Ecological Building and Living Workshop, Saturday, Nov. 7th

Twice a year, I offer a workshop where in one day I take people through the entire creative process of making their home. It's a very full and enlivening day, beginning with drawing exercises to explore what 'home' means as an internal image, to creating models and drawings of your home (or an addition onto an existing house).

In between we sculpt models of our response to a body prayer which embodies the dynamic of how our home at once roots us to place and expands our awareness and connectedness; discuss ecologically design and building practices; hear and see other participants' ideas (which expands our understandings), etc. And you're served yummy organic vegetarian continental breakfast and lunch (and snacks) to keep you going through this very full day. One participant said they hadn't had as much fun since kindergarten!

The next workshop is Saturday, Nov. 7th, 9am - 6pm, at my home, which features many ecologically responsive building methods (you can see photos of my home on our web site).

All for $150! Please contact me at bill@heliconworks.com if you want to attend, and i'll send you more information, including homework to consider before the workshop!

~ Bill

Featured in local story, and missing the point on "payback"

from Truthful Living by (Sat Jiwan)

Jeremy Arias from The Gazette interviewed me, my friend Doug Horgan, and a couple other locals for an article about costs of going green. (Experts: Going green doesn't have to put you in the red, 09.09.09) There's a lot to cover on a topic like this and I think he did a nice job for a short piece, and got most of my quotes and sentiments right on. I enjoyed more of the things that came up in our interview, than what made it into the article.

He mentioned the $7000 (25%) in incentives I got in 2007 for our solar panels and about 15-20 year payback I expect. If I did the same project today combining federal, state (MD) and Montgomery County local incentives, I would get about 80% in incentives and have a payback of 5-10 years. See my recent Voice column (Apr 2009) which summarizes this (note: both MD and Montgomery County have refunded their programs as of June/July).

More on "payback":
While it's true when looking to develop a priorities list for home improvements, it makes a lot of sense to do the quickest payback items first, it's actually a bit of a red herring that you should only do things which have certain financial "paybacks"...

(article continues at: http://truthful-living.blogspot.com/2009/09/featured-in-local-story-and-missing.html )