Every other Sunday, Bluedot Living Martha's Vineyard will share stories about local changemakers, Islanders’ sustainable homes and yards, planet-friendly recipes and tips, along with advice from Dear Dot. Did your friend
send you this? Sign up for yourself here. Do you know someone else who would enjoy it? Forward to a friend.
|
Want to support our local, solutions-focused climate journalism? Contribute here.
|
|
|
|
|
If you make a purchase through our links, including from Amazon, we may earn a small commission.
|
|
|
|
|
SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES
|
|
|
SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE /
STORIES
|
|
|
 |
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 the total eclipse tomorrow. Another Bluedot staffer, Digital Projects Manager Kelsey Perrett, has been working on a very cool eclipse project. Associate editor Lucas Thors talked 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 led by Medford-based ARISA labs, to study how eclipses affect animals (and plants!), 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. 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.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Quick Links
|
Skip scrolling! Here's what you'll find in this edition of the Bluedot Newsletter:
|
|
|
|
Sponsored
|
|
|
 |
In 2009, when you started to hear terms like “greening the grid” and “clean energy infrastructure,” a group of Islanders formed Vineyard Power, hoping to make the community an active participant in the shift to renewable energy. Fifteen years later, Vineyard Power has notched a lot of wins, including signing the nation’s first federally recognized offshore wind agreement with Vineyard Wind. Bluedot Living will run stories in each print magazine, (the Spring issue is out soon) and linking to them in these newsletters to let you know just who the folks at Vineyard Power are, and how they can help propel MV to a renewable energy future. See our story here.
Visit vineyardpower.com for more information on electric
transportation, building modifications, solar and wind resources, or the Energy Transition Program. Vineyard Power also offers energy coaching about purchasing an EV, installing solar panels, improving energy efficiency in your homes, and
accessing income-eligible programs.
|
|
|
|
|
Our Pale Blue Dot
|
 |
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. And here’s the YouTube link of him reciting the “Pale Blue Dot.”
“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!”
|
|
|
In other news, we’re proud to announce that Martha’s Vineyard
Bluedot Living won some top awards at the recent New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA) banquet: Sam Moore was a finalist for his story “Secrets of the Salt Marshes” as well as
for “What’s So Bad About Coffee?” Our website won second place for “Best Overall Website”; copy editor Laura Roosevelt was named a finalist for her column “Garden to Table,” and contributing editor Catherine Walthers helped us nab “Best Food Section” for our Bluedot Kitchen story on Wild Caught Fish (with great photos by Sheny Leon, and a cool prize-winning illustration by creative director Tara Kenny).
|
|
|
|
|
Our MV Green Guide won the top prize for “Overall Design and Presentation,” and we were thrilled that Martha’s Vineyard Bluedot Living was given the contest’s top honor for General Excellence (you can see the print editions here).
Thank you to our readers and advertisers for all your support.
See you in two weeks.
–Leslie Garrett and Jamie Kageleiry
|
|
|
 |
Or give Dr. Bronner’s a try! For more Bluedot Climate Quick Tips, click here.
|
|
|
Paid Advertisement
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What’s So Bad About Chocolate?
|
Our favorite treat has a long legacy of environmental harms and child labor concerns, and while companies claim to be cleaning up their acts, there’s little evidence of change. That said, there are people working hard to create a market for sustainably (and ethically) produced chocolate. Lori Shapiro, of Suenos Chocolates in Watertown, is one of them. Read on.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
BUY LESS/BUY BETTER:
Organic Cotton Underthings We Love
|
If you make a purchase through our links, including from Amazon, we may earn a small commission.
|
If you’d like to make some more space in your top drawer, refresh your wardrobe for spring, or just need new underwear, we’ve got ideas for you this week. The one we’re most excited about: Subset’s pioneering recycling program, which will basically pay you to send in your old underpants, socks, pantyhose, and bras. Once they receive your package (you provide the envelope, they pay the shipping), they’ll email you a $25 credit to spend on their great organic cotton underwear. Your old underthings will live on as furniture batting, insulation, and more. How cool is that?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dear Dot: Help Me Get Rid of Gophers (or Groundhogs?)
|
 |
– Illustration by Elissa Turnbull
|
Dear Dot,
How can I remove gophers from my yard? We are trying a live trap but they go past and are eating roots off all plants and even my huge collection of aloe vera. Please advise … no poisons obviously.
–MaryAnn Marquez
Dear MaryAnn,
Though I have no reason to doubt your gopher-spotting abilities, I must ask you the same question that I was asked when I reached out to a couple of experts on dealing with urban wildlife: Are you sure it’s a gopher?
