Green

I wrote about wood buildings last year. It’s a trend that seems to be on the upswing. An article in Knowable Magazine outlines the methods and benefits of using mass timber construction. I love the aesthetics of these buildings. They just feel warmer than the more typical concrete and steel construction. An interesting bit is how the mass timber is made in the same way as plywood. That is it’s a bunch of smaller pieces of wood glued together under pressure.

I wrote a post last year about wood buildings which are very interesting. Just recently, I read about a wood satellite. That is just way too cool. Especially intriguing is that it “was assembled using a traditional Japanese technique that doesn’t require any screws or glue”. Plus it just looks cool. Maybe we need to give some serious consideration to bringing back the Woodie? To make it more modern it would have be the Lignite or something like that to make it sound more high tech.

WaPo had a article about tall wood buildings that was quite interesting. I love the look of The Wood Hotel. The clean lines and the color and warmth of wood really works well. The article points out that using wood as a construction material is good at reducing the carbon footprint of big buildings which typically rely on very carbon intensive concrete and steel. The fire risks to wood construction are dealt with by sprinklers, fire retardant treatments and the sheer mass of the wood which tends to char rather that be consumed by flame.

I rode up to the Pond Mountain Game Lands on Saturday. It was a brutal ride with the last couple of miles involving a bit of hike-a-bike due to the steep road and very loose gravel. I’d get some momentum off a switchback and then hit loose gravel and spin out. I might have been able to do it on a mountain bike with the wider tires but the 12 mile ride out there from Lansing would have been tough.

An article in Governing highlighted some of the benefits of sidewalks to an area’s social life and interconnectedness. I remember when we bought our house in Roanoke over 20 years ago, I wouldn’t even consider neighborhoods without sidewalks. I grew up with sidewalks everywhere and they were great for us kids to be able to play on and for the adults to get around to see each other and maybe even walk over to the grocery or community pool.

I’ve had a Patagonia Headway MLC for a number of years now. It’s a great bag and I’ve taken it all over the world as my single travel bag. It’s been very durable with only one real problem in the decade that I have had it. When I got home from my last trip, the big external zipper got caught on something and I yanked it too hard and it came off of the track.

I’m not talking about the band, but the switch to eco-friendly lighting in Pittsburg. A switch to lower wattage and less blue bulbs is a great idea. It saves money on energy and provides some real human and non-human benefits. LED lighting is one of those technology advancements that is better than the technology it replaced on almost every reasonable criteria (and yes, I’ve read the arguments about energy savings in cold climates).

I did a Green Web Check on my blog. Unfortunately, it’s not on a green hosting site. I host with Netlify and have been very happy with it but this is a bit of a negative. I use the free starter so I don’t have any money in the game, but I’ll send them a note asking about their hosting policy. It’s not that hard to source green energy for web hosting and they should try to do it.