Alviston Blog

There are lots of cities that are synonymous with water: Venice with its canals, New York has the Hudson, Honolulu and the ocean. 

But most people probably don’t think of Fresno as a “water town.”  We only get 11 or 12 inches of rain a year after all.  We are actually considered a semi-arid desert.   So how can Fresno be a “river city”?

It turns out the the San Joaquin River, the river that gave it’s name to the entire Valley, flows down from the mighty Sierra right past Fresno on its way to the Pacific Ocean. If it were running, it would be the fourth largest river in the state. 

But in 1947, or there ’bouts, the river got turned off.  Up until then, you could catch salmon in the San Joaquin River.  After a while, people started to think, “Well, that’s just the way it is.”   The San Joaquin was more useful as a canal than a river, after all, and who’s gonna miss a few fish?”

All my life I’ve heard people put Fresno down, but I don’t think I ever got the connection. I never thought that maybe one of the reasons people didn’t like Fresno was because we turned off a river.  If you think about it, people need water; we’re magnetically drawn to rivers and lakes and oceans. They not only symbolize life, the provide it.  So if you turn off a river, it’s bound to have some negative effects.

A couple weeks ago, a group called “Revive the San Joaquin” held a festival at Lost Lake Park, just north of Fresno.  It was really no surprise that many in attendance had never been to the park, a beautiful spot on the banks of the San Joaquin River.  Why would you go to a river park that didn’t have a river?  It dawned on me that the reason many who had come this day was simple: the water was back.

The decision to return the water to the river may not be popular in the agricultural community. It’s a tricky issue for sure which may be difficult to understand especially in the light of our current economic struggles. I’ve certainly had questions about the wisdom of turning off the pumps to save the little delta smelt.  The agony that it caused seemed out of proportion to the good achieved. 

But bringing back the San Joaquin River is akin to creating a national park, only more difficult. Becuase as humans, we have a very difficult time turning around, even when we know we’re going the wrong direction.

For a long time, we thought we needed to conquer nature as if nature was our enemy. Now we realize we need nature to survive and we need to learn to live in harmony with nature or things may not work out so well for us.  For those who have worked to bring back the San Joaquin, it must have seemed an insurmountable stuggle, and we owe them all, not just for this river, but what the struggle has tought us about the true value of nature. 

The San Joaquin River and all rivers, should be cherished and preserved and not seen as merely a resources or highways of commerce.  They are so much more.

–Mark Alvis

I am always looking for products that perform more than one function and are easy to use. Because I am really into energy efficiency, these products often have to do with insulation. One of the reasons we use insulated concrete forms (ICFs) is that they are easy to build with. This may seem like a trivial thing, but if something is heavy, it takes more work to move it. More work equals more money.

I also look for materials that last a very long time; you do not want to have to replace a roof if you can help it.

A couple of weeks ago my Dad told me about a new roofing material that a friend of his was using on his house. He said he thought I would be interested because it was called an “insulated roof tile.” We went and saw it and sure enough, it turned out to be a Spanish tile that was made with an expanded polystyrene core. The exterior of the tile was made from some type of stucco-like product. It looked just like the real thing, but it weighed much less than an ordinary tile.

I immediately wanted to try it. I did some quick research, and within a week, we had a contract to use it on a house in Fresno; the first one in the city, it turns out, which is funny because the stuff is made only a few miles north, in Madera. In the process of researching the product, I spoke with a roofer in Maui who had been using it for over a year and said it was great. It has been approved for use in Fresno County, but not within the city of Fresno itself. 

Therefore, I spent a couple of days working with the manufacturer, collecting the product’s test info, and then had a chat with the city of Fresno’s building department at city hall. It turns out that the head inspector for the city was already interested in using the stuff on his house and had a sample of the tile sitting on his desk! I explained that the ICC report was pending, therefore, a one-time use permit was granted, until the report came in.

The installation went much quicker than I expected for a tile roof, owing to its light weight and large size. The roof was all hips, so there was quite a bit of cut off, but even that was easy to handle. The roofing material itself has an R-6 value, which is not huge; however, any R-value for a roof tile is big news. It also has a high emissivity, which means it releases the heat more readily instead of just getting hotter like a piece of metal does.

