I have a story on the state of green building in Greater Boston in the current issue of GreenSource magazine, commissioned on the occasion of GreenBuild, the US Green Building Council's national convention. As many as 30,000 builders, developers, architects and other green partisans are expected at the Convention and Exposition Center next Wednesday through Friday (Nov. 19-21).

OK, so now we have the guy we wanted in the White House. So what is the outlook for clean tech?

Martin Lamonica, green-tech writer at CNet, surveys the landscape. I am always informed by Martin's writing.

[added] Greenbiz.com covers some of the same ground, but also looks at how voters reacted to clean-energy referenda nationwide.

In about a month, the greatest one-city, one-year confluence of green-building events ever (ever!) will culminate when GreenBuild, the annual trade show of the US Green Building Council, comes to Boston.

As if to underscore the confluence, highlighted by the American Institute of Architects' national convention in May and the annual NESEA show in March, the three-day show will overlap with BuildBoston, a regional show put on annually by the Boston Society of Architects.

BuildBoston, now in its 24th year, will be Nov. 18-20 at the Seaport World Trade Center. GreenBuild will be at the big house a couple of blocks away, the Boston Convention and Exposition Center, Nov. 19-21.

Georgie and I have trekked twice to Western Mass. recently to check out green buildings (though the first time, we had the added incentive of attending our niece's 7th birthday party.

On that trip, I was struck by one commonality of three of our stops: Perhaps the most attractive, striking place architecturally was Maria Chao's house [below]. There are green features, such as her Munchkin boiler, but its design is a very strong green element: lots of south-facing glass, solar mass, etc. Maria is an architect, and previously lived in Virginia, working with William McDonough.

I swear the following is true, but it would have to be for me to tell the story; as fiction, it'd be horribly, embarrassingly lame.

At the home of Maria Chao, an architect living in Amherst, one of the points of interest was the Munchkin boiler, whose chief selling points are its efficiency and small size.

Via Jetson Green, news of a new database that lists the zero-energy buildings of the US. So far, the only sites listed are the ballyhooed Aldo Leopold Legacy Center in Wisconsin and projects in Ohio, Minnesota, and California, though it surely will grow.

The site was established by the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program of the Department of Energy, but it has a star-studded set of partners, including the AIA's Committee on the Environment, the Mass. Technology Collaborative, and Building Green, the site's host and maintainer.

Via Re-Nest and the Hartford Courant (a former employer) comes the Tiny House, a one-off production of Elizabeth Turnbull, with help from friends and neighbors.

Turnbull lives in Newburyport, Mass., but is moving to New Haven for the next two years to attend the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She calculated her housing costs for that period, and decided to apply the funds in a more constructive way than just finding a roomie and paying rent.

As with many things on Re-Nest, I'm not sure I could live in her space. The bathroom, as she points out in a video, is smaller than most people's showers — 3 feet by 3 1/2 feet. But she'll be quite self-sufficient, with a composting toilet and three 70-watt solar panels that she says will provide all her needs.

I don't often have contact with contractors or subcontractors, other than those I meet at trade shows, and they are often a self-selecting group of activists, presenters, and all-round movers and shakers. But of mainstream builders, I know only a few.

A story I wrote for Architectural Record was posted in the last day or two.

It says that AIA and the US Green Building Council have announced an intention to form a strategic alliance, which may or may not lead, eventually, to AIA's endorsing the LEED system for green buildings. The announcement of the alliance raised the prospect that such an endorsement might be in the offing, but reporting it out weakened that impression.

According to my WordPress blog stats counter, this is my 21st post touching on some sort of green topic, but it's the first that features my byline.

This story ran in the Sunday Globe this morning. I got onto the idea by meeting a fellow at Boston Green Drinks, which I'm fairly sure I mentioned in one of the 20 green posts.

I'm looking for more story ideas, and ideally, more publications to place them. Share your thoughts in comments, please...