History: Not Dead

PERSPECTIVE A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

carrots...

Today, I planted a row of carrots and pulled some weeds at the Farm with a master gardener I work with. As we worked, she told me stories about the history of her people from her perspective as a black civil rights activist who once marched with the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Dolores Huerta. Crazy, huh? Her stories helped illuminate for me, history as living.

I realize now that history as we learned it in public school is truly dead, at least to me. The premise for this claim: narratives portrayed in mainstream media are dictated by a narrow perspective, which when distributed and taught to the rest of us, helps to enforce and perpetuate a particular paradigm. (Alternative: A People's History of the United States.) The particular paradigm, however, might not produce ideal outcomes for the majority of its participants who believe and perpetuate the narrative. Rather, it is more likely that the particular paradigm will produce outcomes ideal for the minority who dictate it.

Okay, that was really wordy, sorry.

I tend to think of it like a game of Monopoly, except there's a powerful minority that can make up and change the rules without telling the other players about them. Of course, those who dictate the rules will do best in the game and everyone else will likely lose. Yeah, the majority of the players are pissed about it, but they're caught up in the confusion and are trying to learn the new rules to at least keep themselves in the game. And the rule-makers offer to educate the rest of the players about the new rules and even provide assistance to them, like low-paying jobs, high-interest loans, and unreliable welfare that will keep them afloat and make the game seem "more fair." In the end, the minority (10%) ends up with most (73%) of the property and cash.

Why is this important? Because we define ourselves and our neighbors based on the stories we hear. Narratives provide us with material to judge ourselves and others with; a source of justifications for our actions and thoughts. Every individual has a unique story, as does every ethnic and socioeconomic group. Although it's impossible to hear them all, these stories, as accurate representations of the living, can help to better shape democratic societies. I think?

Dark Horse

MOVIE Dark Horse

A quirky Danish film directed by Dagur Kari, 2005. No horses, little darkness.

Liked:

girl to donut, "don't crawl away..."

wallpaper of hearts

unacknowledged elephants

zebra print sheets

one color frame

Despite a decent attempt at filling my days with productive activities, I still find myself with hours and hours to spare, consuming entertaining media. I wonder what it does to my brain. Strange to think that once upon a time all visual/audio sensations were experienced only in live 3D space and time, right in front of you. No repeats.

Planning Brainstorm 3

ORGANIZATIONAL MODELS American Urban Farms

Josef Frank, Swedish designer

Green Youth Farm, Chicago, Illinois
A group of four small urban farms that employ about 50 youth interns each year in various Chicago neighborhoods.

Elements: Year-long intern stipend, 4hrs/wk labor during school year, 20 hrs/wk during summer. 1. Grow produce, 2. develop marketing/business plan, 3. sell & manage produce to local buyers. 20 students per acre. Weekly cooking sessions. Job shadowing. Field trips. Training sessions. Guest speakers. Entrepreneurial activities. Graduates get promoted to crew leaders/staff. A LOT of external funding, individual, corporate, local, and government levels since it's run under the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Earthworks Urban Farm, Detroit, Michigan
They have 2 youth programs, a summer camp, and provide for their parent organization, a soup kitchen.

Growing Healthy Kids, 5-11 years old: Weekly afternoon program w/healthy snacks, outdoor play, coloring, flower bed planning, vegetable garden planting, painting, pancake making, honey extraction, and seed starting.

Youth Farm Stand, 11-17 years old: Farming, marketing, personal development, and community food system education. Stipends.

Other Elements: Monthly food justice potlucks, co-teaching of workshops, lots of organizational collaboration, annual tours, event tabling, seeking of community feedback, organic certification funding from Farm Bill.

HUB Urban Farm Hub

Lots of links to organizations across the nation w/technical material, funding opportunities, etc.

INSTRUCTION MANUALS from CASFS

Free pdf downloads. Hundreds of pages, EVERYTHING is in here, including how to plan a CSA, how to teach soil science, and business planning strategies. Gosh.

1. Teaching Organic Farming and Gardening: Resources for Instructors

2. Teaching Direct Marketing and Small Farm Viability: Resources for Instructors

3. Sustainable Agriculture Curriculum

Biological Control the Movie

TRAILER Biocontrol

Biological Control - Trailer from R.J. Glass on Vimeo.

