Once again unto the breach” — Henry V
Another program/event for reskilling and reusing at the Portland area library: Held August 30th at 6pm in the main multipurpose room. Open to the public. Lots to be discussed as usual. Joining in person and joining via listening to the podcast represent the idea of “being present”. Do so.
from facebook:
Some things can’t be helped…Like hosting/attending/
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Unfortunately, the sound file was either corrupted or incorrectly saved, or both–leading to the horrible situation of having no sound file available. Not even in Recycle Bin. Luckily, I found DiskDigger freeware which dug some of the deleted files out of the hard drive. The recovered audio file is in 6 second increments, per the Audacity program manner of saving, and the filenames are not chronological. The audio file is in filename order, however, which makes for a popcorn effect which is impossible to make sense of. Furthermore, the stereo files are separated, so there are many repeated 6 second snippets. Maybe someday I’ll reorder the 6-second files into chronological order and remove redundancies, but I’m not holding my breath since it is only encompassing the last 10 minutes of a 90 minute reskilling/reusing session/event. Here’s the wonders of modern technology:
http://metageny.com/reskill/audio/snippets%20of%20august%20reskilling%202016.mp3
If you want to know what we talked about, here’s the notes from the meeting which we only got to about half the contents:
AUGUST 2016 RESKILLING AND REUSING EVENT PROGRAM
Novelty in agenda:
Intro: Why reskill and why reuse? Why meet in person? Why record for podcast? Fireside chat — anything on topic.
Physical, then Psychological, then Sociological, then culture/taboo/deep issues/spiritual/elephants in the room
BOOK REVIEW
Announcements
Laughter yoga
SEANCE–give it a try
Wrap Up
———————–
PHYSICAL
Made a wood shed from found wood and pallets.
ReUse: Grabbing tree trunk sections instead of sending to land fill. Use for stove. Learn to clean chimney pipe of creosote. Learning how to split big tree trunk sections: Sharpen axes and bring in the wedge. Find sledge hammer.
ReUse old metal grate for use as gate for chain link fence. Make hinge from eye bolts, but force analysis needed to keep robust and in place. Take picture of lower hinge of gate and fix it by reversing the hinge and elongating the eyebolt.
ReUse and Reskilling: Spent grain can be quite tasty. lots of the starches have been removed, leaving the protein and fiber. Brewers should never throw this stuff away…and they shouldn’t give it to cows/chickens unless humans say they don’t want it. Yeast is not a problem with spent grain for compost.
Spent grain at breweries. Drying the grain in a solar oven? Beer takes up lots of grain, so it’s just a luxury item…or a transition item. http://www.metacookbook.com/tag/spent-grain/ Start using breadmaker with spent grains. Find a way to grind the dried spent grains.
Emerson Garden shed — don’t destroy. Store used tiller. Existing built environment is thrifty, but “new” is safer so insurance/risk/liability is in play.
Food: harvest, compost, replant for fall. Monetize your meat: Transition from dollar bill sized meat portions to the size of a quarter.
Plant food in your front yard…even though it might get stolen.
Cuttings for Grapevines should be given out every Sunday after church.
Humans ate kelp while migrating from alaska to chile. We are ignoring submerged plant eating…e.g. drum in back yard.
DIY pipe shotgn with hot pads. $1. Over-population isn’t even being written about, let along thought/talked about.
Folding saw is so convenient: Can keep in purse.
Invest in harness for roof work and tie around chimney. Also don’t forget knee pads (Bargain Supply)
Scavenged mesh from trampolines and using above my driveway to partially block sunlight.
Brother gave bag from Trader joes: If this bag is framed after use, is it recycling or reusing?
also from brother:
I scrounged some sod pallets some time ago. Waiting for a use for them.
My chicken coop is made significantly from reused wood stock.
How about making something last a long time? Dad liked aluminum paint as a rust resister, and he made a lot of his own tools for outdoor building maintenance and yardwork!
My garden shed needed replacing when we moved into our home 12 years ago, but by patching all the micro-holes in the tin roof with roofing tar (from the inside on a sunny day), and by applying Rust-Oleum primer on the outside roof, and by modest paint touch-up and repair, it is still going!
The shed is good cover for my gardening tools, of which the metal I sharpen and oil, and the wooden handles I rub with boiled linseed oil, at least annually.
When the boys were young, I noticed a previously-used, wooden play structure in my neighbor’s yard. I made an offer on it, they accepted, I dismantled it, modified it slightly, and erected it in our yard.
I keep a large outdoor storage area of stones, pavers, old cement blocks, lumber, deck replacement boards, fencing, all behind a stacked firewood visual screen for my neighbor’s sake.
Much more…
PSYCHOLOGICAL
Take time for fantasy and utopia, since daily grind can get rough if weather or health or finances aren’t perfect.
Have a 5 year plan, but not a 10 year plan.
