Reusable Part 1: Bring Your Own Cup!

"There is no "away."-----Scott Anderson (my dad, on discarding trash)

I'll put my challenge up front: get a reusable travel cup with a lid, preferably steel. Carry it with you whenever you leave the house. Set yourself an ultimatum: if you don't have your reusable cup, you can't buy a to-go beverage from a coffee shop, gas station, or restaurant. That includes coffee, tea, hot chocolate, soda, or juice. Simple. It's a solid first step on the path of minimum waste.

On to the logic:

A while back, I put up a blog post about the need to curtail the use of disposable containers, such as flimsy plastic water bottles and paper or styrofoam coffee cups. It didn't exactly change the world, but my readership is still, um, growing. The containers that bug me the most are the ubiquitous white paper coffee cups. They are almost as annoying to me as those blue plastic bags with the smiley faces from 10 or so years ago that you'd see stuck on fences and in trees. I am not trying to vilify the coffee shops (or Wal Mart), but I am trying to get through to those folks who continue to accept single-use paper cups rather than bringing their own reusable, refillable mug. It's a simple issue to solve.

I plan to try to convince you that this issue is a problem from a couple different angles, environmental and financial.

Environmentally speaking, there are several steps in the life cycle of any item, and a paper cup is no exception. The cup, lid, and the cardboard "hand saver" sleeve must be manufactured from paper or plastic, and sent to your favorite coffee shop via truck, train, or ship. After you place your order with the barista, the cup--for the briefest part of its life--is put into use. You enjoy a piping hot cup of joe, hopefully taking the time to note all the wonderful textures and flavors in commercially roasted coffee (usually, a burnt flavor), and experience (or not) the slight paper, wax, and plastic undertone. After you empty your cup, it finds its way into the trash. Someone empties the trash into the dumpster, and a big, diesel-burning truck comes and picks up the dumpster and hauls it to a transfer station. The contents of the big truck are dumped in an even bigger trailer and hauled to a large, centralized landfill. Every weekday, all day, these trucks make the rounds around town, so keep that in mind when you throw stuff away. The upside to a paper cup is that it could possibly break down into building blocks for life, but only if it's exposed to soil & microbes. Burying things in a landfill, unfortunately, entombs them in a sterile cocoon that does NOT promote degradation, not that that makes any difference for the plastics in your cup--they will never break down regardless of their exposure to the elements.

What does that mean for you? Well, for each cup of coffee you buy and consume in a disposable cup with a sleeve and lid, you generate 3-4 pieces of eventual trash. Lest you think that "I am only one person and can't possibly have much impact with my one paper cup," please consider this thought experiment. There are roughly 12,000 people in my town. If 10% of them get a cup of coffee in a disposable cup every day, that is 1,200 cups that end up in the dumpster each day. We happen to have at least 4 places in town where you can get a cup of coffee to go, so I don't think my guess is too high. A small (12 ounce capacity) cup weighs about 0.5 ounces.

1200 cups x 0.5 oz/cup x 1 lb/16 oz = 37.5 pounds of cups per day. According to Google, 1200 Cups works out to about 10 cubic feet of volume, but I'm guessing the volume decreases by 75% or so when the cup is crushed, giving 1200 paper cups a volume of say 2.5 cubic feet. For reference, my 100-pound chocolate lab (Rusty the dog) takes up roughly 3 cubic feet. So, my rough calculation for my small town's daily cup-to-landfill total is 37.5 pounds/2.5 cubic feet.

Every day. Multiply that by a work week (5 days; 187.5 lbs/12.5 ft^3). Or a work-month (20 days; 750 lbs/50 ft^3). Take it as far as you want, but my point is it gets to be a lot of trash, just in cups. To truly illustrate it, buy a cup of coffee each day in a paper cup, but instead of throwing the cups away, stack them in a conspicuous place, like on your nightstand or in the passenger seat of your car. See how long it takes for an unsightly pile to accumulate. If you can, extrapolate that to your town, and then your county, and then your state, and start thinking about where we are going to put all those cups when we run out of landfill space.

