President Loren Swartzendruber ’76, MDiv ’79, DMin, at the dedication of EMU's first solar array.

This issue of Crossroads comes to you soon after a historic action of the Harrisonburg City Council to grant a 20-year 100 percent tax exemption for commercial solar projects. Our first solar array, on the roof of Sadie Hartzler Library, online since November, is producing 2 percent of our campus electric consumption. The action of the City Council boosts the possibility of adding a much larger array over the University Commons’ north parking lot.

The April 2011 issue of Virginia Business magazine features an article on “green” initiatives around the Commonwealth, with the solar projects at EMU highlighted. The University of Virginia and other higher education institutions have contacted us to learn about our projects!

The late Dr. Robert C. Lehman, a physical science professor at EMU in the 1960s and 1970s, was the first to systematically address ways that EMU was frittering away natural resources – he spent his 1976-77 sabbatical studying campus energy consumption. Since then many faculty and staff members have worked at better managing our utility costs, thereby saving the institution thousands of dollars and, more importantly, reducing our consumption of non-renewable resources. Eldon Kurtz, director of EMU’s physical plant since 1997, has long championed environmentally sustainable practices. Our strategic plan calls for future buildings, new and renovated, to be constructed to LEED [Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design] certification standards.

Students have strongly encouraged the institution to be creative in our stewardship of the earth’s environment. EMU has responded to this interest with a new major in environmental sustainability, where students can choose between concentrating on the social, economic and political aspects of sustainability, or concentrating on its biological and chemical aspects.

This issue of Crossroads highlights more than 100 EMU alumni who are making major contributions to the sustainability movement around the world. We believe that caring for God’s creation is a theological and faith imperative, as well as a matter of good science, and that sustainability practices should not be dependent on one’s political persuasion. We do not believe it is God’s intention that humans should take a cavalier attitude toward the environment, a point on which we may differ from some segments of the faith community. We believe that sustainability practices should begin with how we care for ourselves physically, organize our family and community life, and promote a healthy approach to living that encompasses every aspect of human existence.

Loren Swartzendruber
President

In the early fall of 2010, workers installed the largest solar deployment in Virginia on the Hartzler library roof. It has the capacity to generate104.3 kilowatts of electricity from 328 high-efficiency photovoltaic panels and is projected to eliminate more than 6,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions over 35 years.

AN ESSAY HEADLINED “A Climate-Change Activist Prepares for the Worst,” published in the Outlook section of the Washington Post one recent Sunday (Feb. 27, 2011), sparked 444 online comments before the Post closed the discussion. The essay also prompted more than 1,800 people to recommend it via Facebook.

The writers of the 444 postings were sharply divided, perhaps 35 to 65 percent.

About one-third expressed some degree of agreement with author Mike Tidwell, executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. He described steps he had taken recently to try to protect his home and family against the effects of devastating climate change, including stockpiling food, investing in an emergency generator, and taking skeet-shooting lessons. The shooting lessons were in case he needs to protect his family due to anticipated social unrest caused by climate-related food shortages – and this is despite calling himself “fundamentally a pacifist.”

The remaining two-thirds of the Post readers who commented online thought Tidwell was nutty – or pursuing a leftist-environmentalist agenda – and dismissed his worries about the pace at which earth seems to becoming uninhabitable. (Tidwell’s executive assistant is Nathan Kauffman ’10.)

Tidwell opened his February article with these words:

Ten years ago, I put solar panels on my roof and began eating locally grown food. I bought an energy-efficient refrigerator that uses the power equivalent of a single light bulb. I started heating my home with a stove that burns organically fertilized corn kernels. I even restored a gas-free lawn mower for manual yardwork.

As a longtime environmental activist, I was deeply alarmed by new studies on global warming, so I went all out. I did my part.

Tidwell went on to explain, however, that he feels “we’re running out of time” to avert the physical and social upheavals that will result from global warming.

Fourteen months earlier (Dec. 6, 2009), the Post’s Outlook section published another essay by Tidwell in which he criticized the “go green” movement for leading people to believe that small changes in one’s personal lifestyle would add up to ultimately rescuing the planet. He said personal changes – like the way he used a Prius and ate a “low-carbon-footprint vegetarian diet” – are drops in the proverbial bucket.

He challenged his readers: “No more compact fluorescent light bulbs. No more green wedding planning. No more organic toothpicks for holiday hors d’oeuvres . . .

“Instead of continuing our faddish and counterproductive emphasis on small, voluntary actions, we should follow the example of Americans during past moral crises and work toward large-scale change.”

