Straw hats off to the dudes of Rock Garden Tour. The best radio show on the prairie just went global. Well, statewide anyway. Flowerman, Oil Can and the RGT Family Band made the leap from small college radio to South Dakota Public Broadcasting. Boom!

What?! You don’t know how to turnip your radio? Rock Garden Tour is this fun little program and podcast celebrating some of creations’ greatest achievements: rock n roll, rural life and gardening. The podcast is great, the live show is better. Now you can catch it on SDPB Radio Sunday nights at 10, or download the podcast.

The Rock Garden Tour interview at Michelle's Coffee

Now that’s a big accomplishment for RGT. But there’s something even bigger: Flowerman just wrapped up an exclusive interview with me about my big trip to the sewage treatment plant yesterday. We talked about the guy who operates the Hot Sludge lake boat, and bib overalls. You’ll have to tune into the show to check it out.

Update: Poo Lake made the cut.

Mmm, mmm good.

I hosted a group of high school science teachers and some sustainability interns on a garbage and recycling learning journey yesterday. It was great, and exhausting for some reason. We hit a high school lunch room, the hazardous waste facility, Millennium Recycling, a couple of green buildings downtown (this one and that one), and the big ugly Landfill. We also toured the City of Sioux Falls’ Wastewater Treatment Facility, where we learned what’s green in the sewage business, and were introduced to a little taste of heaven: “Hot Sludge.”

The Hot Sludge Lake Boat.

After the little micro-organisms eat up the poo and other nasties in an anaerobic digester, the remaining “solids” (which the dudes at the wastewater plant affectionately call hot sludge) get pumped over to Hot Sludge Lake–a settling pool. On this yummy lake is a boat, which operates a dredge that stirs up the hot sludge (which by this time is now just your average warm and soupy sludge) and scrapes some off the bottom to be turned into SiouxperGrow. Yes, the sludge eventually becomes a brand-named fertilizer for Minnehaha County corn and soybean fields. It’s injected by a fleet of honey wagons. Oh, one more thing: not only is there a guy who’s job it is to drive the Hot Sludge lake boat, but they also have to do maintenance on that sucker. Underneath the boat. While it’s still floating on Hot Sludge Lake…

And at  the landfill–which I learned is not a hole at all, but a gigantic mountain of compacted, decomposing garbage and earth that rises from the prairie at an alarming rate–we were shown the “Leachite Pond” (which for quite a few minutes, our group thought was called the “Leachade pond”). This is the holding pool for the “solids” left over from a literal mountain of decomposing garbage. The hot sludge of the landfill, if you will. It’s one of two byproducts (other than the mountain). The other is methane gas, which the Sioux Falls Sanitary Landfill is now piping to a nearby Poet ethanol plant to be used to make corn fuel.

Beautiful compost in the making.

The pipeline thing is pretty cool, and of course I was fascinated by the stretching piles of composting grass and leaves (get yourself some free compost–all you can scoop). But overall, the Landfill sucked all the energy out of me.  Witnessing rolling cornfields and precious wetlands in the process of becoming a giant garbage mound the size of Madison is tough stuff for me. Imagine this: you take the valley that Montrosians call home, and you fill it to the top with layers of garbage and dirt. Then you continue building up a mound that buries the water tower on the hilltop. Do that from the ballpark north of town to the south end of the Horstman Addition out by I-90. Now you’re mental visual is close to the real thing.  At least our tour guide Pearl was shining with hope and enthusiasm.

There are a couple of new “cells” ready to be filled up and mounded, with plans for up to five more on the land the Landfill already owns. These cells are about the size of Montrose, and take 5-7 years to fill up, based on the current five-county population the Landfill serves (which is estimated to more than double in the next 20 years).

We are wasteful creatures. But hey, we’re really getting good at helping nature make hot sludge and leachade.

A couple fun things to share from Mesa’s mouth recently…

This morning we walked to daycare, and the Catholic church is on the way. As we passed the church, several ladies were streaming in–all elders. “It must be time for old people church, right Dad?” Mesa said as two ladies walked by and said ‘hello.’..

This weekend, in the midst of our girls’ backyard performance of the fabulous circus show, Zoey was making a tumbling pass and passed some gas. Without skipping a beat, the ringmaster (Mesa, of course) announced, “And, ladies and gentlemen, that is a ‘Fart Flip.’”

The Cottonwood is probably my favorite tree of all, even though I’m quite allergic to them. The majesty and dance of a mature Cottonwood just makes my soul smile–maybe a remnant of childhood evenings at Grandma and Grandpa Knox’s. So, for some strange reason I got up this morning and jumped on my bike without a plan (since Anne says I’m getting fat).  I pedaled up the Valley Road, past many young and old Cottonwoods, singing and dancing their soft song in the light morning current. I’ll share this haiku in their honor:

restless in soft breeze
song of the cottonwood tree
catching low sun's glow

Sleep Walking

We need new locks on our doors. The kind that are really high up and can’t be unlocked by a child. A child who is sleeping, and walking about the house (and who knows where else).

