Note: a current email address for contact – comments welcome! energyprimer@protonmail.com or cissod@gmail.com

Energy Primer – 8 Golden Circle, Southampton, MA 01073

Timeline – 50+ years Experience in Energy and Alternatives.
In 1971, Craig turns 18 and, with wife Martha, starts to pursue an alternative lifestyle called “Back to the Land.” This involved living simply and sustainably. Their first steps included becoming vegetarians and moving to a rural area they found after hitchhiking west. They followed advice from the popular publication Mother Earth News, including heating their home with wood.

1974 – Living the simple life with many others included having our first child in a Tent (our home!) in the woods – heated, of course, with wood. We learned a lot about Energy and wood heating along with dabbling in passive Solar. We lived so frugally that $100 a month easily covered all of our expenses (equal to about $700 today for two adults). Most all of our work involved alternative and sustainable living, organic agriculture and reuse and recycling. Craig and Martha both worked in vegetarian food production and large scale recycling such as dismantling and using/selling large former mill buildings. Here is a short story Craig wrote about the large scale recycling/reuse effort.

1975-1978 – Craig and Martha moved to Rural/Suburban Southern NJ (Pinelands area) to be closer to family after birth of our 2nd Child. Craig continued work in light construction which included building reuse, some of which involved “barn wood” product which was a popular decor at the time.
Noting that no one appeared to be heating with wood, Craig and Martha found a woodstove and installed it in their ranch home. Wood heating was so rare that we had passers-by knock on the door and tell us the house was on fire! 

But the lack of popularity soon reversed as world events and oil shocks sent Americans looking for Alternatives – two of which were wood heating and solar. The Whole Earth Catalog and other “Guides to Tools” became available. Craig started on a quest to learn – and practice – as many skills as possible in the Energy field. 

1978-1998 – Starting with sales from their Living and Dining room, Craig and Martha built a family business in alternate energy which was both diversified and fast growing. The operations included Retail, Manufacturing, Importing, Distribution and even inventions/patents on new product in the Industries served. Both passive and active solar were installed along with central heat and/or space heat. Note that most Solar at the time was water heating as the price of PV was prohibitive for most people and businesses. Many advances in efficiency were made over these decades for purposes of both pollution controls and more “MPG” or heat per log!

1978-1998 – 20 years of Amazing Experiences in Energy including importing and distributing the highest efficiency biomass (wood) burning heating systems from Denmark. We expanded to multiples stores and multiple business entities, always keeping our focus on the environment and on our customers.

1984-1996 – Craig becomes self taught in computers, writing and marketing. He becomes the Hearth Industry “Expert”, giving popular seminars at the National Trade Shows. Starting with Compuserve in 1985, Craig goes Online – learning the ways of online community and education.

1995 – 2014 – Craig is ready when the “real internet” launches and immediately makes use of it personally and professionally. He decides to become a “webmaster” – a dream job at the time – and creates an informational web site covering Woodstoves and the related energy and lifestyle niche. This site becomes extremely popular and content grows to many thousands of information. Craig, along with a small team of volunteers, runs the site successfully for 18 years, selling it in 2014.

2013-2018 – Craig developed an interest in autonomous flying vehicles – commonly known as consumer drones. His site, Droneflyers.com, teaches the public about the rapid advances in the field and become well know for clear and consise explanations, reviews and writing. This site becomes a go-to resource and Craig quickly becomes an “insider” in the Industry. History “how to” books on drone related subjects became best sellers on Amazon. The site was sold to a colleague in 2018 after Craig noted that the Industry had largely matured and the evolution of the products (the fun part!) was mostly complete.

The above is how we got here – learning and teaching are the mainstays which connect all of these efforts and which will drive the content on the new Energy Primer.

In the last decade, after selling my web sites and other ventures, I have engaged in volunteering, whether as a startup mentor at SCORE or Valley Ventures Mentors – currently my volunteer efforts tend to be of a wider scope such as driving for Meals on Wheels of Sarasota or writing this web site (public service).

Some might find it of interest that Energy and Enviornment now run In The Family, as my Daughter is both an Engineer and an Attorney with the Sierra Club – and is focused on clean air, efficiency and other such matters.

Note – I am always willing to give advice (free, of course) on any subject I might be familiar with. Email, or – leave a comment and I will respond either online or by email.
energyprimer@protonmail.com

Thanks for Visting and Reading!