Sustainable living – Page 18

The normal failure of CFL bulbs

Note that the top of the base is slightly brown from heat, which may have occurred when the CFL failed. This is normal.

I happened to be standing right underneath a compact fluorescent bulb yesterday when it failed. It failed exactly according to the book: There was a quiet pop, about the volume of a single grain of popcorn popping, and the bulb went out. When I removed it and looked at it, the white base was slightly brown from the heat of the ballast failure. This was a completely normal failure in accord with the way CFL lamps are designed to work.

The bulb was one of four in my kitchen ceiling that light the countertops. The lamp was seven years old. It was one of the brighter types — equivalent to 100 watts of incandescent light at 23 watts power consumption.

Right-wingers who believe that any kind of energy conservation is a left-wing conspiracy have done everything possible to demonize CFL bulbs. A while back, a conservative friend on Facebook shared a propaganda post about how terrified some right-winger was when a CFL bulb made a popping noise and a blackish brown spot appeared on the base. If I hadn’t been home it could have burned my house down! said the Facebook post. Horse wash. Some of the earlier bulbs failed less gracefully, but they all eventually fail, and the failure is usually in the power supply. As the Wikipedia article on CFL lamps points out, one of the challenges of designing CFL lamps is designing in an inoffensive failure mode. And of course nobody wants to smell smoke. My CFL failure yesterday created no odor at all.

The power supply in the base of the bulb, by the way, is a small electronics board that first converts AC house current to direct current. Then transistors convert the direct current to very high frequency alternating current, which is fed to the bulb. It’s this circuit that normally fails, not the glass part of the bulb.

No one claims that CFLs are perfect. What we all want is cheap LED lighting with a natural sunlight color. We’re getting there.

A brief essay on day lilies

If you’ve seen one day lily, have you seen them all?

Not if you worked as hard as I did to get these started. They’re all individuals. I’d name them, like chickens, if I had time. They all are grandchildren of the 300 day lily sets that I planted here seven years ago. Their natural habitats are banks and ditches — places where you want to let nature run wild.

There’s something very sad about day lilies, though. They get only one day in the sun before they shrivel and die. And peak day lily season doesn’t last long.

“We Shall Not Be Moved”

There had been rumors of civil disobedience and disorder, so Stokes County officialdom was braced for that last night ahead of the meeting of the Walnut Cove town board. But, in the end, what the board got was a seriously serious tongue-lashing, followed by a packed house (plus 30 or 40 others standing outside and looking in the windows) singing “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Then everyone walked out.

The reason for the board’s tongue-lashing was its vote a month ago to hasten fracking in North Carolina by allowing the State of North Carolina (at taxpayer expense) to do core-sample drilling on town property, not far from a huge coal ash impoundment at Duke Energy’s Belews Creek Steam Station.

Here’s a link to a story in the Winston-Salem Journal.

I sense something historic here

The Rev. Dr. William Barber II at Rising Star Baptist Church in Walnut Cove

North Carolina government has been taken over by right-wing politicians who have been hastily enacting the billionaire agenda — lower taxes for the rich, higher taxes for working people, the worst voter suppression laws in the nation, the privatization of education at the expense of the public schools, refusal to expand Medicaid simply to spite the president, cuts to unemployment insurance, the fast-tracking of fracking, and eagerness for oil drilling off North Carolina’s fragile coast. The chief source of resistance ought to be the state Democratic Party, but the state Democratic Party has been missing in action, largely because of exceptionally lousy leadership and debilitating scandals.

The NAACP rose to the challenge. The Moral Monday events in Raleigh have irritated and embarrassed state government every step of the way. The mastermind of Moral Monday and the president of the North Carolina NAACP is the Rev. Dr. William Barber. In the first two years of Moral Monday, not much was said about environmental issues. But now the NAACP has come out swinging on the matter of environmental justice. One of the catalysts was a deal between the state of North Carolina and the little town of Walnut Cove (in Stokes County) to do a core-sample drilling on town property to assess how much frackable gas might be down there. The site of this drilling is only a couple of miles from a large and dangerous coal ash impoundment owned by Duke Energy (at the Belews Creek Steam Station). It’s also near the Dan River, less than 20 miles upstream from a coal ash spill into the river last year. The coal ash impoundment and the core-drilling site are right on the edge of black neighborhoods.

