The X design, winter solstice, the sun, no money, the long night, contemplative time, current local citrus, meditation, warmth and light all come together for me when I look at this cunning little instructables project. And, if I had a child in my life I would be thrilled to do this as a beautiful exercise to illustrate living lightly on the earth.
The slide show lesson is excruciatingly detailed, but a few photos might give you the general idea. Short version, the fruit is halved, fruit removed, x cut in top and center pulp stem is surrounded with oil and lit.
The fruit used is clementines. A clementine is the fruit of a variety of mandarin (Citrus reticulata), named in 1902. A clementine is an oblate, medium-sized fruit. The exterior is a deep orange colour with a smooth, glossy appearance. Clementines separate easily into eight to fourteen extremely juicy segments. They are remarkably easy to peel, like a tangerine, but lack the tangerine's sourness and seeds.
I suspect the ease of peeling is the primary reason it is used for this candle, but I have Myer lemons available from a neighbor’s tree and I think I need to give it a try.
I remember years ago doing an orange meditation. I was directed to spend 20 minutes a day looking at the orange and letting all of its ‘orangeness’ unfold. There is a vast amount of life and metaphor within this orange globe. It was a good experience, aside from feeling guilty when I skipped and feeling useless when my mind went berserker on me.
2009 Let the Sun Shine
I think I might pull that meditation out of deep storage and use it this upcoming year. Simple is good.
That’s shorthand for taking a three dimensional perspective to a 2 dimensional one. Or turn a v into an l if you just break it down. Look at it from this different perspective. I love flatpack design and have included it before now in a make-a-(green) plan post.
This cork idea could be enlarged upon for a mounting device for pictures and words or statements of any kind. I suspect an inventory around the house and especially at kitchen counter height will reveal switches (disposal) and receptacles no longer being used. Transformation can take the form of either function or irony. . .
Years ago at a Halloween Party we threw, I dressed in a flowing dashiki of gold satin and wore a crown I’d made. I called myself Sister Mother Madame Miracle.The Tiara of Useful Knowledge
City Flora: The Philadelphia Series
The Tiara of Useful Knowledge focuses on the Importance of plants. It is inspired by The American Philosophical Society's charter [1743] “for Promoting Useful Knowledge,” and The Academy of Natural Science’s [1812] goal of “connecting people to nature.” It consists of portraits of 10 plants, an ant, and a pebble, made from oxidized sterling silver, 18K and 14K gold, and quartz. The Tiara transforms into 12 pieces of jewelry that can each be worn separately. [emphasis mine]
Tiaras are rooted in the ancient Greek practice of placing laurels upon the heads of victors, and grew into an icon of British royalty. My American version is modeled after plants in the vacant lots near my studio and home. I just assumed they were unique to the USA until I read about Invasive Species and Aliens replacing Natives. Many Natives are now described as Rare, Threatened, Endangered, Vulnerable, Extinct or - Extirpated, while others are labeled Nuisance, Noxious, or - Worst!
The Potato (I call it a French Fry Leaf) symbolizes the importance of biodiversity. It is modeled after a sprouted potato my 13 year-old daughter stuck in a bucket of dirt which rapidly grew and yielded 28 potatoes. Native Americans cultivated nearly 3,000 varieties of potatoes at the time of the Spanish Conquest [1535]. Only a few varieties were shipped to Europe, spawning the monoculture that led to the Irish Potato Famine [1845-1850].
Lamb’s Quarters is included for its dual identity. One plant can reportedly yield over 40,000 seeds capable of remaining dormant for 40 years. This makes it highly resistant to chemical herbicides so some researchers call it the “World’s Worst Weed.” But, because this plant Native to the Americas is one of the first to grow in disturbed soil, and is more nutritious than standard commercial crops, others list it as a “Plant for A Future.” One Hurricane Katrina survivor found this the only useful (edible) thing where his house once stood!
Switch Grass reminds us that important things are hidden in plain sight such as the renewable sources of fuel for our cars growing freely on the North American prairies. Sweet Clover, Crab Grass, Plantain, Rye, Prickly Lettuce were each selected for the food, shelter and/or enrichment of all sorts they offer animals, the environment – and us. The American Tobacco blossom refers to the powerful seduction of cash and addictive crops, and Common Ragweed the powerful and even deadly allergens, poisons and medicines, found sometimes in the same plant.
