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To understand how this beautiful city in the middle of Iowa came to be, it helps to study its commercial development. The exploits and legacy of on F.M. Hubbell, founder of Hubbell Realty Company, provides that kind of insight.

In addition to this rags-to-riches tale, what’s intriguing about the Hubbell clan is how it came back, Rumplestiltskin-like, after being frozen for 53 years by the provisions of FM’s last will and testament. His descendants have resurrected the company and its mission of building, now creating sustainable communities and providing housing to low-income families. I wrote this history in an article in American Builders Quarterly.

I am so NOT prone to using exclamation points when I write, in text copy as well as headlines. But the topic of this article warrants it.

In this story of the April/May/June edition of Green Building + Design, I write about an ugly building that is LEED-certified green. It’s owned by Con-way Freight, a Michigan-based, international surface transportation carrier that has accomplished very significant things in the realm of going green. For example, with the simple use of new delivery-planning software they have cut 124,000 miles driven by their 9,600 trucks every single day.

But the larger story is this: The trucking industry has worked cooperatively with the EPA over the last several years to develop best-practices to the benefit of all. Trucking firms are working with greater efficiency and less gas is being used. This is a stark contrast from the more common perception that regulation is a cost burden on business. As Randy Mullett, Con-way’s vice president of government relations and public affairs, explained to me, “Fuel is the second biggest expense to our company. Economics, customer interest, and regulatory encouragement drove this program. It saves us about $25 million per year.’”

To me, that is worth an exclamation point.

It’s a pretty rare thing for anyone under the age of 40 to recall a time they drove a car on a gravel road. That’s because even the most rural areas of America saw the paving of roads everywhere that linked farms, industrial sites and remote recreational areas with the highway systems designed for cross-country transportation.

But that trend is being reversed. I write on Pothole.info about pavement-to-gravel conversions that arehappening in many parts of the U.S. This is due to empty county and small town public coffers, a problem that has two components working in synergy.

Just at a time when the roads are aging and in need of rehabilitation – i.e., potholes going unfixed – the price of oil is soaring. There are two simple factors that cause this to happen: oil byproducts are a component of asphalt, and the price of crude has gone from $76 to $102 per barrel since 2010. Funding for road maintenance is heavily dependent on gas taxes, which are levied per gallon – at a time when cars are becoming more fuel efficient and the economic recession has reduced driving overall.

More repairs required plus less money to make the repairs equals de-prioritized least-used roads.  Several counties have purchased or rented pulverizing equipment to tear up the asphalt that remains, which is then laid down as a base for the gravel road.

The shifts in how we deal with public infrastructure is an ongoing narrative of Pothole.info. It’s a national story that affects everyone in all kinds of ways.

A bill pending for the U.S. Congress, HR 763, the Safe and Efficient Transportation Act, would essentially allow heavier (not larger) trucks to ply the streets and highways of America. It’s an interesting and somewhat perplexing proposal, because it may or may not have an environmental benefit, it may be more or less safe, and it may cause more damage to the highways or help fund repair of our crumbling infrastructure. But one thing is certain: for companies that ship dense things – think beverage and paper companies – it will save them money and improve operational efficiencies.

I wrote about this bill for Pothole.info, where I am the primary content provider (writer). We cover news and features about pavement deterioration, the problems with infrastructure funding and the declining revenues to the Highway Trust Fund, which are based on gas consumption, a bad formula as vehicles migrate toward greater fuel economy. The article might be a little wonkish – who really thinks much about how many axels and wheels a truck has? – but it shows how policy decisions such as this can have many consequences. That includes those that are well understood and perhaps several more that are not.

It’s a sad fact that a third of American adults have high blood pressure (a.k.a. hypertension or HBP). Those with HBP are at risk for stroke, myocardial infarction (heart attack), heart failure, chronic kidney failure and arterial aneurysms. Overall, life expectancy is lower for people with HBP.

Pharmaceutical products that include ace inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, beta blockers and calcium channel blockers work for many. But the side effects can lead to their own health-inhibiting conditions such as headaches, dizziness, gastrointestinal distress, nausea, constipation and edema.

In this article, I write about ways to reduce blood pressure naturally, through better diet and exercise. Included are testimonials and studies to illustrate how it can be done. As I conclude in the article, all the healthy habits to reduce HBP also contribute to good health overall.

As seen in the television shows and news reports, hoarding is a newly-acknowledged disorder that is being considered for inclusion in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-V), the official list of psychological disorders maintained by the American Psychiatric Association.

I was able to discover a link to a hair loss condition known as trichotillomania in this article, which is a compulsive pulling of one’s hair to the point of baldness (also a psychological disorder). Both phenomena are under the broader umbrella of obsessive compulsive disorders.

