I am but an egg in the realm of green building (that's a Robert Heinlein reference, for those who don't recognize it; I was named after his Martian, Valentine Michael Smith), and yet I get to sit in the office's most pleasant room here in the old Estey Organ building--the drafting room, airy and bright with large double-hung windows and a delightful clerestory, where in days of old plans for over-ornamented Victorian parlor instruments were drawn. May I be worthy.
Before coming to Building Green, I studied anthropology, grew vegetables, and wrote and edited for small-town weekly newspapers.
A wind turbine ad on the New York Times homepage! Sure, Web ads are relatively cheap, but it still looks like a sign that alternative energy is hitting the big time. 
BuildingGreen recently cleared out about 75 shelf-feet of periodicals -- Architecture and PanelWorld and Ecological Restoration and Mold and Moisture Management and lots more. The recycling area outside the office was getting overcrowded with them and we still had more to remove. Then I remembered that our neighbor, Steve Benson, at J.S Benson Woodworking & Design, had told me he could use paper in his briquetter.
A friend of mine near Barcelona wrote me that truckers in Spain are on strike and are blocking roads. They demand the government set a 35% haulage tariff, which would be in proportion to the increase in fuel costs in the past year. Anticipating the stores will soon be empty, my friend made a trip into town, by train, to get a 50-pound bag of rice and some butane cylinders to run his family's kitchen stove. News reports say perishables are expected to run out within a week. Of course, if people make a run on the stores, perishables and non-perishables alike could be scarce faster. 