Resolutions for the Lakes (and ourselves)

Suggestions for a very happy new year:

Give up bottled water. A container made of oil, filled with water no better than tap? No questions here! Look up bottled water issues and influence (and maybe pressure) your place of employment, organizations, family, city, to give up bottled water at meetings and in buildings. Research success stories for inspiration.

Use cloth bags all the time. Reinforce the habit, and expand it. Take your own containers to restaurants for leftovers.

Increase your composting. Leave your leaves in your yard, compost your fall decorations. If you're out walking and can save something from a carbon-spewing trip to the landfill, bring it home. Remember that garbage trucks are some of the most polluting vehicles on the roads, averaging a pathetic 2.8 miles per gallon. And that the diesel fumes are a health hazard to the neighborhood and especially the workers.

Join an organization, or two or three. Meet people who share your passions; put those passions into action. Dovetail participation in national organizations with smaller ones that address local issues.

Take a weekly local hike or other outdoor activity. Put roots down in your area. Tell others; take along a friend.

Don't fly. Each passenger on a 1,000 mile flight personally causes about 600 pounds of CO2 emissions, and other problem gasses and vapors. Acquaint yourself with train and bus schedules; take small practice runs. Check out possible local vacations to reduce your carbon footprint while increasing your positive impact on your locale. Consider a journey by bike or canoe or kayak. One nearby.

Buy local food. Search out small local businesses. Let your local roots grow and strengthen.

Keep an eye on your state's Sierra Club website. Stay acquainted with your state's issues and priorities.

Set up a clothes rack somewhere in the house; ditch the dryer. Switch to cloth napkins; use the good china whenever possible.

Bump it up! What actions can you take further?

Set up a time weekly for contacting the officials whose salaries you help pay. Don't let them slide.

Enjoy our lakes. Find a new campground, state park, hiking trail. Love what we fight for!!! Staying in touch with our lakes renews the spirit, and strengthening your connection with them reinforces your passion for protecting them.

The Happiest of New Years to all of you!

Written by Becky Hammond

Bottled Water (and New Year's resolutions)

There are many obvious reasons to reject bottled water, and spending a snowy afternoon googling "bottled water + great lakes" reveals new ones. A good visual for anyone wondering why the bottles themselves are an environmental nightmare can be easily made or just described. When someone is drinking a bottle of water, suggest they picture it one-fourth full of oil. Crude oil. The shiny and transparent bottles don't look in any way connected with oil, but that's how much oil it takes to produce a single bottle: one-fourth its volume.

One-fourth of the bottle filled with oil equals the amount it took to produce the bottle, but only one fourth of bottles produced are recycled. This number is holding steady over the past few years despite the fact that over three-fourths of Americans have access to plastic recycling. This is quite a shame, as it takes only 10% of the energy to recycle plastic as it takes to make it from scratch. About 10% of U. S. oil consumption goes to produce all our plastic. In 2007, the energy required for America's bottled water amounted to between 32 and 54 million barrels of oil. Most of this is to make the bottles and transport the water. And the production of the bottles created 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. Googling the words "bottled water issues" presents a world of information, none of it good. You'll read of water levels in wells and streams near bottling plants dropping. Of bottled water having contaminants that tap water is free of. And of course, the terrifically inflated price: a New York Times op-ed piece reports that you can spend as much as $1,400 a year for bottled water if you drink 8 glasses a day, or drink tap water and pay 49 cents!

If your local group is addressing the problem of bottled water in the Great Lakes region, displaying a commercial water bottle 1/4 filled with oil is quite symbolic and effective. Setting up a blind taste test of the bottled waters available in your area alongside tap water is apparently eye-opening. Read this NYT op-ed about a test set up among friends; only one could identify tap water, alongside a number of commercial brands.

Most of us have "give-up" New Year's resolutions, and "add" New Year's resolutions. I'll give up some desserts and add more walking; give up some TV and add more reading, etc. Giving up bottled water is a plus to the planet, our lakes, and certainly our pocketbooks. Spread the word, and the happiest of holidays to everyone.

Written by Becky Hammond

Wednesday's Great Lakes Lover

Chris Holt from Michigan

Do you love the Great Lakes?

