At the same time, I’ve been busy launching a brand-new site that has its own bright future: LoveandTrash.com!

It’s a project with some of my very good friends. We’re calling it “a DIY blog for people who do things differently.” There’s a ton of content, some very fun stuff, and lots of “actionable inspiration” to get you motivated.

The truth is, the more I traveled, the more I found that while I love traveling, my true passion was more on the environmental/DIY track. Love and Trash gives that passion a voice, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

So stop by and check it out! I think you’ll like it. LoveandTrash.com

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A congress member speaks at the morning fire ritual

In October, I traveled to The Farm in Tennessee, where the 10th Annual Bioregional Congress was taking place. I was excited to be there, though I couldn’t help but wonder…

What’s a bioregional congress?

Good question. To understand it, you need to understand “bioregionalism”. From biocongress.org:

[Bioregionalism] is taking the time to learn the possibilities of place. It is a mindfulness of local environment, history, and community aspirations that leads to a sustainable future. It relies on safe and renewable sources of food and energy. It ensures employment by supplying a rich diversity of services within the community, by recycling our resources, and by exchanging prudent surpluses with other regions. Bioregionalism is working to satisfy basic needs locally, such as education, health care and self-governance.

Essentially, bioregionalism boils down to getting more out of what you have, instead of importing what you don’t. Many new organizations and communities are working in this way, with an eye toward resource (and human-resource) management.

Shared meals in the common center, prepared and paid for by attendees

The Congress started in 1984, at which age your humble author was just learning to sing to trees. Since then, it’s continued to grow into a vibrant semiannual gathering of people from throughout the Americas who are actively experimenting with new forms of community and environmental awareness.

For example:

• a group called Ecobarrios who are working with residents in Mexico City’s housing developments to institute sustainable practices, composting and gardening (more on Ecobarrios);
• a housewife from Nashville who just got involved in nonprofits and wants to find out what the challenges are from a marketing perspective;
• a self-described eco-punk from LA who organizes traveling shows to teach underprivileged communities around the world about sustainability;
• several members of intentional communities from North to South America, here to discuss what works, what doesn’t, and where they are headed.

There is a fair share of outré hippie yahooism here as well. Tie-dye, massage, singing with the earth, singing Woody Guthrie songs: it all happened. But that hippie veneer was only skin-deep: beneath the surface, every person here is honestly, fully dedicated to working for change.

These guys talked animatedly for a long, long time.

Hippie Soup to Nuts

Each morning, the entire group met to discuss the day’s topics. Nothing was predetermined; it all had to be hashed out by discussion and vote. Laborious, yes—but it meant that everyone present had a voice.

These folks have their system down TIGHT. I’ve never seen anything like it. They conducted a huge meeting, circle-style, in a format where everybody got a chance to talk, with minimal interruption, almost no off-topic ranting, and not a single insult. You try that sometime with a group of 100 people.

That was my first sign that the people here were not just trying to share, give and change, but making it happen.

Proposed lecture topics for a single afternoon

The next sign was the depth, breadth and complexity of the discussion topics. People here were not speaking in generalities, but addressing topics that had direct effects on their work.

One woman wanted to discuss GMO seeds, and how we can keep them out of gardens. A small group proposed a new community and asked for potential members. A man offered dowsing lessons. A Venezuelan woman offered to share stories from the revolution. A short film on Cuba’s survival without petroleum drew a crowd.

Throughout the day, people gathered in various groups and addressed various questions and topics. The level of intellect was high, and the work accomplished was impressive.

In the evening, there was food, music and dancing.

I could only stay one day at the Bioregional Congress, but I left completely inspired. I fully intend to take part in future Congresses: as the environmental movement ramps up, these are the people who are leading the way to the future. I have faith they’ll get us there.

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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1. Hear live music on a streetcorner.

On a sunny day, the downtown area is always populated with buskers. Sometimes it’s your basic guy-with-a-guitar setup; sometimes there are a few dudes in overalls or tweed; sometimes it’s a full band with amplification. One sure thing is that you won’t have to walk far to find a street performer to tickle your ears for free (donations appreciated).

