January 31, 2008 by Ben.

Dear YERTians,

As some of you may remember, back in late September we included a poll with our Vermont video pod - YERTpod10: Seeding is Believing in Vermont. The video was packed to the gills with snippets from a number of different subjects and interviews. In the hopes of doing a little more justice to at least one of those subjects, we polled you, our viewers, and asked you to tell us which of our seven primary subjects you wanted to see more of in its own video. Well, the votes are in (truth be told, they were in four months ago but this road trip thing is quite the time sink and it’s taken us this long to carve out the time to make good on our poll) and we are delighted to announce that the winner is….. Yestermorrow Design/Build School!

So without further ado, here is a slightly more in-depth look under the hood of our favorite alternative to traditional architectural thinking, not to mention our favorite hybridization of two words - YESTERMORROW (a place so creative and environmentally inspired, we’re almost sure that somewhere on the other side of the planet, just to keep the universe in balance, there must be another school called DAYTO that teaches nothing but Soviet-era concrete block construction using nothing but petroleum and coal). We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Balancing,

Mark, Julie, and Ben (Your YERT Team)

team@yert.com

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January 25, 2008 by Mark.

Dear YERTians,

Ok, ok, we’re sorry for the excessive dam jokes. We’ve just fallen in love with the oceanic nutrient delivery vehicles called salmon. If you watch the video you’ll know what we mean…

Washington State, particularly the city of Seattle, contained a mother lode of environmental stories that we’re just giddy to share– but we had to choose one, so we focused on the Elwha River Restoration Project in Olympic National Park. Once this thing is complete, you’ll see smiles on most faces– the National Park Service, the Lower Elwha Klallam Indian Tribe, and particularly on salmon faces (yay sushi!), not to mention the countless living things that depend upon such a wonderfully peculiar upstream swimming habit.

You’ll also see a smile on the face of our friend Amy at Xeko (you saw her in Trailer 1), who reappears to creatively describe Xeko and the superpowers of salmon. Kathleen Drew, Executive Policy Advisor for Sustainability for Washington Governor Gregoire, gave us a bit of perspective on these issues. And we were blown away by the single-handed and mindedness of Sue Joerger and the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance as they patrol the Sound to make sure that businesses along the waterfront are following the law– leaving a cleaner habitat for those struggling salmon.

Swimmingly,

Ben, Julie, and Mark (Your YERT Team)

team@yert.com

P.S. And now for Breadcrumbs! If you want to learn more about the topics in this video, check out these resources:

• Xeko - We admit it. We absolutely love Xeko and all the folks working there. Ben and Julie will be teaching their new kiddo all about animals with this eco-adventure game, and Mark just enjoys looking at all the pretty pictures.
• Puget Soundkeeper Alliance - We thought that the government was the organization responsible for monitoring pollution in the sound… but it appears that we’d be up a creek if we left it entirely to Uncle Sam. According to the Soundkeeper website, “The mission of Puget Soundkeeper Alliance is to protect and preserve Puget Sound by tracking down and stopping the discharge of toxic pollutants into its waters. The Alliance is the only organization that actively monitors and patrols the waters of Puget Sound to detect and document sources of illegal pollution.”
• The Elwha River Restoration Project - The National Park Service is working to pull down a couple of dams built on the Elwha River nearly 100 years ago. They were initially built to create electricity, but in this case, the value of the ecosystem outweighs the need for that power from those dams, so they’re coming down. Check out the old but more informative NPS website here, and the newer but unfinished website here. There’s also a nifty PDF that narrates the details of the project here.
• More on our Blog - Julie tackles most of the issues covered in this video in more detail in her blog entry: Day 92, 93: WA: On to the Heavy. Saving the Sound, and Salmon.

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January 24, 2008 by Julie.

k i am pretty sure we are a-ok but how do you know when you don’t own your own Doppler to hear your baby’s heartbeat and s/he is still too small to feel kick you in the ribs as reassurance??? How do mothers get through the panic and the worry to actually have a baby?

I have spent the day today feeling a bit off. I ascribe it to hormones but i confess to being affected by the weather. It’s been cold and rainy here in Austin and, though it IS winter, i was hoping for some warm weather to boost my spirits.

Austin is a really cool town. It’s easy to see that there’s much going on here environmentally and no way that we will possibly be able to cover but a little corner of it in the short time that we’re here. We are getting used to that feeling but, anticipating a “dry spell” in the remainder of the South, i’ve been looking up natural food options in Mississippi and Alabama. In case they don’t have any. Cause i can’t just be eating fried pickles.