AGREEMENT ON BEING GREEN?

Given the divided readership of the Washington Post, it seems safe to assume that the readership of Crossroads is not united on the subject of climate change.

When we asked readers to “tell us your path to ‘going green’” on the back cover of the fall/winter 2010-11 issue of Crossroads, we received a flurry of contributions from alumni who are putting solar panels on their roofs, riding bikes or walking instead of driving a mile or so, growing as much of their own organic food as possible, and building well-insulated homes from local materials.

Nobody wrote in to say: “Bah-humbug. It’s fine to drive huge gas-guzzling vehicles, live in mammoth McMansions, eat seafood that is flown half-around the world to our dinner tables and that is also in danger of extinction, and remove mountain tops to extract coal to power our electricity-hungry homes and businesses.”

Yet, even in the absence of messages from readers uninterested in “going green,” there are certainly tens of thousands of us who don’t choose to live as simply as Martha Ann Burgard  ’66 in Alabama or as self-sufficiently as Mary Beth  ’72 and Lester  ’71 (MA-religion  ’94) Lind in West Virginia.

A few of the environmentalists interviewed for this issue have opted not to have children, believing that over-population, with concurrent consumption, is part of the problem. They would agree with Paul Hawken, founding owner of a $75 million company specializing in garden supplies. After operating his company from 1979 to 1991, he wrote a book arguing that “the drive for unrestrained economic growth … has become the most important problem facing humanity.”

The primary concern is that a world of over six billion people striving for material satisfaction is drawing ever more heavily from finite supplies of natural resources to fuel an economic growth model destined to lead to an ecological disaster and global poverty without precedence.

Those who disagree with Hawken tend to hold the opposite view on “unrestrained economic growth.” They believe the innovativeness and expansiveness of capitalism hold the key to solving the problems facing humanity and the rest of the natural world, including possibly climate change (without necessarily conceding that this is an actual problem to be solved).

Andrew K. Jenner ’04, a freelance writer who is largely responsible for the reporting on pages 8 through 36, suggested that we follow up this issue of Crossroads by inviting readers to discuss “going green” in the form of a moderated online blog. We have set up a forum for discussion, open until June 1, 2011, at.

While we invite discussion, we must confess that a clear majority of EMU’s current administrators, faculty, staff and students seem to be arrayed on the side of those who believe the preponderance of scientific evidence of major climate change and who wish to reverse climate change or at least responsibly address its devastating effects.

As one Washington Post reader wrote in response to Tidwell’s article: “The precautionary principle would suggest that we do what we can to protect our own survival, even if it [climate change] is not human-caused… There is no room for honest disagreement, the science is clear; but were there room for disagreement, there is no excuse for not acting… just in case.”

EMU president Loren Swartzendruber, DMin, was one of 98 signatories – many affiliated with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities – on a document issued in February 2006 called “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action.”

The statement made four points: (1) human-induced climate change is real; (2) the consequences of climate change will be significant, and will hit the poor the hardest; (3) Christian moral convictions demand our response to the climate change problem; and (4) the need to act now is urgent – governments, businesses, churches, and individuals all have a role to play in addressing climate change, starting now.

EMU’S PUSH FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Since the 2007 founding of EMU’s Creation Care Council – made up of representatives from all parts of campus – every corner of EMU is reshaping itself to be more “green.”

In the spring of 2008, the EMU board of trustees decided that all new buildings at EMU would meet basic LEED standards, at a minimum. (LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.) This decision followed presentation to the board of semester-long research by 14 students in a “Green Design” class taught by science professors Douglas Graber Neufeld and James (Jim) M. Yoder ’94, who both did their PhD dissertations on topics related to the environment.

In the fall of 2010 EMU became host to the largest solar deployment in Virginia, with capacity to generate 104.3 kilowatts of electricity from 328 high-efficiency photovoltaic panels on its library roof. The lead visionary for the project was Tony Smith, PhD, co-director of EMU’s MBA program and CEO of a private company called Secure Futures.

In some cases, these efforts represent renewed interest in initiatives begun decades ago. Five faculty membersjoined with students in the early 1970s to launch the Earthkeepers club, which was mainly focused on recycling newspapers.  Retired biology professor Kenton Brubaker ’54, PhD, one of the founders of Earthkeepers, recalls using the proceeds from selling newspapers to a recycling firm to buy a van, a front-end loader and a pre-fabricated metal building to pick up and store newspapers, as well as to start a compost pile for gardening east of the Suter Science Center.