My co-worker Sean and I are going to build a couple of test “dog houses” for his dogs. On one roof, we are going to use metal, and on the other, we are going to use the new, insulated tile. 

It was 102 in Fresno today. We will let you know soon which dog is happier. 

–Mark Alvis

So we are working on this roof replacement job using a new type of insulated tile (which you are going to hear a lot more about later on), and I am making a run to the cardboard recycler. Yesterday, it was the concrete recycler. Tomorrow, I am going to use some of the busted up concrete from one job to put into a French drain system at another job. That is the way it works, you know; everything is connected.

Anyways… I am driving back from the cardboard recycler and I see another recycler, one of those neighborhood types that take glass, plastic, and aluminum. I was almost past it when a blue glint caught my eye. I curiously turned around and pulled in. On the ground, facing due south was a small photovoltaic array. This recycler was powering the entire rig with solar power…the radio, fan, cash register, and scales. It is true, I have pictures.

For anyone still doubting that solar power ”pencils out,” I recommend looking around your neighborhood and see how much solar power is out there penciling away. I think that people often miss many of the benefits of solar, simply comparing it directly to grid power, watt for watt. However, what if there is nowhere to plug in? Not to mention that the true cost of grid power is never really paid. Well, it may some day by our kids, I guess, and by the occasional pelican.

Even though this has been an incredible week for green, the Green Business of the Week award goes to the people running the recycling booth at the corner of First and Shields in Fresno, right next door to the blood bank.

A solar-powered recycler…fabulous!

–Mark Alvis

I think I have finally figured out the real reason men and women get married: it is so they do not have to decide whether to get a car or a truck. Yikes! I spent the whole week going back and forth between a hybrid car and a pickup, both practical in their own ways, both with their own set of limitations.

Oddly, it turns out they cost about the same. Therefore, an easy cost-based decision was out. At first, I was sure I wanted a truck. I still have a lot of life left in my old bones and a full-size truck can haul lumber, tow trailers, and pull out trees. Heck, you can shovel dirt right in the back of a truck. I have done many things with a Prius, but I draw the line at loading it up with a ton of dirt.

On the other hand, driving to Reedley every day, about a 50-mile round trip, is going to take over three gallons of gas in the truck. The hybrid would take one. In one month, that is 40 gallons more for the truck, 480 for the year. Yeah, ouch: $1,440 more in gas if I drive the truck to go to the same place.

Therefore, I slid back in favor of the hybrid. Then, I was waylaid by all the unbelievable deals the American car companies are offering. You know, the ones designed to waylay you. Did you know we are just a little minus sign away from the car companies paying us to buy a truck?

I took me a week of riding my bike and making phone calls, but I finally pulled the trigger. I got the truck, one that could pull a hecka big trailer and haul a lot of dirt. I might even fit a Prius in the bed.

I wish there was a full-size truck that got 50 miles to the gallon, but there is not. This is the real consternation. If we know that burning gasoline produces CO2 that causes global warming, do we simply stop driving trucks, even when we have few, if any, alternatives right now?

What do you think?

–Mark Alvis

I did not really plan for it to happen. However, for the second time since graduating from high school, I am, sans auto: I have no ride! Now, for those of you reading this in New York City, you are probably thinking, “What’s the big deal?” Nevertheless, for us Californians, not having a vehicle is shockingly disconcerting.

It is like trying to “think” in a foreign language; no matter how much I may like the idea of not having a car, the reality sets in pretty quick. I just got back from the grocery store. I rode there on my bike. I did not think much of it; however, milk, pineapple juice, and rice weigh a lot more when you are carrying them on your bike than when they are on the seat next to you.

I have been looking for a new vehicle, but I cannot decide on either a car or truck. There are good arguments for both…the hybrid for long trips, the truck for pulling trailer loads of ICF. Both are ridiculously expensive and I cannot believe I am actually considering paying over $30,000 for a truck. When did we get to the point where it seems fine to pay half as much for a vehicle as you do for a house? Well, OK, a third.

