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Want to save water? Take a look at what’s in your bathroom. Showerheads installed before 1992 can pump as much as eight gallons of water per minute. New low flow showerheads are inexpensive, emit less than two gallons of water per minute and easy to swap out.
But habits can save water quicker than hardware. The average shower uses about four gallons of water; the average bath uses 50—so even if you’re a showeraholic, it’s still better than a bath.
You can take a “navy shower” by staggering your water usage: Get wet, turn off the tap, lather up, turn on the tap, rinse off. Then cut consumption in half by showering with a friend.
Dec 01, 2014 | Categories: Sustainability | Tags: bath, drought, shower, water | Comments Off on Shower with a Friend
The simple beauty of fundamentals. A long, sturdy craft to guide on a clear trajectory in the morning light, through a shifting wave face, doing its best to look like molten fractured glass. Amen.
photo provided by Surfing Nosara
Nov 29, 2014 | Categories: Costa Rica, Creative Culture, Harmony Hotel, Nosara, Surfing | Comments Off on Guiones Surf Photo of the Week
Carmen Lyra’s “Pastor’s Ten Little Old Men” is a story about the power of storytelling. When Soledad meets Pastor, he is talking to the “old men,” his ten toes. He tells Soledad the stories of these old men, from their days turtle fishing at Tortuguero to their days pearl diving in the Gulf of Papagayo to their many treks across Costa Rica. These stories influence Soledad, as Pastor blends fantasy and reality to deposit in the young child a “sediment of poetry.”
What could you expect of a child like this little girl, who spent all day wandering along the irrigation ditch or perched among the tree branches? She wanted to know where the water came from and where it went, and she loved it when the wind rocked her in the branches. She talked with the water and talked with the wind. So why should it be strange that she understood the toes of a peon who had wandered all over Costa Rica?
Pastor’s last story is a sad one and a reality that will stay with Soledad as long as his fictional tales will.
Carmen Lyra is the pseudonym used by María Isabel Carvajal, who moved to Mexico at the end of her life. She is known for her children’s stories as well as her writing for adults. She is the author of Los cuentos de mie Tía Panchita.
Photo Credit: Giulia Marotta / CC0 Public Domain
Source: Ras, Barbara, ed. Costa Rica: A Traveler’s Literary Companion. San Francisco: Whereabouts, 1994.
Nov 27, 2014 | Categories: Costa Rica, Creative Culture, Nature, Travel | Comments Off on Carmen Lyra
Taking off shoes at the door is an easy way to keep your home clean—and clean of toxic chemicals. When we wear shoes inside, we run the risk of tracking lead, pesticides, insecticides and dirt into our homes, while removing shoes can reduce exposure by a full 85%. Worried about offending guests? A note or a few pairs of shoes at the door can convey your home’s policies without words. Neighbors? Even better.
Nov 24, 2014 | Categories: Sustainability | Tags: clean, lead, pesticides, shoes, toxic chemicals | Comments Off on Be Like Mr. Rogers
As incongruous as it might initially seem, anyone lucky enough to have enjoyed the thrill of downhill skiing cannot deny the remarkable similarity of this surfer’s scathing cutback on a foamy face to a skier tightly clearing a gate on some well marked course.
In both, the forward leg is leading and lifting the edge. Even in his hands, one can imagine the angled poles. The high speed redirection is evidenced either by salt spray or snowy powder.
Oceans and Mountains: these venues often share the human pursuit of physical and spiritual boundaries.
photo provided by Surfing Nosara
Nov 22, 2014 | Categories: Costa Rica, Creative Culture, Harmony Hotel, Nosara, Surfing | Comments Off on Guiones Surf Photo of the Week
In his story “The Palmitero,” Max Jiménez personifies the palmetto, the fan palms that stand “with slender trunks, their feathery green tops waving like plumes,” those trees that are cut down by the palmitero to retrieve the delicious hearts of palm:
You have to hear the screams as each palm splinters to earth, as it falls on its lifelong sisters on the mountainside. You have to see how each palmetto victim buries itself into the damp soil, perhaps seeking a grave, an honorable grave in the dark earth that has so kindly given it nourishment year after year.
It is with this image of death that Jiménez introduces Peje, the palmitero who chooses to escape to the forest and cut down the palmetto trees after his own experience with death.
Jiménez, who lived abroad in Europe and America, is the author of Unos fantoches and El jaúl, in which “The Palmitero” appears. He was also a painter and a poet.
Photo Credit: Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius and Ferdinand Bauer / Public Domain
Source: Ras, Barbara, ed. Costa Rica: A Traveler’s Literary Companion. San Francisco: Whereabouts, 1994.
Nov 20, 2014 | Categories: Costa Rica, Creative Culture, Travel | Comments Off on Max Jiménez
Used in beauty and oral care products to create suds and foam, sodium lauryl sulfate can cause immune system damage and allergic reactions, as well as skin, eye and mouth irritation; its manufacturing results in the release of carcinogenic chemicals.
The Journal of the American College of Toxicology determined that the ingredient has a “degenerative effect on cell membranes” and that even at low levels of concentration, skin penetration occurs. Studies have found that topical application of SLS can lead to traces of the stuff in internal organs.
And it doesn’t just stop at your skin: Those suds wash down the drain, into the water system and up the food chain. That means that fish you’re eating could contain the same SLS that you (or your neighbor) shampooed with. Yum.
Look for natural surfactants—they suds up great, and don’t harm the environment.
Nov 17, 2014 | Categories: Sustainability | Tags: body wash, shampoo, sodium lauryl sulfate, suds, surfactants, toothpaste | Comments Off on Suds Better
Hope you stretched and are in good paddling shape ! The beauty belies the physical work to get out there. Three lines of white water, the inside about to unload, and the feathering, marching outside wave…as final destination. Rarely does a photograph at paddler’s level depict the arduous journey of the surfer’s trip from shore to the line-up, where he or she might grasp the holy grail. There is no free ride. As with all worthwhile pursuits, you gotta work for it.
photo provided by Surfing Nosara
Nov 14, 2014 | Categories: Costa Rica, Creative Culture, Harmony Hotel, Nosara, Surfing | Comments Off on Guiones Surf Photo of the Week
