blog (March, 2007)
following dreams on sweat equity
I’m positively stunned at the blowback from business regulars about that chap giving his music away for free. Oldsters can’t understand the economics!
I’ll clue you in, THERE ARE NONE!
This is your worst nightmare. People who can follow their dream on sweat equity. Who with their computer and the money from their day job or mommy and daddy can compete with you. It’s like the North Vietnamese, all our military might couldn’t defeat individuals who would fight to the death. Same deal in Iraq.
It’s an eye-opener. That your model is IRRELEVANT!
YOU need to pay the mortgage. YOU need to go on vacation to the Caribbean. But the new musicians? They’re willing to sleep on the floor and eat ramen. Hell, they’re in their twenties, they’re not on the corporate track, they’ve got different ambitions!
-- Bob Lefsetz, Giving It Away (the Lefsetz Letter)
Spot on, save for one thing... They're not the new musicians, they're just the real musicians, tooled up to take on the old-guard's shenanigans, and with a general public that's re-discovering quality.
Antaeus: Close to Home
I'm performing in one piece of a program this Thursday-Sunday with Antaeus Dance at Cleveland Public Theatre.
I don't tend to play these things up, or talk much about them at all, but I'm privileged to be performing with this group, these friends, and excited about all of the local talent and original work in the show.
the whole story in one line
Here’s the whole story in one line. This is the greatest discovery of the scientific enterprise: You take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, and humans.
-- Brian Swimme, Awakening to the Universe Story: Interview with Brian Swimme (What is Enlightenment? Magazine)
Maurice Small Meets the Bloggers
I knew from brief encounters at Fresh Stops that Maurice was righteous ripe, just not which flavor. Urban farmer, bearded dready in overalls, quiet riot. Softspoken, some, but unabashed, deliberate, wry.
George opened Meet the Bloggers: Maurice Small posing to each participant a baited question Maurice had previously delivered: what are you eating?
The details aren't important. The key is your connection with your food. It gets juicy when you go beyond traceability. Link with the land, the people involved. Don't just know where it came from, know intimately. It'll taste better in every dimension -- tongue and soul.
(If you are what you eat, and you don't really know what you eat...)
Maurice had some rants prepared, but didn't quite get to finish them. His love is children and growing food, and he's learned to follow his heart. There are kids who think milk comes from jugs, and eggs from cartons -- and he's reconnecting them.
The hour was up too soon for everyone, but I get a sense that any interaction with him would leave a person filled but hungry for more.
cul-de-sac
Grounded myself tonight after work and class, and watched The End of Suburbia: the end of the party, the end of the age of oil, and the American way of life.
The age of the 3000-mile ceasar salad is coming to an end.
-- James Howard Kunstler
Doomsday predictions: not enough time to reverse trends and develop alternatives before things come crashing down; recessions, depression, upheaval.
Think twice, think alternatively, think need-lessly, and get what's needed, locally.
my eggs in google's basket
I've moved mail service for this domain over to Google Apps.
This was a big step. I've been hosting my mailserver on this domain for a number of years, and, though it's posed certain hassles, there are benefits to DIY and control. But off-loading it into the cloud has already begun proving worthwhile, for spam prevention, speed, searchability, tagability, and dependability.
The transition wasn't beautiful, though:
The Import-from-POP function isn't (yet?) available in the Apps version of Gmail, so I used the Mail Redirect Thunderbird Add-on to push all my old mail to my new account. Message headers are maintained, so it looks just like the original To:, From:, Date:, etc., but GMail still lists the redirect-date in message lists. :(
Nor am I yet as in-sync as I'd like to be:
I couldn't merge my previous Gmail account, to which I've got other services tied, like Google Calendar, Analytics, Desktop, and Reader, (yikes!)
Yeah -- Reader too. I switched from my longtime feedreaders, NetNewsWire/NewsGator -- for the speedier (AJAXier) interface Google Reader provides. (Another desktop app bites the dust, in exchange for the browser/cloud.)
I hope this is a move in the right direction. Doing all I wanted, myself, wasn't feasible anymore. I'm keeping this site hosted on my machine, maintaining it as my (private/public) hub to the web. I hope Google continues to play nice with my data, and to mix and sort it in helpful ways, and that it's ultimately portable, should I (when I) choose to take my digits elsewhere.
dorkbot-cleveland
I think Pittsburgh City Paper's recent State of Art article was my introduction exposure to Dorkbots; I must've missed Tech Futures covering Dorkbots coming to Cleveland nearly a year ago.
(Wikipedia:Dorkbot): Dorkbot refers to a group of affiliated organizations worldwide that sponsor meetings of artists, engineers, and designers working in the medium of electronic art.
So, yes, CLE has one, now:
dorkbot-cleveland presents a free, informal gathering of artists, engineers and programmers in the greater-Cleveland area, to show their work. There's a mailing list (but no blog,) and there's been one gathering at the defunct HealthSpace Cleveland (apparently with Rich Weiss of Ingenuity, Case Weatherhead's Fred Collopy, and video artist Kasumi on the bill.)
short-[sighted,circuit,cut]
Every biologist who goes into the wilderness today is, or will be, in my shoes. We all ask ourselves: What do you do when the Corporation comes to town? The Corporation’s goal is the rapid extraction of energy. It’s like shorting a battery, selling the magnificent spark and leaving behind a dead, useless battery. It goes from ecosystem to ecosystem, sucks out the spark and then moves on, leaving behind a deflated, dismantled, dysfunctional once-living system.
-- Alexandra Morton, The Spark