The 1970s is also when EMU planted an arboretum and experimented on its own land with the best way to treat soil for maximum vegetable production.

Recycling of paper, glass and plastic is now integrated into the work of EMU’s Physical Plant Department, which collects these materials by bicycle rather than van. Earthkeepers, now run by students, continues to work at composting – student volunteers collect discarded food and biodegradable paper from the dining hall for composting near the Suter Science Center. They also join with others in running Food & Farming Week each year.

In 1986, EMU took the risk of installing an innovative, but then-unproven, closed-loop heating and cooling system in the newly built Campus Center. Designed by LeRoy Troyer, an Indiana architect who was raised Amish, the building has withstood the test of time in being a model of energy efficiency. Physical plant director C. Eldon Kurtz ’76 estimates that the center saved EMU $3 to $4 million in energy costs its first ten years of use.

REDISCOVERING ROOTS OF THE LAND

Reaching even deeper into EMU’s history, in the decade after it was founded in 1917, EMU had pig pens, cows, poultry sheds, corn fields, and vegetable gardens on its grounds, with students fresh off the farm who knew how to deal with such matters. Ironically, however, most of these students were more interested in reducing their need to do manual labor to survive. They wanted to engage in more intellectual pursuits, rather than remaining bound to the farms of their ancestors.

In the 30th anniversary edition of Living More with Less (Herald Press, 2010), Sheri Hostetler, pastor of the First Mennonite Church of San Francisco, advocates rediscovering the knowledge of self-sufficient people, who are often the oldest generation: “People over the age of seventy and those who have come more recently from countries in the global South have experienced life in societies not based on cheap oil. Thus they have skills and stories about how to live more self-sufficiently, sustainably, and locally.”

EMU has embraced a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) – called “Peace with Creation” – whereby every undergraduate learns about the importance of good stewardship for creation and reflects on ways that he or she can help. First-year students are given writing assignments on the topic and sustainability is threaded into the coursework of every major.

As part of this QEP, cross-cultural trips are being retooled to increase environmental awareness. Vice-president and undergraduate dean Nancy Heisey, PhD – who has committed to using public transportation when possible and to walking to destinations a less than a mile or so from her home or campus – will be leading a trip in the summer of 2011 where the students travel (to Montreal) by train instead of by airplane.

Biology professor Jim Yoder led a trip to New Zealand in the summer of 2010 that included a tour of a geothermal power plant. The group also studied how New Zealand is dealing with invasive species, especially rats and possums, to restore its bird populations.

TO ENGAGE IN POLITICS OR NOT?

Most of the people featured in this issue of Crossroads are focused on “being the change they want to see,” to borrow Gandhi’s words. They believe that change necessarily begins with oneself and in one’s community – as in the slogan “act locally, think globally” – and that such grassroots changes can result in a shift over time in larger socio-economic paradigms.
Writing in a book published in 2000, Mel Schmidt applauded the record of Mennonites and their institutions for practicing what they preach in terms of living in a responsible manner. But he criticized their traditional reluctance to address issues at the macro or policy level:

By their faithful track record on peace and justice issues, as well as their historical love of the land, Anabaptist/Mennonite faith communities have earned the right to speak out on environmental issues but are quite content to be die Stillen im Lande [quiet of the land] – an irony of our time.

This is puzzling and mystifying, particularly in view of the fact that even the most isolationist groups among them will dig in their heels and take tough political stands on controversial issues when the need is clearly present…Even more puzzling, perhaps, is the nearly total absence of any identifiable Anabaptist/Mennonite political activity in an area that one would think is near and dear to their hearts – sustainable agriculture.

Schmidt asked why the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition based in Washington DC has no institutional Mennonite presence or overt Mennonite support.

Referring to the More-with-Less Cookbook, he wrote, “The publishing of cookbooks is not to be demeaned. Responsible consumption is at the core of our efforts to save the earth. But, having done this one thing well, have we neglected to do other things just as needful?”

Recent graduate (2010) Nathan Kauffman may exemplify interest among a small minority of alumni in tackling environmental problems via political involvement. Kauffman went from majoring in history and social science at EMU to working full-time for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. He had interned for this group while spending a semester at EMU’s Washington Community Scholars’ Center. This internship paved the way for him to be hired as its special projects person and executive assistant to Mike Tidwell, the man who wrote the provocative Post article.

Kauffman has become accustomed to preparing talking points for reference and distribution, donning a business suit, and knocking on the doors of state and national legislators in the mid-Atlantic region. He and his colleagues recently (Feb. 2011) succeeded in persuading the Virginia General Assembly to pass legislation that will establish a revolving loan fund to help Virginians install solar energy projects on their homes. He then turned his attention to the Maryland General Assembly and legislation to help create off-shore wind farms.

