I've mised TC and everyone here and I'm sad I've missed such good conversation!
Using a sample of your hair, a simple test can show what percentage of your food intake is from corn. Garpike this is my new favorite random sentence. I'll just throw that out in casual conversation and see what response I get. Actually, I could talk food all day and night: the best man at my wedding worked an organic lamb and pig farm for awhile, now he works at Stone Barns Center, a demonstration farm practicing sustainable local etc. farming.
My diet used to consist mainly of lamb, beef, and pork from his farm or farms of his friends in upstate NY, eggs from him also, and my CSA (organic co-op) membership. This was when I lived in downtown Philadelphia in the center of the continuously-developed eatern seaboard. Then I moved to the great midwestern United States, America's heartland, and guess what? Finding local agriculture is damn near impossible. Doesn't that seem backwards? Not with the intensive single-drop agribusiness that goes on in the US!
I'm a strong believer in local food, in-season food, and knowing where your food comes from. But in Indy I mainly shop at Trader Joe's (though there is a farmer's market and organic grocery that I can walk to once a week here).
PS if you don't buy into this "slow food" talk, anyone, think about how a cardboard tomato from the WalMart tastes, then how one you grow in your backyard tastes. That's how good all food should taste! Real eggs are practically red-gold in the yolk and they taste so damn good! I'll eat grass-fed fresh beef pratically raw, it's so yummy!
Also, Brooklynites, there's a mag out now called Edible Brooklyn that discusses these issues relative to that borough. Good stuff.
WonderK, can't you call this "Summer of Men"? That has a nice ring, too.
e, Gus is the same way with the outdoors - he doesn't like laying on the ground, he prefers sleeping on the couch after his brief wilderness rambles. And drinking running water from the tub, and for awhile we fed him witha fork. Spoiled!
My roommates have local CSA delivery but I couldn't afford to go in on it with them. They kindly share extra veggies with me, though, and the taste is always 300x better (stronger, fresher) than store-bought veggies. The kale was incredible.
I still can't find a fruit source in Boston that rivals what we had in CA, alas. I actually dreamed of fresh fruit last night, and that is absolutely not a joke. It was like I was in the garden of eden. Sometimes I feel like I'm getting scurvy--I'm just not at all used to the fruit availability here. I will always miss the Israeli grapefruit sold in markets in Paris though--so sweet I literally bought one from the morning market and peeled it and ate the sections on the way to work, just like an orange! AMAZING.
lb – could not agree with you more on buying local food and knowing where your food comes from. WalMart cardboard tomatoes could not compare to homegrown tomatoes or buying product from a local store that sells organic products.
myriam – I had the same problem finding quality fruits and vegetables in Boston. California rivals in comparison and I wished I could point you to a reliable source - Best bet in lieu of growing your own – as liberty bell states - Trader Joe's. BTW, the Israeli grapefruit sounds marvelous!
I'm simultaneously posting and reviewing email and watching [url]Rock School[/url], the documentary about the Paul Green School for teaching rock to kids in Philadelphia. God I miss Philly. Jeez, I really, really miss Philly! The shots of the street and the rowhouses and the accents even....man.
Glad to see that stephanie and lb made it back safely. I sent Chris Daniel off the other day after taking him on my token tour of Cincinnati's signature architecture and making him eat chili.
Today I am off on my own excursion. Going to London, and while I'm excited to go, I wish I had a buddy to come with me. I'm meeting my friend there though. It's just all the airport stuff that's got my stomach in a knot. Also I have a new man-friend so the timing of my 10-day absense is a bit awkward but I'm going to get him something silly and British, I think.
I'll try to check in while I'm gone. Have a great week everyone....
have a great trip dubK. vacation season, perhaps - I'm off early next month for mine...also flying in and out of Heathrow (going to Spain and the Netherlands)...
welcome back lb (you made me blush on the 'babe' thread ;-)...
Last night we had some pho (vietnamese soup) at my friend's house. About 5 spoonfuls into the meal, she runs outside and returns with a handful or two of fresh basil. We shredded the fresh leaves up in our soup... It was SO GOOD!
coming back from 10 days in peru and am exhausted after flying all day yesterday... going out for dinner and drinks w/ a few friends that just got into town directly from the airport wasn't helpful for the rest...
flying yesterday wasn't so bad. definitely a lot of security about but it didn't seem any worse than say a moderate to slightly bad day in terms of delays...
just a taste of some of my photos... i took almost 500 so i'm still sorting through them. hope everyone else's vacations are going well.
Oh, you went to Macchu Picchu! My dream! Wow. I am hungering to get out of the city after all these awesome pics. Wish I had a car and could at least go see N.H. or the Cape before I leave Boston.
Cool, lb! I had no idea you were into local food (well, how could I know?). I am pretty bad at it. A little new to the idea and not very diligent - Trader Joe's for about 75% of my food, and even then it isn't very local or seasonal.
