She spent the next few weeks running around, looking up, and finding more letters in the alphabet formed by architecture and sky.  The project culminated in a booklet and poster of the sky alphabet, and the poster which said on the front, “Will you look at me? And “Yeah!” on the back.

Rienerman’s type is a reminder to look up to see what is being formed by the framing and negative space of our urban environment.  The project was awarded a certificate of typographic excellence by the Type Directors Club New York 2007.

Image Source:
www.lisarienermann.com/

Links:

www.lisarienermann.com/

jpgmag.com/photos/205473

SMITH was founded by Larry Smith and Tim Barkow in 2006.   Smith and Barkow believe that everyone has a story, and everyone should have a pace to tell it.  SMITH was created as a place for professional and never-before-published writers, artists, and anyone with a passion for storytelling.

SMITH Mag, and its younger cousin, SMITH Teens, are homes for storytelling of all forms, with a focus on personal narrative. SMITH is best known for the Six-Word Memoir® project, which has led to a bestselling book series, including Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure, Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak, and Six-Word Memoirs by Teens Famous & Obscure

On the website, you can submit your story in six words including topics such as:

Love:   Share six words on love & heartbreak.

Questions :  Ask a question in exactly six words.

Resolutions : Hopes, dreams, motivations, and mistakes to avoid in the coming year.

Happiness : Share your six words on the secrets to happiness.

Each Monday there is a six-word question of the week that is posted.

So why it is called SMITH? As you probably know, Smith is the most popular surname in the U.S. Smith and Barkow felt that the name “represents us all, each of us living our extraordinary lives—day by day, story by story.”

On the site, I checked out some of the stories listed under Green Life.
Some of my favorites include:

What can you say in 6 words? Check out the SMITH website, and see if you find a topic/challenge that you want to write about.

Links:

smithmag.net – SMITH Magazine

Her project Destroyed House done in 2008, was created in a house that had an adjoining ice cream parlor.  The work was done in close cooperation with a contractor in order to remove ceilings and floors, move walls, and to create viewing holes in the structure.  She calls the works architectural sculptural installations.   Many of the materials used in Destroyed House were from the house itself .

In writing about her work, Teeuwen writes, “The literal breaking away of parts of floors, walls and ceilings signals a further accentuation of the polarity between destruction and construction. There is a balance between order and chaos, balance and imbalance, aesthetics and anti-aesthetics, refinement and crudeness.

The photographs of her work emphasize the careful layered materials in contrast to the frame of the buildings, which appear to be on the verge of collapsing.  The effect is an image of order and disorder and the relationship of construction to destruction.

Images of her projects can be seen on her website at  http://www.kw14.nl/

Image Source:
Marjan Teeuwen Website

Links:

Marjan Teeuwen Website – http://www.kw14.nl/

Working with soil, plants and props,  Wheen makes tiny worlds that bring attention to road conditions, and also create a unique small world within our world.  He puts the props in the gardens for the photo shoots only, and tries to make the gardens on quiet streets with footpaths and dead end lanes.  He has created a small cricket match scene, and a red telephone booth garden in a pothole in front of London Bridge.  Often his gardens get attention, and on the Pothole Gardener blog you can see videos and photos of people taking pictures, and bending down to get a better look.

A recent garden scene he made is comprised of soil, green moss, a miniature chair, a tiny Easter basket, and a blooming plant – all located in a pothole on the street.  Wheen describes his project as, “ Part art project, part labor of love, part experiment, part mission to highlight how sh** our roads are – the pictures and gardens are supposed to put smiles on peoples faces and alert them to potholes!”

His blog has links to other Guerrilla Gardeners, and he writes that he is part of a community of guerrilla gardening.  Tired of the pothole on your street?   Check out thepotholegardener.com and see pictures of videos of Wheen’s gardens and get inspired.  I’ve got my eye on a big pothole that is getting bigger and bigger and is just around the corner from my house.

Image Source:
thepotholegardener.com

Links:

thepotholegardener.com

www.guerrillagardening.org

I was surprised that the CO2 offset was so low, and I wondered where the money would go if I opted in. I checked out the website of STI, a non-profit organization that Continental, United, Enterprise and other businesses partner with.  When you make a contribution to Sustainable Travel International for the purpose of purchasing carbon offsets, you are directing STI to buy the amount of carbon offsets that you want on your behalf.

You don’t own the emissions offsets your pay for as your property, but they are used for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.  Current projects in the carbon offset program include one project in Madagascar, and six wind farm projects in the United States.

One project is protecting Madagascar’s Northeastern Forests, where carbon offset credits are used to help reduce deforestation rates.  The goal is to get the deforestation rates down to 0.07 percent, or the rate found in nearby national parks.

The wind farm projects are overseen by Bonneville Environmental Foundation who provide renewable energy carbon offsets in the United States.

BEF Wind Energy Projects Include:

Sherbino Wind Farm, Texas
Forest Creek Wind Farm, Texas
White Creek Wind, Washington
Wilton Wind Energy Center, North Dakota
Tatanka Wind Facility, North Dakota and South Dakota
I was surprised to see that the majority of projects for carbon offset was for windfarms.  I thought it would be about planing trees, or improving the natural environment in some way.

I did not purchase my carbon offset credits for my ticket.  I would rather take the $2.90 and plant a tree.

