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by Tsia Carson, December 15, 2006 11:14 AM
Sometime last winter my husband came home excitedly and said "I bought you a present." Oh boy, I thought, I love presents. He unzipped his bag and plopped down two giant textbooks in front of me. Textbooks? I was hoping for pajamas. He had bought me Edible Forest Gardens Vols. I and II by Dave Jacke. "Aren't these great?" he said. I smiled wanly, not really knowing what he was talking about. Of course, it made perfect sense. We had just finished reading 1491, which is a totally mind-blowing book, about the Americas before (and just after) the arrival of Europeans. Although i have a good knowledge of and keen interest in this history, in part because I am part Cherokee, 1491 was filled with theories and history that I hadn't heard about at all. It is seriously a total page turner. And I immediately began to think about creating a heavily visual elementary school book based on the information. That is something I really should pursue. It's daunting, of course. So many projects... Anyway, the first half of the book had gotten us very excited because it talked about how managed the forests were in the northeast U.S. and how people here had a very complex system of forest agriculture that looked nothing like farming. In this kind of agriculture, generally referred to as permaculture, symbiotic forest plants were encouraged to grow together, nuts made up a huge part of the diet, and then also animals were herded hundreds of miles along roads to provide another food source. In the end you have a very productive, low maintenance, and sustainable food producing system. So what Europeans understood as wilderness was actually a carefully managed ecosystem of edible and useful plants and fruits. We had just bought a house on four wooded acres in NY and we were surrounded by oak trees and constantly bombarded with acorns. We have the perfect site for an edible forest garden. So this project is still in the fantasy realm. I still have not even gotten through Vol. I of my assigned reading. But I feel confident that this winter will be a great time to read and plan for the spring. I am getting excited about all the climate appropriate things I could try and grow here: mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns, jerusalem artichokes, and kiwis (yes there are varieties that can winter here). And I am really looking forward to making a protein rich drink called mast, made from acorns. I think it probably ends up being a bit like coconut milk. Recently I found a new hero through book contributor Abigail Doan. Hi name is Fritz Haeg and he has been doing something called "Edible Estates" where he comes in and redoes your front lawn/rooftop into an edible permaculture example. He is trying to do 9 prototypes across the US to show how this can work in different ecosystems. I love me a radical gardener! Images of Friz Haeg's Salina KS edible estate ? before: And after: And I may be playing a little fast and loose with the term permaculture because it can encompass a lot more than what I am talking about. For more through, less eccentric information go here. If you are not ready for the textbooks you can read about it here. If you are not ready to drink the mast, you might want to try and find a CSA (community supported agriculture) in your area and support small local farmers. (Click here for Local Harvest and here for Farm to Table.) This is my local CSA: Common Ground Farm and i just want to do a shout out to them for NOT growing a lot of kale this year (kale is one of those crops that is very easy to grow and therefore you can get a lot of kale at a CSA, you have been warned). And here is the SuperNaturale Alt Guide on the topic. And finally, here is my truly favorite gardening site, they have a book too! Well, thanks for reading my meandering posts. I hope you enjoyed them. I get so much joy from writing about things I love. I hope that some of that rubs off on you. In a good way, I
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by Tsia Carson, December 14, 2006 12:19 PM
So there I am minding my own business, watching music videos from 1982 on YouTube, singing along. The love of my life walks by and quips: "What are you getting nostalgic? Isn't this supposed to happen when you are 45, and aren't you supposed to be listening to the Eagles?" I stop humming. He is totally right. What the hell am I doing? He knows better than anyone how much I hate nostalgia from a theoretical perspective. Nostalgia isn't a simply 36-year-old woman's sing-a-long to Afrika Bambaattaa. It's an oppressive, hegemonic force that reinforces the modernist idea of a mythic origin point when the world was pure and good. It collapses identity and complexity into a Hummel figurine or a Norman Rockwell print. It means that there are people who actually believe that in the 1950's everyone was happily married in a tract home and that women stayed home and raised kids. Or that everyone was at Woodstock. Or that World War II was a nice war. So when I saw the word used in a review of Craftivity recently I was a bit taken aback. Is it actually a nostalgic book? I really had