If you haven't already read Omnivore's Dilemma, you should. It's entertaining, and chock full of good info. Once again I feel like a cheap ad... I just like this book.
Well, i am off to a tofu festival in LA today. Not sure what to expect. Accept maybe some high levels of smug.
Last week I checking out the CSA choices in Mpls- there are over 50! so now I'm faced with choosing between a feminist collective organic farm and permaculture advocates and home delivery versus neighborhood drop-offs. hmmmm. Oh, there are farmers markets everyday of the week somewhere in the metro area, and some neighborhoods have two.
two weeks left till the move to mpls! (i'll miss LA when its cold and snowy)
LB- move up to the northwoods where you can get organic cheese curds!
Ants- welcome back, those pics are great!
K- 'manfreind', that shows lots of maturity - no boys for you?
treekiller I'm following you around the forums tonight as I procrastinate finishing an electrical plan.
I love cheese curds, got them often in upstate NY. I'd recommend the neighborhood pickup, if possible, as it allows you to meet more people. My friend and I were "sitters" every other week for the CSA we were in, gave people their shares and checked them off the list, and I met a lot of like-minded people including the producer of Fresh Air, very nice woman.
Remember, garpike, just don't buy Horizon organics! They aren't. A tofu festival, really? Or are you being facetious? Reminds me of a story I heard on NPR about the summer after major wildfires in LA: someone decided a good way to keep the brush short and thus less flammable was to bring in a bunch of goats to graze the hillsides. People with nice houses on the edge of the foothills started having "goat watching parties" when they knew the public goats would be in their vicinity. That's right, they came and sipped wine and watched the goats. I told my farmer friend this and he about fell out of his chair laughing: we modern people are so far removed from agriculture!
ACfA, great pics, looks beautiful. Glad you had fun.
Steven, just the icky jellyfish that stung me, I never actually saw it. And I was embarassed that two other women on the beach had my same bathing suit, dang!
I'm hoping there will be CSA in Chicago, but I'm not too worried. There probably will be something of the sort.
I also say: go with neighborhood pickup. My roommies share a nice Sunday morning walk down the hill and back up to pick up theirs--AND it gets dropped off at literally the single best bakery in town! So they usually come back bearing veggies and croissants, too. Mmmm. Good reason to get out of the house for a walk.
your comments on the lack of organics makes me sad, lb. mostly because it rings too true for comfort.
most of my family farms or is in the industry one way or tother. actually i should say most of my family USED to farm. when i was a kid i (rather perversely) loved the smell of the farm, feeding the cows, and always always wore cowboy boots (cow patties seriously made them a necessity) and my floppy cowboy hat. my uncle had 200 head of cattle and a small-ish bit of land where he grew wheat (NOT organically; back then the idea would not have been understood).
the stress of market finally got to him though, and now he rents his land to a supertanker of a company, and works the land FOR THEM. which is insane. small scale farming is very hard to make a go at in the market today. and if you have cattle the last few years has been a serious hardship cuz bse has made the old uns worth less than it costs to slaughter them. my uncle just quit it altogether. now his farm smells cleaner, but it also smells kinda wrong. no livestock. ah well. such is progress i guess.
when i talk to my gramma she always laughs at how organic farming today is pretty much how she and grampa used to do things when she was young...they never made a decent living at it though; not even close. now you can charge a premium for the methods that agri-business nearly squashed. she was born too late.
i dunno how it is going to go. whenever i go home i get to hear and see the hardships of farming up close and personal and i can't see organic going much farther than a small-ish market for the middle class...most farms just can't qualify cuz they have turned their land into hydroponic fields over the years. and toxic to boot. my family at least keep their own chickens and goats, and all grow their own veggies...but it ain't really normal. i think my mums town is one of the few places left in the area where it is still legal to ride a horse on the street.
what we have allowed to happen to farming is really just sad.
you know it is rather odd, but the japanese govt doesn't allow agri-business or intnl competition for farming, so even my old archi-boss keeps a few acres of land to grow rice on. it is all small scale, family-based business. every year my boss would take the natnl holdays to plant and then harvest the rice, keep enough to feed his family and sell the rest to the co-op. my father in law does the same. crazy eh?
No, no jump - it's good to read it all! I also fear for small farms and think the only way they will survive is if more upper-middle-vcass people start worrying about where their food is coming from. I also fear that Walmart "going organic" is only going to have a negative effect on US organics. But it's too early to go into that right now. Would rather just ruminate on using cowboy boots (aka "shitkickers" as we used to call them) for their real purpose. A good pair of boots is priceless, as you well know.
Love that your family in Japan stillgrows bits of their own food. My husband seriously wants to get us a couple pigs for our suburban backyard. I could be convinced, I think, if zoning allows it and we slaughter them fairly young!
