Carp's Conversations

Setting Up the Party

James Carp — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:44:34 +0000

Howdy!

I’m glad you stopped by for a visit. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely prepared to receive guests right now. You see, I’m still building this here website.

I’m traveling in South America right now, and, as you might be aware, traveling in a foreign country trying to learn the language is a pretty all consuming activity. I hope you can forgive me for not having the website all finished and pretty looking and full of neat ideas right this moment. I’ll be sure to let everybody who follows my Twitter or knows me on Facebook know the moment I’ve got something more interesting up here.

In the meantime, I strongly recommend you read this article. (As you read find the ideas behind the antiquated language, it was written in the 1930s) It had a profound impact on me, and is a conversation that we, as a society, badly need to have. Also, I have two partly defunct blogs MakingTable and IfYouNeverDid (this one gets updated intermittently). If you’re interested in me, those might be a good place to start.

If you’re trying to get ahold of me, try james [dot] carp [at] gmail [dot] com. (I’m sure you’re smart enough to make that into a working e-mail address.)

This website graciously and generously hosted by the fabulous Sarah Dopp!

Hello world!

James Carp — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:34:19 +0000

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

The Universe has a Wicked Sense of Humor, but I Love it Anyway.

James Carp — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:38:00 +0000

And so, with a great party but little fanfare, my program with Living Routes in Lamas has come to an end. It was a good program, and if you ever want to visit the high Amazon of Peru and get out of the beaten tourist track, I highly recommend the place where I stayed, the Sangapia Hotel (link needed). It was an eye opening experience, and I learned a whole heck of a lot about the indigenous groups in the area, and their struggles to keep their forests intact and preserve their way of life. They need money pretty badly – political organizing takes legwork, but what is two days away on foot is often only a few hours away on a truck – they’re trying to buy a 4×4 truck. However, I believe that Haiti needs your cash much more right now, so I’ll hold the plug for SEPKA (the indigenous rights organization that I got to know a little) for later.

The one thing I will throw out there – if any of you know a grad student or other person with environmental impact assessment abilities, this is desperately needed to try to counter the obviously false environmental impact assessments produced oil and extraction companies which state that their activity will have no impact on the forest. The reason I suggest a grad student is because these indigenous communities don’t have the money to buy a used truck, much less hire a professional environmental scientist. On the off chance that one of ya’ll does have that connection, put them in touch with me via e-mail and I’ll pass them on to the communities in need.

Now for everyone’s favorite: a story.

This is the story of my last 24 hours, because it is exactly what it should have been. We got off the plane back to Lima at 1:40 pm. Picking up my luggage was straightforward, and I got a taxi to the first of two possible bus stops. I say ‘two possible bus stops,’ but actually there were four. Transporte Wari, the bus company I’m using to get to Cuzco, has four locations in Lima, but doesn’t say on their website which busses leave from which locations. Fortunately, my first guess was a good one, and I was able to make it all the way to the ticket counter (after grumbling about expensive airport taxies). At the ticket counter, I discovered that there were simply no more seats left on any busses going to Cuzco that day, Sunday, and I was given the opportunity to buy a ticket for the next day, today. I bought myself a ticket and then sat back wondering what I was going to do with myself in Lima for 24 hours. I knew that some other folks from the Living Routes program were going to be staying in a hostel called Kokopelli in the district of Mina Flores, and that some other folks who had a late flight were planning to meet up before the flight there for drinks on the rooftop bar. I didn’t have the address of the hostel, but I went and found a taxi driver who assured me that he could take me there, and said it would cost 20.

