Taos Solar Music Festival
I just got back from the Taos Solar Music Festival. What a great time, and tons of interesting stuff to look at in the area. What to start with?
Let's start with the music. Loved Yerba Buena and Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon ("loved" means "would buy albums from"), although Mike and Leo should consider outsourcing their singing. Not terribly impressed with many other acts. The buildup for Michael Faranti was too much. One side-stage act was amusing, singing about $2 shoes and such, but I didn't catch her name. The Solar Queens, I think we can all agree, would have been doing that even if there were no Music Festival. Conspiracy Theory: they concocted the Solar Festival as a cover story for being able to show off their drag costumes in public. Look for more festivals in Taos featuring the "[blank] Queens" (fill in blank as appropriate).
The Solar Village was a little disappointing. You've got the NMSEA, the Santa Fe Electric Bicycle Company selling WaveCrest bicycles, someone else hawking classes on making biodiesel from waste vegetable oil, someone else talking about how cities of the future will be long & narrow strips, Veterans For Peace auctioning a beautiful hand-built canoe, someone else showing off solar ovens, a few people showing collectors and solar toys, a few showing water recycling systems, and I don't remember the rest. It wasn't that any of them were bad, but c'mon! - most of the solar panels I saw were manufactured by BP, so where's BP? Where's Sharp, Kyocera, Xantrex, and the other manufacturers? How about an architect or two?
I suspect that the political and anti-capitalist messages of the NMSEA, several of the artists, and more than a few attendees might drive these companies away, but the anti-capitalists are foolish if they think that alternative energy is going to have any impact without major investment from capitalists. Why is it unacceptable (and it is unacceptable) for an oil company to be associated with a murderous regime, but acceptable for artists to worship dead mass murderers and meet and greet with living ones who have ruined their country (and are trying to ruin others') while murdering 7 times more than Pinochet? Well, at least they have high educational achievements and free health care, eh?
The better display was the community of Earthships just North of Taos, especially Angels Nest. The "entrance" to the Earthship area was extremely disappointing, including the area where I think they make their biodiesel. It looks like someone's garage project, and I think it does a tremendous disservice to show that as the face of sustainable living. Our recurring theme was that it's like serving twigs and berries to someone while trying to convince them to become a vegetarian. Angel's Nest, on the other hand, was truly impressive. Unfortunately, there weren't any signs or displays directing people towards the Earthships, and you just had to get lucky to get a tour of Angels Nest.
Speaking of twigs and berries, we had a few encounters with food establishments in Taos. We were looking for someplace to eat in Taos and discussing the possibility of finding a vegetarian place when we came across the Sheva Cafe. Outstanding - I had the spinach pie and found it to be in diametrical opposition to twigs and berries. I enjoyed coffee several mornings at the Taos House of Coffee. One night we ate at the Guadalajara Grill - surprising and interesting place, with (I can report) excellent shark tacos. We got interesting lunch goodies from Cid's Food Market, a place that specializes infood for wealthy "hippies" organic, macrobiotic, vegan, vegetarian, and other specialty diets.
The camping was okay, but there were a few things that could have been better. For example, a solar shower would have been perfect. A published shuttle schedule would have helped. Next time, we bring bikes. I think I was one of the few paying campers - freeloaders only make it less likely that they will improve the campground for next year (I think it ran on the honor system). A water supply would have been nice (thanks to whoever's hose that was, and I sure hope it wasn't grey water! (that's a real concern in Taos, where many people recycle water 1-2 times)).
Finally, a comment on Earthships in general and Angel's Nest specifically. I liked AN, but let's face it: only a multimillionaire could afford something like that. If people want to see any appreciable effect on their favorite enviro-topic (be it oil use, CO2 emissions, water use, renewable energy, etc.), the middle class has to be able and have the desire to live in houses like this. Someone has to address the affordability issue and, frankly, reduce the appeal to eccentricity. It has to be mainstreamed.
