Long Arm Farm - our dear friends!

We love these people!

Micaela, Cullen, Thurman, Oota, and Lugh: Long Arm Farm in Wisconsin

Thurman's blog: Permaculture for Kids

Diaper free for you and me

I have been meaning and meaning to figure out how to transition my babe from diapers and towards going diaper-free, and generally, doing what 75% of the world does with their babies (i.e. not using disposables and training them to have an awareness of their bodies, and not sitting in their excrement). But, lots of work, travel, ignorance, fatigue, and stress have slowed down my self-education, confidence, and abilities... But, now I have had some time to do some research and am so excited about all the good info out there about infant potty training. No, this is not some crazy, punitive system where you try to control your babies and give them horrible complexes that would make Freud giddy, but rather a gentle and natural approach to helping them learn how to potty naturally, out of diapers... the same way we support babies developing other skills like eating and walking and talking. It has meant a lot of rearranging, re-education, and mopping up the kitchen floor (but, really, that floor needs to be mopped all the time anyway). Most of all, I am excited to have another way to bond and communicate with my little one and to not have his infancy be more of a burden on the environment (disposables in landfills and cloth eating up water, etc). As an infant, I was potty trained back in Russia at around 4 months old and it worked really well until we started traveling (which threw everyone's cycles
off), so I know it is a real and positive thing that is possible even in cold, urban areas and in small apartments.

It is so fascinating that "elimination communication" (EC), "infant potty training" (IPT) or "diaper-free" is something so rarely mentioned in American baby/parenting books. But, Americans were, in fact, using early infant potty training until fairly recently. Perhaps the move away from EC can be traced back to the sweeping changes that the 1950's brought for women and families (e.g. mothers working outside the home more and much earlier; more use of baby formula instead of breastfeeding; more consumption and material wealth in homes - such as wall to wall carpeting and laundry machines; disposable diapers and plastics; new chemicals for diapers and laundry, etc, along with a whole host of other new technologies) - all of which lead to many shifts in parenting, including a move away from early potty training. At the same time, childhood expert T. Berry Brazelton convinced a nation of parents that early potty training was simply wrong and destructive. Interestingly, he was supported by the diaper company Pampers! While he might have been right to warn parents against forcing children to use the potty and using punitive tactics, he also dismissed the idea that babies can be aware of and control their bodies and its processes. While babies do not have perfect control of their bladder or sphincter (or any other muscle!), they are able to learn causal relationships and can be helped to make the connection and achieve control, though it does take a while. The result of all this has been a long delay in potty training in the US, with many toddlers still in diapers at the age of 3 or 4 - creating mountains of disposables and wipes, frequent diaper rash, contests of will at the potty, and nighttime ordeals.

All of this is strange when you consider that most everywhere else in the world, parents do not have (and cannot afford) diapers and have come up with other tactics to use all these hundreds of years. Millions of mothers across China, India, Africa, Russia can't be all wrong. Of course, as a working mom in an American urban setting, there are modifications and difficulties, but the concept just seems so right to me, so we're going to try. Fingers crossed.

So if you are interested and already diapering - don't worry because, yes, you can start late (though I have read - and it makes sense - that it is easier for all if you start right away). And yes, you can do it part-time (i.e. use diapers for travel or overnight, etc).

Here's some info to start off with... there is plenty more out there...
Diaper Free by Ingrid Bauer
Infant Potty Training by Laurie Boucke (and here is one of her articles at kellymom.com)
Diaper Free Baby
New York Times article
Inhabitots

Art Project, Not An Art Project

A local free-cycle listserv consistently surprises and confuses me. The list of things people want and offer read like demented and mysterious poems, creating a strange contour drawing of our consumption patterns as well as the tedium of daily life, the planned obsolescence of gadgets and the dashed hopes of technological utopias.

The photo above (as well as the rest - to be found here) are one very organized man's collection of things to give away, marked thoughtfully with blunt and comedic post-it notes - an art project for education aliens who are not used to our wasteful material culture of old cords, unwanted fax machines, and retired parts and pieces.

Cornbread with masa harina (instead of corn grits)

Only had masa and wanted cornbread. Found this recipe and it was very delicious.
Here is to provisional cooking, magical substitutions, and the power of corn.