To tell you the truth, I am really quite enjoying my newfound freedom from gas. In the weeks leading up to selling my old Toyota pickup, I spent over $400 in gas driving to places I was absolutely certain I needed to drive to. Now, just a week later, I do not even have a car. Somehow, I have survived.

I sold my truck to a very happy young man in Richmond, California. I drove it up to him on a Sunday because he needed a truck. However, how was I going to get back home to Fresno? OMG! No truck! Nevertheless, not having a car gave me the chance to ride the Amtrak for the first time in my life. It was fabulous and much faster than I expected. I was able to read, sleep, and see parts of California I had never seen.

I am thinking that everyone in America should give it a try…one week without a car. 

Really…try it. 

–Mark Alvis

We have some weird habits when it comes to food.

Let us say the family is sitting down to a nice Sunday dinner of roast beef and mashed potatoes (the good homemade kind with lots of butter), string beans, and salad. Everyone’s favorite, especially Dad’s.

Arnold, the youngest, had to stay late at church so he comes in late. Everyone else has already loaded up his or her plate. There is plenty of everything except the potatoes, so Arnold takes the last helping.

The family continues eating and talking until Dad asks for some more potatoes.

“All right! Who ate all the mashed potatoes?” Everyone looks at poor Arnold because he was the one who finished the potatoes. It is as if he ate the whole bowl even though everyone else had more than he did.

Look, it is as simple as this…when we started using fossil fuels for energy there was a fixed amount. There will never be any more. The planet has gone out of the oil-making business. Just like the bowl of mashed potatoes, we are going to run out. However, unlike the potatoes, we are not going to be able to grow more. Therefore, when it comes down to the last barrel of oil, are we really going to say, “All right, who used up all the oil?” Furthermore, what is going to happen as we approach the time of the empty bowl of oil? I bet it will be worse than a fight over mashed potatoes. 

We now have an opportunity to deal with several serious global problems all at once: global economic decline, global warming, and the global food and energy supplies. Once we recognize that our current path is unsustainable, does it make any sense to keep doing it? Since there is a limited amount, should we not be figuring out ways to conserve it rather than using as much as we can?

To deal adequately with Earth’s heating climate, we are going to have to reduce the amount of CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere by 90%. To do this, we need alternatives to nearly the entire transportation fleet, and something like 85% of the power supply. We need to stop burning coal to make electricity and bring in wind power, solar, geothermal, and hydro. It would probably be a good idea to use the fossil fuels to ease this transition rather than just burning it for fun.

Good fortune has given us a global economic meltdown. It is a heart attack for the planet. We need to take it as a warning sign that the fossil fuel diet we are currently on is having serious consequences and needs to be changed immediately.

Or, we can ignore it and wait for the next crisis.

Oops, my bad. We are already in one.

–Mark Alvis 

You have probably heard of Father Damien, the Catholic priest who worked with the victims of Hansen’s disease on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Prior to his arrival, the leper settlement, located on the nearly inaccessible Kalaupapa peninsula, was a sort of “mad max” hell on Earth. Father Damien changed that. He built hospitals, churches, and cemeteries. He taught the people who lived in Kalaupapa to respect themselves and each other. He brought hope to people who had little.

However, few people know about St. Frances of Molokai.

After losing both her parents while she was still very young, Grannie (which she was called even though she never had children and was only 38) began building a series a houses on the east side of Molokai in a little valley called Puo’o. At first, she lived in the jungle in a shack that she shared with the geckos and the rats. Every morning she woke up to the birds singing and the sound of the wind through the magnificent mango trees. For some, this would seem unbearable, but not to St. Frances. She had grown up in Hawaii and felt the life of the Earth in everything there.

After living in the jungle for a few months, St. Frances decided that this was where she wanted to live. Her understanding of the connections between people and the land meant that she did not want to trample the jungle, or the animals that lived there. She wanted to “fit into” nature, rather than conquer it. At the same time, she wanted to provide for her family. Therefore, she decided to build homes that would have a minimal impact, by being powered by the sun. They would grow much of their own food. St. Frances and her husband started to build. They would provide habitat for the animals there.

