Blackout in the grocery store

Maxx Value food store opened in my neighborhood recently, to a fair amount of neighborhood concern.
The previous tenant, Lucky Foods, is a union shop and the new one isn't.
That is a topic for another day.
People also wondered about selection, price and upkeep of the outside of the store.

The outside was repainted, the parking lot repaved with recycled asphalt, and the place is pretty spiffy inside. Prices looked good.

But the neighborhood power went out.
After about five minutes of people quietly continuing their shopping, the manager threw us all out of the store.
Now, I have waited out afternoon power outages in Colorado, where summer afternoon storms can knock power out with regularity.
I've never been told to leave, but mangers have suggested coming back in 45 minutes.

As we all walked out, probably 45 to 52 people, the manager kept saying, yes we need a generator.
Having a back up generator with cold food is a great idea.
But locally distributed energy, hosted on the grocery store property, would be a better insurance policy.
The host could get all the power in an outage (written into the host and subscriber contract) and subscribers would get some credit if the outage went on for several hours.

Community solar gardens can be reality in your neighborhood.
In California, SB 843 opens the doors to this locally distributed electricity.
Call your senator and representative and ask them to vote for 843.

More minimalist wardrobe

This is an update on a remix of two challenges popular in the blogosphere,Six Items or Less and Project 333.

I pulled the best guidelines of both and pulled them together to see what works for someone at the crossroads of minimalist and cheap.. er.... frugal. Add the desire to never be under of over dressed, and the desire to know most items will go together, and many fabulously, well. This is worth the few hours of planning (some of which have been fun).

I'm trying to use 10 items of clothing for 30 days.
Launch day is March 10.

For 30 days, I will wear outfits pulled from
1-dark wash jeans
2- green corduroy trousers
3- peacock blue sweater
4- forest green T-shirt, short sleeved
5-black long sleeved T-shirt
6- purple long sleeved T-shirt
7 and 8 to be determined
9- closed toe green and brown vegan earth shoes
10- my beloved black Chacos. I live in these. I bought them in 1998, resoled them three times and re-strapped once. Price per wear is about two-tenths of a cent.


Ultimately, I will have a few capsules (remember capsule wardrobes?) for the seasons, plus one for dressing up situations, which are about six per year for me these days.
Work clothes are pretty much a self-created uniform. That capsule is seasonless and will have three to five trousers and five tops.
That is for my bodywork business.

At times, I appear as a representative of Solar Gardens Institiute, and those meetings are business casual. If I am speaking, I take it up a notch.
The rest of the time is my version of casual, and frankly, after 14 years in tie dye and a couple years of "hippy anarchist" colors, well, I might still be in black and green, but by golly, I can wear blue and purple, too.

And yes, I still have tiedyed clothing. Mostly dresses and a few special shirts.
They were the work and gifts from my former spouse. Beautiful stuff, and will eventually be in memory boxes.
I do wear a few pieces here and there. Nothing like custom clothing that seems to be lasting forever.
One shirt is from the week we met- 17 years ago. It has one small hole. Outlasted the marriage!

Prepping for the 10

"My fashion style is 'woman who wears clothes so she won't be naked.' " --Molly Ivins, columnist and all around patriot.

I relate to Molly's quip a little too well.

30/10 grew out of reading style blogs. That means I'm actually going to think about what I wear, what it says and does it itch.
Pretty important, that last one.
I've been reading color theory, imagining what a reworked closet will look like in a year, and trying give myself a reality check about what I actually do.
In reality, my idea of dressing up is nice trousers, even jeans, tidy shirt and a blazer. I actually own two, one in ikat-like stripes, and one solid black.

So, in. 10/30, I will experiment with simpler things. Belts. Scarves. Changing necklace lengths.
I will need to pick up a couple belts at the thrift store, and maybe an interesting necklace.

I haven't decided on all the items, and might leave a couple to be selected later into the experiment.

Dark jeans, olive cords, and one deep peacock blue sweater are making the list.

So, from my closet, I do manage to not be naked. Can I look pulled together?
Could I discover a signature look?

Six items or less, or a variant thereof

Last November 15- December 15, I took part in six items or less, a challenge to take six main items from your closet and wear them exclusively for 30 days.
Accessories, undies, shoes, work or school uniforms and workout wear (worn only to work out, not to the library or public meeting) don't count.

While I didn't take a slew of pictures, proof of my needing to evolve blogging skill, I did post somewhat regularly on the challenge Web site.

I created a school wardrobe of three shirts and two pants, exempt from the list.
I pulled a black sheath dress, two long sleeve shirts, a short sleeve shirt, dark wash jeans, and a sweater.

By day 26, I was thinking about the end, but really, aside from not loving one of my original choices ( which I selected in a frantic hour for the first five, while thinking about item six) I was not thinking about shopping, wearing something not in my six, or quitting.

I was thinking about laundry.

The simplest way to handle four tops and two bottoms is to hand wash. Rack drying has to be planned if the rack is inside, as the dry takes a bit longer than outside. Sometimes a day longer if humidity is high.
The six items challenge allows for exact multiples of items. I would have duplicates of anything that takes more than overnight to dry, or plan their use. For me, this was the jeans ( I did have two. One wore out just after the challenge) and sweater.


I did cull my closet, and I have once more, too.

I'm developing my own challenge based on Six Items or Less and other similar projects.

Starting March 10 and ending midnight April 10, I will have 10 items, including shoes, excluding undergarments, coats and accessories.

My hope is to learn how to use what I already have but not look like the hippy kid I often resemble.

