MADELINE’S SOLAR HOUSE
In 1980 a woman named Madeline Blakeley called me to ask me to look at a piece of land with her. She was a librarian in her early sixties whose husband had recently died. They had no children and had always lived in rented apartments. Her dream was to own a piece of property.
She had $7,000 in cash. A realtor showed her a lot priced at exactly that, but all her friends advised her against buying it. The property sloped steeply south to a beautiful little valley, a perfectly matched solar exposure and view. But it was right beside the main road from Vineyard Haven to Edgartown, which was very loud and loomed over the property. Except for that proximity and the fact that the whole lot was a hillside, it was a lovely site. There was nothing else on Martha’s Vineyard within her price range.
I suggested that we could cut and fill and she could build an earth-bermed, partially underground house. “The southern orientation aims away from the road just enough, and the berming would dull the noise as long as the house doesn’t open to that side. We can design the traffic right out of the picture.” She was excited. Even though she didn’t imagine that she could afford to build anything at all, the idea that the land could eventually be sensibly used was appealing. She bought the property.
We learned that the Farmer’s Home Administration had a rural housing program with very low interest loans for low and moderate income people. She qualified. Would they finance a passive solar earth-integrated house for Madeline? We completed plans, submitted them to Farmer’s Home and requested that they raise the mortgage limit from $40,000 to $48,000 due to the promise of carefully analyzed and documented energy savings. After extensive bureaucratic wrangling the increase was approved.
The house was built.
Madeline’s dream was realized. She and her dog moved in and lived there for many years.
In the mid 90’s she met an older man named Edwin Heath, re-married, and reluctantly moved to Florida, where he was accustomed to the gentle climate. With a heavy heart Madeline sold the house, but she always stayed in touch with the buyer, a woman named Tillie, because the house was such a part of her. Tillie loved it too. Madeline was glad of that.
I lost track of Madeline after her move, but when my book, The Company We Keep, was published, I tracked her down and sent her a copy with an affectionate inscription. She wrote back – a wonderful letter in longhand about what that house had meant to her.
A few years ago Madeline’s husband died, and she, quite old now too, and somewhat ill, had one dream left – to move back to the Vineyard for the final years of her life. But there was little hope of that. Undaunted, she put her name on the long list of people waiting for housing through Island Elderly Housing. Miraculously, her name was drawn a short time after. She accepted the apartment offered, sight unseen, packed up, and made the trek.
Twenty six years after I first met Madeline, she called me and said she was settled in on the island and wanted to come to see our new shop and office, and the cohousing neighborhood next door where we live. Her neighbor Joyce would bring her. We arranged a time. They drove up to the office. Once inside she stopped, looked around, and sighed deeply. “My god it’s beautiful,” she said. She walked into the main office,
with a look of wonder on her face as if she had just entered a botanical garden in full bloom – touching everything, gazing around, taking it all in.
She looked older, of course, but not so much. More wrinkled, and smaller – compacted in a way. She moved more slowly, too, with the help of a mahogany cane. But the eyes and the voice had not changed at all. And her character – observant, candid, emotional, expressive, and vital – was the same as always.
Everyone in the office was drawn to her. Her presence was magnetic. She strolled through like an old master, pointing out things of interest, but humbly, not grandly. She was awed by everything she saw and everyone she met.
After touring, we sat down in my office to rest, to talk, to have a glass of water. She said, “John, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but you and the others didn’t just build me a house. It was so much more. I found myself in that house. I loved everything about it, and everything about being there, and every day I lived there I found myself again, in some other way, and found something else in the house to bring me pleasure.” That’s what she said.
• • • •
Last week I got a call from a lawyer. It said that I was a legatee in a Will. I had never heard the word. I looked it up – it is, of course, a beneficiary. Hey, not bad – I guess you never know what you’ll find when you open an envelope from a lawyer. Sometimes it’s something unexpected. Sometimes it’s actually something you want.
He e-mailed me the Will. It was Madeline’s.
Here’s what it said, in part:
Second: I give and bequeath the following sums to the following individuals for the specified purposes:
A: Fifty Thousand Dollars ($50,000.00) to JOHN ABRAMS (or his designee) to be used in conjunction with the South Mountain Company, Inc. for the purpose of making an innovative and educational renewable energy installation at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School or another appropriate public setting on Martha’s Vineyard. Said sum shall also be used to erect a brass plaque engraved to reflect this bequest came from Edward Charles Heath and Madeline Blakely Heath, with specific wording to be determined by JOHN ABRAMS, such plaque to include a bas relief of my solar house design.