2. Feed your head at Malaprop’s Bookstore.

Granted, Malaprop’s is a business, so they also appreciate monetary contributions. But if you’re broke, spend a buck on coffee and peruse their incredible selection of literature.

This store is one of the places that convinced me so utterly of Asheville’s uniqueness. In fact, Malaprop’s seems to assume that its clientele is highly intelligent, educated in self-sufficiency, and actively committed to social/environmental change.

And there’s the proof: a book on Cattle Health in the Green Living section? We’re not in San Francisco any more.

3. Take a nature walk.

While exploring downtown, I picked up a map that indicated there was a botanical garden next to the UNC campus. Heading out that way, I stumbled across the Reed Creek “interpretive trail”, which was a hugely educational resource. It guides you through an area that was once occupied by buildings; along the trail, a series of signs informs you of what was here, what’s here now and why. In the space of a city block or two, I learned a ton about local history and botany.

The Reed Creek trail lets out near the Asheville Botanical Gardens, a huge and beautifully-managed set of trails, greens and buildings. It’s an easy walk, and just like at Reed Creek, the Botanical Gardens are full of information on native species. Make sure you stop at the creek, an excellent spot for a wee nosh and/or nap in the dappled sunlight.

Click for more photos of Reed Creek and the Botanical Gardens.

4. Go on a self-guided art tour.

As I mentioned recently, Asheville is full of art both strange and beautiful. From the underpass mural, to political graffiti, to statuary both commissioned and independent, there’s art all over the place. And that’s just on the sidewalk—but there are also tons of art galleries for your browsing pleasure.

Don’t miss Chicken Alley, a strange little street that looks straight out of New Orleans or Oakland. It’s haunted by living artists and one dead doctor: Dr. Jamie Smith was killed in a 1902 barfight and still hangs around the place.

If you’re more into modern-age ephemera, guess what? Chicken Alley’s got free wifi. Yippee!

5a. (for hippies) Hippie out at the Drum Circle.

photo by BillRhodesPhoto

Apparently this is a big deal, but I am somewhat opposed to drum circles. If they’re your thing, that’s super! There’s a giant one here every Friday night, on Patton Avenue. Just follow the smell of patchouli and sounds of wild djembe.

5b. (for nerds and queers) Get your summer Shakespeare fix.

photo by Zen

What self-respecting town doesn’t have a free Shakespeare-in-the-park series these days? Asheville is right on point, offering free performances all summer (Friday, Saturday & Sunday nights only). The address is #1 Gay Street, so you ought to feel right at home.

Want more, more, more free stuff? I know right? Cheapskate your heart out at Asheville’s official Free Things to Do page.

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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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
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One year ago, I visited the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, a shop in Oakland, California that supplies teachers and artists alike with craft supplies. The store takes in community donations and provides bin after bin of glorious junk. It’s also highly photographable. Some of these photos have been among my most popular of all time. Can you guess which?

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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.

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This is what I found in Oakland dumpsters this morning. Well, this and a croissant which I burned already in the toaster oven.

Today’s grocery run took about an hour and cost me $0, plus I got a workout biking across town. I came home with 3 loaves of artisan bread (sour, sweet, rye) and half a loaf of sliced sourdough; a head of organic lettuce; a bunch of organic sweet baby broccoli; 3 peppers; a half cantaloupe (still shrinkwrapped); a bunch of fresh sage and parsley; and a container of mango-papaya salsa.

This is the second time I’ve gone dumpstering since I got to Oakland. The first time took much longer, as Lex & I had to bike all over town to find the good spots. That time we supplemented our booty with some ground beef from the store. When we got home, the whole house pitched in and we had some kickass burger kabobs (like hamburgers, but on a stick and roasted in the firepit. Inspired by a Christmas ornament, but that’s another story for another day).

A few of my temporary housemates have worked in food service, which helps when you’re trying to figure out if something could be contaminated. And yes, that’s extremely important. I won’t get into the details of dumpster-diving etiquette, but if you’re interested, you can find a lot of information here and here.

What I can say is that it’s really not that hard, OR as messy as you might think. It’s fairly easy to find good, unspoiled food—and once you find good dumpsters, you can usually visit them over and over.

