wraps you in gauze steeped in tea bags to warm you up and extract toxins from your body (steamboatgrand.com). The new Allegria Spa at Park Hyatt Beaver Creek features a Mountain Juniper Berry Scrub that revives and exfoliates, and the therapist finishes with a honey rinse and rosemary mint lotion to help restore moisture (allegriaspa.com). The Mountain Man body treatment at The Lodge and Spa at Cordillera in Vail Valley stimulates with a scrub, a liniment rub, and an herbal spice lotion massage (cordillera.rockresorts.com).

The Stoweflake Mountain Resort and Spa uses both local and organic products in many of its therapies. The Vermont Maple Body Sugar Polish treatment hydrates skin with a vitamin-packed maple scrub and locally handmade body butter. The Green Mountain Coffee Body Treatment starts with an organic, fair-trade coffee scrub, moves on to a nourishing Dead Sea mud wrap, and finishes with a coffee-oil massage (stoweflake. com). At nearby Topnotch Resort and Spa, the Mount Mansfield Saucha wraps you in linen sheets steeped in organic oils, indigenous herbs, and flowers before the therapist begins your massage (topnotchresort.com).

The Spa at Sundance Resort is a cozy retreat—mostly built from reclaimed wood—that offers natural and organic treatments inspired by Native American traditions. Its signature Sundance Stone Massage loosens tired muscles with heated rocks, and the Warming Ginger Scrub combines the freshly ground spice with organic sugar and essential oils to exfoliate and improve circulation (sundanceresort.com). The High Altitude Massage at the Cliff Spa at Snowbird Resort uses a custom-blended mix of essential oils to help skiers acclimate to the thin mountain air. And Styrofoam packing peanuts find new life as toe separators for pedicures (snowbird.com).

ski gear photographs by anthony verde

plentymag.com

| december/ january 2008 |79

“ This coming-of-age memoir is brave, emotional, and gorgeously written.”—Frances Mayes “SenSuouS.”

—Booklist

“Kim Sunée tells us so much about the French that I never learned in 25 trips to Paris, but mostly about the terrors and pleasure of that infinite octopus, love. A fine book.” ––Jim Harrison author of Legends of the Fall and Returning to Earth

“KIm Sunée’S

poetic memoir is like a piece of dark chocolate— bittersweet, satisfying, and finished all too soon.” —Laura Fraser, author of An Italian Affair

Available in hardcover and as an eBook www.hbgusa.com

• www.kimsunee.com

Hachette Book Group usa Author photo: JMM

food | choices

J.K. Scrumpy’s Hard Cider

There are only two ingredients that go into this bottle: organic apples and yeast. The result is a smooth, flavorful cider as crisp as fruit plucked straight from the tree. $5–$7 for a 22-ounce bottle, organicscrumpy.com Jeriko Estate Brut

Ring in the New Year with this chardonnay-based bubbly, the first and only organic sparkling wine made in America. It has a pleasing citrus flavor, and the aroma evokes toasted almonds. $49, jeriko.us Butte Creek Train Wreck Organic Barley wine Ale

Don’t be fooled by the sweet and fruity flavor: With a 10.6 percent alcohol content, this ambercolored seasonal ale will warm you up on cold winter nights. $6–$7 for a 22-ounce bottle, buttecreek.com Bison Brewing Gingerbread Ale

Pop the cap on this spiced porter, and you’ll smell fresh-baked cookies. The beer is dark—but not heavy—and is flavored with ginger, nutmeg, and a hint of cinnamon. $4 for a 22-ounce bottle, bisonbrew.com Horizon Organic Lowfat EggNog

Enjoy this creamy, non-alcoholic seasonal favorite straight out of the carton, or spike it with your own warming blend of rum, whisky, brandy, or cognac. $3– $4, horizonorganic.com

’Tis the Season

Toast the holidays with a festive and organic wintertime libation By cathy garrard photograph by anthony verde eco styling by camilla slattery

plentymag.com|december / january 2008|81

choices | food

You’re Invited Tips for thoughtful entertaining over the holidays By jessica tzerman Though it may seem obvious, staying mindful of the small stuff during holiday meals and parties can make a huge difference in offsetting your environmental impact. Here are a few tips for entertaining without sacrificing your eco intentions or your friends’ and family’s expectations.

