I regret to report that your correspondent was ignorant of Steven Chu, the president-elect's designee for secretary of energy, but the reaction I'm reading today is very enthusiastic.

People who know of my interest in sustainability sometimes ask where to start, and my answer has varied over time, dependent on what new action I've been exposed to.

Perhaps this states what's obvious to others, but I've only recently come to understand that the right answer is the first one, whatever that is. Whether one starts with here or there doesn't matter nearly as much as having started.

I've been writing for a while about what Georgie and I do, and don't do, at home in the name of energy efficiency and sustainability. (You can see the series here.) I've been lax on keeping up, but we've added a few things recently:

Amory Lovins, the sophisticated thinker who cofounded the Rocky Mountain Institute and easily one of my green heroes, came to Cambridge last week, and I am bereft! It's the second time this year — the other was MIT's energy conference in March — that important topical events took place in Cambridge without my knowing it.

Oh, the affrontery! Don't they know who I think I am?

The windmill that stands tall beside I-93 in Dorchester is about to get a companion north of the city, in Medford.

The city is erecting a 100-kilowatt turbine at the McGlynn Middle School, with help from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and Mass. Energy, among other funders.

Joel Gordes, whom I know of through NESEA, says that if taxpayers are going to give $34 billion to bail out the Big 3 US automakers, one of the conditions should be that they must stop pursuing their selfish lawsuits against state regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

At Mass. Energy's annual meeting Wednesday night, solar vet Henry Vandermark told me about of SolarWave Energy, a venture he has in start-up that provides a real-time, remote monitor for solar systems. 

As I understand it, Vandermark will sell his service to installers, as a constituent of their warranty services, allowing them to make service calls before a crisis, and avoid making business calls when they may not be necessary. 

No, the subject isn't cold drinks made with evaporated cane juice, organic yogurt, and shavings of ice from distilled water. EcoShakes are an artificial shingle made from wood chips and recycled PVC piping that were shown at GreenBuild.

I thought they looked awful.

Granted, I was seeing them at fairly close range under artificial light, and they might look a lot better espied from street level on a typical day in the suburbs. But in those conditions, they looked as fake as fake could be.

According to Noah Bierman at the Globe, Boston-area commuters stayed with the T in October, even though gas prices had declined from their outrageous highs.

It will take at least another month to know if that is just a blip or if it signifies a long-lasting change. But it's promising news.

An interesting product I came across at GreenBuild was the home-control system being offered by Verve Livings Systems. The tech-candy for me is their wall switches, which convert the energy you use to flip the switch into a pulse that sends the instruction to a a central controller, dousing or dimming the light in question, or performing more complicated routines if programmed that way.