I just looked at about 100 of SuperHeavy's 350 pictures from his road trip over on Flickr: SH, you are one lovely photographer (and a pretty lovely guy, too: "which are like rocks, but bigger" you crack me up!).
One of the chefs commented on the ban said "soon we'll only be allowed to eat grass!"
Sort of an egregious assault on freedom, if you ask me. Why not ban hot dogs? Or sausages? Or down comforters? Or everything made with eggs? Egg-laying chickens are treated horrendously.
If they have a problem with the way the food is produced then they need to lead a fight against agri-business. Legislate THEIR practices, not our eating choices.
If they have a problem with the way the food is produced then they need to lead a fight against agri-business.
Damn straight, myriam. It's like that metaphor I think John Irving uses: in a small town, where a string of late-night rapes had occurred, the council instituted a curfew on women being out after 10pm. But it was clearly a man committing the rapes, so why not institute a curfew on men? Nonsensical.
That being said, I hate geese, but even moreso I hate inhumane treatment of any animal, even a nasty mean aggressive pooping-all-over-the-bike-path animal.
I agree--force-feeding ducks is pretty despicable, if it hurts them (which I'm assuming it must).
That's an AWESOME metaphor--makes me think of the recent airport securty Transgesses Against Intelligence. If they're making everyone dump their liquids into bins where they all mix together, instead of taking them on the plane... hmm. Seems to me liquid explosives reacting in a trash can in the middle of a security line of thousands at a packed airport would kill more people than something on a plane.
And why are they just letting people check their liquid explosives into the belly of the plane, anyway? And STILL not screening most bags, let alone cargo and mail that get carried down there. Oh wait, and wasn't one of the UK plotters a Heathrow grounds employee with an all-access pass? HMMMM.
...and yet they've BROUGHT BACK the shoe-scanning decree.
Lb & M - yeah making connections and new freinds is a good reason to do the community pick-up choice. thanks for the suggestion!
on morning edition today their was a story about an autistic designer of corrals and enclosures for stock yards and slaugherhouses- she wanted to make the animals calm knowing that we will all die sometimes- pretty trippy to listen to at 6:45am...
If walmart's 'organic' efforts reduce the amount of pesticides and fertilizers being used- then that is a good thing. forcing agribusiness to cut back from their addiction to petrochemical poisons will make a significant impact on the health of our wildlands and waterways- maybe we'll still have salamanders in 10 years.
If we can take the worst 10% of irrigated fields out of production in the colorado river basin, then we will reduce salinity downstream by 90% - and improve the fertility of all the other farms!
The US bureau of reclaimation's policy has damages more land and promoted the growth of mega-agri more then any other federal policy. Just look at the california central valley- it cost billions to build the california aquaduct (including a nuclear power plant to pump the water) and we got only lettuce in return.
Sorry to be a horse's ass, but this is exactly the type of thing that makes me pissed that the lack of a "thesis" is supposedly what keeps me, as a B.Arch recipient, lower on the totem-pole than an M.Arch. Nevermind that I've taken more classes, had more design studios, did more intensive work than much of what I've seen come out of the GSD (at least) recently...I didn't write some glorified paper-cum-"building" that I did research for on the internet.
end rant.
**disclaimer: an architect that I highly respect wrote his thesis on film and architecture in 1982.
I agree with myriam's last post. But the poster was only asking for help -- as to whether he or she will actually engage in rigorous research is a completely different matter.
M- that's why horses have tails- to swat at the flies!
My master's thesis (to keep it off the official thread) was designing rural infrastructure to counteract the impact of Los Angeles Aquaducts on the landscape and people of Owens Valley - so I learned way too much about water politics in the west - Cadillac Desert is a great book to learn about how and why the western cities are where they are.
My undergrad thesis was way more pretentious and academic- analyzing Tschumi's Advertizements for Architecture - so very derrida and timely in 1994 - so bringing up film/architecture today seems so dated.
I know, I'm sure her thesis will be a complicated well-researched and excellent piece of academia for all the ages to enjoy, once she's done with it.
Anyway I don't really care about her cry for help--that's what this forum is for, after all--I care about the fact that most arch. thesis projects I see are no more rigorous than the regular final semester projects done in 5th year of undergrad arch. and yet they are held as the key argument for differentiation between the degrees.
lb, welcome back, the threads just aren't as interesting when you're away.
acfa, when you get those pics sorted, put them on flickr or something for us to see.
as far as fresh food in the mid-west, the unfortunate part is that to get truley fresh food, you kind of have to either go to famers markets like you said, or live in a rural community where you can find your local farmer that isn't part of the corporate farming complexity. Just avoid the farms with the "crystal farms" or other corp. signs stuck in their front lawns.
We got our milk fresh as a kid from the farm next door, and for the most part grew every vegetable we consumed ourselves (that's including corn ;-)). Ofcourse most of those farms are gone now, replaced by mid-western mcmansions.