If you’ve got the right kind of friends, you’ll soon find that there are hidden treasures and well-kept secrets that provide steady streams of free food. I’ve heard of a few places where store employees have a deal with local freegans, and vast amounts of fresh-enough, still-sealed goods change hands in midnight parking lots.

Dumpstering is a good way to survive in the city without having to shop constantly, which is good for my wallet and just a useful skill to have. I’m still buying meat and dairy from the store, and taking my vitamins; if I were planning to stay in Oakland longer, however, I might try to make a real go of the urban-freegan thing.

As it stands, though, I’m headed North in a couple of days. Time to get back to the woods! See you there…

PS – Punks, freaks, and bums aren’t the only ones dumpster diving. Check out this article on Burt’s Bees’ $25,000 trash-unpackin.

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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We’re installing an arbor to surround Faithful Fountain. I bet you never thought about how all that big art was installed, did you? Yeah, me too.

The arbor is made of rebar. It was built in the metal shop, which is down by the house. In order to move it up the hill to Dandelion Ballad, Candace and Loren had to cut it into four sections—each of which is still bigger than a truck can easily carry. I honestly have no idea how they got it up the hill. But I know one thing for sure: these folks can really work with what they have.

Introducing the Power Wagon.

click to enlarge

Yep, that’s an old Dodge (circa 1948) with a boom lift mounted to the front. It takes us (and by “us” I mean “Loren”) hours to get the boom positioned correctly and ropes tied just right so they don’t take off the top of the fountain, but damn if Loren doesn’t work it out.

And then, we start raising it up. It goes a few inches at a time: lift it a little, put cinderblocks underneath, shorten the ropes, lift again. I am full of doubt: there’s no way this will work, the angles are all wrong, it’s too heavy, etc etc. But before long, lo and behold, we’ve got it a couple feet off the ground!

click to enlarge

So now comes the positioning. It’s got to be just right, so that the arched doorways are aligned with the center. Candace and Loren and I all take turns staring at it, hemming and hawing, pointing, lifting, turning the arbor until it looks pretty much right-on. My favorite part is when the boom needs to move to the right a hair: Loren just puts a jack under the left side of the truck, and cranks it up until the positioning is better.

And there it is. Next Loren busts out a transit level, and we get the heights just right. From there it’s a simple matter of hammering in about a zillion stakes (which we make by welding together lengths of recycled rebar) and mounting the arbor so it stands on its own. Tedious work, that, but it gets done despite my griping.

All told, it takes us nearly four days to get that crazy thing in the ground. But the closer we get to finishing it, the better and better it looks; by the end, our furrowed brows have turned to big grins, and dang if we don’t have a piece of art on our hands.

Another victory for Dandelion Ballad!

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By the time I reached Boston, I’d been on the road for ten months. I’d already worn through a pair of boots, and repacked my entire bag with summer clothes. But one thing that happens when you’re traveling is that clothes just don’t last as long.

Part of it was due to the fact that I was washing things however I could: hot water, cold water, river water, bathtub water, laundry soap, shampoo, Dr. Bronner’s, scrubbing-with-gravel… and yes, that was wearing my poor threads to shreds.

But mostly, the demise of my duds was due to the fact that I wore the same thing every gosh-dang day. New outfit? Ha! Not on the road, not when you’re broke. Now, I’ve never been much of a clothing horse, but still… a girl’s gotta dress up sometimes.

And so there I was in Boston in my worn-out hand-me-downs, pirate pants, threadbare socks and stained shirts—and I said to myself, “Hun, it’s time for a new look.”

(...)
Read the rest of Boston's Best Thrift? $1-A-Pound at the Garment District. (315 words)

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I ain’t gonna lie, I was scared to visit New York. Somewhere in my small-town hippie-chick psyche, I was convinced that city would eat me alive, and spit me out broke onto a westward-bound highway.

But my poverty and naïveté have never stopped me before, right? So I headed for the Big Cheese, and (thanks to good buddies Landry, YP & Eggie) found myself in safe and luxurious Brooklyn digs. All that was left, then, was for me to tackle Manhattan.

I saddled up The Navigator and hopped a subway, and soon became enthronged in the teeming masses of New York.

(...)
Read the rest of Chicken in the City (934 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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