10 mm 111014

Monday Mailing

Year 21 • Issue 10 10 November 2014 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

As Infrastructure Crumbles, Trillions Of Gallons Of Water Lost Adapt and Reuse: Transforming the Old to the New Big Beer Deceivers and Bullies Time for a Trust-Busting Beer Bust These Photos Showcase the Wonders of the World You Can’t See Small Cities Regional Meetings Lay Off the Artisanal Ice, You Ignorant Hipsters The Netherlands’ New Solar Bike Lane Totally Rules FREE E-BOOK: Introduction to Permaculture Design and Sustainable Living 9. For Family-Friendly Cities, Build Play Beyond the Playground 10. Food Sleuth Radio – November Schedule 11. The Land Grab Out West 1. As Infrastructure Crumbles, Trillions Of Gallons Of Water Lost Imagine Manhattan under almost 300 feet of water. Not water from a hurricane or a tsunami, but purified drinking water — 2.1 trillion gallons of it.

That's the amount of water that researchers estimate is lost each year in this country because of aging and leaky pipes, broken water mains and faulty meters.

Quote of the Week: “The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.” ~ Disraeli Oregon Fast Fact: The state of Oregon has one city named Sisters and another called Brothers. Sisters got its name from a nearby trio of peaks in the Cascade Mountains known as the Three Sisters. Brothers was named as a counterpart to Sisters.

Fixing that infrastructure won't be cheap, which is something every water consumer is likely to discover.

In Chicago, fresh water is drawn into water intake cribs in Lake Michigan and piped to the enormous Jardine Water Filtration Plant on the lakefront, adjacent to Navy Pier.

Jardine is the largest water filtration plant in the world by volume, pumping about 1 billion gallons of purified drinking water out through hundreds of thousands of miles of pipes to 5 million people in Chicago and 125 surrounding communities.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Adapt and Reuse: Transforming the Old to the New Refurbishment, rehabilitation, retrofitting, adaptive reuse: Call it what you will, but the transformation of an existing building from one state to another can be an effective way to build community. At its most basic level, adaptive reuse takes an existing structure and modifies it to be used as something else. An auto repair shop renovated to serve as a diner. An empty warehouse turned into office spaces.

Throughout the country we have hundreds – thousands – of examples of existing structures that are under-used, or not used at all, that with the Adaptive reuse has its roots in historic preservation – incorporating the structure’s historical elements in a reuse project – and that’s an important contribution, but increasingly adaptive reuse applies in Page 1 of 5

other contexts that also offer other benefits. I like how the Archinode Studio site at MIT puts it: “A more accurate description of [adaptive reuse] is to prolong the period from cradle-to-grave of a building by retaining all or most of the structural system and as much as possible of other elements, such as cladding, glass, and interior partitions. Not only buildings of historic significance can be infused with new life.”

To access the full story, click here.

3. Big Beer Deceivers and Bullies Time for a Trust-Busting Beer Bust OK, that’s it — no more Mr. Nice Guy from me when covering the avarice and arrogance of corporate power! Their monopolistic grabfest has now turned personal.

It’s about beer, the nourishing nectar of a civilized society. From my teen years forward, I’ve done extensive and intensive consumer research on the brewer’s art, from the full array of ales to the most substantial of stouts. I weathered the depressing era of the 1970s to 2000, when Budweiser, Miller and a couple of other nationalizers of bland beer forced a diversity of livelier regional brands in our country out of business. And I rejoiced in the last decade or so as a flowering of upstart craft and new micro-brews has spread from city to city, creating an abundance of real gusto and local flavor from coast to coast.

However, ye who savor the flavorful hops and grain, do not just sit on your duffs, doing 12-ounce elbow bends at our favorite brewpub, for here come the Big Brew Bastards again, bigger and more menacing than ever. In fact, they’ve gone global, wielding their predatory marketing clout and political muscle to rule Beer World once and for all. SABMiller, now a South African conglomerate, is trying to take over Heineken, the world’s third largest beer maker. But Anheuser-Busch, now owned by a Belgian-Brazilian monopolist called InBev, is trying to buy SABMiller, creating a single beer behemoth that would control a third of all beer sales in the world. In our US-of-A, the monopolization is worse, with InBev and SABMiller effectively controlling three-fourths of our beer market. That duo could soon become uno if InBev swallows SABMiller, leading to higher prices, lower quality and fewer choices.

To access the full story, click here.

4. These Photos Showcase the Wonders of the World You Can’t See When we think of stunning photographs, we tend to picture landscapes on an epic scale. Equally awe-inspiring--and perhaps more difficult to shoot--is the incredibly small. Since 1974, the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition has celebrated vistas that are only visible when magnified hundreds of times. This year's winner is Wim van Egmond, curator of the Micropolitan Museum. (The museum is wonderfully known as "The Institute for the Promotion of the Less than One Millimetre.") Van Egmond took first place with a 250x magnification of Chaetoceros debilis, a marine plankton that forms a helical chain.

To access the photo series, click here.

5. Small Cities Regional Meetings Looking for a place where your small city can share successfully implemented projects and learn new ways to overcome challenges? Then be sure to attend the next quarterly meeting in your region!

Share, learn and grow with input from your peers and special guests. These events not only help you invest in the future of your small city, they provide LOC with insight into current regional events and help us better address the needs of small cities. Cities with a population of 5,000 or less are encouraged to attend. Cities of all sizes are welcomed.

Page 2 of 5

Click the region's date and location for current meeting details.

