GREEN TRAVELER

At my current job, I travel frequently. Every time I pack for the trip, I am tempted to plan to not bring back some clothes, as a way of getting rid of excess clothes.  I don't buy clothes that often but I do inherit old ones from relatives and the collection grows slowly.  So far I only actually left behind only some socks that became unfit.  I also plan ahead and try to be a green traveler, by doing the following:

• I bring along a stainless steel tumbler to drink water etc from.  If needed, I would also use it to hold water with tooth-brushing.  Starbucks has a bring-your-own although I have yet to participate.
• Usually by the second day I would have a disposable cup from lunch to use with tooth-brushing.  The hotels provide cups, whether glass or plastic, but I'd rather re-use a disposable cups a few times.  One time I accidentally dropped a glass cup, ugh, all the more reason to re-purpose a cup from breakfast.
• If the hotel provides silverware and the office has cereals, I would borrow a spoon to go with breakfast at work.
• I take home all opened shampoo travel-sized bottles and unpacked bars of soaps for use at home.  I have a good stack of them to last for a while.
• Whenever the option is there, I take mass transit to work, even though my employer provides a car for every trip.  Even when I have to get from the airport, with luggages, to the hotel.  It helps that I travel relatively light.  A weekly pass for the local subway, when used to get to the hotel, saves money from a taxi ride, which burns oil.
• Most offices I visited have recycling bin for paper etc.  As I picked up free magazines or touristy pamphlets, I brought them to the office for recycling.
• I always hang a Do-Not-Disturb sign and avoid having my room cleaned everyday.  I re-use the hotel towels for the entire stay, which is mostly one week long.  Another reason for the Do-Not-Disturb sign, "If it's yellow, let it mellow.  If it's brown, flush it down. " I have nothing more to say on the topic.

NYC, IT IS EASY TO BE GREEN

Contrary to Kermit's claim, it is easy to be green, especially if you live in New York City.  There are many good news in recent months and weeks.  Some weeks ago my brother took some old electronics to an e-recycling event hosted by Tekserve and he got a coupon in return.  He had no plan to buy anything from Tekserve but thought I would so he gave it to me.  And so I did, a stylus that works on the iPad and other iDevices.  Sure Steve Job would turn in his grave but hey it does work.  The coupon lopped $10 off the cost of the stylus, I ended up paying only $5.  Next we have the long-awaited bike share program that despite some noises is used by many people.  There's even talks of paying for the program to expand quickly into parts of Brooklyn and Queens that won't have subway services for weeks because of scheduled repairs to fix problems brought about by Hurricane Sandy.

This week it was announced that NYC may soon get food scrap recycling.  Food waste takes up to 35% of the waste stream.  The City pays by the ton to get the garbage trucked elsewhere for dumping, so cutting the size by 35% will save us some money.  The latest green good news is that there are now some Street Charge stations, for people to charge their electronic devices, from solar-powered connections, for free.  Of course one would have to have common sense and not just leave their devices unattended and invite others to steal them.  Hey, we do have ATMs on the street, people can withdraw hundreds of dollars, so having one's iDevices out in the open is not that crazy of an idea.

I followed some URL and found out that there was supposed to be a Street Charge station in my nabe, over on 21st Street or thereabout and Surf Avenue.  I made it part of my afternoon run but alas it wasn't there.  I found out later on that it's scheduled for a July 2 installation.  So while I didn't get a photo of the Street Charge station, earlier in the run I found this nice public sculpture.  Let's say Nemo was found and it was not good news.

NEMO!

In other unrelated news, I helped PPTC out at the third race of the Al Goldstein Summer Series.  I started at the New Registration table then when the race was under way, I ran with the back-of-the-pack runners.  I took some time out to use the restroom of the nearby Central Library, then again to try to contact the owner of a cell phone a friend found.  It was a guy visiting from Haiti and my three years of high school was not too useful, but I managed to find the settings to change the language to English then things got better.  I both met the guy and caught up with the last runner, now a speed-walker, not the stroller woman any more.  When I got back to the finish line, look who's helping with the award ceremony - Mr. Al Goldstein himself!  I did see him walk earlier without the use of the cane, too.

You can call me Al.

No Lemon, Yes Melon

If someone tells you he is environmentally conscious, would you assume he grows his own fruits and vegetable in a backyard garden?  If that is the requirement, then I am not much of a green person, but I really am.  I walk or use public transportation, instead of drive, most of the time.  I recycle and re-use everyday.  I turn off TVs, lights, computers, etc. when they are not in use.  But gardening so far has always eludes me.  My first attempt at gardening was many years ago when I lived in Long Island City.  The group Astoria Residents Recycling Our Waste (ARROW) just turned a vacant lot into a Green Thumb park, with a section set aside for gardening.  I helped setup the plots and got one assigned to me.  I lived just two blocks away from the new park but weeks then months pass and I never planted anything in the plot.  If there was any plot thickening, it was just weeds taking advantage of my absence.

Years later I have my own house with a backyard.  Long periods of time would go by and I would not spend any time in the backyard.  Last year I decided to maintain a compost bin, even though I did not know what I would do with the stuff once they are made.  From a friend in ARROW I got two more containers for composting and spent more time in the backyard turning and messing around with the bins.  By chance someone my wife knows has some extra melon buds (?) to give away.  The things would normally go to my in-laws but this year they already dedicated their front yard to growing string beans.  I do not recall what got into me but I decided to take a shot at growing them melons.

I do not have much soil area in the back yard so I grew one in a large pot while others went into the soil elsewhere.  Maybe in the future I will share my un-handyman's trellis but this time I just want to show off the potted melon.  As shown in the first two photos, the melon plant has grown large and spreading all over.  The tall photo is a Photoshop composite of three photos.  I may not have properly merged the photos together, but you get the idea.  I just water it everyday and guide its vines so it won't end up in the neighbor's yard.   By the way, I actually used some of the compost, made mostly from last year's autumn leaves, in a pot to support the melon vines as they spread onto cement floor.

I have not read up much about growing melons and just play by ears, so to speak.  I know these things like to climb but never having grown them before I was amazed to see first-hand how the process is done.  The vines themselves have sticky hair to cling on whatever they come across.  Then there are these other things that crawl ahead and coil around poles and such for support.  I definitely need to read up on melons to know the proper terms.

In case you wonder what's with the title of the blog post, it is a variation of the phrase NO MELON NO LEMON, which spells the same from left to right and from right to left.  I love palindromes and cannot pass the chance of using them, but in this case since I grow melons, it is NO LEMON YES MELON.  Of course the phrase is not a palindrome any more.

ARROWOnline.org Re-launched

For years I was the webmeister for the green group Astoria Residents Reclaiming Our World, or ARROW for short. I know, it is an ambitious-sounding name. I was not the first webmeister but rather inherited the design from someone else. Over the years, I kept the site mostly up-to-date, reflecting a few changes with the Board Members and the occasional event announcements. Life changes took a toll on the Board Members and much as we wanted to do more for the environment, other responsibilities took higher priorities. Somehow, even with the convenience of email and the cell phone, I didn't get frequent enough updates to put on the web and for a long time the web site was idle. One day, my ARROW friend SR came across some MAWebCenter person. The software sounded promising, with the possibility that SR and others can just update the web site themselves. I didn't make any changes to the original web site design so it was about time the site got a face lift.

It is a few months later and the new www.arrowonline.org is up. For SR, the software isn't as easy to use as advertised, but I think the site looks pretty good. ARROWOnline's goal is to disseminate useful green news, be it recycling, re-using, or reducing, focused on local organizations. Check it out and learn a thing or two about the green movement!