He waited until we were halfway across town to ask me for the address. When I didn’t have it, he stopped in at another hostel and went inside. He came out five minutes later and told me that they couldn’t find the Kokopelli hostel online, therefore it didn’t exist. I chuckled – because what else are you going to do? – and told him to drop me off in the center of Mina Flores. I figured I could find the hostel myself. He didn’t want to drop me off in the center of Mina Flores, and we argued about that some. Eventually, I prevailed upon him to leave me in front of an internet café, and he pulled over on some street a few blocks from Kennedy Park, which is, I think, the functional center of Mina Flores. Then he asked for 30. I reminded him that he had said 20 earlier, so he told me that he had meant 20 dollars. This really didn’t make sense. I had paid about 20 dollars to get from the airport to the bus stop, which was at least three times as far as he had taken me. I usually don’t mind paying good money for services rendered, so if we had been at the Kokopelli, I might have given him 30 soles, but this guy had not taken me where I asked to go, and had then refused to leave me where I wanted to be dropped off. I told him I only had a 20 soles bill, and he could take it or leave it. He took it, but was unhappy about it.

Alone, in a foreign city, with my 23 kilogram home made duffel bag on my back, I did the only thing that made any sense at all – I found an internet café. Thankfully, Peruvians don’t mind giving lost gringos directions or I might never have accomplished that feat. I promptly found the Kokopelli Hostel’s website and copied down their address. Armed with an address, and the knowledge that I was within seven or eight blocks of them, I set out again, only to get lost, again. Happily, a Peruvian guy who was hanging out in Kennedy Park looking for friendly USAmericans to practice English with noticed that I was lost and, after getting directions from a policeman, walked me to the hostel. Predictably, he asked for some money when we got there, and I gave him a sole.

Because the universe has a wicked sense of humor, the hostel was booked up for the night, and they couldn’t give me a bed, but could tell me that the friends I was trying to find had dropped their stuff off and left about five minutes before I showed up. Because people are, after all, good in our nature, they let me put my stuff in their luggage storage space, which they usually let guests use to store gear while out trekking.

I went back out on the street, and back to the internet café from earlier. I changed my hostel reservation in Cuzco to reflect my change of plans. Then I started looking for food. I didn’t want to get too far away from my landmark, Kennedy Park, but I also didn’t want to eat at any of the US fast food chains which encircle the park. Eventually, after much poking my nose into side streets, I found a hole in the wall café to sell me some comfort food, which turned out to be a very tasty rough analogy of a hamburger. I ate it while chatting with a British woman who had just finished spending six months in La Paz, Bolivia, working as the barkeeper for a hostel there.

I went back to Kokopelli, where one of the wonderful employees decided that I had suffered enough for one day, and gave me a free shower. Now, this was not just any free shower. This was A) my first hot water coming out of pipes since I left the USA on Christmas day and B) the first water-coming-out-of-plumbing and hence first honest shower of any sort in two and a half weeks. (Lima is in a state of drought, the municipality was only giving water for an hour every other day. When we had a little water, we were flushing toilets with buckets, and to get clean we went to a pipe with a steady stream of, probably a paved over creek, coming out of a hillside at about head height where the local people did laundry.) When I got out of the shower this same very nice employee informed me that he had found and made a reservation for me to stay at another place a few blocks away for 30 soles (about ten dollars) for the night. I put my bag back on my back and, on my way out the door, I bumped into my friends from the Living Routes program who told me to come back and hang out with them.

When I got to the place where I had the reservation, it was much nicer than I had expected. Turns out that, in the same way that in the USA you can get a cheap upgrade if the nicer rooms don’t have guests, in Peru hotels offer cheap, unreserved rooms as overflow space for hostels. I got a big room with a private bath, my own TV (which I didn’t use) and three beds (because, why not?). This room usually goes for five times what I paid for it.

I went back to the Kokopelli hostel and had a very pleasant evening saying goodbye (again) to a bunch of new friends. On a related note, a good Pisco Sour is my new, official, favorite mixed drink. I went to my room around 11 and slept until 8.

Upon waking up I took another shower. (Two showers in as many days! Unheard of luxury!!) At about nine, I went in search of breakfast. Now, searching for a good meal in a foreign city is a particular kind of art. You have to get far enough away from the touristy parts of town to get food that isn’t designed for what they think you want (they almost always get it wrong and you’re better off eating the local food) but you need to stay close enough to the nice parts of town that you get a meal that won’t make you sick. Fortunately, I had all morning. I went and got a hot chocolate from the place I got the burger before and, on a whim, went and drank it in Kennedy Park. I was amazed that three shoeshine guys tried to get me to let them shine my sneakers. Is that even possible? I was temped to let one of them just to find out.