John Bartram, an early botanist, approached plants with curiosity and a profound belief in Nature. Thomas Jefferson embraced vegetation trusting it had virtues perhaps not yet known. Benjamin Franklin encouraged the pursuit of knowledge in diverse fields for the common good. These ideals - born in Philadelphia and worthy of a nation - celebrate diversity, foster tolerance, and focus our attention on Usefulness.
© Jan Yager 2007
I will admit I was going to talk about this piece from a distance, so to speak. I don’t wear jewelry and have never been much of a consumer of costume jewelry, yet alone fine handmade jewelry. I have a couple precious pieces a friend who makes jewelry gave me, otherwise – zip. I haven’t worn jewelry for the last 4 years either.
All that being said, I think this concept is valuable and soul pleasingly lovely. I hope Jan Yager does well with this beautiful work.
Inhabitat
We’re excited to announce that Inhabitat was recently nominated for a Cooper Hewitt People’s Design Award! Founded by the prestigious Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, the competition gives people a chance to vote for their favorite examples of good design. We’re honored to be nominated and we think it’s important to spread the word that good design is green design. Help us spread the word and Vote for Inhabitat today!
Thirty years ago I made the observation that whoever designed the homes I’d lived in or the restaurants where I’d been employed had never worked in these settings. It was clear to me that the proportions, the flow – to name only two – were just wrong.Seven American Utopias:The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790-1975.
"Seven American Utopias combines cultural history, design analysis, and political theory. It is, thus, a conceptually ambitious book and a good one....a sophisticated study of the politics of design."
--Thomas Bender, The Journal of American History
The Grand Domestic Revolution:A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities
"This is a book to startle and inspire feminists today...An architect herself, Hayden has brought history to life by insisting that social problems are also spatial problems, and must be addressed as such."
--Nancy Cott, The New York Review of Books
"Women's work is not done. The design of our place to live (some still call it 'the built environment') still follows men's visions. For most women, the old household drudgeries have merely been replaced by new suburban drudgeries.
"We now have women architects--all of 3 percent of a total of 37,000 members of the American Institute of Architects. But few if any of them are addressing the issues of residential and community design that are still keeping women 'in their place' and that, a century-and-a-half ago, led to what Dolores Hayden calls 'material feminism."
--Wolf Von Eckardt, Washington Post June 1982
These were the two publications I knew about during my studies. Later, Hayden wrote these following books about America’s suburbs, America’s urban environment.
Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life
Americans still build millions of dream houses in neighborhoods that sustain Victorian stereotypes of the home as "woman's place" and the city as "man's world." Urban historian and architect Dolores Hayden tallies the personal and social costs of an American "architecture of gender" for the two-earner family, the single-parent family, and single people. Many societies have struggled with the architectural and urban consequences of women's paid employment: Hayden traces three models of home in historical perspective—the haven strategy in the United States, the industrial strategy in the former USSR, and the neighborhood strategy in European social democracies—to document alternative ways to reconstruct neighborhoods.
Revised and expanded in 2002 and still utterly relevant today as the New Urbanist architects have taken up Hayden's critique of suburban space, this award-winning book is essential reading for architects, planners, public officials, and activists interested in women's social and economic equality.
"...the most cynical anti-planner and the scrappiest tenant organizer will be pleasantly surprised to see that Hayden includes positions of class, race, and the economic underpinnings of women's position."
--City LimitsThe Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History
"Essential reading for preservationists and anyone interested in urban America."
--Antoinette J. Lee
"Hayden invents a totally original method of 'storytelling with the shapes of time.' The result is an almost poetic invocation of the resilience of the human condition, grounded in both theoretical understanding and practical experiences of place-making and preservation."
--Michael Dear
"The Power of Place is a graceful manifesto that enlists Dolores Hayden's formidable skills as a writer and architectural historian to argue for new ways to understand and represent the social history of urban space."
--Carl AbbottBuilding Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000
A history of the seven contested cultural landscapes where most Americans now live.Delores Hayden is a professor of architecture, urbanism and American Studies at Yale University. She is credited with being the first to use the expression ‘built environment’ in America. She’d studied in England in the 1970’s where this expression was in use.
