SharpeWorld 2 Has Moved

This website is now over here:
www.sharpeworld.com.

The Alchemists Of Sound

A documentary about the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, who, using tape loops and improvised contraptions (sometimes made out of repurposed objects) created the 1960s sound of the future for shows like Dr. Who.

The Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid, Tokyo

Narrator: "It's not a building. It's a revolutionary urban environment that squeezes two dozen 80 story high skyscrapers and a population the size of San Francisco, onto artificial land in Tokyo Bay."

Trash Gurus

For the past few months, I've been in the Oakland hills, staying with my friends, Marty and Chantelise, who have let me set up camp in their back house "hippie shack" (as I call it). It's a quirky little place, made out of recycled wood (a chicken coop found on Craigslist) and windows from an Oakland mansion that was torn down.

That the cottage is made out of re-used materials is part of a greater philosophy that, to my Los Angeles mindset, makes Marty and Chentelise seem like the ultimate Northern Californians. Beyond driving biodiesel cars, and growing their own food, they don't generate any garbage that isn't compostable or recyclable. They don't even use toothpaste because the tubes create gratuitous garbage. Instead, they've switched to tooth powder that comes in a recyclable box.

Much as I've integrated into non-chemical life here on "the farm," my days at the hippie shack could be numbered. I've decided to stay in the Bay Area an extra three months, and am still waiting to hear back about whether Marty and Chantelise want their cottage -- normally Chantelise's office and yoga space -- back. In the meantime, I've been scouring Craigslist. Today, I Iooked at a house for rent in the Rockridge district.

It was an uninviting craftsman with a large front porch and thrashed built-in cabinetry. I liked it. While the owner showed me into the kitchen, another woman came to see it, who immediately complained about the light, and asked much better questions than I did. Like, Would the tenant have to buy garbage cans from the city and pay for trash pick up?

I told them about Marty and Chantelise's packaging-phobic relationship to garbage, and how it had changed the way I think about throwing things out. The woman lit up. As it turns out, she'd had a roommate who'd saved all his garbage for a year as an experiment. "I've heard of that guy!'" I exclaimed. Marty had told me all about him, and cited him as one of his big inspirations. Now here I was talking to Marty's trash-guru's former roommate... What a small world.

I got home and googled Ari Derfel, who is one of two men who did identical year-long garbage experiments. The other is Dave Chameides, who I read about in a blog post written by Madeleine Brand, who happens to host the NPR show I contribute to (Day To Day). What a coincidence.

The world gets smaller. A good thing to remember when thinking about trash.

CRASS documentary

Late 70s Anarchist band CRASS demystified.

The Sea Organ, Zadar, Croatia

I was listening to KUSF today, when the dj started playing this weird Sea Organ music. I had to look it up...

"The musical Sea Organ (morske orgulje) is located on the shores of Zadar, Croatia, and is the world’s first musical pipe organs that is played by the sea. Simple and elegant steps, carved in white stone, were built on the quayside. Underneath, there are 35 musically tuned tubes with whistle openings on the sidewalk. The movement of the sea pushes air through, and – depending on the size and velocity of the wave – musical chords are played. The waves create random harmonic sounds."

That description is from oddmusic homepage, which has some other great instrumentation listed in the gallery section, like the gas tank orchestra and the Excedrin thumb piano.

Hemp For Victory

A documentary from 1942

2012 trailer

Wanna Start A Commune?

Stephanie Smith, founder of Ecoshack, designer of modular tent cities, yurts, Beekeepers' huts, and tipis, is hoping to bring the commune back to the forefront of American culture with her new project, Wanna Start A Commune?

Having started a number of living-off-the-grid experiments in Joshua Tree, she's now exploring the communal idea "in an ongoing series of design and cultural projects that bring a collective attitude to places where it doesn't yet exist."

Like cul-de-sacs.

"Do you live on a cul-de-sac? Or a dead-end road? Or an apartment building (or condo) with an interior courtyard? Why not come together with your neighbors and share resources? Create a shared compost pile, gather weekly for potlucks and friendship, start a recycling program, barter services, share childcare, or anything else that you cook up."

The Oxford Project

From The Oxford Project website:

In 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein set out to photograph every single resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa (pop. 676). He converted an abandoned storefront on Main Street into a makeshift studio and posted fliers inviting people to stop by. At first they trickled in slowly, but in the end, nearly all of Oxford stood before Feldstein’s lens.