That was followed by B, C, D, and E – four bequests of $2-3,000 to friends. And then this:
Third: I give and bequeath all the rest, residue and remainder of my estate to said JOHN ABRAMS (or his designee) to be used for affordable housing initiatives on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.
We’re not sure what to do with the $50,000 yet. But one of my partners – Phil Forest – has us thinking about making the first electric charging station on the Vineyard, way up in Aquinnah at the extreme western tip of the island. It would be solar electric powered and provide electricity for cars, chilled water for cyclists and hikers, and a shady and welcoming oasis for these several kinds of travelers.
She’d like that.
Whatever we do, it better be good if it’s to measure up to her spirit. And it will have, of course, a bronze plaque with a bas-relief of Madeline’s beautiful little solar house. Maybe the rest of the words will be, “She loved her solar home, where she found her self – again and again.”
And I don’t know how much will be left to support our affordable housing efforts. But I wouldn’t mind using it –if there’s enough – to build a replica of her sweet little house for a young island family who needs stable housing. Community preservation in Madeline’s memory. She would like that too.
For Better Or Worse
Several weeks ago my old friend Marc Rosenbaum 
arrived on Martha’s Vineyard. He often arrives on Martha’s Vineyard. For 20 years this distinguished, nationally recognized building performance engineer has been arriving here to consult with us – to help us make better buildings. For 30 years he has been responsible for some of the most advanced buildings in New England.
When he arrived here last Tuesday, it was different than most times. First of all, his partner Jill DeLaHunt was with him. Second, her dog Leela was with him. Third – they had a big U-Haul truck with them, and inside were most of their belongings (including their nine bicycles, 
but not including the bicycle he built in 1974 as his senior thesis in engineering at MIT. At the time, it was the world’s lightest bicycle, at 12 pounds – today, it hangs in the MIT museum).
Finally, it was different because it has now been more than three weeks and he hasn’t left yet! That’s because, for better or worse, Marc and Jill have moved here, and Marc is joining forces with SMC, and will be running our Energy Services department (as well as continuing, part-time, through South Mountain to satisfy the needs of his clients throughout New England). We are thrilled to be able to add his expertise and wealth of experience to our own, and to offer his services to island (and off-island) residents, businesses, and towns. He and Jill are also neighbors; they live four houses down from us here at Island Cohousing.
This is an important development for our company. It expands what we able to do in the realm of energy and building performance and it sharpens and refines our abilities. Not only does Marc bring an incisive mind and a tremendous range of knowledge and experience, but he also brings a fierce sense of purpose, an intensely focused moral compass, a profound dedication to professionalism, and a remarkable spirit of deep inquiry.
Marc enhances our connections to the world of building science, which is changing at breakneck speed. We are rapidly learning much that we never knew before. Recently Alex Wilson of Environmental Building News (quite simply THE most thorough and impeccable source of information for the green building industry) reported that a Canadian researcher discovered that the blowing agents used to make a familiar insulation product (extruded polystyrene [XPS], which people in the building industry know as the blue rigid board Styrofoam, made by Dow Chemical, and the pink rigid board Foamular, made by Owens Corning) gradually seeps from the board over its lifetime and is a powerful contributor to global warming. Depending on thickness used and climate zone, insulating with these materials might take 40+ years of energy savings to “payback” the global warming potential. Our zero energy homes, therefore (if they use these common materials) may, in fact, use no energy, but they may at the same time have a large carbon footprint!
That’s big news; it’s hardly what we’re after.
New information like this is coming all the time. But there is also a ton of green building mis-information floating around out there. Often, the nuances and subtleties and variables make it impossible to know what’s right and what’s not, what will work long term and what won’t, what makes the most sense, what might cause problems, what needs monitoring over time, what requires experimentation.
When we get reliable new information we must change our practices. Marc helps us figure out what’s what because he keeps up with new developments, because he understands the engineering and the science, because he knows who and what are reliable sources of information, and because he knows who to talk to when he doesn’t know (and, just as important, he KNOWS when he doesn’t know – - and, of course, sometimes NOBODY knows).