I'm not opposed to helping people on here, it's just that mindset of creating a profile, asking for us to pick their thesis or college for them, then leaving that pisses me off. We need to stop humoring these people.
Argh, sorry about the bitching, but does anyone else get the feeling that we'll live to see the end of human society as we know it? I'm just waiting for the time that American's return home to their rubble houses and towns. It's all very depressing.
you guys have to go easy on me when i start posting stupid threads like that. or at least put me back in line. (i can't believe i'm only about 5 weeks away from starting my m.arch! simultaneous fear and anxiety and excitement threatens a premature breakdown)
lb, I really went to the Tofu Festival. Suprisingly no smug at all. It was nice. Very diverse, yet crowded. You buy "scrips" tickets and wait in lines to try small portions of various tofu foods. Tasty.
[sarcasm] Goat watching sounds fun! [/sarcasm]
Horizon is bad! Most free-range chicken coops are bad. A free-range chicken spends the first 4 weeks of its 9-week life confined indoors because the farmers are afraid of disease, rightfully so. No drugs allowed. When granted freedom at the age of 5 weeks, the chicken know no outdoors. They are too afraid to leave into the yard. The door is open, but no chicken leaves.
SBD, I don't think we'll see the end of human society in my life time.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if the American empire crumbles. And Americans consider this the end of human society. America, or more specifically American cities will become travel destinations and even more expensive, much like London.
We must blend into the choir, sing a static with the whole
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul
And to this endless race for property and privilege to be won
We must run
myriam ... again, you're right. I went to some M.Arch thesis final reviews at several schools this past Spring Semester. Not only was I shocked at the lack of rigor, but I was left agog by the amount of deference juries gave to mediocre projects.
Smoke, you're the good, intelligent, rigorous kind of academic. I like you.
And I'm too tired to go into it all any further. I'm so down today. Tell me, hwy oh why do I go to the trouble to specify exactly which recessed can, bulb, and trim I want in exactly which location when I know that I'll show up at the jobsite and see that the electrician has just dropped anonymous 6" cans at every lcoation anyway? What do these people think a lighting schedule is for? And apparently the electrician on the current job thinks the rectangle on my RCP is an island in the middle of the kitchen, not an existing skylight right there in the torn-apart ceiling that I pointed to last week and said "That remains as-is" oh my god I have so much respect for good tradesmen but I swear I wonder how come of these guys manage to figure out how to get their pants on in the morning!!! (No offense, please, puddles dear)
Oh lb, I sympathize totally. We've wasted a good chunk of our morning over here just chasing down the chain of responsibility to find out who to make fix something on a jobsite... because the GC refuses to take responsibility even though it's HIS project... etc etc etc. SO TYPICAL and SO TIRING.
Inspired by my trip to the Harvard Museum of Natural History this weekend.
Out of curiosity... were you spec'ing these?
They're my favorite recessed light as there is NO CAN to make CEILING ACNE! Flush-mounts all the way, baby. Screw that nasty black shadowed ceiling pockmark.
Every time I spec it though, the electrician unfailingly goes, "uhhh... that's a SHOWER light" as though I didn't notice the name, and as though IT MATTERS. They always try to put in the Lightolier version, which is cheaper and has a smaller lead time, and tell me "it's the same"--well it's NOT, you dummy, it has a convex lens, not a FLAT lens! And the covex lens casts a funny little shadow on the ceiling next to every damned one of the lights. So suck it up and put it what I spec'd, bitch.
I was stung by a bee today ... on my right foot. I was out watering my Mom's plants when this cute little honeybee decided to land on my foot and sting me. It flew away, leaving a good chunk of its abdomen stuck to my swelling foot.
I was also at my parent's ranch in South Texas all week ... saw this HUGE black snake.
I also watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith on cable last night ... what a terrible movie.
And last week, I saw Maximum Minimum, the Kraftwerk concert movie. Made me realize that watching a Kraftwerk concert is basically Barney for adults: soothing music, hypnotic visuals, etc, etc.
myriam- yeah, they do that because the waterproofed ones are more expensive, and you don't really need waterproofed lights all around the house, and pretty much everyone we ever have to deal with would prefer to assume that we're stupid and spec'd the wrong thing instead of thinking that we may have had a reason.
Thread Central
diamond in the rough
I've mised TC and everyone here and I'm sad I've missed such good conversation!
Using a sample of your hair, a simple test can show what percentage of your food intake is from corn. Garpike this is my new favorite random sentence. I'll just throw that out in casual conversation and see what response I get. Actually, I could talk food all day and night: the best man at my wedding worked an organic lamb and pig farm for awhile, now he works at Stone Barns Center, a demonstration farm practicing sustainable local etc. farming.