INGREDIENTS

• 1.5 c masa harina

• 1/2 c flour,

• two eggs

• two t of baking powder

• 1 t. salt

• 1 scant T sugar (brown, turbinado, white, honey, whatever)

• 1.5 (approx) c of milk

• 1/2 stick of butter, softened

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Mix dry ingredients.
2. Rub half of butter (2 T) into dry ingr., Put the other half in a cast iron skillet in a 425 oven.
3. Add eggs and enough milk to dry ingr to make a batter (takes more than regular cornmeal bread), around 1.5 c.
4. When butter in skillet is melted, spread out batter and bake until brown around edges and light brown areas on top (about 20 min). Cool out of the pan if you want to keep the bottom crust crisp.

Old post-it note reads thusly:

A reflection on a scattered, excited, and curious mind...

Can Experimental Cultural Centers Replace MFA Programs?: http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/how-we-learn/can-experimental-cultural-centers-replace-mfa-prog/
The Longest Walk 1978-2008: http://longestwalk.org/
Wings of America (running program for Native American youth)
http://www.brownielocks.com/notes.html#Thank%20You%20How%20To
"anti-civilization" + Derrick Jensen
"citizen advice bureau"
Tiny Human Fossils: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/hobbit
VOICES FROM THE GATHERING STORM: The Web of Ecological-Societal Crisis
Passer domesticus, Latin for "House Sparrow"
"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks." - Tennessee Williams

News from Flux Factory

Flux Factory is moving into its new space and is inviting artists to help design its digs.

From their website:

Calling designers, interior decorators, architects, builders, performers, and artists of all media!

Flux Factory’s first major show at our new building, opening Friday, February 19, will consecrate the space as a social structure, a conceptual place, a workshop for craft and ideas, and a space of art conception, production and consumption. Most importantly, it will inaugurate the space as a complex, ever-evolving, multimedia, radical work of art: an installation to the scale of a full building. It will be an exercise in architecture, interior design, social practice, and general aesthetics covering every room, every surface, and every object of the building and affecting every physical and conceptual space.

Comparable in scope to Georges Perec’s ambitious novel, Life, A User’s Manual, in which he meticulously describes in a second, or ninety nine chapters, every room in a modern Parisian building. Each room, object, or resident contains multiple stories that expand the narration to create a multi-dimensional oeuvre.

This construction will embody multiple paradoxes, possibly our most accomplished work to date, but also one never to be finished. In other words, we’re putting the flux back in the factory. A project tightly curated in places and running wild in others, it will be the manifestation of many aesthetics that shape Flux Factory’s style: junk yard, curiosity cabinet, gentlemen’s club, post industrial, psychedelic. A unique signature best described by Holland Cotter in the New York Times as “a cross between a youth hostel and a space station.”

Artists will intervene throughout the building in the largest collaboration in Flux Factory’s 15 year-long history. We are taking proposals for various artist-made fixtures such as wallpaper, wall paintings, floors, lights, doors, windows, drapes, along with an eclectic collection of furniture, art objects, artifacts, and time-based or conceptual work. Proposals are also being accepted for performances during our opening gala on Feb. 19th.

We are looking for proposals from designs for all types of art, housewares, furniture, and fixtures for all of our spaces, including:

-Kitchen/dinning room/living room
-Library/lounge/winter garden
-Office
-Hallways and stairwells
-Bathrooms
-Roof Deck/Garden

Potential participants will be invited to visit and explore our new digs on Saturday, January 9th and Sunday, January 10th, 2010 from 12 – 6pm [Tentative additional viewing dates are Saturday, January 16th or Sunday, January 17th]. Proposals are due on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 5pm.

Interested parties should submit:

-One paragraph explaining your project. (300 words maximum. Please title your document in this format LAST NAME_FIRST NAME_LETTER.DOC or .RTF)

-Documentation of previous work, maximum 2 pages, or 5 images in JPEG of PDF format. Maximum 72 dpi. (Please title your document in this format: LAST NAME_FIRST NAME_IMAGE#) or 5 minutes of video. Please do send movie files, instead, include a link to your work online.

-Resumé or bio (Maximum 2 pages. Titled LAST NAME_FIRST NAME_BIO.DOC or .RTF)

Please put “Call Home Proposal” as the subject of your email. And for goodness’ sake, put your name and email on everything.

Submissions should be sent to jean@fluxfactory.org. If you have any questions, please send him an email with “Call Home Question” as the subject of your message.

Please do not send original material. Nothing will be mailed back to you (aside from gratitude).

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!!!

