Why I Don’t Call It a Trend Where I live half the year, there’s no grid to tie into. Not unless you’re ready to fork out a fortune for a dozen poles and a trench the length of a football field. So solar isn’t a
Why I Chose to Install Solar Panels When I first moved out to the edge of the mountains in rural Tottori, electricity was the one thing that still tied me to the grid. Everything else — water, food, heat — I had figured out in
When old wood meets new light I bought a house most people wouldn’t touch. Not because I’m reckless, but because I saw something still alive under the dust and cracked siding. Back in 2016, I was working contracts in the mountains of Gifu, and the
Coal’s Dusty Secret I’ve worked near power stations, and I’ve seen the piles — dull gray, soft as talc, stretching like dunes behind chain-link fences. That’s fly ash, the fine powder drifting up chimneys when coal is burned for electricity. There’s also bottom ash, which
