Grid Magazine January 2016 [#81]

IS LESS MORE? INSIDE THE MINDS (AND HOMES) OF PHILADELPHIA MINIMALISTS

TOWARD A SUSTAINABLE PHILADELPHIA JANUARY 2016 / ISSUE 81 GRIDPHILLY.COM

is it time for environmentalists to reconsider

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INSIDE: CHOOSE THE RIGHT ENERGY PROVIDER FOR YOUR HOME THE COOLEST BLOCK IN PHILLY · HOW DO YOU DEFINE THE NEW AMERICAN DREAM?  BREAD WINNERS: THE BEST NEW BAKERIES IN PHILADELPHIA

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CONTENTS D EPA RT M E N TS

08 To-Do List January is the month of indoor plants, home safety and dreaming of your garden

10 Comings and Goings Find out which doors are opening and closing, and who deserves kudos

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The minimalist room of Ayse Unver

Editorial A builders’ lobby puts profit before public safety, says the Clean Air Council

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“I … feel less pressure to try and ‘keep up with the Joneses’ because I don’t want what the Joneses have.”

– Krista Pfleger, 28, minimalist

Shop Local These new bakeries are on the rise

21 Made in Philly Staying dry with PiperWai’s natural deodorant

22 The Right Question Just because energy is renewable doesn’t mean it’s sustainable

24 The Big Picture Scholar Juliet Schor discusses the systemic cycle of American consumption

I N SI DE T H E I SSUE

37 Choosing Home Energy What you need to know about selecting an electricity provider

40 Blocks of Energy The ECA keeps a South Philly block cool, and a North Philly block fit

41 Energy Thieves Common culprits that steal energy in your home

ABOV E PH OTO BY M A RGO R E E D ; COV E R PH OTO BY J E R E M Y BLA KES LE E

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Minimalism in Philly

Events

The calm and clutter-free rooms of a rising movement

What to see and where to go: It’s warm inside, but the fun is outside

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Homestead Acts

Dispatch

Anna Herman breaks down the science of baking your own bread

One woman’s quest for simplicity provides a connection to her neighbors

57 Market Watch A soft spot for the sweet potato

ON THE COV ER

26 Going Nuclear Climate change brings atomic energy back to the future

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EDITOR’S NOTES

by

HEATHER SHAYNE BLAKESLEE

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH How keeping up can hold us down

I

very briefly nannied for a couple on the upper West Side of Manhattan— let’s call them Sarah and John. I once listened to them argue in front of me, in French, over the welfare of a child’s hat that had been purchased in Paris.

It was maybe eight weeks after 9/11, and four weeks since I had been laid off from my job of six years in the publishing industry.

The couple did not know I could almost understand them, and that I had ascertained that the hat in question probably cost the same as a day of my wages.

On another occasion, Sarah remarked to me that she and her husband “lived hand to mouth,” which she clarified by informing me that they had to “decide every summer whether to take the house on the Cape.”

It may have been Nantucket that she said.

Or maybe Martha’s Vineyard. In any case, these were people for whom occasionally not summering where they wintered was not enough—it was stressful. It took me a long time to understand how anyone could have so much and still feel as though they were just getting by.

At the time, I didn’t get it. I had much less than they did, but I thought I had enough. I could choose to quit a job I hated or keep a low-paying job I loved. I paid $400 in rent, had no debt, no dependents, no medical issues and only one prized possession: a nice guitar.

When I moved out of my tiny Brooklyn apartment a year later, I downsized.

At the age of 29 I moved into a 150-squarefoot cottage on a farm on the outskirts of Bethlehem, Pa., for a year of experimental living. I brought with me about 20 items of clothing, a handful of books, my guitar, a new boyfriend and a strong desire to start over. While I was there, I often thought about “enough.”

Some of it was material. Did I have enough firewood brought in for the night? Enough

whiskey in the cabinet to at least make it feel as if there was enough firewood?

The harder parts were mental. Did I have enough character to sunnily hold a temp job I hated while I tried to finish my second record? Enough equanimity to live with another human being in 150 square feet of space, settled in a strange and sparsely populated town?

When you strip down your world, you get very clear about what it is that will not only help you to grow, but to bloom. It’s freedom.

As I think about so many people still held back from their own happiness by the trap of keeping up with the Joneses, I hear a vast sea of other “up” idioms: not just catching up, but moving up, upward mobility, upselling, and upscaling. In my mind, they all lead to one place: up to our necks, and then up to our ears in our desires and perceived shortcomings, finally drowning and giving our better selves over to the mythical sailor Davy Jones, death incarnate. He’s the only member of the Jones clan we’re actively trying to avoid.

It’s heartening to hear about more and more people stopping that cycle and reflecting on tough questions that sit at the intersection of our personal “enough” and our world as a whole. Do we have enough energy to sustain our current lifestyle?

Enough water? Is it what we want anyway?

What are we willing to give up so that others down the street, or in far-flung places, have more?

How much is enough?

How much is enough?

editor-in-chief Alex Mulcahy managing editor Heather Shayne Blakeslee heather@gridphilly.com 215.625.9850 ext. 107 designer Kathleen White kathleen@gridphilly.com 215.625.9850 ext. 112 copy editors Andrew Bonazelli Walter Foley editorial assistant William Beisley writers Marilyn Anthony Peggy Paul Casella Susan Corcoran Anna Herman Emily Kovach Joshua Fields Millburn Jerry Silberman Hannah Waters Logan Welde illustrators Mike L. Perry James Olstein photgraphers Jeremy Blakeslee Margo Reed

___________ Sales & Marketing Manager Claire Margheim claire@gridphilly.com 215.625.9850 ext. 103 ad sales Wesley Kays-Henry wesley@gridphilly.com 215.625.9850 ext. 100 distribution Megan Matuzak megan@gridphilly.com 215.625.9850 ext. 106 published by

heather shayne blakeslee Managing Editor

heather@gridphilly.com

Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850 G R I D P H I L LY . C O M

TO-DO LIST 1. order your

2. go wassail a tree

3. watch out for winter mold

January may seem like a lull in your gardening endeavors, but there’s no better time to start dreaming about spring. Order your catalog now, and when February rolls around, you’ll be ready to start your planning in earnest.

Caroling to orchard trees is an ancient custom that scares away evil spirits and promotes a healthy harvest for the following year. Superstitions aside, an evening of drinking spiced cider and singing with family and friends is rewarding enough.

When cold rooms are adjacent to warm rooms in a house, it makes your drywall more susceptible to moisture and mold.

It can trigger nasal congestion, sneezing, coughing and respiratory infections and worsen asthma and allergic conditions.

seed catalogs

4. grow flowers

6. boost your

If the gray landscape gets you down, plant some indoor tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocuses or scillas to color your winter. The National Gardening Association has easy instructions on how to “push” bulbs to bloom early, or you can buy kits that are ready to bloom within weeks of bringing them home.

The best way to get your vitamins is from healthy food. To help keep your immune system strong, eat your greens! Look for dark, leafy greens and red and yellow vegetables. Want some vitamin C? Oranges or home-squeezed juice can give you a boost.

from bulbs inside

immunity

5. replace batteries in carbon

monoxide and smoke detectors Invest in carbon monoxide detectors, especially if you have an old heating system (or are forced to use energy-guzzling space heaters because you rent and can’t make efficiency improvements). If you don’t like the sound of chirping smoke detector batteries as they wear down, do what many fire departments recommend: Replace all of them at the same time once a year.

7. donate newly replaced items

8. shovel the neighbor’s walk

9. compost

Now that the holidays have granted you a new television or long-sought article of clothing, it’s time to donate its predecessor. Take them to a local Goodwill or charity.

Donate them instead of hiding them in the closet.

Shoveling stoops, stairs and sidewalks can be dangerous, especially for elderly neighbors or people who are trying to look after a gaggle of little ones. Lend a neighborly hand to those around you who may need assistance.

Make sure to add some of your fireplace ash to your compost bin this winter. The ashes will help maintain the neutral condition of the compost, and by spring it will have combined to provide you with a balanced fertilizer for your garden.

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fireplace ash

10. recycle your holiday trees and wreaths

Keep your holiday greens out of the landfill. These local programs recycle holiday greenery for use as mulch in parks and in beautification projects.

Greenlimbs Treecycling

2nd and Lombard streets, 4th and Bainbridge streets, 801 S. 9th St., 20th and Callowhill streets, 929 South St., 4th St. and Washington Ave. Jan. 9, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. $5 per tree; $3 per wreath

Philadelphia Streets Department Recycling

66th St. and Haverford Ave., 54th St. and Woodbine Ave., Broad and Christian streets, Washington Ln. and Ardleigh St., American and Thompson streets, 20th and Hartranft streets, Corinthian and Poplar streets Jan. 9 and Jan. 16, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

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Palmer and Front streets (closes at 2 p.m.), 13th and Reed streets, 3rd and Poplar streets, 43rd St. and Chester Ave., Taney and Pine streets.

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NEWS

news from around town

MAYOR KENNEY APPOINTS CHRISTINE KNAPP NEW LEADER OF MAYOR’S OFFICE OF SUSTAINABILITY

DAWN RITTENHOUSE RECEIVES WOMEN IN SUSTAINABILITY LEADERSHIP AWARD

Christine Knapp will head the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability during the Jim F. Kenney mayoral administration. Knapp has been a leader in Philadelphia’s sustainability community for over a decade; she led PennFuture’s Next Great City Campaign, headed Philadelphia’s Urban Sustainability Forum, and most recently served as deputy chief of staff and director of government affairs at the Philadelphia Water Department.

“I’m honored and excited to be chosen by Mayor-elect Kenney to serve as the director of the Office of Sustainability in his administration,” Knapp told Grid. “The office, under the leadership of Katherine Gajewski, has done a tremendous job over the last eight years, and I look forward to building on that work to ensure all Philadelphians can thrive in a healthy, sustainable city.”

Transition meetings between Knapp and Gajewski, who left the office voluntarily, have already begun. Knapp starts her new post this month.

On Nov. 19, Green Building and Design magazine awarded Dawn Rittenhouse a Women in Sustainability Leadership Award. Twenty women were chosen nationally to celebrate “the achievements of women who are making lasting change and strive to identify, support and give opportunities to future women in leadership.” Rittenhouse is a Delaware Nature Society board member and the director of Sustainable Growth at DuPont, a 200-yearold chemical company headquartered in Wilmington, De.

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GREENLIMBS’ FIFTH ANNUAL TREECYCLE PROGRAM Jan. 9 marks the fifth year that local environmental group Greenlimbs will host its Treecycle program. Inspired by the work of Northern Liberties Neighbors Association and Passyunk Square Civic Association, Greenlimbs’ Treecycle is a sustainable holiday tree disposal program

that diverts holiday greens from landfills by installing collection sites in Pennsport, Queen Village, Society Hill, Washington Square West and Bella Vista. The trees and greens will be chipped and donated to city parks and vacant lots for beautification projects.

The Treecycle project is supported by Bartlett Tree Experts and Whole Foods Market. Since the program began in 2011, Greenlimbs estimates that it has recycled over 1,500 trees, providing mulch to schoolyards and senior centers and deterring weed growth in vacant lots. Visit greenlimbs.com for a full list of Treecycling sites and volunteer opportunities.

PHILADELPHIA PRISON SYSTEM RECOGNIZED

BY EPA FOR FOOD RECOVERY PROJECT On Nov. 24, the Environmental Protection Agency recognized the Philadelphia Prison System with an honorable mention for innovation for its food recovery project. The Riverside Correctional Facility and House of Correction facilities produce an estimat-

ed 1.35 tons of wasted food per day. Their food waste is now being diverted from its usual course to the landfill and is instead sent to a composting facility or used to nourish the plant and vegetable gardens on prison grounds.

After the compost is finished, it is donated to local communities and used in the Philadelphia Prisons Orchard Project, which produces fruit for donation and use within the prison system.

The new composting procedure was conceived by Laura Cassidy, executive assistant to the commissioner and Green Program coordinator/project manager in 2013. It is estimated to save the city $31,000 per year in landfill fees. It also works to provide inmates with hands-on job training in horticulture and urban gardening.

PHILADELPHIA WATER RECOGNIZES POPI’S ITALIAN RESTAURANT AS 2015 STORMWATER PIONEER On Nov. 19, Popi’s Italian Restaurant in South Philadelphia was named Philadelphia Water Department’s (PWD) 2015 Stormwater Pioneer. Gina Rucci, Popi’s co-owner, was awarded a plaque to celebrate the stormwater-diverting rain gardens the restaurant installed, which were funded by a $94,860 grant garnered through PWD’s Stormwater Management Incentives Program. PWD also honored the managing and design team for the project—Lakash Constructors, Wilkinson & Associates and Ruppert Landscape.

PHILADELPHIA UNIVERSITY AND THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY SIGN INTENT TO MERGE The boards of trustees of Thomas Jefferson University and Philadelphia University announced on Dec. 17 that they had signed a letter of intent to exclusively pursue the integration of the two universities. The merger will develop over the course of a threeyear transition, in which time Philadelphia University will retain its name.

This new partnership is expected to ex-

pand the academic dynamism of both universities by integrating studies to develop new courses.

The merger is the third for Jefferson University since Stephen K. Klasko became chief executive in September 2013. The deal is expected to be finalized early this year.

A PHILADELPHIA CLIMATE ADAPTATION REPORT AND A CARBON REDUCTION REPORT ARE RELEASED Growing Stronger: Toward a Climate-Ready Philadelphia, Philadelphia’s first climate adaptation report, was released by the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability on Dec. 1. The 60page report details Philadelphia’s climate projections, vulnerability assessments for city-owned assets and adaptation strategies for a “warmer and wetter climate.”

Drexel University also released Options for Achieving Deep Reductions in Carbon Emissions in Philadelphia by 2050, a report funded by the university’s Institute for Energy and the Environment and prepared for the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Sustainability. It shows possible pathways for reducing Philadelphia’s carbon emissions 80 percent over 2012 levels by the year 2050.

PENNSYLVANIA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY TO AWARD NEIGHBORHOOD PLACEMAKER GRANTS On Dec. 22, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) began accepting ideas from Philadelphia-based organizations for its Neighborhood Placemaker Grants. The grants will donate between $15,000 and $25,000 to help fund horticultural projects that enhance or create sustainable public spaces, build communities, or exemplify Philadelphia as a city with notable civic landscapes.

PHS will host an information session Jan. 6 at 5 p.m. at its headquarters, 100 North 20th Street. Letters of interest will be accepted until Feb. 12 and can be submitted through phsonline.org.

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GU E ST EDITOR IAL

HOUSE OF CARDS Public safety and energy efficiency are under attack by a cost-cutting builders’ lobby by logan welde

W

hat if I were to tell you there was a system in Pennsylvania, and in most states, that—in principle—ensures that new buildings are built to the safest-known standards, with the best-known technology to save lives and reduce energy consumption? What if I were to tell you that that system exists, but the Pennsylvania Builders Association has hijacked it and all but ensured that new codes will not be adopted in Pennsylvania?

That’s exactly what’s happening now.

This is not only a critical safety issue, but an important environmental issue. The Pennsylvania Builders Association (PBA), in a petition to the state, argues that the adoption of new codes on the current cycle is “bad public policy and harmful to its members.” Common sense energy-efficiency standards aren’t being implemented because the builders’ lobby wants construction to be as cheap as possible, regardless of the consequences.

Pennsylvania’s building code adoption process was, originally, among the best in

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the country. It was an “opt-out” system. It allowed for the new codes from the International Code Council to be automatically adopted every three years, but also allowed for the experts—the Review and Advisory Council (RAC)—to exclude provisions unworkable for Pennsylvania.

This process worked; the 2009 codes were adopted without a hitch. But when a proposed law called for all new one- and two-family homes to be equipped with fire sprinklers, builders were furious—they worried it would cost them too much, despite the fact that the U.S. Fire Administration estimates that sprinklers could prevent thousands of deaths, save hundreds of millions of dollars in property losses and lower home insurance.

