Photography by Rich Gigli

The doorway of life invites us to open. But, it's in that deceive moment as we pass through that we are nether leaving or entering the space. No matter our age, or gender, we all go through doorways on our way to meet our destiny. (Gigli 2009)

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Our children are growing up in a vastly different world from the one in which we grew up. By the time they graduate, much of what we taught them will be obsolete. Our country is in a period of transition, moving away from dependence on fossil fuels to a greener future. Let’s prepare our children by transitioning them and their school environment.

The Eco-Schools USA program is part of an international program led in the U.S. by the National Wildlife Federation. The program sets up school-based action teams of students, administrators, educators and community volunteers. Schools become certified by achieving a series of goals that must be implemented by students, faculty and administrators.

More than 270,000 schoolchildren in Ireland are taking part in the Green-Schools program, which is in its 13th year. Irish youths are leading initiatives on litter, waste, water and travel. Successful schools are recognized at successive levels, from bronze and silver to the highest award — a green flag. Once a school has received four green flags, it is considered a green school.

“Our Green Schools committee has been led by Transition Year students since 2005, and we received our first Green Flag in 2006,” says Anna Kavanagh, a geography teacher in a green school and author of “Green-Schools Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change.” “We’ve been calculating the ecological footprint of the school, which looks at our impact on all of nature’s resources. We’ve introduced recycling bins into the classrooms, carried out renovations to fit the school with energy-saving light sensors, got a compost bin, and planted over 1,000 spring bulbs.”

“We’re going for our third flag and we’ll be focusing on water conservation and quality,” says Eimear Noonan-Tracey, a 16-year-old student in a green school. “It’s about encouraging people to use water wisely, turn off taps, and be aware of pollution, such as that caused by slurry washing into rivers.”

Eco-school programs are democratic and participatory, engaging our children as active participants and citizens of the world community.
Students and staff can work together to reduce litter and waste and run the schools in environmentally conscious ways. Students take home an increased environmental awareness that affects their families and communities, also helping to transition them.

The process engages our children in actively working toward solutions. Children take control of their own environment, learning and making decisions about how to improve both their home and school environments. This is empowering to children, who often are made to feel powerless and frustrated by big issues, such as climate change.

At a time when school budgets are being cut, this type of program pays for itself and helps the schools save money. Reducing energy and water waste in schools will also reduce utility bills. Being an eco-school means taking responsibility for environmental stewardship and participating in the world community. Students can link up to other eco-schools around the world and share environmental information and culture.

The first flag focuses on litter and waste, implementing various initiatives to reduce waste and combat any litter problems they may face. On average, schools have reduced their waste by more than 60 percent, and some schools are operating at zero waste. Once a school receives the first flag, it moves on to the next theme, energy, before tackling the areas of water and travel. Each theme builds on the previous one, and all themes are worked on continuously until they become integrated into the rhythm of the school day.

“I’m doing this because I worry that the world we leave behind won’t be habitable for our children,” Kavanagh says. “We can’t forget about their future.”

To get your school involved, visit http://www.nwf.org/ecoschools and then enlist help from other parents, students, teachers, administrators, PTA members and school environmental clubs.

Shawn@Zestoforange.com

Photography by Rich Gigli

Veterans Day - Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Recent hikes in the costs of fuel oil and natural gas have many of us looking to alternative sources for home heating. But what is the “greenest” alternative? That is a tough question because it depends on where you live and what fuel is abundant locally. If you live in the Midwest, corn is more abundant than wood and may have less of an environmental impact because it doesn’t have to be shipped to you.

If you live in the woods, then wood is a logical heat choice for you and is carbon-neutral, meaning that burning the wood doesn’t add any more carbon to the atmosphere than the tree would have sequestered during its lifetime. Most people who live in the woods can use windfall trees and standing deadwood and don’t ever have to cut down a living tree. However, if we all burned wood, it quickly would deforest our country and add to climate change dramatically.

Biomass heat is gaining in popularity and can be a greener choice in some cases. Corn pellet stoves and wood pellet stoves look the same and heat equivalently. Because they are highly efficient, they don’t need chimneys; instead, they can be vented outdoors by 4-inch pipes through outside walls. You also can tie a corn stove to your thermostat so that glow plug igniters automatically light it. It has a hopper capacity big enough to hold several days’ worth of corn. Both stoves use blowers to create vacuums inside the stoves, keeping smoke from seeping into your home.

What you burn is also crucial. Wood smoke can contain many tars, creosote and other chemicals that degrade our air quality. Burning wood as hot as possible helps reduce contaminants in the smoke. Corn burns so cleanly that you won’t see a wisp of smoke from the stovepipe. However, corn requires many chemical inputs to grow and can be environmentally devastating.

Wood pellets burn the most cleanly but are not necessarily as renewable a resource as corn.
Look for corn that is grown locally and has low pesticide and fertilizer use, such as transitional corn, for a truly environmentally friendly alternative fuel.

There are also multi-fuel stoves, which burn almost anything that fits in the 2-inch hoppers. This type of stove may be a good choice if you live in an agricultural area. Farmers are discovering a new use for waste crops, such as wheat shafts and hulls, cornstalks and moldy hay. These crop wastes can be pelletized and sold as biomass heat pellets for multi-fuel stoves. This may be a local source for home heating fuel in areas where wood is expensive and corn is needed as food.

Many farmers have started growing biomass crops, such as switch grass, specifically to pelletize and burn them for home heating use. You can use grass pellets in pellet stoves, as well as in high-efficiency wood stoves. If you have enough land, you can make grass pellets out of just about any type of hay or straw. You even can use last year’s moldy hay bales to make next year’s pellets. Finding a pelletizer may be the hardest part of the process. Some farmers in New York pitch in together and rent one. You could make your own pellets and save substantially on home heating. This could become a popular home-based business that helps wean Americans off fossil fuels so that they can enjoy real homeland security.

