For Halloween I was a corporate pirate. Here I catch a hug from Sarah Palin! What a gal.

I like snow! This is the first time I have seen it for real. SARA.

Snow!!! We've been blessed with a white Solstice, and Ty and Sara's first major snowfall.

Snows of Mount Kilmanjaro

On the way to Dar Es Salam (early Oct 08) the plane passed over Mount Kilmanjaro. Here's what's left of the snows...

To the right is a photo of the mountain in snowier times.

Blown cellulose

We're moving along in construction of our homes! Yesterday Chom and I spent the day blowing cellulose insulation into the attic spaces of three homes. 14" deep, R-49. The cellulose is made of recycled newspaper with boric acid added as a fire retardant. It's a 2-person operation. One is manning a 4" diameter hose, spraying the insluation. The other is downstairs, constantly feeding the blower/agitator with 25 pound bales of cellulose. I was upstairs crouching in the attic space doing the blowing. To keep the dust down, I would keep the hose submerged. Cellulose would bubble and spurt up like lava.

We were glad to be inside! The rest of the crew (20 or so at the site yesterday) were out in the pouring rain, doing emergency repairs. It's the first heavy rain, and there was some damage to some of the intermediate plaster layers on the strawbale walls. Others were dealing with erosion helping direct water that was puddling dangerously in the newly bulldozed grounds.

We've also just started shingling!!! Come one, come all if you want to pound some nails.

View from the Kempinski Hotel in Dar Es Salam

Today's "Daily News" published in Dar Es Salam had a story with the following:

In 1998, a year before his death, Nyerere met with top level staff at the World Bank in Washington DC. The officals had asked him why he had failed in some of his political ambitions. His answer must have dismayed them. He answered: "The British Empire left us with 85 per cent illiteracy, two engineers, and 12 doctors. I left office 13 years ago. Then our per capita income was twice what it is today. We now have one third less children in our schools and public health and social services are in ruin. During these 13 years Tanzania has done everything the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have demanded."

I'm here in Tanzania right now working with as a World Bank consultant for the first time in my life. I'm helping the Tanzanian government put in place regulations that make it easier for renewable energy generators to connect to the grid and sell power to offset Tanzania's use of expensive diesel fuel for electricity generation. Seems like a win-win-win situation. Cheaper electricity. Less fossil fuels burned. Local people develop small scale projects so the money circulates within the economy rather than going to Saudi Arabia to purchase diesel.

Has the Bank changed? It seems that parts of it has, anyway.

Intern Gino, my sister-in-law Oy, and myself work on installing metal roofing on one of the Common Ground homes.

Working on the roof is great... when the weather is nice. Great views!

Our house is the vertical collection of 2x6's just to the left of the big green forklift thingey! It just leapt from a cement slab a few days ago. What a change! We are bewildered and excited to wander through the rooms to get a sense of the space.

Many of the homes in the Common Ground project have straw bale walls in place with plaster on them. Some have even got metal roofing on them. We've really enjoyed working on the site, and have set up a separate Common Ground blog for residents and interns to share thoughts, dreams, images.

Most saturdays we've been helping Ty and Sara to sell Thai icetea and coconut stickyrice at the Lopez Farmer's Market. Here's Ty in his chef's hat giving a free Thai language lesson to a patron.

4th of July

We went to see the 4th of July fireworks. The fireworks and the reflection on the water were beautiful!

Earlier in the day we were all in the parade. It's Lopez at its most diverse -- the hippies dressed in moss and cedar bark, all the way to the folks in black hummers with "God Bless the USA" stickers and flags. We found ourselves in the Friends of Lopez Island Pool (FLIP) -- with Sara dressed as a mermaid (throwing candy), Ty as Neptune (operating a water-blasting firearm), and Chom and Chris trailing behind blowing bubbles and waving a flag.

Morning in the outdoor office

Getting work done means getting up before the kids wake up and using our 'outdoor' office. Chom's busy chatting with a colleague in Bangkok using Skype...

Family of four in 460 square feet

I love the little cabin we're living in. Fishing cabin. On the ceiling boards are names and dates written in pencil:

Julia Munson, August 19, 1937
Bee Palm, R.A. Palm, J.W. Palm
Edna May Palmer, 1934

The cabin measures 370 square feet, with a dark pantry adding another 90 square feet. We have a kingsize bed -- which Chom and I share with three year old Sara and a small zoo of Sara's stuffed animals. Big brother Ty, 5, sleeps on the couch in a sleeping bag. Cold water flows, on tap, from a 55 gallon tank on the roof. When it runs out we go out and pump it full. No toilet, but wifi reaches out to the outhouse! For hot water we use a solar cooker, augmented by an electric stove.

Yay for small living spaces and simple life!!! Outside it looks like this:

Citizen's energy reform

When we were in Bangkok, Chom did a lot of this -- policy meetings, working to bring social justice, accountability and transparency to the energy scene in Thailand. Here she's addressing a group of villagers and NGO activists at a workshop entitled "Citizens electricity reform", explaining the structure of the natural gas and electricity industry.

Here on Lopez we continue to stay in touch, to the extent we can. We're currently organizing a study tour that will bring key electricity and gas decision makers from Thai government and industries together with NGOs together to meet counterparts in Washington and Oregon. We'll visit power plants (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, gas) and talk with a variety of high-level decision-makers to exchange ideas on power sector planning and regulation.

A month after moving to Lopez...

Life in transition. I used to look out my window and see miles and miles of Bangkok buildings. There was scarcely a tree in sight. I wore shorts and (maybe) a tee-shirt. Now I look out the window and see windswept trees, white caps on dark blue water that spans for miles to the Olympic mountains which – at this moment – are in snow capped brilliance. Now when I emerge from the warm cocoon of three layers of down comforters, I scurry into layers of long underwear, down vest, gloves in the morning (in the afternoon the sun sometimes comes out in a blaze of glory, and we can put on shorts!).

(This video shows a panorama of where we get to call home for now! We feel so fortunate.)

What are we doing here? This morning on an early morning jaunt, I witnessed an eagle, half a dozen deer, and Indian paintbrush flowers in full bloom on mossy rocky outcroppings. I guess that’s what we’re doing here. Soaking in nature after years of city. Trying out an entirely different mode of life. We moved to Lopez Island a month ago after eight years in Bangkok. The idea was to try a new balance of “wellbeing, career, family”.

In Bangkok we’ve been very happy on aspects of the ‘career’ and ‘family’ aspects. We had endless fascinating work to do on energy and social justice – fun! but with a tendency towards burn-out. We had Chom’s wonderful family just down the street, who nurtured us with two or three meals a day, and provided lots and lots of childcare which allowed us to get our ‘career’ work done.

The ‘well-being’ dimension suffered, though. Polluted air. Lots of concrete. And we were never really sure where our food was coming from. Also, getting Ty, in particular, to go to school was like pulling teeth. (The photo at right seemed to capture too much of his Thai school experience -- alienated and not psyched about a rather authoritarian educational style).

Another aspect of being here is to reconnect with 'home'. For a long time Lopez has been 'home' in a kind of abstract way. But it's wonderful to experience it as something real and connect with folks that were a part of my youth (i was here 3rd grade through the end of high school and spend a lot of time on Lopez through college years and before grad school at Berkeley). In the time I was gone the community has blossomed beautifully. We have a community radio station (KLOI 102.9 FM) , regular Quaker meeting, a great juggling crowd, and lots of potlucks.

Family is a big draw too -- mom and sister and her wonderful husband Clive and their baby Noni.