In response, the PBA lobbied state legislators and then-Governor Corbett to change the system. The PBA won and got a law that all but guaranteed the end of code updates in Pennsylvania.

This law, Act 1 of 2011, flipped the process to an “opt-in,” and required a super-major-

ity (a two-thirds majority) of the RAC to adopt any new codes at all—all but killing building code adoption in Pennsylvania.

In 2012, no new codes were adopted.

These revisions included energy saving provisions that would save homeowners thousands of dollars per year in energy bills.

There was hope that the 2015 codes would be adopted, but the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (PDL&I), which oversees building codes, shattered that hope. PDL&I arbitrarily interpreted Act 1 in a way to forever disallow the RAC from adopting new codes that it had passed over before. This disallowed the RAC from adopting better energy codes since many did not change between 2012 and 2015. The RAC objected, but felt bound by it. As one RAC member quoted in their May meeting minutes put it, the interpretation would result in a code “so confusing that there’s not a person... that will be able to understand this process.”

Nevertheless, the RAC subcommittees set out to review the 2015 code and voted IL LUSTRATIO N BY M IKE L. PERRY

to adopt over 98 percent of the changes.

But when the full RAC committee voted on the well-reasoned decisions of the subcommittees, due to the super-majority requirement on voting, it adopted only 16 of the almost 2,000 revisions.

Not adopting new building codes in Pennsylvania is extremely troubling and dangerous. New building codes keep buildings and residents safe, can drastically lower utility bills and will help Pennsylvania reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

By its own admission, PDL&I declared that not adopting new codes is against the best interest of the public; that it “negatively impacts Pennsylvania’s ability to compete with other states.”

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, generating electricity from power plants is the single largest source of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. Buildings in suburban and rural areas consume up to 40 percent of the total energy produced; in urban areas, buildings consume up to 70 percent of the total energy produced. Constructing buildings that are more energy efficient allows Pennsylvania to greatly reduce the amount of energy produced and lower its greenhouse gas emissions.

The Clean Air Council is suing the state of Pennsylvania to challenge the code adoption process so the state can move forward with better, safer buildings and cleaner air.

The City of Philadelphia requested permission to adopt the 2015 codes, but PDL&I refused.

Gov. Tom Wolf has the ability to fix this broken system through his oversight of PDL&I, but has chosen not to do so. Before his election, he pledged to “work to amend Act 1 of 2011 so that our codes remain upto-date, we are promoting the highest energy efficiency standards, and Pennsylvania residents are living and working in safe and healthy environments.” Pennsylvania’s legislature could fix this, too.

This issue affects millions of homeowners from a financial and safety standpoint. If we can’t adopt new building codes in Pennsylvania, the state loses a valuable way to address climate change, homeowners lose money and the unluckiest of us will lose our lives. Only the builders win.

Logan Welde is a staff attorney with the Clean Air Council.

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Mighty Bread Co. loaves, left to right: toasted sesame, apricot hazelnut and rustic country

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MAGAZ

Bakeries & Cafés by emily kovach

New Bakers, Bakeries and Cafés About Town For many of us, the workday begins with coffee and a bagel at the corner café and ends with a baguette from the local bakery. It's a simple and satisfying pleasure to bite into a still-warm, aromatic sourdough, or see that our favorite kind of muffin hasn't sold out yet.

As generic chain cafés amass all over town, and as bread from the supermarket leaves you cold, take heart that Philly’s passionate artisans will leaven your spirits.

From beer-boiled bagels to cherry-cola doughnuts, here are a few of Philly’s rising bakeries and cafés.

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SHOP L OCAL

THE LITTLE BIRD BAKERY & CAFE 517 S. 5th Street

Jessica Nolen has already delighted many local diners with delicious sweets through the dessert menus at Brauhaus Schmitz and Whetstone Tavern, both owned by her husband Jeremy Nolen. This past November, she opened her own shop, aptly named the Little Bird Bakery & Cafe (her maiden name, Vogel, translates to “little bird” in German).

A graduate of the Restaurant School, she has demonstrated a knack for all sorts of scratch-made baked goods: Croissants, breads, cookies, tortes, pies, cheesecakes and many more treats stock the shelves in her cozy café. But the most popular menu item so far? “Baguettes!” Nolen says. “People want baguettes all the time. I've had to up my pars daily to keep up!”

Her vision for the café, which also serves coffee and light lunch fare, was simple: a bakery where locals stop by for their daily needs, as well as for special occasions. “I want it to be a place where you can come in and I'll remember your face and we can chat about the holidays, or whatever came to mind,” she says.

Lemon bundt cake

FIKIRA BAKERY fikirabakery.com

Fresh baked soft pretzels

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Ailbhe Pascal moved to Philadelphia in 2012 to pursue urban farming, and picked up bread baking skills along the way. Pascal (who prefers they/them as a pronoun) soon began bartering baked goods for art, or to thank friends who helped them move. In August of 2015, Pascal decided to start a business, and began renting space in the Center for Culinary Enterprises communal kitchen on 48th and Pine streets in West Philly. “Sustainable food is so affordable if you do it in bulk,” Pascal says. “So, scaling up just made so much sense.”

Fikira, which means “idea” or “thought” in Arabic, is a fitting name for the business, which is deeply informed by Pascal’s feminist, community-centric politics. “I became very fed up with homophobia and transphobia in my family and ran away,” Pascal says. “But I didn’t just run away; I ran into something and now my life is my own—how do I make it as fully realized as possible? That translates into Fikira, trying to live that truth.”

The bakery’s seasonal menu ranges from bialys to muffins to daikon dumplings, stuffed with greens grown at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. Customers order through Fikira’s website, and within 48 hours, everything is delivered by bicycle to their doorstep. The deliveries go all over the city, and soon Fikira will be able to accept EBT and SNAP payments. “That’s necessary, especially when people living in food deserts are told they don’t deserve fresh food,” Pascal says. “Of course they do! Everyone does!”

S H OP L OCAL

FRONT STREET CAFÉ 1253 N. Front Street

Toasted sesame

MIGHTY BREAD CO. mightybreadco.com

“People buy a loaf of bread because it makes them happy,” says Chris DiPiazza, whose baking gig is a stark contrast from his job as an IT professional where, he says, “people only call when something’s wrong.” DiPiazza, a South Philly resident, had been a bread baking hobbyist for a few years, and was educated and motivated by classes at prestigious culinary programs like the San Francisco Baking Institute. In November, he struck up a relationship with the owner of Stargazy, a British bakery on Passyunk Avenue, and began selling loaves from within the shop. Everything DiPiazza makes is naturally leavened, meaning a live culture is used in lieu of commercial yeast, and made in small batches. He prefers simple, classic bread flavors, like rosemary peppercorn and toasted sesame loaves, two very popular items so far.

This month, DiPiazza introduces a bread subscription program. Members will order through Mighty Bread Co.’s website, and for $32 a month, will receive a loaf of bread plus one other local, artisan-made product every week, available to pick up at Stargazy or Old City Coffee. While he plans to expand to a wholesale business in the future, he’s excited about the CSA model. “It’s a way for people to be more involved in what’s being made,” he says.

“I do everything from buying ingredients to mixing dough, so it will be a very direct relationship. I think people like that.”

Front Street Café, on the corner of Front and Thompson streets in Fishtown, is an ambitious, multi-functional establishment open daily from 6 a.m. until midnight (2 a.m. on weekends!), with organic coffee and fresh juice, a full bar, and breakfast, lunch, and dinner service. Owner Nicole Barclay is a longtime resident of the neighborhood who was frustrated with the lack of healthy options to fit her dairy-, wheat- and meat-free diet.

The menu, 85 percent of which is vegan, reflects her commitment to fresh, healthy, responsibly sourced food with choices like kale-flecked hotcakes, a BBQ pulled mushroom sandwich, and sustainably harvested salmon from Skuna Bay, Vancouver.

The building itself embodies the philosophy of the café: Real estate developer Lee Larkin worked to uphold the integrity of the late-1800s architectural details of the building while incorporating sustainable elements. Additionally, 90 percent of the building materials were reclaimed, recycled or repurposed, and all of the tabletops, booths and banquettes in the space were made from reclaimed wood and materials. The outdoor garden patio was designed to allow rain runoff to permeate the soil and naturally irrigate the surrounding greenery. Front Street Café may be the only spot in town where the pancakes are green, but the building is greener.

Coffee and juice bar

Tostada grain bowl

Golden Glow smoothie

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SHOP L OCAL

Modern Munchies Coming soon: vegan doughnuts and bagel spreads

Raspberry lemonade, vanilla sprinkles and chocolate pistachio doughnuts

DOTTIE’S DONUTS 4529 Spring field Avenue

Matt Quinn and Jeff Poleon met while slinging vegan pizzas together at Blackbird Pizza, and began to brainstorm what other kinds of vegan foods the city was missing.

The answer seemed obvious. “Philadelphia has every other kind of vegan food, but not doughnuts!” says Poleon. “New York has Dun-Well, L.A. has Donut Friend, and we thought, ‘Why doesn’t Philly have a place like that?’” In March of 2014, they opened as a wholesale business, quickly amassed coffee shop accounts, and currently crank out up to 60 dozen doughnuts a day.

Soon after the new year, Dottie’s will open a storefront in West Philly, adjacent to its commercial kitchen—part of a larger goal to become a small local chain. The space will hold 10 tables and sell uniquely flavored doughnuts (e.g. matcha pistachio and cherry-cola), bagels from neighbor Four Worlds Bakery, plus some new additions: jelly-filled doughnuts, apple fritters and fresh-made “dots” (doughnut holes) tossed in flavored sugars. On the coffee front, Elixr Coffee will be on drip and espresso, and single-origin pour overs from a rotating roster of local roasters will be available. The shop’s aesthetic is clean and modern, but Poleon assures there will be playful touches, too. “We’re not stuffy at all,” he says. “We still love the image of Homer Simpson eating his doughnuts.”

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Fresh everything bagels

PHILLY STYLE BAGELS 1451 E . Columbia Avenue

After wowing crowds of early risers at their Saturday pop-ups at Pizzeria Beddia, bagel-obsessed duo Collin Shapiro and Jonathon Zilber are on the verge of opening a brickand-mortar location to call their own. A combination of loans and a successful Indiegogo campaign secured them the space (at the corner of Columbia and Sepviva, right on Palmer Park in Fishtown) and a righteous oven (the Montague Hearth Bake 25P-2, or as they call it, “our life force”). The small takeout-only joint will channel a classic bagel shop vibe. “We aren’t sandwich renegades,” says Shapiro. “We want to put all the excitement into the bagels themselves.”

Their signature Yards beer-boiled bagels will pair with familiar breakfast and lunch fillings—cream cheese, lox, eggs and bacon, and chicken salad—as well as vegan spreads, and locally sourced veggies. Coffee from Counter Culture will round out the menu, and they hope to soon add other carb-y delights, like babka and challah.

MADE in PH ILLY

PiperWai allnatural charcoal infused deodorant

NO SWEAT PiperWai natural deodorant rocks a crowdfunding campaign, hits the small screen by william beisley

J

ess Edelstein, CEO and co-founder of PiperWai, has a rote but enthusiastic way of discussing her all-natural cream deodorant, which is understandable considering their recent bombardment of interviews. Edelstein, along with co-founder and CFO Sarah Ribner, had four interviews the day before their meetup with Grid, not to mention an appearance on ABC’s primetime entrepreneur-based reality game show, “Shark Tank.” So, why are so many people taking notice of PiperWai’s deodorant?

“There weren’t any options on the market for organic deodorant before PiperWai that lasted all day and didn’t irritate sensitive skin,” says Edelstein. “It impresses us every day, and we created it.”

PiperWai’s gender-neutral formula absorbs sweat instead of preventing it, replaces the magnesium lost when perspiring and restores the skin’s pH balance, preventing the buildup of bacteria that causes odor.

The ingredient list features tapioca starch, coconut oil, milk of magnesia, shea butter, various flower extracts and activated charcoal powder, which is the key to its effectiveness.

As to the recipe, Edelstein says they had to do research into body odor and why it occurs. “It took a lot of experimentation and trial and error. When I came up with a formula that worked really well, I gave some to Sarah. She was definitely a little skeptical at first.”

But that skepticism faded when Ribner

used the product while volunteering in South America in November 2013. Upon her return to Philly, the pair discussed developing a brand, and by February of 2014 PiperWai was incorporated. PiperWai received a family loan of $2,000 to begin production. Soon after, they won $7,000 in a business pitch competition at the Columbia School of Business, and that was followed by an Indiegogo campaign that raised $27,818 in June of 2015.

Edelstein, 26, is a Center City real estate agent by day and hails from Merion Station, though she now resides in Queen Village. Ribner is from West Mount Airy and is pursuing her MBA at the Columbia Business School in New York City. Despite their busy schedules, they were able to handcraft batches of PiperWai after work at the Greensgrow Community Kitchen in Kensington.

After 16 months of handcrafting, using pastry bags to fill their jars, they knew they'd need manufacturing assistance.

They delegated production to Power Line Packaging, a family-owned cosmetics facility in Conshohocken. The pair still handcraft emergency batches to ensure that they can fulfill the influx of new orders.

PiperWai is now carried by over 40 brick-and-mortar shops, and by online distributors. Their roll-on stick deodorant is in development, and they’re confident that it will expand the company even more, making converts out of aluminum-based antiperspirant users. Edelstein and Ribner imagine creating an entire line of natural cosmetic products, but for now they’re focused on refinement.

“We have this really awesome product that so many people love,” Edelstein says.

“Let’s focus on getting this product out there and dominating our space in the natural deodorant market by trying to convince people who are wearing antiperspirant and won’t switch to natural deodorant because they think it won’t work. PiperWai works, and it’s not going to sacrifice the effectiveness of something that isn’t good for them.

PiperWai is good for you.”

PiperWai can be purchased online at piperwai. com and purchased locally at Fair Food Farmstand, Weaver’s Way Co-Op, Bikram Philadelphia, Essene Market, Balance Health Center, Juju Salon & Organics and Pickwick Pharmacy.

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the RIGH T QUE STION

BLOWING IN THE WIND When it comes to electricity generation, renewable and sustainable don’t mean the same thing by jerry silberman

Q

uestion: Is large-scale renewable electricity production sustainable?

The Right Question: Is renewable energy the future for human society?

The recognition that burning fossil fuels may burn us out of the planet’s ecosystem has made the abandonment of fossil fuel resources the right choice, regardless of how much remains buried in the ground. We must begin switching over to electricity generated from the sun and from wind as soon as possible if we hope to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Did you notice the equation of “energy” and “electricity” in the questions above?

Probably not, because most public discussion about renewables is only about electricity. However, only one-third of the en22

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ergy we use comes in the form of electricity.

Most energy use comes overwhelmingly from direct fossil fuel consumption—gasoline, jet fuel, natural gas for cooking and heating—which means that travel and our home lives need to be rethought.

Nevertheless, since fossil fuels also generate the majority of our electricity, moving to sustainable, renewable electric generation would be a step in the right direction to limit global warming.

But we need to understand that “renewable” and “sustainable” mean very different things. Renewable sources of energy are those reproduced day in and day out by the elemental forces bringing energy to our planet—primarily sunlight, but also gravitation, expressed in tides and the rotation of

the planet on its axis and in its solar orbit.

The motions of air and water, the heat and light arriving from the sun, are concentrated energy forces that we may capture to do useful work for us.

However, they are never as concentrated as fossil fuels, where chemical and geological processes have taken eons to distill the energy. Unlike fossil fuels, these renewable energies will be available for billions of years, but we can only get a limited amount every day. Renewable energy is the goose that lays the golden eggs: one each day, as long as we don’t get greedy.