Images:

http://ecolibrary.org/
http://101mobility.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/jet.jpg

Links:

http://www.sustainabletravelinternational.org/

http://www.b-e-f.org/

WTF has developed some online games where players can engage in online game activities and earn points that help create realworld change.  One of the games, FreeRice is an online trivia game where for each correct answer played, ten grains of rice are donated to WFP to feed hungry people around the world, paid for by sponsored banners on the site.

Players can choose from 45,000 questions in a variety of subjects, including flags of the world, chemistry and literature.  The game can be played in six languages.   There are currently over  one million registered players, who together have donated nearly 100 billion grains of rice to feed almost five million people since the game started in 2007.

WTF reports that, “1 in 7 people worldwide goes to bed hungry every night. And now, with nearly 7 billion people in the world, this means that almost 1 billion people are not getting the food they need today.”

Hunger seems like a far away problem for most of us.  Earlier this month, WTF had a week with contests and promotions where it promoted the six degrees of separation idea in relation to hunger– in that we are all connected to people who are hungry through 6 levels of connections.

Today I spent some time creating my FreeRice account, and tried out two areas of trivia.  I first tried the art area, and was able to identify most of the paintings ( I killed it!) I switched subjects and tried identifying flags of countries around the world, where I still won a few, but I did not do quite as well.  All in all, in a couple of minutes I earned 140 grains of rice.

On the site, FreeRice  states that it has two goals.   One is to provide education to everyone for free.  Second is to help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

Want to try FreeRice? You can join on the site, or on Facebook.  Like most online games, you are able to ask friends to play, participate in contests, and read updates on the blog and site.  I’m going to see if I can run the game on my phone, so that I can work to help end hunger when I am waiting or in a meeting, instead of just playing

Image Source:
freerice.com

Links:

freerice.com

wfp.org

The USDA recently released a new plant hardiness zone map.  The updated map is based on the past twenty years of temperatures and conditions from 1976 to 2005. The temperatures in the U.S. are in general two-thirds of a degree higher than before.

The new updated map has rezoned many areas, generally one half-zone warmer than the last map in many areas of the United States. States such as Ohio, Texas, and Nebraska are now in a warmer zones.

Overall, the temperatures in Winter are not as cold as they used to be.  The growing season is longer, and gardeners can grow and harvest plants for a longer period of time than 20 years ago.

Is this an indicator of climate change?  Is the earth warming up and influencing our environment? There is no official report about this in relation to the updated map.

In Ohio,  most of the state moved from zone 5 to zone 6 under the Department of Agriculture’s revised map.

I just looked at some gardening sites online, to see what can grow in Zone 6. Big news, there is one type of orange tree (Flying Dragon) and a few varieties of figs (Celeste, Chicago Hardy, LSU Gold, LSU Purple, and Magnolia) that can grow in Zone 6, which means that oranges and figs can now grow in Ohio.

Image Source:
Hidden Springs Nursury

Links:

2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Map

2012 Interactive Plant Zone Hardiness Map

The stamps are made from materials that re biodegradable and recyclable and is part of the Post Office’s Go Green sustainability initiative.  The stamps are intended to help promote the idea that doing daily things can make a difference.  Examples are that recycling one aluminum can save enough energy to run a computer by three hours, or inflating your car tires properly will improve gas mileage by three percent.

The U.S. post office has been working to reduce its impact on the environment for some time.  For over 100 years, the post office has owned electric vehicles.   The USPS was the first federal agency to publicly report greenhouse gas emissions, and has eco-friendly mailing materials that meet the Cradle to Cradle Certification, which is earned by conserving natural resources.

I haven’t used any of my stamps yet.   It’s hard to say what using the stamps will do to promote these ideas, but I can’t wait to use the “Ride a bike… forever” stamp on a letter.

Links:

Animation of GoGreen Stamps

USPS sustainability initiatives and the Go Green Forever stamps

German artist Bartholomäus Traubeck has created a record-player which is capable of digitally reading tree-slices and translating them into piano music.   This record-player, called “Years,” plays slices of woods and uses the program Arduino to transform the rings into sounds.  For the piece, a camera takes an image of the tree ring and sends this to Arduino, a electronic programming and processing tool.  Traubeck programmed Arudiono to interpret the tree ring in terms of thickness, strength, and rate of growth which is mapped to a scale of the overall appearance of the wood.  This information is then mapped to piano sounds.

In the videos of the piece on Vimeo, you can see that the player plays various tree disks including a fir tree and an ash tree with a complex texture.

The resulting sounds  piece is an interesting interpretation of trees and sound.

Image Source:
Years -  on Vimeo

Links:

Years -  See and Hear on Vimeo

Bartholomäus Traubeck Website

Years on Creative Applications.net

Rachel Carson was a scientist, writer, and ecologist.  She worked for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and wrote radio scripts during the Depression.  She also wrote feature articles on natural history for the Baltimore Sun. She was a scientist and eventually became Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She did a variety of writing, which included pamphlets on conservation and natural resources, scientific articles, and also nonfiction articles in popular publications such as the Atlantic Monthly.

Carson was attacked by some individuals in government and in the chemical industry as being an alarmist, but her voice served to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject, and that we can experience the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem.

In order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring Mark Wilson, a PhD candidate at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle, England recorded a podcast that explores the significance of the book.  Wilson has written a study which compares the response to Silent Spring in the US and Britain.  The Podcast is on the Environmental History Resource Website and can be streamed from the site.

Image Source:
Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson

Links:

Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson

Silent Spring

Silent Spring at 50: a Comparison Perspective Podcast