Twenty years later, Feldstein decided to do it again. He invited writer Stephen G. Bloom to join him, and together they went in search of the Oxford residents Feldstein originally shot in 1984. Some had moved. Most had stayed. Others had passed away. All were marked by the passage of time.

What emerges is a living portrait of Small Town, USA, told with the words and images of its residents—then and now—and textured by their own words. It tells the compelling story of one archetypal American community—its struggles, accomplishments, failures, and secrets—and how it has both changed, and stayed the same, over the course of the years.

The Summum Sect Battles the City of Pleasant Grove, UT

A Utah religious sect called The Summum and their founder, Corky Ra, are fighting to get a monument of their seven "Aphorisms" into a public city park alongside a preexisting monument to the ten commandments. They congregate in a pyramid, where they spoke to a reporter from the New York Times:

Inside the pyramid, sitting on a comfortable white couch near a mummified Doberman named Butch, Ron Temu, a Summum counselor, said the two monuments would complement each other.

"“They’ve put a basically Judeo-Christian religious text in the park, which we think is great, because people should be exposed to it,” Mr. Temu said. “But our principles should be exposed as well.”

Su Menu, the church’s president, agreed. “If you look at them side by side,” Ms. Menu said of the two monuments, “they really are saying similar things.”

The Third Commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

The Third Aphorism: “Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.”

In case you're considering, here's what the pet mummification costs.

Thanks Jodi

Paul Stamets: 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save The World

Paul Stamets is the world's leading mushroom tinkerer. He's figured out ways to use mushrooms to break down toxicity, and believes that their effectiveness as a vaccine makes preserving old growth forests a matter of national security. In the labratory, he's derived fuel from their sugars, and has discovered how to use them as "the most destructive technology" many executives in the pesticide industry say they've ever seen in pest control. His book, Mycellium Running, paints a compellingly strange portrait of the planet in its early days, when the first living organisms on land were funghi, a kingdom of sentient beings who long predate plants, and who have more in common with humans than any other species. Stamets believes that, even though we humans are being voted off the planet, if we partner with their intelligence, we might stand a chance. If you're an apocalyptic thinker like me, or just a pessimist, you might find this book heartening.


Many great mushroom growing kits and strange gifts at Paul Stamets mail order company, Funghi Perfecti.

Flickr Gallery: Tadanori Yokoo

More about Tadanori Yokoo.

Low Budget Durga

Hindu Sci-Fi featuring Durga (with all the arms) battling Mahishasura in a movie called "Adi Parashakthi" from 1971.

Via Souljerky.

Morningstar Ranch and Wheeler Ranch: Two Online Scrapbooks

Flipping through the pages of The Last Whole Earth Catalog, I came across a photo of naked people lounging around in a disheveled yert with chickens. From the caption, I learned it was an open door Sonoma County commune from the late 60s, Morningstar Ranch.

Riddled by legal battles with hostile neighbors, the commune's landlord and leader, Lou Gottlieb, hoped to save his colony by deeding the property to God. This scrapbook documents the life and death of Morningside Ranch, who are said to have been diggers, and I think Peter Cayote lived there.

After being driven from their land, some of Morningstar's refugees wound up at the nearby, equally doomed, Wheeler Ranch:






Also. The Security Photos series is worth reading about and looking at.

The Last Whole Earth Catalog, 1971

There's no one I'd rather spend the day with than The Last Whole Earth Catalog (1971). But inspired by it as I am, I'm too lazy to go out and hunt and forage for my own meal, so I've decided to instead, harness my energies by time traveling back to 1971, where I'll freely be able to order some of the catalog's intriguing books:

1. The Wilderness Cabin (Log construction, site selection, use of heavy timber tools)
2. The Dome Cookbook
3. Goat Husbandry
4. American Indian Medicine
5. How To Make Booze
6. The Israel Army Physical Fitness Handbook
7. Open Land: A Manifesto
8. The Human Use Of Human Beings
9. The Amateur Archaeologist's Handbook
10. Wood Heat Quarterly

Steve Jobs sees the Whole Earth Catalog as having been the precursor to the internet. Flipping through it, I can see why. Its oversized pages are a dense jumble of how-to diagrams, hippie manifestos, and homespun visions of self reliance that have me fantasizing about building a bark teepee in the woods.




Browse entire editions online, or, buy used copies of The Last Whole Earth Catalog Access to Tools at Amazon.