not thought about it that way at all. I thought of it as the progeny of those 70's craft books, not a look back but the next generation. The 1970's was the golden era of craft books. I have a shelf of beautiful samples from that gilded age. As I did my research making Craftivity, acquiring and loving many of these tomes, I noticed that they were often written by very smart, engaging people who then generally abruptly stopped authoring books. I got this weird sense of foreboding. Would I end up just like these wonderful people, obscure, impossible to locate, without any googability? Am I going to Croatan? Sounds nice actually... These books are also like a secret code between us makers. One of my favorite series, The Family Creative Workshop is featured prominently in Todd Oldham's book. If you ever see these around, pick them up ? they are an A-Z encyclopedia of DIY goodness. And if you made them, get in touch with me! I would love to interview you and know the backstory. I also have to recommend "Making Stuff" series by Ann Wiseman (get the originals, if you can) and the Woodstock Craftsmans Manual as "provoked" by Jean Young. I prefer volume one. I also have a nasty little section of music from 1982ish that would be a lot more fun to share with you.... Afrika Bambaatta and Johnny Lydon, World Desturction Your life ain't nothing. I could be wrong, I could be right. Dominatrix, Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight Terrible video but it was a great club song. I'll see you at the Pyramid. Produced by Stuart Argabrigh, who was big on the New York No Wave scene. You can download tracks form this great compilation. Orange Juice, Rip It Up Edwyn Collins's voice is so dreamy. OJ was initially on the legendary Postcards from Scotland label. This song is infalliable. If you note the guy clapping in the beginning that is Zeke Mandikya ? a Zimbawyean refugee and instrumental session player on a lot UK music from this period. The The, This is the Day This song used to be my little secret until it got covered by the Cranberries. I love the genius concept album and video series here. Note that Mandikya worked with Matt Johnson around this time period, too. I used love to listen to this song on my Walkman lying on a bench in Tompkins Square, along with Julina Cope's Sunspots. Guess I am just sucker for a baritone voice.
Haysi Fantayzee, Sister Friction I wanted to dress just like Kate Garner when I was 12. This song still gets me right back to junior high school. I spent a lot of time in dork-out fantasy land watching "Night Flight" on USA, thinking about the end of the world; as if you couldn't figure it out
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by Tsia Carson, December 13, 2006 10:47 AM
Humiliatingly, I have become a parody of myself. It all began so innocently. My BFF went to see an Ayurvedic practioner a few years back. And she was so thrilled with the results (a general sense of well being, nice skin, weight loss) she gave me a consultation with her. Who would know that this would turn me into a raving zealot for Ayurvedic living? But let me backtrack a little. Now, I know what you are thinking ? she wrote a craft book, of course she is some kind of earth mother hippie type. Au contraire, mon frere. I am the anti hippie. I was raised steeped in New Age garbage, I grew up and instantly got health insurance. I was totally ready to split the mind/body connection in two because I was so sick of all the judgmental crap I had heard in yoga classes and health food stores my entire life. "You hold all your emotions in your hips, if they are stiff you aren't dealing with your issues, man," or "You have a sore throat? Maybe you need to express your anger, use your voice," which all boiled down to "It's your fault you are sick; weakling." By the time I hit adulthood I had had enough! I went and got my flu shot and never spent another winter sick. I got my Pap smears and blood work and all that stuff. I still do and it's awesome. But about 8 years ago I started getting regular migraines. and you know in general doctors just shrug when you tell them you get these things because they are notoriously hard to treat ? see the Oliver Sacks book on the subject. So I medicated them, which worked totally fine for a while. However, after the birth of my kid they came back with a vengeance. I began to get them every 2 weeks, and they are totally debilitating and this was just not tenable with a 2-year-old around. I also had spent most of the last year sick (sinus infections, endless colds, stomach issues) and I just felt unwell. But still, nothing that could really be treatable in a Western medicine way. At this juncture I went and saw the ayurvedic practioner Pratima Raichur. She asked me what was wrong and I thought what the heck, I'll lay it on. Then she looked at my nails and asked me what I ate. As I told her she wrote down everything I said. I thought she took very through notes. But then she handed it to me with the word AVOID on top. She gave me a new diet (filled with nothing I regularly ate) and gave me a bunch of supplements (and I hate vitamins, I don't believe in them, I think you just pee them out) and sent me on