Once I was done with the hot chocolate I was powerfully hungry, so I set out in search. Around 10:30, crisscrossing side streets but staying between to main streets I could find my way back on, I eventually found a little sandwich shop in a business area that seemed just right. This was the place for me, even if they weren’t expecting me. I waited at the counter for a full 90 seconds before I “ahem”ed and got the shopkeeper to look away from a catalogue for music equipment and notice me. I got their only breakfast item, a big bowl of mixed fruit with yoghurt which had puffed rice and some kind of syrup on top. It was delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

After breakfast I meandered back to my hotel, wrote this post and am about to go post it. Then I will check out, probably go straight to the bus stop, and hopefully find some lunch in there somewhere. Unfortunately, I have to leave here at 1, but the bus doesn’t leave until 3, so I must go to the bus stop a little earlier than would be ideal, or haul my stuff around for two hours.

Epic Epicness.

James Carp — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 02:10:00 +0000

So … yeah, I’m not even going to come close to even writing about all of the important things that have happened while I’ve been here. And it’s hardly been a week – wow. I feel as if I’ve been away for a month.

In terms of organizing this blog, I’m a little torn. Do I chronicle my travels or high highlights. If I hit highlights, what’s a highlight? Do I talk more about the positives or the negatives? Do ya’ll even care so long as I post something? I haven’t been taking the pictures for a photoblog – I highly prefer to live experiences and borrow the pictures other people take.

So, the traveling was just traveling. I didn’t get to explore Lima like I wanted to because Andrew, one of the leaders didn’t want to give me the opportunity to get lost and I decided not to push it. The Living Routes (livingroutes.org) program is happening at the Sachamama Center (website coming?) in Lamas, Peru. Near Tampoco, which is easier to find on a map. It’s not an ecovillage (I’m a little bummed) and is the project of Frederique, or professor, who is an anthropologist of India who came to Peru and “went native.” She’s founded this center to work with the native population and has developed a strong spiritual relationship with Ayahuasca, one of the psychedelics used in Amazonian Shamanism. Unfortunately, our other professor had all her bags stolen on the way to the airport while in the states and, for lack of a passport, was unable to come.

We had the chance to meet with a group of University students our age from the local native Kechwa-Lamistas. They danced some for us, but the main show was the elders who came with them to play the music for the dance. Wow! These two men had small drums they hit with a stick which had a string on the other side to vibrate and played flutes with three holes at the end of the flute. It was amazing how well they played! They were very simple instruments, by my standards, but were also amazingly complex in their use and in the music we played. After a bit the USA students got to dance with the indigenous students and we all had a good time. Below is a picture of me engaged in a wrestling style we got taught. The idea was to knock your opponent over. Naturally, I lost, but it was a fun experience and I was amazed at how easily the guy I wrestled and I bonded after our bout. Must be something cross cultural about friendly competition forging personal bonds.

We toured the Takiwasi Center (http://www.takiwasi.com/ – in Spanish), which a French psychotherapist founded to treat drug addiction with a combination of Ayahuasca use, community living, and psychotherapy. It was an interesting tour, and they claim an impressive success rate for addicts who complete their nine month program. Additionally, it seems that they have been recognized by the Peruvian government for successfully treating addicts with traditional medicine.

While we were there we also had the opportunity to meet with the indigenous activist Santiago Manuin. (If you follow the news you might remember that he was shot at the massacre of protesting indigenous people in Bagua, Peru in June.) He gave the students a talk about the history and cosmovision of his peple, the Awajun, who live north of here. Two days later, he came to the Sachamama Center to meet, for the first time, with the leaders of the local indigenous organization, CEPKA (no website). We were fortunate enough to be allowed to be present at the meeting, and Manuin told his version of the story of the events leading up to the unfortunate events of June 5th. He gave the local leaders some advice on their struggle against the government giving, in concessions, most of their land. (On a side note, this land has been given to a biodiesel company which clear cut it and planted palm trees.)

