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SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES
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SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES
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Friday, March 29, 2024
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Meet Bluedot Living’s Newsletter Production Manager, Whitney Multari. She’s wearing protective glasses while looking at last fall’s partial eclipse, and she’s ready for this year’s total eclipse on April 8. Another Bluedot staffer, Digital Projects Manager Kelsey Perrett, has been working on a very cool project associated with the eclipse. Associate editor Lucas Thors had a conversation with her about the various ways to experience the eclipse: “The visual experience is very powerful, but there is a lot of evidence that suggests you can experience an eclipse with multiple senses,” Kelsey told him. Since 2017, she’s been
working with the Eclipse Soundscapes Project, a NASA-sponsored citizen science initiative, to study how eclipses affect animals (and plants!) on the planet, including humans. The project was based on a citizen science project from 1932, and today, anyone can sign up to observe and record what they notice, or to
place audio recorders in landscapes for two days before and after the eclipse. Check out our story to see the path of totality, a list of safe viewing glasses, and info on how to get involved in the soundscapes project.
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DISPATCHES FROM ALL OVER
SUSTAINABLE LIVING ADVICE
ECO-FRIENDLY RECIPES
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DISPATCHES FROM ALL OVER · SUSTAINABLE LIVING ADVICE · ECO-FRIENDLY RECIPES
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“Many indigenous peoples share the understanding that we are each endowed with a particular gift, a unique ability. … It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility. If the bird’s gift is song, then it has a responsibility to greet the day with music. It is the duty of birds to sing and the rest of us receive the song as a gift. Asking what is our responsibility is perhaps also to ask, What is our gift? And how shall we use it?”
– Robin Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass (on Amazon)
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Robin Wall Kimmerer is a gentler environmentalist. Her concern for the planet is expressed through her Indigenous heritage, a deep respect and reverence for the natural world. She reminds us, beautifully, poetically, that the natural world is both a gift and a responsibility — it is our task to both savor and care for it. We at Bluedot will spend these next weeks, as the Earth reawakens from winter, listening to that avian music, and thinking about the upcoming Earth Day, another reminder that, as Kimmerer also puts it, “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy.”
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QUICK LINKS
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Skip scrolling! Here's what you'll find in this edition of the Bluedot Newsletter:
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Copyeditor Laura Roosevelt is also an ace gardener. In this column (which just won an award with the New England Press Association), she writes about how to plant now to eat from your garden year-round (no matter where you live). Because she doesn’t have a proper root cellar, Laura stores her harvests — garlic, onions, squashes — in her basement, and with the help of an extra
freezer — sugar snap peas, string beans, cucumbers, and shishito peppers. We love all the practical tips (and the humor).
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– Illustration by Elissa Turnbull
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Dear Dot,
I have found that I cannot take advantage of energy efficient programs due to knob-and-tube wiring. Is there a rebate program to rewire a small house allowing me to move forward toward a more energy efficient home?
Thank you for your time!
–William
Dear William,
Dot’s first home, a two-storey yellow brick that celebrated its centennial the year my family moved in, boasted many old-house flourishes, including stained glass, hardwood floors, a spectacular fireplace, ten-foot ceilings, crown molding and … knob-and-tube wiring. Knob and tube, or K&T as it’s sometimes called, was the typical wiring in North American buildings from the late 1800s to the early 1940s. And though it’s frequently cast as hazardous, that reputation seems to rest more on the age of the wiring, improper modifications over the years, or insulation around the wires (which poses a fire hazard) than any inherent danger in knob-and-tube wiring itself.
That said, you’re wise, William, to want to rid your home of its knob-and-tube wiring, both for energy efficiency and, potentially, for safety. Knob and tube, the first wiring system installed when humans invented electricity, consists of copper wires run through porcelain “tubes” and held in place by porcelain “knobs.” It doesn’t meet modern safety standards. Knob and tube is highly energy inefficient, and, when it comes to your safety, poses a significant fire hazard. Many insurance companies are washing their hands of homes with knob-and-tube wiring. What’s more, most knob-and-tube wiring was installed when the most demanding electrical appliances in a home were a kettle (invented in 1891) and an iron (invented in 1882) for crisp petticoats.
Out with the old, William! Assuming, of course, you have piles of cash lying around to de-K&T your home. The cost to replace knob and tube averages between $12 and $35 thousand. Dot completely understands your frustration at the lack of rebate programs to ease some of that financial pain.
But William! Perhaps you’re fortunate enough to live in a state that actually does have programs that you can take advantage of. In Massachusetts, for example, Mass Save is offering up to $7 thousand to remove knob-and-tube wiring. …
What else did Dot find out? Read
on.
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Our Fave Paper Towels
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Sometimes you really do want paper towels to pat down a chicken or clean up a hairball. Who Gives a Crap makes great toilet paper and paper towels and donates 50% of profits to charity.
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Buy now or
read our
review.
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The 18-in-1 Original
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The product you’re most likely to find in a Bluedotter’s cleaning arsenal has to be Dr. Bronner’s Castile Soap.
The iconic 18-in-1 formula works for laundry, dishes, and even mopping.
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Buy
now or
Read our review.
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The Social Hour
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🌞✨ The total solar eclipse isn't just a sight to behold for humans — it also affects the intricate world of nature! Bees hunker down as plants and wildlife react to the changing environment. 🐝🌿 Check out the posts below for research showing how the solar eclipse effects nature!
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FOLLOW US
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The Keep-This-Handbook
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Bluedot loves to give you information that makes planet-friendly choices easier to make and implement — such as our intern Emily Cain’s comprehensive guide to dealing with food waste. When food rots, it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Tackling our food waste is one of the most impactful ways we can cut emissions. Emily makes it easy. Read on. And then, please, share with your family and friends so we can all waste less.
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Thank you, Voyager
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NASA launched Voyager 1 in 1977, with a planned lifespan of five years, long enough to cruise by Jupiter (about 500 million miles away) and Saturn (about a billion miles distant). But Voyager kept operating and sending back data, and NASA kept extending the mission. Sadly, NASA recently announced that since November 2023 Voyager 1, now 15 billion miles away, is no longer sending back any usable data. NASA is optimistic they can
fix the bug on a computer that’s 47 years old and moving at 38,000 miles per hour, with the added complication that it takes over 22 hours for a radio signal to reach the craft.
Of all the tremendous gifts Voyager has given us, the best may be a photo it snapped of Earth on Valentine’s Day 1990 from six billion miles away. Our planet is tiny in the photo, less than a pixel against the vastness of space, appearing slightly blue. Carl Sagan, who worked on the Voyager program, was so moved by the photo, he wrote a whole book inspired by it. (Here’s the “Pale Blue Dot” piece he recited.)
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our
species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
We take our name, Bluedot Living, from that photo and Carl Sagan. So we say, “Long Live Voyager 1!”
Enjoy the weekend, and we’ll see you in two weeks.
– Jamie Kageleiry and Leslie Garrett
Editors
Write us at editor@bluedotliving.com
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Jamie Kageleiry, a longtime magazine and newspaper editor from Martha's Vineyard, says her favorite spot on earth is out on a kayak there, looking at birds.
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Leslie Garrett has been covering climate stories for close to two decades. She divides her time between London, Ontario, and Massachusetts. She’s still figuring out her favorite spot but it’s definitely near the
water.
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SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES
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SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES
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Read past issues of The Hub here.
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Bluedot Living® magazine and bluedotliving.com are published by Bluedot, Inc.
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