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Jumbo jar is ready for rain
Jim Redden, Portland Tribune
Water-saving ideas from rural Thailand inspire park project
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Photo: Brad Crowley works on an 800-gallon Thai Jar rainwater collector at the Woodlawn Community Garden. (JIM CLARK / TRIBUNE PHOTO)
Although Brad Crowley has installed rainwater collection systems all over the Portland area, he had never built a Thai Jar until Portland Parks & Recreation asked him to install one at the Woodlawn Community Garden.
Now, after spending the past two weeks splattered with concrete and stain, Crowley has newfound respect for the traditional water supply system found throughout rural Thailand.
“This is a lot of work,” said Crowley, owner of a local company called Harvest the Sky. “Usually I’m putting plastic barrels in people’s backyards. But the Thai Jar has to built from scratch, and it’s really big.”
The garden is on property shared by Woodlawn School, located at 7200 N.E. 11th Ave., and Woodlawn Park, which wraps around the school’s southern and eastern sides.
The completed flowerpot-shape jar stands more than 6 feet tall and can hold around 800 gallons of water. It will collect water from the roof of one of the school’s nearly portable classrooms.
(28 August 2007)
Radical Simplicity and the Fourth Step (complete online book)
Tyra and James Arraj, Inner Explorations
Recommended by Dave Pollard who writes at his blog:
Tyra and James Arraj’s online book “Radical Simplicity and the Fourth Step” is an engrossing read, full of first-person anecdotes of home schooling, building simple forest shelters, growing their own food, etc. The resource guide link at the end of the book is also valuable, especially the intriguing resources and links to natural building. The book conveys, without preaching, the philosophy of simple, responsible, natural living, and how to live true to that philosophy.
(25 August 2007)
Another work in the growing genre of simple living.
What Must We Do? (PDF)
Michael Vickerman. Renew Wisconsin
A presentation by Michael Vickerman at the Illinois Renewable Energy Fair. He describes what we must do:
- Use less petroleum and NG each year as a matter of policy
- More efficient houses, vehicles, devices
- Stop consuming fuel for non-productive (recreational) purposes
- Begin disengaging from global economy – shorten supply lines!!
- Build an economy around renewable energy
- Emphasize local energy production – avoid the commodities trap
- Reinvest high EREOI fossil wealth into lower EROEI renewable technologies
- Let go of the “energy on-demand” mindset – follow the flows
(27 August 2007)
