Half the fun at this weekend’s Maker Faire in San Mateo was checking out all the funky outfits. While the steampunk crowd was out in full force, there were many other unique styles on display – many of them handmade by the attendees.
For many makers, form and function can collide, like in the utility belt seen below. But I didn’t find much wearable electronics – did anyone else see any?
Click below to see a slide show of more fashion or check out the set on Flickr.
How many types of mushrooms can you name? Unfortunately, for most of us, our knowledge is limited to what the grocery store can offer – usually three or four commercial varieties. Yet, nature offers hundreds of species – many of them edible, and some of the best available in the Pacific Northwest.
So I went to a mushroom workshop outside Salem at the Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center to get schooled. The forest center itself provided a perfect learning environment, as the center is remotely located among the Cascade Mountains – a perfect region for mushrooms. The mountains trap the weather systems moving in from the West and cause large amounts of rainfall. Rain and moisture are essential for mushrooms to grow. Once you bring in other factors – such as elevation, flora and fauna – what you find on a mushroom hunt can be quite varied. The center itself prides itself as being a steward of the land – it not only uses its educational program to foster sustainability but also offers a rare low-impact energy use system.
On our first hunt, we found Chantrelles, Winter Chantrelles, a Hedgehog Mushroom, Lacluster Lacaria, and Lobster Mushrooms - all edible!
On the hunt, it is good to have a knife, a brush, and a basket for placing the mushrooms into. The knife helps cut the dirty or undesirable part of the mushroom away, the brush helps further clean it before putting it into the basket. It is helpful to have them as clean as possible before they are placed together with other mushrooms they could possibly dirty.
So I seem to have picked up the Swine Flu. And yes, I am calling it that, and not H1N1, after learning that the virus has been traced back to factory farms in the United States (and subsidiaries in Mexico) and that the hog industry lobbied for the much-harder to say jumble of letters and numbers.
In the days that I have been bed-ridden, I’ve received countless messages of support but also some words of warning. Many are concerned about vaccines such as Tamiflu and cite recent articles that draw in to question their widespread use in treating viruses that are all too often non-threatening.
With all these man-made assaults on my body, I decided to stay as natural as possible for my treatment. On day one of my illness, I pulled out of my fridge a medicinal elixir that my friend Nicole gave me earlier in the year. The tincture bottle is labeled “Elderberry Syrup” and is composed of the namesake berry, along with honey, brandy, lime, cinnamon, ginger, and clove.
Some of Nicole's elixirs. Photo: Julie Sabatier
I asked Nicole to explain the properties of the elixir.
The elderberry elixer was made from locally harvested elderberries. They grow all over the pacific northwest and are harvested in early fall. Elderberries are rich in anti-oxidants, vitamin C and are anti-viral and immune boosting. The elixer is an awesome remedy for colds, influenza and other respitory problems. It is also soothing to the throat and tastes delicious.
Elderberries (elder sambucus) have been used as a folk remedy for hundreds of years. They were a main medicine in England and also used by the native people of this area. Some Native American tribes made flutes from the elder branches and so called it “the music tree”. It was said to protect from evil spirits and in some traditions was planted on the gravestones of the dead. It is a very magical tree and has a strong connection with the fairies!
The elixer also has brandy, honey, osha root, licorice root, ginger root, rose hips and orange peel all increasing the medicinal qualities of the elixer. It was super easy to make, just put it all in a mason jar, let it sit for four to six weeks and squeezed it out with cheese cloth. yum!
Nicole among her garden plants used for medicine. Photo: Julie Sabatier
While cataloging zines at the Independent Publishing Resource Center recently, I came along a pristine copy of Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life #1, printed in 1992. While punk culture and the DIY movement was solidly established by this time, the founding edition of BYOFL can be seen as an achievement that sealed their prominence. It illustrated that the ethics of a counterculture movement had been fully formed and realized. It was no longer just responding and resisting, but creating an alternative.
The collaboration between Maximum Rock and Roll and Profane Existence would provide a resource guide for touring bands and traveling folks for a generation to come, including myself. The zine was the first thing recommended to me when I first began to roam across the country – it was a great guide for places to crash long before I ever discovered couchsufing.com or was aware of WWOOF.