My diet used to consist mainly of lamb, beef, and pork from his farm or farms of his friends in upstate NY, eggs from him also, and my CSA (organic co-op) membership. This was when I lived in downtown Philadelphia in the center of the continuously-developed eatern seaboard. Then I moved to the great midwestern United States, America's heartland, and guess what? Finding local agriculture is damn near impossible. Doesn't that seem backwards? Not with the intensive single-drop agribusiness that goes on in the US!
I'm a strong believer in local food, in-season food, and knowing where your food comes from. But in Indy I mainly shop at Trader Joe's (though there is a farmer's market and organic grocery that I can walk to once a week here).
PS if you don't buy into this "slow food" talk, anyone, think about how a cardboard tomato from the WalMart tastes, then how one you grow in your backyard tastes. That's how good all food should taste! Real eggs are practically red-gold in the yolk and they taste so damn good! I'll eat grass-fed fresh beef pratically raw, it's so yummy!
Also, Brooklynites, there's a mag out now called Edible Brooklyn that discusses these issues relative to that borough. Good stuff.
WonderK, can't you call this "Summer of Men"? That has a nice ring, too.
e, Gus is the same way with the outdoors - he doesn't like laying on the ground, he prefers sleeping on the couch after his brief wilderness rambles. And drinking running water from the tub, and for awhile we fed him witha fork. Spoiled!
My roommates have local CSA delivery but I couldn't afford to go in on it with them. They kindly share extra veggies with me, though, and the taste is always 300x better (stronger, fresher) than store-bought veggies. The kale was incredible.
I still can't find a fruit source in Boston that rivals what we had in CA, alas. I actually dreamed of fresh fruit last night, and that is absolutely not a joke. It was like I was in the garden of eden. Sometimes I feel like I'm getting scurvy--I'm just not at all used to the fruit availability here. I will always miss the Israeli grapefruit sold in markets in Paris though--so sweet I literally bought one from the morning market and peeled it and ate the sections on the way to work, just like an orange! AMAZING.
make that: fruit (un)availability
lb – could not agree with you more on buying local food and knowing where your food comes from. WalMart cardboard tomatoes could not compare to homegrown tomatoes or buying product from a local store that sells organic products.
myriam – I had the same problem finding quality fruits and vegetables in Boston. California rivals in comparison and I wished I could point you to a reliable source - Best bet in lieu of growing your own – as liberty bell states - Trader Joe's. BTW, the Israeli grapefruit sounds marvelous!
I'm simultaneously posting and reviewing email and watching [url]Rock School[/url], the documentary about the Paul Green School for teaching rock to kids in Philadelphia. God I miss Philly. Jeez, I really, really miss Philly! The shots of the street and the rowhouses and the accents even....man.
Duh, sorry....Rock School
welcome back, lb!
didja see anything fun or interesting at the beach? did angus catch any see creatures?
hi lb. welcome back abracadabra , faia episode 28 talks about your dream.;.)
Vacation month, it seems.
Glad to see that stephanie and lb made it back safely. I sent Chris Daniel off the other day after taking him on my token tour of Cincinnati's signature architecture and making him eat chili.
Today I am off on my own excursion. Going to London, and while I'm excited to go, I wish I had a buddy to come with me. I'm meeting my friend there though. It's just all the airport stuff that's got my stomach in a knot. Also I have a new man-friend so the timing of my 10-day absense is a bit awkward but I'm going to get him something silly and British, I think.
I'll try to check in while I'm gone. Have a great week everyone....
have a great trip dubK. vacation season, perhaps - I'm off early next month for mine...also flying in and out of Heathrow (going to Spain and the Netherlands)...
welcome back lb (you made me blush on the 'babe' thread ;-)...
Last night we had some pho (vietnamese soup) at my friend's house. About 5 spoonfuls into the meal, she runs outside and returns with a handful or two of fresh basil. We shredded the fresh leaves up in our soup... It was SO GOOD!
coming back from 10 days in peru and am exhausted after flying all day yesterday... going out for dinner and drinks w/ a few friends that just got into town directly from the airport wasn't helpful for the rest...
flying yesterday wasn't so bad. definitely a lot of security about but it didn't seem any worse than say a moderate to slightly bad day in terms of delays...
just a taste of some of my photos... i took almost 500 so i'm still sorting through them. hope everyone else's vacations are going well.
Oh, you went to Macchu Picchu! My dream! Wow. I am hungering to get out of the city after all these awesome pics. Wish I had a car and could at least go see N.H. or the Cape before I leave Boston.
Cool, lb! I had no idea you were into local food (well, how could I know?). I am pretty bad at it. A little new to the idea and not very diligent - Trader Joe's for about 75% of my food, and even then it isn't very local or seasonal.
If you haven't already read Omnivore's Dilemma, you should. It's entertaining, and chock full of good info. Once again I feel like a cheap ad... I just like this book.
Well, i am off to a tofu festival in LA today. Not sure what to expect. Accept maybe some high levels of smug.