The Earthship village is a collection of independent houses, separated by hundreds of yards, with nothing looking like common space, parks, children, or any of the signs of what might be called "community". Has anyone up there read A Pattern Language? So long as it lacks the community feel, it looks like a place for eccentric hippies. People who are otherwise receptive to reducing their footprint but not to eccentricity will never look past the Earthship surface, and that's a problem with marketing, not the product. Someone is failing to do whole systems thinking.
The bottles and cans stuck in big concrete walls spell "excercise in futility" - what exactly do the cans and bottles accomplish? You're better off recycling cans to Reynolds and bottles to the local bottler, and also doing something to reduce the amount of concrete. Concrete production requires energy - tons of it! Hello - why not use native building materials that use less energy and in some cases sequester carbon? Like, for example adobe and straw-bale? It's not like adobe is unknown in that part of the world, and I walked through more alfalfa and straw in the last 2 days than I have in the past year. (I concede that maybe there's more to this than meets the eye, but I certainly never tripped across a reasonable explanation despite a lengthy visit).
Finally, there were some extremely, uh, ... eccentric? ... explanations for things at Angels Nest. Don't get me wrong - I loved the place and wouldn't mind spending a weekend there. The stretch Hummer Limo that runs on biodiesel/ethanol/hydrogen and uses sunlight to create its own hydrogen is probably the best advertisement for non-twigs & berries environmentalism I have ever seen. However,
Let's start with the music. Loved Yerba Buena and Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon ("loved" means "would buy albums from"), although Mike and Leo should consider outsourcing their singing. Not terribly impressed with many other acts. The buildup for Michael Faranti was too much. One side-stage act was amusing, singing about $2 shoes and such, but I didn't catch her name. The Solar Queens, I think we can all agree, would have been doing that even if there were no Music Festival. Conspiracy Theory: they concocted the Solar Festival as a cover story for being able to show off their drag costumes in public. Look for more festivals in Taos featuring the "[blank] Queens" (fill in blank as appropriate).
The Solar Village was a little disappointing. You've got the NMSEA, the Santa Fe Electric Bicycle Company selling WaveCrest bicycles, someone else hawking classes on making biodiesel from waste vegetable oil, someone else talking about how cities of the future will be long & narrow strips, Veterans For Peace auctioning a beautiful hand-built canoe, someone else showing off solar ovens, a few people showing collectors and solar toys, a few showing water recycling systems, and I don't remember the rest. It wasn't that any of them were bad, but c'mon! - most of the solar panels I saw were manufactured by BP, so where's BP? Where's Sharp, Kyocera, Xantrex, and the other manufacturers? How about an architect or two?
I suspect that the political and anti-capitalist messages of the NMSEA, several of the artists, and more than a few attendees might drive these companies away, but the anti-capitalists are foolish if they think that alternative energy is going to have any impact without major investment from capitalists. Why is it unacceptable (and it is unacceptable) for an oil company to be associated with a murderous regime, but acceptable for artists to worship dead mass murderers and meet and greet with living ones who have ruined their country (and are trying to ruin others') while murdering 7 times more than Pinochet? Well, at least they have high educational achievements and free health care, eh?
The better display was the community of Earthships just North of Taos, especially Angels Nest. The "entrance" to the Earthship area was extremely disappointing, including the area where I think they make their biodiesel. It looks like someone's garage project, and I think it does a tremendous disservice to show that as the face of sustainable living. Our recurring theme was that it's like serving twigs and berries to someone while trying to convince them to become a vegetarian. Angel's Nest, on the other hand, was truly impressive. Unfortunately, there weren't any signs or displays directing people towards the Earthships, and you just had to get lucky to get a tour of Angels Nest.