We know the Great Lakes are a unique, beautiful, and vital resource. They provide habitat to thousands of species, nutrients to all kinds of ecosystems, drinking water for millions of people, excitement for explorers, and serenity to countless dreamers. There are a lot of us out there who love them. We live all over the region, come from different backgrounds, and have all kinds of different reasons for our love. The Great Lakes Program launched the "I Heart Great Lakes" project to visually illustrate this love for the Great Lakes.

Show your love!

Here's what you need to do:

1. Take a picture of yourself holding this sign and smile big!
2. Email your photo to sierraclubgreatlakes@gmail.com, include your full name, city, and state in the email message.
3. Congratulations, you've just shown your love for the lakes!

Have you already submitted your picture?

Make sure you take the Great Lakes pledge!!!

Wednesday's Great Lakes Lover

Connor and Keegan Nolan from Royal Oak, Michigan

Do you love the Great Lakes?

We know the Great Lakes are a unique, beautiful, and vital resource. They provide habitat to thousands of species, nutrients to all kinds of ecosystems, drinking water for millions of people, excitement for explorers, and serenity to countless dreamers. There are a lot of us out there who love them. We live all over the region, come from different backgrounds, and have all kinds of different reasons for our love. The Great Lakes Program launched the "I Heart Great Lakes" project to visually illustrate this love for the Great Lakes.

Show your love!

Here's what you need to do:

1. Take a picture of yourself holding this sign and smile big!
2. Email your photo to sierraclubgreatlakes@gmail.com, include your full name, city, and state in the email message.
3. Congratulations, you've just shown your love for the lakes!

Have you already submitted your picture?

Make sure you take the Great Lakes pledge!!!

Who Needs Coal in their Stockings?

Has your local group been targeting anyone/thing this year? Energy companies, mining companies? Maybe they need actual coal delivered to their door, as an official group event. Make it fun; dress as elves, maybe as angels with coal smudges on their gowns and wings (I've discovered you can use coal to write the words, "This message written with actual CLEAN COAL!"). Hang them a stocking, fill it with coal, make up fun words to carols. Our son, in the charming way that kids get things wrong in ways that make sense, used to sing, "He's making a mess, checking it twice." Those words could actually fit, if you're protesting a dirty energy company. Maybe it'll be a New Year's event and father time can use his scythe to end a dirty year. Maybe someone brave enough can dress as the baby New Year, a cleaner, greener New Year.

What businesses near you are green? Reward them with a green gift, a LTE; maybe plant a tree in their honor. If a business is green enough to notice, thank them and let them know you're telling your friends.

Chicago Sierra Club organizers have a "Naughty/Nice" list. We can all do this. Find ways to spread who's been naughty and who's been nice.

Find a place that needs decorating and buy LED lights to decorate it. An organization's headquarters, a local fire department, a church, a library; LED lights are so low-energy, they reduce a holiday electric bill to almost nothing. It's amazing to plug a string of LED lights into a watt meter and see the number "0". It takes more than one string of lights for the meter to register that any electricity is being used.

In the previous entry on energy vampires, I left off computers. Our computer asleep uses 5 watts of power. Booting up, it jumps to 120, then settles to 88 in use. If it's off, it's still using about 11 watts, most of that being the modem. We've been lax about turning off that power strip, but 11 watts is enough to make it worth remembering.

Wednesday's Great Lakes Lover

Jennifer Paruk from Hamtramck, Michigan

Do you love the Great Lakes?

We know the Great Lakes are a unique, beautiful, and vital resource. They provide habitat to thousands of species, nutrients to all kinds of ecosystems, drinking water for millions of people, excitement for explorers, and serenity to countless dreamers. There are a lot of us out there who love them. We live all over the region, come from different backgrounds, and have all kinds of different reasons for our love. The Great Lakes Program launched the "I Heart Great Lakes" project to visually illustrate this love for the Great Lakes.

Show your love!

Here's what you need to do:

1. Take a picture of yourself holding this sign and smile big!
2. Email your photo to sierraclubgreatlakes@gmail.com, include your full name, city, and state in the email message.
3. Congratulations, you've just shown your love for the lakes!

Have you already submitted your picture?

Make sure you take the Great Lakes pledge!!!

Take Action Tuesday - Pledge to Protect the Great Lakes!