Maybe you don't care about the environment. I pity you, your progeny, and all living beings, but unfortunately, I won't be able to sway you from that angle. Let's try money, since most folks have a fairly strong grasp of, and attachment to, that medium. At $2.00 or so, a cup of regular ol' coffee at Starbucks seems fairly expensive. I can get it down to $0.57, though, if I use my own cup (most coffee shops offer a discount for a "personal cup" or a "refill"). Let's say for the sake of argument that that discount is $1.

My favorite reusable travel cup was* the bestickered stainless steel beauty pictured above. It cost the relatively hefty sum of $22, and cost the planet some more in extraction of raw materials (metals for the cup and oil for the handle, lid, and base) and emissions from manufacture. Luckily for me, it was also a gift.**

Let's set the cost of the cup at $20 because, for this argument, I'm primarily concerned with the money that leaves my pocket (and I like round numbers). If I save $1 each time I fill 'er up, my reusable cup will pay for itself in about 20 cups of coffee. If I buy a cup of coffee every work day (which I don't!), the cup pays for itself in 20 days or so of refills. But then, I can also fill it up when I leave home with whatever beverage strikes my fancy (and whatever I have the raw materials to make). I can also take it camping. So, the reusable cup has added value besides replacing a paper cup.

I've laid out a logical argument against paper cups from environmental and fiscal points of view. My arguments echo sentiments that have been expressed for 50 years or more, so, why are paper cups so ubiquitous? I saw two at a small staff meeting last week (2 out of 12 people (16%) had paper cups with lids and hand preservers in front of them!). It could be because they are a simple, easy, no commitment solution to the conundrum of consuming a beverage. Have we reached the point where we are too lazy to keep track of our own reusable cups? Or, maybe a disposable cup is a status symbol, a way to say, "I can afford coffee from shop X so I don't have to care about consumerism." If you value that image, then keep and reuse your paper cup. No one will know you didn't just buy it! And at $1, it's pretty darn cheap, though I doubt it'll last much past a week of solid use. 

The ultimate solution to this cup problem--from both perspectives--is to not buy that beverage in the first place. You don't have to worry about any of the environmental or financial costs outlined above. Brew your coffee at home. Even at the extreme price of $15/pound for the free trade organic stuff, you can brew coffee far more cheaply yourself (on average, a pound of coffee lasts my wife and I a month, and I guess-timate we drink 90 cups/month (3 cups/day) giving a per cup cost of 16 cents. To take the "less disposable stuff" tack one step further, take and refill your own jar or container instead of getting a new paper or foil bag each time you get coffee (beans or ground). Even if you go through a pound a month, that's still $0.50 per day ($15/30 days), far cheaper than commercially brewed caffeinated tar.

Next up on my list of disposable containers to avoid: plastic bags.

Thanks for reading!

For another (albeit similar) take on this topic, check out http://wunderbudder.blogspot.com/2013/08/saving-world-one-cup-at-time.html.

*Unfortunately, I left this cup on a plane during a recent business trip, so it has disappeared into the depths of Southwest Airlines' lost & found. Dang it!

**I was sort of curious what the mark up on this cup was, so I did a quick search and found this one (and a bunch of other cheap, fascinating stuff for sale) for about $3.50; though it's not identical, it's similar enough to tell me that a brand-name logo is fairly expensive. I'd have to dig much deeper (and perhaps quit my job and become a freelance journalist with multiple trips to China) to get to the emissions and human cost side of things, but I'm guessing the profit sharing where my cup came from doesn't include factory workers in China.

Mostly Recycled Project: Giant Work Table

I'm always walking the fine line between having a functional shop with a variety of materials and supplies on hand, and having progress-impeding clutter. This work table was an attempt to simultaneously address my piles o' supplies and our need for a large craft table in my wife's art studio, but to do so while buying as few supplies as possible.

