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Rising from Rubble

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Kimberley Mok reports at Treehugger about how a prize-winning architect plans to repurpose the rubble from the recent earthquake to rebuild Nepal in an adaptable style based on traditional Nepalese architecture.

“Japanese architect and recent Pritzker Prize winner Shigeru Ban announced back in May that he would be part of the humanitarian effort in rebuilding post-earthquake Nepal. In addition to employing his signature cardboard tube architecture, Ban has announced that he intends to re-use brick rubble from the disaster, in order to speed up the rebuilding process.

“According to Designboom, Ban’s design for relief housing will consist of a modular wooden framework measuring 3 feet by 7 feet. Immediate occupation will be made possible by tossing temporary tarps over the structure, which will allow residents and builders to rebuild at their pace, u sing rubble or other materials for the infill. Walls could be then mortared with whatever is locally available. …

“Ban studied traditional Nepalese methods of building, and used this research in the design of the operable window frames. … For the long-term, there are plans to implement some sort of prefabricated housing, which the architect has done before in the Philippines.”

More here.

Photo: Shigeru Ban

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More Island Photos

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 23, 2015| 4 Comments »

I spent my first couple decades vacationing on Fire Island, a barrier beach off New York’s Long Island. Once you get islands in your system, you never want to get them out.

Nowadays I frequent an island that is part of a state that calls itself an island, too: Rhode Island. Here are some pictures from my latest visit.

The photos are mostly self-explanatory, but I would like to draw your attention to the carrot. The young man in the photo pulled that carrot out of the ground for a neighbor, who gave it to him. His mother washed it, and he ate most of it in one sitting.

And he didn’t even feel like he had overdone the eating the way Peter Rabbit did. No need for a dose of chamomile tea.

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The Importance of Naming

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 22, 2015| 2 Comments »

You know that Adam named the animals and T.S. Eliot the cats. Now Maria Popova at Brain Pickings delves into a Native American author’s book on the naming of mosses and other aspects of the natural environment.

“To name a thing is to acknowledge its existence as separate from everything else that has a name,” says Popova, “to confer upon it the dignity of autonomy while at the same time affirming its belonging with the rest of the nameable world; to transform its strangeness into familiarity, which is the root of empathy. …

“And yet names are words, and words have a way of obscuring or warping the true meanings of their objects. ‘Words belong to each other,’ Virginia Woolf observed in the only surviving recording of her voice, and so they are more accountable to other words than to the often unnameable essences of the things they signify.

“That duality of naming is what Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Thoreau of botany, explores with extraordinary elegance in Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (public library) — her beautiful meditation on the art of attentiveness to life at all scales.

“As a scientist who studies the 22,000 known species of moss — so diverse yet so unfamiliar to the general public that most are known solely by their Latin names rather than the colloquial names we have for trees and flowers — Kimmerer sees the power of naming as an intimate mode of knowing. As the progeny of a long lineage of Native American storytellers, she sees the power of naming as a mode of sacramental communion with the world. …

“Drawing on her heritage — her family comes from the Bear Clan of the Potawatomi — Kimmerer adds:

In indigenous ways of knowing, all beings are recognized as non-human persons, and all have their own names. It is a sign of respect to call a being by its name, and a sign of disrespect to ignore it. Words and names are the ways we humans build relationships, not only with each other, but also with plants.

[…]

Intimate connection allows recognition in an all-too-often anonymous world… Intimacy gives us a different way of seeing.

More at Brain Pickings.

At the suggestion of Brain Pickings, I am deep into a biography of Beatrix Potter and her scientific work drawing and learning the names of mushrooms. Like mosses, they are multitudinous but generally lacking common names.

Photo: Robin Wall Kimmerer

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Mushroom Lighting

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 21, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Treehugger recently featured some rather magical lamps in the shape of mushrooms.

Kimberley Mok writes, “Whether they glow in the dark or are uncommonly rare, mushrooms are the incredible, unsung heroes of the natural world. They can bio-remediate oil spills, potentially cure diseases, and when used in your garden, can lessen its need for watering. Now, thanks to Japanese artist Yukio Takano, you can even have a LED version of them on your desk, transforming any mundane workspace into one of glowing, fungal wonder.

