• HEALTH & HOME,  House Health,  Think Piece

    Radon, an Invisible, Odorless Northwest Issue

    Portland and Vancouver have a radon issue– one that has been here for thousands of years–and it is not going to go away. The soil in the Willamette Valley, much of Clark County, and the Columbia River Gorge has a granite component, Ice Age material brought down the Columbia River from Montana repeatedly between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, during the Missoula Floods. It is found as sand, gravel, cobblestones, even boulders. This granite, mixed into the upper layers of our soil, contains uranium, which breaks down naturally over time and produces radon gas. Invisible and with no smell, radon is drawn upward into our homes (regardless of architectural style,…

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    COMMUNITY,  Education

    Place-based Education: Connecting Classroom and Community

    Something’s Happening Here As you stroll down the halls of your neighborhood school at nine o’clock on a Wednesday morning, you notice that something is different. Many of the classrooms are empty; the students are not in their places with bright, shiny faces. Where are they? In the town woodlot, a forester teaches tenth graders to determine which trees should be marked for an upcoming thinning project. Downtown, a group of middle school students are collecting water samples in an urban stream to determine if there’s enough dissolved oxygen to support reintroduced trout. Out through the windows, you can see children sitting on benches writing poems. Down the way, a…

  • ENERGY,  Think Piece

    How to Stop Energy from Leaking out your Windows & Doors

    In an economy struggling to recover, businesses and individuals alike are trimming costs wherever possible. Many homeowners are choosing to put their budgets on a diet — and a good place to start eliminating unnecessary costs is with energy use. Most homeowners pay dearly for the convenience of appliances, climate control, and electric lighting. Among the top home energy expenses are heating and cooling. There are ways, however, to reduce the cost of these conveniences with little effort. Climate Control By far, the largest energy expense in the home is space heating, which accounts for 45% of home energy usage. Cooling accounts for another large chunk. Together, these two forms…