Last night, the Rev. Barber spoke in Walnut Cove. Actually, it was a sermon, in a small black church nearly full, half with black people and half with white. His sermon was about why taking care of the land and water is a moral issue. I have never heard anything like it. We white people were stunned, because we’re well aware of how some religious people find support for the exploitation of nature and “dominionism” in scripture. But the Rev. Barber found quite the opposite, drawing mostly from Genesis and Zechariah.

Those of us who have been down in the grass roots for the last three years, locally fighting fracking, feel as though the cavalry have ridden in. It’s not just that the NAACP may file suits under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. It’s also that no one is better at focusing attention on injustice than the NAACP, or better at organizing people. And frankly, those of us who have been working locally, more or less alone, managed to make our cry for help heard. I suppose it depends on what happens next. But it feels historic to have the NAACP’s most charismatic leader here in our little county. And I think it’s likely that right-wingers won’t control the state of North Carolina for long. They have overplayed their hand and exceeded their mandate, and lots of people including some Republicans are not very happy about it.

This was historic in 1978. To my knowledge, no African-American has run for political office in Stokes County since then. We are working on that.

Just because it’s June …

There will be blackberries.

I’ve sown a lot of red clover seed, but I learned that it’s just too big a plant to grow in the yard. Only white clover, it seems, happily co-exists with grass. But the red clover loves unmowed ditches and banks.

There will be day lilies — lots of them. The deer have not eaten them this year the way they did last year, during a dry spring. I’ve learned that it’s mainly drought that drives the deer into the yard to devastate what’s growing at the abbey. They still come for the clover, but that’s not a problem.

I planted my heirloom beans late, but the first ones are coming up now.

If the promised rains come through, the celery crop will be good.

Wild persimmon blossom

They’re very shy and try to hide behind leaves. They’re small, and they don’t last long. The abbey has lots of young wild persimmon trees that volunteered in the ditch along the roadside after the old pine trees came down seven years ago.

Seveneves: a review

It’s difficult to write a spoiler-free review of Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, but I will try. It’s not really a spoiler to say that, in the first paragraph of the novel, the moon blows up. What follows is a long saga of survival — 866 pages long.

Stephenson always provides a hot read. I devoured the book in six days. Stephenson also always provides a feast for nerds. Reading Seveneves is like taking a course in orbital mechanics. Stephenson is not the best at character development, character conflict, and character intimacy. But he seems to be aware of that weakness in his previous books and has made a strong effort to do a better job in Seveneves. Still, he writes some of the least hot love scenes in science fiction.

I give Stephenson high marks for giving the reader a lot to think about. His novels do seem to stick to the ribs over the years. But after about a week’s reflection on what’s worth remembering and worth keeping in Seveneves, I can’t say that I come up with much. One could ask the question, “What is Neal Stephenson passionate about?” I’m pretty sure that, after reading Seveneves, the only solid answer would be technology.

I don’t accuse Stephenson of being a techno-utopian. I think he’s too smart for that. He also has some criticism for those who might put too much faith in technology, and at one point in the book he uses the phrase “techno-mystical ideation.” Yet it seems pretty clear to me that technology is his passion. This is clear just from reading his acknowledgements.

The bottom line, for me at least, is that Stephenson writes must-read science fiction. However, I’m getting stronger and stronger whiffs of an arrogant and elitist attitude that can spoil fiction if it gets out of hand. Stephenson is most comfortable with characters who have big egos, lots of admirers, and Ph.D.’s. If you read the acknowledgements or check out his personal web site, it’s pretty clear that he runs with the gazillionaires of the tech industry — the lords of the universe — and that he can’t much be bothered by us mouth breathers.

