Kevin Hooyman is going to share some chapters from a new book he’s working on. Here is his guide to ‘socializing.’ Check back regularly for more tips on human behavior. Next week we’ll take a look at Chapter 7: Dancing! — Jason Leivian
From Desert Island:
Gabrielle told me that she and Ariel used to sell their wares together on the street in the old days! Awesome. Glad they’ll be visiting together for this signing.
Gabrielle Bell + Ariel Schrag
book release party, signing, and slide show
friday, March 27th from 7 to 9 pm
at Desert Island, 540 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn NY
Recently my friend Molly pared down her belongings, stored what she couldn’t carry with her, and left Brooklyn for the fields of rural Missouri to help in the construction of Factor e Farm. The goal of the young farmer scientists who run Factor e farm is to create a replicable, modern, independent off-the-grid farming community or “global village.” So far they are constructing buildings with clay bricks made of the local soil, planting orchards and perennial vegetables, farming local fish, collecting rain water to drink, generating their own electricity from waste vegetable oil and solar power, and working towards creating a “Global Village Construction Set” that would list all the tools necessary to replicate their system once it is totally self sufficient.
The mind-blowing thing about this project is that anybody who wants to start a similar community can do so virtually for free on the outskirts of many cities in the United States. Right now, arable land is cheap. Hell, I heard that in North Dakota they are giving away land to anybody who wants it. I say to all those who are actually taking up this opportunity, all the power to you. The idea is, if you can generate the money to create the system, you will reap the benefits forever. This quote from Factor e farm pretty much sums up their vision:
We are after the creation of new society, one which has learned from the past and moves forward with ancient wisdom and modern technology.
I will be following the progress of this project as Molly sends updates from the farm. You can follow her blog posts here. Learn more about their cost-effective farming methods and plans for the future of the farm in this video:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtfV5ZdexgE&feature=player_embedded
MARCH 27 — KARL MANNHEIM
Lukacsian theorist of the sociology of knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Mannheim
HOLIDAYS FOR MARCH 27
Ancient Rome: LIBERALIA, the Festival of the Vegetation God, Liber Pater, which in the third century B.C. exploded into the wild nocturnal orgies of the Bacchanalia, later suppressed by the state.
Egypt: SMELL THE BREEZES DAY. In the morning, smell a cut onion, get dressed up and head for a picnic in the country.
LAZY MOOCHER’S DAY. Mason City, Iowa: ROSA’S CANTINA DAY.
ALSO ON THIS DAY:
30 — Rebel leader Jesus condemned to death by crucifixion, rules Pontius Pilate.
1513 — Ponce de Leon sights Florida coastline, looking for a fountain of youth.
1893 — Lukácsian social theorist Karl Mannheim born, Budapest, Hungary.
1924 — Legendary jazz vocalist Sarah Vaughn born.
1968 — Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, first man in space, dies.
From Pim & Francie #6. Al Columbia has the rare gift to suggest an entire story, an entire world with just a single image. He is currently compiling and re-contextualizing hundreds of these images and story fragments from his archives to be published by Fantagraphics Books in THE LAND OF BROKEN HEARTS Volume One – Pim & France (THE GOLDEN BEAR DAYS).
((ed. note — interesting coincidence with the big numbers post earlier today. but really, isn’t everything coincident? isn’t everything happening at exactly the same time? maybe now it’s just more apparent with the scope of the internet.))
Above: A living wall in Paris by Patrick Blanc (left), and “Vertical Garden (Weeds)” by Naomi Reis
Date & Time: Opening Saturday, March 28th, 6-8PM (Closing May 23rd, 2009)
Venue: Exit Art (Go here for map & hours)
Location: 475 Tenth Ave. at 36th St / New York, NY 10018
Price: $5 suggested donation
A “living wall,” a part of a building made entirely of vegetation, is not a fantasy. Just look at these pictures and see for yourself. In cities where arable land is scarce, it makes perfect sense to build vertically oriented “sky farms” for cultivating both food and oxygen, two things all humans need to live. So what’s stopping us? This ingenious method of farming is not only practical; it provides us with a dream-like vision of the future, where cities of glass and metal could possibly be infused with green patches of living, organic architecture.
One of the original plans for a World Trade Center memorial included a glass building with certain floors dedicated to tree nurseries. As the trees matured, the idea was to distribute the trees throughout Manhattan in memory of those who died. Unfortunately, some people were not thrilled with the idea of Manhattan regressing to the forest it once was…but hey, if they’re doing it in Paris, why not New York? Read on:
NEW YORK – A project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics), Vertical Gardens is an exhibition of architectural models, renderings, drawings, photographs and ephemera that depict or imagine a vertical farm, urban garden or green roof. It features over 20 projects, both imaginary and real, by artists and architects that envision solutions for building greener urban environments. The highlight of this exhibition is an eight-foot high living green wall by Edmundo Ortega and Dianne Rohrer.
Continue reading
In today’s WTF news, Alan Moore scholar Pádraig Ó Méalóid unveils Xerox copies of Big Numbers #3, the unpublished issue of Alan’s abandoned comic book series begun in collaboration with Bill Sienkiewicz in 1989. Artist Al Columbia took over when Sienkiewicz dropped out after the first two issues. Pádraig says:
…everything I know leads me to believe that this is a copy of the unpublished third issue of Big Numbers, and I genuinely didn’t believe it existed, and certainly never expected to actually see a copy, led alone own one. Even Alan Moore doesn’t have a copy, to the very best of my knowledge, which in this case is considerable, as I decided to specifically ask his permission before I posted this here. He is happy for it to be made available to the world, so here it is.
See the whole thing (!) here.
MARCH 26 — B. TRAVEN
Anarcho-adventure writer, revolutionary, true identity unknown, possibly Ret Marut of Munich Soviet fame.
ALSO ON THIS DAY:
1827 — German classical composer Ludwig von Beethoven dies, Vienna, Austria.
1892 — Great American poet Walt Whitman dies, age 72, Camden, New Jersey.
1911 — Playwright Tennessee Williams born, Columbus, Mississippi.
1930 — Beat bad-boy poet Gregory Corso born, New York City.
1953 — Dr. Jonas Salk announces polio vaccine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
1969 — German born revolutionist, writer “B. Traven” dies, Chiapas, Mexico.
1969 — John and Yoko Ono Lennon start seven day bed-in against war.
All info courtesy The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective
Arthur Magazine 