Kauffman is the only alumnus found by Crossroads to be working full-time to improve environmental policies at the state or national levels. (If there are others, please let us know at Crossroads@emu.edu.) Sharing a basement apartment in Northwest Washington with Josh Brubaker ’06 (grad student at American University), Kauffman says it is not feasible for him to practice the kind of sustainable lifestyle – a vegetable garden, solar panels, bicycling everywhere – described elsewhere in Crossroads. Living in “the District,” as locals refer to it, however, does enable Kauffman to function without owning a car.

“It’s impossible to totally devote yourself to everything simultaneously,” he says. “I am working on policy, and it takes almost all of my time, and other alumni are living in truly sustainable ways, and it takes a lot of their time.

“Making policy is hard, and biking everywhere and gardening are hard. If you try to do everything, you end up being ineffective. At some point you have to throw your lot in with something and commit to it.”

At the local level in Harrisonburg, EMU senior Jakob zumFelde has worked with the New Community Project to encourage city planners and elected representatives to support a pathway for pedestrians and bicyclists to safely travel from the northwest corner of the city to downtown.

Outside of the political arena, alumni certainly have worked on projects with wide environmental impact – Catherine Mumaw ’54, for example.

In 1981-82, Mumaw visited Mennonite Central Committee units in northeast Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guatemala, Jamaica, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Kenya, and Somalia to research appropriate technologies used by women for their households. This led to Mumaw’s involvement in international conferences in which solar cooking was a topic of discussion. From 1989 to 1995 she was an advisor to Solar Box Cookers International, which is responsible for more than a half million inexpensive solar cookers in use around the world. (For more information, visit www.solarcookers.org.)

But Mumaw, along with a few of the scientist-alumni listed on pages 33-36, seem to be the exceptions. Most environmentally aware alumni of EMU have chosen to work in their own backyards – either literally or in their immediate communities.

FOR THE THEOLOGICAL ANGLE

In this issue of Crossroads, we did not attempt to delve into the widely varied views on the Biblical basis of “creation care,” or the lack thereof. That would have required a double-sized magazine or a book-length manuscript.

Anyone interested in this topic is invited to read Creation & the Environment – An Anabaptist Perspective on a Sustainable World (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), with conversation-stimulating chapters by 14 authors, including three EMU-linked professors. Calvin Redekop, a sociologist and Conrad Grabel College professor (emeritus), edited the book. You may also enjoy reading Redekop’s chapter “Religion, Leadership, and the Natural Environment: The Case of American Evangelicals” in a new book edited by his son, Benjamin W. Redekop, Leadership for Environmental Sustainability (Routledge, 2010).

For regularly updated information, visit the Evangelical Environmental Network at www.creationcare.org.

Hugh Stoll ’89 bought this 1920s-era hydroelectric dam on the Rocky River near Pittsboro, North Carolina, in 2005 and has been restoring it ever since. Stoll is also one of the partners in the company that owns and manages the solar installation at EMU.

AFTER CLAMBERING DOWN a rickety iron ladder and inching across a slippery concrete ledge, Hugh Stoll ’89 arrives at the business end of his latest brainchild: a new hydroelectric turbine for his dam on the Rocky River in Pittsboro, North Carolina.

Unscrewing a metal cover to show off the guts of his new contraption – conceived and built entirely from scratch, save for a blade design borrowed from the University of Idaho – Hugh talks hydropower at a mile a minute: “thrust bearings” and “butterfly valves” and “friction loss” and other terms and concepts sailing over the layman’s head.

Hugh goes back up the ladder into the powerhouse, still holding forth rapid-fire on the intricacies of his operation, as he opens up the new turbine control panel. He jumps from “synchronous generation” to “positive load,” then describes the use of a “dynamometer” to create a “torque curve” that has some relation to the coiled thicket of black, yellow, red and blue wires snaking this way and that inside the control panel he engineered.

In the background, his trusty old 1909 GE generator – the dam’s real workhorse, to be supplemented by the new turbine – hums along gently. When the Rocky River’s up and running fast, Hugh’s dam sends enough electricity into the grid to power 90 to 100 homes.

Hugh, who lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia, takes periodic work trips to the dam, a few days here, a few days there, fixing this, replacing that, tinkering with more ambitious projects like the new turbines. There’s no shortage of things to do.
The dam, built in 1922, was “highly neglected” when he and his brother, Craig, bought it in 2005. Ever since, he’s been trying to get things back to shipshape. He claims he’s not an expert; he’s learned as he’s gone along, seeking out mentors, figuring out who can help him when he’s stumped.

