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King of the road
GREEN Reactor column
[Published in The Blue Paper newspaper on March 29, 2013.]
King of the Road
Listening to “citizen input” at the Key West Sustainability Advisory Board’s workshop on bicycling this week, I was presented with the idea that Key West should be a town were automobiles take a back seat to the island’s bicycles. Interesting concept. It’s not entirely new, since there are other bicycle-centric communities out there. Some are also islands, most without road access from the mainland. Others are small subsets of larger towns. Up to now, millions of Key West tourists each year (with cars being the most popular way to get here) have obscured this vision from me, but I believe it deserves a closer look.
Bicycling has always been my main transportation here (closely followed by walking, then occasional car-treks with the wife). There are plenty of bicyclists more avid than I, but (more…)
Blue is the new GREEN
GREEN Reactor column
[Published in The Blue Paper newspaper on March 15, 2013.]
Blue is the new GREEN
After over 50 local articles in most of the local papers (not to mention all those letters to the editors), I’ve happily come aboard the brand new local journal: The Blue Paper. The old “Blue Paper” was just the nickname for “Key West The Newspaper” or “KWTN”; this new journal is really named “The Blue Paper”. This paper won’t be limiting itself to any one topic at a time, it’s ready to follow any important breaking issue at any time. The Blue Paper takes investigative journalism to the next level. I look forward to adding my activistic and educational exposition to the mix. (Did I meet my syllable quota in that last sentence? :- )
For those who haven’t caught my “intro” columns in other local papers, a quick synopsis: My “internet handle” has been Reactor for 20 years. The roots of that nickname come from: 1) my relentless work ethic; 2) my strong social media reflex impulse; and 3) a not-so-well-known album (Re-ac-tor) by musical sage and peace and environmental activist Neil Young. To my fellow Neil Young Fans – the Rusties – I have been known as RE*AC*TOR. When I became a full-time Keys resident, the handle expanded to Key West Reactor. Later my column in another local paper shifted that to KONK REACTOR.
But after five years on the board of Last Stand and four years on Key West’s city Sustainability Advisory Board, (more…)
Into the GREEN
KONK REACTOR column
[Published in the KONK Life newspaper on March 14, 2013.]
Into the GREEN
A couple of months ago I recapped my previous year’s contributions to KONK Life. Anyone who follows this column knows that its focus rambles all over the map, rarely ever on the same topic in consecutive columns. I’ve heard from some of you that you like it that way, and I too like and follow other columns of similar ilk. But I also feel the time has come for me to concentrate my focus — and that focus should target the GREEN spectrum.
As many of you know, a while back – at the time that I embraced the Green Party — I set up a Facebook page to share news and observations of GREEN issues, local, national and global. It has featured several of my green-related columns from here (most recently the one before this one) and lots and lots of news and views from all over. That Facebook page is the “GREEN Reactor” page (also easily accessible from outside Facebook via “GreenReactor.net”). I established the page as a place to segregate the GREEN stuff that I would have posted to my own Facebook wall (timeline) — so that people on my Friends list wouldn’t have to deal with it if they weren’t interested.
But for those who do see the importance of staying informed about GREEN issues (yep, I’m trying to shame the rest of you… *smile*) it just takes (more…)