The day between Takiwasi and the meeting at Sachamama we had a free day and most of the group decided to to to a nearby waterfall. It was amazing. What was even more amazing was that, for his own reasons, the guide ended up inviting me and another student, Claire, to to further up the river and see a second fall! It was a grueling hike up the river on rocks following a path that I could only occasionally make out even when looking back and where we’d come from. It was amazing to me how much the jungle changed once we got away from the tourist area. It was so much more lush and alive and vibrant! The second waterfall was even more beautiful than the first, and I loved the hike, partly because I was able to learn a lot about moving through this part of the jungle by watching how the guide navigated. I came back sore and tired and very happy.

My spanish is improving by leaps and bounds. I’m still very limited by my vocabulary, but my grammar and conjugations are strong. I much more often get hung up because I don’t know the words that someone is using than hung up because I said some form of gibberish.

Anyhow – I need to pack for the three day trip to Urkupata. We’re working on a project to try to recreate the highly fertile anthropogenic soil found in parts of the Amazon. The indigenous technique for it has been lost, but the cultivation of soil microorganisms for enrichment has been done by agriculturists in Japan, and there are some people here working on a similar project. This is very exciting because, if the local community can manage to develop this soil it could mean that they could practice permanent agriculture instead of the roving slash and burn which has been ongoing in the region for hundreds of years.

My Goodbye Gift from the East Coast

James Carp — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:42:00 +0000

For several years now I have been complaining bitterly about the lack of weather in the SF Bay Area, where I’ve been living. Yes, it’s very pretty and balmy there all the time, and that eventually gets on my nerves. Every time there’s snow at the homes of one of my friend, I make a point of being just a tad jealous. So, naturally, as my goodbye gift from the east coast, I get a major snowstorm the weekend before I’m leaving.

And, because reality has a wicked sense of humor, this snowstorm tried to trap me in Annapolis, MD, with my dad’s side of the family. It was very nearly successful. I had a plane ticket to fly out on Saturday morning, but with the forecasts predicting between 7 and 14 inches of snow for Saturday, we were worried. Then we found out that my plane flight was, in a stroke of preemptive genius, canceled. My wonderfully kind aunt bought me another ticket an another, less easily frightened, airline. It was an early flight because we thought it best to try to get me out as soon as possible. We were all set to try to drive me to the airport at 6am on Saturday morning.

Now, I’m a bit of an environmentally conscious feller, but there are times when you can’t help but appreciate a gas guzzling four wheel drive SUV, which is really just a truck with the bed turned into seats (because, let’s be honest, sometimes you need one). Had we only had the sedan available to drive on Saturday, I never would have made it to the airport. The predawn blizzard like conditions we were driving in were alternately harrowing and thrilling. Thanks to my uncle’s steady driving and the truck with the clearance and power to make it through the snow building up faster than it could be plowed, I made my flight and arrived safely in NC. And just in time too, my cousins in Baltimore, near the airport, are in under more than two feet of snow!

So now I’m not only able to see my parents before I leave but I also get my first white Christmas, with about a foot of snow at the house, in something like six or seven years. Huzzah!

and now for something completely different

James Carp — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:27:00 +0000

well, mostly different. I’m leaving Friday. holy crap.

Beginning the Blog

James Carp — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:02:00 +0000

Howdy ya’ll! Sorry about the kind of silly title. Everything more catchy was already taken. It happens. In any case, this is just my test post, so, assuming it works, I’ll actually put something worthwhile up here soon.

Conceptual Framework

James Carp — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 02:53:00 +0000

In this post I depart from Making things in the physical world (mostly) and throw my hat into the fray of competing ideologies. (That’s a dirty lie, I’m sort of an academic and live much of my life in the fray of competing ideologies.) I’m also proposing that Making doesn’t have to be brand new fabrication. Working with and altering existing physical things, or ideas, is entirely valid.