Last week I checking out the CSA choices in Mpls- there are over 50! so now I'm faced with choosing between a feminist collective organic farm and permaculture advocates and home delivery versus neighborhood drop-offs. hmmmm. Oh, there are farmers markets everyday of the week somewhere in the metro area, and some neighborhoods have two.
two weeks left till the move to mpls! (i'll miss LA when its cold and snowy)
LB- move up to the northwoods where you can get organic cheese curds!
Ants- welcome back, those pics are great!
K- 'manfreind', that shows lots of maturity - no boys for you?
treekiller I'm following you around the forums tonight as I procrastinate finishing an electrical plan.
I love cheese curds, got them often in upstate NY. I'd recommend the neighborhood pickup, if possible, as it allows you to meet more people. My friend and I were "sitters" every other week for the CSA we were in, gave people their shares and checked them off the list, and I met a lot of like-minded people including the producer of Fresh Air, very nice woman.
Remember, garpike, just don't buy Horizon organics! They aren't. A tofu festival, really? Or are you being facetious? Reminds me of a story I heard on NPR about the summer after major wildfires in LA: someone decided a good way to keep the brush short and thus less flammable was to bring in a bunch of goats to graze the hillsides. People with nice houses on the edge of the foothills started having "goat watching parties" when they knew the public goats would be in their vicinity. That's right, they came and sipped wine and watched the goats. I told my farmer friend this and he about fell out of his chair laughing: we modern people are so far removed from agriculture!
ACfA, great pics, looks beautiful. Glad you had fun.
Steven, just the icky jellyfish that stung me, I never actually saw it. And I was embarassed that two other women on the beach had my same bathing suit, dang!
I'm hoping there will be CSA in Chicago, but I'm not too worried. There probably will be something of the sort.
I also say: go with neighborhood pickup. My roommies share a nice Sunday morning walk down the hill and back up to pick up theirs--AND it gets dropped off at literally the single best bakery in town! So they usually come back bearing veggies and croissants, too. Mmmm. Good reason to get out of the house for a walk.
whaddya know... i spend 10 days in peru and never get sick from food or the near-freezing temperatures next to lake titicaca...
come home and get sick from the airport food at the miami airport and catch a cold in LA... oh cruel irony...
figgers, acfa.
your comments on the lack of organics makes me sad, lb. mostly because it rings too true for comfort.
most of my family farms or is in the industry one way or tother. actually i should say most of my family USED to farm. when i was a kid i (rather perversely) loved the smell of the farm, feeding the cows, and always always wore cowboy boots (cow patties seriously made them a necessity) and my floppy cowboy hat. my uncle had 200 head of cattle and a small-ish bit of land where he grew wheat (NOT organically; back then the idea would not have been understood).
the stress of market finally got to him though, and now he rents his land to a supertanker of a company, and works the land FOR THEM. which is insane. small scale farming is very hard to make a go at in the market today. and if you have cattle the last few years has been a serious hardship cuz bse has made the old uns worth less than it costs to slaughter them. my uncle just quit it altogether. now his farm smells cleaner, but it also smells kinda wrong. no livestock. ah well. such is progress i guess.
when i talk to my gramma she always laughs at how organic farming today is pretty much how she and grampa used to do things when she was young...they never made a decent living at it though; not even close. now you can charge a premium for the methods that agri-business nearly squashed. she was born too late.
i dunno how it is going to go. whenever i go home i get to hear and see the hardships of farming up close and personal and i can't see organic going much farther than a small-ish market for the middle class...most farms just can't qualify cuz they have turned their land into hydroponic fields over the years. and toxic to boot. my family at least keep their own chickens and goats, and all grow their own veggies...but it ain't really normal. i think my mums town is one of the few places left in the area where it is still legal to ride a horse on the street.
what we have allowed to happen to farming is really just sad.
you know it is rather odd, but the japanese govt doesn't allow agri-business or intnl competition for farming, so even my old archi-boss keeps a few acres of land to grow rice on. it is all small scale, family-based business. every year my boss would take the natnl holdays to plant and then harvest the rice, keep enough to feed his family and sell the rest to the co-op. my father in law does the same. crazy eh?
oh damn.
sorry, i swore i erased moren half of that before posting. didn't mean to ramble on so much. ;-0
No, no jump - it's good to read it all! I also fear for small farms and think the only way they will survive is if more upper-middle-vcass people start worrying about where their food is coming from. I also fear that Walmart "going organic" is only going to have a negative effect on US organics. But it's too early to go into that right now. Would rather just ruminate on using cowboy boots (aka "shitkickers" as we used to call them) for their real purpose. A good pair of boots is priceless, as you well know.
Love that your family in Japan stillgrows bits of their own food. My husband seriously wants to get us a couple pigs for our suburban backyard. I could be convinced, I think, if zoning allows it and we slaughter them fairly young!
