the farm

IMG_2573, a photo by Futurefarmers on Flickr.

people chatting over a potluck dinner, the bandanas flapping in the wind. a few stragglers still planting starts, as the day winds down into evening.

16,000 starts at the Gill Tract. Here are a few

IMG_2569, a photo by Futurefarmers on Flickr.

some of the 15 thousand starts that made it to the gill tract

Take back the tract

IMG_2563, a photo by Futurefarmers on Flickr.

occupy the farm!
save the tract!
this is what a public education could and should look like.
open spaces, where the community and the students can learn and help each other.
spaces to grow food, not profits.
spaces to grow our worth, not commoditize our work.
spaces to make connections, not compete with each other.

Songs and places

Songs and places, a photo by powerdubbe on Flickr.

a window into a broken land.
the land has been stomped on, and broken like glass. watch how the people put it back together, piece by piece.
these photos are of friends and comrades in Aysen, fighting back against state repression and a centralized economy. This fight has not been a pretty one. People have been shot, blinded by buckshot, and beaten nearly to death. but as true patagonians, they never give up. in fact that word isn't even in their vocabulary. ni un paso atras. not one step back.

Kitten, meet the world!

this is blue sky, one of our three new kittens.
it was really amazing being part of the birth, seeing all the instinct that takes over- our Mishka (who is less than a year old her self) is a super-mama and has been affectionately nurturing these little ones.
this connects up with the theme (in class and in life) of constant birth, death, and rebirth all around us. As the seasons change, the plants in the yard wilt, dry, drop their seeds, and let fresh life abound.

Snow

Snow, a photo by powerdubbe on Flickr.

I went to Tahoe two weeks ago, and the snow was amazing. 2 feet of fresh snow over night. a winter wonderland.

iFrankenstien

iPod charger by Charlie. Soon to be fully functional, a photo by powerdubbe on Flickr.

This is the frankenstien machine. i didn't make it, my hands just assembled the pieces, that wanted to come together in the way that they did. I very much was just the outlet for the expression of the iFrankenstien. In other words, as harris would put it, this was a stream-of-coniousness work. No planning of any kind. I am very pleased with how it came out, although it was super heavy. Its not really related to the readings, except for the fact that I was playing atallualpa while I was building it. So it is subconsciously influenced by Argentina.

THings fall apart, the center cannot hold.

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

-W.B. Yeats

This poem is powerful. I like the first paragraph best. It reminds me of now, and here.

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Thats our society. Our world. Right now. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. A revolution is born every second, another dies every second. and the world spins on.