I relish the opportunity as a writer to dig into health disorders of all kinds, particularly those that can be addressed through behavior modification (which sometimes, but not always, can be part of treatment for hoarding and trichotillomania). It is an extension of my general belief that preventive health can be promoted in a majority of individuals through nutrition, exercise, stress management and one’s life structure (e.g., life and work situations that enrich, such as living near one’s employment to reduce commuting time).

CBS-TV reporter Leslie Stahl’s story on “60 Minutes” about the questionable effectiveness of anti-depressant medications has raised many questions among people with mild to moderate depression.

My own story on alternatives to antidepressants for HairLoss.com points the way to alternative methods for managing mild to moderate depression. In brief, those approaches include talking therapy, physical exercise, socialization, herbs, environment and possibly homeopathy.

As experts interviewed for the 60 Minutes story explained, these alternative approaches, as well as drug placebos, can be just as effective without the many side effects of prescription medications – and often, much less expensive.

While smart nutritionists decry – justifiably so – crash diets, the fact of the matter is that people do them. This is largely the province of younger women, often in preparation for special events (high school reunions, weddings, job hunting, beach vacations), however men are jumping in on the action too with supplements and a “Biggest Loser” approach to exercise (i.e., over-training*).

These approaches can be very unhealthy. They are largely unsustainable and can have adverse health effects, including hair loss. I write about a healthier approach to crash diets here for HairLoss.com –- a smarter approach for the person who wants to lose ten pounds in five weeks.

*I say this as a certified fitness trainer who believes in regular, daily exercise – but have seen too many people tackle major weight loss with an extreme approach to both exercise and diet that cannot be maintained over time.

Among Baby Boomers, the general sense is that aging naturally leads to musculoskeletal deterioration, particularly in the knees, hips and back. This certainly happens, but don’t blame exercise – at least if you are exercising properly.

In this article, I write about fitness and exercise as it affects knees and hips. The happy news for runners and others who regularly exercise is that sedentary lifestyles are far worse for joints — the better approach is to strengthen muscles around joints, to open up the joints by stretching and to just move. Contrary to earlier reports, marathon runners have less arthritis of the knee joints than people who don’t run at all, according to research out of Stanford University and a second study reported in Skeletal Radiology (2008).

I have been a writer on health, fitness, wellbeing and related topics for HairLoss.com since 2009.

As Boston’s new youth hostel comes online in 2012, it welcomes travelers both foreign and domestic to a very green future for budget travel in the U.S. While European hostels are often government subsidized, the American facilities are built on donor dollars ($43 million) and operate on guest revenues (about $40/night).

My article on the hostel and its sustainable conversion from a derelict, 19th Century office building is in the January/February/March 2012 issue of Green Building & Design. As a writer for this publisher – on this title and American Builders Quarterly and New American Luxury – I work only on stories that include an environmental feature.

“The Biggest Loser,” love it or hate it, is thought by some to be the driver of a fitness trend: group exercise classes are increasingly popular with fitness trainees and fitness center operators alike.

Why? People who are new to fitness often try and fail with a simple gym membership –- they have no clue as to what they should do once there. Group exercises classes offer a social component, creating a sense of community, the opportunity to meet new people and accountability to attend and achieve. Fitness centers are finding they can charge a bit more from members who elect to exercise with three, ten or 20 other people under the supervision of a fitness professional.

I wrote about group fitness about a year ago for HairLoss.com and the trend continues, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.

Regardless of whether you are eating at a fast food joint or a gourmet-acclaimed restaurant, on the averages you will ingest 55 percent more calories in those places than if you made the meal yourself (source: Center for Science in the Public Interest).

Think about that: you can reduce by half your caloric intake by simply changing how and where you eat. In this article written for Hairloss.com, I boil down the premise of my book, A Guy’s Gotta Eat, the regular guy’s guide to eating smart (DaCapo Press, 2004, with Deanna Conte, MS RD LD). Learn to make a healthy, 15-minute meal at home and you’ll likely eat better and manage your weight more effectively.

Certainly, there will be many occasions when eating out will still be necessary. But if you switch just three or four meals a week to your kitchen, your caloric intake will effectively be reduced and the amount of beneficial nutrients that you consume will increase.

Here is a case where I got to write* about two personal passions – sustainable architecture/design and wellness – in one story. This article is about a Boston-based architecture firm, ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge, which designed some remarkable green campus buildings in Rochester (RIT) and Dallas (the Episcopal School of Dallas). Special kudos to the Episcopal School and former Dallas Cowboy Daryl Johnston, where the new athletic center building and program focus on nutrition and non-athlete wellness as much as athletes.

http://gbdmagazine.com/2011/11/novdec-2011/

Navigate to page 137 for my article (“Two Schools, Two Climates”).