I just looked at about 100 of SuperHeavy's 350 pictures from his road trip over on Flickr: SH, you are one lovely photographer (and a pretty lovely guy, too: "which are like rocks, but bigger" you crack me up!).
I am just annoyed that Chicago has banned the sale/consumption of foie gras thanks to animal lobbyists. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And scary!
myriam, think of that poor fat goose. poor goose. ;-)
mmm yummy force-fed nasty mean goose!
One of the chefs commented on the ban said "soon we'll only be allowed to eat grass!"
Sort of an egregious assault on freedom, if you ask me. Why not ban hot dogs? Or sausages? Or down comforters? Or everything made with eggs? Egg-laying chickens are treated horrendously.
If they have a problem with the way the food is produced then they need to lead a fight against agri-business. Legislate THEIR practices, not our eating choices.
Damn straight, myriam. It's like that metaphor I think John Irving uses: in a small town, where a string of late-night rapes had occurred, the council instituted a curfew on women being out after 10pm. But it was clearly a man committing the rapes, so why not institute a curfew on men? Nonsensical.
That being said, I hate geese, but even moreso I hate inhumane treatment of any animal, even a nasty mean aggressive pooping-all-over-the-bike-path animal.
The mid-thirites of TC will be known as the "food choices" pages - like the first couple pages had a lot of pictures of our dogs!
I agree--force-feeding ducks is pretty despicable, if it hurts them (which I'm assuming it must).
That's an AWESOME metaphor--makes me think of the recent airport securty Transgesses Against Intelligence. If they're making everyone dump their liquids into bins where they all mix together, instead of taking them on the plane... hmm. Seems to me liquid explosives reacting in a trash can in the middle of a security line of thousands at a packed airport would kill more people than something on a plane.
And why are they just letting people check their liquid explosives into the belly of the plane, anyway? And STILL not screening most bags, let alone cargo and mail that get carried down there. Oh wait, and wasn't one of the UK plotters a Heathrow grounds employee with an all-access pass? HMMMM.
...and yet they've BROUGHT BACK the shoe-scanning decree.
Lb & M - yeah making connections and new freinds is a good reason to do the community pick-up choice. thanks for the suggestion!
on morning edition today their was a story about an autistic designer of corrals and enclosures for stock yards and slaugherhouses- she wanted to make the animals calm knowing that we will all die sometimes- pretty trippy to listen to at 6:45am...
If walmart's 'organic' efforts reduce the amount of pesticides and fertilizers being used- then that is a good thing. forcing agribusiness to cut back from their addiction to petrochemical poisons will make a significant impact on the health of our wildlands and waterways- maybe we'll still have salamanders in 10 years.
If we can take the worst 10% of irrigated fields out of production in the colorado river basin, then we will reduce salinity downstream by 90% - and improve the fertility of all the other farms!
The US bureau of reclaimation's policy has damages more land and promoted the growth of mega-agri more then any other federal policy. Just look at the california central valley- it cost billions to build the california aquaduct (including a nuclear power plant to pump the water) and we got only lettuce in return.
you forgot about gilroy, the garlic capitol of the world. that's what we got. and in my own gastronomic book, garlic can do no wrong.
That's fascinating--where did you learn all that?
Sorry to be a horse's ass, but this is exactly the type of thing that makes me pissed that the lack of a "thesis" is supposedly what keeps me, as a B.Arch recipient, lower on the totem-pole than an M.Arch. Nevermind that I've taken more classes, had more design studios, did more intensive work than much of what I've seen come out of the GSD (at least) recently...I didn't write some glorified paper-cum-"building" that I did research for on the internet.
end rant.
**disclaimer: an architect that I highly respect wrote his thesis on film and architecture in 1982.
I agree with myriam's last post. But the poster was only asking for help -- as to whether he or she will actually engage in rigorous research is a completely different matter.
M- that's why horses have tails- to swat at the flies!
My master's thesis (to keep it off the official thread) was designing rural infrastructure to counteract the impact of Los Angeles Aquaducts on the landscape and people of Owens Valley - so I learned way too much about water politics in the west - Cadillac Desert is a great book to learn about how and why the western cities are where they are.
My undergrad thesis was way more pretentious and academic- analyzing Tschumi's Advertizements for Architecture - so very derrida and timely in 1994 - so bringing up film/architecture today seems so dated.
I know, I'm sure her thesis will be a complicated well-researched and excellent piece of academia for all the ages to enjoy, once she's done with it.
Anyway I don't really care about her cry for help--that's what this forum is for, after all--I care about the fact that most arch. thesis projects I see are no more rigorous than the regular final semester projects done in 5th year of undergrad arch. and yet they are held as the key argument for differentiation between the degrees.
wow, a lot went on TC this weekend.
lb, welcome back, the threads just aren't as interesting when you're away.
acfa, when you get those pics sorted, put them on flickr or something for us to see.
as far as fresh food in the mid-west, the unfortunate part is that to get truley fresh food, you kind of have to either go to famers markets like you said, or live in a rural community where you can find your local farmer that isn't part of the corporate farming complexity. Just avoid the farms with the "crystal farms" or other corp. signs stuck in their front lawns.
