PHOTO BY ALAN FREED

On Feb. 2, from Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Penn., Punxsutawney Phil will make his 123rd prediction* as to whether winter is almost over or if there's still more to come. If Phil, the world's most famous groundhog — a member of the marmot family, Marmota monax, also known as woodchucks or whistle pigs, for the high-pitched sound they make (click the link and scroll to the bottom of the page) — sees his shadow, we're in for another six weeks of wintery weather.

While Groundhog Day festivities may sound like some small, quaint tradition, the holiday is actually quite a big to-do, especially after the making of Bill Murray's 1993 movie of the same name. According to John Hallman of the Punxsutawney Weather Discovery Center, a regular turnout for the ceremony before the movie's release was a solid five to 8,000 people. The year Murray attended, the number of participants soared to more than 30,000, and has remained robust ever since.

Not sure what all the fuss is about? Check out this fun video to learn more about the history and ritual of Groundhog Day — well worth the 6:08 minutes.

Want to have your own Groundhog Day celebration? Phil comes out to make his prediction at daybreak, about 7:25 a.m. But be warned, there are many imposter groundhogs trying to get into the spotlight. Make sure you're seeing the real McCoy and check out coverage of the ceremony at the official Punxsutawney Groundhog Club website — where you'll also find Groundhog Day activities, Groundhog Day Poetry and a recipe for Groundhog Cookies.

And if Groundhog Day isn't for you? You can satisfy your inner scrooge with a helping of Groundhog Stew. (No, really, there's even a recipe for Woodchuck Pie.) To each his own.

There's even a great old Appalachian song called "Groundhog." While the lyrics aren't sung in this rendition, the young gentleman below has by far the neatest version of it being played that I could find on YouTube (followed closely, for sheer entertainment value, by The Whistle Pigs "Groundhog" jam session, in which the washboard is literally on fire — though neither the audio nor visual quality of the video are great).

 However you celebrate, Happy Groundhog Day!

*It's official: Punxsutawney Phil spied his shadow, predicting that winter won't be leaving any time soon.

President-elect Barack Obama has asked Americans to participate in a national day of service on Monday, Jan. 19. The day coincides with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and comes one day before Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.

Politicians and celebrities are lining up to appear at high-profile community service events, but the most important people involved in Monday’s happenings, however, will be you, the volunteers.

Search USAservice.org’s national registry of Monday’s community service events to discover projects taking place near you. If you’re interested in organizing an event for your own community or nonprofit organization, check out these resources and tips to help you get started. 

Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first celebrated in 1986, and Congress pronounced it a day of service in 1994. Thanks to the attention it has received from Obama and his inaugural committee, this year’s day of service will likely bring out record numbers of volunteers. We hope you’ll be one of them!

ISTOCKPHOTO

Last month coal ash from a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) power plant flooded parts of eastern Tennessee. An official, Tom Kilgore, from the coal-burning power plant testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Thursday and admitted that the plant’s containment ponds had not been adequately repaired after previous leaks.

The inadequate repairs along with heavy rains may have lead to the dike-break on Dec. 22 at the Kingston Fossil Plant, which released 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge. The sludge covered hundreds of acres in rural neighborhoods and contaminated the Emory River compromising the drinking water supply.

No one was injured but coal ash contains heavy metals such as, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury. In large amounts, these metals have been linked to cancers, respiratory diseases, nervous system disorders and reproductive damage.

Kilgore said TVA is willing to buy the affected properties from residents and possibly sell them back after the clean up. But some view this as a larger environmental issue.

The New York Times reported that Senate Committee Chairwoman, Barbara Boxer, of California, passed around a large Mason jar of sludge from the spill at the committee hearing. She said the spill showed the need for strict regulations of fly ash and closer oversight of the TVA.

“The federal government has the power to regulate these wastes, and inaction has allowed this enormous volume of toxic material to go largely unregulated,” Boxer said.

Boxer has pushed for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to declare coal ash a hazardous waste and create national standards for its storage.

Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee agreed.

“TVA needs to do more, the state needs to do more and it may be that the federal government through the EPA needs to do more,” Alexander said.

According to the New York Times, more than 1,300 dumps in the United States contain billions of gallons of fly ash, leaving legislators worried about the possibility of another major spill.

Wish your friends and family happy holidays with this fun, animated e-card. In it, Rudolph gets a special gift from Santa — an energy-efficient upgrade!

