By Tim Hull ~

It’s early morning in the Dunbar Springs neighborhood and the anarchists next door are still asleep.  The power-hungry new sun is heating up the found-object metal artwork in the streets, and I’m standing by as Vincent Pawlowski mixes up a batch of Papercrete bricks.

The 50-something polymath, a retired biomedical engineer with a bushy beard and a full storehouse of creative energy, is up on a rickety platform in his backyard working a jury-rigged mixing drill through a barrel full of water, recycled paper products—junk mail, old Sierra Club calendars, even tossed-away books—and Portland cement.  The brew looks and smells like paper mache but when it’s formed into bricks and dried in the sun it makes strong building blocks that Pawlowski hopes to use to build a little dream home here on his corner lot.

Increasingly we find ourselves beset by problems that seem beyond our control; global warming, GM Foods, animal testing, the spread of factory farming, the arms trade and human rights abuses, to list but a few. Shoppers are often left feeling helpless, the typical response being theres nothing I can do.

By Aldene Fredenburg

With gas and oil prices rising, consumers, particularly in cold winter climates, are looking at a variety of alternative fuels for home heating. Wood, a traditional fuel, is regaining popularity while more modern alternatives, such as wood and corn pellets and waste oil, are more routinely used.

Strawbale Construction Wins Hands Down
By Ivy Mills

A couple friends of ours, Conrad and Carol, are in the process of getting district approval for the construction of their straw bale home. Bedtime stories of little pigs seem to have created skewed views of straw houses as frail little things that topple over when the wind picks up.

Due to a lack of education and enough disinterest to not pick up a book and learn something, city hall here in Salmon Arm is fighting every step of the way. Luckily, Conrad and Carol are armed with an open-minded engineer and a lot of determination.