GreenTech Geek: Frankenfood

That Frankenstorm Sandy is a bad, bad girl. I spent five formative years in New York City, and it’s tough watching what’s happening there and throughout the East Coast this week.

Next week, here in California, voters have a chance to weigh in on another Frankenstein monster — genetically modified foods, also known as Frankenfood.

Proposition 37 on your ballot seeks to force food manufacturers to label products that are genetically modified organisms (GMO) or contain GMO ingredients. Believe it or not, as things stand now, we are likely dumping GMOs in our bodies every day … since no GMO labelling is required. (Well, GMO labelling is required in much of Europe, but not here.)

Confused?  Maybe a catchy little music video about the issue will help clear things up.  Watch it, after the jump …

Until next week …

The GreenTech Geek Goes to Washington

My paying job has sent me to Washington, D.C. this week for some training at the National Transportation Safety Board. It’s an exciting time to be here, with Election Fever gripping the capital. I plan to poke around a bit and see what I can see.

But even here, as I traverse the halls of power, I will not shrink from my duty to root out important green/technology stories for Tea with Lemon readers. Stories that make a difference. Stories destined to make the world a better place.

I will never turn my back on this worthy cause … kind of like the dude in the video clip, after the jump …

Until next week …

GreenTech Geek: Hippie Juice

I’m glad my sister lives in Eugene, Oregon, because it’s a place where hippie culture is alive and well. Where many of the best attributes of the 1960s still thrive. It is, in fact, one of my favorite homes away from home. I recently returned from a trip there.

I go to Eugene to visit my sister and her two daughters. To be an uncle. To see modern-day hippies. To drink local-brew beer. To be surrounded by trees and lakes and ferns. To ride a bike. To slouch in a gritty coffee shop and read my dog-eared copy of the Autobiography of Che Guevara. To be in a place where people just seem to care more about the earth — and each other — than really any other place I’ve been in the USA. And to turn a random corner and see bowling balls growing in someone’s front yard:

So come along with me to Eugene, Oregon … after the jump.
Welcome to the place where I go to pump up the “Green” in GreenTech Geek — Eugene, Oregon.

Lots of Jesus beards in Eugene. And awesome celestial velour sweatpants. My sister directed me to the Wandering Goat Coffee Shop, above … and I knew I had arrived in Eugene.

Winnie the Pooh has a counterculture cousin, and he lives in Eugene.

Peaceful, pastoral scenes like this abound in the countryside around Eugene.

Dorena Lake outside Eugene, where my sister does swim training for her triathlons. Yeah, there’s a reason I often refer to her as my wonder-sister.

Bathroom graffiti, Eugene style.

Cycling through the Oregon countryside outside Eugene, I encountered a covered bridge for the first time in my life.

It gets a little complicated: Recycling bins — with illustrated instructions — at a downtown Eugene donut shop.

Um, yum. Sampling local brews at Eugene’s Ninkasi Brewing Company. On the back of the cards, I learned that “Ninkasi is the ancient Sumerian matron goddess of the intoxicating beverage, beer.”

It’s a pirate ship in someone’s front yard. This is the Whiteaker neighborhood of Eugene, where the spirit of Burning Man hangs out when not stirring up dust storms in the Nevada desert.

In Eugene, even camper trailers are one with the trees, yo.

Ducks do kick butt. And the University of Oregon  has banned tobacco campus-wide. My kind of place.

I joined my wonder-sister Krista and niece Karina, above, for a 27-mile bike ride through … paradise.

Fast food, Eugene style. No meat, just deliciousness.

Just another day in Eugene, Oregon.

I love ferns. I love cycling. I love Oregon..

Urban graffiti, Eugene style.

I’ve been going to Eugene for quite a while. I was there eight years ago, when Bush II had us embroiled in the Iraq War and John Kerry was trying to unseat him. What I saw in Eugene back then gave me hope for the future, and I made a little video about it:

Until next week …

GreenTech Geek: Interlude, Part 2

Sorry readers and fans, but the Greentech Geek is once again sidelined this week … this time with an acute case of sciatica (too much tennis in my past).

It is uncomfortable for me to sit long enough to turn out a decent column. By this time next week it should have gotten better enough for the return of the GreenTech Geek to be a real and true thing.

I already know what I’m going to write about.  See a hint, after the jump …

Hint.

Until next week …

GreenTech Geek: Interlude

Hello GreenTech Geek followers. Where have I been?

Find out, after the jump …

I’ve been taking a vacation up in the sylvan hippie wonderland of Eugene, Oregon. I’ve been visiting my sister and two nieces, taking a 27-mile bike ride with them through gorgeous Oregon lake country, escorting my 9th-grade niece to her very first Homecoming dance … and smelling the flowers. (Can’t you see?)

Look for a full column from me next week. By then, I’ll be thoroughly recharged, my veins full of energizing hippie juice, and ready to continue fighting the good fight on Tea With Lemon.

Until next week …