We got our milk fresh as a kid from the farm next door, and for the most part grew every vegetable we consumed ourselves (that's including corn ;-)). Ofcourse most of those farms are gone now, replaced by mid-western mcmansions.
I'm not opposed to helping people on here, it's just that mindset of creating a profile, asking for us to pick their thesis or college for them, then leaving that pisses me off. We need to stop humoring these people.
Argh, sorry about the bitching, but does anyone else get the feeling that we'll live to see the end of human society as we know it? I'm just waiting for the time that American's return home to their rubble houses and towns. It's all very depressing.
it's the perpetual homework problem...
you guys have to go easy on me when i start posting stupid threads like that. or at least put me back in line. (i can't believe i'm only about 5 weeks away from starting my m.arch! simultaneous fear and anxiety and excitement threatens a premature breakdown)
lb, I really went to the Tofu Festival. Suprisingly no smug at all. It was nice. Very diverse, yet crowded. You buy "scrips" tickets and wait in lines to try small portions of various tofu foods. Tasty.
[sarcasm] Goat watching sounds fun! [/sarcasm]
Horizon is bad! Most free-range chicken coops are bad. A free-range chicken spends the first 4 weeks of its 9-week life confined indoors because the farmers are afraid of disease, rightfully so. No drugs allowed. When granted freedom at the age of 5 weeks, the chicken know no outdoors. They are too afraid to leave into the yard. The door is open, but no chicken leaves.
SBD, I don't think we'll see the end of human society in my life time.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if the American empire crumbles. And Americans consider this the end of human society. America, or more specifically American cities will become travel destinations and even more expensive, much like London.
We must blend into the choir, sing a static with the whole
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul
And to this endless race for property and privilege to be won
We must run
myriam ... again, you're right. I went to some M.Arch thesis final reviews at several schools this past Spring Semester. Not only was I shocked at the lack of rigor, but I was left agog by the amount of deference juries gave to mediocre projects.
Smoke, you're the good, intelligent, rigorous kind of academic. I like you.
And I'm too tired to go into it all any further. I'm so down today. Tell me, hwy oh why do I go to the trouble to specify exactly which recessed can, bulb, and trim I want in exactly which location when I know that I'll show up at the jobsite and see that the electrician has just dropped anonymous 6" cans at every lcoation anyway? What do these people think a lighting schedule is for? And apparently the electrician on the current job thinks the rectangle on my RCP is an island in the middle of the kitchen, not an existing skylight right there in the torn-apart ceiling that I pointed to last week and said "That remains as-is" oh my god I have so much respect for good tradesmen but I swear I wonder how come of these guys manage to figure out how to get their pants on in the morning!!! (No offense, please, puddles dear)
[end rant] And sorry for all the typos, kids.
Oh lb, I sympathize totally. We've wasted a good chunk of our morning over here just chasing down the chain of responsibility to find out who to make fix something on a jobsite... because the GC refuses to take responsibility even though it's HIS project... etc etc etc. SO TYPICAL and SO TIRING.
Here's something to cheer you up:
The Top Ten Useless Limbs!
Inspired by my trip to the Harvard Museum of Natural History this weekend.
Out of curiosity... were you spec'ing these?
They're my favorite recessed light as there is NO CAN to make CEILING ACNE! Flush-mounts all the way, baby. Screw that nasty black shadowed ceiling pockmark.
Every time I spec it though, the electrician unfailingly goes, "uhhh... that's a SHOWER light" as though I didn't notice the name, and as though IT MATTERS. They always try to put in the Lightolier version, which is cheaper and has a smaller lead time, and tell me "it's the same"--well it's NOT, you dummy, it has a convex lens, not a FLAT lens! And the covex lens casts a funny little shadow on the ceiling next to every damned one of the lights. So suck it up and put it what I spec'd, bitch.
(thanks, lb!!!)
I was stung by a bee today ... on my right foot. I was out watering my Mom's plants when this cute little honeybee decided to land on my foot and sting me. It flew away, leaving a good chunk of its abdomen stuck to my swelling foot.
I was also at my parent's ranch in South Texas all week ... saw this HUGE black snake.
I also watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith on cable last night ... what a terrible movie.
And last week, I saw Maximum Minimum, the Kraftwerk concert movie. Made me realize that watching a Kraftwerk concert is basically Barney for adults: soothing music, hypnotic visuals, etc, etc.
myriam- yeah, they do that because the waterproofed ones are more expensive, and you don't really need waterproofed lights all around the house, and pretty much everyone we ever have to deal with would prefer to assume that we're stupid and spec'd the wrong thing instead of thinking that we may have had a reason.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.