Boing!

A photo gallery I put together for TreeHugger got linked on the popular tech site Boing Boing yesterday. Photographer Mary Taffe was great to work with and her abstract images of pollution in the lake near her Minnesota home are both artistically striking and very sobering.

It's always gratifying to be able to help call attention to the local environmental battles that people are fighting across the world. Having that coverage get attention from my blogging peers is a nice bonus.

The cost of 'virtual water'

A presentation by Arjen Y. Hoekstra of the Water Footprint Network was one of the most interesting I heard at the World Water Forum this spring, prompting all sorts of questions about water footprints vs. carbon footprints and when it might not be best to produce goods locally -- subjects that I could barely give a glancing look in a short news piece for the latest issue of Sierra. Working on it certainly piqued my interest in the topic further; hope it does the same for readers.

Underground adventures

Writing a short travel piece for the May/June 2009 Sierra about a trip I took some time ago to New Zealand brought back great memories. It's a long flight, of course, but well worth it for the amazing scenery, fantastic food and drink, and potential for adventure.

Where else can you hike across an active volcano, kayak secluded coastlines, and go inner-tubing in caves filled with glow worms? And we didn't even get far enough south to hit the glaciers.

World Water Forum in Istanbul

I spent the past week at the 5th World Water Forum, held here in Istanbul this year, attending sessions on traditional cultural uses of water, migration and conflict, and women's issues, among other topics that jumped out from the thick catalog of panels and presentations.

It was a productive week, as I filed daily dispatches from the conference for TreeHugger.com and wrote my first piece for The National, an excellent English-language newspaper based in Abu Dhabi.

Now 'tweeting'...

Count me among those who don't know exactly what the Twitter fuss is all about, but I've been hopping on Web bandwagons since 1996, so I'm not going to miss the chance to try and post some amusing observations and thought-provoking articles in 140 characters or less... Don't worry, I'll go light on what I ate for lunch.

Green amid the grime

Though it would be premature to call Istanbul an "eco-city," there are plenty of green discoveries waiting to be made amidst the urban sprawl. I sought out organic markets with friendly farmers (right), vegetarian restaurants, public-transportation options, parks, running groups, and eco-friendly souvenirs for a PlanetGreen.com "Green City Guide" to my adopted home.

A Treehugger in Turkey

I've taken on a new gig as the Istanbul correspondent for the popular environmental website TreeHugger.com. I'll be focusing largely, though not exclusively, on developments in Turkey and this part of the world, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East. Already I've blogged about ice-cream delivery by bike in some of Istanbul's chicest neighborhoods, problems with garbage collection in the city, a photo contest for images of Turkey's trees, and the country's first organic market.