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.

Sketch Up

MODEL 3D Modeling of the World via Google

Apparently, most of the Bay Area's urban centers have been modeled in 3D, now visible on Google Earth.

Made with Google's Building Maker modeling tool: 1. select a city, 2. make a building, 3. save your building, 4. see it in Google Earth. Additionally, 3D modeling is available with Google's free SketchUp tool, which can be used to draw up floorplans, furniture, houses, parks, whatever you want. Another thing to play with.

Two Months

TIME To Waste

Currently in between stages of life, I've found myself with the rare opportunity of having two selfish months to myself, with few or no real responsibilities. So far, I've used my time haphazardly, lacking structure, consistency, and accountability; dabbling here and there. Running, cooking, sketching, stretching, and other present tense verbs marked by leisure and consumption. If I had the time to do these things 3 months ago while working 3 jobs, volunteering, and taking classes, I think I would've died of joy. Instead, I'm spoiled with boredom. Guess that's why jam tastes better on plain toast. Or nutella on crepes. Or cookies with milk! Mmmmm.

Gonna try, for the sake of meaning.

1. Volunteering: at Earthworks Community Farm & The Newport Bay Conservancy. [Both beautiful places to visit.]

2. Sharing: of ideas, stories, meals, and stuff I make.

3. Conversing: yep.

What would you do if you had two months to spare?

Al Jazeera

NEWS Al Jazeera Live Stream

Hopefully civil unrest will work toward better days.

Antipodes

BOOK Heaven & Hell by Aldous Huxley

The Tasmanian Tiger, a now-extinct marsupial once found in Australia.

Short book in pdf on the nature and significance of visionary experience.

"If you go to New South Wales, you will see marsupials hopping about the countryside. And if you go to the antipodes of the self-conscious mind, you will encounter all sorts of creatures at least as odd as kangaroos. You do not invent these creatures any more than you invent marsupials... A man cannot control them. All he can do is to go to the mental equivalent of Australia and look around him." But Australia is so far away!