“Made with glass, salvaged driftwood and outfitted with energy-efficient LEDs and unique little light switches, Takano — who creates under the name The Great Mushrooming — seems to get the little details right enough to make these lamps look like the real thing (they come with hidden battery packs, to up the authentic-look factor, apparently). …

“Takano’s mushroom lights are one-of-a-kind, and while he sells at design fairs like Tokyo’s Design Festa, according to blogger tokyobling he doesn’t ship them abroad, due to the fragility of these glassworks. You can always feast your eyes over at Yukio Takano’s site The Great Mushrooming and visit the portfolio.”

More styles at Treehugger, here.

 Photo: Yukio Takano

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Quran Discovery in England

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 20, 2015| 4 Comments »

In case you missed it, the NY Times had a great story on the discovery of ancient fragments of the Quran (or Koran) in Birmingham, England, of all places, where they had been long overlooked.

Dan Bilefsky writes, “The ancient manuscript, written on sheep or goat skin, sat for nearly a century at a university library, with scholars unaware of its significance.

“That is, until Alba Fedeli, a researcher at the University of Birmingham studying for her doctorate, became captivated by its calligraphy and noticed that two of its pages appeared misbound alongside pages of a similar Quranic manuscript from a later date.

“The scripts did not match. Prodded by her observations, the university sent the pages out for radiocarbon testing.

“[In July], researchers at the University of Birmingham revealed the startling finding that the fragments appeared to be part of what could be the world’s oldest copy of the Quran, and researchers say it may have been transcribed by a contemporary of the Prophet Muhammad.

” ‘We were bowled over, startled indeed,’ said David Thomas, a professor of Christianity and Islam at the University of Birmingham, after he and other researchers learned recently of the manuscript’s provenance.”

The manuscript fragments are estimated to be at least 1,370 years old.

Lots more here.

Video: BBC, by way of Youtube

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New Massachusetts Photos

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2015| 4 Comments »

Let me tell you about these photos.

I first noticed the shoes of the gentleman riding the subway. Then the white suit, the pocket hankerchief, the bow tie, and the hat. I was concentrating so hard on taking a photo surreptitiously that it didn’t occur to me to check out what he was reading. Somerset Maugham? Proust? William Dean Howells?

You never know what photo ops you might see on the MBTA, and I hope to get adept at taking pictures unobtrusively.

Next we have a fanciful teapot in the window of the Lacoste Gallery.

Moving right along: dappled shade on Summer St., Boston, near South Station; and a row boat for rent in Fort Point Channel.

Today’s Dewey Square excitement was a labor rally for striking airport workers demanding a $15/hour minimum wage. Lots of speeches. I photographed a T-shirt and a Boston politician. The politician had such an energetic speaking style, the photo came out blurry, but I’ll add it if you want it.

The last three pictures are of a fake snake — perhaps intended to keep passersby from sitting on a resident’s stonewall — and grapes. The grapes were the most surprising thing that happened to me today. I must have walked past that fence twice a day for years and years, and I never noticed a grape vine growing there. Did someone drape it over the fence while I was at work?

Goes to show you don’t really have to go anywhere much to find surprises.

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Unshrink Your Wool Sweater

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2015| 2 Comments »

I got started following @MassChallenge on twitter after Erik won a prize for his startup, and I still see items worth noting. Recently Mass Challenge linked to a Boston magazine article on one of the companies the business incubator helped launch. It unshrinks your ruined sweaters.

Lauren Landry reports, “Two Harvard Business School graduates are determined to unshrink your clothing.