Stephenson probably will get a movie deal for this book. It’s the kind of space spectacle that Hollywood loves, and I’m sure that Stephenson knew that when he wrote it. I’d give it four out of five stars. Unless he does something completely different with his next book, I’ll have read enough Stephenson.

Bonterra organic wines

Back in the 1990s, when I was living in San Francisco, had a comfortable income, and had access to a deep cellar, I lived in the French mode, bought wine by the case, and fetched it from the cellar. A lot of the wine I bought was from Bonterra Organic Vineyards. Bonterra’s wines aren’t the sort of wines that will knock your socks off, but they’re good wines and a good value.

Now that I’m in North Carolina and now that retirement has suppressed my wine budget, I no longer buy wine by the case (though I probably should — it doesn’t really cost any more that way). I had not even seen a bottle of Bonterra wine in years. Imagine my surprise, then, at seeing several bottles of Bonterra organic chardonnay and cabernet in an ordinary country grocery store in Walnut Cove. I bought all the bottles that were on the shelf. The 2011 chardonnay was about $10 a bottle and the 2011 cabernet about $12.

I find this puzzling. How did organic wine from a not-very-large California vintner end up on a shelf in a country grocery store in North Carolina? I’m afraid that it probably means that the wine was not well reviewed, didn’t sell well, and got remaindered out to free up warehouse space. But I’m speculating.

Still, if you come across Bonterra wine, give it a try. I see from their web site that they have a wine club. I just might sign up. I have not yet opened the cabernet. The chardonnay is slightly watery though strong on alcohol, but it has good color and a nice, fairly soft chardonnay taste. In short, it’s perfectly fine for a $10 wine.

It occurs to me that I’ve not written about wines here often, mainly because retirement has cut into my wine budget. For the record, I am strongly of the opinion that California wines are the best in the world. I prefer wines from Sonoma County, but Napa and Mendocino will do.

Commingled recycling

Sign on a county recycling container

Some time back, the county I live in changed its recycling system. In the old system, stuff had to be carefully sorted. For example, green, brown and clear glass had to be kept separate. Plastics, aluminum, and cardboard had to be separated. Steel cans, junk mail, and paper milk cartons were not recyclable at all.

Then everything changed. All the bins were relabeled with no fanfare, no explanation, and no public announcement, as far as I know. Now all glass went into the same place, regardless of color. Everything else could be “commingled,” and dumped willy nilly into the same bin.

I was very skeptical of this new system. It’s obvious that if all that commingled stuff truly was recycled, then somewhere down the line a huge amount of labor would be required to separate everything. I finally got around to making changes in my recycling chores and bins at home to reflect the new system. While I was at it, I did some Googling to try to figure out how commingled recycling can work.

It’s legit. In fact, depending on where you live, you’ve probably had it for ages. It does require a huge amount of labor and machinery downstream. The reason for the move to commingled recycling, I’m guessing, was to make it easier for people and thus to encourage recycling.

If you Google, you’ll find videos of these industrial sorting systems. Some of it is automated. The machinery can sort some stuff based on weight, or by using magnets, or by blowing things with puffs of air. But it also requires a lot of human labor. Humans are stationed along the conveyor belts, picking stuff out and throwing it in bins.

Apparently even junk mail is recyclable with the new systems. Small pieces of cardboard (beer cartons, for example) can be happily commingled, it seems. But our recycling depots here still prefer that large cardboard boxes be broken down and kept separate.

The new commingled recycling systems, now that I have a better understanding of how they work, should help me improve my trash to recycling ratio and simplify my container situation at home. Here in the sticks, where we have to drive our own trash and recyclables to county depots, some storage and organization is required at home. Sometime I would like to measure my compost to trash to recyclables ratio. But I already know that, by far, my trash portion is the smallest.

Fracking video wins award

Last year, No Fracking in Stokes produced a video, aimed at our rural constituents, to help them see how fracking would threaten their rural lifestyles by turning rural areas into industrial zones. This week, that video won first place and audience favorite at the Sustainability Shorts Film Festival at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

You can watch the video on Youtube through this link.