Over the past couple of decades, architects and builders looking to green their projects turned to the addition of various piecemeal elements to save water here or cut down on electricity there. Those who added more than a few green touches could apply for and get certified by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) under its Leadership in Energy and Efficient Design (LEED) program. While these efforts have been laudable—essentially launching the green building industry as we know it today—they represent merely the infancy of what green building might someday become.

The concept of the “living building” has now emerged as a new ideal for design and construction. The Cascadia Region Green Building Council (CRGBC)—the Pacific Northwest chapter of the USGBC—defines a living building as a structure that “generates all of its own energy with renewable non-toxic resources, captures and treats all of its water, and operates efficiently and for maximum beauty.” The group has been pushing for adoption of the concept by construction industries here at home, and also helped to launch the International Living Building Institute to promote the concept internationally.

“We view our role as the organization that is meant to ask the really tough questions, to push the boundaries as far as possible,” says Jason McLennan, CEO of CRGBC. To this end, in 2006 the group launched its Living Building Challenge (LBC), a “call to the design and construction community to pursue true sustainability in the built environment.” So far 60 different projects around North America are vying to meet the high standards of the LBC, which exceed even the highest status of LEED certification.

The first building to be completed for consideration under the LBC program is the Omega Center for Sustainable Living, in Rhinebeck, NY. The 6,200 square-foot, one-level building, which serves as headquarters for the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, features a geothermal heating and cooling system, solar panels, rain gardens that direct water run-off to irrigate plantings, a 4,500-square-foot greenhouse that helps filter wastewater for reuse, “daylighting” design that brings natural light indoor to minimize electric light usage, and eco-friendly building materials all around. It was designed—per LBC criteria—to be “net-zero,” meaning it uses no more energy than it generates itself. Once the building has been in operation for a full year next summer, CRGBC will audit it to see if its performance lives up to the green hype. Dozens of other LBC contenders around North America will be audited as well.

Of course, the costs of creating a living building today are very high. Achieving net-zero can be especially costly, and stands out as one of the biggest obstacles to greater interest in the living building concept. Another challenge is finding materials that meet LBC standards, since many common building materials—such as PVC piping for wastewater transport—off-gas chemicals and have other hazardous attributes. LBC also expects builders to source locally as many materials as possible to boost local economies and make efficient use of nearby natural resources. McLennan remains confident that costs will come down as green materials, technologies and methods become more commonplace within the general building industry.

Imagine for a moment that East and West are hypothetical strangers meeting for the first time. Invariably, dialogue (once they got over the language barrier) delves into culture, food and customs.

The open-minded duo quickly bond then, like Romulus and Remus, decide to form a great city. But unlike the tempestuous brothers – whose Rome flourished before perishing in flames – they don’t end up in a knife fight.

Instead, East likes West’s idea of financial markets and free trade. West takes to East’s insistence on a stylish concept called “feng shui.” And they settle on a name: Hong Kong.

It forms the basis of a unique synergy, harnessing the energetic, forward-thinking drive of modern-day Asia within an infrastructure of Western stability and sensibility. Essentially split into the islands of Hong Kong, Lantau and Kowloon, this city of more than 6 million people is as easy to navigate for English and Chinese speakers alike.

Maybe, even, a little too easy. The transit system – labeled in both languages and composed of ferries, underground trains, ferries and cable cars – is among the world’s most efficient.

According to local figures, up to 90 percent of the population rely on it. Swapping modes of transport is often necessary but not discomforting, given the frequency of services and many stations acting as hubs or all four. (Are you paying attention, MARTA?)

They’re also de facto shopping centers filled with labeled-up cell phone wielders. Shopping, though so important to the Hong Kong experience, highlights a nagging dichotomy: Sure, haggling for fake Ralph Lauren was a trip, but do I really appreciate the Golden Arches reminding me that I passed up a Big Mac for authentic dim sum?

Starbucks, McDonald’s, Circle K, 7-Eleven – they’re everywhere. Indeed, a new outlook is required to enjoy this place: think in terms of global harmony, not homogeneity. In fact, you may learn to love it a little.

It’s brought an incredible skyline, one of the world’s largest in terms of skyscrapers; an education system outshining its neighbors; and, crucially, spared its citizens the kind of economic disparity observers regularly point to in the region’s other Four Tigers – Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore.

Perhaps, too, its cavalier embrace of laissez-faire economics is a saving grace from the big boss, China.

As Edmund, a native Hongkongian, put it, “Yes, we are ruled by China, but as long as we are doing well, then they are happy.” At the annual July 1 human rights protest rally, “only about 25,000 people showed up. But so what?”

At a time when the West acted with dismay at the draconian treatment of Tibetan protestors in May, the notion of 25,000 people expressly rounding on China within its borders challenges belief.

“It’s got nothing to do with the Olympics,” Edmund explained. “Some people want the governor democratically elected, but if his brain is about business, everybody knows that’s most important. If not, China fires him, like last governor [who drew more than 120,000 demanding his ouster]. It’s business.”

Edmond’s principal concern, instead, was about the cost of living within China’s baby’s boom. Despite never having been to Europe, the 36-year-old telecommunications executive compared it with Hong Kong’s square-footage rental space as though the continent were one city. His figures showed Hong Kong as being much higher, but clearly only factored Europe’s lower-end prices. (Needless to say London was omitted from the equation).

True, space here is at a premium. That’s where feng shui helps. Piling the masses into sky-high apartment blocks may seem eerily Orwellian, but these buildings – some with flashing lights synchronized to change every few seconds, others neatly placed in a prudent pecking order according to size – neatly fill the landscape.

