Tug boats pull floating solar panels into place near Portugal’s Alto Rabagão dam. An even larger floating array is planned for Portugal’s Alqueva dam. EDP

A topic we thought of as novel in 2011 has become so mainstream that we consider news like this as normal. Thanks to Yale e360:

Europe’s Largest Floating Solar Farm to Go Online in Portugal

Europe’s largest floating solar farm, an array the size of four soccer fields, is set to begin operating in Portugal’s Alqueva reservoir in July. Continue reading →

Salvaged wood first made an appearance in my life three decades ago while converting a barn into a house. Shaver Brothers made it possible to acquire “previously used” lumber to build ceiling beams, stairs and walls; install solid oak flooring and interior doors; a clawfoot tub; and otherwise complete a home with limited resources. Plus, we liked the idea of bringing new life to old things.

A cross-section of wood from a post-hurricane timber salvage operation in Nicaragua

My meager doctoral student stipend, supplemented by Amie’s salary from work producing home furnishings, meant that we needed to be creative in finding materials to build out a home. The pieces that Amie painted at work, akin to the one seen in the photo above (in our family room to this day, made by Amie and her co-workers at that time) was frequently salvaged wooden furniture.

And to this day salvaged timber like this piece of wood from Nicaragua (to the right), or the pillar at the entrance to our home (below left) provide highlights to our sense of home.

Decorative pillar from the one tree removed to build our home

So, by the time we met the artisans of Ceiba, we were longtime converts to the concept of salvage. And I am always on the lookout for more reasons to appreciate salvaged wood. My reading recommendation today is this article by Rivka Galchen titled Making New Climate Data from Old Timber, for reasons related to all that salvaged wood in our lives:

Illustration by Tyler Keeton Robbins

When an old building is demolished, its construction materials can reveal the secrets of the past.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Eastern Seaboard’s old-growth forests were cut down almost in their entirety. Today, trying to find a tree in this area that is more than two hundred years old is like looking for a button that you lost a few years back.But New York City—unlike the surrounding forests—is host to a great crowd of old wood. It’s just that it exists in the form of beams and joists within buildings. Continue reading →

Still life painted at The Faculty of Fine Arts in Cetinje, Montenegro

While working in Montenegro two decades ago I came across the painting in the photo above, which is in our dining room.

“Still Life With a Gilt Cup” painted in 1635 by Willem Claesz Heda, displayed in the grand central gallery of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

In our travels over several decades I was on the lookout for a reasonably priced painting like the one to the right, featured in the article below. Soft, luscious, and full of items to wonder about, the style made classic by Dutch still life painters was my hoped for find. Instead, I found the one in Montenegro, which nods to traditional form but is stark.

Willem Kalf, “Still Life with a Chinese Bowl, Nautilus Cup and Other Objects,” 1662/Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

It seemed perfectly attuned to my personal experience of Montenegro at that moment. While not typical of the themes we cover in these pages, but continuing with our admiration for creative approaches to explanation, this piece by Jason Farago will make your Sunday if, like me, you have a thing for still life paintings and do not know exactly why. It is one of the longest explanatory multi-media articles we have ever linked to, but if you have the time it is as effective as any museum docent. Most importantly for me, it explains the tradition of lemons that wittingly or not, the Montenegran painter was adding to:

Willem Claesz Heda, “Still Life With a Broken Glass,” 1642/Rijksmuseum

A Messy Table, a Map of the World

It was a grand time, but the party’s over. Continue reading →

Behind the scenes at CORe, Waste Management’s Central Organics Recycling facility in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where food waste is processed to be added to wastewater and turned into biogas and fertilizer. Photo by Saima Sidik.

Food waste has been a perennial topic in these pages since we started covering environmental issues.  Thanks to Gastropod for point us to the future of this topic:

Black Gold: The Future Of Food…We Throw Away

Food takes up more space in American landfills than anything else. About 30 to 40 percent of food produced in the US gets thrown away, rather than eaten. What’s more, putting all that rotting food inside landfills produces a lot of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Continue reading →