Marc is constantly examining our practices. He’s an insurance policy against big mistakes. He’s a creative force in pursuit of better buildings. He’s also a superb educator, and has been responsible for explaining complex building performance information (and making it understandable without dumbing it down) to thousands of New England building professionals, helping them to improve their practices.
But he’s a stickler, too. He’s fussy. He doesn’t let anything go and he makes damn sure we get away with nothing. That’s good for us, good for our clients, good for our community.
But it’s not easy.
He’s not easy.
His arrival is the culmination of a year of planning. It’s very exciting. But it’s one of those things – sometimes you get what you wish for.
For better or worse.
MORE THAN A GASH IN THE KNEE
As the Gulf well spews daily destruction and BP scratches it’s head, it’s a time to think about technology and its uses (well. . . it’s been time, for a long time, but now it’s time again). Ever since the the first stone axe glanced off its target and gashed the user’s knee, 
or even before that, we have been inventing technologies that we don’t fully know how to control. But now the things we make have the potential to wreak havoc on a tragic scale.
Nature has always had that potential, but nature also has the ability to repair itself; we humans apparently do not. Bill McKibben, in his new book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, says that “For almost all of human history, our society was small and nature was large; in a few brief decades that key ratio has reversed.”
I’m reminded of discussions – 35 years ago – about “appropriate technology.” These were inspired by British economist E.F. Schumacher, whose 1973 book, Small is Beautiful, 
was the catalyst for an unprecedented period of small-scale renewable energy innovation that was brought to a screeching halt – in this country – by the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
The rest of the developed world continued to build on the early successes of solar and wind technologies which mostly originated in the U.S. Tremendous progress has been made since, but far less here than in Japan, Western Europe, and now China. As recently as 13 years ago, the U.S. made 40% of the world’s photovoltaic cells to generate electricity; now, it’s less than 5%.
Perhaps this new spill, as it continues to drift ashore, will point us in a new (old) direction. We’ve been here before, but we lost our will. Even now, as a country, we remain unable to stop the destruction caused by oil and coal and move swiftly and surely to benign energy sources. Last year China spent twice what the U.S. did on renewables. As McKibben says, we have already done the damage – we have already changed the planet irrevocably (that’s why he calls it “Eaarth”) and now we must minimize the damage.
Part of that is using technology to develop ever-more effective and scalable solar and wind technologies. But just as big a part is using less – transforming ourselves into a low-carbon society.
Buildings play a big role in that. They use 40% of our total energy, and 70% of our electricity, but they don’t need to.
A focus of South Mountain’s work these days is learning to master the art and science of the Deep Energy Retrofit – the practice of building renovations that result in profound energy use reduction, increased health and comfort, and greater durability.
We don’t pretend to know what we need to know about this practice, but we know enough to do a credible job and we continue to learn. We are just completing – over the next several months - two fundamentally different deep energy retrofits – the Lake/Hodgson house in Aquinnah and the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth (click on the attached article to read more about it). 
One is a patched together summer house from the 50’s; the other is a sturdy masonry building from 1910. They share the following characteristic: both were buildings that nobody wanted and both, therefore, suffered years of neglect.
Now they are restored, and they share other things too. They are energy efficient, they are beautiful, and they will each provide many decades of joy and sensible – appropriate – service to their occupants.
The practice is spreading. The other day I received an e-mail from Ian Bowles, the Secretary of Energy and the Environment for the state of Massachusetts. The heading was “deep energy retrofit in Boston” and the message said, “john — i hope you are well. looking for advice on any local experts in the boston area on energy efficiency measures for an old (1878) victorian we are about to buy. any ideas/leads welcome. thx. ian”.
Massachusetts is making a commitment to clean energy that goes beyond that of most states and far beyond the federal government’s. But the e-mail above means more than all the programs – it means the person in charge has taken this all to heart.
He means it. That’s good. We all need to mean it. Because what we’re doing to ourselves and our planet is far more than a gash in the knee.
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JOHN ABRAMS is co-founder and CEO
of South Mountain Company and the author
of COMPANIES WE KEEP read more
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COMPANIES WE KEEP is published by Chelsea Green Publishing
read more -