*Green Building & Design magazine, November-December 2011

In health clubs throughout the world, millions of people are working out with the best of intentions and worst of exercise form. Often, this is due to a poor understanding of their own physiology and how it works. The phenomenon is known as proprioception. Arguably, the person who has studied human physiology has a very good understanding of it.

Of course it does not make sense for everyone to go out and get a degree in exercise physiology. That’s what fitness trainers do (or should do). But at least a rudimentary understanding of where the muscles are and their role in an exercise can help quite a bit.

I write about proprioception in this article for Hairloss.com, explaining how simply observing others perform the choreography of an exercise is inadequate instruction. The tall swimmer has different body geometry than the squat-but-powerful wrestler, hence the way they execute the same exercise might differ in how it appears. What is better and more effective is for the individual to have some knowledge of his or her own muscle, tendon and bone structure. A good trainer should be able to communicate this somewhat, but the visual aid of a physiology chart (try this one) can be very instructive as well.

The value of search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo lies in their ability to deliver what Internet users are looking for. That fact is a fundamental driver of what I do as a writer of search-optimized web content, the value that I provide many of my clients.

An article on avoiding pothole damage, written for my client Pothole.info, is a good example. It introduces factual information on a concept – that potholes can cause expensive problems for motorists – then it provides key steps for avoiding or mitigating the damage. How-to information helps bump up an article in a search because that tends to be what people are looking for.

Potholes are an evergreen subject of interest and of web searches. This is because, unfortunately, infrastructure maintenance is sorely lacking at the federal, state and local levels. As a writer about infrastructure, road building and asphalt, I am made acutely aware of how our roads and bridges will continue to deteriorate to an increasing degree because the poor economy (and resultant reduced road repair budgets) and basic physics (those having to do with freeze-thaw cycles and traffic, all basic natural atrophy) have found a point of collision. Smarter, more efficient methods of building and maintaining roads and bridges are now in development to answer this need – part of what Pothole.info documents.

Philadelphia architect Alvin Holm, who champions classical design in his work, was a delight to interview for this story I wrote for American Builders Quarterly (September 2011, from the link navigate to page 93). Trained in the mid-20th century in all that mid-century modern architecture was meant to be, Holm found his way back to classicism in the 1980s and never came back.

He describes with gusto his classical parlor design for an Irish pub as a place “where a multitude of happy drinkers gather every evening in a Corinthian saloon.” Holm also worked on the 19th century galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which he says was a victory for the paintings it held: “The previous interior was one big Miesian universal space, like an airplane hangar. Museum-goers were confused. People respond better to a universe that is orderly, where you do not need to know much to get it. The museum functions now as an organism, where all the parts related harmoniously to the others – the paintings to walls, the walls to the rooms, and one set of galleries to all the others.”

Note: I write frequently about architecture, landscape architecture, building, construction, infrastructure, urban planning, green building, public housing and community development for American Builders Quarterly, Green Building & Design and Pothole.info.

People take their potholes very seriously. So there was great concern in New York City when the streets department deemed what looked like a pothole to in fact be a “street defect,” which is not their department.

I had fun with this one in my article on Pothole.info – perhaps due to seeing too many B movies in my childhood. That street defect might be a window on something more sinister in a subterranean world.

As a writer for Pothole.info – the blogsite that tracks news relating to pavement and infrastructure – it was hardly a stretch to connect personally with the primary topic. Everyone uses roads, and potholes are everywhere (more today than ever before, given the underfunding of our aging highways and streets). But I’m also an avid urban biker, routinely commuting 16 miles by bike nine months out of the year to my gym. Plus I am an amateur triathlete, having completed my 50th and 51st lifetime races in 2011.

In this article on biking and pavement problems, I am the bicycling writer who could explore how potholes affect racers, long-distance riders and recreational bikers. To goose the SEO characteristics of the story, I made sure to include a variety of geographical locations and a how-to guide on avoiding potholes – which I sourced from experts, but understand well from my own peddling about town.

Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are a category of prescriptive and over-the-counter medications that go by names such as  Nexium, Pepcid, Prevacid, Prilosec, Protonix and Zegerid. These are some of the most profitable medications made as they are used by millions of people in developed countries, including and especially the U.S. For an article I wrote for HairLoss.com, I interviewed a handful of doctors, therapists, nutritionists, holistic health practitioners and others who offer their advice on managing gastronintestinal conditions that include acid reflux disease (gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD), Crohn’s disease and related conditions. They offer solid advice that largely addresses the cause of these conditions – unlike medications that more typically manage symptoms, not the root problems of stress and poor diet. As a writer, I also felt close to these conditions because I suffered severe heartburn for years when I was younger – and which I have successfully addressed holistically since.