Sorry folks—I skipped a post last week. I had good reason: We were at a wedding in, or rather on, Lake Como, in Northern Italy. Constant champagne, fireworks over the lake—you know how it is. A little anecdote from the weekend: One of the guests at said wedding had flown all the way from Panama, and he was worried that his trip to Como had too greatly increased his carbon footprint. Thing is, in Panama he lives on a sailboat. All his food is grown locally—either rice and beans bought at the nearby market or vegetables grown on the farmland acreage he owns; whatever excess the farm produces is spread among his somewhat less than fortunate neighbors. He powers his laptop with a single solar panel set up near the dock; the only travel he does (aside from weddings) is into town for the odd life staple or bag of rice. Yet there he was, concerned that he was making too big of an impact on the environment by traveling to this wedding—did I mention the fireworks over the lake? No comment except to say that to me, buzzed as I was by the constant champagne, he looked like an idealizing monk of the green guilt movement.

Back at home, here’s a little visual update on the new green studio—or rather, the deconstruction of the old brown one. Before we left for the Continent, I pulled out the studio’s toilet and sink, then disconnected and pulled down around 200 feet of electrical wiring strung between about 25 outlets. The joy of that event can be summed up pretty clearly in one photo…

Not pretty. And no small task to untangle. I also pulled down five or six long trays of fluorescent lights—no bulbs broken, thank God, as I successfully withstood the temptation to play light sabers with them. No idea what I’ll do with them—they remind me too much of bad science class at St. Charles Elementary to keep them around. So now I’ve got a pile of aged copper wiring and electics that I’ll be trading, junkie-like, for cash with the local recycler.

Raymond, the guy who’s doing our heat-pipe upgrade, tells me I can get 50 cents for a pound of copper. See, people? Green building does pay off!