Tag Archives: Huffington Post

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First Meteor Shower of 2012: The Quadrantids

Posted on January 3, 2012 | 1 comment

The year’s first meteor shower may be a great one! The Quadrantids are set to peak on January 4th, 2:30 am ET. Astronomers are calling for clear skies and a dramatic show in much of the Northern Hemisphere, especially in the pre-dawn hours.

Can’t watch it at the exact time? Don’t worry — astronomers tell us that meteor showers can last for hours before and after the peak date.

This is a good article about the Quadrantids from Huffington Post.

What is a meteor shower?

Meteors occur when the Earth passes through streams of dust and debris from ancient comets which have entered the Earth’s atmosphere. (When the comet has flown close to the sun, its dirty ice evaporated and that, in turn, caused the comet dust to spew into space.) The Quadrantids are a relatively recent discovery (1825).

How to watch the Quadrantid Meteor Shower

The Quadrantids should be visible with the naked eye in North America and perhaps in other parts of the world. Sky watchers in cold climates should bundle up, grab a chair (ideally one with some neck support), and perhaps a blanket, head outside where you can see the largest patch of night sky possible (with as little city light as possible), and look up.

Because meteor showers last for days before and after the projected peak, be sure to scan the skies during the surrounding days, if you can.

A thermos of hot chocolate is a great accompaniment for the Quadrantids.

This American Meteor Society page is a great site for exploring more about the Quadrantids and where and when to see them in your local night sky.

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Huffington Post: Rise, Fall & Rise of New York City’s School Gardens

Posted on October 12, 2010 | 5 comments

Every now and again, you stumble upon what is simply a great story. Daniel Bowman Simon’s Rise and Fall of School Gardens in New York’s Past Can Guide Us Into the Future traces New York City’s early community gardens, such as the 1902 Children’s School Farm in DeWitt Clinton Park on 54th St. and 12th Ave. in Manhattan, which was planted as much for the civic virtues and love of nature it would instill in its young gardeners as it was for its vegetables and flowers.

A couple of years after its inception, there would be a whole School Farm movement, with an astonishing 80 plots in New York. In 1931, there were 302 school gardens, which accounted for 65 acres.

Over time, the gardens vanished. In most cases, their land was redeveloped. Simon notes that we need to take heed and not let that happen again. He cites some wonderful trends regarding the current uptick in school gardens – namely First Lady Michelle Obama‘s White House Garden and other programs that I’ve written about here, the new school garden at P.S. 29 in Brooklyn that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and celebrity chef Rachael Ray helped promote, and the work of the Children & Nature Movement.

Do yourself a favor and read the article. The graphics are wonderful. And the story turns out to be the writer’s testimony in the recent public hearing held by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, which very recently completed a set of community garden rules designed to strengthen protection for gardens.

White House Photo: Samantha Appleton

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Posted in Community, Nature, Slow News, Sustainability

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No Impact Week Starts Today

Posted on October 18, 2009 | Leave a comment

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The Huffington Post and Colin Beavan, No Impact Man, have announced a No Impact Week, starting today. A lot of folks are taking a pledge to go on a week-long “carbon cleanse” in order to reduce our individual impacts on the planet, both for its sake and for ours. According to the HuffPo:

The week is not about strict rules or precisely replicating No Impact Man (unless you want to!) it’s about thinking about your environmental impact in a new way and picking the goals that are right for you.

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You can download a terrific guide to No Impact Week, or any week. It’s packed with simple suggestions that will really get you thinking about small changes you can make immediately to lower your impact on our planet’s store of natural resources and help your own budget and health in the process.

Ideas include: Making your own cleaning products to cut down on toxins and packaging waste, kicking bottled water and getting involved with the Take Back the Tap campaign, driving less and also differently with the Hypermilers to reduce fuel consumption, and following specific ideas to help you shop less and eat sustainably and locally, including ways to make the food you do buy last longer.

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To that last point, the processing and transporting of food around the globe uses tremendous amounts of water, energy and chemicals. By eating organically and locally, when we can, we each can shrink our own carbon footprint in this area, and probably eat more healthfully (and support local farmers) in the process.

The National Resources Defense Council has created a terrific and fun-to-use site that lets you plug in your state and one of 24 times of the year to find out what you can eat that’s relatively local. Some cold-weather states offer a surprising amount of food choices for year-round eating. In other cases, there’s not as much grown locally, but there are fresh offerings in neighboring states.

This Planet Green site on 50 Ways to Reduce Food Waste is another practical site that will not only get you thinking, but offers ways to change your habits today.

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I signed up for the No Impact Project. I didn’t sign a big, intense pledge. I just volunteered to give it a go and receive updates about the project. I committed to myself that I would follow the guide for the week, which will take me through gradually making some changes — perhaps strengthening or deepening practices I already have. If you’re inclined, join me, and we’ll talk about how it’s going.

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Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman: Pedal-powered smoothies at the Mill Valley Eat In for healthy school lunches, Rainwater harvesting at Fairfax EcoFest and Parade, salad at M.V. Eat In, sign at San Francisco Ferry Building, composting and plastic waste display at Fairfax EcoFest and Parade, produce at City Market in Portland.

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Huffington Post’s First Book Club Pick: In Praise of Slowness

Posted on October 14, 2009 | 2 comments

Ariana Huffington, publisher of the impressive Huffington Post online news source, has announced the first book for her new book club: Carl Honore’s In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed.

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I initially wrote about this very important book when I was creating my blog. Written in 2004, it has taken an even speedier world and a new level of introspection — perhaps spurred by the soured economy, the dwindling of natural resources — for some of us to catch on to Honore’s terrific disease-and-prescription work. I wrote about my own experiences reading the book and beginning to seek a balanced family and community life, and about the rise of the entire Slow Movement, from Slow Food to Slow Cities. My growing resource page reflects the many people and groups attempting to slow life down to a moderate and meaningful speed.

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I recommend taking a look at Carl Honore’s own writing about In Praise of Slowness. You also won’t want to miss this terrific newer piece from Honore about the Slow Movement today and his response to having his book chosen for the HuffPo Book Club.

Ariana Huffington nails why In Praise of Slowness is so vital. She writes:

One of the things I especially love about In Praise of Slowness is Honore’s tone throughout. Far from a lifestyle guru who’s preaching his enlightenment from on high, Honore himself is a pilgrim, trying to learn how to slow down and enjoy the journey.

She also notes that Honore is no extremist Luddite. He, in fact, seeks a middle ground, writing:

I love speed. Going fast can be fun, liberating and productive. The problem is that our hunger for speed, for cramming more and more into less and less time, has gone too far.

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Huffington writes movingly about her own conversion to relative slowness and mindfulness. She also gets macro, and I love the parallels she draws between the cults of capitalism and of speed — what is lost in the process when greed overtakes peoples desires to behave humanely, and what can be gained in our economy, as well as our culture, from a general slowing. To that point Honore wrote (in 2004!):

Modern capitalism generates extraordinary wealth, but at the cost of devouring natural resources faster than Mother Nature can replace them. Capitalism is getting too fast even for its own good, as the pressure to finish first leaves too little time for quality control.

Honore calls this phenomenon “turbo capitalism,” in which people exist “to serve the economy, rather than the other way around.”

I think the choice of book for the HuffPo Book Club will bring these thoughts into greater prominence. I hope a lot of you will participate in the ongoing Slow dialog — here and elsewhere — and that some of the book’s ideas will enrich your own fulfilling lives.

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