GoLocal: School Traffic in Sonoma County

It's All About ME!

Well, summer’s over. I can tell because it suddenly takes me as much as 10 minutes to get onto Hwy 116 in the morning. The kids are back in school and the roads are packed. The good folks at the Climate Protection Campaign tell me that when school resumes traffic increases by about 20% - 30% and that in the last 40 years, walking and biking to school has come down from 50% to less than 15%.

All these added cars are mostly one parent and one kid. What a waste. The school buses are so much more efficient yet are running half full and becoming “too costly” to operate.
It’s not just about the wastefulness. Drop off and pick times at schools are a traffic nightmare. Here at our school in Graton you literally cannot drive through for at least 30 minutes before or after school. In Forestville Carr’s Drive-In becomes a Carr’s Park-In. This is also the most dangerous part of the day for kids. The traffic, over excited kids, and distracted parents on their cell phones is a deadly brew.

How can we teach our kids to be green if we don’t practice conservation in our daily lives? Sure there is a legitimate concern about child abduction. But the fact is that kids face a greater risk in the family car than they do walking, biking or on the school bus. It doesn’t have to be so. There are really good options, the aforementioned school bus for one. There is also a great program called Walking School Buses in which a parent walks with the kids and collects them along the way. October 7th was Walk Roll to School Day, sponsored for Safe Routes to School and the Sonoma County Bicycle Collation who expect most schools and kids will participate this year.
Unlike commuting to work most of this added traffic and environmental impact is discretionary waste. It would not take a huge effort to reduce single car transport of kids by 50%. If we can’t do it for the environment, perhaps the burgeoning childhood obesity epidemic might motivate us?

Here’s the deal. Are we going to get serious about making real change or not? Improving school transportation efficiency is an obvious and highly impactful program that has all sorts of benefits. While campaigns like Safe Routes to School do a good job of building awareness about the issue much more could be done.

So what is preventing this from really taking off? I can’t help but think that the resistance is basically that we think that our own personal convenience is more important than changing our behavior in ways that could save the planet. After all, “I’m only driving a few miles and my child’s safety is really important to me.”

As a playground designer I’ve worked in hundred’s of schools for decades and have always had an interest in this issue. Virtually every principal I’ve talked with has tried and failed to solve the problem. Most principals literally have to be a traffic cop for several hours every school day just to avert disaster. Parents feel that they have a “right” to personally chauffer their kids to campus, to park wherever they can, and basically ignore traffic laws. As a community we lack the conceptual framework for mounting a compelling argument to convince parents otherwise. How can we expect to make the hard environmental behavioral changes that will soon become necessary if we cannot solve even this relatively simple and obvious problem? Must we wait to change until a law is passed or environmental conditions deteriorate to the extent that we have no choice?

Think about it as you deal with the traffic tomorrow morning.

Additional Resources:
Jay Beckwith J.Beckwith@GoLocal.coop
Safe Routes to School www.sonomasaferoutes.org/
Bicycle Collation Sonoma County bikesonoma.org/

READERS: If you want to gain attention on this issue at your child’s school, please submit photos of morning and afternoon traffic jams so others can SEE that this is a problem. Send photos to vesta@sonic.net

Read article »

Building Local - GoLocal in Sonoma County

What is it about guys and hardware stores? It’s the only place our family shops where my wife has to sit and wait for me. Perhaps the appeal isn’t that it’s a place to “buy stuff” as much as it’s a place to “do stuff.” And maybe that’s why locally owned hardware stores seem to be holding their own in this “tuff” (a guy term for really hard) economy.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had a clerk say to me, “You really ought to have a contractor do this for you, but if I was doing the job here’s what I’d do.” Boy, does that motivate a guy! He’s saying he thinks I can do a job that would normally require a contractor. Then, as the conversation continues there’s this subtle dance in the aisle, among the pipe wrenches and twist ties, that ensues.

I try to seem smart and understand what he’s talking about and not take up too much of his time on one side. And on the other side I’m trying to glean as much knowledge as possible so I don’t electrocute myself or worse. There’s a sort of calculator that I run in my head that equates the amount of time I’m monopolizing the clerk and the money I’m going to spend. I’ll only ask one question about three dollar box of staples but that above mentioned $200 electrical service panel that could kill me, I might jawbone for fifteen minutes.

The cool thing is that there is always some little doohickey or a tool you’ll use only once that you just gotta have to do the chore. One of these days I’m going to have a barn sale and get rid of all those oddments. I’ll have a great time explaining to the do-it-yourselfers that drop by why they need have them too.

A trip to the hardware store isn’t an exercise in efficiency. Quite the contrary, the longer one can spend putting together the bits and pieces, the plans and solutions, the better. Over the years I’ve developed something of a hackers mentality; 1) If I can’t open it up and get at the innards I won’t buy it, 2) then I take it home and study up on how it’s supposed to work, and then 3) I make it do what I want it to which generally involves something that voids the warranty.