Use outdoor assets.
Get out and do things in early mornings when it’s cooler.
Learn what it is to be hungry.
SOCIOLOGICAL
Use city info/staff: News sources update. I like Metro 25 in the background.
Reskilling: short vignette plays and mimes and speaking of self in 3rd person– to convey meaning in a world of words that are meant to obfuscate/derail with great facility.
LouieLab and the CNET Urban Smart Home are expected to launch in September.
new offices for the city’s Office of Performance Improvement and Innovation. 5th floor of 745 Main st <https://louisvilleky.gov/news/louisville-opening-louielab-collaborative-civic-innovation-performance-improvement>
Reskill: Learn to find people to play tennis. Alternative: play solo at Shawnee Park has a tennis backstop for practice.
Good soap opera drama: Look at satellite images of actic ice. Scarier than any apocolytic zombie walk. Find good debates where both sides make good points: debate clubs and law schools — not the media. Better yet, find case law and listen to computer reading of text: Use Google Scholar. Get familiar with legal system — lifelong learning: Words in laws/policies are our freedom or our prison cell bars, so get to know them.
Police are using NextDoor to interact with neighborhood, but it can get abusive. BBB gives it a D-.
Family and clan are 700,000 years old (fire) but city is 6,000…and hive mind is only 20 years. We really need to step carefully as a species on the planet.
CULTURAL/TABOO/DEEP ISSUES
Low lying fruit that you can bite into:
Knowing when you are being mind-controlled isn’t enough — you must eschew…close eyes and block ears.
Cynical Understanding: cynicism like cinammon has no bounds, and is spot on and adds to the spice of life– but is only helpful in moderation, like cinammon.
Trump virus: asking taboo questions. e.g. Trash: pass laws to bring backhoe and bury your garbage in your backyard if you don’t clean it up and then bill you — so that you will lose your home soon to foreclosure.
Reskill: Get good at cartoons since they can convey ideas to legislators that they otherwise obfuscate by words. Make them view images for a set number of minutes by videoing their eyes while they watch a slideshow on mountaintop removal or something.
Cartoons example does this: Start doing things radically different within the system, using something called (to animals) the Immune System — it self-corrects without revolution, but sometimes the inflammation can hurt while healing takes place; it’s just nerves firing — you’ll live.
ReUse/reskilling purpose: to show that if we adopt a Victory Garden/WWII mobilization across the world/nation and focus research on carbon sequestration, we can still survive as a species. Solar panels and windmills are all massively heat generating to make the materials, so it’s not a win without massive effort and sacrifice. Why no one talks about over population? Nothing more important than future laborers…that’s why rowe v wade is so important, b/cs TPTB want control over their future laborers…and they won’t let women thumb their noses to their plans for ever cheap labor.
‘trust gap’ — e.g. where do we go to find the real deal? Myths: MUSHROOMS or ENKIDU. Maybe truth needs to be like a mushroom, e.g. hidden underground and then pops up all over the place when the time is right. Traditional news/info isn’t working, so the new model is mushroom info. Like a tsunami/earthquake: shocking and unstoppable…and (most importantly) untaintable. or ENKIDU who is the wildman who shocks the all powerful king after ENKIDU dies, e.g. not standing for the National Anthem. (Portland Anchor)
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Reskilling: Announce on FB. Gather together thoughts from this last month.
Solid Waste Mtg being held at same time as reskilling/reusing, but one is mega, and one is micro.
Need help at Portland History Festival on October 10th: Kids can screw together an amoeba with screw gun. Someone needs to be at the table to oversee the screw gun and hand out bandaids. Also overseeing its painting, blindfolded.
Shawnee area has Math and Science Center spontaneously generating.
BOOK REVIEW:
The Useful Book: too many recipes and procedures. For reference only.
Green Living: Thoughtful and wise — and practical in ways that are broad, but even the expert can learn from a reading.
Graphic Novels — take your mind off things.
The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials — 3rd popular after Lord of rings, Harry Potter. Gave idea for seance.
Summary: Overwhelmingly Humbling. Mourning loss of free time to read.
LAUGHTER YOGA: we all can see and hear… we all can speak English fluently… we all got here on wheels… we will all live to be 120… we can run a mile… we are all quite clever…we have all laughed at bill cosby’s jokes… we allow Wall Street to play with our mortgage… Fracking keeps our gas prices super low… The new normal is obsolete by supper time… we have conscious awareness of here and now… Laughing helps, I guess… We can stop now…
SEANCE: Subtle knife: close eyes, find a spot, open your heart to whimsy/fullness/glee/surprise, then take infiitely sharp knife and slice open and peel away into a new universe — ponder where you are with intuition and perhaps hallucinations, then zip up again. Your secret.
WRAP UP: Podcast posted to website. Please publicize the meeting. This Land is Your Land