"Forty five Billion with a B."

I miss the lab! <3

Planning Brainstorm 2

INSPIRATION Chicago Botanic Garden

Browsed through their website today, which features all 24 of their gardens, including a Sensory Garden [designed for "fragrances, sounds, color, texture, movement"], Enabling Garden [designed for therapy], and Landscapes Garden [which demos appropriate small-scale residential landscape designs for the Chicago Midwest area].

Putting the Chicago Botanic Garden on my list of places to visit.

Lamb's Ear. This plant screams, TOUCH ME!

A Garden for the Senses: feel, smell, listen, look. A guide from the Chicago Botanic Garden.

1. plant fragrant flowers/herbs in raised beds or containers to bring pleasant scents closer to your nose

2. plant near doors and windows for maximum enjoyment

3. include the soothing sound of water by building a fountain, pond, or stream

4. create mood with color. red/yellow/orange for warmth. green/blue/violet for cool

5. make music with a variety of trees, grasses, and shrubs that rustle in the wind

6. select plants with colored and textured leaves, flowers, berries, and bark to make it interesting

7. choose plants that are furry, spongy, prickly, or silky to add tactile delight

8. combine tall, medium, and short plants to create visual interest

9. group plants with subtle fragrances in drifts to combine scents and intensify their effects

10. plant varieties that will attract birds, butterflies, bees, and wildlife

Brainstorming. Elements: botanic science, rainwater harvesting, green roof garden, teaching pavilion, greenhouse, aquaponics, solar panel demo, green jobs training.

So I'm doing research alone in the corner of a coffee shop on Valentine's Day and I really can't complain. God, I love this stuff.

Planning Brainstorm 1

PROJECT Earthworks Garden Design

Last week, I started volunteering at Earthworks Community Farm, located in South El Monte, cornered by the 60 Freeway and a Ramada Inn. It's run by volunteers, a few hardcore immigrant farmers, a full-time youth intern, and a project coordinator from the San Gabriel Valley Conservation Corps. By happenstance, the Farm has recently entered a phase of renewal/renovation, and has given me an opportunity to help shape it during the next two months. The timing is uncanny.

Essentially, I've been given the chance to design a small resting/garden space for installment in September. Despite the fact that I have no prior design experience, I'm hoping to step up and use this opportunity as a space to experiment, practice, and transform all that socio-nature theory in my head into application.

Brainstorming. Landscape elements: seating, walking, eating, resting, education, playing, beneficial insects, birds, edible plants, ethnobotany, color, texture, art, concepts of community, wholeness & cultivation, irrigation. Very. exciting.

Guides: California Native Plant Society, Native Plants for School Gardens & Urban Areas: A Survival Guide

Recidivism

DEFINITION Recidivism

The percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested and returned to prison.

Relevant to: tax dollars, state budget, economy, productivity, equity, community.

NUMBERS CA Recidivism Rate/Prison Population Growth

1980 Prison Population: 24,569

2009 Prison Population: 167,922 [that's 0.5% of our population]

Yes, the general population of CA did grow during those years, but no, it did not increase 583%, not that much.

2009 CDCR Budget: $9.8 billion [$9.1 bill proposed for the coming year]

Avg annual cost/prisoner: $49,000

These people could be paying taxes instead of taking them! How?

CA recidivism: 66% [two out of three will return]

National recidivism: 40%

The reduction of recidivism has potential for increasing state productivity and saving CA money via methods of employment and education since reasons for recidivism are so closely linked to very low education levels and very few employment opportunities post-release. It's a cycle. The Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice has released a report on increasing employment opportunities for people with prior convictions to slow that cycle. If the budget for the "corrections" system could be allocated to actually make corrections, to form productive, contributing members of society, we might have more money to spend on programs that help all of us and prevent said cycle from even starting.

That's not to say that prisoners should take no blame for their actions as individuals. I mean to say that I think criminal behavior can additionally be seen as a side effect and indicator of broken social systems that are set up by public policies and social norms that need to evolve to better suit changing conditions for the sake of the rest of society. The correlations of arbitrary characteristics [such as race, income level, and education level] to imprisonment is just too strong to say that all criminal behavior is 100% an individual choice.