Portland Metro Willamette Valley South Coast Southern Valley Central Oregon Northeast Oregon East Oregon

Region 2: Region 3: Region 4: Region 5: Region 6: Region 7: Region 8:

December 18 - Dayton November 14 - Creswell November 19 - Coquille December 11 - Winston December 18 - Rufus April 15 - Pilot Rock April 16 - Sumpter

For more information, click here.

6. Lay Off the Artisanal Ice, You Ignorant Hipsters If you want to understand the latest trend in craft cocktails, you could do worse than to listen to Outkast. What's cooler than being cool is indeed ice cold. Specifically, it's stored at minus-2 degrees, sculpted with a Japanese band saw, and retails for $1 a cube.

Yes, artisanal ice is now a thing. In hipster meccas from Portland to Williamsburg, bars are serving up their drinks on extra-dense, extra-clear cubes, produced through a laborious process of freezing and carving. Cocktail connoisseurs swear the difference in flavor is worth the extra effort: In addition to being more aesthetically pleasing, the cubes' density and relatively large size mean they melt more slowly and dilute your drink less. But there's evidence that the fancy ice might not be the coolest thing ever to happen to the environment.

To access the full story, click here.

7. The Netherlands’ New Solar Bike Lane Totally Rules As if the Netherlands wasn’t cool enough already, they had to go and build a cycling lane made entirely out of solar cells. That’s right, a path for car-free transportation that will eventually generate enough energy to power three households.

So — not that we’re jealous or anything — now might be a good time to mention that, even though the Netherlands beat us to implementation, there IS actually a solar roadways initiative in the U.S. Two engineers in Idaho designed a solar street system that would make future roads look like a scene from Tron, according to this viral video…

To access the full story, click here.

8. FREE E-BOOK: Introduction to Permaculture Design and Sustainable Living We're thrilled to announce the availability of our FREE e-book, Introduction to Sustainable Living and Permaculture Design!

For a limited time, you can download the e-book FREE online: http://www.permaculturedesigntraining.com/ebook/ The Regenerative Leadership Institute is committed to taking the wisdom of permaculture mainstream, and we're thrilled to be able to offer this e-book freely to the larger community.

We hope you enjoy and look forward to offering more materials in the months and years to come Page 3 of 5

9. For Family-Friendly Cities, Build Play Beyond the Playground Darell Hammond builds playgrounds. From spiral slides to mini rock walls and giant games of tictac-toe, his non-profit KaBOOM! is known for its thousands of community-centric parks. But as childhood screen time and obesity rates rise, he’s been forced to ask an odd question about his kidfriendly structures. In Hammond’s words: “What if kids aren’t playing on them?” What if building big, beautiful playgrounds isn’t enough?

A new report released today, “Using Behavioral Economics to Create Playable Cities,” by the nonprofit suggests a fascinating alternative. Instead of setting spaces aside for play, why not integrate them into the streets, sidewalks and bus stops people use every day? If the park isn’t a destination — if it’s a bus stop in the shape of the word BUS that kids can lounge, jump and slide on — then they end up playing during their daily commute. And quick-access structures integrated into city streets could both keep families from leaving for the suburbs and encourage them to bike, walk and take the bus instead of driving cars.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Food Sleuth Radio – November Schedule Join Melinda Hemmelgarn, a registered dietitian and investigative nutritionist, for 28-minute, weekly interviews with national experts in food, health and agriculture. From physicians to film makers, writers, farmers, scientists and chefs, Food Sleuth Radio navigates our complicated food system.

You’ll discover how farm and food policies impact our environment and public health, and learn the secrets to eating well. Provocative, practical and personal, Food Sleuth Radio helps us think beyond our plates to find “food truth.”

November Food Sleuth Radio guests: November 6th: Mary Stein, M.S., Deputy Director, National Farm to School Network explains how increasing local food in schools – from regional farms to school gardens -- improves child nutrition, school performance and community economic development. www.farmtoschool.org November 13th: Janisse Ray, author of the “The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food,” describes hopeful, loving, collective actions to protect our sacred seeds, farmers’ rights and the future of our food. http://janisseray.weebly.com/books.html November 20th: Amanda Heyman, Minneapolis-based attorney, provides legal counsel for independent farmers & food businesses; she discusses legal aspects of GMO, organic and “natural” labeling, and threats from 2,4-D pesticide drift. http://www.jamborheyman.com/ November 27th (Happy Thanksgiving): Deborah Madison, America’s leading authority on vegetarian cooking, talks about her life, kitchen, garden, beauty, and her latest cookbooks: “The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, “ and 2014 James Beard Award-winning “Vegetable Literacy.” http://deborahmadison.com/press/ To access upcoming and archived editions of the Food Sleuth Radio, click here.

Page 4 of 5

11. The Land Grab Out West ALBUQUERQUE — LIKE a rerun of a bad Western, the battle over ownership of America’s public lands has revived many a tired and false caricature of those of us whose livelihoods and families are rooted in the open spaces of the West.

With a script similar to one used last spring by the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, a small contingent of opportunistic politicians is vowing to dispose of America’s national forests, conservation lands and open space. You may remember Mr. Bundy, whose refusal to pay more than $1 million in overdue grazing fees instigated a dangerous standoff with law enforcement officials. The confrontation made him the face of what some say is a renewed Sagebrush Rebellion to turn over America’s public lands to state control.

Mr. Bundy does not represent the West, however. And the campaign to transfer to the states or even sell off our shared lands should not be mistaken for the mainstream values of Westerners whose way of life depends on the region’s land and water.

To access the full story, click here.

Page 5 of 5