News & commentary on sustainability, activism, urban planning, politics, and our world.
This is a letter that I wrote to my local Bayview librarian to promote Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower as a book that our entire city reads together: Dear Linda Brooks Burton, I wish to recommend Octavia Butler’s brilliant Parable of the Sower as a selection for San Francisco’s “One City One Book” [...]
At a public borehole in Zviyambe, a village in the backyard of Zimbabwe, approximately 250 kilometres away from Harare, the capital city, butterflies, goats, cattle and human beings mix and mingle in edenic fashion all in search of the precious liquid: water. Under a blazing sun, Sekai Mabika (not her real name) and her sister [...]
I met several lovely chickens yesterday when I was in Oakland, and I am now quite smitten. They are truly engrossing creatures to observe; the animal’s social behavior is very complex, their vocalizations are both soothing and fascinating, to say nothing of the delicious fresh eggs they provide. More and more urban chickens are being [...]
Los Angeles has proposed a new water management law that would require rainwater harvesting on all new homes, large developments, as well as on some redevelopment projects. The Department of Public Works unanimously approved the new ordinance in January for the increasingly parched region. It requires various methods to capture, reuse or infiltrate all of the rainwater runoff that is generated by a 3/4 inch rainstorm.