The first page (or two) should go straight into the DIY history books.
A few quotes:
Over the last decade and a half the world has witnessed the blossoming of one of the largest underground countercultural movements in history. Born out of youth anger (and probably just bordem), which created the original 1977 punk explosion, this self motivated and self created movement has spread throughout the furthest reaches of industrial society. People grown tired of pre-packaged consumer entertainment and everywhere punk has spread its “Do-It-Yourself” attitude. Punk is a new folk music, where anyone can take part who has the desire for expression and freedom. Communication and interaction on a personal level is the foremost goal, with production, packaging, and marketing coming secondary. The DIY movement is vibrant and as more people, ideas, thoughts, and actions interconnect all the various aspects making it an ever-changing and growing movement. Over these past years the DIY movement has grown at an unprecedented rate, in some cases fueled by profit-making trends, but for the most part on a real grass-roots level. The national and international communication within the DIY movement is what has kept it strong over the years. Through the efforts of certain individual and fanzines, people have been able to make concrete connections between people of similar interests and have created an entire underground economy based on the spreading of our own living culture and ideal. Bands have been able to promote themselves, book tours, put out records without bowing down to the corporate music industry. That is the essence of DIY. People helping other people without an eye for profit, only for creating a better world and having some fun…
…We feel that by breaking free from the established capitalist system we are creating freedom in our own lives. We need the kind of global interconnections that this magazine presents the possibilities of creating. When we take control of our immediate interests this will set an example for creating a better world. We hope that the people who use this magazine will realize that DIY goes further than just a music “scene” and directly translates into the liberation of everyday life… Continue reading
The Art Murmur is Oakland’s version of Portland’s Last Thursday. Just as DIY, 90% smaller, but a great spectacle among the grittiness of downtown Oakland. It’s on a small street, with several art galleries, a neighborhood coffee shop called Mama Buzz, a bar off to the side, and one of the best volunteer run art collectives in the area, Rock Paper Scissors- which will let you use their many different kinds of sewing machines, teach you how to worm compost, and entertain you with movie nights.
The Art Murmur, named after “Heart Murmur” is a collection of artists, cyclists, burning man folks, freaks, musicians and bystanders, who together block off the street with performances, music, and tables that sell hand screened shirts, illustrations, and vegan cupcakes. Oakland is exceptionally into industrial arts: from metal spiders that roast hot dogs, to life size hamster balls, you’ll find it at the Art Murmur.
The First Friday of every month is art night in Oakland. All over the city art galleries open up to the public, introduce their artists personally, serve wine, and sell art. The Art Murmur is the most DIY component of first Friday and happens in a very specific location- 23rd and Telegraph for those of you who are planning a trip down to the Bay.
Amy Mosley, one of the founders of the Art Murmur says “the Art Murmur grew from the grassroots organizing of the multitude of non-commercial art spaces that thrive in Oakland, with the ‘murmur’ referring to the little known secret that is the Oakland arts scene. Of course, the murmur has only gotten louder: originally we were 8 gallery spaces, and now we are nearly 20, all inside a small geographical zone. At the heart is Rock Paper Scissors Collective, which has worked endlessly to invite community groups to participate, and really diversify the event. Mostly, if it’s going on in Oakland, it might be happening at Art Murmur.”
Legos at SXSW
SXSW Interactive did offer one place for the DIY crowd, right as you stepped inside the front doors of the convention center: an enormous pile of Legos
There was no sign, no attendant to prompt people that they were available for use. SXSW knew that if you just dump a bunch of these constructive toys on the floor, the geeks will know what to do.
As high-tech designers hustled in and out of the front doors, they passed by Oliver, who was selling woodcut prints on the sidewalk.
Oliver and his woodcuts
Oliver just learned how to do woodcuts five months ago. For him, it seemed a practical and cheap medium where supplies such as wood are easy to find.
He said Austin has a surprising amount of woodcut artists in town. Yet he claimed there was no low-cost resource in Austin like Portland’s Independent Publishing Resource Center.
And that’s why he said he’d like to move there. Times have been tough, he says, “with all the rich Californians moving in and taking the high-paying jobs along with the Mexicans taking all of the low-wage jobs, leaves little left for the locals.” Continue reading