my way. She said, "If you do this you will feel better right away." "Yeah, right," I thought. Well, I figured I had nothing to lose, I couldn't feel any worse, and so I did what she said. And suddenly I felt like I did way before Cedar was born. I felt really good. Two days in and I woke up refreshed and full of energy. One month in and I hadn't had a migraine. Now I am four months in and I have had 2 full-blown migraines that whole time. By the second month in, I became a born-again ayurvedic maniac, studying ayurvedic texts and raving to anyone who would listen. It is so embarrassing. I like systems and structures. And this system for living is really fascinating. Now I am the one cornering people in the health food store. Jabbering to whoever will listen. People humoring me. I make a terrible convert. I am doing my best to tone it down and maybe try and focus it. Maybe write an article on SuperNaturale. Or perhaps it will make it into the next book. I think I might start a ayurvedic line of balancing breakfast granolas, which is totally in line with my dosha, yo. This is not to say that I am about to don the orange robes and get on a commune. I am really into this because it produced tenable results. I didn't change my mind, I just changed my diet. And I am totally suspicious about why basically all new world foods are often considered un-ayurvedic (tomatoes, potatoes). Plus they don't like mushrooms. It's not a "spiritual food." I like to eat fungus, give me a break. The real kicker is no garlic and no onions. Good luck going out to eat! The conversion experience definitely gives me just a little bit more empathy for the next time I see a Jehovah's Witness or Hare Krishna. Not very much, though. The convert recommends these links and books to learn more about this 5,000-year-old way of living.
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by Tsia Carson, December 12, 2006 11:58 AM
My daughter has been my main deal the last two and a half years. So I am obsessed with children's media. My husband and I made a decision to not let her watch TV until she was 2-ish. It is amazing how many people tell you that you should have your kid watch TV. We weren't making some kind of radical stand with this decision and we certainly aren't fascists about it. But generally there is no TV (even still). Sometimes we surf Google images to find pictures of monkeys. Monkeys are what she likes best. So we got pretty fanatical about the books she reads and the stuff she plays with. I guess overtly branded stuff makes me queasy. That can wait until she is a little older, as far as I am concerned. Really expensive stuff also seems absurd. Like did you read the article in the NY Times Sunday Styles (my must read section) on art collecting for the nursery? Come on! Have them make the art, not buy it. There is a good amount of monkey-related media out there for the toddler set. She adores this little knit monkey from Bla Bla (she has the mini verde monkey). And frankly, I do, too. There are also a series of monkey related books by Anthony Browne, a British illustrator, which are wry and a little bit tragic. ALWAYS pre-screen books and media before giving them to your child. There are things that set other parents off that don't bother me at all, and vice versa. My favorite book is called Gorilla, about a girl whose father is too busy to take her to the zoo so she asks for a Gorilla for her birthday. He also did a series of books on a Chimp named Willy ? a quintessential underdog. Her absolute favorite books are the Jenny Linksy series. I loved these too as a kid. They are actually for young readers but I got them for her a bit early. They are written by Esther Averill in the 1940s and have just been republished by the New York Review Children's Collection. They are about a black cat named Jenny Linksy who wears a red scarf and lives in the west village. She has a series of adventures with her cat friends in the neighborhood and she is shy, loyal, and small. My husband says that seeing these books really gave him a "new window on my personality." The artist uses the same palette as the beloved Good Night Moon series because I think the printing restrictions of the time period. When adults see them they either don't know them at all or they say, "Oh my God, where did you find these? I love these books!" Enjoy them. I made her a scarf to match Jenny Linsky. She loves it. I also think that kids are often surprising in the things they like. We live near DIA: Beacon and she loves the Michael Heizer sculptures. There is a huge rock in the museum that she loves to think about. We sing songs about it. Children's music is a touchy subject as well. I don't understand why we inflict terrible music on children. It probably hurts us more than it hurts them. I feel like everyone has heard of Dan Zanes but then I am always surprised when another mother says, "Who is that?" Dan Zanes makes really smart, sophisticated kids' music with other real musicians. NYC-based, he used to be the lead singer for the Del Fuegos. He does duets with Aimee Mann, Lou Reed, and a host of others. It is totally listenable and a great gift, too. Here are some of my daughter's favorite songs: "Sabotage" ? Beastie Boys, "No Aloha" ? The Breeders, "My Lady Story" ? Antony and the Johnsons, and "Star" ? The Roots, and most of all anything by Tricky. I made an Imix for you to enjoy. Go figure. There is one last thing to share with you, my secret weapon of sorts: a seam ripper. My daughter cannot tolerate a tag in any of her shirts and my seam ripper has been my best friend for the last year as I busily remove tags from her