Ben is still editing the Washington pod, has been for days now. We had so many hours of footage. Looks like this will be his all-nighter tonight… I hope that he is able to pull it off by morning. It’s a tough job, it really is, I couldn’t do it. I will have to sleep just to support him. And thank our little jelly beano traveler for letting me know when it is time to rest.

I heard some very sad news today about someone we just met and I have to acknowledge it. A great great loss. My heart is heavy and flying out to them all at the same time. I am so thankful for my family, for this trip, for the amount of time I have gotten to spend with the people in my family…Everytime somebody dies I am reminded to make better use of the time i have with the people i am with.
This is no exception. I am so grateful.

Posted in Julie, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

January 21, 2008 by Julie.

My last backtracking journal entry ended with a nighttime icestorm on our drive from Oklahoma to Kansas City and the home of some friends of Mark’s parents. We had no sooner rolled out of the car (in which we had been roasting with the defrost on full-blast to melt the freezing wildshield) and onto the newly iced driveway, when I felt my back go OUT with me. This, I thought, will be perfect for the next few days of driving and interviews…

I shuffled into the foyer of our homestay and left my wet shoes by the door as we met our host, inwardly bemoaning my state of brokenness, and outwardly excusing myself right to bed to fall asleep in my clothes (as has become quite common for me since we conceived). I awoke before the sun and stumbled fast to the nearest bathroom, (also quite common) and saw through the window… ice covering everything… every blade of grass and every twig and leaf glazed in ice, anything that had held still long enough to get covered… including, I saw, our Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur mascot, frozen to the hood of our car. (Harry normally rides on the dash of Rachel Carson but Ben had decided Hairy needed to build character and so Harry got left out on the hood overnight.) Then, in the middle of my quiet reverie in the loo, I sneezed, and it was like somebody stuck a knife in my spine. The second sneeze nearly put my lights out. I think it is safe to say that i experienced some light road trip panic in those moments- a bit of How crazy is this road trip and What am i even doing?

When i joined everyone for breakfast, I sheepishly announced my disappointing back problem and then went ahead and spilled the beans about the pregnancy, too, since Tom, our host, started offering Tylenol and things that developing babies can’t take. He was thrilled about the good news and graciously offered to show me some meditation and breathing exercises for my back and to help to de-stress. I must say, they were very helpful (Thank you, Tom).

It was, I think, equally helpful that our interviews for the next couple days were hosed due to the icestorm. That, coupled with no internet for the first couple of days, forced us to just sit and BE, and for me to breathe, relax and HEAL. We were really bummed about possibly missing our on the Land Institute in Salina but we got some beautiful b-roll of still icy Kansas and during these couple of days we really got to spend time with our newfound KC family and share ideas about how to be new revolutionaries!

Tom had voluntarily worked in Vietnam in the late 60’s in refugee camps, and he told us amazing stories. We watched a documentary film called Hearts and Minds about the Vietnam War on which Tom took the film crew to the Vietnamese people and served as translator - we could hear him in the background of the film translating questions into Vietnamese. He wanted to know if we thought that Americans had learned from Vietnam. We found ourselves wondering the same thing. Food for thought.

I’ll go into more detail later re: what we saw in Kansas but I will say here that I never could remember whether we were KC Kansas or KC Missouri, so everything in Kansas City is all a giant KC in my mind (apologies to the purists). That said, we went to a village sustainability meeting with Tom where villagers expressed frustration with the town’s seeming inability to agree on adding a recycling drop-off spot.

Ben reconnected with his Kansas City childhood when we found Marty Flowers. Marty has a yard that is probably best described as a wild place, in the best possible way. There is an entrance at the corner of Marty’s yard - a threshold which announces it as an “Urban Wilderness.” Marty told us how he can’t count the number of times he’s been sued for having an “unkept yard.” After we chatted with him about the whys of letting a yard grow its own way, Marty took us to a Kansas City sustainability meeting - which was anything BUT frustrated, and which led us to one of our most interesting interviewees to date - an incredible architect and gentleman named Bob Berkowitz, who we’ll get to next time, i promise… The enthusiasm and, more importantly, the confidence and even expectation that change is on its way was quite compelling.

I’ll stop for now but just have to say that one of the very best things about this trip is the people who have invited us to come into their homes and share their space and their food and their thoughts and their habits with us and, also, their encouragement. Thank you, people, any and all of you who have kept us so far. Thank you very very much.

to be continued…

Posted in Travelog, Julie | 1 Comment »

January 15, 2008 by Julie.

OK this momma is ready to go back and fill in the blanks from out first bite of cold weather in Oklahoma! here goes:

While on the road, we had been emailing back and forth with our friend, Hunter, in NYC, who was from Oklahoma. Upon landing in OKC (still freaking cold) we quickly became aware that all our friends from Oklahoma knew each other, as did nearly everyone we interviewed! Very small world, and very very friendly, with lovely girls who look like they might all have a eye toward the Miss America pageant. (There is a reason for this, we were told- OK is very proud of the number of Miss OK’s who have made it to Miss America.)