Speaking of twigs and berries, we had a few encounters with food establishments in Taos. We were looking for someplace to eat in Taos and discussing the possibility of finding a vegetarian place when we came across the Sheva Cafe. Outstanding - I had the spinach pie and found it to be in diametrical opposition to twigs and berries. I enjoyed coffee several mornings at the Taos House of Coffee. One night we ate at the Guadalajara Grill - surprising and interesting place, with (I can report) excellent shark tacos. We got interesting lunch goodies from Cid's Food Market, a place that specializes in
The camping was okay, but there were a few things that could have been better. For example, a solar shower would have been perfect. A published shuttle schedule would have helped. Next time, we bring bikes. I think I was one of the few paying campers - freeloaders only make it less likely that they will improve the campground for next year (I think it ran on the honor system). A water supply would have been nice (thanks to whoever's hose that was, and I sure hope it wasn't grey water! (that's a real concern in Taos, where many people recycle water 1-2 times)).
Finally, a comment on Earthships in general and Angel's Nest specifically. I liked AN, but let's face it: only a multimillionaire could afford something like that. If people want to see any appreciable effect on their favorite enviro-topic (be it oil use, CO2 emissions, water use, renewable energy, etc.), the middle class has to be able and have the desire to live in houses like this. Someone has to address the affordability issue and, frankly, reduce the appeal to eccentricity. It has to be mainstreamed.
The Earthship village is a collection of independent houses, separated by hundreds of yards, with nothing looking like common space, parks, children, or any of the signs of what might be called "community". Has anyone up there read A Pattern Language? So long as it lacks the community feel, it looks like a place for eccentric hippies. People who are otherwise receptive to reducing their footprint but not to eccentricity will never look past the Earthship surface, and that's a problem with marketing, not the product. Someone is failing to do whole systems thinking.
The bottles and cans stuck in big concrete walls spell "excercise in futility" - what exactly do the cans and bottles accomplish? You're better off recycling cans to Reynolds and bottles to the local bottler, and also doing something to reduce the amount of concrete. Concrete production requires energy - tons of it! Hello - why not use native building materials that use less energy and in some cases sequester carbon? Like, for example adobe and straw-bale? It's not like adobe is unknown in that part of the world, and I walked through more alfalfa and straw in the last 2 days than I have in the past year. (I concede that maybe there's more to this than meets the eye, but I certainly never tripped across a reasonable explanation despite a lengthy visit).
Finally, there were some extremely, uh, ... eccentric? ... explanations for things at Angels Nest. Don't get me wrong - I loved the place and wouldn't mind spending a weekend there. The stretch Hummer Limo that runs on biodiesel/ethanol/hydrogen and uses sunlight to create its own hydrogen is probably the best advertisement for non-twigs & berries environmentalism I have ever seen. However,
- Magnetic vortex water purification systems: Um, no. Gravity and the offset nozzle cause the vortex, not magic energy fields. The magnets at the bottom could not possibly generate a strong enough magnetic field to kill anything except by old age. More refutation of this junk science here.
- The hot bath that "removes mercury, aluminum, and other heavy metal toxins" sounded like someone was indulging in a chelation therapy fantasy.
- I really like the architectural use of copper. And it is a very good conductor of electricity, but by no means the best (as they claimed). Encircling parts of your house in it looks good, but I don't think it is going to reduce "bad" EMF that "cause brain tumors". For one thing, if there were a lot of currents being conducted through it, those create their own EMF. Thus, any field created inside (by, say, electronic equipment such as stereos or inverters) are going to remain inside. For another thing, Marcia Angell wrote a very strong editorial in NEMJ when she was editor, admonishing researchers to drop the powerline/leukemia hunt and go do research with real prospects. Study after study failed to find a link, and that involved people living near high voltage (and high amperage) feeder lines that create much stronger electric fields than you will ever see in an off-grid house fed by an inverter.
- They claimed there were no "tumor-causing" AC circuits in the house, but I saw AC outlets in several places. Also, the induction stove uses AC.
- The TruLight phototherapy did not win any Nobel prize in 1913 or any other year, much less the Nobel Peace Prize, and certainly not for curing Small Pox (or Yellow Fever or whatever she said).
- The vertical wind generators may have an interesting spiral sculpture inside them, but that does not mean that they operate "on the principles of DNA". C'mon - as I said, I like the concept, but some people are going to hear this stuff and walk out thinking that none of it works. They might as well be saying that it is operated by flying ponies and water sprites.
Labels: culture
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