More Musick

So I'm back, after snarfing a few munchies (some excellent black bean salsa and chips). The band is great. If you want to hear some good music, come on down. I talked with Pete Bowers about Into the Woods, and met Jack Hebert, who looked terribly familiar but I couldn't place him until Mike introduced him by last name. He's one of those people I know by two names, sort of like Jacques Cousteau, Mike Musick, etc. Must have both names or the name doesn't stick in my mind.

At any rate, other interesting folks include James Pagell, Scott Johnson, amy Taylor, Shannan Turner, Amy Cameron, Jenny Schlofeldt (not sure I have the spelling of her name correctly), Jeanne Laurencelle, several regulars at the bar, and more unusual folks of various sorts. Mike stood at the mike (ho ho ho, yes yes, I know) for a few minutes and spoke on the importance of using less: less energy meaning less cost to the borough, rebates from the state of several tens of millions reserved for retrofitting houses and public buildings.

This is one of the things I think is an appropriate use of public money: if we save fuel, we save a LOT in terms of money, and we make ourselves much more secure with regard to fuel dependence. But I've gone on about this before.

Bob Siftar was feeling feisty and asked Mike about his old wood stove, which, as he said, "worked fine!" Mike had been talking about how the emissions standards for wood stoves didn't necessarily have to be an onerous thing, and in fact, if one improved one's efficiency (i.e., establish the baseline and then improve the efficiency of the heater--oil furnace, wood stove, whathaveyou), one could actually get a lot of money back on the proposition. So if your stove works fine, GOOD.

Jack Hebert does a lot of this for a living: evaluating houses for their heat loss and fuel efficiency. He works with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center and, he said, "for some reason people think my opinion is worth something." I'll say. The guy's only been working with green building for what, ten, fifteen years or more?

Hans just walked in, with his usual insane grin. Lori Neufeld, with her magnet attraction toward good music, has been here for a while. Time to mingle again, I think.

A most pleasant evening. We'll see if I can provide more substantive info on Musick's stance later.