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by Tsia Carson, December 11, 2006 12:01 PM
Editor's Note: Tsia Carson is a partner in the multidisciplinary design firm Flat and an accomplished designer with an extensive background in the fine arts, semiotics and new technologies. Flat's clients include the New York City Marathon, Red Cross, the Tang Museum, Knoll, the Brennan Center for Justice, Creative Time, and ESPN. Tsia has taught at Yale's Graduate Program for Graphic Design, Rhode Island School of Design, Parsons School of Design, and Hunter College. She has served on several nonprofit boards, including the Board of the New York chapter of the AIGA. Tsia is the editor-in-chief of SuperNaturale, an alt DIY site created by her firm, and author of the recently published Craftivity: 40 Projects for the DIY Lifestyle, out from HarperCollins.I thought i would spend the next five days sharing all the things I am currently obesessed with with you. I think it will be more fun and probaly more revealing then telling you about my rather humdrum life. After writing/curating a book on the alt DIY/craft couture scene I have inadvertently set myself up as some kind of expert on the topic. I have never been much for expertise. But I would be remiss if I didn't live up to expectation in this regard. You would think after working on this book for 2 years I would be burned out on making stuff but actually I am more excited now than ever. I like to make stuff, I like the people who make stuff, and I like their stuff. I definitely advocate not making stuff and instead supporting other people who make stuff. In fact, most people make nicer stuff than I can make ? which is why Craftivity has 40 phenomenal contributors. There is some stuff that I have seen recently that isn't in the book that has blown me away. I thought a few tidbits would be nice for you. Ana Voog makes these incredible free form crochet hats that are out of this world and dude, she accepts commissions. I totally love her work. Check out this chain link fence by Joep Verhoeven ? it is just so beautiful I can't stand it. I also recently saw these images of vertical gardens, which really got me thinking. And have you seen Zoë Sheehan Saldaña's work? She remakes everyday things like paper bags and Kmart shirts by hand and then returns her items into the original context. I love the conceptual making. I like to call what I do high concept crafting. I almost always start with an idea ? like I want to make teeny tiny issey miyake clothes because I can't afford the real thing. In the past I extended this idea to teaching myself some ghetto version of feng shui and now I am on an ayurvedic kick (more on this in a later post). As I put together this book that drove a lot of my decision making process in terms of other contributors. Craftivity is a project-driven book so there are 40 projects to do in it that are very defined but generally the people who made them started out with an idea or in some cases a conundrum ? what should I do all these moth eaten sweaters? I wonder if I can crochet a skull? There's a tree stump in the sidewalk, it looks lonely... And so on. But most projects in the book started out as gifts ? from one individual to another. And I think this kind of generosity is powerful and immediate when you see it in action. But after all this prattling on I do have a craft crush on something ? Tunisian Crochet AKA afghaning AKA granny squares AKA Shepard's crochet. I have always been partial to crochet, perhaps because I learned it as a child. I also think it is very easy to learn and therefore democratic. Tunisian crochet is probably the mother stitch to both crochet and knitting, proto knitting I like to call it, the mother of all stitches. It is elegant, strong and fun to do. You use a very long needle with a crochet hook on the end and you essentially cast stitches on and off the needle with a crochet stitch holding the yarn as you do in continental knitting. It has a knit and purl side like a knit piece but it looks almost woven. You can easily transfer the work onto a knitting needle (on a cast on row) and just start knitting with the piece. It's a very open system. Generally people make ugly ass afghans with this technique (granny squares) but I really think that it can be used for much more interesting things. I recently did a project of Amy Spencer's new book where I made "yarn" from yards of fabric and used a broomstick to Tunisian crochet so I had a super chunky scarf. With its density it lends itself to something like a rug, which I think, might be my next project. Although I am totally backlogged here... I still haven't finished my 2-year-old daughter's baby quilt. Darn
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