“This is a different place, isn’t it?” said Tommy, two months into a one-year banking assignment and unsure if he likes it or not. “I tell friends back home, ‘you’re not going to believe this place; it’s not really China, but kind of is, plus it’s way more crowded than Manhattan.’ Still you’d never think it sometimes, but other times it is. Weird.”

His time would be better spent in the city’s Stanley Market area, which en route takes in much of Hong Kong Island and is a welcome departure from the crowded downtown.  It’s best known for its outdoor market, views of neighboring islands, and remains something of a British bastion. There are no tall buildings, just eateries and cobbled streets.

Alluringly, though, it’s still the skyline that never ceases to amaze. Many insist on seeing it both day and night at different vantage points. The most spectacular view is from a footpath-come-nature-trail next to Peak Tram Station, which is serviced by a ventricular railway. Make sure it’s a clear evening, as storms and clouds storms can spring from nowhere during the rainy summer season.

It’s refreshing here, even quiet. But if savoring a moment away from the overwhelming drum of fast-paced money making sounds mundane, the same view can be enjoyed from the Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant in the station’s shopping mall. Weird.

“When do you have time to make all that pizza?” I tried a joke.

Max laughed back at my comment. Thank God. The 30-minute long discussion had gone sour for me twenty minutes ago. The subject as usual focused on a bad state of affairs — my health. Today had started off with dizzy spells and pains; no big deal for a vintage-aged gentleman such as myself — I’m an old fine wine with a few good years left before I turn to vinegar — or so I’d like to think.

“Okay, Rudy. Call if you need anything. You still have Dr. Vanick’s home phone number handy?” Max said.

“And his daughter’s cell phone number too,” I said, lining up my brown prescription bottles across the counter, phone wedged to my shoulder.

Max, my oldest son of two, owned the best pizza place in town. He planned to hand it down to his son.

“I’ll be fine, Max. Promise.”

More than eighty years ago I sat next to my own father and watched him die. He had been scared. I saw it, and I had heard him say it – through his last breaths.

“Alright then, have a good time tonight, Dad,” Max said before hanging up the phone.

That’s how these morning check-up calls always go. The first few minutes I report (I don’t know why, but I feel obliged to report) the pains, aches, dizziness, stomach problems, sweaty palms, missed heartbeats, etc. Take your pick. Then, I spend the next twenty-nine minutes trying to convince him not to worry: I promise to call him if I need anything; I promise to call my doctor; promise to answer my phone, and I always promise to take my medicine. To finish us up on a lighter note, I tell a joke, and just before hanging the phone back in its cradle, I say I’m alright.

Fear. Getting old is about living with it. Old folks wait for, even expect, the day when that sudden clinch inside the chest means more than indigestion or a fall leaves us flailing around like an upside down turtle, alone. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” as the grand old lady said in that horrifying b-rated commercial. What an awful heartstring for homecare advertisers to pull; that ad ran during the local news every night for almost six months. Eventually, all the late night shows lampooned the old lady’s fall.

The fifth pill went down easy with a glass of water. Good children take care of their parents during our so called golden years. My two sons, Max and Ted, are the best. When they were boys, I knew too well the difference between being their parent and being their friend. Their friends never told them “it’s bedtime” or “take your medicine.” Eventually, they grew into men with families and livelihoods, and we became equals — real friendship — and that’s when parenthood really paid off. But that all changed March 4th of this year. I had my first stroke, that’s when “How are you doing today, Dad?” changed from really meaning, “Are you busy, can you please help me paint the deck, Dad?” into, “Dad, how long you think before you’ll be back in the emergency room?” Nowadays, my daily routine, my walk of life, consists of a back and forth between my living room and the kitchen. A constant soundtrack of well meaning noise: friends and family ringing the doorbell, email alerts (I need to call Max about that, I can’t figure out why my email keeps bouncing back), and the beep of that damned life care bracelet strapped around my wrist, all those sounds accompanied my every step; the iCare monitors might as well tag old people: “This one has almost come to the end of his march.” Makes one religious and a tad more conservative, but I’m okay with that.

The door to the basement squeaked a bit. My new digital piano downstairs would be the last thing I grabbed before leaving. The boys had craftily included the keyboard and the home assistance service (the people responsible for the iCare bracelet) into the same birthday bundle. “We care, because YOU care,” boasted the company’s slogan. No matter.

All of my old radios, vacuum tubes, toys (including a mouse riding a motorcycle), and clothes stayed down here. Francis’s cat-eye glasses sat on the shelf next to an old dusty tuba. I laughed out loud. Ted, Max’s younger brother, had come home in a huff after quitting the High School band late one football Friday. “You can take that tuba and shove it up your ass!” I found out were his parting words to the band director. Although Francis pretended anger, I knew deep down she had been amused. Ted spent one day home on suspension for that stunt, but went on his first date the following week. After High School, Ted left home and carved out his own life, he became a real-life small-town everyman turned into the self-made-millionaire complete with jet plane and a lasting full head of hair. As for Max, he went bald his senior year, stayed too skinny, married his second girlfriend, opened the Purple Owl pizza restaurant (named for the High School mascot), and bought the house next door to mine. To this day, when the two brothers are in the same room, tension rises between the I-stayed-at-home-with-Dad Max vs. the made-his-own-way Ted, but those episodes always end in laughter and a pat on the back.

The eighty-eight key digital piano rest against a bookshelf full of tools over in the far corner of the basement. Nice instrument. I had to convince the salesman that my fingers would fly off the end of the sixty-one key version before he would special order the larger version. Not to mention those extra twenty-seven keys are the twinkle notes. Still, compared to my old pianos, this one is extremely portable.