Don’t overbuy Studies show that Americans throw away about 1.3 pounds of food on average every day, so you can imagine how easily that could skyrocket this time of year. The solution is basic math. “If you’re having a cocktail party, plan on six to eight hors d’oeuvres per guest; for a small dinner, you’ll need six to eight ounces of protein per person; and for more than eight people, do a buffet,” says Nicole Aloni, whose book, Secrets from a Caterer’s Kitchen, has a handy food-quantity chart. Trick your party-goers’ eyes “People want to see a lot of food even if they don’t want to eat a lot of food,” says Akasha Richmond, owner of Akasha restaurant in Culver City, California. Instead of making pies, for instance, whip up six- or eight-inch tarts. “That way,” says Richmond, “people get to sample everything, and there’s not as much waste.” Shop local, sustainable, and organic It’s worth repeating: Buy sustainable seafood or humanely raised meat, or serve a great 82|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

vegetarian recipe, and plan your holiday menu around that. Visit your local farmer’s market, or, if options are limited, check out heritagefoodsusa.com to order onceendangered varieties of poultry and unique seasonal ingredients like Guajillo Honey. Use real silverware and cloth napkins Not only is real cutlery more sustainable, it confers special-occasion status on your event. If you must use disposable, opt for good quality plastic ones you can use repeatedly, or choose biodegradable plates and cutlery made from bamboo or corn to reuse or recycle later. compost your leftovers If despite your best efforts, you still have extra food scraps, start or add to your compost heap or indoor worm farm. Just be sure to avoid putting meat, bones, or oily fats into the worm box, as they may emit odors and attract mice. Give to food banks Food is great, but donating cash can go even further toward helping your local hungerrelief organization. “Because we work directly

with most of the major manufacturers, we’re able to purchase food at drastically reduced prices,” says Ross Fraser of America’s Second Harvest, a nationwide network of more than 250 food banks (secondharvest.org). bag it These days, there’s a slew of reusable bags to take with you on grocery-shopping trips. Envirosax offers a bevy of colors and styles (envirosax.com), and ChicoBag’s carabinerequipped totes clip easily to purses, backpacks, and belt loops (chicobag.com). And, if guests want to take home the extra desserts and goodies, opt for biodegradable doggie bags, like TreeCycle’s recycled boxes (treecycle.com) or the Biodegradable Store’s corn containers (biodegradablestore.com). Dine by candlelight Soy, vegetable-oil, and pure beeswax candles are your best bets since they burn cooler—and thus longer—and don’t contain paraffin, a petroleum product found in most conventional candles. Even if the energy you save can’t be measured, hey, everyone looks better by candlelight.

food | choices

Gifts That Give More

For the food devotees on your gift list, give and give again Smart Steeping

Recycled with Style

Serve and Serve Again

Aromatic and intense, Paromi’s line of six palatepleasing, full-leaf teas are not only made from natural and organic ingredients, but also come packaged in pyramid-shaped, biodegradable sachets and apothecary-style, recyclable, ambercolored glass containers. Fifteen sachets for $12.50, paromi.com

Great for casual, everyday meals, Wine Punts are made from used wine bottles that the Colorado Springs-based company gets from local restaurants interested in a little creative recycling. You can also send them your own empty wine bottles, and they’ll even engrave them for you. Set of four ten-ounce glasses for $26, winepunts.com

Giving Sterling Place’s serving pieces to your entertaining-happy friends will keep you forever on their A-lists. Particularly lovely are the ten-bottle wine rack made from reused stave pieces (e.g., wine barrel slats), and the sturdy butcher blocks made from strips of laminated bamboo. Stave wine rack for $135, bamboo butcher blocks, $49 for medium, $22 for mini, sterlingplace.com

Ditch the Plastic Wrap

Staying Sharp

Made from fast-growing, cultivated poplar wood, PaniMold’s oven-safe, all-inone, bake-and-give baskets are a great way to break the cellophane habit when wrapping up your edible homemade gifts. Bonus: You can write on the wood, too, and avoid wasting paper tags! Set of six 7x4-inch baking molds for $11.99, gourmetbetty.com

Filled with hundreds of skinny bamboo sticks, these unique, rectangular knife boxes have a stylishly trim profile that’s perfect for cramped countertops. Bamboo box knife holders, $89 for large, $49 for small, vivaterra.com. —Amy Zavatto