“You piddle around with stuff and find out what works,” says Hugh. “It’s just really simple. There’s not a whole lot to it.”
And Hugh loves simplicity. He relates a parable from personal experience:

Some years ago, he chaperoned a group of students from Eastern Mennonite High School visiting the “solar decathlon” on the National Mall in Washington DC, a showcase of the most advanced and innovative solar-powered houses in the world. Impressive, yes, but the approach felt wrong. The houses’ complicated electrical systems would cost tens of thousands of dollars to build and require an engineering degree to really understand – far, far too complicated an arrangement for Hugh’s liking. While the houses at the decathlon were perhaps sustainable in some narrow sense, they were kind of missing the broader point.
“[We] should talk about wisdom, not sustainability,” he declares, tugging at his long beard, cut in a style evocative of the Amish men in his ancestry.

Vaguely resembling a flying saucer, the 1909 General Electric generator behind Hugh Stoll makes much of the dam’s electricity. During periodic work trips from his home in Harrisonburg, Hugh has been building two supplemental turbines from scratch.

Wisdom is an expansive concept, he continues. Simplicity is part of wisdom. Average everyday people should be able to understand wise things. Seeking others’ talents, as he’s tried to do when troubleshooting at the dam, is part of wisdom. And living sustainably is an inevitable side effect of living wisely. Wise people don’t poison their own wells, he says. Wise people take care of what they have.

Pragmatism figures into all of this, too. The ecological effects of damming rivers makes hydropower a controversial source of renewable energy, Hugh acknowledges, but perfect can’t be the enemy of good.

“Our culture has an insatiable appetite for electricity, and you have to get it from somewhere,” he says.

After graduating from EMC with a degree in Biblical studies and theology, Hugh and his wife, Kathy Hilty Stoll ’89, moved to Tacoma, Washington, where Kathy earned a degree in occupational therapy. Hugh worked as an electrician in Tacoma, and then in Arizona, the couple’s next stop after Kathy earned her degree.

In 1996, by then with two children in tow, the Stolls moved to eastern Washington, near the town of Kettle Falls. Hugh became a stay-at-home dad at first, while he built the family a simple, no-frills straw bale house within eyeshot of Canada. Good insulation, careful design and a wood-burning Russian stove were plenty to keep the house comfortable.

In Washington, Hugh’s love of whitewater kayaking first connected him with hydroelectricity. He got to know a man who owned a dam on one of Hugh’s favorite rivers, and before long, he began helping his new friend with electrical projects there.

When Hugh’s father, Dan (electrical service supervisor at EMU for 12 years) died suddenly of a heart attack in 2002, the Stolls – then with four kids – sold the house in Washington and moved back to Harrisonburg. After the move, Hugh kept his eye on hydropower industry journals, saw an ad for the dam in Pittsboro, and soon enough, had bought a hydropower plant of his own.
Hugh’s foray into hydroelectricity has gotten him interested in other forms of renewable energy.

Last year, he built a large solar panel array in the back yard of his family’s home just north of town. He’s now a partner with Secure Futures, the solar energy company that owns and manages EMU’s recent solar installation on the library roof. And lately he’s begun dabbling in wind power. Hugh and Craig are fixing up a 100-year-old wind turbine for fun, and he’s toying with the idea of launching some sort of wind energy development.

And one more thing – Hugh’s been dreaming lately about building another house. He’s been doodling plans, considering sites, thinking about design. Or even better, he’s dreaming about a group of houses, connecting with other like-minded, people interested in building and living together. Living simply. Living sustainably. Living wisely.

Sarah Myers (left) and Herb Myers '66 (center) are building onto the home of son-in-law Jason '99 and Janelle '01 Myers-Benner and granddaughter kali. Sarah, who formerly directed a non-profit, and Herb, a psychiatrist, are moving as retirees from Pennsylvania to Virginia.

Upon their graduation from EMU, Jason ’99 and Janelle ’01 Myers-Benner knew that living sustainably would be an overarching priority in their lives. In the decade-plus since, this desire has grown into “a vast and consuming project … engaging and energizing, even while exhausting,” Jason writes.

The Myers-Benners minimize their travel by vehicle, heat their house entirely with its passive solar design and backup wood stove, and try to grow, raise or gather as much of their food as possible from their land in Keezletown, Virginia.