Sustainable energy uses renewable energy without depleting non-renewable resources. Unfortunately, large-scale energy projects require massive amounts of fossil IL LUSTRATIO N BY G RI D STA FF

fuels. Is it really a sustainable generating system to have a windmill 150 feet high— or 500 feet high, as are some now planned off the shore of Scotland—using thousands of tons of concrete, steel and fiberglass (or high-tech plastic) for its vanes, placed offshore by a huge construction ship operated by a diesel motor? Without a variety of machines that burn fossil fuels, and the substantial greenhouse gases they emit, its construction is impossible.

While the windmill will generate a lot of electricity over its lifetime, the electricity it generates cannot power the processes needed to manufacture a replacement windmill when it reaches the end of its useful life. This technology is a one-hit wonder.

Much smaller windmills, built of local stone and wood, with some iron in their gears and drivetrain, have, in the past, done much more than grind flour. They have made paper, woven cloth, sawed wood and performed many other complex tasks. The direct harvest of mechanical energy to run machinery can be used with incredible versatility. At the end of their lifetimes, such machines can leave the world as they found it, having done extensive useful work over decades—perhaps centuries—with essentially no consumption of non-renewable resources.

The output of such machines is necessarily less than their giant, fossil-fuel-subsidized cousins, but that is why they are sustainable. Only if we accept serious limits on the amount of energy at our disposal can we get to the point where we rely on renewable energy, sustainably generated.

Using wind energy directly to power tasks that we need is a more efficient use than producing electricity. Why generate electricity to run a faraway motor or water pump, when the work could be done directly where the power is created? Resources and energy are saved. It will be our choice to use some of that wind power to generate electricity where there is no alternative, for example, for lighting.

Learning to live within a sustainable budget of electricity will prove to be our biggest challenge in combating climate change.

Real. Innovative.

Collaborative. Design.

“The move from environmental friendliness to the higher bar of integral sustainability and regenerative design demands a new type of design professional, one who is deeply collaborative, ethically grounded, empathically connected and technologically empoweredour M.S. in Sustainable Design program will prepare you to be that kind of professional.”

–Rob Fleming, Program Director

We are currently accepting applications.

For more information, please contact us at 215.951.2943 or by email at GradAdm@philau.edu.

Jerry Silberman is a cranky environmentalist and union negotiator who likes to ask the right question and is no stranger to compromise.

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the B IG PICTUR E

RUNNING IN CIRCLES When the American Dream is a nightmare, it’s time to wake up interview by heather shayne blakeslee

F

or the last few decades, scholar and author Juliet Schor has been studying Americans: the way that we work, play and spend. She’s made her life’s work of understanding the economic and cultural forces that mold us—as well as what makes us happy, and what doesn’t—in seminal books like The Overworked American, The Overspent American and Born to Buy. In her book Plenitude, and through her foundational work at the Center for a New American Dream, she has been a proponent of slowing down and examining what is important to us—as individuals, as families, and as a country—all as a means to help us live our values, realize our potential and, hopefully, save our planet.

Many people in America and elsewhere are finding themselves on a hamster wheel of work, spending, debt, stress, more work.

It’s not making us any happier, and, as you’ve pointed out, it’s also killing the planet. So, why are we still doing it?

JS: We get trapped in this cycle of work and spend in large part because of the nature of jobs. So, when people take jobs, they don’t have much choice about hours. … The basic argument is that employers set the hours of jobs and the people who want the jobs have to go along with it. … There is income that goes along with that, and people spend it. Basically, Americans... aren’t doing too much saving, so we tend to spend what we get—except for the people higher, closer up to the top of the distribution. ...

Now, there’s another important aspect as to why we’re in the hamster wheel, and that is that consumption is a higher social activity. … The system is generating more for people, people are spending it, so lifestyles and consumption habits are getting more and more expensive. A kind of “upscaling” of lifestyle goes on, and people have to sort of work more to earn the money to keep up with the ratcheting-up of lifestyles.

So, there’s kind of a defensive component to it, because it’s important for people to not fall behind: Staying in whatever income group, or social reference group, as we call it… is really important to people.

We’re very social animals.

It’s gotten much, much worse because the income distribution has gotten so much worse. The top one percent is taking all of the gains. Incomes are stagnating, but the kind of aspirational consumption is still going up. … So, it’s a complicated process with those three big dimensions.

Do Americans have a specific, or different, relationship with time and money than other cultures?

JS: Well, we used to be more like other wealthy countries. So, from about the 1870s until after the second World War, the U.S. was the international leader in work/time reduction. It’s hard to believe at the moment, but we’re the first ones that got Saturdays off and a number of other landmark reforms in terms of working hours. …

Our path of reducing work hours through productivity growth stopped, and we kind of plateaued for a while, and then

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IL LUSTRATIO N BY JAM ES OLSTEI N

in the 1970s we started getting increases in working hours. … So, we now have quite high working hours compared to other wealthy countries. In the neighborhood of 300 - 400 more hours a year than in a place like Germany, another very wealthy country, or France, and some of the other European countries. ...

I don’t see it as a primarily deep cultural difference in the way that some people argue. Some people say, “Oh, it’s the Puritan work ethic” or “Americans work so hard.”

Actually, I think the more important thing has been the growth of inequality. There’s some really good research showing that more unequal countries have longer hours of work.

When Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In came out, my personal reaction to it was, “Lean into what?” Even if I was a super, super ambitious person, I’m not going to go work for a big company that pollutes the environment, and I don’t really want a seat at that table. I want to be at a smaller table that’s more aligned with my values. But if all of us do that, do we lose the ability to change the larger game if people are opting out?

JS: I don’t think so. Actually, the more opt-out there is, the more opting-out is a good option, [and] the more the core economy [must] respond. Because it means that people have an alternative.

When that is all there is, people are much less likely to resist the things in that world that they don’t like, whether it’s excessive working hours, too much stress, abusive bosses, lack of meaning in a corporate culture, corporate malfeasance—any of those things.

When you have a good alternative, you can go. We’ve seen, for example, in certain professions—accounting is a certain wellknown one—[where there is an] exodus of women on account of the inability to combine work and family, which led that profession to change, and to become much more flexible for people who wanted reasonable work schedules. So, I think the presence of an option is one of the most powerful levers for change.

Talk a little bit about the Center for a New American Dream, and their mission of raising awareness about the downside to hyper-consumer culture and giving people re-

sources on conscious consuming and green living.

JS: In the early ’90s, a number of us who worked on consumer issues had begun talking about the fact that almost no one in the environmental movement was addressing consumption.

It was a very production- and policy-oriented movement, which is fine; those are the really key things. But we believe there’s also a role for households and changes in consumer culture and that, ultimately, you were going to have to have changes in consumer culture to have a sustainable economy and society. ...

At that time, [I] was working on the question we had just been talking about:

We have a campaign, a few years after we were founded, which was called More of What Really Matters and asking people, “What really matters?” And the answer to that is more time, more nature. But that meant more sustainability, attention to the planet. More community, more fairness.

We were really focused on doing this in a way that was bringing people together, reducing inequality, ensuring that the goods that we purchased are not made with slave labor, exploited labor. We really wanted to inject a conversation about consumption into the environmental movement. …

It wasn’t just because of us, but, 10, 15 years after we started, all of the major environmental groups were finally talk-

“As to why we’re in the hamster wheel...

The system is generating more for people, people are spending it, so lifestyles and consumption habits are getting more and more expensive. A kind of ‘upscaling’ of lifestyle goes on.”

that sort of excessive busyness, and the work-and-spend cycle and what that was doing to people and our culture. So, we came together and founded a group that was oriented to raising questions about how we were living, and we sort of had the motto of “more fun, less stuff.” Kind of quality of life over quantity of stuff. And that has been a really important theme.

Since that time, there has been a tremendous amount of social science research on the question of what provides quality of life. [It supported] the approach we were taking, which was to say, just giving people more money and more stuff is not the root to happiness, well-being, life satisfaction.

Other things matter a lot more.

T HIS EXC ER PT ED INT ERVIE W H AS BE E N E D I TE D FO R CLA R I TY

ing about how people live. It became a really central part of the sustainability discourse. Since then, we’ve moved on to a place where it’s not just about individuals, individual behavior change—which is an important thing—but we’re doing a lot more around organizing community. We believe that, particularly with the kinds of changes that are going to come from global warming and climate chaos, it’s really important for us to come together as a community: to build resilience, to build equity, to build an engaged citizenry.

Juliet Schor is a professor of sociology at Boston College.

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THE ENERGY ISSUE

The partially constructed containment vessel at the Phipps Bend Nuclear Power Plant in Tennessee

THE ENERGY ISSUE

THE NUCLEAR OPTION Can atomic energy help us win the war against global warming? by

“

heather shayne blakeslee

photos by jeremy

blakeslee

W

e’re not a major. We’re a minor,” says Chris Peters, 47, a nuclear scientist with the College of Engineering at Drexel University.

He’s sitting in the unremarkable lab where his students will learn this year about nuclear science, as well as electrical and computer engineering. The ceilings are low, the lighting is bad and scattered throughout the room are machines whose faces are crammed with dials, switches and knobs surrounded by all manner of wires. It’s not a glamorous place. But it’s an increasingly popular one.

Five years ago, the nuclear engineering program didn’t exist at Drexel. But companies are hiring nuclear scientists at a growing rate, and students are taking note.

At schools like University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and Idaho State University, demand for nuclear science degrees is booming. “I've been in touch with Michigan. They’re full,” says Peters of his alma mater, and he notes that Drexel’s nascent program already boasts 30 students. Professor Kenan Unlu, 60, is the director of the Radiation Science and Engineering Center at PSU. He says that typical nuclear science classrooms there have grown over the past decade from approximately 15 students to 100.

While the Drexel nuclear engineering program is only a minor, nuclear power is a major part of the energy mix in Philadelphia already. A surprising 40 percent of Philadelphia’s energy, delivered by the East Subregion grid powered by ReliabilityFirst Corporation, is fueled by nuclear energy.

Nuclear is also an energy source that think tanks are looking to when creating scenarios to reduce greenhouse emissions. One such study, prepared by Drexel University in November 2015, outlines power mix options to help the city achieve its greenhouse gas reduction targets. It shows nuclear power contributing 27 to 40 percent of our electricity in 2050, when Philadelphia hopes to have reduced emissions by 80 percent over 2012 levels.

Philadelphia, like it or not, is an atomic town.

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THE ENERGY ISSUE

The shadow of nuclear energy “The future of nuclear energy is bright,” Peters says, “if it’s done properly.” In his cautious optimism, you can hear both the promise of nuclear power—a domestic, low-carbon energy source—as well as the dark echoes of its Cold War history.

Environmental groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) are skeptical about nuclear power’s cost and safety, and Greenpeace is still staunchly opposed to any further investment in nuclear power, period. They cite chronic cost overruns to build new plants, safety concerns with operations and spent-fuel storage, unproven technology in next-generation atomic power, and

an increasing risk of proliferation, in which facilities in our country and others that enrich uranium used for fuel can also produce nuclear weapons. Edwin Lyman, 51, senior global security scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), says, “Once you have that capability, then it’s really just the word of the country that has it that it’s just using it for peaceful purposes.”

Greenpeace also believes that investing in nuclear energy won’t help the world decarbonize our economy fast enough.

“If you want to have an impact on climate change,” says Jim Riccio, a nuclear analyst for the organization since 2001, “you have to do things that are fast and affordable, and that rules out nuclear power.” Most of

all, he argues, if we ramp up wind and solar production, we won’t need to split atoms.

Yet, nuclear power has some new champions. To an increasing number of vocal scientists and academics who also consider themselves environmentalists—the stereotypical kind who drive electric cars, have solar panels on their homes and write checks to the Sierra Club—nuclear power is a piece of the energy mix that will help us decarbonize our economy without destroying the planet in the process.

A cohort of high-profile climatologists such as James Hansen, scores of aligned conservation biologists and other thought leaders have begun to argue that an intractable opposition to nuclear power is no longer a tenable position. This past November, The Boston Globe ran an opinion piece called “Inconvenient Truths for the Environmental Movement,” written by political scientist Joshua Goldstein and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker. They argue that denial of facts cuts both ways: Environmentalists can’t ridicule climate-science deniers and then cherry-pick facts about nuclear energy to suit their politics.

Our strategies for using nuclear power may be determined by many factors. Energy prices, as they have for decades, will likely be a primary motivator. Increasingly, we may see shifts in the risk tolerance of individual communities presented with the choice between nuclear power and gasfired power plants. Regulation will be key, and that is fueled by an unreliable and intermittent power source: political will.

A divided public

The abandoned containment vessel at the Hartsville Nuclear Plant in Tennessee

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While Greenpeace’s Riccio says that both “Wall Street and Main Street have abandoned nuclear power,” it’s clear that, as a nation, we are divided on the issue. Even after the 1979 reactor meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island facility and the subsequent accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima, a 2015 Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans—51 percent—support nuclear energy, down from a high of 65 percent five years ago. An earlier poll shows that support is higher in areas that already have a nuclear power plant, which shouldn’t come as a surprise: They create high-paying jobs. The economic rewards are with-

“If you want to have an impact on climate change, you have to do things that are fast and affordable, and that rules out nuclear power.”

- Jim Riccio, nuclear analyst for Greenpeace

out the health issues that accompany the burning of fossil fuels, which produce air pollution and, in the case of coal, more radiation than a nuclear plant. (Disclosure: I grew up near the PPL nuclear power plant in Berwick, Pennsylvania, where my father worked. Family friends, including George Imel, quoted later in this article, work or worked as nuclear scientists.)

Losing an already-operating nuclear power plant can be like losing a military base or any other large employer in a small town: Residents worry about the loss of high-paying jobs, tax revenues and the patronage to local businesses. A plan to shutter the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in Scriba, New York, is causing significant concern in the community, which may not survive the closure. Low natural gas prices have rendered the FitzPatrick plant unprofitable.

Not every community has embraced a nuclear plant. In South Carolina, Greenpeace’s Riccio says that small business is suffering because of the ongoing construction of a new nuclear power plant. “You actually have a rate revolt going on by the small business association in South Carolina,” he says, “because they’ve had about a 25 percent rate increase and at least six rate hikes since they started building.” The plant is still under construction and isn’t producing energy yet, so taxpayers are essentially paying for energy they aren’t yet receiving.

For others still, the promise of nuclear energy will never justify the safety risks.

For years, activists tried to shut down the Vermont Yankee plant in Vernon, Vermont, and the new governor was elected in part on the promise to close its doors. It finally closed this year, with approximate-

ly 20 years still left to go on its operating license, but it was economic forces—specifically, the low price of natural gas—that dealt the fatal blow.

“I just visited the Vermont Yankee plant,” says Joshua Goldstein, 62, an emeritus professor of international relations at American University, and one of the authors of The Boston Globe editorial that implored the environmental community to reconsider nuclear power. “The company said, ‘Well, we just can’t compete with natural gas, cheap natural gas.’ So, that’s another story about needing to put a price on carbon pollution—so that natural gas doesn’t get a free ride.”

He says that after the plant shut down, “They ended up buying nuclear power from Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant next door in New Hampshire, because they needed the electricity,” and that they also now rely on natural gas.

“We shut down Vermont Yankee, and we’re burning Pennsylvania natural gas instead,” Goldstein says.

Environmentalists are loud.

Energy prices (and government support) are louder.

Energy cost and demand are the pivot point of nuclear power’s short and up-anddown history, but its origins are important to consider.

“Nuclear power was developed by the government, for the government,” says Erik Conway, 50, a historian with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-author of the book Merchants of Doubt.

“And then, in the 1950s, there’s an effort by the government to commercialize the tech-

nology. During the same era, there’s very rapid growth of electricity consumption.”

The U.S. broke ground on its first fullscale nuclear reactor used for peacetime purposes on Labor Day, Sept. 9, 1954, in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. The Shippingport Atomic Power Station was located about 20 miles from Pittsburgh, and its core was taken from an atomic-powered aircraft carrier whose construction had been cancelled. An admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hyman G. Rickover, was in charge of operating the plant, a reminder that America’s investment in atomic energy was for wartime purposes. Seven years after breaking ground at the Shippingport plant, it began generating power for the grid operated by Duquesne Light Company, and the plant operated until 1982, with stoppages only for routine core changes. In the 28 years the plant operated, the market for nuclear power shifted dramatically.

