They say it's not a hippie commune

Land has been set aside to create the town of Sky, Florida. Houses will be heated and cooled with geothermal energy, and appliances will be powered by solar panels. They're also setting up the town so you can walk pretty much everywhere.

Sounds good to me, but I'm a little far away.

The ingenuity of students never ceases to amaze

Okay, so it's been some weeks since you've heard from me, and I apologize for that. But I've been busy, you know?

The other day I noticed that a few spokes on my bike's rear wheel had gotten a little bent, so I went up to the Bloomington Community Bicycle Project (an open workshop where you can use their tools to fix your bike) to straighten them out, and that place was PACKED. There seemed to be a lot of students there, and not all of them had bikes, so I'm guessing they were there for the Earn a Bike program. It's a great program where you do volunteer work for them, and they give you a bike after you've put in so many hours. Of course, all the bikes they give away are donated to them in the first place, and who knows how many they have left, if any.

Still, it's nice to see some action being taken. The student population seems to be getting the most creative about things. I heard that most of the students that couldn't get home after the spring semester ended opted to enroll in summer sessions so they could get some more student loan money. A temporary fix, to be sure, but at least they're finding ways to survive while they're stranded in Middle America. Fraternity Row has turned practically all of its lawn space into gardens, as well as several of the open grassy areas on campus. It's good of the campus to let the students use their land like that.

But it gets me thinking about the fall. This town is built around the university. What's going to happen when students stop coming because they can't afford to get here? How are the local businesses going to handle that? How many university employees are going to get laid off because there aren't enough students to teach? And how will those people survive if they can't move somewhere where they can get work?

All this thinking about the future gets me worrying about the coming winter. I'm thinking I should pick up a 20 pound bag of rice in case the currently minor food shortages (o noes, i cannot eat doritoes!!) get worse with the cold. Is there a proper way to store those?

Thank goodness for vegetable oil

I think my bike is my best friend right now, because the farmer's market is a few miles away from where I live. But it's amazing to see the way people have adapted to the cost of transporting their crops. This past weekend I saw one guy bringing his fruits in with a horse drawn cart! I guess that's the way things go in the Midwest. We aren't quite as far away from nature as the more urban areas are. I'd hate to see how things are going in Indianapolis. And just forget New York!

I know there have been some reports of violence in other areas of the country, but here in Bloomington, things have been alright. My biggest worry is the student population. The school year just ended, and there are a lot of kids here that have no way to get back home since the shuttle service stopped running to the Indy airport. As long as they don't get too anxious, things should be alright.

One of my friends has the right idea, though. She's got a diesel car that she'd converted to run on vegetable oil some months ago. The restaurants she's been taking leftover fry oil from have started charging for it (I guess it's been a popular choice of alterna-fuel), but it's still cheaper than gas. She helps deliver crops to the farmer's market, and during the rest of the week she's been ferrying students up to the airport. They have to pay their way, of course, but it's far less expensive than taking the local taxi service up there. I only hope they can afford a ticket once they get there.

Me, though, I'll stick with my bike. I hope my parents don't mind that I can't visit them out of state anymore...