Recap: I dared myself to see if we could keep our home energy consumption below an average of 500 kwh for an entire year. Our house was pretty well-designed for a project like this, and the first few months turned out to be pretty easy. When we finally crunched the numbers in the early part
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Let’s take a moment to recap in case you missed the last column: I am pretty average. I was bored and felt inspired to do something to combat global climate change and I found a whole bunch of cool stats about home energy consumption by state on a website call EnergyLocal. I set a goal
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I would say that I am a pretty average person. The two exceptions might be my intense love of Star Trek and my strong inability to bowl above a 180. (I fully accept that those two things might be correlated…) This last year I set out on a quest to be decidedly below average in
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Childcare is and has been a continuing challenge in our communities. From a labor perspective, we’ve got a shortage of workers, and one key to entering the workforce is having confidence in where we leave our kids. In this commentary in the Grand Forks Herald, Rob Port argues that the State’s licensing and regulatory agency
Read & Share sourced from: Grand Forks Herald
While a growing minority of us pick which side of the line (on any given issue) to stand on, there’s another group of people losing trust in all of it. Perhaps instead of choosing sides and, thus, who to distrust, we start listening to those who are watching our larger trends? What they’re seeing is
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A home in the country — it’s a long-standing commonly held goal among many of us. We want the peace, tranquility, privacy. But it’s a desire in conflict with another common goal — vibrant, engaged, communities. It’s hard to have both. But in Savannah, Georgia, a set of colliding circumstances created a place that captures
Read & Share sourced from: Strong Towns
What type of land development fosters an entrepreneurial ecosystem? If we think in terms of the biological ecosystem, we don’t have sustainability unless there are species at every level of the food chain. That metaphor speaks to a start-small mentality; this commentary from Strong Towns does also.
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Things change. Sometimes they change so slowly we don’t see them happening. Such is the fate with a former staple of the American experience — the family road trip. Ashley Fetters with the Atlantic has the story on a new book and the author’s thoughts on what happened.
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The Wednesday editions of #GoodTalkMinot featured two keystone conversations — one focused on our future, the other, our past. Watch below as Jonah Lantto and I discuss the status of the region’s flood protection efforts with SRJB and Mouse River Plan Project Administrator, Ryan Ackerman. And for our afternoon session, we were joined be long-time
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Many residents in Minot want to see citywide recycling, but before we invest big in the facilities and equipment, perhaps we should ask — what problem is it we’re trying to solve? One answer we’d expect to hear is we need to reduce the amount of plastic entering the environment. If that’s the case, then Matt
Read & Share sourced from: Scientific American
How do you train someone for a job that doesn’t exist yet? Whether educators know it or not, this is their job. The world is changing and pace that’s increasing exponentially, and our students will need the tools and the know how to retool on the fly. Michelle Weise writing for EdSurge shares her thoughts
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What makes a place remarkable? Maria Popova explores the question through an exploration of Jane Jacobs life. Her conclusion: “Out of this arises the awareness that a city, like a niche in nature, is an ecosystem. The synergy of its various human and nonhuman components — neighborhoods, parks, stores, streets, sidewalks — is what makes
Read & Share sourced from: The Marginalian
Minot recycling has been a contentious topic of late, and for those who support the effort, there are few reasons worthy of a delay. But circumstances far beyond Minot are wreaking havoc on the pillar of American environmentalism and forcing environmentalists to think differently about the practice. And one problem that’s been identified may surprise
Read & Share sourced from: BloombergFew places have had more experience with the Corps of Engineers and flood protection than Minot, but Southern Lousiana is one place that can probably make the claim. And with experience, comes the opportunity to be constructively critical. Check out this editorial from the Daily Comet calling for a reorganization of the Corps interior related
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What do you see when you look at Minot’s downtown grain elevators? For long-time Minoters, these icons of past industry have bled into Minot’s background. Sure, they’re there, but how many of us see them anymore? That’s a shame. What would it take to turn your eyes up to them? What would it take to
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Two summers ago, we rebuilt the 4th Avenue Bridge near Oak Park. Last summer and this summer, we’re reconstructing the Broadway Bridge. Yes, both bridges seem like sturdy constructions; I’ve got no reason to doubt their structural integrity. I even like the way they look. But I’ve still got a question that concerns me deeply
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