One factor was an economic slowdown, and the other was purely political. “Due to the [oil] embargoes,” Conway says, “there’s increased efforts at both conservation of energy and efficiency throughout the 1970s.

There’s also a deep recession, so there’s less production—and therefore industrial consumption. One result is that the rate of growth in electricity consumption goes to nearly zero, making it hard to finance new power plants.”

As a result, says Conway, “a great many of the nuclear power plants that were under construction in 1970 and 1971 are cancelled, purely for economic reasons.” The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Phipps Bend plant was one such casualty: The decline in demand for energy, coupled with revised economic growth rates for the region, left the plant less than half-built when they JA N UA RY 2016

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stopped construction in 1981. The TimesNews of Kingsport, Tennessee, reported that there were protests, but not against the safety of the plant: They wore yellow armbands at the construction deferral meeting to signify that they were “hostages” to the TVA’s budget. Despite billions of investment funded by taxpayers and ratepayers, not a single watt of electricity was produced.

Rainwater and plant life have begun to take over the TVA’s half-built reactor containment cores and cooling towers. If you’re an anti-nuclear activist, the pictures of these abandoned reactors reclaimed by nature probably look like victory, but the Tennessee story isn’t over.

In August of 2015, President Barack Obama proposed the Clean Power Plan, which outlines cuts to carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, and also includes incentives for deployment of renewables and investment in energy efficiency for low-income households, among other features.

The White House fact sheet on the plan announces, “The Clean Power Plan establishes the first-ever national standards to limit carbon pollution from power plants.

We already set limits that protect public health by reducing soot and other toxic emissions, but until now, existing power plants, the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, could release as much carbon pollution as they wanted.”

Based on a formula, each state has specific emissions cuts and will have flexibility about how they plan to achieve reductions.

Pennsylvania’s emissions reduction targets will be in the 31 to 40 percent range, which is also the range that Tennessee is required to make. As of October 2015, 24 states and a coal company are suing over the regulation, according to The Hill.

That same month, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported that the Unit 2 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City, Tennessee, had received its operating license. The TVA is one of four entities in the country completing construction on a nuclear power plant, and officials at TVA believe that a return to nuclear energy will help the state comply with the Clean Power Plan. It’s a slight mischaracterization to call the Watts Bar plant “new.” It took 43 years to complete, because construction was sus30

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“If you want to subsidize low-carbon energy, how do you want to spend your money? And then the other externalities should come into play.

Mainly, is nuclear power really a reliable, safe electricity source that you select preferentially?”

- Edwin Lyman, Union of Concerned Scientists

pended from the mid-198os until 2007. The final phase of construction cost $4.5 billion.

“While the Clean Power Plan is an incentive mechanism, it’s not a magic bullet,” says Edwin Lyman, from the UCS. “It can’t itself change the fundamental economics in each state. What it does is provide a motivation for state and local policies to try to change, to try to shape, the electricity mix that will meet the requirements of their plan. So, that’s where the debate is, largely, with nuclear power. And the fact is, as it stands, it’s just not an economic source of electricity.”

Lyman goes on to argue that the Clean Power Plan could incentivize states to subsidize low-carbon energy, including nuclear power. “If you want to subsidize low-carbon energy, how do you want to spend your money? And then the other externalities should come into play. Mainly, is nuclear power really a reliable, safe electricity source that you select preferentially?

If you have enough renewable options, you could also deliver low-carbon electricity, but without the fiscal risks.”

The high cost of heavy safety regulation and lack of standardized designs As is evidenced by the cautionary tale of the halted construction at Phipps Bend,

the decades required to complete the Watts Bar plant, and the more recent plans for closures in Vermont and New York, massive infrastructure investments whose viability depends on fluctuating energy prices are a risky move. “I tend to see wind and solar deployment as more evolutionary.

It’s done in smaller steps, which means the grid doesn’t have to be reconfigured all at once,” says Conway, referring to the system that transports energy from the various places where electricity is produced. “Even people who should know better, like Jim Hansen, can look at the cost figures and realize that solar and wind are a lot cheaper.”

Cost is one of the first things out of the mouth of Greenpeace’s Riccio when he’s asked to give the organization’s position on nuclear power. He agrees with Conway on the current economics of building new plants. “You’ve had a number of plants announce shutdowns in the past year,” he says. “Not because of environmentalists, not because of anything other than the fact that they couldn’t compete with the price of renewable energy and the price of natural gas.”

“The first 75 reactors built in this country had a $100 billion cost overrun,” he says.

“Even the one you look at at TVA—TVA just loaded fuel into a reactor that they’ve had under construction since the 1970s.”

But Goldstein says he isn’t sympathetic to the Greenpeace rhetoric on cost over-

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Water and plant life take over the partially constructed condenser chamber at the Phipps Bend Nuclear Power Plant in Tennessee JA N UA RY 2016

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runs. “That’s a little bit disingenuous, if I may say so. The major reason why it’s not scalable so fast and why it’s so expensive is that Greenpeace has been out there blocking every permit and lying down in front of every bulldozer, trying to get the whole thing regulated to the point of zero-risk.

If we had a more reasonable approach to it, such as the French have had, it’s really not so hard to get these things built, and they’re not so expensive.”

Nuclear plants in the United States are essentially bespoke, each one built to suit, whereas the French—who get nearly 80 percent of their electricity from nuclear power—have standardized designs. It’s a point with which Professor George Imel from the Nuclear Engineering Department at Idaho State University is very familiar. Imel, 67, has worked for both U.S. and French national research laboratories as a nuclear scientist, and he explains, “They built a fleet of nuclear reactors, all standardized...[whereas] we give every utility, every customer, the chance to custom order their reactor.” It’s one of the factors that contributes to high construction costs.

Imel also explains that we handle our waste differently than France does. We have a “once through” fuel cycle, whereas the French take spent fuel, clean up the fission products that have built up, and reuse it. “In America,” Imel says, “we don’t recycle, which is interesting because we’re supposed to be environmentalists.” He says a quick way to compare the waste loads is to think about the French storing their waste in a facility the size of a basketball court, and Americans using a space more the size of football field. “If we recycled spent nuclear fuel, we would reduce our waste by at least a factor of 10,” he says.

Imel says the biggest difference between France and America is that France doesn't have a choice.

“They don’t have a natural coal reserve… they have no natural gas to speak of,” he says. Not wanting to be dependent on a foreign country for their energy needs, France chose to invest in nuclear energy.

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“There are a lot of myths about nuclear power that simply don’t stand up to the light of day.”

- Joshua Goldstein, emeritus professor of international relations, American University

to burn coal and split atoms. ... You have major industries that are fighting against solar and wind. Sadly, they offer us our best hope of keeping this planet in a livable condition. The good news is that we can actually get there. The bad news is we have to fight the politicians to do it.”

UCS’s Lyman has a more tempered view of the nuclear industry’s lobbying power, but the same take on politicians. “The industry is pretty powerful in certain ways.

It’s got an enormous amount of support, in principle, for nuclear energy on both sides of the aisle in Congress. But that hasn’t always translated into useful legislation, which is sort of tied up in the fact that Congress doesn’t do that much for anyone these days.” He says that while the industry got some incentives through the 2005 Energy Policy Act, “It was really small potatoes compared to what would really be needed to greatly expand nuclear power in the United States.”

Is nuclear power a bridge to meeting our decarbonization goals, or unsafe at any speed?

a nuclear reaction to slow to a stop during an emergency. Small modular reactors that would be built much more inexpensively— and on a community scale—are also on the horizon, but these new approaches aren’t coming fast enough for some.

“We’re staring down the barrel of two degrees celsius,” Riccio says, referring to the global average temperature rise that climate negotiators are using as their ceiling to prevent catastrophic consequences from climate change. “And waiting another decade for the nuclear industry maybe to show up with a reactor design really is not a viable option when you have solutions that are fast and affordable and available now.”

When asked why the United States hadn’t yet taken advantage of wind and solar, his answer was emphatic.

“Political will,” he says. “We have a very entrenched nuclear industry and coal industry that would like to see us continue

Cost seemed to be a more significant issue than safety for many of the experts interviewed for this article. However, safety is the bigger concern in the American psyche at large.

In continuing to relate the history of nuclear power, NASA’s Conway is clear about the fact that energy prices ruled, but that public opinion did hold some sway as its fortunes declined in the ’70s and ’80s.

“The coup de grace in the U.S. for the nuclear power industry,” he says, “is a combination of Three Mile Island connected with a movie that came out at the same time.”

He’s referring to the 1979 film “The China Syndrome,” a fictional account of a news crew who witnesses an almost-accident at a nuclear power plant in California, and then uncovers critical safety problems at the plant. The title comes from the fantastic idea that a core meltdown in the U.S. would cut straight down through earth and find its way out the other side in China.

“Since then,” Conway says, “There’s been a kind of mythology built up in the environmental movement about nucle-

THE ENERGY ISSUE

ar power, when it actually died because of economics. Again, one simply doesn’t build large, new nuclear power generating capacity in the face of flat electricity demand.”

Political scientist Joshua Goldstein says he used to have the same knee-jerk reaction against nuclear power as other environmentalists, but when he started worrying more intensely about climate change and doing research on nuclear power, he began to change his mind. As an example, he relates that contrary to his conception of the event, no one died from radiation exposure during the Fukushima disaster. “There are a lot of myths about nuclear power that simply don’t stand up to the light of day,” he says.

There has never been a death caused by the commercial operations of a U.S. nuclear power plant. But it is easier for human minds to imagine a disaster at a nuclear power plant than to conceive of the slow emergency of global warming: Our minds are better at seeing specific and immediate threats. Principal Research Scientist Charles Forsberg, from the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, puts it this way: “It scares people very efficiently, but it’s not very good at killing people.”

While we’re debating our energy choices, how we assess the risks of our energy sources may play an increasing role, and there are real risks with nuclear power.

Plants must be managed as tightly as possible to prevent an accident, and they must be designed with unlikely catastrophic incidents in mind. The waste from nuclear power plants must be sequestered for millennia before it isn’t radioactive anymore, and the same enriched uranium that is used for fuel can be made into nuclear weapons. All of these issues must be acknowledged and managed if we continue to rely on nuclear power, for the short or the long term.

The Union of Concerned Scientists does not advocate against nuclear power altogether, but it does think that the industry should continue to be tightly regulated, and that cutting corners on safety to bring down costs would be misguided. “Phasing out nuclear power or operating plants overnight,” says Edwin Lyman of UCS, “that’s not our objective. Our concern is about the

current level of safety and security of operating plants as governed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. … The danger is complacency and the industry starting to believe its own rhetoric about how safe it is.” He doesn’t believe that reforms after Fukushima went far enough.

NASA’s Conway says that you have to ask the safety question “as an economist would” and compare nuclear with other options. “Nuclear power is a lot safer than coal, and yet we burn enormous amounts of coal, about a billion tons of it a year in the U.S. I’m actually skeptical of nuclear power because of its cost… but I’m not per se opposed to it on safety grounds.”

That comparison is one that several people make, including Goldstein. “Fossil fuel is killing a lot of people,” he says. “Coal is killing, like, a million people a year in the world—nuclear isn’t killing anybody. But we have this drastic double standard where nuclear power is held to kind of ‘zero-risk.’

If anything happens anywhere it shows that we shouldn’t have nuclear power. …

We wouldn’t have any energy if we applied that standard to fossil fuels.”

Lyman disagrees. “I’m not a big fan of trying to compare the number of deaths from small particulates from coal plants to the number of deaths from Chernobyl,” he says. “I think that’s misleading and doesn’t really provide the whole picture.”

In an exercise to try to prove that we will tolerate some risks, but not others, Goldstein ticks off a list of other dangers we’ve accepted in order to have the energy and products we want. “The oil trains that go off the tracks and blow up the whole town.

The Bhopal chemical disaster, the coal mining disasters, the hydroelectric dams that break and flood and kill tens of thousands of people. This stuff happens all over the world with all of our energy sources,” he says, “and we want to make a kind of risk/benefit analysis of it.”

Goldstein’s conclusion shows how far he’s come personally in his view of nuclear power, “When you do that dispassionately, nuclear power turns out to be the safest,

“Nuclear power is a lot safer than coal, and yet we burn enormous amounts of coal, about a billion tons of it a year in the U.S. I’m actually skeptical of nuclear power because of its cost… but I’m not per se opposed to it on safety grounds.”

- Erik Conway, historian, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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the cleanest, potentially the cheapest.”

The shift happening in the minds of some environmentalists is coming in part because something that used to be perceived as a threat—nuclear power—is competing with the threat of catastrophic consequences from climate change.

A second change is that, as the world began preparations for the Paris climate talks, it began to look like this time there was the possibility of consensus. That also meant action, and so research teams around the world started running scenarios about how to achieve deep cuts in carbon emissions without hampering the growth of developing nations or the thriving economies that had caused the current crises in the first place.

The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP) has been serving as an um-

QUICK FACTS

brella for that work, and some of the team’s contributors are also involved in work with the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The methodology they’ve been using is based on work that has been happening in California to prepare plans for deep reductions in carbon emissions. Jim Williams has been a consultant to the state during that work, and he’s the head of the U.S. DDPP team.

“The timing,” he says, “always did have the [United Nations Climate Change Conference] in mind.” He believes that in the past, “a key problem in climate negotiations was that they simply were not very concrete about what it would take to decarbonize the energy system. For 20-some years, the negotiators, who are diplomats and lawyers, have been arguing over principles, and therefore the debate has been

To achieve 80 percent reductions in carbon emissions by 2050, Philadelphia would need to make strides in energy efficiency, make significant changes in the transportation sector and recast its mix of electricity generation to favor low-carbon sources.

Current electricity mix for Philadelphia in 2010: renewables- 3%

about... burden sharing and things of that sort, without understanding what is technically involved in physically changing the energy system, or what it might cost.”

The U.S. DDPP report identifies possible energy generation mixes that include renewables, nuclear, fossil fuel generation (equipped with carbon capture and sequestration technology) and biomass. The range of options explored has nuclear power providing between 9.6 percent and 40.3 percent of our power.

Drexel’s report outlines similar power mixes that will help cut Philadelphia’s carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, and it leaves the nuclear option up for discussion.

The report states, “Whether nuclear energy’s... advantages (low-carbon, base-load power reliability) can overcome its liabilities (facility siting, waste disposal, weak-

Possible “aggressive” renewable energy mix for Philadelphia by 2050

other fossil fuels- 1%

natural gas- 21%

nuclear- 40%

49%

RENEWABLES

40%

NUCLEAR POWER

10%

NATURAL GAS RESIDUAL OIL

1%

SOURCE : OPT IONS FOR AC HIEVING DEEP REDUCT IONS IN CA RBON EM ISSIONS IN PHILA DELPHIA BY 2 050, D REX E L UN IV E RS ITY, 20 15 coal- 35%

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THE ENERGY ISSUE

ening long-term demand) is very much an open-ended question.” It also raises a scenario whereby if nuclear power electricity generation declined because we chose to decommission existing plants, “electricity generation might—absent other developments—become more carbon intensive rather than less carbon intensive.”

Professor Patrick Gurian, 49, is the lead author of the report. “[The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability] had done some shorter-term planning and goal setting on greenhouse gas reductions,” he says. “But they knew that the 80 percent reductions by 2050 was a really important target that’s out there that other cities have looked at ways of meeting, and they wanted to do some longer-term planning.”

The report was funded by the Drexel Institute for Energy and the Environment, and it has an important difference from some other studies when it prices nuclear power. Their methodology includes considering the cost of producing nuclear power, as well as externalized costs that are avoided. They essentially ask and answer the question that both Conway and Goldstein propose: What are all of the cost differences between one electricity source and another, including carbon emissions that harm the planet and pollution that harms human beings and other life?