I asked my granddaughter — she’s in her mid-twenties now and plays music professionally in Nashville – during one of her visits if she would help me adjust the keyboard’s tones and digital presets. To my secret and great satisfaction, she did not have a clue how the thing worked. My ruse worked. Immediately I conjured up an entire orchestra from the keyboard’s data banks. My musical and technological tour d’ force surprised, and, more importantly, impressed her. She became so much happier and genuine around me after that. Best part of it, she quit asking me how “I felt” and instead began asking me who I played music with and where we performed. She almost became a friend. I zipped the keyboard into the tote bag and climbed up the stairs back to the kitchen. For a moment, I sat down to take a break. Pain. There had been a slight flutter in my chest but, thankfully, the green light of the iCare continued to glow. Must be nerves and stress about my big night tonight I told myself. A glass of cold milk fixed me right up and back to work I went.

All the music instrument cords and stuff fit nicely into my old leather bag. Been using it for gigs since my twenties. Dixieland, jazz, swing, Tommy Dorsey, all that music came natural to me. I play all the old standards by memory: “It Had to Be You”, “Anytime,” Have you Ever Been Lonely,” I play all of them except for “Star Dust”– the best piece of music ever written. Some say the melody is too bittersweet for lovers. They are wrong. They’ve listened too much to the lyric and not enough to the song. That melody is for the moment right before falling in love, that moment when you decide it’s okay to take the plunge again, that amazing second when a man looks at a woman and decides, “Okay, I’m going to do this. I am going to allow myself to fall in love again. To fall in love with you.” That’s “Star Dust.” During my granddaughter’s last visit, she borrowed my “Twenty-two Different Recordings of Star Dust.” Been almost a year. I hope she never brings that record back.

The garage door rolled open. Every Monday night meant live music courtesy of the Rudy White Trio in the Marion Retirement Home cafeteria. Our music stands lay folded in my car’s trunk. Made them for the trio years ago, screwed in the hinges, cut the wood and glued the glitter. My grandchildren painted a mouse in brass buttons on each member’s stand. Each mouse played the appropriate instrument for the band member: a trombone, piano, and drum set. “Oh, Rudy’s grandchildren are darlings! His boys have turned out so well too!” The blue haired ladies would say giggling at the painted bandstands. The one hairless and brown spotted scalp, probably Harold, among them would answer, “That’s because Rudy is a damn fine gentlemen.” Funny how we old people are defined now by our kids and grandkids. The Rudy White Trio has been together for years. I am thankful. Even though the most of the world has forgotten about us long ago, we can still find a few like-minded folks for an audiences. We are survivors. We have fun.

After the Buick’s warning chimes reminded me to fasten the seatbelt, I turned the key and whirled the car to life. I circled the cove, frost covered the curb, before turning toward Bernadine’s Eats. Tonight would be different; I would be meeting a girl. So many years had passed. My hands trembled on the steering wheel. What would my children and grandchildren think if they saw me with someone else.

Bernadine’s Eats became a staple of Mt. Gilead town life generations ago. During the Depression years, live combos swung the place until closing time, during the ‘40s young men always bought beers for one another before shipping off, and in turn bought beers for the girls whose boys had already left. During the ’50s, a jukebox rock-n-rolled teenagers and their parents refused to believe what had become of the charming old hangout. Now in the 20th century, the fresh desserts and cornbread tasted good as ever. My Doctor, the family, and all those pill bottles could go to hell. No better medicine exists than cherry pie.

I pulled right up to the building’s brown bricks and shut off the motor, tightened my big coat, and wiped the cold sweat from my forehead and palms. The cherry trees had grown so thick around the building that the windows were completely covered, but no worry, the chipped orange and brown sign stood unapologetically. I locked the car’s door and walked around to the entrance. The “Welcome to Bernadine’s” written in the baseball type hadn’t changed for years. I liked that.

This is where I had first talked to her.

* * *

“Hi ya Rudy!” greeted Bernadine. She had the biggest buffoon black hair-do. “Take your booth over in the corner?”

“Sure,” I said, but before I reached my seat, I heard Jack Owen yell,

“Rudy, get over here, man.”

He and Francis sat together in the side booth. The two came attached, albeit a friendly connection, and both were between maybe twenty to twenty-two years old, a couple of years younger than me, but I knew Francis walked light-years ahead of both of us guys. I looked hard at her for a short second. She always wore the best cat-eyeglasses with those tiny green faux-rubies buried in each corner. Someday Francis would be around, alone, and I would ask her about those cat-eyeglasses. I wasn’t scared of her like Jack.

“Hey Rudy, when are you playing again? Man, your show last weekend really blew my cool. I really almost jumped up there with y’all!” Jack said. Pomade tightly greased back his blond hair.

Francis snuck a look at me. Her discrete grin told me she knew why her friend Jack “blew his top” and liked to “get far out” and all the other latest clichés he tossed around — Jack could never be one of the “cats” or one of “beats” that he loved so much, but we all felt, despite the hot air, that Jack was a good guy. He ate his lunch like 99 percent of the Mt Gilead High School’s graduates everyday in the National Standard Plastic Molds cafeteria, and also like everyone else, he only wanted someone to care enough to save him a seat.

Across the diner a kid put a nickel into the jukebox. The record flipped over and the needle dropped- the new song by Chuck Merry or Nut or Berry, or something, anyway he’s a new negro musician. Francis tapped her foot.

