It is pretty tough to excel in a judgment-rated endeavor when you're expected to excel, and that's the situation Barack Obama was in last night — the foundation of all that has grown up in the past four years around him was his keynote speech at the Boston convention.

Even against such high expectation, I thought Obama gave a very good speech last night.

I loved when he said that the election was not about him, but about us. Damn right.

I'm just flummoxed by those who see the Republicans on the winning side of the energy issue, because they are for offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR. Those positions are wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Via Re-Nest and the Hartford Courant (a former employer) comes the Tiny House, a one-off production of Elizabeth Turnbull, with help from friends and neighbors.

I'm conversing with an architect this morning in advance of a consultation next month about expanding our house. No matter which way we imagine it, we're two rooms short, although we could probably get by with just one more.

For several years, LEDs were supposed to be the next big thing in consumer lighting, and they're still coming.

But a post this week at GreenDaily touts Electron Stimulated Luminescence as a quicker comer. They are supposed to be equivalent to CFLs in cost and lifespan, but to overcome two of their shortcomings: They use no mercury, and are dimmable.

So would you spend $55 million without expectation of return? You know, if you made billions in profit and could afford it?

I don't often have contact with contractors or subcontractors, other than those I meet at trade shows, and they are often a self-selecting group of activists, presenters, and all-round movers and shakers. But of mainstream builders, I know only a few.

In addition to cycling, animals and plants, farms and gardens, were a major theme.

Sunday, we rode over to Flamig Farm in West Simsbury, which was just around the corner from my family's first Connecticut home, to check out all the sustainable efforts they're taking, which includes a 72-panel solar array, a large-scale composting operation, and organic farming. I didn't bother shooting the panels, but the livestock were kinda photogenic:

I returned yesterday from a day and a half in Rhode Island, traveling with my brother, sister and their spouses, after spending the weekend with them, my mother and my niece at my brother's in Connecticut. But this photo offering is from our trip the previous week to Maine. (Don't fret, Vermont, we're coming in September.)

Another in the series of posts of what we do in our home that is, or isn't, sustainable or otherwise earth friendly.

I've been off red meat for at least a decade, which at the time was more pointed toward easy weight loss, rather than any consideration of sustainability. I saw a friend drop perhaps 20-30 pounds without trying, strictly as the result, he said, of marrying a vegetarian who did all the cooking. I was also influenced by my sister-in-law, Beverly, and her daughters, who are vegetarians.