First, they built a small house that in which they would live while the bigger house was being built. It used photovoltaic panels for electricity, solar collectors for hot water, used compact fluorescent bulbs, and a DC-powered fridge was installed. Without the need for heating or cooling, PV provided plenty of power for them.

Next, they built a solar-powered barn/studio for the husband. They planted a small orchard of fruit trees, which added to the mangos, papaya, and coconut trees that had been there for a long time.

Once the barn was finished, they started work on the main house. It took a great deal of time and patience getting things to be just right. Working with local builders, they gently helped them to understand their vision.

St. Frances did not realize nor brag that, in designing and building her home and the homes for her family, she patiently brought the compassion for the land she had learned growing up to many of the island’s residents. She did this by having people do things that they were unaccustomed to doing; doing things she was unfamiliar with herself. Saving electricity became second nature. She recycled, composted, and learned the rhythms of the land. The combination of conservation and sustainable power generation was so successful, that they ended up generating more power than they used.

It was not that she had planned to be a saint, but when her husband suddenly passed away, Grannie was left having to house, feed, and take care of her daughter-in-law, her grandson, plus her grandson’s girlfriend and baby.

The first few months after her husband’s death were grim. All the hard work they had done seemed to be a waste. Nevertheless, slowly the spirit of Hawaii reawakened in her, in the birds singing, in the rain out over the ocean, in the giant mango trees laden with fruit. Nature surrounded her showing her life.

She had lost her parents when she was still very young and now her husband. As anyone would, she questioned why this all had happened to her, so much pain and sadness. For most people, these would have been ample reasons to be bitter. However, St. Frances would have none of that. She was still alive and there was still much good she could contribute to the world.

With patience and caring, she held her family together while always holding steadfast to her “real world” approach to sustainable living. They still have not hooked up to the grid. Everyone that has worked with Grannie has come away with a deeper respect for themselves, for the land, and its creatures.

St. Frances was never comfortable being labeled a conservative or a liberal. Regardless, she did not mind being labeled smart.

–Mark Alvis

Neither of us had said anything for at least an hour.

We had “bouldered” over to the edge of the ocean on the rocks at Halawa Bay on Molokai. Behind us were 2,000 ft. cliffs with a 500 ft. waterfall right where it was supposed to be. There were very few people around. We sat on top of a couple of the smooth, black rocks that separated the two beaches. A couple of boys were body surfing in the waves, which came in sets of four and five.

Patches of violently green plants made a statement of defiance amongst the boulders. The clouds had translucence at their edges and the sky seemed 3-D. However, that did not make sense. The horizon was vividly defined; a line between the purple-blue ocean and the clouds above and it stretched from one edge of the bay to the other and was very discernibly humped in the middle.

Halawa does this to people. It surrounds you with life. You feel the earth, with its intense colors, the constant motion of the waves, and the ocean’s incessant sound. You see things you usually do not see, things you are not sure you are actually seeing. It is almost overwhelming, as if there is just too much going on. However, if you take some time, slowly, it starts to happen.

I have had similar feelings, but never so intense or so clear. This place talks to you. You have to be listening of course, but it is not as if Halawa is whispering. It is talking so loud it is almost deafening. I thought about it for a while, while we were sitting on the black boulders in the middle of this unabashed exhibition of life. I thought of what it reminded me.

It was Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, where I felt a connection to the land. I remember doing almost the same thing, looking out over the canyon, and feeling the people who had been there before. Though very different, in both cases, my understanding had come through interpreters, which in this case were Hawaiians, while it was the Anasazi in Arizona. In both cases, no one said anything directly to me, but instead, like the land itself, maintained a patient persistence that slowly led me to see how we are surrounded by and are part of nature, and that we need to take care of it as it takes care of us. They both know that this is not something that you can be taught, but something you have to find out for yourself.

Even though Molokai is called “The Friendly Isle,” I had found that the people on Molokai were not very friendly. I wondered why. Halawa helped me understand. The connection that I felt to the earth in the brief time we spent sitting on the rocks on the shore of Halawa Bay was exhilarating, but nothing compared to what the Hawaiians must feel for this place.

