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And Dot Dishes about EV Infrastructure from a Cool Perch on Her Porch
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Every other week, Bluedot Living will share stories about local changemakers, Islanders’ sustainable homes and yards, planet-healthy recipes and tips, along with advice from Dear Dot. Did your friend send you this? Sign up for yourself here. Not interested? No problem — click here to be removed from Bluedot Living emails.
SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES
Dear Dot
Contributing editor Catherine Walthers, who wrangles much of our food content, shared this Vanessa Seder Ginger Strawberry Shrub recipe with us recently. Summery, isn’t it? “Using an old preserving method,” Cathy writes, “shrubs rely on the tangy, distinctive bit of vinegar to preserve ripe seasonal fruit.” Preserving ripe seasonal fruit is both sustainable and thirst-quenching. Here’s the recipe.
Awesome Possibilities
Did you gasp when you first saw the images this week from the James Webb Space Telescope? We did. That’s the thing with awe. It opens us to what is possible.

The idea of what is possible has been on our minds a lot. Bluedot founder Vicki Riskin considers it every time she engages with the young people of our Bluedot Institute initiative. “The Plastic-Free MV kids inspired Bluedot Living magazine,” Vicki reminds us, “and after the Climate Summit co-sponsored by Felix Neck Audubon Society and organized by Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School climate group on May 27 I was impressed and hopeful.”

I felt awe when I watched the video of Bluedot’s summer intern Cleo Carney’s interview with good friend and 16-year-old powerhouse Naila Moloo, who is working both on a sustainable bioplastic from the aquatic plant duckweed and a flexible plastic for solar panels. What’s striking isn’t just the brilliance of these two young people but their clear-eyed passion. They are acutely aware of the challenges we all face but they get to work, inspired not only by what’s possible but by each other. Please watch — I promise you’ll be awed too.

Political scientist and “Commanding Hope” author Thomas Homer-Dixon recently told a reporter that his inspiration to tackle climate comes from the fact that “we actually don't know what positive possibilities there are just over the horizon. And they could be remarkably, remarkably large and powerful.”

A few years ago, we didn’t imagine the photographs we’re marveling at right now, images of the first breath of the universe. Images that reveal what, as Homer-Dixon puts it, is potentially “just over the horizon.” —Leslie Garrett
This issue of the Bluedot newsletter is sponsored by Island Grown Initiative.
Climate Quick Tip
Help preserve biodiversity on Martha’s Vineyard by becoming a citizen scientist. Join BiodiversityWorks’ Matt Pelikan in helping to catalog Island flora and fauna for the “MV Atlas of Life” project.

See what your fellow Islanders have already found here.
These are golden times for naturalists,” Matt Pelikan says in this Field Note from BiodiversityWorks. “Advances in optics and digital photography, the advent of DNA analysis as a tool for classifying wildlife, and the flow of information and personal communication made possible by the Internet have revolutionized how nature is studied and how naturalists interact.” The MV Atlas of Life, which we reported on last year, is a joint project of BiodiversityWorks and the Betsy and Jesse Fink Family Foundation. In its second full year now, the MVAL includes more than 16,000 individual observations representing more than 2,800 species by more than 2,000 citizen scientists.
BUY LESS/BUY BETTER

“The first time I heard the word ‘biodegradable,’” contributing editor Mollie Doyle writes, “I was 10 years old…heading off to sleep away camp. Campers needed ‘biodegradable soap’ because we would be bathing in a lake. So my mom and I went down to the local health food store and picked out some Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Pure-Castile Liquid Soap.” Sounds cool on a hot summer day, doesn’t it?
LEARN MORE
Dear Dot,
I read in Bluedot Living (Cruising with Currier, Spring 2022) that Tesla plans to open its charging stations to electric vehicles that aren’t Teslas. I drive a Volvo plug-in hybrid and have discovered on my trips to the Vineyard that the Tesla chargers don’t fit my vehicle. Are there plans to create a universal charging plug for all electric vehicles? Which companies’ charging plugs are proprietary? And how quickly is EV-charging infrastructure being built?
–Daniel, Vineyard Haven

Dear Daniel,
It’s a common refrain: “I’d love to buy an electric vehicle but …” Much of what we do in our Cruising with Currier column is try to move past the “but …” to demystify electric vehicles because, as your letter indicates, confusion and frustration persist.

I took your question to Samantha Houston, a senior analyst with the Clean Transportation Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Samantha loves questions like yours because they give her a chance to do what she does best: Make the case for electric vehicles and the infrastructure that will support their wide implementation.

“My job,” Houston says, “is making sure that’s not happening for folks like the person who wrote to you...”
RIGHT AT HOME
“I became really intrigued about the intersection that solar energy has with nanotechnology,” 16 year old Naila Moloo told Bluedot's Cleo Carney, “using microscopic materials to increase the efficiency and also enhance other properties of solar panels.” Read or watch more.
By now, most Bluedot readers know how crucial oysters are to the health of our ponds. So any recipe (like this one by Karen Covey) calling for local oysters gets our vote. Especially when it comes with a strawberry mignonette — perfect for a hot summer day. Find more recipes at bluedotliving.com.
Please join the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for a special virtual discussion with Danielle Deane-Ryan (Equitable Climate Solutions, the Bezos Earth Fund), Cheryl Andrews-Maltais (Chairwoman, Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head/Aquinnah), Peter de Menocal (President and Director, WHOI), moderated by Mindy Todd (WCAI host).
With support from the MV Museum and MV Bank.
ADVICE
Did you know that Island Grown Initiative (IGI) accepts (hard-to-compost) meat and dairy scraps at its drop-off locations? Residents can find these sites at the Island Grown Farm, the Chappy Ferry dock, and all town transfer stations (except for Aquinnah). If you already patronize these services and have been throwing in your meat and dairy scraps with the rest of your compost there's no need to fret — it can all go in the same bin.

For more composting tips, consult our Ultimate Simple, Smart, Sustainable Handbook to Martha’s Vineyard.
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