Intertwined and inseparable elements of their approach to sustainability are the Myers-Benner’s significant emphasis on community and connection. They live out these values, in part, by homeschooling their 7-year-old daughter, Kali, building relationships with their neighbors and investing in nurturing, caring interactions across multiple generations. (Janelle works 30 hours per week as academic program coordinator at EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.)

As Janelle’s parents, Herb ’66 and Sarah (class of ’67) Myers, began planning for their retirement, the family saw an opportunity to further develop its commitment to multi-generational living. In 2010, Herb and Sarah began building a 900-square-foot addition to Janelle and Jason’s house. The two living quarters are separated by a shared laundry room, utility room bathroom, and office. Their addition includes a rainwater cistern, a solar water heater, and other features intended to maximize the structure’s energy efficiency.

The new arrangement – a modern twist on the traditional Amish dawdy haus for aging parents – will make it easy for the family to share appliances, vehicles, tools and other household items. Moreover, Sarah writes, moving in beside Janelle and Jason will allow them all to share in the work of trying to live sustainably: tending the garden, harvesting and preserving food, caring for livestock, gathering wood and more.

Herb and Sarah’s addition also anticipates the physical challenges of aging by building all the main rooms to accommodate wheelchair access. That feature will make life easier both for them and their family caregivers next door.
“This building project … [will not] render our lives perfectly ‘sustainable,’” Sarah writes. “But for us it seems to be an opportunity worth taking for the health of our planet and for our own sense of wholeness.”

In 2005, Lind drew on her professional expertise and personal experience to write Simply In Season (Herald Press), a cookbook arranged by season with an emphasis on fresh and local foods. Lind co-wrote the book with a Goshen College graduate, Cathleen Hockman-Wert.

“That whole sense of eating locally and seasonally [that I grew up with] was what was so important about Simply In Season,” said Lind. She hopes the book will help broaden the horizons of recent generations of home cooks who don’t “know where their food comes from other than the supermarket, [and] who want to support the local, seasonal food economy but to whom it is not part of their heritage.”

A decade before Simply In Season’s publication, Lind and her sister, Sarah Myers (class of ’67) co-wrote Recipes from the Old Mill: Baking With Whole Grains (Good Books, 1995), inspired by childhood memories of their uncle, who ran a water-powered grain mill in West Virginia.

Herald Press celebrated the 30th anniversary of a kindred bestseller, Living More with Less, with last year’s release of a new edition edited and expanded by Valerie Weaver-Zercher ’94. Living More with Less was originally written by Doris Janzen Longacre, who died of cancer just before completing her manuscript (her husband, with three others, ushered it into publication). Longacre had previously written the bestselling More-with-Less Cookbook (Herald Press, 1976 & 2000) – 860,000 copies sold by 2010, including British and German editions – which provided inspiration for Lind and Hockman-Wert’s Simply in Season.

Lester ’71 and Mary Beth ’72 Lind, pictured at their home in Philippi, West Virginia, have shaped their lives around a faith-based commitment to simplicity and sustainability. For decades, the two have worked part-time jobs and lived off their land as much as possible.

Lester ’71 and Mary Beth ’72 Lind were undergraduates at EMU when the environmental movement was taking off. They were on campus when the first Earth Day was celebrated. They took part when the college offered a January term focused on environmental issues. And they drew inspiration from a popular saying of the time – “live simply so others can simply live.”
“We decided to take that little phrase fairly seriously,” says Lester, who returned to EMU to earn an MA in religion in 1994. “Simplicity grew from a concern for the environment and justice to become a guiding principle of our faith.”

And so, not long after they graduated, the Linds settled in Harman, West Virginia, near Mary Beth’s childhood home, putting their commitment to simplicity into action. Working part-time jobs, they lived a little above the poverty line, which was comfortable enough for their tastes.

They grew much of their own food, and for a long period, plenty of surplus produce for restaurants, grocery stores and farmers’ markets. They chose not to have children, and if they ever ended up with more money than they needed, they gave it away – all decisions guided by the Linds’ commitment to simplicity and stewardship, and all decisions that have left them with a deep sense of satisfaction.

“It was a lot of hard work, and it wasn’t easy, but it was worth it … the reward is great,” says Lester.

Now, he and Mary Beth live in a house they built in Philippi, West Virginia, closer to their congregation of Philippi Mennonite Church. One of the ways they tried to incorporate sustainability into their new house was through its one-floor design, meant to make household life easier as the two of them age.

As that time approaches, decisions the Linds made earlier in life about income and livelihood have presented them with new challenges, like finding a way to fund retirement after a life spent avoiding the accumulation of money. Without insurance through an employer, healthcare costs have also become of increasing concern.

