I250: International Design's Invisible Streetlight

IDEA, International Design Excellence Award 2008 went to a Korean Designer, Jong Oh Lee.
Invisible Streetlight emits light at nighttime by saving energy from sunlight during the day. The most innovative element of Invisible Streetlight is that it does not require a support because the flexible body in the shape of tree branch is directly installed to the trees lining a street. Installation is simple in parks and outskirts of urban centers, and the Invisible Streetlight does not spoil scenic beauty of the surrounding areas.


Contact: JONGOH LEE: jojuly79@yahoo.co.kr
Credit: DESIGNMALL (South Korea)


h/t Inhabitat where there are more incredible design inspirations

N91: Narly Roots, Nuts and Nasty Wigglers

Without television I am falling asleep earlier and earlier, so that this Sunday morning I woke before dawn. By 7:30 I was at the Henry’s market to get some bulk food for my pantry. This week is the letter ‘N’ so I got a bunch of nuts. I bought walnuts, almonds, cashews and pumpkin seeds. It wasn’t really just for the letter N. For weeks I have only had pine nuts and these are precious. My BFF mailed me a pine nut care package last summer after she’d gotten them through family relations. These expensive nuts were a wonderful surprise and they’ve lasted this long because I keep them in the refrigerator and ration them.

After getting back from Henry’s, my farmer’s market foray’s featured food this week, the narly vegetable – black turnip. It was huge! I will have many meals from this monster bouquet of greens and the two big roots. Despite the roots being dry and almost dead looking, the verdant green above was a fecund bush 36” high and 24” in diameter. Here again, I took liberties in my title as this is a misspelling for the surfer term gnarly or ‘grotesque, yet awesome.’

I am planning on slow cooking the greens and the black turnip in the solar oven. I am not counting on a recipe here as everything about this solar oven and my ‘narly’ veg is a big science project. All of this food (the poundage I can’t even guess) only cost $2 so it is no great loss if I fail – as I did last week.

I think that everything about these ‘N’ choices just scream, ‘earth.’ But, this week is the beginning of my focus on water elements. Let me borrow from the Wiccan lore that says,

Ah water, the symbol of our emotions. Water imbibes all life forms and in us we flow with the "tide" of our feelings. It involves intuition, insight, conception and pregnancy, fertility, the womb, health, beauty and divination.

The italics are mine. Admit it! - nuts, root, dry, verdant, fecund, bush, diameter are all pretty suggestive words. I didn’t compose it that way, but nature is bursting out all over. Sometimes the line between food and sex gets pretty fuzzy. Just sayin’ . . .

My critical farmer’s market errand was to score a big bag of worms from the woman who sold me my worms last year. This week’s big bag was for the community wormery and to add a few to my wormery. Okay, I was going to say that despite the title, I don’t think worms are nasty. But, in the middle of my food post they are.

Fun facts: By the numbers:

• Life span: Average two years
• Optimum temperature: 55-75 degrees
• Food intake: One pound (700-1,000 wrigglers) eats one-half pound of food each day.
• Eyes, teeth, lungs, brain: 0
• Senses: Nerve endings help them find food
• Hearts: 5
• Reproduction: Hermaphrodites, begin breeding when 2 months old, capable of producing 96 babies each month.

Source: Solana Center for Environmental Innovation; Tacoma, WA., Public Works Department.

Part of the nasty comes with the smell of decaying food. Today I shared with the community wormery a bit of my sweet smelling compost accelerator and additive for odor control, EM-1 Rice Bran Bokashi. This word, bokashi, is a Japanese term meaning fermented organic matter. It is saturated with beneficial microorganisms and also is used to keep smells down. I got it from the Peddler’s Wagon this last week.

Post Script: It occurs to me that black food, like my turnip, have the Spanish word negras (black olives = aceitunas negras) or a some form of the word. So I could have used that in the title. Frankly, that root word has caused too much ugliness in the USA, so I’m glad it hadn’t occurred to me.
The French for black is noir and the Italian is nero.
The nod to surfers seems more fitting, Nevermind.

Second post script: I have been so slow with cooking the turnips. Today I must get the greens into the solar oven. I now have another non-working heating appliance. My induction cook top stopped working in January after I had it turned off for a while. Yesterday I found my microwave is now non-working. I had unplugged it (trying not to use it) and when I plugged it back in it didn’t work. Grrrrr Will I have to use it as another solar oven as Sharon at Casaubon's Book suggests?

M86: Miscellaneous

Today is starting with me feeling way behind. Forgive me for giving this short shrift. I am going to share a few highlights now. I hope I can update with more and better bloggery.

meals on wheels
Yesterday the solar oven I'd ordered came. By the time I unpacked the huge box, gave the booklet a cursory read and mixed up a couple of practice meals it was 1:30 in the afternoon. My new black enamel pots were filled with beans, lentils, rice and lots of other goodies. This kind of fare was supposed to take 2-3 hours. Well, this first day was a true science project. A neighbor and I kept moving the oven to new locations to capture the moving sun. I only had 3 hours of sun and it kept getting shady, so the pots never boiled - so to speak.