Desiree Stolar and Nate Barbera sold out of their first 200 units of Unshrinkit on the Somerville-based product discovery site The Grommet in one hour. The patent-pending solution interacts with proteins in wool and, with the help of a cold-water rinse, causes them to revert to their original shape. …

“A shrunken cashmere sweater spawned the idea. … Around the same time [it shrank], a team of her Harvard Business School classmates were given $5,000 and told to launch a startup, as part of the school’s FIELD 3 program. … Barbera, with a background in mechanical engineering, set out to try and develop a chemically based solution capable of unshrinking wool clothing. …

“ ‘We tested out at least 20 ideas, one of which happened to work incredibly well—with no side effects and a relatively inexpensive ingredient.’ ”

The startup grew very fast and soon heard from customers that the magic potion didn’t work on very tightly woven wool.

“So, the founders launched into another round of R&D this past February to develop a new solution. Within the next month, the company plans to launch a ‘professional version’ of Unshrinkit, made with the same active ingredients, but with a few additives and a nice, fresh linen scent. …

“Now the team is focused on growing that community of supporters.

‘A lot of people don’t know they can unshrink their clothing,’ Stolar says. ‘We have to disrupt that mental state.’ ”

More here.

For relative beginners, they have a pretty professional ad.

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Tiny House Vacation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 17, 2015| 2 Comments »

The latest thing in tiny houses is taking a vacation in one. The Boston Globe suggests that if you have been intrigued about downsizing (way, way down sizing) to a tiny house, you could test one out. Or maybe you just want to simplify your life for a week.

Jessica Geller writes, “Getaway, a new startup out of Harvard, is taking the off-the-grid retreat and miniaturizing it. …

“For $119 a night, a group of four can book a cabin complete with hotel basics, such as towels and sheets. The tiny house is stocked with snacks, bicycles, firewood, and playing cards, all available for purchase via Venmo, a mobile payment system.

“Getaway … is one of the first projects out of the Millennial Housing Lab — a collaboration among the business, law, and design schools [at Harvard] — with the goal of developing fresh housing ideas for a new generation. …

“But are they too cramped for comfort? Jon Staff, a cofounder of the Millennial Housing Lab, says no. They’re full of conveniences. And they might just teach visitors a thing or two about scaling back. …

“In addition to Getaway, the Millennial Housing Lab plans to build tiny houses for the homeless and create kits for anyone to be able to build a house in 30 days.

“At 160 square feet, the 8×20-foot Getaway cabin is larger than the average minivan, 90 square feet, and a little smaller than a school bus, 245 square feet.”

Check out a few of my past posts on tiny houses: here, here, here, and here. And be watching for a series of photographs I’m taking of a tiny house going up gradually over the summer at the Umbrella Arts Center.

Photo: Kataram Studios

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Turning T-Shirts into Quilts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »

I like this story about a couple of idealistic young men who have created fair-wage, environmentally sustainable textile jobs in the United States with the help of customers’ T-shirt collections. Their company, Project Repat, is “repatriating” some textile jobs lost overseas years ago.

From the website: “Project Repat story starts in Nairobi, Kenya, where Project Repat co-founder Ross Lohr was doing non-profit education work. After sitting in traffic for 2 hours, he discovered the cause of the jam: an overturned fruit and vegetable rickshaw pushed by a Kenyan man wearing a t-shirt that said ‘I Danced My Ass Off at Josh’s Bar Mitzvah.’

“Amazed by all the incredible t-shirts that get sold off and sent overseas by non-profit and for-profit companies in America, [Nathan Rothstein and I] began working with Kenyan artisans to design new products out of castaway t-shirts, including bags, scarves, and re-fabricated t-shirts. Those products were ‘repatriated’ (or returned to the country of origin) back to the United States and sold to raise money for non-profits working in East Africa.

“When trying to sell our upcycled products at markets in Boston, we quickly discovered the difference between a ‘good idea’ and a real business: while potential customers liked the idea of a repatriated upcycled t-shirt bag, they didn’t like it enough to actually buy it. What customers did ask for, time and time again, was an affordable t-shirt quilt.

“We had heard enough: instead of shipping goods all around the country, why not create fair wage jobs in the United States and create a product that has a lot of meaning for customers? As they say, the rest is history. Rather than ‘repatriating’ t-shirts back to the United States, Project Repat creates a high quality, affordable t-shirt quilt with minimal carbon impact.”

