"So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, good bye"

The singing children of "The Sound of Music" provide my parting words to you, my supportive readers.

I am embarking on a challenging adventure to advance my professional career that will require copious studying for the rest of this year. Though I intend to continue living as simply and sustainably as possible, there will be no time for blogging. Besides, there are wonderful bloggers on these topics, and the links to some of those blogs appear along the right side on this blog.

Once I decide the time has come to take this blog down, I will give all of you plenty of notice.

My sincere gratitude to each of you for reading, commenting on and sharing this blog! Best wishes to all!

more evidence you should start a garden

This article in the New York Times discusses global climate change as a factor in the destabilization of the food supply system.


If you haven't already, you should start a garden and learn how to grow some of your own food. The Master Gardeners can help you.

Cellphones and bees: not so happy together? (and the Telephone Game)

A recent post by The Everyday Minimalist links to a post by Inhabitant that links to a Daily Mail article about the effects of cellphones on bees. The hypothesis is that signals from active cellphones and towers cause bee swarming behavior that may contribute to bee disappearance or colony collapse disorder. Loss of habitat, agro-chemicals and farming practices are other factors that may contribute to declining bee populations.


It's interesting that the Daily Mail article states, "The study did not show that mobile phones were deadly for bees, he said." Yet, Inhabitant titles the post, "It’s Official – Cell Phones are Killing Bees" and The Everyday Minimalist announces, "Active cell phones are killing bees." It's like the game of Telephone where everyone whispers a message to the person next to them and by the time it gets to the last person, the message hardly resembles the original. It seems the same has happened with these blog posts.


As a scientist and advocate for sustainability, I am very disappointed. This kind of sensationalism of scientific information hurts the credibility of the  green/sustainable/environmental community. The veracity of information provided in posts must be of utmost importance to bloggers. Otherwise, what's the point of sharing information if it isn't completely true?

Wishy washy on dishwashing

On the one hand I like hand dishwashing because the soapy water can be dumped on our compost pile (we use biodegradable soap) and the rinse water on the garden. But our Energy Star dishwasher beckons, especially when the dirty dish pile looms. As much as I would like to not incur electric use for the dishwasher, I am not so disciplined to keep up with the dishes, and it's just two people in our household.

I think this shows that as much as I--or anyone--wants to be very sustainable, there are the realities of our developed world life that task our sustainability desires.

What are your thoughts?

Sterile bananas, sterile men

Below is an excerpt from The New Community Project's weekly NCP Globalization List email.

Speaking of spraying, in the environmental class I'm teaching just now at Elizabethtown College, we were talking about the fact that to keep producing cavendish bananas (the variety we and the EU prefer)--a mutant, sterile banana reproduced from cuttings--each crop has to be sprayed 40 times to beat back plant diseases. One outcome is that 1 in 5 male banana workers in Central America is sterile and female workers suffer increased leukemia and birth defects.

"But if we stopped buying them," remarked one student, "the workers would be out of jobs." True enough--but the best thing that could happen to poor workers in banana-growing regions would be for the corporations to have to pull up stakes and go home, turning the land back over to the locals for (healthy) food production--for themselves.

utterly and completely shameless selling

If you are a reader of this blog (and live in the El Paso area) you will receive a 20% discount off of our fridge advertised for sale on Craigslist and mentioned in the previous blog post.

Even friends and family of The Adventures of Pei readers can take advantage of this very generous discount!

To receive the discount all one needs to do is print out this post and bring it when the fridge is paid and picked up.

As my father says, "Can't beat that with a stick."

shameless Pei Haus promotion

If you live in the El Paso area and need a refrigerator and/or a bike trainer, check out the Craigslist ads below.

Fridge - $450 cash and carry

Trainer - $10 cash and carry  SOLD (that was fast!)

Your purchase helps fund our Summer 2011 home maintenance program. Thank you, y !muchas gracias!*

*(Just had to parody the Popular Mattress fellow. Local folks know what I'm talking about.)

even more about food production and global climate change

A recent report released by OxFam is the topic of this article in USA Today.  One of the things the article says is, "The world's poorest people will be hardest hit as the demand for food rises 70% by 2050 while the world's capacity to increase food production declines..."

Are you ready to start your own garden yet?

Even nations and corporations believe in global warming

The below is excerpted from the New Community Project's May 30th Africa update email. 

You're likely aware of the move by many Rich World nations and commercial interests to purchase African farmland as a hedge against future food shortages [due to global climate change] in their own countries. This article does a nice job of laying out the troubling aspects of such deals, which so far are enriching the few while doing little to safeguard the interests of people in affected farming areas. The whole enterprise has disturbing echoes of previous incursions onto the continent--first for slaves and ivory, then for precious minerals, petroleum and other commodities, now for land.  

This summary and the linked article about purchasing farmland in Africa scares me the most of any of the social justice/global warming-related issues. It spells doom for common human decency if nothing is done now to curb potential abuses. Actually, it already is an abuse that non-Africans are purchasing land that will likely be kept from feeding Africans.

I remember a very simple--and very true--slogan on the wall of the Syracuse Real Food Co-op, "Food is politics." We are seeing that play out in Africa, and elsewhere.

Invisible Cyclists in El Paso

This post over at Utility Cycling is about Invisible Cyclists in L.A. These are working-class bike riders who do so out of necessity to get to their jobs. It includes a video and a link to a companion article in Good Magazine. 

I especially like that they've connected bicycling with environmental justice. Another thing they talk about is a bicycle repair cooperative.

The post and linked article are certainly relevant to El Paso, TX where there are many similar bicyclists. While out and about in El Paso I see so many bicyclists who could use the assistance of a bicycle repair cooperative to make their bikes more comfortable and safe. Wonder if a such a thing could work in El Paso?