“I don’t know when we’ll be playing here again.” I said to Jack, but meant it for Francis, “Harder these days.” I pointed over to the jukebox. “I don’t get why everyone likes this new stuff really. All that racket. Those drums sound like someone building a house, but it’s taken over everywhere, we have to search for our audience now; I’m not worried though: Jazz and Swing will stay. You know why? The rhythm is already there in the notes; we don’t need a drummer banging around like he’s making a house, or a greasy haircut, to make our beats and melodies. ” I started humming, snapping my fingers, swaying my shoulders, while all the time watching Francis.

She laughed loud enough to make me look at her funny.

“Yeah, but what about your car, that’s a smidge extravagant for such a straight shooter as yourself, isn’t it?” she said trying hard to keep from cracking-up again. She stared out the window into the parking lot. “Look at those fins and all that chrome. Do you really need all of that to get to where you’re going, Rudy?” She looked straight at me, hard.

“Listen, cat-eyes, that out there is an automobile not a car,” I said to keep it going, “An ‘automobile’ is a sculpture. A ‘car’ is like a mule.”

Francis cocked an eyebrow up.

“I’ll show you tonight. My band is playing over in Marion. Not too far down the road. Maybe I’ll take you for a ride in that piece of art you’re so interested in.” I stole another not so secret glance at the brunette.

“Sounds great, Rudy!” Jack butted in. “I’ll bring my horn. You guys will let one of your Mt. Gilead boys get up ‘n strut won’t ya?”

“Sure, Jack.” I said. My shoulders sagged.

Francis sat knowing everything. Eyebrow still cocked.

“Let’s split a cherry pie you two,” she said.

* * *

One last bite of gravy soaked roast beef lay alone on my plate. “That’s enough about my best days,” I promised to my fork. My waitress sat across the room talking to her boyfriend. I put the teenager’s tip on the table. I think she’s Frank Merriweather’s granddaughter; Bernadine had left a long, long time ago. I walked outside into the October nip. Although I could see my breath in the cold, the sweat beaded up again beneath my red knit hat and gloves. The car door unlocked. “When did Detroit start to hammer them into eggs?” I thought to myself.

And Francis stayed inside the diner. She wouldn’t be at the show tonight. The MS had crumpled her body into a ball of old newspaper. During the last days, she lay in the fetal position staring at the antiseptic walls of County hospital. If she blinked, the grandchildren would grab my arm and say, “She knows we’re here!” Maybe.

I had spent more nights at the hospital back then than most staffs would have normally allowed. That staff bent a lot of rules for me. After a few weeks, they began to let me play after dinner on the out-of-tune piano in the chapel room right down the hall from Francis. Eventually, our local paper wrote a story, everyone really appreciated my visits, I guess, even, and most importantly, Francis. The article said she blinked during “Star Dust.”

Francis died so slow — months — the way old men and women don’t want to talk about, and no husband wants to see, but everyone else insists on.

Those cat-eyeglasses have been in my basement for a very long, a painfully long time.

I stared in the car’s sun visor mirror at the strands of silver hair poking out of the tip of my big red German nose. The other two guys, the drummer and trombone player, were going to beat me to the show. I hoped they would be able to smooth things over with Carol Ann and Denise. Benny and Lewis were never the fast talking kind of musicians. My long lunch had put me behind schedule. I started for a line of blue pay phones outside of a filling station, but only husks of blue posts and empty plastic phone book covers remained. All week I’ve been waiting for this evening’s show, but again, against my better judgment, I stopped the car and decided to gamble away a few more minutes. The few strands of hair left on the sides of my scalp needed a comb.

Oh good Lord, not now, please. God help me. The iCare’s’s bracelet alarm had went off, the green light turning amber. Where’s pill number six — that blood thinner pill? Fifteen minutes to get to my show or twenty minutes to get back home — I had forgotten my pills again. Losing patience with the whole damn world, life’s whole enchilada, I balled my hand into a fist and punched the dash. An old man hitting a dashboard felt more ridiculous than angry. I put the car in gear. “Oh, at my age, what does it matter anyway?” I said to the dashboard.

Making up time fast over the two-lane, I arrived only a few minutes late. The corn around the parking lot felt familiar, warm. I spotted her straight white hair thirty yards before turning in, and this time, finally, she waited alone.

“Hi, Mary.” I opened the backdoor of my car to get the piano out. She came closer and offered a hand. I gave her that old leather bag full of instrument cords.

“Hello, Rudy,” she said holding the bag in front of her like a schoolgirl.

“Where are Carol Ann and Denise?” I asked.

“They had to go on inside. Serving food.” A smile played around at the corners of her lips. “You’re late, but I talked to them for you.”

I noticed the new bracelet around her wrist; the same accusing small green light flickered from her like mine. Something bad must have happened.

“I didn’t know you had kids.”

“Yes I do, Rudy. Three boys.”

“Well, let’s not talk about them.”

“Good.” The laugh swept the lingering day from the stars and Ol’ Blue Eyes sang:

Sometimes I wonder why I spend

The lonely night dreaming of a song

The melody haunts my reverie

And I am once again with you

When our love was new

And each kiss an inspiration

But that was long ago

Now my consolation

Is in the stardust of a song.

]]> http://pinepresents.com/short-fiction-star-dust/feed/ 0 http://pinepresents.com/pine-interviews-club-awesome/ http://pinepresents.com/pine-interviews-club-awesome/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:00 +0000 Holly http://pinepresents.com/pine-interviews-club-awesome/

Club Awesome began as a rotating cast of musicians and instruments in 2004, finally settling around founders Errol Crane and Rick Kemp, joined by Blair Gainous and Lance Warner.  The band soon became known for inventively self-aware stage pranks like stopping mid-set to read aloud from their suggestion box, staging impromptu “battles” with other bands on the bill, performing in a handmade white tiger costume – and later, convincing clubs to let them install and fill a twelve-foot aboveground pool near the stage for their annual summer Pool-Party Parties.  Thankfully, the music began to get noticed as well, prompting comparisons ranging from Joy Division and Tullycraft to Joe Jackson and Superchunk.

