The third event in Belvedere’s Concert in the Park series will feature cajun musicians Flambeau and Tom Rigney from 4 to 6 p.
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Residents along San Rafael Avenue have rejected a proposal to pay for burying utility wires in their neighborhood.
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St. Hilary School, a K-8 Catholic school in Tiburon, is accepting registrations for the new school year, which starts Aug.
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The Belvedere City Council heard from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. on Monday that “smart meters” would not be rolled out in the city until late fall, and the City Council backed a move to halt installation of the devices pending more study.
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Caltrans is planning to remove trees on Tiburon Boulevard from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday, which could result in partial lane closures and possible traffic delays.
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“ 18th Opera Night at Servino “

Special  guest wine maker “ Paolo Mastroberardini ”

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Robert Ashens Artistic Director, Conductor

ξ

Passing Appetizer 6:30pm

Polpette Siciliana, Boconcini e Prosciutto, Mista di Bruscetta, Polenta e Gorgonzola

Prosecco Bellucci

Dinner & Opera 7:00pm

Insalata Estate

Organic Mixed Greens, Organic nectarine, radish, goat cheese, glazed nuts

2009 Falanghina, Terredora Dipaolo, Campania

Primo

Ravioli Vivaldi

House made spinach ravioli stuffed with fresh Dungeness crab, served with a light tomato cream sauce

2009 Greco di Tufo, Terredora Dipaolo, Campania

Secondo

Maiale alle Prugne

Roasted center cut pork loin, filled with prune, wrapped with pancetta,

Served with a light Marsala reduction, on a bed of potato, garnish with broccolini

2004 Taurasi, Terredora Dipaolo, Campania

Dolce

Crunchy Chocolate Mousse Cake Served with organic mixed berry coulis

Vinsanto

$ 85 all inclusive

9 Main Street, Tiburon, Ca 94920, Tel: 415 435 2676 www.servino.com

The World Wildlife Federation (WWF), in an effort to promote both greater use of renewable energy and conservation of marine ecosystems, has a 46-foot solar boat (WWF Solar) sailing around the Mediterranean.

The solar catamaran is part of WWF Spain’s new ‘Embárcate’ (Get on Board) campaign that is planned along the Mediterranean coastline for the next three summers.

“The WWF Solar is powered completely by the sun. It does not use sails, and it does not use any fossil fuels. It is a boat that causes no polltion – it does not emit any Co2 whatsoever. The Solar shows that we can easily substitute fossil fuels with renewable energy,” said José Luis García Varas, Head of the Marine Program at WWF Spain.

“The WWF Solar and its crew have already docked in the cities of Águilas, Mazarrón, and Cartagena along Spain’s southeastern coast, bringing with them an arsenal of infomation on endangered Mediterranean habitats and species, as well as tips on the sustainable use of resources in some of the last wildlife bastions along the Spanish shoreline,” WWF wrote on Friday.

The WWF Solar will visit Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) such as the Cap de Creus Canyon, home to the greatest density of submarine canyons in the Mediterranian Sea, as well as other important coastal areas in the Mediterranean in the next few years.

The WWF Solar has photovoltaic panels covering its 65m2 roof, allowing the boat to travel at an average speed of 5 knots. It can run for 90 nautical miles straight, essentially two full nights of sailing or around 18 hours, when its batteries are fully charged.

“Renewable energy is an important part of this as is raising awareness that there are many other sustainable practices, such as operating small scale fisheries, that make it possible for people and the environment to thrive,” García Varas said.

The WWF is not new to the seas. In 2007, 5 people traveled from Basel, Switzerland to New York City on this boat to set a Guinness World Record for completing the first motorized crossing of the Atlantic Ocean using only renewable energy. After completing this trip and setting the record, Swiss association Transatlantic 21 (original developers of the boat), donated it to WWF.

Bastille’s Rooftop Garden Raises Urban Farming to New Heights - By Michael van Baker

Colin McCrate, urban farmer

If there’s a vanguard for the back-to-the-future, “Victory Garden” era in horticulture and landscaping, Colin McCrate is leading it. As the recession stretches out, garden-happy Seattleites are switching flowerbeds and shrubs into edible greens, fruits, and vegetables. At McCrate’s Seattle Urban Farm Company, the requests for residential farm landscaping (and chicken coops) keep increasing.

“It’s definitely true,” said McCrate, atop Ballard’s Bastille restaurant (5307 Ballard Ave. N.W.), where he’s installed a prototype rooftop garden. “More and more people are taking advantage of yard space to supplement their food needs. The sale of vegetable seeds has gone through the roof.”

Seattle’s climate, even in a cloud-shrouded summer like the one we are currently experiencing, is perfect for cultivation of greens, herbs, vegetables and fruit, particularly native apples, cherries and plums. Rain and peek-a-boo sun makes for perfect growing conditions. Some local gardeners have always made a sport of growing food products, and Seattle’s P-Patch network has been flourishing since the hippie-intensive 1970s. But now, people are farming for keeps, both residentially and commercially.

“Our customers are constantly surprised at the yield from even a small plot,” McCrate commented.

A few years ago, Bastille’s James Weimann and Demming Maclise purchased a building on the resurgent Ballard Avenue. (If you haven’t been over there recently, make plans. It’s as nice a mix of retail and restaurants in the city). Their goal was to create a restaurant that adhered to the strict demands of French cuisine, namely the use of fresh ingredients. They succeeded in spades, but not before an intensive remodel and some bold thinking. Weimann and Maclise hit on the idea of a rooftop garden. What could be fresher than the harvest from a two-flight walk-up garden?

