Earth Sheltered Houses

Here are some earth sheltered houses I've come across. It's a great idea, big energy savings, low maintenance. The wood one is from http://www.undergroundhousing.com/ and the concrete ones are from http://www.earthshelteredhousing.com/. I once toured an earth sheltered house and it was quite nice. It was the concrete type, very bright, quiet and warm. Many earth sheltered houses

will save 80% on heating and cooling costs since ground temperature is a constant 50-55 degrees year-round. You're fighting against outdoor temperature with a conventional home, trying to keep the heat either in or out. Another nice thing about them is that the roof being green adds space for wildlife and helps the house blend in with nature instead of destroying and intruding on it. Imagine what an earth sheltered housing development would look like. Seems like a great solution to the rising energy costs and the destruction of the environment.

Let's Do Lunch

If you're fortunate enough to have a job, no doubt you look forward to lunch like a first grader looks forward to recess. It seems like so many people spend their lunches during the week in airless lunchrooms, running errands or in fast food lines. I would rather find some nature and spend my lunch time there. Not much nature left, but I've located a couple of places within 5-10 minutes by bike (not motor, pedal- more on that some other time). One thing I look for is a river. Dragon flies, birds, an occasional heavy metal laden fish, a little white water provided by a protruding tire or shopping cart. Peace. Today, lunch was spent at the Attleboro (Ma.) River Park. The L.G Balfour Co. used to be on this spot and I worked there when I was in high school. The red brick buildings on the rivers' edge were part of their complex. Balfour made class rings, trophies, and diplomas among other things. The river wasn't exactly pristine back then. I rememember men in hip waders scraping the bottom of it for rings that fell out of windows since the building was right on the river. Rumor has it that more than a few flew out on purpose, disgruntled employees "stickin' it to the man." On my favorite bench I indulged in a bag of Doritos and an organic carrot (a perfect example of the internal struggle we fight between good and evil, today they fought to a draw), closed my eyes and enjoyed the sun. You may be wondering about that expanse of concrete. That's skating pond that I've been told gets filled with water and frozen for skating. Anyway, my plan is to bring a blanket and place it under the tree on the little hill a few feet from my bench. A couple of weeks ago a guy was playing guitar (quite well) under that tree on a beautiful day. It was very hard to return to the job I'm fortunate to have.

Vitamin C

I'm certainly no expert on vitamin C, but I believe that it's very important to good health. We need to be taking far more than the RDA, which is less than 100mg per day. Probably 3000-6000mg if we're feeling well, triple or more if sick, is what's needed. Just recently I've had two situations where we used vitamin C with excellent results. I've have seasonal allergies (hay fever) for 30 years. I've used the usual over the counter medications and natural cures like local honey, and drinking large amounts of water, with limited benefit. I did some research and decided to try vitamin C. Now you can't take small amounts if you have an acute situation like hay fever, a cold, or flu- you need to take alot. I worked my way up to a peak of 25,000mg one day, but most days I've been around 9,000-15,000. Incredibly, even with that amount I had no adverse reactions. From what I've learned, if you're sick your system needs large doses to fight it and will use it all. What a difference. Along with a lot of water which has an anti-histimine effect, the allergies are basically gone. If I feel them coming on, I'll take 1000-2000mg and it's like taking a benadryl without the drowsiness. You have to keep your blood saturated with C, so I spread out the doses throughout the day. If I wake up at night I'll take one. If you try this, you'll need to take as much as you can to get rid of the symptoms. If you get diarreah, cutback. The other situation was with my daughter. She's had a urinary tract infection (we're sure because we went to the emergency room and the test was positive), so we started giving her 1000mg every hour or so. In one day the pain was gone. We kept giving her 3000-4000mg per day for several days afterward just to be sure. She's seven and takes 1000-2000mg per day as a maintenance dose. Vitamin C has strong anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties. If you're interested in learning more about it go online and research Linus Pauling, 2 time nobel prize winner, and Dr. Fred Klenner. Klenner wrote dozens of papers on how he cured polio, carbon monoxide poisoning, burns, mononucleosis, hepatitis, snake bites and many more ailments with large doses of vitamin C given intravenously. Also check out http://www.cforyourself.com/. Of course the medical establishment will try to discredit most all natural cures and vitamin C is no exception. Personal experience and observation is meaningless to them, they've got to have double blind placebo controlled studies. All I can say is it works for me. Hopefully I'll get a real bad flu next winter and be able to see if C cures it. (kidding).

The Beginning

Well, here's my first post. There are a few things that I find interesting and maybe there are people out there who will find them interesting too. Things like alternative housing (earth-sheltered, earth bag, small house etc.), bicycle commuting, natural cures, nutrition, vitamins and herbs, history, and assorted stuff. Maybe some family stuff that will have to be either very amusing or very interesting, so there probably won't be too much of that. If it interests me I'll probably write about it eventually. That's about it. Thanks for taking the time.