Crane, Kemp, Gainous and Warner recorded an EP with Brian Slusher of Slushco and a split seven-inch with Tokyo Sex Destruction on Passive Aggressive Network, and then teamed with producer Nev Walker for Dynamos, their full-length debut.  After recording the album, Club Awesome suddenly lost both Gainous (to Berkeley) and Warner (to New York), but found handy replacements in friends and East Bay, CA, transplants Mikey Holliday and Erik Armenia.  Club Awesome is currently touring in support of Dynamos, and writing and recording for a follow-up album.
<a href=”http://pinemagazine.com/media/club.mp3″>
Click here to listen to an interview with the band</a>.

Often lauded for its sophisticated pop/rock style, Atlanta-based music collaborative Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun continues to gather accolades, having quickly become one of the city’s more favored bands. 

Featuring vocalist Lauren Gibson, guitarist Cregg Gibson, bassist Micah Silverman and drummer Jeremy Cole, the band is known for its powerful live show, and played with a formidable list of indie heavy-hitters such as the White Stripes, Interpol, Manchester Orchestra, the Whigs, the Walkman and the French Kicks.

<a href=”http://pinemagazine.com/media/today.mp3″>Barely in town to catch a breath, Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun stopped by our studio to discuss their past, their present and their very bright future.</a>

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The Atlanta-based This Piano Plays Itself delves deep into the electronic possibilities traditional instruments can offer, their style a drugged state of the usual rock fare, one that’s somehow pulls off refined incoherence.

In many of their songs, the start is slow and mellow, with the melodies quietly building towards a sort of climax that pulls in instrumentation you wouldn’t always expect — reverbs, pitch shifters, delays and echoes, with the occasional horn cutting through the effects. Their style carries masculine overtones; their subtle certain machismo rock almost always pounds its way through their art facade.
<a href=”http://pinemagazine.com/media/tppi.mp3″>
Click here to listen to an interview with the band. </a>

The band is one of two inaugural acts signed to Gavin Frederick’s Adair Park, a separate project from his locally-lauded Stickfigure Records. <a href=”http://www.myspace.com/thispianoplaysitself”>Check them online</a>, or watch the video below (or both, really). 

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As would be the case after any natural disaster, water-borne illness could run rampant and chemicals and oil could leak out of damaged storage facilities as a result of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that ripped apart Haiti on January 12. Surprisingly, no large industrial spills have been found during initial post-quake rescue efforts, but of course the focus has been on saving human lives and restoring civil order.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the biggest issue is the building waste; some 40 to 50 percent of the buildings fell in Port-au-Prince and nearby towns. “Thousands of buildings suddenly become debris and this overwhelms the capacity of waste management,” says UNEP’s Muralee Thummarukudy, who is directing efforts to collect the waste for use in reconstruction projects.

Even before the quake Haiti had major environmental problems. Intensive logging beginning in the 1950s reduced Haiti’s forest cover from 60 percent to less than two percent today. This lack of trees causes huge soil erosion problems, threatening both food and clean water sources for throngs of hungry and thirsty people. “If you have forest cover, when heavy rain takes place it doesn’t erode the land,” UNEP’s Asif Zaidi reports. “It doesn’t result in flash floods.” He adds that, due to its lack of forest cover, Haiti suffers much more during hurricanes than does the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Compounding these ecological insults is Haiti’s fast growing population, now 9.7 million and growing by 2.5 percent per year. This has pushed millions of Haitians into marginal areas like floodplains and on land that could otherwise be used profitably. “Most fertile land areas are often used for slums, while hillsides and steep landscapes are used for agriculture,” reports USAID’s Beth Cypser. The resulting sanitation problems have stepped up cases of dysentery, malaria and drug-resistant tuberculosis among Haiti’s poverty-stricken population. Trash-filled beaches, smelly waterways, swarms of dead fish and tons of floating debris stand testament to Haiti’s water pollution problems—now exacerbated by the earthquake.

“We need to…create mechanisms that reinforce better use of natural resources,” says UNEP’s Zaidi. Prior to the quake, UNEP had committed to a two-year project to bolster to restore Haiti’s forests, coral reefs and other natural systems compromised by the island’s economic problems. Providing access to propane to encourage a shift from charcoal-burning stoves is an immediate goal. Longer term, UNEP hopes the program will help kick-start reforestation efforts and investments in renewable energy infrastructure there.

Perhaps the silver lining of the earthquake in Haiti is the fact that millions of people around the world now know about the plight of the country’s people and environment, and donations have started to pour in. Anyone interested in helping relief efforts in Haiti can send a text message triggering a small donation to the American Red Cross (text “HAITI” to 90999 and $10 will be donated and added to your next phone bill). Those concerned about clean water specifically should donate to World Water Relief, a non-profit focusing on the installation of water filtration systems in Haiti and other distressed areas of the world.

By all definitions, the earthquake disaster in Haiti is a true catastrophe.

The Red Cross’s current estimate of the number of people killed is 100,000, but that number could rise in the weeks to come.  With Haiti’s feeble infrastructure almost totally destroyed, including most all government buildings, the response over the next few weeks will be a logistical nightmare.