We know you love the Great Lakes, so take Sierra Club's Great Lakes pledge. Commit to protecting the Great Lakes by using non-toxic cleaners, installing a rain barrel, or any of the other items listed on the pledge. Take action and make this your New Year's resolution!

Our Vampire Story

Vampire stories are popular these days (although the zombies are steadily sneaking up and overtaking them). We're going to examine our energy vampires, those appliances and electronics that use power (and thus coal or nuclear energy) even when we're not using them, and when we're away, or asleep. Will we someday find we also are infested with energy zombies? Walking dead, and cannibalistic; maybe that could refer to non-energy star fridges? Since eco-buddy Melissa and I have the watt meter out and handy for Green holiday demos (we're eco-buddies because we make pledges to each other and expect to be held responsible), I'm taking it around the house and checking for vampires, stake (or off switch) at the ready.

The TV cable box, on or OFF (amazing!), uses about 10 watts, either way. The combination of TV and cable box uses 17 or so watts, day or night. Our TV is rather small by modern standards. These are on a power strip and turned off when not in use. Our stereo, with receiver, CD player and tape deck, uses 6 watts off. These are also on a power strip, but we often forget to turn that off. No more! The standby mode, which enables us to use remote controls and hence never have to actually touch our electronics, causes this vampiric use of energy. Appliances and electronics used to be off when we turned them off.

Some items, like toasters, can use power when off even though they have no standby mode. This cana be enough to light an incandescent bulb. Luckily, our toaster registers 0 plugged in but turned off. It uses a horrifying 900 or so watts to make toast. The digital stove clock uses 3; the microwave clock also 3. I've unplugged these; I doubt it will seem inconvenient to plug them in when needed. Who needs a clock everywhere you look? Probably contributes to that feeling of time being the enemy.

A good air cleaner can be made by using an ordinary 20 X 20 window fan with a same-size furnace filter placed against it, with the suction holding it on. We have indoor allergies and keep one running in our bedroom at all times, and it really works. The filter gets dirty faster than the one in the furnace. This uses 50 watts on low. Maybe we'll try running it only at night and see how the allergies respond.

Some surprises: a cute 50s-era electric clock that looks like a fireplace, complete with fire effect made by a small bulb surrounded by a rotating mesh cylinder, uses a mere single watt with just the clock running. I've been unplugging that (it's in my music studio and I only need to know the time when teaching, a few times a week) thinking I was saving a reasonable amount of power. When the little fire is "lit" the total is 5 watts. I'll keep the clock on, the fire off. The small stereo in that room uses 7 watts when off. That I will continue unplugging.

A horrible surprise: the pond deicer in my back yard, which supposedly keeps the goldfish from dying of methane buildup when the pond is frozen, uses a horrible 1080+ watts. That needs a different solution. It's our house's king of coal-gobblers.

I googled "watt meters" and see them priced between 20 and 60 bucks, 30 being common. Buying one and sharing it, or using it for demos, in schools, offices, etc., can make that price worth it. If you want to convince a friend of the difference between incandescent and compact florescent bulbs, the watt meter sums up the situation neatly.

Written by Becky Hammond

Great Lakes Children's Books

There's still time to order Great Lakes books for the children on your list. Here are some titles to get you started.

The Great Lakes by Kathy Henderson. A New True Book. Grades 2-4. Many drawings and illustrations. Info on geological history, explorers, tribes, locks, and modern issues the Lakes face.

Western Great Lakes Lighthouses: Michigan and Superior, and Eastern Great Lakes Lighthouses: Huron, Erie and Ontario, by Bruce Roberts and Ray Jones. Guidebooks described as having wonderful photos and good directions; not all lighthouses are mentioned.

The Great Lakes Historical Society in Vermilion, Ohio lists the following books:

Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling Clancy Holling, a book I can personally recommend, along with the same author's wonderful Minn of the Mississippi. Paddle-to-the-Sea is a hand-carved Native figure in a canoe, put into the Great Lakes watershed in Lake Nipigon, and followed through the Lakes, with wonderful illustrations. Minn is a snapping turtle making her way down the Mississippi River. The small drawings in the margins keep kids busy finding Minn while listening to the adventure.

The Christmas Tree Ship: The story of Santa, and The Historic Christmas Tree Ship: A True Story of Faith, Hope and Love by Rochelle Pennington.

Great Lakes and Great Ships: An Illustrated History for Children by John Mitchell and Tom Woodruff.