“Our values of simplicity seem incongruent with a healthcare system that is not sustainable,” Lester says.

These realities, the Linds say, have significant implications for how people can pursue lifestyles based on simplicity. The Mennonite church, Lester adds, could – and should – provide better leadership in alternative ways to fund health care and retirement.

Nevertheless, the Linds remain as committed as ever to the simple lives they chose 40 years ago. “The value of simplicity continues to form who we are and how we live,” Lester says. “If we had it to do all over again? Yes, we would.”

Darrell and Sylvia Yoder, Both '81 Grads, have taken the small-steps approach toward sustainability in their household in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When the old oil furnace gave out, the Yoders installed a geothermal heat pump. Other measures: Replacement windows. Better attic insulation. Solar tubes for more natural light. Laundry drying on the line. Cloth grocery bags. One car for the family of four. A big vegetable garden. Says Darrell: “Small steps make a big difference … and (they) make your life richer.”

At the Landis Homes community in Lititz, Pennsylvania, Dr. Richard ’60 and Ruth Slabaugh ’63 Weaver were the first couple to move into one of nearly two dozen cottage homes built with a number of simple green features. These include rain barrels, tubes to let sunlight into dark areas of the house, geothermal heat pumps, and solar-powered attic fans. Richard and Ruth both spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new, sustainability-focused part of the Landis Homes campus. Linford Good ’80, vice president of planning and marketing at Landis Homes, has led the effort to use greener building methods at the retirement community.

In Philadelphia, Carol and Timothy Martin Johnson, both ’82 grads, commute to work by public transportation, bicycles or walking; when they need to drive, they use their trusty old Corolla – 260,000 miles and counting. In January 2011, they put solar panels on the roof of their 100-year-old house, which should provide at least half their electricity. The Johnsons rent out the third floor of their house, attend a church that shares space with five other congregations, and allow an urban beekeeper to keep two hives in their back yard. The sharing and interdependence that accompany urban living, Carol writes, present “challenges, but also endless creative possibilities in which we find much joy!”

“There are a lot of little things that each one of us can do in our own homes to save the planet,” wrote Martha Ann Burgard ‘66, of Gadsen, Alabama, in a letter describing the simple things she’s done in her own home. In condensed form:

Clean with white vinegar and baking soda, because they work  as well as toxic chemicals. Use a clothesline. White metal roofs reflect more sunlight and keep a house cooler. Heat with a wood stove. Wear a hat. Bundle up. Invest in a down comforter. Shop at thrift stores and yard sales. Repurpose old things. Try treating ailments with home remedies. Compost. Mulch. Turn your lawn into a wildflower meadow. Collect rainwater for the garden. Grow your own food. Buy local produce. Cook in bulk, divide into meal-sized portions, freeze for later. Avoid processed food. Buy eggs in cardboard cartons, not styrofoam, because cardboard is a good fire starter and is compostable. Don’t dry-clean clothes. If you can’t wash it, you don’t want it. Make bags and purses from fabric scraps. Use some. Give some away as gifts. Volunteer. Teach middle-schoolers how to build birdhouses.

Says Burgard: “This is the civilized way to live, in harmony with nature, not fighting it, not destroying it, but enjoying it, communing with it.”

Alex Ivanitsky ’02 and A. Neal Lewis, class of ’01, former EMU basketball teammates, own Sustainable Solutions of Virginia. They were the general contractors for this three-unit townhouse building, which includes passive solar design, solar water heaters and other green features.

Alex Ivanitsky ’02 and A. Neal Lewis, class of ’01, started a construction company in Harrisonburg, Virginia, soon after their college years. A few years later, after Lewis took coursework in sustainable design at EMU, the pair renamed the company Sustainable Solutions of Virginia and refocused their business on sustainable construction practices. Both have since received further training in solar hot water system installation, energy auditing and home weatherization. Their company now partners with Energy Star, EarthCraft House and the US Green Building Council. This spring, Sustainable Solutions is installing Harrisonburg’s first multi-family residential solar water heating system as part of a project to decrease energy costs for low-income housing.

Aaron Yoder ’01 owns A M Yoder & Co., a Harrisonburg home construction and remodeling company that uses the EarthCraft House program. Compared to conventional building, EarthCraft House projects generate less waste during construction, require less energy for climate control and demand less ongoing maintenance. A M Yoder & Co. applies these techniques to a wide variety of houses. The company can build a Habitat for Humanity home that uses 40 percent less energy, and an 8,000-square-foot luxury home that is far less resource-intensive than a conventionally built mansion.

