sam firke dot com

  • It’s time to hit pause on proposed I-94 Operational Improvements

    The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) is considering possible improvements to I-94, south of Ann Arbor. The timing is lucky: they were still in the study phase when the impact of COVID-19 emerged and there’s time to hit the pause button. For fiscal and environmental reasons, and to meet its stated goals, the state should indefinitely halt any investments in this stretch of highway.

    Background

    This project would add capacity to the stretch between Ann Arbor-Saline Road and US-23 pictured here:

    Source: MDOT

    MDOT’s objectives for this stretch include accommodating an increased volume of traffic. They seek to “reduce recurring peak period congestion along the corridor and improve travel time reliability” as well as “provide reasonable capacity to address existing and 20-year forecasted 2045 traffic demand along the corridor.”

    The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the case for spending millions to improve traffic flow on this stretch. We can no longer afford this project, but luckily, we also no longer need it.

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  • Building a hugelkultur mound in a city backyard

    Building a hugelkultur mound in a city backyard

    This was a leap-of-faith project during Michigan’s bleak COVID-19 “shelter-in-place” period. I’m documenting it here as a plan for building a hugelkultur bed on a small city lot as well as to preserve a pleasant COVID-19 memory. Behold the thriving hugelkultur mound:

    It’s exploding with vegetables – see below for pictures of the hill itself

    Hugelkultur is a permaculture concept where you pile up organic material (logs, leaves, compost, etc.) and then grow a garden on top of it. Here is a good explanation of hugelkultur and its benefits. It’s also a fun word to say. We refer to our mound as “the hugel” [German for hill].

    This was the perfect COVID-19 project. Under lockdown in April, we had nowhere to go. I was spending lots of time with my kids at home during the day. And I wanted to be outside. Building a garden bed with the materials at hand was a small act of protest against the feeling of being dependent on a global supply chain whose fragility had suddenly been exposed. I couldn’t easily get soil or lumber delivered for a conventional raised bed. And crucially, the city’s compost and yard waste collection was about to resume for the spring, so my neighbors had their maximum amount of organic material awaiting disposal.

    Starting with a hole

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  • The Factions of Ann Arbor City Politics and Why They’re A Problem

    One might look at the makeup of Ann Arbor’s city council, or candidates running for a ward seat, and think that the partisan battle has been decided: they’re all Democrats.  But under the Democratic label, there are two dominant, warring factions in Ann Arbor politics.  Together they occupy a share of local power and attention similar to that held by Democrats & Republicans on the national scale.  That is to say, nearly all of it: votes, endorsements, donations, who runs for office, and which resolutions even come to the table.  The last non-factional candidate to hold office, Sabra Briere, stepped down in 2016.

    This dynamic is the driving force in all aspects of city politics.  It’s invisible to those who aren’t active observers, yet it’s impossible to cast an informed vote without this knowledge. If you’re choosing which candidate to vote for, knowing which faction they align with tells you more about how they will caucus and vote than what’s on their website.

    It’s trickier to explain than the well-understood labels of Democrats vs. Republicans, though.  Other articles have acknowledged the factions, but not in a way that is both comprehensive and seeks to be objective.  Here I attempt to describe this dynamic and its consequences.

    The Main Takeaways:

    1. Ann Arbor politics are dominated by two camps, the Protectors and the Strivers.
    2. Factional alignment is the best indicator of how an elected official will caucus and vote, more so than what’s stated on their website.
    3. This dynamic is toxic and impedes good governance.
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  • Do curly and Red Russian kales cross-polinate?

    Last year I grew curly kale (starts from the farmer’s market) and Red Russian kale (replanted annually in my own garden since about 2012). They overwintered, flowered, and are now falling over under the weight of their seed pods.

    I plan to harvest the seeds and wondered, will the resulting plants be a cross between the varieties, given that the plants are flowering just a couple of feet apart from each other? It appears they won’t, because the two kales are actually different species. According to the Comox Valley Growers and Seed Savers (2015):

    All the curly kales and the lacinato belong to the brassica oleracea species. They will cross with each other and with many other crucifers – cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and collard greens.

    The Red Russian and Siberian kales belong to brassica napus species and will cross with each other but not with the other kales. They will also cross with rutabagas, rape and canola. It seems that the napus variety can self pollinate without suffering from inbreeding depression and also it does not have a self incompatibility mechanism which so many plants do.

    So the two varieties of kale should stay true in their seeds. We’ll see next year!

    Update in June 2022: indeed, I harvested about a cup of seeds from the Red Russian plants in 2020 and they have stayed true to the cultivar as I’ve grown them since.

  • Sand the bottom of a door that sticks without taking it off its hinges

    Problem: a wood bathroom door rubs slightly on the tile of a bathroom floor at the midpoint in its swing, sticking in place. I wanted to sand off the tiniest bit so that it swings free.  But it wasn’t worth removing the door from its hinges.

    Solution: get some rough sandpaper (I used 60 grit) and an old magazine. Open a dozen pages of the magazine and lay the sandpaper on top, grit up. (Without the magazine padding I’d be nervous that I’d mar the tile floor). Put this stack at a point in the door’s arc where it swings freely.

    Before you start sanding: you want to avoid pulling off any strips from a veneer that may be covering the door’s surface.  To avoid that, first sand the trailing edge of the door (that is, the side that hits last when you’re slamming it into the sandpaper), so it isn’t caught and pulled while you slam.  Also consider using a finer grit of sandpaper, which would add a few minutes to the sanding, and opening-and-closing on the sandpaper with less force.  Keep an eye on the veneer throughout the process.

    Now, slam the door into the paper stack so that it sticks. In the process, it sands exactly the lowest point on the bottom of the door. Keep swinging it back and forth, slamming it into the sandpaper. As you make progress in shaving the door, you may need to add pages to the stack or move it closer to the point where the door sticks.