We stayed at the abode of the fantastic and fierce Lance McDaniel for a few days, who showed us around OKCU’s campus (where his Dad happens to be President). We interviewed some budding film students at lunch where the cafeteria stopped using trays in an effort to cut down on waste. We were also treated to OKCU’s Xmas Dance Concert (thank you McDanielses!!) which was a very nice diversion from all things green…

One really exciting thing that we happened upon was a Habitat for Humanity build site where every house going up was being equipped with geothermal heating/cooling systems donated by ClimateMaster- very cool, as these homes are built for those of us unable to afford a regularly priced home, much less one with a geothermal system. We filmed the whole neighborhood pitching in for a wall-raising and Ben got them singing a rousing chorus of “Oklahoma!” I took a break from some of the freezing weather to finish knitting the scarf I had started when i realized we were in for some pretty chilly weather for the next month or so…

Speaking from the pregnant back seat, (Did I mention that i am no longer riding in front due to the danger of airbags on pregnant bellies?) I have to mention this wonderful cafe we found for lunch - fresh organic food and fair trade coffee, wonderful atmosphere with internet and nice humans - It was called The Red Cup and it was heavenly. We ate there like 3 dys in a row. I highly recommend it!

We visited with Rep Randy McDaniel (R) and Rep. Andrew Rice (D) to get two differing takes on how global warming is viewed by legislators in Oklahoma. We were not able to get to Senator Inhoff but that is probably just as well as I don’t think we would have had quite the diplomatic and open conversation that we had with Randy McDaniels. I believe I speak for all of us when I say that we really enjoyed talking with both representatives very much. And, if you live in OK, please do check out Andrew Rice’s website. He is very much in tune with environmental concerns and is willing to go to bat for them in DC.

We stopped by Boldt Building Corp and got a neat tour of their green facility…and were warned that we might consider leaving Oklahoma a day earlier than planned as there was an ice storm headed our way and Oklahoma drivers are not known for their ice-driving skills…

So we took their advice and drove away a day early with thick red Oklahoma mud on our shoes (and therefore on Rachel Carson’s carpet under our feet) several hours into the night through an ice storm that ended with one knit hat and my back going out, unfortunately not for the last time on this trip…

Posted in Travelog, Julie | 2 Comments »

January 14, 2008 by Ben.

Dear YERTians,

YERT traveled to the northern reaches of Idaho to track down a man with a plan…a plan to solve the looming energy crisis, attack global warming, and fix our crumbling infrastructure all in one fell swoop. People coming to America used to believe that the streets here were paved with gold, but Scott Brusaw wants to pave our streets with something far more useful - solar panels. That’s right, Scott has a plan to replace asphalt with an integrated network of solar panels that people can drive on. No, he’s not crazy…though he does have a beard. Click on the video below to learn more.

But it gets better - not only would Solar Roadways replace our current fossil-fuel-intensive asphalt and concrete paved surfaces, but they could essentially replace the power grid itself. Imagine a world without coal-fired power plants, without obnoxious power lines, without smog - a world where the very road you drive on pollution-free supplies everything from on demand power for your electric vehicle and your home to high-speed internet and cable TV service - all with clean "green" energy from the sun. We know, it sounds crazy, but Scott is perfectly sane - we promise. Take a look for yourself at his website - http://www.solarroadways.com - and let him know what you think.

You Are Our Sunshine,

Ben, Julie, and Mark (Your YERT Team)

team@yert.com

P.S. There is an interesting in-depth discussion about SolarRoadways here on TreeHugger.com, including a thorough reply by Scott to virtually every concern posted.

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Posted in Video | 1 Comment »

January 12, 2008 by Julie.

Boys, you can skip this part if it bores you - Like yesterday’s blog, this is much less of an update or travelog and much more like reading a pregnant lady’s journal…

The big thing I am worrying about now on this trip (that i wasn’t worrying about as much when it was just me I was feeding) is what i am putting into my system every day. I have made it a point to discover what is in foods but when you are eating a lot of your meals in restaurants, it is really hard to know…
I aim to avoid all things unnatural but, since we are not finding Farmer’s Markets so far this winter, I don’t really know how to do this without making/accepting garbage!!!
p.s. Scary FACTS:
Canned food has bisphenol-A.
Meat generally has antibiotics and hormones added.
“Fresh” veggies and fruits served at most restaurants have pesticides in them, and aren’t as healthful since they have had all their fighters (antioxidants) bred out of them.
Tap water has chlorine and flouride, among other chemicals.