The factories are located in cities once-renowned for textiles: Fall River, Massachusetts (where “Precision Sportswear has been able to succeed by specializing in custom work and smaller production runs for made-in-USA. companies”), and Morgantown, North Carolina (where “each worker at Opportunity Threads is part of a collaborative working model, [and] each employee adds input to the production process and has the opportunity to earn an ownership stake in the company”).

I was not able to find on the website what happened to the artisans in Africa when the company’s focus changed. Ping @lunastellablog1 if you know.

On this Repat page, you tell the company what size quilt to make with your T-shirts, what size panels, and what color PolarTec backing you want.

Photo: Project Repat

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A Camera that Flies

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 15, 2015| 3 Comments »

The first time I really got into the Internet and computers was in 1994 when I was working at HBR. We all loved experimenting with kooky screen savers. Do you remember flying toasters?

Flying toasters are what I think of when I look at what reader Rob Moses is doing with his camera on a drone. Here are photos from a flight over the Calgary Zoo. (Rob lives in Canada.)

He writes, “I have been flying around this DJi Phantom 3 Professional Quadcopter lately. I took this picture with it flying over the Calgary Zoo. One of the most fun things around flying one of these things is having the ability to shoot photos of views people don’t really see. This picture is a good example of a view not seen. I only wish there was some animals walking around in the picture haha.”

Seeing what your flying camera picked up must feel similar to riding on a train through people’s backyards, where you get a sense of lives as they are lived that you never get from a front lawn.

Be sure to check out the Rob Moses Photography blog, here.

Photo: Rob Moses Photography

 

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Boston Public Market

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 14, 2015| 2 Comments »

The original idea when the grandchildren visited my workplace was to walk to the new Boston Public Market, but it was too far and there were so many other interesting things along the way.

We will go as a family another day, but I thought I would zip over there Thursday and take some pictures. I arrived at 8 a.m. The market is open Wednesdays to Sundays, 8 to 8, and since the activity wasn’t in full swing, it was a good time to look around.

The Boston Public Market is not as big, as noisy, or as messy as the famed Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia (and there are no Amish), but it shows real promise. Although the market was fairly quiet at 8 a.m., there was already a line at MotherJuice and George Howell’s Coffee — people getting revved up for work at Government Center and environs. At a farmstand, I bought two small squashes. Fifty cents.

The Vietnamese restaurant Bon Me had a counter, and I saw local honey, fruits, vegetables, artisan cheese, and crafts. The crafts gave me pause as the market is supposed to be mainly an outlet for regional farmers, and much as I love crafts, I have seen them overwhelm another farmers market. As long as there is a good balance, it will be fine.

Note the vegetable soft toys in the children’s play area.

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Grandma’s Office and Other Adventures

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 13, 2015| 6 Comments »

Yesterday two of my grandchildren came to where I work prior to setting out on a downtown exploration with their mom. What a treat for me! Co-workers who missed seeing them were kicking themselves today. Fortunately, my daughter-in-law took pictures I could share.

After the kids pretended to work at my desk (assisted by a colleague’s Donald Duck — push the button and he talks like the real thing), we went out into the Greenway. There is always something going on there in the summer, and we were surprised to find a good band concert surrounded by lounging chairs, tables, couches, bouquets, and beach floats.

I had to go back to work, but the kids got to ride on the wonderful marine-themed carousel and get wet in the crazy fountain. Everyone was impressed with all the food trucks along the Greenway and sampled a couple.

I was just running out to put more coins in the meter where my savvy daughter-in-law had parked (she actually found street parking!) when they returned from their adventures, just in time. That takes talent.

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Listening to What the Community Wants

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 12, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Good things continue to happen in the West End of Providence, thanks in large part to the vision and community responsiveness of West Elmwood Housing Development Corporation (WEHDC) under the direction of Sharon Conard-Wells.