Today I decided to set it on top of one of my old oil barrels on wheels. Yes, now I can move it around to follow the sun. I even added the optional reflector wing things. But, I am not hopeful because the sun has gone behind the clouds for the last two hours. Aaargh. But, I still think 'meals on wheels' is a funny line.

my mom's tip
I am always really pleased to get a letter from my 84 year old mother. It is work for her to 'keep up' (her term) with my letters. When she actually responds to a question or enquiry I am particularly pleased. Today was good little pile of clippings, photos, images and notes. Among all of these was a great, natural stain removal tip via Heloise. I wrote before about my mother being a Heloise fan in my youth. Anyway, this is the tip:

Homemade Pre-wash
Mix equal parts of water, household amonioa and dishwashing liquid and put the mixture into a spray bottle. Apply directly to the stain. Wash the garment immediatly after applying. Remember to treat the stain as soon as you see it, and don't dry the fabric until you're sure the stain is gone.

manual washing machine
Also receiving my WonderWash this week means I will be using it today to wash my very first load. For the first time since the beginning of December I may run out of cloth wipes. Oh noes. Air drying would also be helped by a shining sun. The afternoon is half over and its looking pretty gray. I may have to use my folding rack to dry inside.

make-a-plan garden layout
I measured the community area of our mobile home park yesterday. The next step is to get it drawn up and then go back to locate existing plantings, trees, buses. Once I have all of that information I can print it up for us to use as a planning tool for our garden. I am not moving forward on this as quickly as planned. I have had a lot more interactions with people and letter writing time than I'd planned. Maybe tomorrow . . .

money versus magic
Let me just say that these gifts to myself are a real treat. I wrote about both the solar oven and the washer right after I started this blog (around Thanksgiving). I would have preferred purchasing in 2007, but I couldn't find the money. I am not sure why I waited until April, possibly waiting for magic. It seems magical that so many good things seem to happen without consciously budgeting, spending. In this case, not so much.

mishaps
First load of clothes went really well, except . . . I wondered where the directions were and had to look online. When I was done washing I found the directions in a million little pieces of wet, lint-like fibers all over my load. Great. Next, I had another mishap that started well on Monday. I started soaking a cup of dry chickpeas, let them soak for more than 30 hrs and then put them in the crock pot for another day. I turned off the crock Wed night and put the pan into refrigerator until morning. Thursday afternoon I strained the chickpeas and put them in the food processor with the lemon juice, tahini, garlic and seasoning. After adding the chickpea liquid and some olive oil and letting the processer do its thing, it looked weird. (Aside: I am in the meantime setting up the big solar oven science fair exhibit in my driveway.)

I tasted the wannabe hummus. GAK! The stuff was raw! Either the crock pot is ready to die or I accidentally had it on low. Then I decided to throw this crunchy puree back into the crock pot. I let it cook with several cups of the chickpea liquid all night long. By this morning it was a vile, steaming mass of darkened, crunchy hummus. Absolutely delicious treat for my worms (once I let it cool) and a monstrous concoction for me. It has been awhile (christmas baking 2006) since I have had this big of a culinary flop. I just couldn't salvage this cup of dried beans.

It is gray and chilly so my solar oven cooking has become my third mishap for this day. I brought the pots inside and I am finishing the barley, mushroom dish on my little craptastic electric hot plate. (Note: February's mishap was the death of my induction cook plate. I am still mourning.)

L73: Laundry

This last Christmas Eve I spent the evening with my son. We went to the laundry together. We each had four or five loads because we decided to end the year with clean bedding, towels and all of our clothing fresh and organized. We had a good time strolling down memory lane. I reminded him how he was in charge of doing all of the laundry when he was a senior in high school and we lived in South Philadelphia. He hadn’t remembered that I insisted he do all the laundry all the time because his was the lion’s share of the loads.

My observation was that my kid used a towel and threw it in the laundry, wore a pair of jeans and threw it in the wash pile. My strategy was to make him responsible for it all. Now that doesn’t sound too onerous unless I mention that this was in Philadelphia where we had to schlep our laundry up and down stairs and walk blocks to the Laundromat. The thing is, it hadn’t really changed his heavy laundry loads.

And this is the first thing I want to say about laundry. I think Americans wash clothes more often than necessary. Clothes can be worn more than once unless one’s day is in a physically demanding, filthy place.

Next I want to jump in with the 2008 program I have been following. As I said in past post, air drying and appliances, I air dry my clothes and use the community coin washing machines at $1.25 a load. In that post I also said I’d like the Wonder Wash and I still do. The thing is I decided to buy a solar oven today (another post for another day). I was arguing with myself this afternoon because the cost right now is killing me. It is only $54 with shipping. That will pay for itself before the year is out. That helped me decide to go for it.

Lastly, the major change this year is with the cleaning products. I wrote about getting rid of household cleaners and replacing them with natural products like vinegar, soda, salt, etc. Well, I have also quit with the petrochemical detergent and gone with Soap Nuts.

