MOTHER EARTH NEWS Interns Celebrate Halloween Alternative-Energy Style

Reader Contribution by Jennifer Black
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Pumpkin carving is hard work, but somebody’s got to do it. All three MOTHER EARTH NEWS interns got into the Halloween spirit this week and carved some alternative-energy pumpkins, courtesy of stencils from the U.S. Department of Energy. The stencils include a biomass symbol, wind turbine, solar panel, compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) and an atom to represent nuclear energy. We started with three pumpkins; out of the five DOE designs, we didn’t carve the atom symbol or the CFL. Looking back, I should have done the light bulb.

The end result of our trials and tribulations were two happy pumpkins and two very sad pumpkins. Because England Porter and I don’t work on the same weekdays, Megan Harris worked with me on day one to knock out the solar panel design and biomass symbol. We printed the designs off the DOE website. They were perfect for our medium-sized pumpkins. Taping the flat designs to our round pumpkins took some cutting and folding. Afterwards, we used a sharp-pointed pen to poke holes through the paper, tracing the patterns onto the pumpkin shell. Pumpkin carving kits are inexpensive and can be reused each year. While rotary tools, minisaws and woodcarving tools are good for more advanced designs, they are unnecessary for smaller pumpkins and simple designs such as these.

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