For many Haitians circumstances will get much worse before they get any better.  Victims who have not seen any assistance are becoming increasingly desperate and angry, and unspeakable horrors and violence will be unleashed in the streets of Port-au-Prince.  The country is on the edge of chaos and anarchy.  Only the most tightly knit communities and neighborhoods will weather this disaster well, but even wealthier Haitians were pushed down Maslow’s famous “hierarchy of human needs,” including Haiti’s president, René Préval, whose home was destroyed.  One-third of Haiti’s population of 9.7 million is struggling to satisfy the most elemental requirements for life: water, food, shelter, and safety.

The island of Hispaniola sits between two major faults and, in 2008, a team of seismologists detected signs of increasing stresses, indicating an increasing probability of a major earthquake in the near future.  Of course, Haiti did nothing to prepare for such an eventuality.  Haiti’s extreme poverty, really a kind of socioeconomic disaster, was behind the country’s vulnerability.  However, it was not just poverty.  Decades of political misrule and corruption had essentially gutted the Haitian government’s capacity to manage a disaster, and it’s not as though disasters are something new to Haiti.  The country is frequently hit by hurricanes and tropical storms.  In 2008 four major hurricanes — Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike — dumped heavy rains on the island nation, deforesting 98 percent of the country and causing widespread flooding.  More than 1,000 people were killed or went missing and 800,000 people were affected.  Damage was estimated at over $1 billion.

Indeed earthquakes are different from hurricanes.  You can see a hurricane heading your way.  Earthquakes occur suddenly and with no warning.  Nonetheless, Haiti really had no emergency management system in place when other poor countries — for example, Bangladesh, Cuba, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Haiti’s neighbor, the Dominican Republic, have dedicated some of their limited resources to disaster preparedness.

Many Americans are shocked, shocked to find there’s so much poverty going on here.  Just a little over an hour flight from Miami, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.  The Failed States Index ranks Haiti as the 12^th most failed state in the world, and according to the 2009 Human Development Report, Haiti ranks 149^th out of 182 countries, the GDP per capita (PPP $US) is $1,155, 42 percent of Haitians do not have regular access to safe drinking water, and 72 percent live on less than $2 a day.

Very little foreign direct investment goes to Haiti and the Haitian economy is largely dependent on aid, loans and remittances.  Indeed Haiti has been virtually saturated with development NGOs for decades, and many communities have become wholly dependent upon them.  The country has also been the recipient of millions of dollars in official development assistance from the United States and other countries.  However, the annual per capita amount of assistance is relatively low: only $73.

Yet, on the other side of the island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic, which has suffered its fair share of disasters, is relatively much better off.  Still a poor, developing country, the Dominican Republic is 90^th on the United Nation’s ranking, the GDP per capita is $3,772, and only 15 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day.  Moreover, the Dominican Republic has an emergency management system in place to deal with disasters.  The National System for Prevention, Mitigation and Response to Disaster lays out a set of guidelines, policies, activities, resources, programs, and institutions to implement disaster risk reduction and prevention activities and to respond to large-scale emergencies.  Haiti’s emergency management system is virtually non-existent, and the country has depended on foreign assistance in all of its crises.

Evidently, the island of Hispaniola is a real-world social science experiment where we can compare two very different socioeconomic, political, and cultural realities, controlling for geography.  It seems it mattered significantly who did the colonizing and how independence was won from either the French or the Spanish.

Nothing could have been done to prevent the earthquake, but Haiti’s extreme poverty has exacerbated the situation and has once again demonstrated the disaster-development connection.  In Haiti, the complex interaction of population pressures, rapid urbanization, mass poverty and high inequality, environmental degradation, poor land use, shoddy building practices, and weak social and governmental institutions put millions of people at risk.  And the 2010 earthquake exposed, rather quickly and dramatically, Haiti’s chronic social, economic, and political vulnerabilities.  Simply put, more people died in Haiti than should have, but this is the pattern in most of the developing world.  More people die in weaker, poorer countries than they do in stronger, wealthier countries because disasters are inextricably linked to levels of socioeconomic development.  However, disasters can be development opportunities, and there’s hope that Haiti’s vulnerabilities will not be rebuilt.

As a researcher who focuses on the “politics of disasters” and as a consultant for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, I’ve seen how disaster experts and humanitarian agencies better understand the disaster-development nexus than do politicians and policy makers.  For example, CARE International, OXFAM International, World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, and Save the Children embed the concept of disaster vulnerability and disaster risk reduction within their overall development strategies.  Like disaster researchers, they see disasters as having three phases.

The first phase is Pre-Impact, before the trigger event.  For low-probability, high consequence events, like the Haitian earthquake disaster, this might be an incredibly long time period.  Since resources are limited, especially in the developing world, there are very few incentives to mitigate, plan, and prepare for the unlikely occurrence of a trigger event.  However, for societies regularly inflicted by tornadoes, hurricanes, or earthquakes, a trigger event is always near.  A simple cost-benefit analysis makes it logical to mitigate, plan, and prepare for the event’s next probable occurrence.  Hopefully, then, there are fewer casualties and less structural damage.

Unfortunately, more attention is paid to a disaster’s second phase, Impact and Response, than to Pre-Impact.  The trigger event itself and the response, when emergency management organizations and civil defense authorities kick into high gear, receive the most media attention.  Initially, search and rescue missions, needs assessments, and aid distributions make for heart-wrenching, human interest stories, but inevitably questions arise: Why were so many people killed?  Why were the losses so high?  Why were there no early warning systems and emergency evacuation plans?  Who is to blame?  This is when things really start to become political.