Merely explaining the relationship of American studies, the social sciences to the built environment brought back a flood of the passion within me. I loved my field of study and had forgotten how much until reading the interview that follows."Building Suburbia," Architecture Boston, April/
May 2008, Jeff Stein interview with Dolores Hayden
There is a real key within this book to the loss of our farmland and the disproportionate wealth, the dominance of a growth economy and the loss of the focus, the money, the building and governing for the public good. I have not yet read the book, but I am excited to after reading this interview.
I am so happy to have been given this reminder of Delores Hayden again.
Website News & Events
I can count on Inhabitat to bring me design concepts that apply to sustainable living. This one by designer Mattieu Lehanner was an art exhibition and hasn’t been priced for production. Mr. Lehanneur also created home air purification designs using plants. But, I derive my pleasure from exploring my own imagination, my own notions of how it would fit or not in my own life and thinking about this as a design solution for some population. I hack, if only in my imagination.
Yes, it is a big stretch if you are a literal thinker. I suspect I have lost most literal minded blog readers with my many design offerings. See, it never occurs to me to think of most of these products as something to buy. Sorry, designers . . . I don’t have income or inclination to get more stuff, unless it can really transform my life. But, I am always interested in problem solving.
lights may be required if this poor person also has no sunlight. With a bit more design and development the concepts can all lead to at-home water purification, food growing, oxygen producing, carbon dioxide reduction and fish for supper. And, it needn’t look like a set for Blade Runner.
I am inspired to attempt a recipe for a burger I found a couple of days ago from an Australian blogger. It was like she was reading my mind, my cravings. The photos and the recipes are lifted from her blog, Down to Earth. Pay her a visit if you haven't before, as it a pleasure to read a happy blogger proud of her life.
CHICKPEA BURGERS
But on Sunday evening I had an invigorating interaction with two young women. I looked out my window and saw two beautiful young women admiring my latest art project – pencil posts. They asked if they could take pictures and also asked me to get the two of them in a shot.
In my weekly Farmer’s Market buying, blogging framework I try to pick something new. This week of *A* - the redux – I didn’t spot some new thing to try. I had hoped I would be seeing towering amaranth plants in our community garden. Not. I have not had any success with any of the amaranth seeds I planted in May.
As a kid in the late 50’s and early 60’s I remember our getting a ‘lug’ of peaches each summer. A lug was a wooden crate of individually wrapped peaches. Each peach was wrapped in tissue. What a treasure.
The floor consists of peach pips that are packed by hand onto a glued surface and filled with a silica sand and resin mixture, then sealed with a twin pack urethane. The sharp edges of the pips are grinded off, firstly to expose the nice red colour hue of the pips and secondly to make it very comfortable to walk on them with bare feet.
The first reaction is that this must be a really green alternative. But, as you can see the silica sand / resin mixture, the ocean of urethane negates the natural peach pit part. Right? Well, I am not ready to dismiss this out of turn. Just for the use a peach pits alone I want to keep this in my mind.
Stones. Stones are a basic of our building tradition. For me, nothing says trite or boring like a granite countertop. I want to scream when I see a televised design reveal showing a granite counter and every other human yelling, “Awesome!” I want to hurl at the robotic utterances, vapid designs and monstrous waste of natural resources. Stones are being blasted, gouged from the earth.
Leave the damn stones in the earth. Quit digging pits and start collecting pits from peaches, olives, cherries and apricots. Capture a vast diversity of plant stones now being tossed into landfills.
Figure out how to make the resin finishes from recycled plastic waste. And, as usual, I love to take the commercial product and try to figure out how to hack it. How can we in the do it yourself category carry this off?
Today I want to pass along some images and links to think about gardening and farming differently. We are not used to considering the vertical space, the Z axis for our growing food. It is time. It is past time. Anyone who has read my blog knows I am a fan of green roofs. I want a green roof above my humble abode in the worst way. But, it goes further than that with me. I think that it just makes sense to maximize space, to sequester the carbon in the atmosphere (the home) and to allow growing things to serve many functions.A carbon dioxide (CO2) sink is a carbon dioxide reservoir that is increasing in size, and is the opposite of a carbon dioxide "source". The main natural sinks are:The process by which carbon dioxide sinks (natural and artificial) remove CO2 from the atmosphere is known as carbon sequestration.