UCS’s Lyman urges caution about pricing externalities. “I would be skeptical of that kind of a study, because there are just too many disparate endpoints, externalities. So, to try to come up with a common metric to compare them—which people have tried to do for decades—really, is probably not a meaningful way to go. Trying to fold all those complexities into a single number, you lose too much information.”

Gurian says that the report outlines several strategies for achieving carbon emissions, including efficiency measures and changes to the transportation sector and low-carbon energy mixes.

“When you start to say, ‘OK, how can we make the electricity low carbon?’ there are a lot of options there, and certainly nuclear is one of them. And from our point of view, how could we not put it in the report? It is available commercially, it is cost competitive and it is not intermittent. It’s frequent-

ly used for the baseload demand.”

But he’s clear that the report is simply a starting point for discussion.

“The whole point,” he says, “was not to issue recommendations, but to come up with options... This is a good time to talk about this and maybe have a more nuanced discussion and try to get a little more detail about what options are out there.”

The scenario with the most aggressive renewables has a mix of 49 percent renewables, 40 percent nuclear power, 10 percent natural gas and 1 percent residual oil; it eliminates coal altogether.

Not everyone will be happy about that high number for nuclear power, not least of which advocates who believe that we can scale renewables to 100 percent and avoid investment in nuclear altogether. “Greenpeace has opposed nuclear power and nuclear weapons since we were founded,” Riccio says. “And nothing between 1971 and now has convinced us that we should revisit that position.”

A New “China Syndrome” The for-or-against, renewables-vs-nuclear, Democrats-vs-Republicans framework probably isn’t going to work when we get down to the day-to-day practicality of decarbonizing our economy. Goldstein believes that targeting symbols of industry and influence won’t help us at this point.

“It’s kind of too easy to just blame the Koch brothers,” Goldstein says. “The fundamental truth is that it’s made worse by the Koch brothers, but it’s really caused by all of us, and by a pretty fundamental problem with industrialization, and one that we need to find our way out of collectively.”

While “The China Syndrome” was fiction, and the idea that a nuclear reactor meltdown could burn through the center of the earth from America to China is pure fantasy, it does illustrate the nature of our connected world. Twenty-five years later, looking at images of Beijing shrouded in pollution—in part from factories making products for Americans—it’s hard not to think about pollution and climate change as a new China Syndrome.

Increasingly, we are seeing that we’re all in this together: If the U.S. meets its

emission targets, but India and China fuel their economy with coal plants, humanity still loses.

With the agreement from Paris this past December, the world’s countries have finally come to consensus about the first steps to collectively addressing climate change, and each country will go about reducing its emissions with various means; within our own country, those decisions will also be made at a state and city level. Nuclear power may well be one of those means, if only as a bridge to a future filled with renewables.

In Philadelphia, there is no buzz about abandoning our heavy reliance on nuclear power, but as the city moves to reach its carbon-reduction goals and keep its economy growing, it’s only a matter of time before the nuclear option is part of the discussion. Local plants will need to be relicensed in the coming decades.

Who stands on either side of that debate stage when the time comes may well be two people who both consider themselves environmentalists. If we are able to get our renewables portfolio up to nearly 50 percent, the question they may be considering is where we get that second half of our electricity from: nuclear energy or fossil fuels, the latter of which, if they are used at all, will hopefully be equipped with carbon capture and sequestration technology.

Since it doesn’t look as though there will be a price on carbon any time soon, the availability of cheap natural gas may be the single factor that decides whether we invest in nuclear power in the U.S. Other factors in the discussion will include demand for energy, the regulatory landscape and how the public views the risk of each of these options.

A discussion is exactly what Drexel’s Chris Peters wants to have with local people who are concerned about atomic energy. And he wants them to know that he’s an environmentalist, too.

“I want to embrace the environmental groups or bring them in or actually go to them and have a long discussion and see what the issues are,” he says.

“We need to have a dialogue on this.

There’s a valid concern from any new technology, you know? We can’t just go on into the future blindly.”

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THE ENERGY ISSUE

IT’S ELECTRIC! Shopping for an energy provider can be overwhelming.

Here's what you need to know by hannah waters

A

letter slides through my mail slot urging me to change my electricity provider. I groan.

“Sign and return the form below to have 100% renewable sources supplied for the Waters home,” it says. “If you don’t switch, your power will still come from power plants that contribute to air and carbon pollution.”

Another audible groan escapes my lips as I see that “switch energy provider” is already on my to-do list—where it’s been for more than a year. Whenever I get these letters, I always intend to make the switch. But as soon as I start researching my options, I find myself overwhelmed. There are more than 100 alternative energy providers avail-

able to Philadelphians, and some offer multiple plans. It’s hard to know where to start.

It’s time to stop procrastinating and recognize this anxiety for what it is: the power of choice. Pennsylvania is one of only 17 U.S. states that grants citizens the power to choose their energy provider, according to the American Coalition of Competitive Energy Suppliers. While we might not have a choice of who delivers our electricity to us—PECO services all of Philadelphia County—we don’t have to accept whatever electrons they serve up. We can choose where our electrons come from, whether from renewable sources or a provider that charges less.

Well, up to a point. If you switch to a

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“It’s not like we’re attaching a wind turbine to your home.

I describe it like banking: You put money into a bank account, but you don’t take that same money out.”

- Tom Matzzie, CEO of Ethical Electric

green provider, for instance, your house won’t be powered only by green energy; it’s not the same as installing solar panels on your roof. All electricity generated by providers is pooled into a single grid, which PECO then distributes throughout the city based on demand. If you make the switch, however, you increase the amount of renewable energy and reduce the amount of fossil fuel-generated energy that is consumed across the city.

“It’s not like we’re attaching a wind turbine to your home,” says Tom Matzzie, CEO of Ethical Electric, which provides 100 percent wind power from Pennsylvania, and is responsible for my recent mailer. “I describe it like banking: You put money into a bank account, but you don’t take that same money out.” When you switch to a renewable energy provider, you put green energy in, and take out whatever is available.

The Watts and Volts Right now, if you have standard PECO service, most of your energy comes from fossil fuels and nuclear power, with renewable energy coming in at 5.5 percent of the total supply. Around two-thirds of your monthly bill pays for this power generation (called “generation charges” on the bill), and the remainder pays for transmitting that power from the provider to PECO and distribution from PECO to your home. If you switch to a new provider, you will get the same bill every month; the only difference will be from where PECO purchases your power.

The cost of standard electricity from PECO is a fixed rate that is adjusted every 38

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quarter; as of December 2015, that rate was $0.0836 per kWh. (You can see this on your bill as the “price to compare.”) Many of the alternative providers also offer a fixed rate, which guarantees a certain price for the length of your contract. This means a more consistent bill—but often a slightly more expensive one.

The other option is a variable rate, which changes with market conditions.

This means that in periods of high demand—such as in the summer and winter, when air conditioning or heat are on full-blast—power may also cost more per kWh. But in times of lower energy usage, your rate may be below PECO’s standard rate. Variable rates tend to most benefit customers whose energy use falls around or below the household average of 700 kWh per month. (You can see your usage on your bill.)

Beyond making an ethical switch to green energy, many people choose a new provider to save money or to sign up for creative contracts. Time-of-use plans, for instance, incentivize customers to do power-hungry activities (like running appliances) when demand is low (e.g., in the middle of the night) for even lower prices.

Pennsylvania also allows consumers to choose their natural gas supplier. Unfortunately, however, there are no competitive options available in Philadelphia.

Making the Switch If you, empowered citizen, want to look into your options—whether to support green energy or save some money—it’s unfortunately not as easy as checking a “Yes,

Clean Energy!” box and going on with your life. But there is a great tool available to you: PAPowerSwitch.com, which is run by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.

If you go to the website, you can type in your zip code, see the options available to you, and narrow your list down by energy supplier, cost or terms of the contract. It offers the details of plans without marketing and has a lengthy FAQ, including questions you should ask an alternative provider.

There are many choices for Philadelphians, and once you find one you are happy with, you can click through to register.

Matzzie cautions against simply chasing the lowest rate, because “sometimes those plans come with surprises”—like an increase in cost after a short introductory period, or high cancellation fees that make it hard to leave the contract.

If you’re interested in green energy, PAPowerSwitch tells you what percentage of green power is supplied by each provider and, where possible, what kind of power and whether it’s local. Some renewable energy providers generate or buy their power from across the country, so if you’re interested in supporting local options, keep that in mind.

And if you do sign up for a new plan, make sure you do it online instead of through a telemarketer so that you have time to read and process the full terms and conditions in your contract.

Once you’re done, you can rest easy, satisfied that you have executed your power of choice—and pushed Philadelphia to be powered by a greater proportion of renewable energy. It’s enough to make you feel electric (boogie woogie woogie).

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THE ENERGY ISSUE

COOL IT, PHILLY

A South Philly block stays chill, while North Philly homes get fit, thanks to the ECA by marilyn anthony

I

f you want to stir things up, ask any group of Philly residents to name the coolest block in the city. They probably won't know that in 2010, South Philly’s 1200 block of Wolf Street officially took home that title in a contest run by the Energy Coordinating Agency (ECA).

At stake in the Coolest Block contest was more than bragging rights. ECA, with partners from the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and the Dow Chemical Company Foundation, provided rowhomes on the winning block with a host of energy improvements, including energy audits and white roofs.

In 2010, Terry Jack volunteered as neighborhood coordinator for the Wolf Street competition. Jack, an environmental engineer with two young children, had been thinking about energy improvements for her family’s rowhome, so the contest seemed like a great opportunity. She spent many weeks meeting with her neighbors, enlisting all but one of more than 40 households. Her investment of time keeps paying off in annual energy savings of 20 to 30 percent. “Winning the contest was a good urban living experience,” says Jack, “with neighbors coming together, city and industry coordinating something that’s beneficial on a small, personal, block level [and also] having bigger impact for the city and potentially for the world.”

A white roof is not a coat of house paint.

Catherine T. “Katie” Hunt, Ph.D., formerly the research and development director for the Dow Chemical Company and a key partner with ECA, describes a genuine cool 40

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roof as “energy rated, elastomeric, solar reflective material.” When properly applied and paired with another new technology, open cell insulation, white roofs on a block of rowhomes significantly reduce the internal temperature of the homes in summer, but also lower the ambient temperature of the entire street. Proper professional maintenance of a white roof may mean never having to replace your roof, ever again.

ECA’s goal for the contest is also far-reaching, with ambitions far beyond saving dollars: since this first installation five years ago, Executive Director Liz Robinson believes white roofs are saving lives all across our city.

In 1992, a killer heat wave struck Philadelphia, leaving 137 people dead over a single summer weekend. The 1990s was the hottest decade on record, and each subsequent decade has been hotter still.

In 1993 the federal government responded with fans and air conditioners. ECA realized the Philadelphia residents most in need of house cooling could not afford higher electricity bills; they began experimenting with white roofs to passively cool homes without adding to the energy load or household expense.

According to Robinson, when ECA began installing white roofs, there were no cool roofs on any of the more than 400,000 rowhomes in the city. Our roofline was one enormous heat sink of black tar, reaching surface temperatures as high as 198 degrees and releasing a pungent aroma familiar to city dwellers. Five years after the Coolest

Block contest, a Google Earth shot of Philly shows between 20 to 60 percent white roof coverage, with higher percentages occurring in more affluent neighborhoods. ECA claims credit for 700 of these installations.

Robinson attributes the rest to public education and the power of a good idea. Philly’s widespread adoption of this seemingly simple innovation has earned us global attention, with interest from India, Mexico and others.

Five years after the Coolest Block contest, ECA launched a new competition, EnergyFIT Philly. Robinson describes it as “‘Extreme Makeover’ without the glamor.” EnergyFIT Philly, targets low-income households in poor to terrible condition and provides renovations that are “healthy, safe, durable and highly energy efficient… emphasizing improvements to all aspects of the quality of life in the home.”

In 2015, North Philadelphia Block Captain Darlene Pope launched a door-to-door campaign just as Terry Jack did years ago.

Pope convinced her largely elderly neighbors to apply for EnergyFIT Philly, and their block won. The resulting renovations and positive neighborhood impacts earned Pope thunderous applause in her church.

“I want everybody to have this [program],” she says. “Not just in my North Philly neighborhood, but in West Philly, in New York City, wherever people are striving.

The people from ECA took a load off me as a homeowner, and we are truly blessed.”

ECA’s Robinson hopes City Council will provide funding for another contest in 2016.

THE ENERGY ISSUE

ENERGY THIEVES

Most electronic devices in your home consume very small amounts of energy per day. However, most homes have over 40 electronic devices, many of which are left plugged in and continue to consume energy even when turned off or left in standby mode. Adding together the individually small energy use of all of these electronics will reveal a high level of energy waste and hundreds—if not thousands—of dollars of needless annual charges.

There are many ways to relieve our planet and your personal finances of unnecessary energy consumption. Here are eight household energy thieves and the ways to disarm their energy use.

1. Air conditioning

2. Refrigeration

3. Light bulbs

4. Media devices

Air conditioning is reported

by Energy.gov to consume five percent of all residental electricity use in the United States.

Some home systems can cost as much as $22 a day, so take every precaution to ensure that your air conditioning use is limited.

Insulating your attic will help keep the sun’s heat out, closing doors to unused rooms will help contain cool air and using a dehumidifier to remove humidity will greatly cut air conditioning’s energy costs.

Most new refrigerators use less than half of their cousins who were born in the 1980s. Making sure you have an energy-efficient model can save money, as they run for up to 10 hours a day. Using the energy saver settings will optimize performance and reduce the daily energy use. If you have multiple refrigerators at home, consider consolidating the contents into one to save hundreds a year.

All light fixtures should be turned off when they’re not in use, as each bulb costs roughly six cents per hour to power—a seemingly low figure that can quickly add up. Additionally, LED bulbs consume about 50 less watts each per hour than incandescent bulbs, while lasting thousands of hours longer.

Televisions, computers, video game consoles, DVD players and especially digital cable boxes all sap energy when left in standby mode. Connecting all of your home media centers to their own switchable power strips allows you to easily deactivate all of the devices when not in use.

5. Washer / dryer

6. Small kitchen appliances

7. Shower / water heater

8. Chargers

Each load of washed and dried laundry is estimated to cost between $1 and $2. To cut that cost, use cold water to wash, which doesn’t necessitate the use of your water heater. Also, consider drying your clothes on a clothesline, cutting drying cost completely.

Unplug all small kitchen appliances when not in use. Toasters, blenders, convection ovens and other infrequently used devices work together to soak up energy, even when they’re not in use.

Limiting your shower times will decrease the amount of time it takes for your water heater to generate more hot water. Installing a low-flow shower head will also limit the energy used by your water heater.

Unplug all wall charging devices after use. Their energy use is minimal, but it’s likely that there is a charging unit in almost every room of your house needlessly drawing energy even when your computer or phone isn’t plugged into them.

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OWN YOUR L I F E CAN FULFILLMENT BE FOUND IN AN EMPTY ROOM?

by ALEX MULCAHY // photos by MARGO REED

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MINIMALISM M

A

aron Bitler stands in front of his sparsely populated clothes closet. If this rack were in a retail store, you’d think it was going out of business. His winter wardrobe consists of five work shirts, three weekend shirts, two pairs of work jeans, a pair of weekend jeans, a winter coat, a fall coat, and— for special occasions—a sport coat and slacks. Three pairs of shoes are on a rack on the floor, and stacked one level above the shoes are his “house” and workout clothes. He owns three short-sleeve shirts, which are in the basement, and he keeps his socks and undergarments in a dresser drawer in his living room.

Bitler, 40, a chemistry lab supervisor at the Philadelphia Water Department, recently got rid of his bed, so his mattress lies on the floor. There’s a book on the small table next to the bed, a copy of A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, a 2008 title by philosophy professor William B. Irvine.

