Ahmed Fathi in D.C. for Free Fri. March 13

Yemeni oudist and singer Ahmed Fathi is playing the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. for FREE at 6PM this Friday Mach 13 as part of the Center’s Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World series, running for another week.

If this improvisation in someone’s living room is anything to go by, the concert should be a hot one.

Wed March 11: Time Banking founder EDGAR S. CAHN at Farmlab (L.A.)

drcahnwillseeyounow

Culled from various sources:

Dr. Edgar S. Cahn, the creator of Time Dollars and the founder of TimeBanks USA, will be speaking in Los Angeles on

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009, 7:00 – 9:00PM at

The Metabolic Studio (Farmlab, Chora, AMI)
1745 N. Spring St., #6
L.A., CA 90012
(at Baker St. Downtown)

WHAT IS TIME BANKING?
At its most basic level, Time banking is simply about spending an hour doing something for somebody in your community. That hour goes into the Time Bank as a Time Dollar. Then you have a Time dollar to spend on having someone doing something for you. It’s a simple idea, but it has powerful ripple effects in building community connections.
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THE VOICE OF COSMIC INDIA

We ran a feature (actually, a book excerpt) on Pandit Pran Nath in Arthur a while back. Now one of the records that started Pran Nath’s legend in the West is available again on vinyl through a subsidiary of the dependably wonderful Mississippi Records (see J. Spaceman interview in Arthur 30, as well as Ian Nagoski’s text in the unprinted Arthur 32) of Portland, Oregon. The Big States blog has posted a digital verz of the record; click on the album cover to go there…

Help build a magic forest at Machine (Echo Park, L.A.)

machineforest

from Machine:

Short Version: Sara and Christy are turning Machine into a complete forest set, and we are having a volunteer meeting for those who want to participate this Thursday March 12th at 8:30pm.

Long Version: When we last saw Christy McCaffrey and Sara Newey they were making the Heavy Metal Gothic Arch at the LACMA show. They are returning to Machine this month to turn the entire gallery into a forest for a month, during which time we will be hosting all kinds of forest related activities. If you’re trying to imagine what that looks like, check out this here link…

http://machineproject.com/events/2009/03/27/magicforest/

This is a fairly epic project, even for us, and so we’re putting the call out to see if anyone would like to be part of making this happen. This is a great volunteer opportunity if you are interested in building very real looking fake forests, learning about how set design and set dressing works, and being part of a epic Machine Project project. The meeting to hear more about volunteering is this thursday night at 8:30pm, right here at Machine Project. Beer likely.

Back in print, just in time: THE ONE-STRAW REVOLUTION by Masanobu Fukuoka

onestraw

From the reprinting publisher’s site — NYRB Classics:

The One-Straw Revolution
An Introduction to Natural Farming
By Masanobu Fukuoka
Introduction by Frances Moore Lappé
Preface by Wendell Berry
Translated from the Japanese by Larry Korn, Chris Pearce, and Tsune Kurosawa

Paperback
May 26, 2009
200 pages
NYRB Classics

Masanobu Fukuoka (1914–2008) was born in a small farming village on the island of Shikoku in southern Japan. He developed what many consider to be a revolutionary method of sustainable agriculture called no-till cultivation. He received the Deshikottan and the Ramon Magsaysay awards in 1988, and the Earth Council Award in 1997.

Call it a Zen and the Art of Farming or a “Little Green Book,” Fukuoka’s short volume about gardening, eating, and the limits of human knowledge is as startling today as it was 30 years ago. “It is an inspiring, necessary book about agriculture because it is not just about agriculture.”—Wendell Berry

Masanobu Fukuoka’s book about growing food has been changing the lives of readers since it was first published in 1978. It is a call to arms, a manifesto, and a radical rethinking of the global systems we rely on to feed us all. At the same time, it is the memoir of a man whose spiritual beliefs underpin and inform every aspect of his innovative farming system.
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