The work surface was the basis of this project. For that part, I happened to have a large hollow core door. It was my garage workbench at our old house, and before that, my wife had it as her work table. Long before that, it was an actual door in my wife's childhood home. Anyway, she gave up her work table when we had kids and she had to vacate her studio to make room, but when we moved a few months ago--and she got a studio of her own again--she wanted it back. I had beaten it up pretty good in the garage, and had to resurface it. I chose Masonite (also called hardboard) and had to buy that new. 

The actual first thing I did was plan. I talked her into a trestle-style table base with a shelf on the bottom for storage. That combines good foot/leg room under the table with good strength and stability. Next (and, after I'd started, unfortunately), I decided I needed to practice making mortise and tenon joints, so I chose that as my joinery method (backed up by screws and bolts in certain places). Finally, I gathered up all wood I had around and planned the size and dimensions of the legs, bracing, and shelves around that.

I designed it so it could be broken down and moved easily in 6 pieces--4 legs, the trestle base, and the top.  I chose "lap" joints--where material is cut from each of the boards being joined--to attach the legs, and these were secured with 1/4" furniture bolts and T-nuts (unused from a previous project; 12 in all). With the lap joints, the weight of the table is borne on the wood structure rather than the bolts/hardware. This strategy minimizes hardware (and expense).

End view.

I covered the "door" with Masonite, a hard, smooth, durable work surface. The Masonite was glued down with Liquid Nails "Project" adhesive and held in place around the edges with 18-gauge nails (I have a pneumatic nailer which makes these kinds of projects a lot less tedious and a lot more fun). I had to buy the Masonite and the Liquid Nails new, but that was limited to a total cost of about $15.

Here is the finished product installed in my wife's studio.

Top/corner view, showing the hardboard covering on the top. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Thanks for reading!

My Latest Piano Recital

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! This is likely my last post of 2014, and I'm looking forward to a little rest, relaxation, and reflection for the next couple of weeks. We have a few gigs in February, but they all depend on our local ski hill being open. The ski hill opening depends on getting more snow. We have about 6" on the hill right now. One of my band mates told me he'd read that by 2060--if this warming trend keeps up--our ski season will be about 6 weeks long in February and March and will be relegated to the high peaks in Colorado and Utah. Ugh.

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On December 7, my music students and I put on our 3rd piano recital. It was a great experience for everyone, in one way or another, and I think we all learned a lot. I recorded the event (let me know if you're interested in how, but computers make is SO EASY to get reasonable recordings) and I've been listening and reflecting on how well everyone did, and how we can do better.

Before I get to that, though, I'm amazed that my piano teaching "business" has grown the way it has. In 2010, I started this endeavor with 1 student who wanted to learn to read and play out of a fake book. She didn't know it at the time, but she really wanted to understand scales and chords. D.K.'s kids joined me in 2012, but one decided to take up the cello instead, so I was down to 2. I added a 3rd in 2012, then a 4th, and then 2 guitar students in 2013. This year, my enrollment swelled from 6 to 15, which prompted schedule rearrangement and much thought about priorities. I really enjoy teaching music, and I enjoy working with little kids much more than I thought I would. That said, I'm not quite ready to quit the day job, because it's pretty compelling to manipulate matter on a molecular level to create new compounds and materials (yes, that's what a chemist does) and it earns a good living. The more compelling thought, though, is that I can attract business, even though 1) I hardly advertise, 2) there are several good piano and guitar teachers in town, and 3) I don't have a music or teaching degree, something that the mainstream social construct tells us would be useful. Apparently folks are ready for a different approach. My mission statement is, unofficially, to bring up the next generation of jazzers and rockers, if they are so inclined. Or, as my band mate Jeff puts it, to train "functional" musicians. More on that in another post.