Now that you’ve got a sense of what a hardware store means to some guys, and many gals too, (me!) you can understand too why the neighborhood hardware store is such an institution. You know a good store when the staff stays the same for decades and when you ask a complex question and they practically draw up a stool to discuss it.

The thing is though that these cornerstones of our community are having more and more trouble competing. That’s why I make it a practice to buy as much as I can in locally-owned hardware stores. When I have a job that actually needs a contractor, I ask them to do the same. Cost generally isn’t an issue because locally owned stores will pretty much match any other store’s price. Nor is selection a problem. In fact many of these smaller and older stores have more of the oddball pieces that I crave.

I figure that by keeping my shopping local, I help keep their doors open and that matters because if they go out of business, I don’t just lose a place to buy stuff, I lose a place that helps me do stuff.

(A note from Vesta: last week when I was delivering papers I stopped by Sebastopol Hardware to buy a tool I didn’t have in my truck. One of my newsstands had been smashed and I needed to fix it. Heck – here I go buying another tool I already own! But no – Liz, a fellow Forestvillian) works n Seb Hdwr and she told me about the tool loaner program. I found just what I needed – signed it out – fixed the newsstands and took the tools back. How handy is that?)

For ways to learn how to Build Green as well as Build Local - go to: www.usgbc.org

golocal.coop
Jay Beckwith
J.Beckwith@GoLocal.coop

Read article »

Sonoma County Eat Local Campaign

The Eyes Have It

By Jay Beckwith

The idea of buying “local” is catching on. As with any movement that becomes popular folks will try to join in who aren’t really a part … what the kids call “posers.”

In a current article “The Corporate Co-Opt of Local” Stacy Mitchell at the New Rules Project has detailed how mega-corporations and their focus groups have identified the local trend and are moving in with their typical cynicism and speed. Industrial food producers call their products “local” because they are grown somewhere near their factories.

Conglomerated financial intuitions claim to be local because they have a branch in town. Starbucks is taking its name off some of its newest stores and re-branding them to look like the local ones they’ve run out of business.

Not content with trying to co-opt the term local, the “spin” merchants are ramping up their flimflam. Telling us “facts” like a tomato from Argentina has a smaller carbon foot print than one from Gilroy because it was shipped by much more efficient boats rather than trucks. Or that buying local doesn’t actually create jobs it just moves them away from countries that really need trade dollars to survive.

Inevitably a new word has been invented for this trend: “local-washing.” We can even see this happening here. A large national grocery chain with several stores in the county is labeling its produce as local even though some of the products have tags that say “Hecho en México” or come from even further away. Santa Rosa is pushing a Buy Local campaign that includes every business in the city including the mall.

Well folks, we’ve dealt with fakers before. What do they take us for, a bunch of county bumpkins? OK, so maybe we are, but we can still recognize the real deal when we see it. When it comes to making a food choice I like the guideline that a group called Locavores has created:

• If is not locally produced, then buy organic

• If you can’t get organic, then buy family farmed

• If not family farmed, then buy from a local business

• If not from a local business, then select products with terroir, i.e. from a specific region

We’re so lucky here in Sonoma County that we can easily meet all five criteria in most of what we put on our table.

My personal decision tree is similar but a bit more fun: I count eyes.

The food I’m most comfortable with comes from people that I can look in the eye. That’s why I love the Farmer’s Market, I get to know, and hear the stories from, the folks who grew what I’m about to put in my mouth.

When I can’t get to, or what I need from, the Farmer’s Market I want to look in the eyes of the owner or manager of the market. We are surely blessed with some of the finest locally owned markets in the world. These are places where the clerks have been there for years and you can actually talk with the owner.

When I buy coffee or other imported product I want to know who has done the importing and be guaranteed that she has looked the local farmer in the eyes and knows that she is getting and giving a fair trade.

And living here on the farm I’ve had to come to terms with looking in the eyes of somebody I am going to eat. That’s why most of my protein these days comes from eggs.

Sources: www.newrules.org/retail/article/corporate-coopt and local www.locavores.com/,
Go to www.GoLocal.coop and take the Eat Local Pledge.

Read article »

The Greening of Roseland, Sonoma County

Roseland neighbors come out for first annual Hearts and Hands, The Greening of Roseland

The Greening of Roseland, a first annual Earthday celebration, brought hundreds of Roseland neighbors together for a performance by Danza Mexica, the very popular Aztec dance troupe Coyolxauqui, Mexican guitarists, chalk artists, adobe and hay bale teachers, rainwater harvesting folks and GoLocal people at a former Albertson’s Grocery lot on Sebastopol Road in Santa Rosa, Sun., Apr. 26th.


Plants and seeds and haybale information to create a kitchen garden were offered free.
“You see this building here?” exclaimed North Bay Institute for Green Technology/Youth Green Jobs Sonoma (NBIGT/YGJS) Director, Evelina Molina, pointing to the empty store behind her. “In years to come we’re gonna make this a community building. It will be beautiful!” she said, letting the crowd know this day would be the “beginning a tradition of education and action on climate change and conservation - healing the heart of Roseland by connecting local people with the whole of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County.”