Tuesday, WEHDC held a reception to celebrate past accomplishments and the new mixed-income housing development they are about to build. The mayor came. Community members came. Many of Rhode Island’s movers and shakers came. I came.

It was impressive to see how WEHDC’s projects have flourished when you consider that 10 years ago, the nonprofit was tackling the cleanup of a nearby industrial site and hoping to turned the blighted Rau Fastener factory into beautiful mixed-income housing — keeping their fingers crossed that the market would respond.

The market sure did respond, and now WEHDC is starting the second phase. At the same time, it continues community work of many kinds. Antoine started out doing lead abatement and now works with young people in the neighborhood. Adeline works with the community farm and the Sankofa World Market. Rosa and Debra do housing counseling and lending. Rachel manages WEHDC’s many partnerships and is always looking for more.

The energy and optimism are tangible, and it was good to see the recognition the nonprofit is getting from people in a position to ensure that the good work keeps going. The current wish list includes new laptops and web design work (in case you know anyone interested in offering help that is sure to be used wisely). Check out WEHDC here.

Photo: Sankofa Initiative

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Beatrix Potter, Scientist

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 11, 2015| 2 Comments »

There was more to Beatrix Potter than Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail. Her meticulous drawings of flora and fauna made serious contributions to the science of the day.

Maria Popova at Brain Pickings shares Potter’s mushroom drawings and more.

“At a time when women had no right to vote and virtually no access to higher education, very rarely owned property and were themselves considered the property of their husbands, Potter became a commercially successful writer and artist, using the royalties from her books to purchase her famed Hill Top Farm, where she lived simply and with great love for the land for the remaining four decades of her life. …

“Linda Lear’s altogether magnificent Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature (public library) — [is] by far the best book on Potter and one of the finest biographies ever written, Lear’s prose itself a supreme work of art.

“A formal scientific education was virtually inaccessible to women, except for the rare Ada Lovelace or Maria Mitchell, and membership in scientific societies was strictly reserved for men. But Potter’s scientific work was exceptional in that she deliberately tried to penetrate the very institutions that dismissed women’s scientific labor solely on the basis of gender. …

“By her early twenties, Potter had developed a keen interest in mycology and began producing incredibly beautiful drawings of fungi, collecting mushroom specimens herself and mounting them for careful observation under the microscope. … Lear writes:

Beatrix’s interest in drawing and painting mushrooms, or fungi, began as a passion for painting beautiful specimens wherever she found them. She never saw art and science as mutually exclusive activities, but recorded what she saw in nature primarily to evoke an aesthetic response. She was drawn to fungi first by their ephemeral fairy qualities and then by the variety of their shape and colour and the challenge they posed to watercolour techniques. Unlike insects or shells or even fossils, fungi also guaranteed an autumn foray into fields and forests, where she could go in her pony cart without being encumbered by family or heavy equipment.

More here.

Art: Beatrix Potter
Flammulina velutipes (Armitt Museum and Library)

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Jeffro Uitto Sculpture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 10, 2015| 8 Comments »

Someone posted a chair by Jeffro Uitto on Facebook, and I had to know more.

Uitto’s About page says, “On the Washington coast there’s a place where nature’s leftovers get a second chance at stardom. The place is Knock on Wood, and Jeffro Uitto is the artist making the magic happen.

“Since high school Jeffro has been creating with wood, his favorite medium. This stuff isn’t from a lumber mill either. Each piece is found and rescued from the shores of Tokeland, the banks of Smith Creek, or the valleys between the Willapa Hills. In due time the varied sticks, slabs, and roots are cured and then found a fitting home. …

“Not everything is built right in the shop though. Clients have brought Jeffro on site to build one-off creations in places like Alaska and Hawaii.

“Jeffro’s shop is located near the historic Tokeland Hotel, a stone’s throw from Willapa Bay. … Visitors are surprised to see that many of Jeffro’s tools are hand made by the artist himself. After you get to know him, this isn’t surprising at all.”

Be sure to check out the amazing sculptures at Jeffro Uitto’s website, here.

Photos: Jeffro Uitto

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