At first, I just wanted to write about the present-free (or present-minimal) Christmas. It’s something we’ve done in my immediate family, without any formal agreement, for several years now. And let me be the first to say that it’s great. Better than great: It’s amazing — really — everything Christmas or holidays in general should be, in my humble opinion. Because without presents, the focus has to go somewhere else, and the next obvious options — food, family — are what it’s all about. And boy is it fun.

But then I got to thinking about what a present-free holiday means outside of our homes, say, in the world of business and people earning a living from that business (which is pretty much all of us). And I was realizing that Christmas this year (or any other pending holiday that can involve gift giving) just got simpler and more complicated, all at once.

First, the complicated part:

My entire life my dad has owned his own businesses making handcrafted percussion instruments — objects that visually are beautiful and musically are something even more. Not being a percussionist, I’m not the ideal judge, and am obviously biased; but I know from those who do understand — his friends, customers and competitors — that they’re highly unusual in their quality and sound. This makes them almost invaluable to those who use them, yet they’re still far from the staples that people buy regardless of the economy, such as food and warm socks. (Unless, of course, you’re one of those goofy drummer types.)

Being the daughter of a businessman, I get that if people don’t go shopping, business doesn’t happen. And it’s a thorough cycle: When the economy tumbles, people shop less, and the less they shop, the farther the economy tumbles. That's one devil of a problem we’ve got to figure out if we’re going to live sustainably as a species, but that’s a bigger conversation than this post, and frankly, one I’m not yet knowledgeable enough to tackle without making a fool of myself. (You can look for informed coverage of this topic at Rancho Cappuccino.)

So, while I want to tell you about the brilliance of a present-minimal holiday, I also get that if we all stop shopping, right now of all times, that, baby, things aren’t going to get any better. And after a few years of hearing “go shopping!” as the directive following any bad news, the last thing I feel like doing is telling anybody to go shopping. Not to mention that I imagine no number of stocking stuffer purchases is going to be enough to turn around the economy right now. I suppose maybe the point of all of this is just that I feel a little guilty about suggesting that everyone minimize their shopping, and realize that some of these simple decisions can have some rather complicated consequences.

 But, now that the musing and guilt is out of the way, on to the simple parts:

1. People are rightly worried about their jobs and money, so saving money makes good sense (ooh, and I love good old simple common sense!).
2. Present-free and present-minimal celebrations are, trust me on this, really where it’s at. Be there, or be square.

Yes, this list of simple stuff is a lot shorter than the musings on the more complicated aspects — as is appropriate. But those simple bits are really big, and as long as you have food on your table and a roof over your head, the elements that are wrapped up in those two little points are everything. Think friends, family, food, peace of mind, games, laughing, bear hugs* — and don’t forget financial solvency!

Not only do you get more time and energy to focus on what really matters, but research shows that people who give and receive fewer gifts are happier than their more gift-ed counterparts. Just think, you could spend your evenings in front of the fire, rather than in line at the mall. Maybe you would have room in the budget for a great cheese that everyone can enjoy, if you’re not spending hundreds on presents. And when the holidays are gone and the decorations are back in the box, you won’t be facing crazy bills or credit card statements, or the stress that goes with them. You won’t be finding room for items you didn’t really need or want. And this list doesn’t even cover all of the environmental benefits of a less material holiday: less shipping, producing, packaging and disposing.

This isn’t an argument for no presents, though if that works for your family – go for it! I still participate in the gift exchange at my grandmother’s, where we all draw names and purchase one gift. Last year, I saw a stunning ornament that I knew my mom would love, so I gave it to her. But only because I knew she would love it, because I knew she would have room for it and enjoy it, and because it wasn’t going to just add to a pile of stuff or make my bank account suffer. It was exactly as it should be, again, in my opinion.

For more on the benefits of a present-free or present-minimal holiday, check out the Christmas with No Presents blog post from No Impact Man (Colin Beavan), plus read Beavan’s full article on the subject from Yes! magazine.

 *If “bear hug” doesn’t mean anything to you, consider this Christmas the perfect time to check it out. Find the best hugger in your group, give ‘em a two-armed, full-on, full-strength (unless this person is a lot smaller than you, of course) squeeze – and really squeeze! My dad and I have spent years perfecting the bear hug, and while I may be nearly 27 years old, I still get lifted off the ground with a good bear hug. Trust me on this one, too, the holidays are perfect bear-hug season.