Back to the recital. Of my 15 students, 12 were able to play solos in this recital, giving an event that was about 25 minutes long (these were fairly short pieces). I did find it interesting that most of my students avoided the standard classical material that pianists have relied on for years, despite the fact that I did offer some simpler Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart compositions as choices. My own piano teacher gave me a great model, actually--while she insisted that I play from the standard classical repertoire, she also brought in other materials, such as ragtime (which I still enjoy). I recently found a composer, Bill Boyd, who wrote 4 of the 14 pieces that were played in this recital. There are several composers and arrangers who are writing jazz, blues, and ragtime music for kids, a development that I find very exciting as a teacher who is interested in teaching mainly jazz, blues, and ragtime.

I give each student several choices of pieces and let them pick what they want to perform at a recital. That way, they have "buy in" and are more motivated. Many had their pieces memorized weeks before the recital. I don't think I'll change that approach. I am rethinking my "no sheet music at the recital" policy. A couple students could have really used their music during their performance. I still want the music memorized because it looks more professional and polished, but stuff comes up--one kid was sick, then traveling with her folks, then busy with other activities, and as such, didn't have her piece memorized as well as she would have liked. Memorization strategies will be a significant part of lessons in 2015; May's recital will involve more challenging pieces (I'm debating between a couple 5-page ragtime pieces for my own study), as well as some duets, both 1-piano-4-hands and piano-guitar.

One aspect of this recital that stands out, though, is how nervous everyone was. I've been thinking hard about this for a couple weeks now, and dealing with stage fright will be part of our lessons leading up to the next recital in May. I plan to spend some time over the Christmas and New Year break looking for material for the next recital, but I also plan to do some reading on strategies for dealing with performance anxiety, starting with this article from The Bulletproof Musician blog. I play a lot, and I know how to channel stage fright into increased focus. It's taken a while to get to that point, though.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Holidays!

A New Musical Adventure: Accompanying a Soloist

Recently, I had the privilege of accompanying a nice young lady ("C.B."; I don't have permission to publish the full name) for her judged "Solo and Ensemble" performance. She was playing the flute, I was playing the piano. She had been working with a private local flute teacher, and I took about a month to learn the piano part of the piece as perfectly as I could play it. C.B. and I practiced a couple times so that we could get used to playing together, and, come Saturday Dec 12, she nailed it at her judged event! It was the best I'd heard her play the song, and she got a "1," which is the top score possible. Even though I'd only known her for a couple weeks, I was still really proud of her hard work and achievement.

I didn't ask for payment for this one, but it was still really cool to get a thank you note and a gift card.

During this process, however, I was reminded of earlier mis-adventures in accompanying soloists. The last time I tried my hand at this, I was in high school and the soloist was also a flutist. It didn't go nearly as well, although, if memory serves me correctly, I did play a killer rendition of Joplin's "The Strenuous Life" for my solo performance later that day. And I accompanied a couple of solo vocalists in high school as well for talent shows and such. I learned the most about work as an accompanist, however, during my 2-year stint as pianist for the Octave One Vocal Jazz Ensemble at the College of Idaho in the mid-90s. I reached the point where I could transpose jazz chord changes on the fly, though that's a skill you lose if you don't use it. And I don't use it. So I've lost it. A new challenge, perhaps?

Thanks for reading!

My First Elk Hunt

This spring, After a 20+ year hunting hiatus, I decided to put in for an elk. For those of you unfamiliar with the vernacular, "put in" means to apply for the lottery drawing (with a $70 fee...) to the New Mexico Dept. of Game & Fish for a permit to go into the woods with a high-powered rifle, kill a large animal, and return home with a bunch of meat. I "put in," and my name was drawn for an area close to home, for a 5-day window in November.

