In hard times, humans have persevered. Plumbob is a part of the wave of sustainability moving all over the world right now. Plumbob is taking aim at the inefficiencies of how we build our living, working, and learning structures by re-discovering passive solar principles and re-aligning community to live by the Sun as an energy foundation. Our society is hanging on the question; "What will we leave the next generation?"

I have spent several weeks at Arcosanti and attended a one week seminar at the Architecture project

This week started what most people knowledgeable about the weather think is going to be a long spat of rain! I almost wish I hadn't wasted all the water planting everything last summer, but this rain will pretty much assure that everything is going to take successfully without any water this year! I sat outside for a while the other day during the heaviest rain and just watched the rain gutter work. It never got more full than in this picture, even with a good gallon a minute(atleast) pouring out of the gutter that you can see at the top of this picture. I am wondering how long it will take for it to silt up. My guess is several years at least, but for now it's working like a charm and we are making use of so much water that would otherwise collect where it isn't needed.
I also made a make-shift rain catchment with a 35 gallon garbage can on wheels on a down spout in the backyard that I have emptied twice in 4 days! The other down spout in the backward was easily redirected to the base of our orange tree, which is probably really loving the water right now.
This is a low tech solution to things like water shortages, and run-off issues that everyone can do. It's super fun to problem solve, and ultimately it saves money, water, and our wetlands(run-off issues).

I was looking through my 'top pages' report on this site today, and a post about Arcosanti is by far the most visited page. It's pretty interesting because when you search 'arcosanti' on any of the major engines, it's no where near the first page(I actually stopped looking for it, so I don't know what pages it's on), so I'm not sure where 1300+ people have landed on that page from. Anyway, it prompted me to write some more about it. I have been in loose contact with a bunch of Alumni from Arcosanti who want to create a community website for alumni activities and groundswell. We are trying to get back on track with it in time for Paolo Soleri's 90th b-day celebration at Arcosanti this summer.

Check out the Arcosanti Alumni Network site progress and let us know what you think!