As far as “stuff” in that room goes, that’s about it. Bitler is among a growing number of people striving for a minimalist lifestyle, examining their possessions and systematically paring them down, sometimes to a jarringly utilitarian few.

When asked how he feels in this room, he says, “This is the best room in the place!”

His 7-year-old son, Erich, begs to differ.

Across the hall from his father’s barebones sanctuary is his room, a tsunami of two-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rexes, Hess trucks with sirens and horns, Legos, papers and puzzles. “You can hardly walk from one side to the other,” he brags. It’s not the only untamed room in the house.

The third floor contains Bitler’s comic book collection, and a boxed-up weight bench, which will be assembled when the room is eventually emptied.

Bitler’s minimalism is a work in progress, and that’s why for the past year he has sought inspiration and support by attending meet-ups of minimalists around the city.

If it seems like ridding yourself of unwanted items shouldn’t require a support group, consider these facts: The average American home has 300,000 items; U.S. children—3.7 percent of the world’s population of kids—have 47 percent of all man-

ufactured toys and children's books.

Not surprisingly, the containers for our possessions have grown as well. The average size of the American home has more than doubled since the 1950s, and despite our ever-growing square footage, one in 10 Americans rents a storage unit.

Bitler has found it a relief to discover compatriots who want to live “a meaningful life, which includes owning only that which is important to you, but extends to mindful decisions about food, technology and entertainment. It’s a safe place.”

Unease with a materialistic life The group, a local chapter inspired by the blog The Minimalists, was founded by Ayse Unver, 27, an urban planning and policy manager at Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

Unver grew up in Summit, New Jersey, an only child. Her home was—by her account—modest, with enough stuff in it to make it feel “lived in.” She recalls some tension among her, her mother and her father. He preferred a more organized environment, and she and her mother were frequent clothes shoppers.

“It was a suburban existence, so [we were] driving everywhere and shopping,” she says. “We had a mall within a mile of our house, and that was the pastime: You would go hang out at the mall…

The tale of suburbia.”

While Unver always felt a little out of step with society at large—she was voted “most non-conformist” in high school—it wasn’t until after she had already landed her first job and moved from a studio apartment to a three-room apartment that she truly began acknowledging the uneasiness she felt with the life she was leading.

“I was living and decorating my space in a way that I thought society expected me to. I need a coffee table. Now I need a dining room table. Now I need a tablecloth. I don’t have enough counter space because I have so many kitchen tools. Let me get a butcher’s block island from IKEA.” All of this acquisition, coupled with rent, meant that Unver wasn’t saving any money. It was concern for her financial fu-

ture that pushed her to downsize her three rooms to one. But what to do with all the stuff she had accumulated?

“When I realized how much stuff I had to move, that then drove me to the internet to ‘how to declutter your life.’” That led her to the The Minimalists blog, and she was soon poring over every word they said.

“In a way, they’re a removed set of mentors,” Unver says. “They set you on a path, they give you the knowledge to forge your own path.”

The Minimalists The Minimalists blog was launched in 2010 by two childhood friends, Joshua Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, who, in the past seven years, have radically changed their lives. In the first half of their 20s, prior to the site’s launching, they were living what many consider the American dream. They each had jobs that paid them six figures and were able to buy anything they wanted. But both were working 70to 80-hour weeks, and despite the healthy paychecks, they were sliding into debt.

When, in the same month, Millburn’s marriage ended and his mother died, he found himself facing some big existential questions, and he began to look at the role stuff played in his life. His conclusion was that he was freer without it.

Months later, Nicodemus noticed a dramatic and improved change in Millburn and asked him, “Why the hell are you so happy?” When Nicodemus learned of Millburn’s possession shedding, he decided to follow suit. Together, they organized a “packing party,” where all of Nicodemus’ things were packed as if he were moving, and unpacked only as they were needed over a three-week period. After the time was up, Nicodemus found that 80 percent of his possessions remained in boxes.

He sorted the remaining packed possessions into three categories: donate, sell and discard. The process hit a snag when he encountered a shoebox box full of sentimental items, including a photo of him and his girlfriend from a homecoming dance and emotionally packed letters from his mom written during a turbulent time. He found a solution.

45

“I’m going through the stuff and I’m like, ‘What are you going to do with it, dude? Are you going to hold on to it?’ and I tell myself, ‘Well, I can’t. This is something I’ve committed to, and I refuse to be trapped by things. I’m not going to do this.’

So, I didn’t throw away the shoebox. I took one letter out of the box and took a picture of it, so technically I still have it. Saved it, put it on my phone. I threw the letter out and it’s not like I shredded it or burned it or anything. I just put it in the trash can and thought to myself, ‘Okay, if I get up in the morning, I can easily get it out of the trash can if it weighs on me that much.’”

Much to his surprise, the letter slipped from his mind and was not rescued. Every once in a while, he’ll scan through his photos, but in the five years since he scanned it, he hasn’t read the letter once. “They’re just sitting in my folder.”

Stories like these that have earned the pair devoted readers and heavy web traffic—they claim four million people have visited their website. They’ve received media attention a rock star would envy, including features on ABC, CBS, NBC, BBC, 46

NPR, TODAY, TIME, Forbes, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and National Post. “Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things” will be released in 2016.

They’ve written several books, and while touring to promote one of them, Everything That Remains: A Memoir by the Minimalists, that the idea to create local support groups was hatched. Nicodemus says, “[At] every single stop, people [would say] The people here are awesome. How do we hang out with [them]?’”

Letting go of anxiety and emotional clutter On an unseasonably warm November night at the Cosi on 12th and Walnut streets, a dozen or so people sit around a table, participating in the Philadelphia chapter of The Minimalists group. How, Grid asks, have your family and friends reacted to your decision to pursue a minimalist lifestyle?

Bitler responds, “Honestly, my friends

think I may be going crazy, and they have expressed this to me. They fear I will never find a mate without a bed. They fear I will regret getting rid of so many things, books, comics, CDs, once they are gone.”

Being a father and striving to be a good role model pushes him past the discouraging comments. “It’s my hope that I can help [my son] see what is truly important in life, despite the reminders he gets from TV, Christmas and other children.”

Yaeisha Slack, 30, a chemist who works with Bitler at the Philadelphia Water Department, agrees that the holidays can be tricky to navigate.

“Last year, last holiday season, when I was thinking about minimalism, wanting to get rid of things, I told my mom I didn’t want anything,” says Slack. “She got me stuff and I was like, ‘I don’t want this,’ and she lost [it]. ‘I picked this out for you! How can you say you don’t like this thing that I gave you!’ And I was like, ‘I warned you.’”

Krista Pfleger, 28, a community outreach coordinator at the Please Touch Museum, understands the conflict. “I think [people] get a little confused around

MINIMALISM Mâ€

Left: The light-filled, West Philadelphia bedroom of Ayse Unver

Right: An empty closet becomes a unique architectural feature in the room of Ayse Unver

Bottom: Aaron Bitler climbs the stairs to his sanctuary

47

Left: The shared bathroom space of Art Museum resident Krista Pfleger.

Krista's sink is on the right

Bottom Left: A table in the Bella Vista apartment of Susan Corcoran

Bottom Right: Aaron Bitler's closet of wardrobe essentials

Right: Krista Pfleger enjoys her clutter-free apartment

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MINIMALISM M

the holidays and birthdays. Like, they still don’t believe me when I say that I don’t want anything. But if they insist on getting me a physical gift, I have no problem telling them if there is a specific item I need, even if it’s really basic, like a new pair of jeans or a haircut. I’m fine with the lack of surprise.”

While some challenges are external, the biggest seem to be internal. Just as Nicodemus had to face his shoebox of mementos, the aspiring declutterer will encounter emotional pitfalls. “For me, the most difficult items to get rid of were—and still are—items linked to memories, both good and bad,” says Bitler. “I have no compunction about giving away boxes of comics or books or toasters or other appliances without reclaiming any money for them.

But a scrap of paper or business card from 20 years ago can give me pause and prevent me from action.”

Aspirational items can also be difficult to let go of. It can be painful to divest yourself

of the unplayed guitar in the corner of the room, or the expensive paints and paintbrushes in the closet. Separating yourself from those items is akin to admitting that good intentions are not coming to fruition.

“It was kind of hard to let go of my sewing machine,” says Carly Statz, 35, an instructional designer at Thomas Edison State College. “My mom and stepdad bought it for me, and I had been very excited about learning to sew. After working on a few projects, though, I realized that I liked the idea of sewing, but I don’t actually like doing it. That was a little hard to admit to myself.”

While overcoming these obstacles requires a lot of mental fortitude, everyone fervently agrees that it is worth it. When asked if anyone ever regretted getting rid of something, everyone at the table shakes their head no. And the rewards seem to be many. “[In] general, I feel less stress and anxie-

ty,” says Statz. “My home feels comfortable and peaceful instead of messy and chaotic.

It takes hardly any time to clean my place. I spend less money on things, which allows me to save more, or spend it on experiences like traveling or dance classes. And minimalism isn’t just about having fewer possessions. For me, it’s also about limiting obligations, activities and relationships to the ones that are really meaningful to me. That frees up more time and also cuts down on mental and emotional clutter.”

“I think I am more present in my relationships,” says Pfleger, “because I really cherish the time I get to spend with loved ones. It has made a huge difference on my finances. I used to consistently spend more than I earned, which was really easy to do. Now, I have some wiggle room to contribute more to savings or paying off debt. I also feel less pressure to try and ‘keep up with the Joneses’ because I don’t want what the Joneses have.”

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L E T TING GO O F SEN TIMENTA L I TE MS JOSHUA FIELDS MILLBURN

Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus of The Minimalists Blog

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y mother died in 2009. She lived a thousand miles away, and it was my responsibility to vacate her apartment in Florida. It was a small, one-bedroom place, but it was packed wall-to-wall with her belongings.

Mom had great taste (she could have been an interior designer), and none of her stuff was junk. Nevertheless, there was a lot of stuff in her home.

Mom was constantly shopping, always accumulating more stuff: She had antique furniture throughout her apartment, a stunning oak canopy bed that consumed almost her entire bedroom, two closets jam-packed with clothes, picture frames standing on every flat surface, original artwork adorning the walls, and tasteful decorations in every nook, cranny, and crevasse. There was 64 years of accumulation in that tiny apartment.

So I did what any son would do: I rented a large truck from U-Haul. Then I called a storage place back in Ohio to make sure they had a storage unit that was big enough. The truck was $1600, the storage facility was $120—financially I could afford it, but I quickly discovered the emotional cost was much higher.

Initially, I didn’t want to let go of anything. If you’ve ever lost a parent, a loved one, or been through a similarly emotional time, then you understand exactly how hard it was for me to let go of any of those possessions. So instead of letting go, I wanted to cram every trinket, figurine, and piece of oversized furniture into that storage locker in Ohio, floor to ceiling.

That way I knew that Mom’s stuff was there if I ever wanted it, if I ever needed access to it for some incomprehensible reason. I even planned to put a few pieces of Mom’s furniture in my home as subtle reminders of her.

I started boxing up her belongings: every picture frame, every porcelain doll, and every white doily on every shelf. I packed every bit of her that remained.

Or so I thought.

I looked under her bed. Among the organized chaos that comprised the crawlspace beneath her bed, there were four boxes, each labeled with a number. Each numbered box was sealed with packing tape. I cut through the tape, and when I

“Holding on to stuff imprisons us; letting go is freeing.” folded back the boxes’ flaps I discovered old papers from my elementary school days from nearly a quarter-century ago: spelling tests, cursive writing lessons, artwork—it was all there, every shred of paper from my first four years of school. She obviously hadn’t accessed the sealed boxes in years, yet Mom had held on to these things because she was trying to hold on to pieces of me, pieces of the past—much like I was attempting to hold on to pieces of her and her past.

I realized my retention efforts were futile: I could hold on to her memories without her stuff, just as she had always remembered me, my childhood, and all our memories without ever accessing those sealed boxes under her bed. She didn’t need papers from 25 years ago to remember me, just as I didn’t need a storage locker filled with her stuff to remember her.

I called U-Haul and canceled the truck.

And then, over the next 12 days, I donated her stuff to places and people who could use it.

Of course it was difficult to let go, but I realized many things about our relationship between memories and possessions during the experience: I am not my stuff; we are more than our possessions.

Our memories are within us, not within our things.

Holding on to stuff imprisons us; letting go is freeing.

You can take pictures of items you want to remember.

Old photographs can be scanned.

An item that is sentimental for us can be useful for someone else.

I don’t think sentimental items are bad, or evil, or that holding on to them is wrong; I think the danger of sentimental items (and sentimentality in general) is far more subtle. If you want to get rid of an item, but the only reason you are holding on to it is for sentimental reasons—and if it is weighing on you—then perhaps it’s

time to get rid of it, perhaps it’s time to free yourself of the weight. That doesn’t mean you must get rid of everything, though.

When I returned to Ohio, I had four boxes of Mom’s photographs in my trunk, which I would later scan and save online. I found a scanner that made scanning the photos easy.

Those photos are digital now, and they can be used in digital picture frames instead of collecting dust in a basement. I no longer have the clutter of their boxes lying around and weighing me down, and they can never be destroyed in a fire.

I donated everything else strewn throughout her home: her furniture, her clothes and her decorative items. It was a giant leap for me, but I felt I must do it to remove the weight—the emotional gravitas—of the situation from my shoulders.

I don’t need Mom’s stuff to remind me of her—there are traces of her everywhere: in the way I act, in the way I treat others, even in the way I smile. She’s still there, and she was never part of her stuff.

Whenever I give advice on paring down, I tend to offer two options.

The first is usually the Giant Leap option, the dive-in-head-first option: Get rid of everything, smash your TV, throw out all your stuff, quickly rip off the Band-Aid, let it go! This option isn’t for everyone (and it’s often not for me), but in the case of my mom’s stuff, this is exactly what I did.

The second option is to take Baby Steps, which works because it helps you build momentum by taking small, incremental actions. What sentimental item can you get rid of today that you’ve wanted to get rid of for a while? Start there.

Then pick a few things each day, gradually increasing your efforts as you feel more comfortable.

Whichever option you choose, take action: never leave the scene of a good idea without taking action.

Reprinted with permission from The Minimalists blog at theminimalists.com 51

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12/14/2015 2:38:48 PM

HOM E STEAD ACT S

DAILY BREAD Baking bread is an easy and satisfying gift to give yourself by anna herman

I

t is hard to improve upon the fresh bread available from so many excellent local bakeries. But you can come close, and few things are as magical as transforming flour, water and salt into fragrant loaves—so it is worth your time to try.

Whether turning out unleavened, handrolled flatbreads, or creating a crusty sourdough boule through the loving tending of natural sourdough microbes, home bread baking is easily accomplished and offers many satisfactions.

Quality flour is key. There are several local mills, and many sources for the ground grains whose flour featuresa in bread recipes. Patience can be helpful, but not essential. Cornbread or Irish soda bread—batter leavened with baking soda or powder—can be on the table within 45 minutes.

Requiring a bit more planning ahead are raised yeast breads, which get their texture—and much of their flavor—from the life of yeast, and the yeast’s interactions with the main components of the flour.

All flours have yeast food in their carbohydrates, and wheat flours in particular have a significant protein (gluten), which creates structure. Yeasts digest these carbohydrates, multiplying and creating carbon dioxide gas, which makes the dough bubble and rise. The gluten can be encouraged to form a matrix to enrobe and hold this gas within the body of the bread. The physical action of kneading was a traditional—and still widely used—method to develop these gluten strands.

A modern look at the science behind the process has created a new no-need-toknead tradition. No-knead bread recipes feature moist doughs, and allow yeast and enzymes in the flour to do the job of forming gluten structure with much less fuss.

Purists will debate techniques, rising times, flour combinations and oven temperatures.