Since this was my first real participation in the New Mexico hunting community, I watched in fascination (and took some notes) as the camo came out and people started talking about scouting, stalking, hunting, "sighting in" rifles (yes, I did this, too; see my post on the target stand), and whether or not they were going to camp out during their hunt. I got to postpone these decisions and activities a bit as my hunt was right before Thanksgiving, and my music schedule had a bit of a lull in October & November. I still had to prepare, though, and here was my sort of general checklist.

Sighting in rifle: check. I still need to work on "squeezing" the trigger so I don't jerk (I've been working on this since I first started shooting at 12 years old!), but my dad's .270 shot straight and sure, even out to 250+ yards.

Scouting: check. My friend, Eric, and I spent a couple weekends in the woods looking for elk sign (droppings, tracks, bedding/sleeping areas) and found a few likely spots.

Supplies: check. I had almost everything I needed from my pursuits as a backcountry enthusiast, and a friend who moved to Alaska several years back had given me a nice heavy-duty canvas camoflage coat. I went ahead and negated the camo, though, with a bright orange vest over the top (so other people could see me and not shoot me if I was inadvertently in the line of fire). I did find it interesting, though, that most of the folks I ran into hunting were camoflaged head to toe. When I was a kid, only archery hunters, duck hunters, and the military were so attired. Anyway, the only things I bought for this endeavor were a 3 gallon water jug, food, and gas for the truck.

Partners: check. My friend Dan joined me for 2 days and Eric joined me for one. I skipped 2 days because I was exhausted. My lovely wife offered to go one day, but Dan stepped in at the last minute.

The experience: I decided not to camp as my hunt was close to home. However, despite having hunted as a kid, this was a relatively new experience for me. I had never hunted for elk, only deer, and I really had to consider how I would get a 500 pound animal out of the woods if I shot it. I brought along a cheap kiddie sled, made some game bags out of an old sheet, read a lot, and watched a few YouTube videos on harvesting the meat from a dead animal. But more to the point, I was in charge of my hunt. When I was a kid, Dad drove, read the maps, chose the spots, maintained the guns, and loaded the ammo. Now I get to do those things, except the ammo, because I don't have the equipment (yet). Not that I mind, really. My 4Runner did awesome on some pretty rugged roads, and I got to see some great country on foot and from the truck. And my efforts in learning navigation through ski patrol paid off as I wandered through the woods mostly un-lost.

Unfortunately, all that effort and preparation were fruitless with respect to the ultimate goal of harvesting an elk. In fact, I only saw 2 elk, and that was after dark in our nearby national park while driving home (and they were, consequently, illegal to shoot). My wife also saw two elk, right at the edge of town, silhouetted against the skyline above the gas station, but they were also off-limits. I did, however, see 12 deer, 6 coyotes, 2 bald eagles, 3 turkeys, an owl, several hawks, and countless squirrels, rabbits, crows, and woodpeckers. I got to see places I hadn't seen before at times of day (dawn and dusk) that few people bother to experience. And I alternately froze and baked--on Monday, it snowed. On Wednesday, I was way too hot.

But why bother? In addition to experiencing all the aforementioned natural wonders, there's an intentional philosophy around it. My family and I have made the conscientious choice to avoid food from factory farms and their overuse of antibiotics (among other things), and we came to the conclusion that the most basic, simplest way to know the source of your food is to grow/raise/harvest/kill it yourself. Hence, this process of hunting.

The process of hunting also encourages fully experiencing the outdoors. It requires planning, stealth, observation skills, memory, and diplomacy (dealing with other people as they, too, have unfilled elk tags!). Being able to carefully and competently operate a 4x4 helps, too. The senses are heightened, and I found myself noticing things I might not have if I'd been driving faster than 5 mph, mountain biking, or cross-country skiing. All in all, I had a great time wandering around outside. I plan to put in again next year.

Thanks for reading!

Recycled Project: Rifle Target Stand

For the first time in a very long time, I drew for an elk hunt. It's at the end of November, the weekend before Thanksgiving. The next few weekends will be spent in the hills, scouting and sighting in the rifle.