In the near future, humanity will be challenged by the converging trends of energy depletion and climate change. It will be necessary for us to transition into a culture that consumes drastically less, and to shift away from the paradigm of perpetual material growth.  As part of this transition, the means for securing food, water, energy and waste management must be re-localized into people’s home communities. As currently more than 50 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, it will be critical to make our cities more sustainable.

The book Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A Do-It-Ourselves Guide, written by Stacy Pettigrew and myself (South End Press, 2008), is a collection of skills, tools and technologies usable by urban residents wanting to have more local access and control over life's essential resources. Through practical descriptions and wonderfully vibrant illustrations, the book describes how to build sustainable infrastructure using affordable, simple designs that utilize salvaged and recycled materials. In addition, the book promotes radical sustainability, a philosophy that emphasizes the interconnection between ecological and social justice struggles.

Useful ideas for aspiring sustainable city dwellers include:

Make a duckweed pond: Raise duckweed, a tiny, floating protein rich water plant in a kiddy pool. Using only sunlight and nutrients, duckweed can double its mass every other day. The duckweed can then be harvested and used as a food for humans, chickens and fish, or be used as a “green manure” for building soil fertility. 

Raise edible and medical mushrooms on logs: Many urban spaces don't receive adequate sunlight for gardens. Mushrooms only require indirect light and moisture, making them suitable for marginally sunny spaces such as alleys and shady backyards.

Build a floating trash island: Inspired by a natural phenomena, floating trash islands create habitat for plants and microorganisms to assist in purifying contaminated storm water runoff — a major urban problem. They are made buoyant by floating debris, such as bottles and polystyrene, stuffed into a giant life-ring. Water plants are zip-tied onto the island’s surface, and develop an extensive submerged root network that hosts water cleansing critters.

Cook with an old satellite dish: When the parabolic curve of a satellite dish is lined with a mosaic of mirror shards and aimed at the sun, it can focus the sun’s rays onto a pot of water and bring it to a boil in minutes!

Construct a small scale biogas digester: Using a five gallon bucket, organic matter such as plants, chicken manure and dead leaves can be turned into methane gas. The gas then can then be stored and used for cooking and heating. Why pay money for natural gas when you can make it in your back yard?

Clean up contaminated soil with compost tea: Made with worm castings from a vermicompost box, compost tea can be used to help clean up toxic soils. The multitude of hungry microorganisms in the tea can help speed up the degradation of certain pollutants in city soils.
 
All these systems, plus many others, are described in much further detail in Toolbox for Sustainable City Living. (You can find the book at www.radicalsustainability.org.) 

About the authors:  Stacy and I are co-founders of Austin, Texas’ Rhizome Collective, a non-profit urban sustainability project. Toolbox is a culmination of eight years of research and experimentation at Rhizome. In addition, they are the organizers and teachers of R.U.S.T., The Radical Urban Sustainability Training.

On Saturday, President Bush holds a summit of G-20 leaders where trade and agriculture policy, such as farm subsidies, are sure to come up. The global economic crisis will be a major topic, and a likely proposed solution will be for the countries to come to reach a conclusion on the Doha trade negotiations, which could affect American farmers. The current Doha Development Round is part of a World Trade Organization trade agreement.

A Reuters article by Doug Palmer quoted Deputy U.S. Trade Representative John Veroneau as saying, “I expect there will be some expression of support for the global trading system and the value and benefits of concluding the Doha negotiations as soon as possible.”

The last attempt failed in July, partially because of the Farm Bill that had just passed. The president vetoed the bill, in part to facilitate negotiations, but the U.S. Congress overrode the president’s veto. The bill provided the largest subsidies ever to U.S. farmers — a topic of contention with other countries, who feel this put them at a disadvantage in the global market. Their complaint is that subsidies allow U.S. farmers to sell goods at lower prices than farmers from countries without subsidies.

A main objective of Doha is to reduce global trade barriers, such as tariffs. But developing countries, such as India and China, see large farm subsidies as a barrier as well, because of the unfair advantage they create in the global market.

G-20 countries account for 70 percent of the world’s farmers and 26 percent of the world’s agricultural exports.

The conclusion of Doha would likely benefit American farmers because it would expand and increase their trade options, but because they benefited from the Farm Bill subsidies, negotiations could stall once again.

The recent global economic crisis might make the world leaders put their differences aside and develop a conclusion for the Doha agreement. Such a move could boost global economic confidence and take one issue off the plate of President-elect Barack Obama.