The City Mouse in the Country

  When my wife and I bought this house nearly 6 years ago, we made some upgrades.   We put on a metal roof, replacing the original shingles, replaced the floor in the kitchen, both bathrooms and the downstairs den.  We ended up upgrading the pellet stove (twice!) and added some insulation; one of the jobs I want to do in the coming year is to insulate the garage, mostly to keep the freezers we have in the garage from becoming damaged. It's only in various home improvement shows that the work to improve your home is done all at once and somehow in 1 hour.  For most of us its an ongoing never ending project. One of the important improvements that I've been wanting to make but have kept putting off for various reasons has been solar panels.  Now, I'm thinking that it may be time to least do something. The main reason we have been putting off this improvement was cost and how long it would actually take us to pay off the panels.   I'm 60 years old now...

This blog was started because I had lived most of my life as an urban dweller; I wanted to record my adventures as I tried my hands at different things and I never pictured this blog would become what it did. Country life suits me in some ways.   I'm at a point in my life where I can appreciate looking up into the night sky and seeing thousands of stars, just like I did as a kid.   I just love how the moonlight bathes my beautiful sleeping wife in a creme colored light.   Country life is more peaceful and a lot more hard work than I would have ever expected.  While my neighbors and I may not agree politically or philosophically, my new lifestyle has given me insights on how they view the world. This brings me to my main point.   Here in rural America we simply don't have public transportation, nor do we have a lot of manufacturing or diversity or hospitals or even great education...and if we are going to move forward with a brighter greener f...

  Where I live in Western Pennsylvania was mostly spared the worst of the soot and smoky skies caused by the recent Canadian wild fires.   However it still managed to blanket most of the North East in some of the worst air quality we've ever had . In some ways it was a taste of our near future. It's just one more thing that is piling up on the scale leading to an eventual tipping point.   It's not all doom and gloom of course...but it is mostly doom as study after study after study are all pointing to a difficult and deadly future. Now...that being said I'm still an optimist about the future.   I don't believe we are going to prevent "the worst" from occurring.   I do believe however that we can do what we can to at least delay the worst of it.  We are still going to have to deal with global warming and all the consequences it brings; from submerged coastlines to super storms to the forced mass migration of people. Delaying the worst of it gi...

As I entered the Energy Innovation Center near Pittsburgh's center,  the ladies at the registration desk asked me to write down what Solar Punk meant to me.  I declined.  The reason being that when I first learned about the Solar Punk movement, I was immediately attracted to its desire to change the fundamentals of the world; solar punk is more than an art and literary movement.    While Steam punk was about a time that never was and seemed to have a certain way of dress and style to it solar punk seemed more grounded.  An old pair of blue jeans bought second hand and work boots were functional and fashionable. Where Cyberpunk seemed to envision a cold harsh future, solar punk seems almost utopian.   It offers solutions through everyday acts like gardening, vegetarianism and recycling.  Those that believe in the solar punk movement are simply not sending money to some charity but living and working to make this world a better place....

  I never expected to live out in the country.    I never expected to enjoy it.    I never expected to plant my own food, or do much of the day to day “manual” labor that living out in the country requires.   I was a city boy, I had come to enjoy the distractions that a city offered. I never expected to love where I live, I love the quiet.   I love the stars at night.    I even love the deer that nibbled at my garden, or the wild turkey and foxes that live around me.    Which got me thinking, what can I do to improve the community around me?   Other than what I already do with the Odd Fellows ? Basically we live in an area of three closely knit towns, and despite the title of the blog – it’s not considered the “boondocks” but it is rural.    I live in the small town of Stoneboro, close to the small towns of Jackson Center and Sandy Lake.     Small communities that are all knitted together by country r...

**Several months ago I had a bit of an argument with someone on Facebook.  That promoted this article.   I've decided to republish it due to the city of New York recently purchasing over 1000 all electric Police cars and replacing most, if not all, of its gasoline fleet.  You can read about that here .**   One of the reasons I write this blog, is because I believe that knowledge is useless unless it is shared.  Someone that reads this may disagree with me or my conclusions and that's fine.   However they can't say that they didn't learn something. Facts and Reality are not something we get to choose.  Nor can we ignore a fact that does not fit our world view.   Example of an EV Fire Truck Even though I do try to keep politics out of the blog, this post and the last were inspired by a political debate about disaster relief in the future.  Or the mistaken belief that somehow hybrid vehicles or electric vehicles (EV) will never replace...