Lake Erie Coloring Book by Connie Smith Girard. "Created for Kids Who Love Lake Erie."

An impressive list of educational materials for kids to learn about our Lakes can be found at Great Lakes Monitoring. The options could not be more impressive. Histories, software, teacher's guides, links to many other organizations and sources of information are arranged in an easy-to-use manner.

Many of us remember how much we enjoyed National Wildlife Federation's children’s magazines, like Your Big Backyard and Ranger Rick. A subscription is a gift that lasts the whole year.

The Alliance for the Great Lakes in Chicago has a curriculum called Great Lakes in My World which includes 80 indoor and outdoor activities for kindergarten through eighth-grade students. The curriculum is divided into six units: Lakes, Sand Dunes, Wetlands, Human Communities, History and Geology. Each unit includes 11 to 17 activities, divided by grade level, and student pages accompany the activities. The curriculum meets Common Core State Standards and state learning standards and benchmarks in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Paradise, Michigan, has a page of children's books and puzzles on their website. Books include The Gulls of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Tres Seymour, Mail by the Pail, written by Colin Bergel and illustrated by Mark Koenig; the story of how mail travels the Great Lakes, and Final Passage - True Shipwreck Adventures (beginning with the very first ship that sank on the Lakes) by historian Frederick Stonehouse.

Sleeping Bear Press has been publishing children's books for over 10 years. The Night Henry Ford Met Santa catches my eye!

Stranger in the Woods by Carl R. Sams and Jean Stoick is the beautifully-photographed tale of of whitetail deer in northern lower Michigan taking the winter getting the nerve up to approach a partially-edible snowman. It's been followed by First Step in the Woods and Lost in the Woods. These are charming books, and the website is lovely.

The Children's Literature Network's website makes me want to order a stack of children's books, kids in the house or no kids in the house. Who can resist titles like Antler, Bear, Canoe: A Northwoods Alphabet Year by Betsy Bowen, or Up North at the Cabin, by Marsha Chall. These are just two, shown on a pleasant website with useful reviews.

Get the kids out in the snow, then come home and make cocoa and curl up together with a book on our region.

Written by Becky Hammond

Wednesday's Great Lakes Lover

Dennis Miller from Ripon, Wisconsin

Do you love the Great Lakes?

We know the Great Lakes are a unique, beautiful, and vital resource. They provide habitat to thousands of species, nutrients to all kinds of ecosystems, drinking water for millions of people, excitement for explorers, and serenity to countless dreamers. There are a lot of us out there who love them. We live all over the region, come from different backgrounds, and have all kinds of different reasons for our love. The Great Lakes Program launched the "I Heart Great Lakes" project to visually illustrate this love for the Great Lakes.

Show your love!

Here's what you need to do:

1. Take a picture of yourself holding this sign and smile big!
2. Email your photo to sierraclubgreatlakes@gmail.com, include your full name, city, and state in the email message.
3. Congratulations, you've just shown your love for the lakes!

Have you already submitted your picture?

Make sure you take the Great Lakes pledge!!!

Take Action Tuesday: Stop Asian Carp!

Take Action Tuesday - Call the White House to STOP Asian Carp!
Please help us protect our vulnerable Great Lakes from aquatic invasive species such as Asian Carp.

We cannot wait until 2015 for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete their study. We need solutions now!

Follow this link to call the White House and tell President Obama that!(And tell your friends to do the same.)

Winter Reading

Are you looking forward to the quiet time ahead, the cozy feeling of being warm in the house while snow falls? Here are some books on our region to curl up with, maybe by a fire (a future entry may quiet any fears about wood fires and global warming) maybe with a nice cat nearby and a cup of something warm or bottle of something cool (Leinie's, Wisconsin?)

Check out downtown Detroit's Wayne State University press and their Great Lakes book series. Titles range from mining to the auto industry to the Detroit Tigers. http://wsupress.wayne.edu/greatlakes

GLiBA, or the Great Lakes independent Booksellers Association, has a big list of regional titles on their website. The Great Lakes Reader, edited by Carl Lennertz, is a collection of writings by librarians and booksellers, including Life on a Wisconsin Lake, Tough Enough for Michigan, and Small Town, Big Heart Ohio. http://www.gliba.org/index00.php

Like freighters? Check out the Great Lakes Book Shelf on http://www.boatnerd.com/books/

Another great University Press: Michigan State, at msupress.msu.edu. Beautiful website, intriguing books.