Benjamin Meredith ’92 is owner and president of Building Knowledge: Professional Inspection Services (Harrisonburg), which conducts home and small business energy audits to identify the best ways to reduce energy consumption. It also provides third-party verification for homes built to Energy Star or EarthCraft green building standards. Meredith uses construction expertise and specialized equipment – duct blasters, infrared cameras – to understand and improve a building’s energy usage. “Residential buildings consume approximately 22 percent of the energy consumed in the United States,” he says. “It is my job to help people figure out how they can reduce their energy consumption footprint.”

Pictured on the job in Raleigh, North Carolina, Bradley Yoder ’02 works as a project adviser for Build Sense, a green design and construction company. The Raleigh project pictured here will earn a Gold certification, as defined by the National Green Building Standard.

Bradley Yoder ’02 is project adviser for Build Sense, based in Durham, North Carolina. It builds all its new homes to the National Green Building Standard of the National Association of Home Builders. Smart and efficient homes, Yoder says, are a key part of living well-balanced lives: “If you’re careful about building [people’s] homes responsibly, efficiently and healthily, [they] are better equipped to do what they want with their lives.” One of Bradley’s colleagues, John Price, class of ’76, is the “build lead” at Build Sense, overseeing several of the company’s construction crews. Through another company, Carolina X Wall, Yoder also sells insulating concrete forms, an efficient and eco-friendly building material.

In Fulks Run, Virginia, Heather Bauman ’04 and Justin Thomas Yoder, class of ’03, live in a passive solar house, with supplementary heat from a masonry stove. It has a lightcolored metal roof to ward off summer heat. Built by Justin and his father, Kenton E. Yoder, the house stays comfortable during summers without air conditioning, says Heather.

Elmer ’64 and Marianne Kennel’s pre-fabricated, 20-sided house sits on a scenic hilltop just outside of Harrisonburg. The unusual shape attracts curious visitors from time to time – and provides efficiency gains by shedding wind and minimizing the home’s outside surface area.

The house isn’t technically round, but with 20 sides, it’s close. And it looks unusual enough that strangers sometimes drop in just to ask about the place Elmer ’64 and Marianne Kennel built in 2007 a few miles outside of Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Built with 20 prefabricated panels made by a company in North Carolina, the house includes a number of green features, beginning with the shape itself. The round design gives the home an improved surface-to-volume ratio – and consequently, improved energy efficiency – over a standard, boxy house. Simple ways the Kennels maximize the efficiency of their house: passive solar design, orienting the house to maximize and minimize the effect of sunlight at the appropriate times of year, thick insulation, reflective roof shingles, well-built windows and doors, and “window quilts” to minimize heat loss.

The house also includes some higher-tech green features, including solar collectors to heat the house via radiant floor heat and the water system (on March 1, a sunny but chilly day, their tank temperature reached 120 degrees). A separate, 4.8 kW photovoltaic system at the house generates about half the electricity the couple uses.

Elmer’s and Marianne’s previous house, built in 1980, also had solar collectors for hot water and a passive solar design.
“It seemed like the right thing to do years ago, and it still is,” says Elmer, who retired in 2010 from his career as a general surgeon affiliated with Rockingham Memorial Hospital.

Photo by Sarah Huntington Photography

After being exposed to a variety of toxic substances while renovating his home in 1980, Clint Good, class of ’77, developed hypersensitivities to compounds in paints, adhesives and other building materials. He was just 27 years old. Good visited numerous doctors as he struggled to regain his health.

He began paying close attention to the environment he lived in. He moved out of the city to find cleaner air. He began filtering his water, started growing much of his own food, and used mind-over-matter techniques to overcome anxiety about exposure to toxins.

That experience had a direct and enormous effect on Good’s career as an architect. (After attending EMU, he earned an architecture degree from Catholic University in Washington DC; his daughter, Bethany Good, graduated from EMU in 2004.)
“How could I specify products that go into people’s buildings that could make them sick?” he says. “That was my call to action.”
In 1984, Good designed his own special “ecological” house to safeguard his health. After that project received attention in an architecture magazine, Good started getting calls from interested people across the country and around the world. In 1988, his self-published book, Healthful Houses: How To Design and Build Your Own, became one of the first on the subject.

Now working from his office in Northern Virginia, Good has designed healthy homes and buildings for clients throughout the Americas, as well as in Asia and Europe, and has spoken widely in the field on how to build to protect occupants’ health.