Stories indexed with the term ‘energy’

Cecile Green blows air through a metal tube to fan a fire in an earth oven at the July 19 Re-Skilling Festival, organized by Transition Ann Arbor. Green taught a class in how to build these ovens, which are made of clay. She described this one as cupcake-sized. (Photo by the writer.)

“I want to demystify canning and make you feel powerful!” quipped Molly Notarianni, holding up a Mason jar full of jam. She was speaking to a group crammed into a room at the Rudolf Steiner High School, who’d come to learn about canning, oven building, medicinal plants and other skills of self-reliance.

This day-long event wasn’t just a dabbling into traditional domestic arts. Saturday’s Re-Skilling Festival – which drew about 150 people to Steiner’s bucolic campus on Pontiac Trail – fits into a broader effort, one that aims to strengthen the local economy and gird the community for a time of dramatically reduced resources.

Called Transition Ann Arbor, it’s led by a small group of residents who aren’t elected officials, aren’t business leaders, aren’t even all among the usual suspects of community activists. So who are they, and what exactly are they doing? [Full Story]

Looking north from the southwest corner of Main and William streets in downtown Ann Arbor at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday. Can you spot the evidence that Earth Hour is taking place? (Hint: Look closely at the street lights.)

This year, Earth Hour fell on Saturday between 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., so The Chronicle decided to head downtown and see how much impact this international event was having in Ann Arbor.

It was hard to see the dark.

Street lights were off along Main Street between William and Huron (three blocks), on Liberty between Main and Ashley (two blocks) and, somewhat oddly, only on the south side of Liberty between Fourth and Main. What this seemed to reveal more than anything is how bright the downtown area is without street lights. [Full Story]

Laura Russello, executive director at Michigan Peaceworks, presented background on the collaboration between the nonprofit she leads and Veterans for Peace on the Iraq Water Project.

Ann Arbor City Council meeting (March 2, 2009): Whatever chance for controversy that might have been present in the Ann Arbor’s City Council meeting agenda on Monday evening was eschewed in favor of values statements. These expressions of values were reflected in many of the agenda items themselves. We’ve organized our account of the meeting in terms of values related to the following topics: water, the arts, land, energy, history, and democracy. [Full Story]

Ann Arbor City Councilman Stephen Kunselman, right, works his day job as one of the organizers of this year's UM Energy Fest. He was talking with Rick Richter, who coincidentally is the second person in Ann Arbor awarded a permit to keep backyard chickens. That takes energy, too.

The sun was out for Tuesday’s 13th annual Energy Fest on the University of Michigan Diag, an event that drew students, faculty and other passers-by with the allure of giveaways (who doesn’t want another reusable grocery bag?) and information.

The centerpiece of the Energy Fest was the distinctive yellow Solar Car, parked prominently in the middle of the Diag.

Jeff Rogers, a senior majoring in computer science, has worked on the Solar Car Team four years, and was part of the crew that won this year’s North American Solar Challenge, a 3,862-km race from Texas to Calgary. His job was to ride in the lead support vehicle, monitoring data on a computer that was fed in from the solar car.

The data was important for both strategy and safety, he explained. With lithium-based batteries, “if you abuse them, they’ll explode.”

[Full Story]