A personal favorite? Deep Water Passage by Ann Linnea, a book I read annually on our "pilgrimage" to a remote spot on Lake Superior. She circled the big lake by sea kayak, on an odyssey as much spiritual as physical.

Wild Shore by Greg Breining is another tale of kayaking Lake Superior in short segments.

Great Lakes Townhall has an editorial section describing some books that cover our water issues, including Great Lakes Water Wars by Peter Annin, The Living Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis, Great Lakes for Sale by DAve Dempsey, to name a few. Learn more about the issues we face. http://www.greatlakestownhall.org/editorials/3752

Mississippi Solo is a terrific story of a solo canoe trip down the length of the Mississippi by a great writer but inexperienced canoeist. By Eddy L. Harris.

Another favorite re-readable book, loved by everyone I've recommended it to: Winterdance, by Gary Paulsen. An amateur sled dog owner in northern Minnesota decides to run the Iditarod, and is hilariously honest about his training misadventures. The moment in which the dogs drag him prone down the driveway, igniting a pocketful of wooden matches, will make your day. Some friends have bought multiple copies of Winterdance to give as gifts.

What are your favorites? Any recommendations?

Written By Becky Hammond

More on Leaves

Leaf Pickup in the Great Lakes State of Pennslyvania

A few weeks ago we discussed the dire problem of our region's forests being buried in leaves each year, leaves that Mother Nature is in no way equipped to deal with. NOT!!! Of course, leaves in forests are gone by the beginning of the next summer, more or less. So why is it common wisdom that our own yards can't handle them?

I found out a few things recently about my Detroit suburb. We have about 21,000 residents in just less than 4 square miles. Like many cities, we have financial troubles, yet pay $29,000 a year to get rid of LEAVES. This is only the cost of the disposal (they're composted, but not in our city). Overtime alone for pickup is $7,000 this year. A nearby city estimated they'd save almost $60,000 if they stopped leaf pickup. Of course, anything that ends up weighing 1,200 tons will be expensive to deal with. That's what my town ends up with annually: 1,200 TONS of leaves.

Leaf and garbage trucks, usually diesel-powered, get the lowest MPG (2.8) of any vehicles, including semi trucks; in fact, semis get at least twice the mileage. Think of the amount of fumes breathed by a worker at the back of a garbage truck. Seventy percent of the time the trucks are idling or close to it. Volvo will have a commercial hybrid garbage truck on the market two years from now, and some cities are switching to natural-gas-powered trucks, but for most of us (91%), it's still diesel. And there are more than twice as many garbage trucks as public buses, and garbage trucks make up the oldest fleet of vehicles in the US.

At my house we discovered by accident that we didn't need to move leaves around about 10 years ago when we built a raised bed across the end of the yard and didn't want to buy topsoil, so we used the leaves from the huge trees in our small yard. That soil, by the next summer, was so obviously superior to that anywhere else in the yard that we stopped moving leaves except to pile them on other flower beds. As we've eliminated grass, adding more beds and mulch paths, there's little to do each fall. Next year I am going to try the experiment of taking the leaves from the yards of neighbors and hopefully proving that not only can Ma Nature process our own leaves, but maybe those of 4 or 5 other yards as well.

Written by Becky Hammond

Wednesday's Great Lakes Lover

Elise Gregory from West Bloomfield, Michigan

Do you love the Great Lakes?

We know the Great Lakes are a unique, beautiful, and vital resource. They provide habitat to thousands of species, nutrients to all kinds of ecosystems, drinking water for millions of people, excitement for explorers, and serenity to countless dreamers. There are a lot of us out there who love them. We live all over the region, come from different backgrounds, and have all kinds of different reasons for our love. The Great Lakes Program launched the "I Heart Great Lakes" project to visually illustrate this love for the Great Lakes.

Show your love!

Here's what you need to do:

1. Take a picture of yourself holding this sign and smile big!
2. Email your photo to sierraclubgreatlakes@gmail.com, include your full name, city, and state in the email message.
3. Congratulations, you've just shown your love for the lakes!

Have you already submitted your picture?

Make sure you take the Great Lakes pledge!!!