Imagine my mixture of surprise, fear and anxiety as I’m rushing toward our kitchen Sunday night, right after my wife shakes me awake with a terrified look on her face. “Joe. Someone’s coming in our house!” She heard the door handle shake, and then the deadbolt unlock. As I was stumbling my way to the kitchen in my underwear, I heard the door swing open and someone walk in. “Hello. Who’s there?!” I demanded (it was the only thing I could think of on the spot, OK). As I came around the corner, ready to bust out some ninja skills I was sure were inside me somewhere, I saw my middle daughter looking at me with a blank stare. When I asked what she was doing, she suddenly got angry and stomped off to her bedroom saying “leave me alone!”

Who knows how long she was in the garage. Or what she was doing. The lights were all on, the big door open to the summer night outside, and the door to the van left open. After she stomped off, Mesa came back into the living room confused and wondering what her parents were doing. She said she had to go out to the garage to get a bucket for her feet. (!?) Then she laid down on the couch with me and went right to sleep. She remembered none of it by morning.

Until we get some new locks, I’ll keep propping a chair against both doors so at least we’ll hear her moving them before she takes another midnight vacation. Any tips for newly discovered sleepwalking parents?

We surprised Jaim with cupcakes from Queen City Bakery and the new camera the girls recorded a special pair of messages on. Now on to the anniversary…

A friend showed me this beautifully wild idea today that I hope you’ll support (thanks Chas). It’s a plan to designate three areas of the Buffalo Gap National Grassland as the nation’s first Grassland Wilderness. According to the site, here’s what you can do in a Wilderness:

Allowed in Wilderness Areas

• Hunting and fishing
• Hiking, backpacking, camping
• Horseback riding
• Birdwatching
• Rock collecting for personal use
• Livestock grazing and access, where already established
• Mining on pre-existing patented claims
• Rafting, canoeing, and kayaking
• Outfitting and guiding
• Wheelchairs (including certain motorized wheelchairs)
• Control of wildfires, insects, and disease outbreaks
• Access to private inholdings

Prohibited in Wilderness Areas

• Road building
• Logging
• Oil and gas drilling
• New mining claims
• New reservoirs, power lines and pipelines
• Motorized or mechanized vehicles like ATVs and mountain bikes

So, if you’re a South Dakotan, or if you’d like to visit the grasslands of South Dakota, please visit http://www.sdwildgrassland.org to learn about the plan, and then click on Get Involved for info on contacting our congress men and woman to show your support.

Sounds like a great spot for my next wilderness solo…

I was part of a panel of four speakers last night for an organization called Repower America. At least it was supposed to be four of us. 

The day before the panel, we found out former Vice President Al Gore would be joining us by conference call at the beginning of the meeting (he’s chair of the We Campaign, which is the parent organization of Repower America). Al spoke for about 15 minutes about the Cap and Trade bill that is making it’s way through congress right now (you can tell your congress representative what you think very easily by calling 1-877-9-REPOWER, no matter where you live). It was a national conference call with members of Repower America, and we just happened to be holding our event at the same time. So, he gave a shout out to Sioux Falls. 

I was scheduled to go first on the panel, to talk about the Sioux Falls Green Project and changing the way we talk locally about sustainability. So, with the late addition of the Vice President, I got to follow up Al Gore. Crazy.

It was a good event, and I learned some things and made great new friends. Others on the panel were my friend Randy Parry from the Rural Learning Center, Matt McClarty from the Environmental Law and Policy Institute, and Ned from Repower America. Plus Al Gore…

Because I have posted squat on this blog lately. But, the good news is there is something cool brewing–big bartblog news coming soon…

So, here’s Mesa’s 6th Birthday party. Shopping, the science museum, a movie, Pizza Ranch, and birthday cake (featuring blue frosting and spankings) with the fam. 

A friend out there sent a link to this. It’s a fractal zoom on a mandelbrot set, finishing on a dendrite area. I don’t know what that means, but it sure is beautiful. (Thanks Toke.)

It gives me new ideas and understanding of how this network of life might really be organized. Makes me think of the infinite networks and connections that are unfolding always.

You can learn more about the mathematical discovery called the “Mandelbrot Set,” which creates the kind of fractal zoom images shown in the above video, by watching this one below. It is 9 minutes, and only part 1 of 6, so dig in if you’re really interested…

What kind of shop are you running here, Nicole? Better sell some duct tape next time. Better yet, give it away.

http://www.keloland.com/NewsDetail6162.cfm?Id=85864