Sonoma County GoLocal Coop co-sponsored the event with NBIGT/YGJS.
GoLocal Marketing Director, Jay Beckwith was delighted. “The Roseland event is all we could have hoped for...excellent, very mellow. Really good conversations going on, lots of heart contact.” Santa Rosa Councilmember, Veronica Jacobi, was present for the entire event, filming and interviewing and SR Councilmember Efren Carrillo came and got in the line dance. Press included NPR reporters, a Press Democrat reporter and several photographers and writers.

NBIGT/YGJS will begin a green jobs training program during the summer months, offering opportunities to underserved youth and young adults from Latino, multi-ethnic and Native American communities.

Molina was also excited about the event. “The word magical comes to mind! Today we brought neighbors together as a Zocalo (plaza) experience, a place-making event, de la tierra de la Rosa (Roseland in Spanish). What a concept to use a place name from its residents native language!”

GoLocal was glad to offer hay bale lessons. “This simple step makes growing a kitchen garden possible for many,” said Beckwith. Localizing food with kitchen and community gardens growing healthy and affordable food, is a major step, according to Molina.

“Our Greening of Roseland event filled me with HOPE comes to my HEART for "La Tierra de Las Rosas," said Molina.
“Thank you does not seem enough to express our gratitude for the "Hearts & Hands" that have begun the healing of Roseland and beginnings of El Zocalo del Pueblo a place of gathering for everyone...algun dia (someday) our dreams will come true. I am dreaming of Earth Day in El Zocalo de La Tierra de Las Rosas 2010 too. Go Local and North Bay Institute Green Jobs joined at the hip now. Let's keep "DOING" for each other, the planet and a bright future for all. Live United.”

For more information, go to www.nbigt/ygjs.org or email Evelina Molina, greeningroseland@gmail.com or call 707-236-7335.

Contacts:
Evelina Molina, NBIGT, 707-236-7335
Jay Beckwith, GoLocal 707-824-9349

www.golocal.coop

Read article »

GoLocal Economic Summit September 18 and 19

This will be a very interactive, "roll-up-our-sleeves" event focused on
Economic Localization.

It will be held at the Petaluma Community Center and we will be joined by Michael Shuman, an expert in Economic Localization.

We have already received many exciting "Big Ideas" for the idea gallery.

If you or your organization is working on a project that will help stimulate the local economy, create local green jobs and or localize goods and services, please submit your idea to present at the Summit. You can learn more at www.golocal.coop.

Please mark your calendars for September 18-19th.

Thank you!
Kelley & the GoLocal team
www.golocal.coop
707-888-6105

Read article »

GO LOCAL SONOMA COUNTY - Earth Day

On Christmas day forty-one years ago this photo of “Earthrise” over the lunar horizon was taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders. They had become the first humans to leave Earth orbit. In a historic live broadcast that night, the crew took turns reading from the Book of Genesis.

The view of the Earth, whole and complete, stunned the world’s consciousness. To see our home in all its glory and fragility floating in the colorless void made environmental converts out of many of us. In September 1969, Senator Gaylord Nelson announced that on April 22nd of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment – Earth Day.

Today, the view from space has lost much of its visceral impact but we should look again. There is still much we have to learn. Imagine the earth not as a planet but as a fish bowl. Like one you may have won at a church bizarre with a lucky toss of a ping pong ball and brought home with a bright eyed goldfish anxiously darting within. And now complete that story by remembering the lesson that fish taught you; the iron rule of nature, that the waste of one organism must be the dinner for another. Not knowing this rule, you probably “over fed” your fish and it suffocated in its own waste.

This is the core lesson that the “global warming deniers” simply don’t get. The issue is not whether the planet’s temperature is changing, but that the human population is spewing forth more waste, in this case CO2, than the planet can metabolize. We don’t know in detail what the full repercussions will be. Quite likely the added CO2 will have more impact on humanity by chemically turning the ocean more acidic than in its effect on climate. That acid makes it very hard for animals who live in shells and who are the base of the food chain. When they die, the ocean dies we are all in really serious trouble.

Look again at the earth in space. Now see that globe, not as a fish bowl, but as a carefully crafted aquarium. One in which just the right plants and animals have been placed so that they are in perfect balance. Creating such a miniature ecosystem is a typical project in biology courses. When properly done they can be tightly sealed and will live longer than their builder. This is what ecologists call self-sustaining systems. Our world and our economy are similar systems. When carefully made they can be “sustainable.”

Take a final look at the earth. If you could take that picture today, the polar caps have visibly shrunken, the tan deserts are larger, storms more powerful, and the infernos of regional fires could be seen. In four decades man has literally changed the face of the earth.

This is the first regular GoLocal column. A goal of this column is to provide ideas to help us redesign our “fish bowl” so that we can stop, and then begin to reverse the changes we are making to this precious place.

J.Beckwith@GoLocal.coop
www.GoLocal.coop

Read article »