Harvest

This photograph was taken on a walk not far from San Qing Mountain (a historic Taoist site in Jiangxi Province, located in southeastern China). I think the tiny blue eggs are Robin eggs; I couldn't help but be drawn to them - so small and precious, lying in a plastic colander, still in the very nest in which they were laid, now forever frozen, never to hatch. The woman selling cucumbers and peppers gave them to me for some reason; my Chinese still rudimentary, I could only repeat, "Thank you, thank you", though what I really felt most was a confused, vacuous sadness rather than gratitude. I ended up traveling with the nest for weeks, packing it carefully in paper inside of a bamboo hat like some strange spoils. Perhaps I had some ridiculous sense that these eggs were precious and alive and were just waiting for the opportune moment and place to hatch. Eventually, one by one, all the eggs got little bruises, but otherwise survived the journey. By the time they arrived in the USA, they were practically hollow - strangely light for the concentrated potential they once housed, now just air surrounded by a thin dry membrane and a beautiful turquoise shell with tiny fissures that could be hidden if the eggs were placed just so.

Forbidden City / Construction

Desicated Purple Potato Friend (#458)

My new favorite song to sing over and over...

16mm film support!

The 16mm Directory is a technical resource directory for supplies and services related to 16mm exhibition. The directory is by no means exhaustive, rather it’s an attempt to collect a large portion of the information available on the internet and catalog it on one site as an information hub.
http://www.16mmdirectory.org/

Saying Goodbye to 2009

Green Christmas Trees?

CHRISTMAS trees are big business: more than 31 million were sold in the United States last year, for $1.3 billion, according to the National Christmas Tree Association

I would love to have my wood-burning stove set up (though I am looking into how environmentally friendly that heating option really is, even when using very efficient stoves) so that I can have a great use for all the Christmas trees that end up on the curb... it is quite disgusting to see these beautiful, noble trees cut and used as decorations and then discarded as trash after a couple of weeks. I am just waiting for the wreckage to pile up as I walk down the New York streets these next few days.

I would love to have a company that goes around and collects all these trees... and reuses them. Better yet, I would love if folks would consider "renting" a sapling for the season - i.e. using a potted tree for a few weeks that would then be planted in the ground. No waste (except some transport... but even that can be greatly reduced if the trees are grown and planted nearby). Is there already someone doing something like this?

Here are some resources to consider next year, if you do decide to buy a cut tree and want to support local farmers and environmentally-friendly growing practices:

How Green Can a Christmas Tree Be? (New York Times, December 4, 2008)

Locally grown, pesticide-free food is gaining sway these days but how many of us give the same kind of thought to the Christmas trees we bring home? If you are looking for a Christmas tree that has been certified as organic or chemical-free, there are several Web sites that can help you.

Local Harvest, a national network of local products, in Santa Cruz, Calif., lists sources for Christmas trees and wreaths, both organic and conventionally grown; localharvest.org, (831) 475-8150.
Toxic Free North Carolina, in Raleigh, N.C., lists sources for sustainably grown trees in the state, and has information about pesticides commonly used on Christmas trees; toxicfreenc.org, (919) 833-5333.
Beyond Pesticides, a nonprofit group in Washington, provides sources for organic and naturally grown trees, as well as up-to-date information on pesticides; beyondpesticides.org, (202) 543-5450.
Green Promise, a group in Pingree Grove, Ill., that distributes information about sustainable products, lists sources for organic trees around the country on its Web site, greenpromise.com.
Agricultural extension offices often keep lists of local growers; consult the Department of Agriculture’s Web site, csrees.usda.gov/Extension.
The Council on the Environment of New York City keeps a list of farmers’ markets, many of which sell Christmas trees; cenyc.org/greenmarket, (212) 788-7476.

Trees as Homes

Whole Tree architecture (more info here).

Stupak on the Stupak Amendment

As the health care plan moves forward, anti-choice legislation is getting into the bill:
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/stupak_on_the_stupak_amendment.php

From Pandrew

WHACKED LADIES: Female Victims of Political Assassination

A new art exhibit by our friend and one-time NEIGHBORS collaborator & artist-in-residence, Makeal Flamini. Whacked Ladies is a series of prints and papercuts. It focuses on women who have been assassinated for political and religious reasons.

Opening July 24th 2009 5-9pm

THE BORGWARD COLLECTIVE

823 W. National Ave, Milwaukee, WI

Fake Project

Look at this: www.fakeproject.com

Experimental Communities

An interesting blog: www.experimentalcommunities.net/blog

Beautiful Hand-Embroidery

Just stumbled across this company that works with Indian artisans to hand-embroider beautiful patterns: Lost City Products