- the oceans' biological pump and
- plants and other organisms that use photosynthesis to remove carbon from the atmosphere by incorporating it into biomass and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere.
And this . . .
Regenerative agriculture, if practiced on the planet’s 3.5 billion tillable acres, could sequester up to 40% of current CO2 emissions.[snip] Agricultural carbon sequestration has the potential to substantially mitigate global warming impacts. When using biologically based regenerative practices, this dramatic benefit can be accomplished with no decrease in yields or farmer profits. Organically managed soils can convert carbon dioxide from a greenhouse gas into a food-producing asset. In 2006, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion were estimated at nearly 6.5 billion tons. If a 2,000 lb/ac/year sequestration rate was achieved on all 434,000,000 acres (1,760,000 km²) of cropland in the United States, nearly 1.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide would be sequestered per year, mitigating close to one quarter of the country's total fossil fuel emissions. This is the emission-cutting equivalent of taking one car off the road for every two acres under 21st Century regenerative agricultural management.The examples below are for larger scale farming, like the first example in the urban setting to the micro scale within a home or apartment like the last two.
The concept of effective use of space is a compelling one. I continue to think about how to retrofit the acres of grocery stores and other retail structures – to grow food rather than sell things. But, after looking at the website, this outfit seems pretty creepy and factory-like. I question the materials and the highly mechanized and sterile process. It has the feel of Monsanto.
A back yard may already be planted with a garden, but this outdoor room would be a welcome dining, gathering space. It offers shade and privacy as well as plantings. Within a tiny area this might be the only garden someone has. I would love something like this with a deck on top – so I could look out towards the ocean. I have also worked in offices that have a bit of outside space. Something like this for a lunch room, retreat would have been – well, almost humane.
I have adored this kind of a building façade for some time. I am sure I'm not the only fan of the Frenchman, Patrick Blanc who is responsible. Only today did I read within the post’s comments that there are problems with this installation. Apparently, there is the need for intense pesticides and birds have been poisoned. Sounds again like a great concept that needs to be further developed to be sustainable. That to me is a mere formality as it is just a matter of commitment and research.
Vertical Garden DIY The post begins . . .Ok, not as 'how-to' as I'd like, but a good example of removing the shroud of mystery from vertical greening. From Metropolitan Home, via Dwell, a project that "...shows how one couple planted a vertical patch (above) of echeverias, aeoniums, sedums, and kalanchoes."
Apartment dwellers, homes and offices are all potential setting for this healthy alternative to a dividing wall or even sculpture. These become real ‘living rooms.’
Oh, and here is a student project utilizing vertical space for rainwater havesting (and growing) from the Canadian website Verte.These all stimulate my imagination on a whole other plane and perspective.
Here is another low tech design in a water pump that is transforming lives. I saw this one on Link TV as well as here at Inhabitat’s project H. You can’t see well in the picture, but the device has 2 foot pads that one steps on to pump. The action is much like gym equipment, stepper, with a purpose.Kickstart, an organization promoting tools and technologies to end poverty, has found a great product that solves immediate problems and stimulates potential local economies. It’s called the MoneyMaker Micro-Irrigation Pump, available as the Original design or the new Super pump, and it allows rural small-scale farmers to pull water from underground to more efficiently irrigate their farms. Many thousands of entrepreneurial farmers are now irrigating with Kickstart’s manual irrigation pumps and changing their small subsistence farms into vibrant new commercial enterprises. With irrigation they can grow and sell as many as three to four high value vegetable crops every year, and ensure that the crop is ready for market when the price is high. The pump is currently being distributed throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America.I think all of these simple inventions lend themselves to a post-oil life in developed countries as well. This scenario of one’s own pump for one’s own garden (individual or community) beats the fuck out of buying water from a rich guy (is adding 'white' redundant?) with a 6 billion dollar wind farm and water rights to an entire aquifer across half a dozen states. That is the horror story No Impact Man wrote about this week.