Traditional open masonry fireplaces aren’t effective or efficient heating devices. A traditional fireplace draws in as much as 300 cubic feet per minute of heated room air for combustion and then sends it straight up the chimney. This is the same as having a 4-foot hole in your wall that is sucking your precious heat straight outdoors! Only high-efficiency fireplace inserts have proved to be effective in increasing the heating efficiency of older fireplaces. The insert functions like a wood stove, fitting into the masonry fireplace or on its hearth and using the existing chimney.

Shawn@zestoforange.com

Photography by Rich Gigli

The Beaver Kill is a tributary of the East Branch of the Delaware River, approximately 44 miles long, located in the south central part of New York State. The Kill runs through the Catskill Mountains and has long been celebrated as one of the most famous trout streams in the United States.

By Bob Gaydos

 If you still care about politics, if you still think that “the people” can make a difference in how this country is run and if you think that the proper way, the common-sense, decent, truly all-American way would be for politicians of all persuasions to work together as much as possible for the common good this has got to have been one of the worst summers of your life.
 
 The summer of the know-nothings and the yahoos. The summer of the shameless and the gutless.
 
 It began with the crowning of Pedro Espada Jr. as leader of the state Senate in Albany — by both parties at different times. A man under investigation for diversion of state funds, a man who defected not once, but twice, from the political party of the moment, wound up in charge of the supposed upper legislative body in Albany and had the gall to call it a reform movement. And no one in Albany had the guts to call it what it was — shameless political extortion — and no one was willing to work out a solution between Republicans and Democrats because no one wanted to lose control. Control of what I don’t know, because, clearly, Espada, with the most selfish of motives, was in control the whole time. If you, dear reader, can somehow hold out any hope for this group of senators to govern responsibly in the future, more power to you. I cannot. And if they do manage to surprise me it will be at least 20 years too late.
 
 But the really bad, really dumb, really outrageously idiotic stuff this summer has come on the national level from what used to be known as the Party of Lincoln. I have never registered in any political party, but I have friends who claim to be Republicans and I dare them now to publicly justify the hateful, spiteful, fiction-based attacks on our president that have followed any initiative he has proposed. They can’t, because there is no justification save the political one — the only way the GOP feels it can survive and regain strength is to attack Barack Obama on every front, to reject every overture from him to work together, even on worthy causes, but mostly to spread lies and fear among a distressingly large segment of the population that has proven to be as gullible as P.T. Barnum observed.
 
 The Birthers and the Death Squad people and the “he’s a Socialist,” “he’s a Nazi” people — and the politicians who allow them to get away with it — have not only sullied the name of the Grand Old Party, they have sold its soul. And, if you stop and think about it (which they don’t), they have rendered a harsh indictment on the education system of this country.
 
 What kind of  nation, after all, turns out so many people who are willing to take hateful fictitious charges — leveled at their newly elected president, no less — at face value? And, backed with nothing but fear and anger, to spread it? What kind of nation allows discussions about serious issues such as health care to be hijacked by lying attack dogs supported by the industry that stands to lose the most profits — the insurance industry? What kind of nation cringes when the yahoos unleash a storm of protest because their president — a man who inspired generations with his story of success against great odds — wants to deliver a non-political pep talk to American students returning to school?
 
 A once-proud nation that has lost its way, I fear.
 
 But wait. Oh, wait. Do my ears deceive me? Just when I have about given up all hope that Republicans will ever be able to comport themselves with some modicum of sanity again, comes a Republican behaving with, of all things, dignity.
 
 Bless you, Laura Bush. Bless you, bless you,  bless you.
 
 In the midst of all the Fox-led flame-throwing about the president’s speech to schoolchildren, the former first lady, in an interview with CNN in Paris, said, “I think there is a place for the President of the United States to talk to schoolchildren and encourage schoolchildren and I think there are a lot of people who should do the same and that is encourage their own children to stay in school and to study hard and to try to achieve the dream they have.”
 
 Shocking. By the way, that’s pretty much what Obama said.
 
 Mrs. Bush, a former teacher, also said that, with the redrawing of election districts into safe congressional seats where candidates with narrow ideological views can be elected and reelected repeatedly has come an increasing political polarization, with fewer people willing to work for compromise solutions. She said her husband, George W. Bush, found this when he moved from the Texas governor’s mansion to the White House. It was one of  his “real disappointments,” she said, and she said Obama was probably also surprised by the intensity of it.
 
 “I think it’s … really important for everyone to respect the President of the United States,” Mrs. Bush said, adding that she felt criticism of him as a socialist was unfair.
 
 “Do you think he is doing a good job?” she was asked.
  
 “I think he is,” she replied without a hint of worry of political repercussion from GOP attack dogs. “I think he has got a lot on his plate and he has tackled a lot to start with and that has probably made it more difficult.”
 
 Good grief, a reasonable statement by a well-known Republican about a Democrat. Some will note that Mrs. Bush, of course, is not seeking election to any office; nor is her husband. But neither is Dick Cheney. Asked about the former vice president’s non-stop attacks on Obama, Mrs. Bush said Cheney had “every right to speak out” and she appreciated that he was defending her husband’s administration. But she also noted that “George, as a former president, chose not to speak out. … He thinks the president deserves the respect and the no second-guessing on the part of the former president.”
 
 So Republicans are not wholly without dignity after all. It’s been a long time since the Bushes were their party’s saving grace, but they certainly provided the Republicans’ best moment all summer. Now, if they were only listening. 

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.