By Shawn Dell Joyce
Buildings are responsible for approximately half of U.S. energy consumption and carbon emissions annually and are growing faster than any other sector, according to the U.S. Green Building Council. Forty-three percent of U.S. carbon emissions and 76 percent of U.S. electricity consumption happen in buildings, through heating, cooling, lighting, hot water and appliances.

By Bob Gaydos
How do you feel when a waitress calls you “hon”? How can the Mets rehire Jerry Manuel? Do you dread four-way stop signs? Am I the only one who misses Jimmy Cannon?

By Beth Quinn
One by-product of my dog Mike’s feud with Boots Jones was a nervous stomach, and he passed a lot of gas. This affected everyone in the family because Mike slept in front of the hot-air vent in the kitchen.

By Michael Kaufman
They don’t call it an unemployment office anymore. Now it is a “one-stop career center” and the employees are kindly even if the job market is not.

By Jeffrey Page
After all the talk and all the excuses, he was 43 and she was 13.

By Carrie Jacobson
There’s something about an abandoned house that speaks to me. I see these houses, I pass them day after day, and I watch nature take them over, take them back. As vines climb up their sides, as the fields push their way into the lawns, as the roofs fall in and the paint weathers off, these abandoned places speak more clearly to me. This one is on Route 17K, just outside Montgomery. Last week, the purple wildflowers shone softly in the autumn sun, and the goldenrod bent and swayed in the wind.

By Carrie Jacobson
In this chapter, Zoe, Kaja and Loosey the cat leave the river, and Samantha Morrone, behind.

By Shawn Dell Joyce
View from the rocks below Perkin’s Tower on Bear Mountain. Perfect fall weather brought every motorcyclist within 50 miles to Bear Mountain Sunday, including me. Come paint with me and the Wallkill River School next Sunday in the same lovely spot. To see more paintings, go to www.WallkillRiverSchool.com.

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Yard sales are great for bargains, but they also are great because we are keeping usable things out of our landfills. Each of us produces 1.2 tons of garbage per year, but that figure doesn’t include the usable goods — such as old furniture, clothes and books — that also wind up in the waste stream.

Photography by Rich Gigli
HARVEST MOON – The moon rising over Jeffersonville, N.Y. (Photo was taken October 2006.) Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009, was a harvest moon.