Logically, Impact and Response is followed by the third phase: Post-Impact (Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction), which then flows into a new Pre-Impact phase.  This is when the “window of opportunity” opens to mitigate, plan, and prepare for the next event and ask even more difficult political questions: Should we rebuild in the same place?  Should we build structures that are more resistant to natural forces?  Should we forcefully prevent people from building in risk-prone areas?  Should we strengthen our emergency management capabilities?  Should we install early warning systems?  Unfortunately, the straightforward answers will not be forthcoming because politicians and policy makers will be faced with resource limitations and competing demands and because they rarely understand that disasters are development opportunities.

The 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster will be known as the first big disaster of the social networking age.  Right now, the networks are buzzing, and the media spotlight is shining brightly on Haiti.  People are paying attention, and the international community is working feverishly to provide humanitarian relief.  The challenge, however, is maintaining the focus on Haiti for the next few years and weaning Haiti off its dependence on foreign aid.  Only long-term, sustainable development projects will pull the country up from its sorry status as the least developed, most vulnerable country in the Western Hemisphere.

Vincent T. Gawronski is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Birmingham-Southern College. He can be reached at

Musician Adam Franklin has never been one to sit still. The man has about three dozen releases through the revered Swervedriver,  Magnetic Morning and his own solo projects, including Bolts of Melody, his latest endeavor.

The Oxford-based Franklin put the final touches on an upcoming album — “I Could Sleep a Thousand Years” — just before boarding a plane to start his US tour, his third time touring the states in less than two years. You can click here to listen to his song “Champs” off Spent Bullets while reading!

Holly Lang/Pine Magazine: Tell me about your upcoming tour… Is it a national tour?

Adam Franklin: Yes, starting and finishing in NYC. We have only toured the Spent Bullets album once so far and that was as special guests of The Church but, the thing is, some of the ticket prices were high on that tour so I know that not everyone could come out to those shows. Plus of course we didn’t play some places such as Atlanta. It will be great to be back.

HL: How long since you were playing in the city? Last fall with Magnetic Morning?

AF: Yeah, I think that must have been November of 2008 and before that was June 2008 with Swervedriver I think

HL: The Swervedriver show is easily one of my favorites, as I’m sure it was with many others. And speaking of, how has the resurgence, of sorts, of Swervie been, as far as shows and reissues?

AF: It’s been great really. That US tour was amazingly well received and that continued onto the UK shows. This year we just played some more shows — a couple in London, one in Oxford where the band formed and we played the All Tomorrows Parties festival that My Bloody Valentine curated. The great thing about that was that a lot of the bands Swervedriver was into when we started were playing also – Sonic Youth, J Mascis, Bob Mould, Sonic Boom from Spacemen 3, the Valentines, etc. So we played a good set and J Mascis and Bob Mould came up to me afterwards saying it sounded great so that was nice.

HL: That’s fun! So was it sort of a homecoming of sorts, being around the influences, possibly, of some of your earlier years?

AF: Exactly. In fact, another way of looking at it is that most of the bands on the bill were, in fact, 40-somethings but that didn’t mean that the kids weren’t there! But yeah, it was really cool to be on that bill because when we did our very first demo I made a mixtape of my favorite bands at the time and snuck our songs on there to see how it sounded and then there we were playing with all those bands!

HL: And did the fit as well on the stage as it did on the mixtape?

AF: I think so, yeah. A Place To Bury Strangers were on before us and there were bands like Serena Maneesh on the bill also. There has been a kind of revival of that kind of music in recent years with younger bands playing perhaps a similar kind of rock and those guys are all really nice as well. Serena Maneesh said that when they saw that Swervedriver had been added to the bill, that’s when they decided they wanted to do it.

HL: That’s awesome, though, to bring something back somewhat full circle in several ways, through both the revival, as you said, of this style, but the realization of your own revival with it on stage with those who helped bring it all about.

AF: Let me just say that people said we sounded great and we felt we did. Plus playing a festival was really good because there would have been people there that hadn’t seen us for years and wouldn’t necessarily have gone to our own shows but would have been curious and so we ended up playing to about 3,000 people and they were noisy, but then so were we.

HL: Do you feel this resurgence of Swervedriver shows bear any sort of influence on your solo style, meaning that, by revisiting live some of the songs that served as a such a watershed musically, do you feel your current solo effort has been affected stylistically?

AF: It’s been interesting seeing how much more people are responding to that older sound, like when I went to Australia at the start of 2008 and met a lot of folks who are really into that kind of sound and scene but had never seen many of those bands play live, and I think that in a way I’ve gone back to that kind of a sound a little.

I suppose the Toshack Highway album in 2000 that was more electronic in some ways and then I did some releases that were more acoustic-based because I was doing solo acoustic shows at the time. But eventually I started embracing the electric guitar again which is really more what people want to hear from me anyway and in fact we just recorded a new album which is definitely more under the influence of my old band and that sound than anything else I’ve done of late.

HL: And this is I Could Sleep for a Thousand Years?

AF: Yes.

HL: How was the recording? Was it as global as Spent Bullets?

AF: Pretty much. We recorded the basic tracks and got the drums, bass and rough guitars down in NYC at Stratosphere studio. We then went up to Toronto again to do guitars, keyboards, singing etc. I mixed in Cardiff and tomorrow we’re mastering in Oxford, so the same as last time essentially, just New York instead of London

HL: Who all is a part of this album?

AF: Mikey Jones played drums on The Church tour and he also plays drums in Josh Stoddard, the bass player’s band The Still Out. Mikey was really into the idea of recording back in NYC after the tour since we were starting to really sort of lock-in and rock-out at the end of the tour.