Seriously. I feel like i would have to live at home catching rainwater eating out of my own garden in order to be sure not to contaminate my unborn child any more than i already have by living the life i’ve lived so far on this planet…

The challenges we have made for ourselves on this roadtrip are wonderful and yet we haven’t been able to accept the challenge of eating all local and organic…we are not made of money and we are traveling all over the country so we have to sometimes take what we can get…and it is not always so good for us. It sometimes means Ruby Tuesdays salad bar or Chipotle’s bean burritos or some random truckstop’s grilled cheese sandwich with cottage cheese on the side…It will never mean McDonalds but it is NOT how I would feed myself were I in my own home, buying organic food for us at our local health food store, recycling milk jugs and yogurt cups.

So. a bit frustrated, I am trying not to worry too too much about the effects that my imperfect diet is having on our little beano’s nascent development, as I continue taking vitamins and finding sleep when I can. I know that global warming is a sign of change that we wish would slow way down but, to me, spring can never some fast enough..and this year is no different. All i can say is Thank God we are in the south, and hopefully we will start seeing some farmer’s markets soon.

Next stop: Dallas. If anyone happens to know of any great organic eateries there, please give a holler…

Posted in Travelog, Issues, Julie | 2 Comments »

January 11, 2008 by Julie.

First let me say what a load is off my mind now that the 6 mo check-in video is out there on the web so i can actually talk about it…

Secondly, I have a confession to make. Tonight I drank bottled water, which is pretty bad because it wasn’t a mistake. I caved. The boys were out doing interviews in Little Rock and I stayed home to work (read: rest). At some point I realized that I had drunk all the water we had in our steel bottles and was having a minor pregnancy panic attack bc I was super thirsty and was afraid to drink the tap out of the bathroom sink.

Normally I fill our bottles up with tap water but I always check with our host to be sure to get the thumbs up on the water/pipes quality, and I hadn’t done that this time. I suddenly worried: What if there is something wrong with the pipes in this lovely B&B and that is why our hostess offered us free bottled water? I looked for her and couldn’t find her. I ate an orange. That helped for about an hour. Ben called and I asked him to fill up our canteen and bring it home. He said he would but they were just sitting down to dinner and it would be awhile.

I recalled the phrase “If you wait till you’re thirsty, then it’s too late: you’re already dehydrated,” and began to feel like a withered dried sponge. Suddenly, convinced that our little one must be parched and gasping in the womb, I ran dramatically down to the visitor fridge, pulled out a plastic (NOOOOOOOO!) bottle of water and downed it in about 45 seconds on my way back up to our room. The guilt came immediately after when the YERT angel on my shoulder said, “Oh, come on, pregnant lady, did you really have to do that? Really?”

I have no doubt that when I ask our hostess tomorrow morning how is the quality of the tap, she will tell me it is fine. A moment of weakness and I caved utterly. This just means I have to be more diligent. Do not fail to ask about tap water wherever we are staying, and make sure that canteens get filled every time we are out at restaurants or whatever. This bottle is going to travel with us now as a reminder of how important it is to plan… That was crappy, on my part, and I am renewing my effort to NOT MAKE TRASH.

i had to fess up when the boys got home. sorry, fellas. this one was for the little guy. They looked at me kind of sideways and sighed.

p.s. i also bought a huge plastic container of organic yogurt earlier in the week to deal with that craving but I don’t feel as bad bc Heather said they need those at the Zoo for something…so I am not considering that garbage. Am I wrong?

Posted in Travelog, Julie | 3 Comments »

January 6, 2008 by Mark.

Dear YERTians,

Happy New Year! We think that this year could well be happier than the last, despite the delicious Nobel Peace Prize winning and overwhelmingly earthly reporting that made it onto the front pages of newspapers around the world—even in the United States!

We think that this year, people all around the country, from all political walks of life, are finally going to see past the “tree” in “treehugger” and embrace the universal appeal of a sustainable lifestyle. Hug your neighbor, hug your free time, hug your family values, hug your fresh water, hug a tasty banana. You might save a planet, and you just might find it appealing.

Oh yeah—don’t hug your junk mail.

In fact, do everything you can to avoid it! Junk mail was one of the big challenges during the last six months, in our otherwise frugal quarter. We explain this and more in our second quarterly “check-in,” complete with new challenges and new highlights for a brand new year.

Resolutely,

Mark, Julie, and Ben (Your YERT Team)

team@yert.com

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Posted in Video | 4 Comments »

January 4, 2008 by Julie.

Going to sleep but wanted to post a couple of pictures from today! xox julie

Posted in Travelog, Julie | 1 Comment »