McCrate, who designed the innovative rooftop beds for Bastille’s produce, estimates that with 800 square feet of garden, the restaurant is currently meeting about 30 to 40 percent of its needs for fresh greens and herbs, including red leaf lettuce, Miner’s lettuce, arugula and peppercress. “They are, however, getting 100 percent of their basil and rosemary needs, which both do very well in Seattle.”

Weimann and Maclise may not see a positive return on their investment for a number of years, but patrons get an immediate, positive return in every bite. And as innovators in the rooftop garden field, they’ve been raking in the media coverage. The garden is “poised to become a Seattle landmark,” said Eat, Drink and Be. Bastille is not the only restaurant or urban enterprise doing a bit of intensive farming. Venerable Canlis has a terraced garden in its North Queen Anne Hill location, and, two years ago, Maggie McKelvy, a manager of HomeStreet Bank’s Ballard branch, led an effort to turn a bed in the bank’s parking lot into a vegetable-producing space.

McCrate believes efforts like these are just the first steps of a widespread movement to reclaim food. It’s hard to argue with him. Just two years ago, separate incidents with contaminated lettuce and cilantro generated a great amount of fear about the safety of our industrial-strength food chain, and the quality of produce like greens, fruits and vegetables that should be served as fresh as possible.

“Producing your own food allows for a measure of security,” said McCrate. “Anyone can plant a vegetable bed or a fruit tree. It takes no more water or soil than a flower bed, looks almost as beautiful in the yard, and produces a tangible and edible benefits.

SANYO SOLAR MUSEUM

Sanyo’s 1,033-foot- wide solar-powered museum in central Japan is composed of thousands of factory-recalled solar cells recycled from the company’s junk piles – a rare fusion of budgetary restraint, ecological awareness, and aesthetic design.

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Trend setting California is again leading the nation; this time in the development of solar power. But California isn’t alone and it’s not just power companies and automobile manufactures finding religion in going green. Many of the incentive plans being put forward by companies are a result of federal stimulus dollars packaged with state and local programs. These prgrams are making going solar a viable alternative for homeowners. Modeled after German FITs (Feed in Tariffs) which even though Germany isn’t known for sunny weather, it has become a global leader in the use of and manufacturing of solar panels. PG & E recently joined forces with solar finance company SunRun to provide money for PG & E customers to go solar. This comes at an interesting time as PG & E has been dealing with some controversy about its’ Smart Meters and the loss of Proposition 16, a largely PG & E sponsored bill designed to limit consumer choice for energy.

The energy business has indeed been turned on its head. People are realizing there are options and they are not just “consumers” to be prayed upon. There really is a choice. See The Solar Bill of Rights Video. One niche within alternative energy is the world of the OTG’s as I like to call them. OTG? Sounds like a gang with whom you don’t want to mess with uh?Anyway it stands for Off the Grid. Here are some of their stories:

Green living: Off the grid families pioneer sustainable energy lifestyles

Once on the fringe, about 750,000 off the grid American households pioneer green living by tapping sustainable energy from the wind, sun, and earth.

By Kari Lydersen, / Contributor
posted August 7, 2010 at 2:34 pm EDT – Asheville, N.C. —

Living “off the grid” can conjure fantasies of Swiss Family Robinson-style ingenuity in paradise. Or, for those with less love of roughing it, it can simply remind them of the hardscrabble self-reliance throughout much of the developing world, where millions cook over fires, bathe in streams, and consider the glow of a bare light bulb a luxury.

In the United States, off-the-grid living – without relying on government entities or utility companies to provide electricity, heat, gas, and water – often is associated with gritting it out on the survivalist fringe.

But an increasing range of Americans are leading a snug, even smug, lifestyle totally or mostly unhitched from public utilities. Using nature – the sun, wind, water, and the earth itself – they cheaply warm and cool their homes and power everything from a blender to a giant flat-screen TV to a raging hot tub. And with the constant concern about global warming and messy dependence on fossil fuels, it’s natural that growing numbers of Americans – “the foot soldiers” of energy independence, as one expert calls them – would begin taking steps to untether themselves from the grid.

For Wayah Hall, going off the grid in a cabin 26 miles from downtown Asheville, N.C., was a way to live in harmony with nature and avoid reliance on electricity that comes from the region’s coal-burning power plant that pumps smog into the famous Blue Ridge Mountains haze.

Mr. Hall, an outdoor-skills instructor, and his wife, Alicia Bliss Hall, a natural healer, live in a kind of off-the-grid neighborhood with another young couple: Jason Brake, a professional muralist, and his wife, Diana Styffeler, a mountain bike excursion leader. Their two cabins, nestled in temperate rain forest, are powered with electricity that comes exclusively from solar panels mounted on a wagon that they wheel around the property to catch the best rays. Their water comes from a swiftly flowing stream; wood-burning stoves heat the cabins and even an outdoor hot tub; and indoor, waterless composting toilets built decoratively out of tree stumps mean they don’t need a sewer system. They’re installing a hydropower system in the stream that will add to the solar power.

Their existence appears quite rustic – and the “sustainable” lifestyle depends a whole lot on them to sustain it with such work as wood chopping and wagon pulling. But they say they have all the creature comforts they need, and – if February’s record snowstorm is any gauge – some their neighbors need, too. When public power outages left on-the-grid neighbors in dark and chilly homes, a dozen of them congregated in the Halls’ self-sufficient glow: a lighted cabin, where they cozied up to the wood stove, recharged their cellphones, and even enjoyed a soak in the hot tub.”We didn’t even realize the power had gone out until our friends started coming over looking for refuge,” says Ms. Hall. Read on

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Gigantic, Very Green and on Tap for Marin

Anders Swahn stays busy running a solar energy startup. In his spare time he plans his new home, a clean-technology marvel said to be carbon neutral with solar panels, geothermal heating and gray-water recycling. It would be built to last for 200 years and measure up to Marin County’s green building standards.

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