I'm in the Bay Area. I have massage clients. I volunteer with a local paper and oversee social media for Solar Gardens Institute.
I will also be in class three days a week and have a couple weekend seminars, as well as attending a professional conference for SGI.

I will exempt the massage clothing, as it is a uniform. My capsule wardrobe for it will remain small, at three tops, two bottoms.

As part of blogging discipline, I will take photos.
I might even post them!

Just start a solar garden already!

I'm a renter. Always have been.
I support solar power. Always have.
Those two statements are NOT in conflict.

Locally generated and distributed electricity reduces the amount of power that must be generated in the first place, since long transmission lines lose power as heat.
For a proposed Xcel Energy solar installation in Colorado's San Luis Valley, about 15 percent of the electricity would be lost in transmission.
So park PV panels close by, on roofs, as parking structures, in odd corners of industrial lots.
Gang up on utility bills and form a solar garden. You and nine people can literally change the world by changing your power source.
And profit is standing in the wings, not yet ready for her closeup, but ready to bring home green in two ways.
Talk to the folks at The Solar Gardens Institute.

Purging the bookshelf and more

It had to happen someday. I had to let go of an absurd number of books.
I'm exhilarated that it is done, but getting there took, well, years.

You see, I love books. I was raised to love books. None of my childhood books had crayon marks, if we bought them new.
Books and learning were our religion.
I love books; the information and stories between the covers, the potential in a craft or home improvement book, the promise of family meals in cookbooks.
One of my favorite bands has the line "oh there's nothing better/ than the smell of a used book store/ we'll get lost between the covers."
Thanks, Ezra and Keith!
(song is Old Things by Trout Fishing in America, a band named after a book.)

But the books had to be set free. I am moving into a small place that already has an occupant, and very little room for stuff of mine.
Two years ago, my library numbered close to 1000 books. It is now four beer boxes.

I'm reeling, in one way and feel liberated in another.
Now I have to use the library heavily, and that will keep me from reading the same 100 books again and again.

I culled my CDs in a similar way.
I had acquired many from a previous employer, CDs from every artist who played over a seven year span. I was given the majority as a thank you for selling merchandise.
Some were from the free box.

In many ways, culling clothing was easier. I don't have a shoe fetish. I don't have handbags or purses. I dress in what is kindly called an eccentric way.
Over the past two years, I've started dressing in black and green with the odd brown shirt.
Long way from the tie dye I lived in for 14 years!
One item took me by surprise.
I have a nice but holey warm sweater from Nepal. I bought it in Ft. Collins before a String Cheese Incident concert in 1998. I said then that it would bring me to Colorado to stay.
So, packing in an apartment in Englewood, Colo., I folded up the well worn sweater and started to drop in in the donations bag.
But I couldn't. I felt a wave of sadness at the idea. Honestly, I cried. over a sweater. (yes, pitiful, isn't it?)
But I listened to that impulse, and kept it.
A fleece took its place in the donation bag.

What strangely emotion moments have you had during moves? What surprised you?

Sunrise for community solar gardens

On an appropriately sunny Colorado afternoon, the community solar gardens act became reality.
With the flatirons in the distance, Gov. Bill Ritter signed HB1342 into law June 5.
“At SolarGardens.org, we see the Community Solar Gardens act as a step toward enabling everyone to own their own solar panels,” said Joy Hughes, founder of SolarGardens.org. “Even if you have shade on your roof or rent your house, you can subscribe to the sun, and if you move, your subscription moves with you.”
Rep. Claire Levy ,D-Boulder, author and House sponsor of the bill, credited a single resident with the idea of community solar.
He mentioned that his neighbors in the mountains above Boulder have good exposure, but don't necessarily have the money for their own system. The constituent, Solargardens.org board member Greg Ching, thought allowing panels on another owners property would help the mountain residents generate power for their homes.
Levy looked into the law, and saw several impediments to siting solar panels off one's own land.
At the same time, Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, was looking for a way for her constituents to own collaborative solar. They joined forces and carried the Community Solar Gardens bill.
As Ritter signed it, he spoke of the leadership Colorado has taken in the new energy economy, and the 56 bills, of which Community Solar Gardens is the latest, that position Colorado as the national, and Ritter argues, international leader in new energy economies.
Allowing people to purchase subscriptions to solar gardens benefits the customers by allowing them access to benefits, from rebates to tax incentives, that homeowners get. The act also aids utility companies in achieving their state-mandated 30 percent renewable energy standard as customers sell excess power back into the grid.
David Eves of Xcel Energy said the act allows those who cannot Participate in Xcel's Solar Rewardsz program to do so.
“You have a lot of good ideas coming out of Boulder,” Eves said. “Thank you for pushing us.”
The Community Solar Gardens act will allow people to own solar panels that are not on their property.
Becoming part of a community solar garden brings clean, sustainable power to renters of homes, apartments or offices, condo owners, people with locations that are not ideal for solar panels or live in areas with homeowner associations that limit the number or location of panels.
A Community Solar Garden is at least 10 people, called subscribers, who own panels at a site.
HB 1342 directs the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to create rules that require public utilities to extend rebates and other offers available to homeowners who install photovoltaic panels to these groups.
One of the benefits for the utilities is more renewable power generated in areas where it is used and sold to the grid.
State Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, sponsored the bill in the House and State Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, sponsored it in the Senate.
U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-El Dorado Springs, is sponsoring a similar bill at the federal level, the Solar Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) Act.
For more information on Community Solar Gardens, visit www.solargardens.org.