Many good books, blogs and videos can expand your understanding of the options. A hot loaf of bread out of the oven is always 54

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Another bread you can try baking is a traditional rustic loaf

HOME STEAD ACT S good; so don’t let perfection be the enemy of the delicious.

The practical art of bread baking has been evolving for over 30,000 years. Add this homesteading skill to your repertoire, and you can continue a body-and-soulnourishing human endeavor with a few simple ingredients and a little time.

Quick No-Knead Multi-Grain Bread Ingredients: yy 1 ½ cups whole-wheat flour yy ½ cup all-purpose white or bread flour yy ½ cup whole rye or oat flour yy ½ cup cornmeal yy 1 teaspoon instant yeast yy 1 ½ teaspoons salt yy 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar yy Sesame or poppy seeds for top of bread yy Oil as needed

Directions:

1.

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl.

Add 1 ½ cups very warm water and stir well with a strong wooden spoon until blended. Dough will be sticky and rough.

2. Cover

bowl with a dish cloth. Let dough rise about 4 to 6 hours until doubled in bulk—time will depend on the ambient room temperature.

3. Oil an 8- or 9-inch loaf pan very well, as dough tends to be sticky. Lightly oil your hands and form dough into a rectangle to fit in the pan neatly. Sprinkle with seeds if desired.

4. Lightly oil top of loaf and cover with waxed paper. Let dough rise in the pan for about one hour until it has clearly puffed and just risen over the top edge.

5. Preheat oven to 350 F. Bake bread for 40-45 minutes. To ensure bread is done, you can check the internal temperature with an instant-read thermometer (every cook should have one!) of 195-205 degrees.

Remove bread from pan and cool on a rack.

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Connect to the Co-op.

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MAR KET WATCH

SWEET POTATOES From Covingtons to Beauregards, sweet potatoes hit the spot by peggy paul casella

T

hey might not be as flashy as other super foods, but sweet potatoes pack a serious nutritional punch, and have impressive concentrations of fiber, potassium and other essential nutrients. Most notably, sweet potatoes are one of the most potent natural sources of beta-carotene and other pigment-related antioxidants, which have been shown to boost the immune system, prevent cognitive decline, reduce inflammation in the body, and even aid in blood sugar regulation. And the best part? These tuberous root vegetables are available year-round, bringing vibrant color to your table even in the coldest winter months.

Sweet potatoes hail from the morning-glory family of plants and originate in the tropics of Central and South America, where they have been used as a food source since prehistoric times. However, it wasn’t until the 16th century that farmers in North America began to cultivate this ancient crop. Now, there are hundreds of varieties worldwide, ranging in color from creamy white to reddish-orange and purple, and in texture from soft and moisture-rich to firm and dry.

When so-called “soft,” orange-fleshed sweet potatoes were first cultivated in the Americas, African slaves called them yams, because they reminded them of the familiar tuber that was commonly grown in their homeland. Even though the two plants are not botanically related and have very different attributes (yams are starchier and drier than sweet potatoes, with blackish-brown, bark-like skin), this misnomer took hold and is still used today to identify the softer, sweet potato varieties. True yams are very rare in the United States; chances are, unless you’re shopping in an international market, what you find in the “yam” bin or basket will technically be a sweet potato.

If you’re in search of that classic sweet potato-y flavor and soft, pillowy texture, look no further than the orange-and-reddish-fleshed Beauregards, Garnets or

Covingtons (great for mashing, roasting, soups and stews, casseroles and desserts).

White-fleshed sweet potatoes tend to be drier, starchier and less sweet (great for candying and gratins); and purple-fleshed sweet potatoes are richly flavored, with a slightly firmer texture than their orange counterparts (great for roasting, casseroles and other savory applications). Choose sweet potatoes that are firm and without bruises, cracks or soft spots, and store them in a cool, dry place—not in the refrigerator! Temperatures below 55 F will cause their cores to harden and their flavor to de-

teriorate. Also, leave the skins on whenever possible, as they contain high amounts of fiber, potassium and antioxidants.

USES: Roast them, bake them, mash them, toss them into salads, soups, stews, chilies, casseroles and gratins. Shred them for latkes and potato pancakes. Fry them in a skillet for breakfast hash. Juice them.

Cook and purée them for smoothies, parfaits, gnocchi, hummus and baked goods.

Peggy Paul Casella is a cookbook editor, writer, urban vegetable gardener, produce peddler and author of the blog Thursday Night Pizza.

Yukon & Sweet Potato Gratin with Fresh Herbs Ingredients: yy 1 ½ lbs medium Yukon potatoes

yy 1 tbsp minced each: flat-leaf parsley,

yy 1 ½ lbs medium sweet potatoes

sage, rosemary and thyme

yy 2 cups heavy cream

yy 1 ½ tsp fine sea salt

yy ¼ cup unsalted butter

yy ¾ tsp fresh ground black pepper

yy 3 garlic cloves, minced

yy 1 ½ cup coarsely grated gruyere cheese, packed

Directions:

1.

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

2. Peel and cut the potatoes into 1/8inch thick slices, and place the slices in an ice water bath. Set aside.

3. Combine the cream, butter and garlic in a medium saucepan over medium heat; bring to a simmer, stirring constantly, then immediately remove the pan from the heat.

4. Toss the herbs together in a small bowl. In another small bowl, mix together the salt and pepper.

5. Butter

a 14-inch oval baking dish.

Drain the potatoes, and pat dry. Spread half of the potatoes in the bottom of the baking dish, sprinkle with half of the salt-pepper mixture, half of the herb mixture and half of the cheese. Repeat with the remaining potatoes, salt-pepper mixture, herbs and cheese. Pour the cream mixture over top, pressing lightly to submerge the potatoes as much as you can in the liquid.

6. Cover the gratin tightly with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 25 minutes, until the top is golden and most of the liquid is absorbed.

Remove the gratin from the oven and let it stand for 10 minutes at room temperature before serving.

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EVENT S

january

1

Co-ops and Social Justice Book Club This month, the Mariposa book club will be reading chapters one and two of The World According to Monsanto by Marie-Monique Robin. Free copies of the chapters are available in their library. mariposa.coop WHEN: 7 to 8:30 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 4824 Baltimore Ave.

january

5

Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath The Philadelphia Museum of Art features the black and white photographs from the 1950s and 1960s by Philadelphia photographer Dave Heath. His narrative images will be on display until Feb. 21. philamuseum.org WHEN: 10 a.m to 5 p.m. COST: $20 for adults; $18 for seniors; $14 for students and children WHERE: 2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy.

Constituting Liberty The National Constitution Center displays one of the 12 surviving copies of the Bill of Rights alongside a first edition stone engraving of the Declaration of Independence.

WHEN: 9:30 a..m to 5 p.m. COST: $14.50 for adults; $13 for seniors, students and children.

WHERE: 525 Arch St.

Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life The first survey of American still life in three decades, “Audubon to Warhol” features 130 oil paintings, watercolors and works in other media representing the finest accomplishments in the genre from its beginnings in the late 1700s to the Pop Art era of the 1960s.

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. COST: $20 for adults; $18 for seniors; $14 for students and children WHERE: 2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy.

Straying: Diary of a Cold Universe “Straying” is an exhibition retracing Walter Benjamin's movements in Moscow during December of 1926, and their contemporary spatial and political resonances. It will unfold as a work in progress as the weeks go by, accompanied by a series of public conversations, before closing in early February.

WHEN: Noon to 5 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut St. 58

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Cy Twombly: Sculptures

Kitchen Science

This exhibit features five bronze sculptures that Twombly considered companion pieces to his painting series “Fifty Days at Iliam.”

The exhibition ends on Jan. 31.

The Franklin Institute hosts a scientific experiment in cheese making for the entire family. fi.edu

philamuseum.org WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. COST: $20 for adults; $18 for seniors; $14 for students and children WHERE: Philadelphia Museum of Art - Perelman Building, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy.

We Speak: Black Artists In Philadelphia This exhibit features over 70 paintings, photographs, sculptures, and prints produced by black artists living and working in Philadelphia during the mid-20th century.

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. COST: $10 for adults; $7 for seniors; Free for students and children WHERE: Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Ave.

The Weight of Watercolor: The Art of Eileen Goodman “The Weight of Watercolor” celebrates one of Philadelphia's most respected realist painters and an innovator within the city's long-established tradition of still life painting. The exhibition will include work spanning five decades of Goodman's career.

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. COST: $10 for adults; $7 for seniors; Free for students and children WHERE: Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Ave.

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Wine, Cheese and Honey Pairing Penns Woods is teaming up with local cheese and honey artisans to provide a wine, cheese and honey pairing. Indulge in a sitdown pairing of five Penns Woods wines, each paired with various cheeses and honey from local farms on Jan. 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, 24, 30 and 31. pennswoodsevents.com WHEN: 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. COST: $28 WHERE: 124 Beaver Valley Rd., Chadds Ford, Pa

Recycle Your Holiday Cards Craft your old holiday cards and calendars into beautiful little boxes at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve. Bring your large folded cards, old calendars and a long ruler if you have one. Learn how to transform them into cute little boxes, ready for re-gifting. bhwp.org WHEN: 3 to 4 p.m. COST: $8 for members; $10 for non-members; registration required by Jan. 7 WHERE: 1635 River Rd., New Hope, Pa

WHEN: 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. COST: Free with museum admission WHERE: 222 N. 20th St.

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Lower Merion Winter Bird Count Join experienced BirdWatch volunteers for their 18th annual winter bird count. Gather at the conservancy cottage and split into teams to count winter resident birds at Rolling Hill Park, Saunders Woods, Riverbend and Flat Rock Park. lmconservancy.org WHEN: 8:30 to 10 a.m. COST: Free WHERE: 1301 Rose Glen Rd., Gladwyne, Pa

Winter Lecture Series: Snowy Owls Jean-Francois Therrien, Ph.D., has tracked the movements of snowy owls throughout the Americas. His presentation at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve will illustrate the field work situations he used to monitor these highly mobile and unpredictable predatory birds throughout consecutive years. bhwp.org WHEN: 2 to 3 p.m. COST: $8 for members; $12 for non-members WHERE: 1635 River Rd., New Hope, Pa

Local Food for Thought 3 Sustainable Cherry Hill’s Garden Task Force presents a free afternoon to meet farmers from local CSAs, as well as master gardeners helping you grow your own food with raised beds and community gardens. See a demonstration beehive and meet a local chicken. Bring something for the local food pantry. sustainablecherryhill.org WHEN: 1 to 3 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 1301 Park Blvd., Cherry Hill, N.J.

Campfire Cooking Enjoy making a lunch over the campfire with Friends of the Wissahickon: Cook hot dogs on a stick, grill veggies, and then bake potatoes in foil, brownies in an orange and cake in a Dutch oven. fow.org WHEN: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. COST: $5 WHERE: Wissahickon Valley Park, 300 W. Northwestern Ave.

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Horticultural Society Chinese Auction The Horticultural Society of South Jersey is holding a Chinese Auction. Bring new or gently used items to donate. Pass on any unwanted holiday gifts that someone else may treasure. Gardening items always wanted, but not mandatory. hssj.org WHEN: 7 to 9 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 820 Mercer St., Cherry Hill, N.J.

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Planning Together, Growing Together: Planning Commission Annual Celebration Philadelphia City Planning Commission holds its fourth annual event to mark progress on Philadelphia2035, the city's comprehensive plan. Mayor Jim Kenney will speak and recognize 60 graduates from the 2015 Citizens Planning Institute. The 2016 Annual Update Calendar will be presented and distributed. planningtogether.eventbrite.com

The First Step of Starting a Business

WHEN: 5:30 to 8 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: WHYY Media Commons, 150 N. 6th St.

Have you always had a dream to start your own business, but didn’t know where to start? This workshop will help aspiring entrepreneurs begin the process of successful business ownership, including evaluating ideas, developing a business plan and exploring financing options. sbdc.psu.edu

BirdPhilly at Pennypack on the Delaware

WHEN: 3 to 4 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 420 Holmes St., Room 9, Bellefonte, Pa

WHEN: 7:30 to 9 a.m. COST: Free WHERE: The gazebo at the entrance to Pennypack on the Delaware, State Road, just south of Rhawn Street

Career Wardrobe Mainline Clothing Drive

Join the BirdPhilly staff to see great cormorants, canvasback, common goldeneyes and other water birds and gulls. The eagle nest will be active at this time. birdphilly.org

The Art of Play with Anna Beresin Join the Community Design Collaborative and psychologist and folklorist Anna Beresin for a workshop inspired by The Art of Play, her book presenting recess and play through the eyes of Philadelphia school children. cdesignc.org WHEN: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. COST: $5-10 donation WHERE: Center for Architecture, 1216 Arch St.

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The Crafted Table Wine and dine in the Clay Studio galleries and experience “The Crafted Table,” a handcrafted multi-course meal served on artist-made ceramic ware from their shop.

Chef Ethan Morgan of Lloyd Whiskey Bar will present his culinary creations. theclaystudio.org WHEN: 5:30 to 9 p.m. COST: $80 for members; $85 for non-members WHERE: 137-139 N. 2nd St.

Fundraising 101

Stop by Falls Presbyterian Church to donate your new and gently used women's clothing and accessories. careerwardrobe.org

Learn the basics of fundraising for all types of organizations and projects. Instructors will talk about the most common types of fundraising, how to get the most money in the least amount of time, and the different tools and methods. mariposa.coop/events

WHEN: 5 to 6:30 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 7700 Parkview Dr., Haverford, Pa

WHEN: 6 to 8 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: Falls Presbyterian Church, 3800 Vaux St.

WHEN: 7 to 8:30 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 4824 Baltimore Ave.

Give Cozy, Get Cozy

Healthy Eating in a Junk Food World

3D Printing Workshop

Maker’s Mark is holding its weekend-long mobile coat drive across Philly. All donated coats will go to One Warm Coat, a nonprofit organization that provides winter clothing to those in need. makersmark.com/holiday-truck-tour

West Jersey Sierra Club meets to learn about genetically engineered foods (GMOs), their accompanying agricultural chemicals and healthy food awareness. Learn which foods to avoid, which to seek out and how to navigate the supermarket. gmofreenj.com

Ready to dive into 3D printing, but don’t know where to start? Join the Franklin Institute for a 3D printing workshop and learn how to turn those designs you’ve imagined into physical formations with the click of a button. fi.edu

WHEN: Various times COST: Free WHERE: Various locations

WHEN: 7:30 to 9 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 45 Friends Ave., Haddonfield, N.J.

WHEN: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. COST: $40 for members, $25 for additional participants; $50 for non-members, $30 for additional participants WHERE: 222 N. 20th St.

Every second Tuesday of the month, stop

by Athertyn at Haverford Reserve to donate your new and gently used women’s clothing and accessories. careerwardrobe.org

Career Wardrobe East Falls Clothing Drive

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Serving the nonprofit sector STARTUP • GENERAL COUNSEL • REPOSITIONING • CRISIS MANAGEMENT

5275 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19144 www.CheshireNonprofitLaw.com 267.331.4154

Local | Farm-to-Table Fresh | Organic

ChefPeg@cosmicfoods.com | 610-324-5256 | Lloyd Hall, 1 Boathouse Row

Values-driven baked goods Biked fresh to your door fikirabakery.com 267-304-3855

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EVENT S

january

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Giants of the Forest Learn how to identify trees based on their winter characteristics, such as shape and bark pattern, with the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. As you walk past old fields and ruins of 19th century homesteads, you’ll hear about the history of the land and how human use has influenced our forests. Pre-registration required.

Owls at Andorra Meadow

Edible Gardening Workshop

January is a great time to hear owls at the Wissahickon Environmental Center, because great horned owls are breeding, and wintering species like saw-whet and longeared owls may be present. BirdPhilly staff will have a short talk about local owls by the fire and then guide participants out on the trail. birdphilly.org

Do you want to grow some of your own food, but don’t know how to begin? This four-session workshop on edible gardening will take you through the basics about soils, planting and common challenges. Each person will work at designing a unique plan that they can implement on their property this spring. ivpl.org

WHEN: 7 to 9 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 300 Northwestern Ave., Glenside, Pa

WHEN: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. COST: $50 WHERE: Indian Valley Public Library, 100 E. Church Ave., Telford, Pa

schuylkillcenter.org

Indoor Seed Starting

WHEN: 1 to 2:30 p.m. COST: $5 WHERE: Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, 8480 Hagy's Mill Rd.