It is excruciating. To have this deep knowledge and yet have to watch as such a place as Hawaii, such a place as Earth, slowly succumbs.

There is a bumper sticker on Molokai that says, “Don’t change Molokai. Let Molokai change you.”

It changed me.

We took a few pictures. I think I got one that maybe hints at what the place is like.

–Mark Alvis

With the population of Molokai being that of a small town, you would not expect there to be much of nightlife. But let me tell you.

I have been here just over two weeks now, working for F.E. de Camerones on several properties she is getting ready to sell. There is a rental house, a guesthouse, a small cottage, and the main house. The property stretches up a valley and has a gorgeous ocean view of West Maui. Being on the east end of Molokai, it gets pretty good rain but it is not quite full-on jungle.

One of the projects we have been working on is repairing and painting all the windows on the main house. To do this, we had to remove most of the hardware and the screens, sand, primer, and paint. The job took about three days and in the meantime, we had to leave the screens off.

The first night was not too bad. However, by the second night, the bug network had set in. It was like an insect parade. It started with small little black gnats that hovered around the lights and went swimming in your water glass. Then, there was a contingent of cool-looking spotted moths followed by a hopping creature that looked kind of like a miniature cricket. All harmless. I never saw a mosquito and nothing bit me. Then…flying roaches!

We were getting ready for a barbeque the next day and I was making potato salad when we came under attack. They would dive bomb right past our ears and hit a wall making incredible noise. They would circle around on the wall for a while and then launch again.

Fortunately, F.E. had been well trained in anti-roach warfare and quickly dispatched several by stomping on them with her bare feet, but they were undaunted and kept coming from out of the darkness. They were the slowest roaches I have encountered, and I found it relatively easy to pick them off myself, though F.E. taught me you need to squish their heads or they just kept on twitching. Body shots would just piss them off. F.E. even enlisted the help one of her cats who stomped on a roach himself. (See pictures.)

It was quite a night and it got me thinking. If you build a house in the middle of the jungle and leave your windows open at night, the nightlife is going to come in. What else would you expect to happen?

That got me thinking…is this not true wherever we are?

–Mark Alvis

One of the first things I saw when I arrived on Molokai was a big, hand painted sign of a wind turbine with a slash through it.

In comparison to the other Hawaiian Islands, Molokai is sparsely populated, with fewer than 8,000 permanent residents. I had heard that there were many forward-thinking people on the island, really into solar power, sustainability, and against things like GMOs. Therefore, when I saw signs that said “NO TO WIND POWER,” I was confused.

I did some research and learned that since Molokai is so small, they do not have the demand for power like the neighboring island of Oahu. However, Oahu, being an island, does not have a lot of room for the wind turbines. Therefore, the idea is to put them on Molokai, which is much more sparsely populated. Kind of like the farmers in the Midwest who have put up wind machines on their ranches and are turning a tidy profit.

I am not sure if this “anti-wind turbine” sentiment on Molokai is based on aesthetics, which I could see, or if it is simply some type of isolationist thing. I have only been here a week, but I would certainly understand why people who live here would want to keep the rest of the world’s craziness out. Of all the places I have been in the world, including several other Hawaiian islands, Molokai is the most down-to-earth.

That is the sad part. We all want places like Molokai to stay just the way they are. However, Molokai is part of the rest of the world too. We all have to deal with issues like global warming, ocean acidification, overpopulation, etc. No one gets to opt out.

Sometimes the issues are island specific. Right now, people on Molokai have been told they cannot throw any metals into the landfill; no one is interested in recycling metal due to its low price. This has happened in the past, and the result was people just pushed their old, dead refrigerators and rusting cars into a convenient gulch. Nothing too aesthetic about that.

I see Molokai’s refuse problem as a microcosm of the rest of the world: we are all running out of places to dump our trash.

I empathize with the people on Molokai. They live in paradise and do not want to see it destroyed. Nevertheless, I think the time has finally come where we all realize that the entire Earth is a paradise and we all must share in the task of saving her.

–Mark Alvis