The Statistics:
- 45,000 pumps currently in use by poor farmers
- 29,000 new waged jobs created
- $39 million per year in new profits and wages generated by the pump
- More than 50% of the pumps managed by women
- 4 manufacturers producing the pumps
- Over 400 retailers selling pumps in Kenya, Malawi, and Tanzania
This is a fantastic way to donate a few dollars and help a family with a very tangible item of need.
I wrote about a design I was musing about for myself in the comments yesterday.
In my own mind I daydreamed about capturing the greywater from my home, filtering it, diverting it to a leaching tank with plants and then some sort of exercise bike or stepper that would pump it up to a roof - a green roof. Would that be cool or what?
Although I’d forgotten how this actually worked, I believe this was what triggered the idea.
I’m not stuttering, that isn’t a typo – it just cracks me up to think of using waste to hold waste. I wrote last month about trash dummy. Well this waste basket is a project for later, but damn it, I want to blog about it now because I had a long encouraging chat with a neighbor last evening about waste. (More on that later).Thanks everyone! Glad you all like it. Now for a little FAQ...
How long did it take you?
A freakin' long time. I started it on Monday and worked on it for a couple of hours a day until last night. I'd say it took at least six to eight hours, probably more than that. I set up a little work space in the living room so I could watch crappy reality TV while I worked on it. I think that kept me from going insane.
Did you seal/protect it with anything?
I sealed the whole thing with Mod Podge. I still might give it a coat of polyurethane.
HOW DID YOU DO IT?! I LOOOVE IT!
It's easier than it looks! The base uses the same technique one would use to make a magazine bowl, only instead of shaping it into a bowl you leave it flat and coat the whole thing with Mod Podge. For the rings you cut magazine pages into thirds and, starting at one corner, roll the pieces around a bamboo skewer (or a pencil or other similar object). Brush a little dab of glue on the opposite corner and seal it up to make a thin paper straw. Then flatten out the straw and coil it around your finger to make a ring, gluing down the tail. Repeat about 399 times and hot glue them on top of each other in a shape you like, and seal with Mod Podge. Hope that makes sense.
How strong/durable is it?
It's sturdy enough to function as a trash can. It wouldn't take much to destroy it if you tried, but I wouldn't try if I were you, at least not in my house.
Have you tried doing it with just a few colors like a pattern or something?
I haven't but that might be cool, maybe with some patterned paper. I like the random, colorful look of the magazines though.
Well, I have stacks and stacks of design magazines to purge. I have scheduled purging all my books and magazine the last week of September. By then I hope I have become completely at ease with not being in front of a screen for hours and hours at a time. I also suspect I could sell these or give them as gifts if were able to produce more than one.
Now I will put it aside for a season and turn to the tasks at hand. The neighbor who came to my door last night needed me to throw her rotten vegetables from a half dozen plastic bags into the composter. She had ventured out of her little lavender home to the compost bin by the garden, but just couldn’t abide the idea of lifting the lid and having fruit flies around her face. *sigh*
I was happy to dump the slimy vegetables for her and commiserated about the guilt of letting food go off. When we talked of waste I shared my stories of no plastic bags from the grocery store due to taking my homemade produce / bulk food bags and laundry basket. She was intrigued, but she was adamant she had to have plastic liners. I explained I put all wet waste into a glass (or metal or plastic) container with a lid until dumping in my wormery. My paper, metal or glass recycle stuff didn’t need a liner though I think papers in bottom catch in water droplets from washing out cans, bottles. And, I told her about my Trash Dummy for all of the plastic that I think I am keeping out of my house. *sigh* I want to see how much it expands trash dummy rather than simply weighing or recording it.
We ended our conversation with my telling her to just observe herself and play around with ideas, confessing it took a year for me to figure out some of my basic strategies that now seem so simple. I reminded her that we have been habituated by advertisements to think we must have countless products that are just not necessary; e.g., paper towels, plastic bags and shampoo. Well, the shampoo reaction will wait. The woman was so intrigued. She came by not long after with bags of fresh vegetable to share with me.
Maybe I could make her a waste waste basket this fall? Oh, and did I mention I am not very fond of crafts or cutesy stuff? For some reason this waste waste basket is appealing to me.