Gophers and groundhogs, I’m told, are often mixed up. What’s more, while groundhogs, common in North America, prefer somewhat populated wooded areas (humans = food), gophers, a sort of groundhog-adjacent rodent, are partial to more grassy or sandy terrain in North and Central America.
Both belong to the Rodentia order. But groundhogs (also known as woodchucks, and I apologize because you and I both will have that tongue twisty poem locked in our brains for the rest of the day) are part of the Sciuridae family — think squirrels, prairie dogs, chipmunks. The gopher, on the other hand, is a member of the Geomyidae family, which includes various species of mice and rats. This also gives a hint as to size. Adult groundhogs are typically the size of a large housecat, about twice the size of gophers, and though groundhogs like to dig, they don’t burrow tunnels with the same glee as gophers.
If you’re still scratching your head about which interloper you’re dealing with, start by taking a look at the tail: gophers’ tails are hairless and thin, like a rat’s; groundhogs’ tails are thick and bushy. (Fun fact about those tails, MaryAnn: Gophers often walk backwards and so their smallish tails act as something of a white cane, feeling the ground behind them.) Groundhogs have the distinction of whiter, less visible teeth, while gophers look like they could stand a trip to both a dentist and an orthodontist. Oh, and gophers have little cheek pouches, where they store food. Groundhogs do not.
One point I would like to make before we dig into what the actual experts say: While there have been numerous groundhog sightings in Dot’s neighborhood, these animals have been rare in Dot’s yard. One brave (or perhaps dumb) soul visited Dot’s yard not long ago, and I was smitten — they are adorable. My two large dogs, however, saw this groundhog’s arrival as a declaration of war. Though I didn’t allow the dogs outside to defend their territory, I suspect evidence of their presence in our yard is a major deterrent. So … my non-expert, anecdote-based solution #1: Get thee a dog. Or two.
What does an actual expert have to say? Whichever critter you’re wrestling with, be it a gopher or a groundhog, Nathalie Karvonen, Executive Director with the Toronto Wildlife Centre, has some sound advice. … What does she recommend? Read on.
See more Dot here. Got a question
for her? Write her at deardot@bluedotliving.com
|
|
|
Sign up here for Your Daily Dot newsletter! Get a daily dose of Dot's eco-friendly wisdom when she answers your sustainability questions.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
BLUEDOT KITCHEN
|
“My grandfather built this boat in the mid to late ’30s,” Denny Jason, Jr., a second-generation fisherman, told Contributing Editor Catherine Walthers for this story about local, wild-caught fish. He was standing next to The Little Lady, which motors from Menemsha most mornings in search of fluke. Denny’s grandfather started
fishing in Menemsha Bight and “fell in love with this Island and the rest is history. The boat builders did not expect her to last more than 30 years and here she is at 94. I’ve spent a lot of my life just taking care of this boat.” The story’s great (and won The Bluedot Kitchen a top award) and so are the recipes, including this one for Sea Scallops With Parsnip Puree. Catherine also gave us this Cottage City Kelp Clam Chowder recipe inspired by the story she wrote about the Martino brothers and their kelp farming enterprise.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Two years ago, Laura Roosevelt decided to plant her garden so that she could eat from it year-round. “For basement storage, I planted garlic, red onions, and butternut and red kabocha squashes,” she writes;
“for freezing, sugar snap peas and string beans; and for pickling, cucumbers and shishito peppers. I’d hoped to can some tomatoes but my crop was diminished by blight and a horde of hungry chipmunks…” Want to get started on a spring “Garden to Table” plan? Read more of Laura’s prize-winning column here.
|
|
|
|
|
HANDBOOK
|
Taking up the oboe? Why buy new when you can borrow? At the West Tisbury Library, patrons can check out games, activities, audiovisual equipment, musical instruments, tools, and much more. For more great resources, consult our Ultimate Simple, Smart, Sustainable Handbook to Martha’s Vineyard.
|
|
|
What’s Behind the Name “Bluedot”?
|
“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world,” astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in 1994’s Pale Blue Dot. “To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” Sagan’s humbling words inspire us to deliver stories to you that reflect his and so many others’ work to cherish this blue dot. Please consider forwarding this newsletter to your friends and family to share and inspire real-world eco-actions we can take at home and in our Martha’s Vineyard
community.
Thanks for being part of our Bluedot community!
–Jamie Kageleiry and Leslie Garrett
Editors, Bluedot Living Martha’s Vineyard
|
|
|
|
Jamie Kageleiry, a longtime magazine and newspaper editor from Oak Bluffs, says her favorite spot on earth is on the trails around Farm Pond, and out in a kayak there, looking at birds.
|
|
|
Leslie Garrett has been covering climate stories for close to two decades. A newcomer part-time to the Vineyard, she’s still figuring out her favorite spot but it’s definitely near the water.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