    Test periodically. In a few minutes you’ve removed a millimeter or two from the bottom of the door and it should swing freely, without altering the look of the door or needing to remove it.

    Besides the convenience of this solution, I enjoy its elegance: by replicating the act of making contact with the floor it shaves the door in precisely the right place.

  • Mending knee holes with sashiko

    Mending knee holes with sashiko

    I love repairing things. For several years I’ve hoped to take up sewing to extend my fixing skills to clothing. Sheltering-in-place during COVID-19 has provided opportunities to try my hand at mending ripped knees in my family members’ pants. It feels good to sit in peace and make something whole again. Apparently I’m part of a trend, with mending and in particular visible mending gaining in popularity.

    I asked my friend Cassie where to start in mending holes in knees and she pointed me to the book Mending Life, which had steps that were thorough, clear, and seemed doable – with handy illustrations (pp. 96-103). So I took a shot at it. So far I’m 3 of 3! None are perfect but all three exceeded my expectations. Below are photos.

    Specifically, I have been trying to emulate sashiko, a Japanese decorative reinforcement stitching technique. I sewed the first patch with a piece of thick thread I found in my sewing box. The next two I did with proper sashiko needles and thread I ordered online. (As with most of my things, if you live near me and want to borrow them, just ask).

    I chose contrasting thread and patches to emphasize the repair jobs. I’m proud of my work, it normalizes repair and reuse, and frankly I think the unique & visible mends leave the clothing looking better than it did new.

    Sashiko patch #1: women’s jeans

    The ripped fabric at the knee was exploding outwards. It was begging to be patched with the “exposed edge technique” (Mending Life), with an interesting pattern poking through.

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  • Building a compost bin out of pallets

    Building a compost bin out of pallets

    The project: My mother-in-law had long expressed interest in composting her food scraps, but didn’t care for the plastic bins available for purchase. I’d been interested in building such a bin by reusing salvaged lumber, mostly discarded wood pallets. This presented a fun challenge: construct a compost bin that satisfied her aesthetic requirements and followed my principles of reuse.

    It turned out well: it’s attractive (in a rustic way) and functional, though took longer to build than I expected. Breaking down pallets was a big chunk of that time overage: they were free in monetary cost but not in the time they took to process.

    After weathering its first winter

    Design: I built it probably a little too big, 32″ L x 30″ W x 29″ H. Compost bins have to solve for the problem of emptying the finished compost (after a year or so) while leaving in place any recently-discarded food. In bins like this, which will be emptied via a not-yet-installed door in the bottom of the side (see below), that separation is achieved by the depth of the pile. The bottom of the pile, with older finished compost, is no longer turned, while the fresher, unfinished material rests on top. In a narrower bin, the walls support layers of material such that the top layers can be left in place while the bottom is scraped out. This bin may be too big to neatly do that. Perhaps the over-sizing just means it can go a few years between emptying.

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  • On Timefulness

    I enjoyed and was moved by the book Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, by Marcia Bjornerud. This post is a review & reflection I’m finishing many months after reading it.

    “Rates of technological progress far outstrip the rate at which human wisdom matures (in the same way that environmental changes outpace evolutionary adaptation in mass extinction events).” – Marcia Bjornerud, Timefulness

    The book has a few threads going at once but the bulk of it is a geological history of the world, in a more layperson-friendly format than a textbook. It’s heavy on the science and I learned a great deal of earth science. For instance:

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  • Drilling through a broken zipper slider and adding a paperclip pull

    Drilling through a broken zipper slider and adding a paperclip pull

    The slider on my zipper – in this case, on a waterproof bag for holding soiled cloth diapers – broke such that the top of the bridge separated from the slider body. I tried to glue it to no avail.

    Two tailors told me they’d need to replace the entire 16″ run of zipper and quoted me $25 and $26. I could get a new bag for that much. So I took a shot at repairing it.

    I drilled through the side of the slider bridge, using a 1/16″ bit. I first used a hammer & nail to make a tiny indentation so the bit wouldn’t walk. If the hole is even a little off-center, it will leave a thin border prone to breaking.

    I drilled that hole. Like usual, I forgot to take a “before” picture. It looked like any zipper.

    Then I stripped a spare piece of 22 AWG wire I had lying around, bending the copper into a loop. Kind of pretty, I think!

    It took just a few minutes and seems to slide well. We’ll see how it holds up.

    UPDATE May 2020: the twisted wire was impractical and failed quickly. It has been replaced by a paperclip, which is working much better. The clip falls off in the washing machine, which might pose a risk to the machine. I now remove it before tossing the bag into the wash and reattach afterward. Overall the bag now works as well as new!

  • An Excel grocery checklist template

    Being in an unfamiliar setting can lead to epiphanies, big and small. Travel is great for this. For instance, I first learned about cargo bikes when I saw one in Brooklyn on a work trip.

    In 2012 I stayed in an apartment that had a physical grocery list hung on the kitchen wall. It listed common items – apples, eggs, etc. – and had arrows you could flip to note that you needed something.

    I liked the idea. It solves the tricky problem of trying to see in your fridge the things that aren’t there, providing a checklist instead. But you can’t take it with you to cross things off and it’s hard to modify the items as your needs change over time.

    So I made an Excel version of this checklist, organized by section of the store and with space to write in custom items. I’ve tweaked it over the years and it’s worked great.

    In the spirit of knowledge sharing, I’ve posted it for others to download and adapt. It’s not “open-source” because it’s a Microsoft Excel file. But I share it in that spirit. It should be accessible to regular people who want to make a customized grocery list. I hope someone else can benefit from the time I spent tweaking the formatting!

    (don’t judge me for the list contents, everyone is different)