CMYK

TRIM

185903ama02B

choices | the green fiend

The scoop on composting

Annemarie Conte’s how-to guide to the crazy world of DIY environmentalism

y boyfriend had argued for a rottweiler. I lobbied for something that weighed a more manageable 30 pounds and didn’t look like it snacked on children. (Rotties can be very sweet, I know, but I also wasn’t into the uncontrollable drooling.) We compromised and found an adorable, 45-pound mutt at a local shelter. Honey has a yellow lab body with a pit bull head that looks like it was screwed on by a mad scientist. Actually, she is totally adorable and not at all mutant-like. Though nowhere near the scale of a rottweiler’s crap, Honey’s poops are still considerable and, needless to say, unavoidable. I started getting the newspaper delivered around the same time we got Honey, and because our paperboy insisted on double bagging on even the driest of days, our porch was overrun with yellow plastic sleeves. After a few weeks of grabbing one from the growing pile and using it as a pooper-scooper, I returned home, sunk the knotted-up bag of dog waste in the trash can and felt overwhelmingly guilty. I was taking a natural product that would eventually degrade on its own and encasing it in plastic. In an airless landfill, my dog’s waste will outlive her. (Hell, it’s gonna outlive me.) I wish I could get all renegade and tell people to leave the poop where it lies, but a) this isn’t Paris, b) that will make people hate you and hate all dog owners by extension, and c) dog poop is actually really dangerous.

84|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

Dogs carry E. coli, salmonella, and giardia, among other nasties, so when you just leave the poop there to rot, the rain can wash it into rivers, streams, and oceans (beaches have been closed across the country due to contaminated water caused, in part, by dog doo). So, my moral quandary became: Do I doom it to a landfill or directly contribute to unsafe swimming conditions? My choice was neither, and that’s how I ended up as the crazy lady who composts dog poop. Turns out there are a few commercial composters out there, like the Doogie Dooley (doggiedooley.com), but since I feel my $89.95 could be better spent on squeaky toys and liver treats, I decided to make one myself for less than ten bucks. All of the credit goes to Sharon Slack, head gardener of City Farmer at Vancouver’s Compost Demonstration Garden. She’s been doing this for more than twenty years on her own, so I called her up and shamelessly mined her for wisdom after poring over the slide-show instructions on the City Farmer website (cityfarmer.org). Sharon tells me to pick an area with porous soil that doesn’t have a high water table and is at least fifteen feet from my garden, due to the aforementioned contamination issues. Since my basement threatens to flood every time there’s a chance of thunderstorms, I assume I’m okay on the water table front. (And I realize I’m lucky enough to actually have a backyard, unlike some of my apartmentdwelling friends, who refer to their fire escapes as the “lanai,” à la The Golden Girls, to make themselves feel better about their lack of outdoor space.)

I choose a flat patch behind the garage, then grab an old, plastic garbage can, cut out the bottom, and drill drainage holes in the sides. While I do that, I try to convince my boyfriend to dig a can-sized hole, but he refuses, saying, “this is your project.” 2. After I’m done digging the hole, I sink the can into it, the top just above ground-level, and add rocks to the bottom for drainage. 3. At last, it’s time to throw in the dootie I’ve stored in 100 percent biodegradable BioBags (get ’em at www.biobagusa.com; there are other bags out there that are sold as biodegradable but aren’t). 4. I add in a can of septic starter I bought at a hardware store, then enough water to soak the whole mess. I stick a lid on the thing and ignore it unless I’m depositing a BioBag, an armful of grass clippings, or more septic starter to keep breaking down the mess. 5. In time, Sharon tells me, I should have a nice, rich soil to spread on my non-edibles (go figure—bacterialaced compost should be limited to decorative plants since it’s not so great for your veggie patch). The whole thing took me less than an hour, which I suspect will make it among the fastest and easiest eco-friendly changes I’ll ever test-drive. What’s the hard part? Teaching Honey to poop directly into the composter. 1.

illustration by thomas fuchs icons by jameson simpson

2006 Environmental Defense ©2006 Environmental Defense ©2006 Environmental Defense ©2006 Environmental Defense ©2006 Environmental Defense©2006 Environmental Defense ©2006 Environmental Defense ©2006 Environmental Defense ©2006 Environmental Defense ©2006 Environmental De