The thing is, though, that Josh broke his foot quite early on during that tour, like after the sixth show or something so we had The Church’s touring keyboardist Craig Wilson step in so at the end of the tour we didn’t have a bass player. But our friend Matt Sumrow played bass on the recordings and he had played keys with us before but only ever in rehearsal and he also plays guitar with The Still Out as well as with Dean & Britta and he plays piano with Ambulance Ltd also. Of course, Locksley Taylor has played guitar with Bolts of Melody for some time now. This next album is actually going to be credited to AF & Bolts of Melody, in fact.

HL: I think many are curious about this album, as your style can be a shape shifter of sorts, at times, which I imagine is what lends towards having such a rabid fan base. Not very predictable, which is a good thing.

AF: I think this new album has quite a variation of songs but it’s weird because you can never tell how people are gonna react. Like with the last album (Spent Bullets), which is quite heavy in my mind, whether it’s the lyrics or the music itself, and yet some people said they thought it was light and didn’t rock! Or people said that they thought that the album might be more like Swervedriver because it was recorded right after the Swerve tour, well this one probably does have some more Swervesque songs but then others that are pulling in a different direction, but then it’s difficult to critique it when it’s your own music, I suppose.

HL: You seem to be able to distance yourself from your music to some degree. I do have to say, though, that what is easily one of my most favorite descriptors of an album, or at least a few songs on an album as: Scott Walker sound tracking a French spy movie.

AF: Ah yes, well, there was a big Scott Walker influence on both Spent Bullets and the Magnetic Morning album A.M., but whether you would actually pick up on it if you didn’t know Scott Walker’s music is another thing. It’s not like I was crooning or anything but the influence of the song “It’s Raining Today” is audible in different ways on about five of those songs, I would say!

HL: Well, it is a rather lovely song.

AF: It most certainly is. But there are lyrical nods to that song and others of his as well as sonic and melodic swipes

HL: From where did he come in your musical world? Someone of whom you’ve always been a fan, or a musician you came about recently?

AF: More recently, I knew the three big Walker Brothers tunes (“The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, “ “Make It Easy On Yourself”and “My Ship Is Coming In”) and then some people tried to get me into his solo albums but I couldn’t get past the voice and it was too rich for me. Then at some point I was able to take it and really got into it last year, read a couple of books and stuff.

He’s a very interesting character because a lot of the music is almost middle of the road sounding, on the surface, but then the lyrics are about not being able to pay your rent or the music gets actually quite psychedelic or avant-garde in places. I met someone at the Swervedriver show in L.A. Stephen Kijak, the guy that made the Scott Walker documentary 30 Century Man, and he told me Scott is a big fan of shoegaze music!

HL: Maybe there will be some rare recent tracks that somehow pop up and you’ll hear an Adam Franklin influence in there!

AF:  I hope so!

HL:  When do we get to hear your new album?

AF: It should be in the spring around May 2010.

HL: Another tour in support of that, possibly?

AF: Absolutely. In fact we may be back over for the SXSW festival.

HL: You know we’ll all want you to make another Atlanta stop somewhere in there, right?
 
AF: We won’t do it if there isn’t an Atlanta show in there!

Cars, trucks and buses emit considerable amounts of airborne pollution as they make their ways along city streets and highways. The fine particles, nitrogen dioxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) spewing out of tailpipes have been linked to a wide range of human health problems, from headaches to respiratory illness to cancer. Though Australian researchers found that exposure to these pollutants is actually higher while riding inside a vehicle than while riding a bike, turning your handlebars in the direction of back roads might still be a good idea, for safety’s sake as well.

Western Washington University Geophysicist Bernie Housen, concerned about the air quality on his own bicycle commute along busy Bellingham roads, recently launched a study of the magnetism in local trees to gauge air quality along his route and elsewhere in his region. The magnetism in a tree’s leaves is created by tiny particles of iron oxides and other pollutants that drift through the air, emanating primarily from eroding vehicle brake pads and diesel exhaust. The particles are small enough to pass through our nasal passages and get lodged in our lungs. Housen and his colleagues found 10 times as much magnetism on urban roadside tree leaves as on their rural counterparts that contend with little traffic.

Housen has also altered his own bike route to campus to avoid the more polluted thoroughfares. “One underlying concern is that if you are riding your bike, you are being more physically active; you are breathing deeper and breathing more air in, and so if you are doing that in an area where there is a concentrated elevation of this material it might not be such a good thing,” he added.

Ironically, many cities that offer dedicated bike lanes often lay them out right next to busy bus lanes, unintentionally ensuring that bicyclists breathe in as much diesel exhaust as possible. “I ride along one of these high-traffic bus routes,” Housen says, “and … there was between two and five or six times more magnetic fine particulate matter along the bus route than [on less-busy streets].” Housen would like to expand his research so it could be used by urban planners to better design bike and pedestrian routes so as not to intermingle so much diesel transit and pedestrian/bicycle traffic.

Of course, there are other ways to track urban pollution levels. In the UK, for instance, researchers from the government-funded Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council have created the Urban Pollution Monitoring Project, which builds and distributes GPS-enabled mobile pollution sensing systems that can be carried by hand or placed on a bike rack. The group is using data gleaned from the sensors to map where and when pollution levels are at their highest around London and other UK cities, and hopes to use its research to influence the way roads and urban areas are planned in the future as well.

Those who want or need to keep on riding through polluted areas should consider wearing an anti-pollution respiratory mask, many of which can filter out upwards of 95 percent of particulate pollution before it enters the human lung. Some leading manufacturers include Totobobo, G-Flow and Respro.