It occurred to me in this process that I needed something to hold the targets up. My dad had one that he made out of scraps, and I was thus inspired to do the same. This project is 100% recycled, except for some glue.

I had some old, well-used 2x6 lumber lying around, so I cut it down to make the uprights and back legs. I designed a groove that holds a board to which I could tape my targets and slide it in/out from the top. The top of the frame is composed of two thin pieces sandwiching a tongue on the uprights and bolted together. The bottom of the frame that holds the target is held in place with a mortise & tenon joint, as are the braces at the bottom of the stand. The back legs hang slightly lower than the front legs so that the target will be more or less vertical when it is standing up, which will be nice at 100 yards. The hinges were old cabinet hinges from our last house. Since the frame is made out of 1 1/2" thick material, it is fairly substantial, which will keep it from blowing over in a stiff breeze. A piece of parachute cord passes through some random holes in the cross braces to keep the stand from splaying out.

That's the official U.S. Army "50 ft small bore rifle target" in the frame. My dad had a box of probably 1000 of these targets, so I took 100 or so. I hope I can see those circles at 100 yards.

All in all, this was a quick and easy project. I plan to try it out in the near future.

Thanks for reading!

24 is Sometimes Not Enough, or Why I Try to Blog

By 24, I don't mean my age. In fact, I turn 39 very soon, and I wouldn't go back to 24 unless I could know what I know now (kind of like the old song...). No, I'm talking hours. I'm struggling to find the time to do everything on my list. I need to get the swamp cooler ready for its hibernation--first frost is imminent. The rental house chimney needs a screen (a bird flew down the other day). The truck fan is on the fritz, and both it and the car need oil changes. On top of that list are other commitments, such as the family, eating food and drinking water, exercise, my chemistry day job and my side occupation as piano teacher and musician, and the "honey do" list (I just finished my wife's big work table, which I'll be posting about later, but I also have some book shelves and a vanity to finish for my daughter). The yarn store sold out of fishing flies, so I'm falling asleep at the tying vise most nights trying to fill orders. I don't know if I want more that 24 hours in a day, though, because I'd fill those up, too. There's always a new idea brewing, like the open mic night I'd like to start and the acoustic jam session and the piano group and the "manly" Christmas stockings I'd like to sell this year.

7 boxes down, 3 more to go. Then on to the grasshopper mimics, and the "flies I like best" mix. Like I said, there's always a new idea brewing.

So, given all that, the first thing to slip off my priority list was this blog. I like to keep it up, if for no other reason than it gives me a good chronicle of my thoughts and accomplishments. At any given time, I probably have about 4 blog posts that I'm working on (right now that number is up to 7). Some require research. Some require pictures. But there's always a bottleneck. I have great respect (and a bit of jealousy) for the folks who can work full-time and maintain their weekly (or more often!) blog posts. Shannon Hayes (weekly) and Ben Hewitt (more often) come to mind, as they are both farmers/radical homemakers. But they make a regular effort. Good writers have all said that honing the craft requires daily practice. That's true of every other craft or art or practice, too, I suppose. Music definitely falls into that category!

I've dabbled in writing off and on throughout my adult life, but the blog has led to my most regular and prolific output. The biggest upside to writing in this format is that the data is stored online, somewhere else, and I don't have to pack my laptop (or even a thumb drive) around with me to be productive. I just need a computer I can log into. Another benefit is that I can write about whatever I want to write about and post it here. That would probably change as soon as I sought to monetize the blog and expand my audience, but for now, I am content to have it be free and easy for all of us. I like the purely democratic nature of the internet, and, since I do other things to make my living, I want to keep my blog open-ended. Hopefully, if you are reading this, you think that I have had something interesting or even useful to say. I have a lot of interests, and I'm hoping that something on my blog appeals to someone else, too (you?). That someone else can forward it on to another person, and we can all share some piece of life together. I marvel at our connectedness.

Thanks for reading!