Ecosphere

We now have an Ecosphere - a self-contained and self-sustaining environment filled with active micro-organisms, small shrimp, algae and bacteria, housed in a glass sphere of filtered sea water. It looks bigger in the photo than it actually is (about 4" in diameter). The shape of the sphere makes interesting magnifications of the small shrip scurrying around the tiny globe. In Denver you can get these at Talulah Jones. Thanks Amy!

Wheatfield

Agnes Denes, Wheatfield—A Confrontation, Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan, 1982

Wheatfield—A Confrontation (The Harvest), 2 acres of wheat planted and harvested by the artist on a landfill in Manhattan's financial district, summer 1982.

photos from the Chelsea Art Museum.

Greenmuseum.org writes, "In 1982, she carried out what has become one of the best-known environmental art projects when she planted a two-acre field of wheat in a vacant lot in downtown Manhattan. Titled, Wheatfield -- A Confrontation, the artwork yielded 1,000 lbs. of wheat in the middle of New York City to comment on "human values and misplaced priorities". The harvested grain then traveled to 28 cities worldwide in "The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger" and was symbolically planted around the globe. "

Aren't these photos great? I remember learning about this work some time ago, but running into it again at Mount Olympus renewed my excitement about the work and the idea. As it gets more and more expensive to ship food across huge distances (what James Howard Kunstler likes to call the "3,000 mile salad"), it will be more important to grow food nearer to where it is consumed - so I think this work in particular will have increasing relevance over time. There's recently been a boom in urban farming. In fact, Denver's Westword ran a feature on the movement in May called "The Urbavore's Dilemma: Getting down and dirty with Denver's backyard farmers".

See also; this post at Coolhunting about landscape ecologist Eric W. Sanderson's decade-long Mannahatta Project, an exhaustive study and recreation of the Manhattan ecosystem circa 1609 (the year of Henry Hudson's arrival in Mannahatta).

Making the best...

of a bad situation. After a morning of serious scheduling errors, I can take some hope in this image by Lois Weinberger of vegetation on broken asphalt. Growth in brokenness.

Last Night's Sky

With the extreme heat we've had lately (this is our 19th day straight of 90+ degrees), and the brown haze that has settled over Denver (with the help of very little rain this month) - we had a great sunset last night. It looked like Downtown was on fire from my window:

The End of Cheap Oil as an Opportunity

Car/Bus/Bike (found at theartofwhere)

photo by Nathan Abels

I highly recommend this article by Claude Lewenz at WorldChanging, called "The End of Cheap Oil as an Opportunity". The author outlines how the American economy and habitat changed after the Great Depression and WWII - establishing a period of unprecedented economic growth based on the abundance of cheap fossil fuels.

In a letter quoted in the article, Stuart Udall writes, "As a freshman congressman in 1955, I regrettably voted with my unanimous colleagues for the Interstate Highway Program. All of us acted on the shortsighted assumption that cheap oil was superabundant and would always be available. This illusion began to unravel in the 1970s, and it haunts Americans today.

Oil lies at the epicenter of a critical energy crisis. Petroleum is a finite resource and is the most precious, versatile resource on the planet. Cheap oil played a crucial role in the development of American power and prosperity, and sustains the military machine that dominates the world today. Oil is now nearing a historic transition that will alter the civilization Americans have come to take for granted."

The article does not only specify the problem, but has an interesting proposal for building communities (referred to as "villages") that do not rely on the automobile. In fact, Lewenz expresses great positivity about the possibilities of the future, writing, "if cheap oil is a thing of the past, change will come. We can either suffer it, or realize it as a great opportunity."

Similar to James Howard Kunstler, this article's writer, Claude Lewenz points out how problematic the suburban environment truly is in the long term; "In simple terms, it is time to stop building new developments that are based on the shortsighted assumption that cheap oil would be abundant and would always be available. It makes absolutely no sense to build another suburb, another shopping mall or another office or industrial park where people must drive distances to get there."

I could quote nearly the entire article, but you should read it yourself. If you are curious about Peak Oil, gas prices, and the suburban environment, this is a great place to start.

Rare Cloud Formations

via Shanghai Kiss blog