I use Maggie’s Soap Nuts as these were recommended to me by a neighbor and I can get it from a store within walking distance. According to the website text:

Maggie’s Soap Nuts™ are the only laundry soap that grows on trees!
Truly effective, 100% natural and safe for your most sensitive skin.
Soap NutsTM are the dried fruit of the Chinese Soapberry tree.
They contain saponin, a natural cleaner used for thousands of
years to clean clothes, just like the plants used by Native Americans
for washing.

Simply put a few Soap Nuts into the included cotton sack and drop
it in your laundry. Your clothes come out clean, vibrant, and soft.
Replace your laboratory detergents and softeners with the soap
made from Nature by Nature. Your clothes, your skin, your family,
and your planet will thank you.

I couldn’t be happier with this product. It really is pleasant smelling. A part of me questions how this really works as the soap nuts bag stays in the machine during the rinse because the commercial front loader doesn’t allow me to open the door during the whole process.

When I get my Wonder Wash I will be able to remove the little bags prior to rinse.

Another justification besides cost will be no electricity, saving water and the soap’s better efficiency. I will confess to one more advantage. I will be able to launder my toilet wipes at home rather than dragging them to the community laundry. Ha! I am seldom this discreet, but it happens.

Kidding aside, these two consumer goods purchases represent major lifestyle changes towards sustainability. I realize that I am ready to take this on as a life change, not just a sustainability experiment. Yet, I am full cognizant that there will be those who read this and decide it is just off the charts impractical (for him or her). That's cool. For myself there is a growing impatience with half measures. The longer I pursue living simply the more attractive it becomes. It also gets more efficient as I practice. I wonder if it is even coincidental that chile, green bean and others are writing similar words? Somehow it is all connected.

laundromats by Patrick Q at flickr

Gift Ideas

Besides the great purchase I made earlier this month of a toilet lid sink, I have been eyeing other products to assist me in a no impact lifestyle. At the top of my list here is a solar oven from the same people I got my sink. Now, I know I could make a solar oven, but I would prefer not to have a homemade one. Next, I’d like to have a washer that uses very little water or detergent and no money or power. Not one of these things that follow is needed in my life, but all of them would help me save water, energy and money. A bike should be number one on this list. But, I’d like to postpone my discussion until I borrow my neighbor’s bike for a test run and do some more research.

Sport Solar Oven

This lightweight 10 lb oven concentrates the renewable heat of the sun to effortlessly (and deliciously!) roast meats, steam vegetables, bake breads and cookies, and prepare rice, soups and stews. Requires only minimal sun aiming to cook most foods in two to four hours.

The complete kit includes two black cooking pots, solar reflector (for an increase in temperature on cold or cloudy days), oven thermometer, water pasteurization indicator and recipe book.

Oven dimensions are 12"H x 27"W x 16"D (not including reflector)
Take a look at some useful questions and answers at Path of Freedom recently.

$150 plus $23 shipping from Peddler’s Wagon

Wonder Washer

Wonder Clean is the ideal washing machine to use in any place. It is virtually for everyone. It washes in the same way as the best electrical washing machine, but it does it so much more quickly and easily. How it works: It is neither MIRACLE nor MAGIC - It is SCIENCE. The principle of operation is based on the physics laws of pressure and heat. The hot water heats the air inside the container. The heated air "tries" to expand but is prevented so by the hermetically sealed container. When the expansion of the air is prevented, the result is that the pressure is built up inside the container. This pressure causes the soap and water to penetrate forcefully through the garment and the stains are released. Turning the container causes the previously released stain to be removed from the garment.

$ 43 plus shipping from Laundry Alternative

or $47 plus shipping from Emergency Essentials

Lastly, I was so excited with this controllable flush product and was ready to purchase it when I looked more closely at the figure and the description. It is made to convert a toilet with a front-flush. Alas, mine is a side flush. I offer the information to others who might be able to take advantage of this simple design.

Controllable Flush


Convert your standard toilet into a low-flow toilet -without tools or a plumber- and save up to 35,000 gallons of water a year. Because not all flushes need to be the same, the dual-action Controllable Flush controls the amount of water you use to flush waste matter. Push handle down for a conservative 1.5 gallon flush for liquid; lift for a powerful flush for solids. Easily retrofits to standard front-flush toilets.
12.5"H x 5.5"W x 2"D. 5 oz. USA.

$36 plus shipping from Gaiam

Oh yes, about gifts. I don't expect to receive these gifts this year (or any year) because I don't give them. My friend gets me something - despite my being open about non-consumerism, rejection of the forced generosity of the holidays, blah, blah, blah. But, she usually selects something that has touched her in some way;e.g., something she has seen that makes her think of me or our friendship. My mother and I have an agreement. She and I used to send each other checks because we wanted to allow each other the option of selecting what we wanted (for our $25). On top of this, we both have December birthdays - so this check exchanging could happen twice with attached greeting cards. Last year I said to her we should just leave out the banking/checking portion and just share with each other what we purchased.

So, I will probably be gifting myself and that's fine by me.