Learn how to start your garden from seed this year. Primex Garden Center’s propagation expert, Gloria Foran, will discuss seed selection, planning timing, and steps for growing flower seedlings.

Winter Celebration: How Genetic Engineering Works Joseph Tychonievich will relay the mechanics of genetic engineering, how it is similar to and different from other forms of plant breeding, and reveal new trends in technology. scottarboretum.org WHEN: 4 to 7 p.m. COST: $25 WHERE: Swarthmore College’s Chang Hou Hall, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, Pa

Growing Under Lights: Build a Light Unit Learn how to grow plants indoors when there isn't enough natural light, what lights are best, how to keep costs down and which plants to choose. Construct and take home your own light unit made from PVC pipe. phsonline.org WHEN: 1 to 4 p.m. COST: $10 WHERE: P.H.S. Town Hall, 100 N. 20th St.

Starting Seeds & Getting Ready for Spring Get the jump on spring in this workshop on season extenders, garden planning and starting seeds indoors and out. Participants will take home seeds appropriate to the season. pennhort.net/gardentenders WHEN: 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. COST: $10 WHERE: P.H.S. Town Hall, 100 N. 20th St.

Restoration Volunteer Workday Become a steward of the forest at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education while learning more about nature.

You’ll help with restoration projects, remove invasive species and maintain trails. Water refills and snacks are provided. No prior experience is needed, just a desire to improve the health of the forest. schuylkillcenter.org WHEN: 10 to noon COST: Free WHERE: 8480 Hagy's Mill Rd.

primexgardencenter.com WHEN: 1 to 2 p.m. COST: $10 WHERE: 435 W. Glenside Ave., Glenside, Pa

january

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Winter Lecture: Gardens of the Founding Fathers William Penn, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were avid gentlemen gardeners whose paths all led to the Quaker garden and botany tradition exemplified by John and William Bartram. In this presentation, Irwin Richman, Ph.D., will share the ways Bartram influenced the gardens of these eminent American historical figures.

WHEN: 2 to 3 p.m. COST: $8 for members; $12 for non-members WHERE: 1635 River Rd., New Hope, Pa

january

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Mariposa Game Night Unleash the gamer inside you with Scrabble, Apples to Apples, checkers and cards. Meet new people, spark conversations, and enjoy tasty snacks with your neighbors and fellow members. mariposa.coop/events WHEN: 6 to 8 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 4824 Baltimore Ave.

Nature Preschool Open House Get to know the Schuylkill Center Nature Preschool by visiting the classrooms, meeting the preschool director, learning about the curriculum and schedule, asking questions and picking up a registration packet. schuylkillcenter.org

january

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Roundup the Usual Suspects GMO Free NJ explores your questions about genetically modified foods, food labels and more in a special meeting about Roundup, the agricultural chemical that is applied to genetically engineered foods. gmofreenj.com WHEN: 6:30 to 8 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: Collingswood Public Library, 771 Haddon Ave., Collingswood, N.J.

Phila2035 Lower Southwest District Plan The Lower Southwest District Plan is one of 18 district plans that will guide Philadelphia’s physical development. Join in the second public meeting to see the results from the first, and help refine the community vision for growth, development and preservation. phila2035.org WHEN: 6 to 7:30 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: Penrose School, 2515 S. 78th St.

january

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Get Skooled Spend the fourth Friday of each month with Community Bikes and Boards for basic bicycle knowledge. This month, they will focus on brake adjustments. communitybikesandboards.com WHEN: 7 to 9 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 712 S. 4th St.

Full Moon Hike Night Hike by the light of the full moon at the Wissahickon Environmental Center. Discover the tree silhouettes against the moonlit sky, hear the hoot of an owl and then warm up around a campfire. fow.org WHEN: 6 to 10:30 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 300 W. Northwestern Ave.

WHEN: 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 8480 Hagy's Mill Rd. JAN UARY 20 16

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Art and Architecture Tour

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Winter Wonders: Animal Tracks Tiptoe on the frozen ground as you search for animal tracks and signs of hidden life.

Afterward, read a tracking story and make a craft. Program is appropriate for ages 3 to 8.

Children must be accompanied by an adult. bhwp.org

This themed tour features an in-depth look at the Kimmel Center's architecture, a walk down the Avenue of the Arts and a tour of the Center's displayed artwork.

WHEN: 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 300 S. Broad St.

january

WHEN: 10 to 11:15 a.m. COST: Free for members; $7 for non-member adult with child, $3 for each additional child WHERE: Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, 1635 River Rd., New Hope, Pa

Nature in Winter Walk Explore Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve in its winter brilliance with naturalist Mary Anne Borge. Enjoy the quiet beauty while learning how plants provide winter food and shelter for birds and small mammals. bhwp.org WHEN: 1:30 to 3 p.m. COST: $4 for members; $8 for non-members WHERE: 1635 River Rd., New Hope, Pa

Repair Fair, Philly Fixers Guild The fixers and volunteers of the Philly Fixers Guild are back at it. Stop by with your broken or malfunctioning possessions and learn to fix them. Bring anything. phillyfixersguild.org WHEN: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: The Sculpture Gym, 1834 Frankford Ave.

Tree Tenders Basic Training Help plant and care for trees in your community. The PHS Tree Tenders program offers hands-on tree care training covering tree biology, identification, planting, proper care and working within your community. pennhort.net/treetenders WHEN: 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. COST: $25, limited scholarships available WHERE: Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 100 N. 20th St.

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Basics of Raising Chickens in the Suburbs Learn how to set up a chicken coop, select hens and care for them year-round. Learn how to familiarize yourself with the legal issues in your town. facebook.com/camdencountychickens WHEN: 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. COST: $10 per household WHERE: Camden County Environmental Center, 1301 Park Blvd., Cherry Hill, N.J.

Winter Lecture Series: Plants Galls of Pennsylvania This presentation will focus on the world of insect and mite-induced galls and the wide variety of galls and gall-makers that can be found in Pennsylvania and other northeastern states and surroundings. Participants will learn about these unique growths of distinctive morphologies that can be found on various parts of selected species of plants.

WHEN: 2 to 3 p.m. COST: $8 for members; $12 for non-members WHERE: Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, 1635 River Rd., New Hope, Pa

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Kitchen Remedies for Winter Colds In this workshop at Mariposa Food Co-op, instructors will cover some simple remedies you can make in your kitchen with commonly available herbs to help ward off the common cold and flu. Attendees will go home with a jar of fire cider. mariposa.coop WHEN: 7 to 8:30 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 4824 Baltimore Ave.

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Owl Howl Mt. Cuba Center’s varied landscapes and topography provide ideal habitats for four of Delaware’s native owl species, and winter is the best time to spot them roosting in their trees. The owl is nocturnal, so join the search for them just after dusk. mtcubacenter.org WHEN: 4 to 7 p.m. COST: $15 WHERE: Mt. Cuba Center, 3120 Barley Mill Rd., Hockessin, De

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The Roots of Fermentation Join Amanda Feifer, author of the cookbook Ferment Your Vegetables and the fermentation blog Phickle to learn the art of pickling root vegetables in the heart of winter. eventbrite.com/e/the-roots-of-fermentation-tickets-20020405572

Philly Stake Philly Stake is a recurring event celebrating locally sourced food and creative community projects, organized completely by volunteers. phillystake.org

WHEN: 6 to 8 p.m. COST: $20 WHERE: Free Library of Philadelphia, Culinary Literacy Center, 1901 Vine St.

WHEN: 4 to 7 p.m. COST: $20 donation WHERE: Christ Church Neighborhood House Theatre, 20 N. American St.

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Bodacious Birds of Prey Staff from AARK Wildlife Rehabilitation Center will visit with several of their animal ambassadors for an up close and personal look into the fascinating lives of birds of prey. Find out where these creatures live, what they eat and how they raise their young. Learn how you can help protect our animal friends and their environment. bhwp.org WHEN: 10 to 11:30 a.m. COST: Members: $6 adult, $4 children; $10 adult, $8 children for non-members WHERE: Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, 1635 River Rd., New Hope, Pa

Water is Life: Connecting the Drops Join Sustainable Cherry Hill for a free, public presentation about the condition of the local waterways that provide our drinking water. Learn how public water is protected, and what you can do at home to make a difference. sustainablecherryhill.org WHEN: 2 to 3 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: Palmyra Cove Nature Park, 1335 Rt. 73 S., Palmyra, N.J.

What's for Dinner?

Farm to Table Fundraiser Visit Camphill Village Kimberton Hills for a dinner made from seasonal, local, organic and biodynamic foods, either grown or raised right in Kimberton Hills or in the neighborhood. Between courses, attendees will hear directly from the growers and producers to learn more about the foods served that evening. camphillkimberton.org WHEN: 6 to 10 p.m. COST: $100 WHERE: 1601 Pughtown Rd., Kimberton, Pa

Saturday Wellness Walk Trade the sweaty gym for open skies, fresh air and friendly company with an invigorating walk along the beautiful Schuylkill trails. The walk will be led at a moderate pace, along one of their wider and more level trails. schuylkillcenter.org WHEN: 2 to 3 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, 8480 Hagy's Mill Rd.

Create a Terrarium Create a miniature garden under glass in this make and take workshop. Instructor Jamie McCracken will teach you how to create and care for your miniature landscape.

Cost includes all materials. primexgardencenter.com WHEN: 10 to 11 a.m. COST: $35 WHERE: Primex Garden Center, 435 W. Glenside Ave., Glenside, Pa

Hawk Krall: The New Philadelphia Artist Hawk Krall’s imaginative street scenes and vaguely futuristic illustrations celebrate the intersection of old and new in an ever-changing city. The exhibition will be on display until March 5th.

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: The Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design, 1916 Race St.

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Farming for the Future Conference Join the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture for their 25th annual conference. Farming in a Changing Climate is a four-day event that will generate discussion around fundamental change in the way people relate to each other and the earth.

WHEN: 7 a.m. registration each day throughout the event COST: Varies for members, non-members and students from $35 - $340 WHERE: The Penn Stater Conference Center, 215 Innovation Blvd., State College, Pa

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Backyard Chickens Maureen Breen, of Philadelphia Backyard Chickens, will teach you how easy it is to raise a backyard flock. Learn everything from choosing the right chicks, setting up a coop and keeping them happy and healthy year-round. primexgardencenter.com WHEN: 10 to 11 a.m. COST: $10 WHERE: Primex Garden Center, 435 W. Glenside Ave., Glenside, Pa

Hucksters: The Tumult of Dock Street "Hucksters" highlights the bygone culture of Philadelphia's famed Dock Street produce market. In addition to historical images and ephemera, the exhibit features artwork by local artists who drew inspiration from the scene.

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: Independence Seaport Museum, 211 S. Columbus Blvd.

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DIS PATCH

BUY NOTHING, GAIN EVERYTHING How decluttering your home can enrich your neighborhood by susan corcoran

A

bout two years ago, I realized that every time I walked into my apartment I felt anxious and unfulfilled. Things I didn’t use were everywhere. I was always questioning why I had so much when it caused me nothing but stress. I first tried to organize it, but it was all still there, just placed in brightly colored boxes.

When I decided to lead a more minimalist life, I needed to figure out what I would do with everything. I didn’t want to throw it in the trash. Selling it seemed like too much work and not worth the effort. I donate items to charity when I can, but that doesn’t work for something like my opened bottle of fancy perfume.

Then I read about the Buy Nothing movement, a national project based in Bainbridge Island, Washington. “Give, Share, Build Community” is their tagline.

The idea is to be able to meet and trade with people in your immediate area. I joined my local chapter, Buy Nothing: Bella Vista/Washington Square West/Queen

Village. The group has over 600 members.

It has grown so big that we recently had to split off into another group for the Graduate Hospital/Point Breeze neighborhoods.

Joining this group led me not only to recycle things I no longer wanted, but also to become more aware of my community. I’ve met dozens of people I would have never otherwise encountered.

I remember the first time I knocked on someone’s door to pick up a red messenger bag. I was feeling anxious and presented her with a bamboo plant to alleviate my feeling of being a freeloader. Why am I picking up a free item from a total stranger?

What would I even say to her? Am I a total freak for doing this? The meeting turned out well. We made small talk and she was very pleasant.

Then it was my turn to list things I wanted out of my house and my life once and for all. I’ve given away a brand new Android tablet, my old coffee table, even air filters I had bought that were the wrong size. I especially love the odds and ends that people

actually need, such as the perfectly good glass plate from my broken microwave. I posted it because I know they are easy to break, but impossible to replace. Mine was a perfect fit for someone else’s microwave.

I gave away a never opened flower-shaped candy mold that was used at a 4-year-old’s tea-party-themed birthday celebration.

I contributed a bright purple T-shirt to a family’s Halloween costume that the creative mom (who just happens to be our group’s founder) pieced together from neighbors’ contributions. She posted pictures online the day after, and they looked fantastic.

The effort of putting together a child’s Halloween costume or getting ready for a party becomes almost a community puzzle.

We all come together to solve it.

We’ve gone from helping each other to helping the community at large, including a family who was displaced from their home, local public schools, an emergency shelter, and the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society. Meeting the people who help facilitate our efforts has been very inspiring: the kind social advocate who collected items for a family's new home, a crafter who turned our old blankets into beds for the dogs and cats waiting at the rescue, the public school teachers who do everything they can to educate the youth of our city. We come together and help our city and people in need.

I’ve lived in Bella Vista for 13 years and knew only a few people on my block.

Through the Buy Nothing group, I met a fellow former student from the small state college I attended in New York. It was great to find someone here who knew which dorm I lived in and all the bars we used to frequent. I’ve been invited into people’s homes and grown to know my neighbors.

I feel that I’ve learned more about my community in the past two years than I had the decade before, and I can’t imagine how else I would have been able to meet them.

I thought my journey into minimalism would be a solo one. As it turns out, getting rid of things can bring people together. Buy nothing, open your door and meet your neighbors.

Susan Corcoran is a respiratory therapist from New York, living happily and minimally in Philadelphia.

Each month, Dispatch features personal reflections on adventures in sustainability. Have a story you’d like to share? E-mail getinvolved@gridphilly.com

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IL LUSTRATIO N BY JAM ES OLSTEI N

Growing up green How one executive translated his childhood dreams into a thriving career.

Greg Kelder Master of Environmental Studies ’10, University of Pennsylvania To read more about Greg’s experiences in helping corporations and countries develop their environmental strategies, visit www.upenn.edu/grid

Greg Kelder (Master of Environmental Studies, ’10) has had a lifelong relationship with the great outdoors. Growing up in the Hudson Valley, Greg and his family spent their time visiting national parks, hiking the Adirondacks and driving to nearby recycling plants. Nowadays, Greg is the Vice President of Claims at the Brandywine Group of Insurance and Reinsurance Companies, a subsidiary of the ACE Group, where he helps businesses manage their environmental risks through insurance products.

Staff from Penn’s MES

Greg has been in his field for nearly three decades, but the large-scale environmental focus of businesses and institutions is a fairly recent development. “I’ve seen a complete turnaround over the expanse of my career in environmental education and corporate responsibility,” he says.

program are here to answer your questions face-to-face on the second Wednesday of each month.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, Penn’s MES has stayed ahead of the curve. Greg beams, “Having a Master of Environmental Studies from Penn gave me more credibility in my profession—it’s what helped elevate me to the position I have today, a position that really speaks to my life’s passion.”

Walk right in.

www.upenn.edu/grid

www.upenn.edu/grid

www.facebook.com/UPennEES

@PENN_EES