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the last word

Pedaling Love

Settling down with the bike of a lifetime doesn’t come without its flings by ethan gilsdorf once you’ve been with a bike, you never go back. That’s what I used to think. I spent most of my twenties and thirties living in rural places—New Hampshire, western Massachusetts, Vermont—where swearing off automobiles is no easy thing. During the Vermont years, I was utterly devoted to my black 1985 Saab Turbo: Manta. We’d met through the classifieds. Unlike the usual clunky pickup truck or minivan, she was sleek, smart, and Swedish, and we quickly became romantically involved. Sometimes I think I gave her the best years of my life. I even once wrote her a poem: Oh Manta, you drove me and kept me from walking / and I need you today, oh Manta. (Apologies to Barry Manilow.) But when I moved to Paris in 1999, I ditched Manta. Letting her go wrenched my heart, but I had no choice. The day I sold her, I could tell she was hurt. We promised to be in touch, but I never heard from her again. In Paris, I flirted, bien-sûr, with a few cars, but to my own astonishment, I ended up falling for a nerdy, teal-green Dutch bicycle named Amsterdam. Together, Amy and I discovered not only an eco-friendly commute, but a new way of interacting with the city. We soaked up the smiles and nods of passersby. We chatted with strangers on bike paths. We basked in the sensory details of slowermotion travel that anchor me to the world— the feel of the wind on my face, the whir of wheels on the sidewalk, the sight of an anthill cracking the asphalt. We crisscrossed many an arrondissement together late at night. The City of Light became the City of Bike. When I moved to Boston five years later, though, I left Amy behind—it was the right

88|december / january 2008|plentymag.com

thing to do—and quickly rebounded with a black Gary Fisher named Windy. Instant bliss. Thanks to Windy, I became a car-less, committed, one-bike man for eight years running. I thought I had forsaken my love of the internal combustion machine, but this summer, something inside me grew restless, and I longed to go faster. Was it a seven-year itch? A mid-life crisis? I’m still not sure, but desire, I’ve learned, can be as mysterious as a Shimano rear derailleur. When a friend announced she would be leaving for the summer, and asked if I wanted to borrow her Volkswagen until her return, I felt guilty, but tempted. Quickly, I rationalized that the fling would be harmless. I’d never take her seriously. The emerald-green Jetta and I bonded immediately. Like me, she was a bit rusty: dinged up, missing some trim, the radio busted. I didn’t mind. Emerald Jetta was a blast, and I relished our weekends in the country and our spontaneous trips to the mall. I got to know EJ’s trunk and back seat intimately. We did everything together; I grew dependent upon her. I stopped walking and taking the subway. I got fat, but felt free nonetheless—even happy—and I forgot about Windy, abandoned in my basement. Over time, though, I began to see what an expensive date EJ really was. That brazen car had constant demands: fuel, oil changes, insurance premiums. And she grew possessive and jealous, keeping me locked in her glass-and-metal world. Sure, I was comfortable, air-conditioned, and secure—but I was also terribly lonely. One day, I realized it had been months since I’d noticed the sky or really used my legs to get someplace. I would never admit this to EJ, but I was almost relieved when my friend came back

to town and reclaimed her. My summer fling was over. There was, though, the problem of how to approach Windy. Could she ever forgive me? I dusted off her saddle. I inflated her tires. I brought her into the shop for a tune-up, a manipedi, and a chain massage. I apologized. “Jetta never meant anything to me,” I promised her. She took me back. She let me ride her again. Months later, Windy and I are happily reunited. Yes, there have been some bumps and flat tires, but I’m content. My calves, once more firm and sculpted, speak to the harmony of our beautiful union. What I don’t spend on gas these days, I use to take Windy on romantic adventures: a bike–train jaunt to the beach, a wild ride in the woods, or, for nostalgia’s sake, frequent small-scale grocery runs. To spice up our bike life, we’re trying out new toys like, ahem, a double-action minipump. But on rainy days, or when it’s snowing outside and the grocery store seems far, far away, I still sometimes pine for Emerald Jetta. I remember the scent of her fabric interior, lust after her cargo space. And when it’s really cold, I dream of Manta. In the dream, we’re flying down I-95 at 80 miles an hour, destination unknown, blissfully oblivious to the world. Yes, I still compose the occasional ode to her—but now I know better than to write them down. Ethan Gilsdorf is a writer and poet from Somerville, Massachusetts whose work can be found in Poetry, The New York Times, and National Geographic Traveler. Contact him at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com.

illustration by felix sockwell

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