UPDATE: Polls are closed! And the winner is…

LOVEANDTRASH.COM

We’ll be launching in just a few weeks. (Don’t know what this is about? Read below…)

Big news from Raggedy Annarchy and Jessica The Hun:
We’re launching a new blog
dedicated to
creativity, radical interdependence
and
how to be awesome for cheap.

This will be a place where YOU can show off your projects, promote your friends’ good work, and pick up new ideas. It’s dedicated to the little things we all do in our lives: to guerrilla gardeners and creative welders; to bike riders and secondhand fashionistas; to fire dancers, banjo pickers, amateur collagists and part-time poets.

Name That Site → WIN

Now through Saturday 3/6, leave a comment below with your name suggestion! We’ll pick the finalists, and run a vote next week.

If your suggestion becomes the name of this new site, you get a one-year Flickr Pro account, or a year’s subscription to one of these mags: Juxtapoz, Make, Wired, National Geographic or Popular Science. Your choice.

Need some inspiration? Here are some examples of what we’ll be publishing:

art video bikes general food pr0n zombies unicorns sewing lessons motivation ridiculous recycling poetry	photos fashion recipes (vegan and meatatarian) clowns weird welding inspiration transmogrification music lots and lots of art fabulous trash
…and whatever else YOU come up with.

Please note:
1. We get to suggest names too. If our suggestion wins, we keep the prize.
2. You can check to see whether your name idea is available: click here and search for your domain name.

OK GO.
Comment below to win!

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2010. | Permalink | 56 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: alternative, art, contest, diy, featured posts, freegan, garbage, gardening, green living, how-to, prize, prizes, recycling, reuse, starving artists, sustainable, zombies

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August was a slow time for me. I’d parted ways with Quiet Earp back in Boston; he took off for Nevada and Burning Man, while I continued eastward. But I’d been traveling fast, and I needed a break to stop and write about what I’d seen.

It was baking-hot in Beantown, but New Hampshire was halcyon and verdant. My friend Epona lived up there, and had a place I could stay for a few weeks. I hopped on the Downeaster, and soon found myself in Dover.

the Farmhaus, by Epona

Epona lived in an old farmhouse overlooking a wide field. She and her roommates Jamie and Chris had been out there for years, creating their own version of the American Gothic. Three fiercely independent and blazingly intelligent artist-types, they’d filled the Farmhaus with macabre sculptures, stark photographs, maquettes of bone and feather, hand-forged metal works and artfully-deceased flora. Cobwebs and dead things were considered art, and left to flourish in dark corners.

It was the kind of place that could give little children nightmares—which was precisely why I loved it. After months on the tourist circuit, my inner artist craved a dose of freak. In the Farmhaus, I found it.

The inside of the Farmhaus may have been a beautiful crypt, but the outside bustled with life. Jamie, Chris and Epona, in the true, self-reliant spirit of New Hampshire, were teaching themselves to farm.

They had a roost of chickens, raised from infancy and coaxed each evening from the tree branches to their homemade coop. A pair of guinea hens cackled and screamed their way around the yard, followed by a brood of twelve chicks (which, as we soon discovered, they would defend to the death from the likes of us). A white-eyed wolf-dog called Volka strutted, pranced and skulked about, occasionally killing something he shouldn’t. And in every corner of the yard was a garden patch.

I didn’t take many pictures at the Farmhaus. I was there to write, and write I did. I rarely looked up from the computer—but whenever I did, Chris, Jamie and Epona were there with food, beverages, entertainment, art, gardening advice… and we had FUN. It felt good to relax, and it wasn’t long before I felt renewed.

 

Random photos: a night out in Portsmouth, NH

I stayed out there for two weeks or so, and when Epona’s friend Hillary went out of town, I housesat for another week with her head-like-an-anvil bull mastiff, Oden. During that time, I took just a few photos—and so, for the next two days, I’ll be posting images from New Hampshire: the most idyllic August you can imagine in the semi-rugged semi-wilds of the Northeast.

See you tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s Oden.

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: alternative, art, Dover, farm, featured posts, New Hampshire, photography, portsmouth, starving artists

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I was going to write a post on the art of the underground bike scene, but these photos tell the story better themselves. So, for your Wednesday-morning consideration: the art, the fire, the fury and the girls of the bike world. Enjoy!

So you know what you’re looking at: the people in these photos have created everything you see with their own hands. They made their own bikes, costumes, hairdos, jackets, flamethrowers, circus rides and just about everything else they could think of. DIY, eat your heart out.

Big love to my friends pictured here, including Hollis, Eliza, Moses, Doyle, Big Daddy, Katy Bell, Cyclecide, Rat Patrol, Black Label, and oh Johnny Payphone do I see a bike or two of yours in there?

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: adventure, alternative, art, bicycle, biking, buy nothing, citizen science, community, counterculture, design, diy, fire, freegan, garbage, green living, outsider art, photography, radical, recycling, reuse, robots, starving artists, superhero, transportation

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No two ways about it, good firewood is the most important thing you can have up here. When it gets down to 20 degrees each night and never fully thaws during the day, even a well-built house doesn’t keep you warm— and few things are more frustrating than spending three hours trying to nurse a smoky, smoldering fire with green wood.

And so, the procurement and preparation of good firewood becomes a major occupation in this life. And there’s no easy way to go about it: wanna fit a tree in your woodstove? You’ll have to work for it.

(...)
Read the rest of Things I Learned: Firewood! (458 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: California, fire, how-to, Humboldt, Siskiyou, wood

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click to enlarge

In honor of the occasion, we had us a party. It started with a mock election: everyone voted via secret ballot. After two rounds of voting, candidates from the Slumber Party, Dismal Party, Bachelor Party, Sausage Party, Party Poopers, Slightly Silly Party, and Pants Party were ultimately beat out by the Republican Party.

Yes, George W Bush and Dick Cheney were elected President and Vice President. I must say, however, that the results were highly contested; honestly, they were somewhat difficult to believe. I really thought the Pants Party, (MC Hammer, Marky Mark) would emerge victorious.

(...)
Read the rest of Burnin’ Bush (63 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: art, California, fire, politics, robots, starving artists

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