For a long time, I have been searching for a conceptual framework which can support, characterize and show the interconnectedness of the great variety of activist work which I support. As a committed anti-fundamentalist I support a lot of activism I don’t necessarily fully agree with. Activists who are interested in the same goals fight a lot about which particular goal is the most important and which tactics are the best to use toward that particular end. While that’s a good and valid conversation, it often gets far too bitter for the severity of the disagreements. If we can’t celebrate diversity of opinion and belief in our activism, how will we celebrate diversity of opinion and belief in the world we seek to create?

Hmmmm. I got a little sidetracked. Hope that’s not too onerous.

My point is that I want a framework for what I have seen described simply as “the movement” since we can’t seem to agree what movement it is, but we all generally agree with each other. (Unfortunately this is one of those you-either-get-it-or-you-don’t things. It should be clear by the end of the post. If you still don’t get it I’ll try to explain, but you have to tell me you don’t get it first.)

Thankfully my friend Michael Tank presented, at the last California Student Sustainability Coalition Conference, an idea that E3, a student group at UCLA which Tank helped found, is based on. (Image left.) This is an elegant framework which I highly admire. It’s phrased to have a nice ring to it when you read it out loud. It presents two of the main directions in activism as complimentary, with a single point of immediate contact and direct linkages in other work. It presents a wide variety of activist work as interconnected and complimentary and can allow activists to see each other as engaged in different fronts of a common cause rather than as competing. That’s really important so I’m going to say it twice.

This conceptual framework has the potential to help activists working on separate things to see each other as engaged in different fronts of a common cause rather than as comp

eting for support and attention.

As amazing as this framework is, I see real problems with some of it’s specifics. Particularly “Economy” as a goal. While some of us in the movement know what we mean by “Economy” we’re not using the actual meaning of that word. Almost universally, we mean something very different than what the word ‘economy’ has been historically used to describe.

The term emerged in the Late 15th Century which corresponds to a significant period of enclosure of the English countryside which, in turn, was the primary accumulation which initiated capitalism in England. From there it spread throughout Europe. The term economy was coined in order to describe the management systems developed around facilitating this primary accumulation and constructing the scarcity necessary to develop a working class. In its most basic form “economy” refers to choice under scarcity.

Ok. Lemme unpack that a little bit. “Primary Accumulation” is the transfer of thing of value which are not privately owned, but rather held as common property, into private ownership. This is the creating of the capital necessary for capitalism to function. The scarcity we all take for granted, that allows the engine of the modern economy to function by requiring that we participate, was initially constructed by depriving the peasant and land tenant classes of their rights to use the land and make a livelihood from it, thereby transforming those who were agriculturalists into a working class. That artificial scarcity is maintained today in things like food and resource distribution inequalities and inconsistencies. What’s key here, is that that very scarcity is constructed by a system which only operates when things are scarce. It is entirely possible to have a system in which scarcity is not a primary factor. (I’m drawing much of this from a lecture by a people’s historian named Iain Boal. He does not maintain a web presence, but this is an interview he gave that touches on many of these same points.)

What is crucial here for the conceptual framework above is that in makes a system which requires false scarcity a goal. The “Economy” is, in its truest sense, a linchpin of the project of Modernity and conglomerated capitalistic society which those of us in the movement are fighting against. I will go so far as to say that as long as the economy remains, as long as a system of choice under scarcity is how goods and services are transfered, we cannot win.

Therefore, “Economy” cannot be a goal of this movement. But, for those of us who mean by “economy” something different than what economy actually is, what word can we use? What is that goal, and how can it best be described? I suggest “Ample.” Ample does not have the advantage of being both a noun and an adjective, but I would much rather live an ample life than an economical life. I would much rather live in an ample world than an economical world. And, “Ample” expresses a clear goal which I think we can agree upon. We want to end the constructed scarcity and provide ample lives for everyone. Not opulent, not frugal, ample.

Also, and this is a much more, to my mind, minor quip, “Regeneration” is not quite right. The word means to recreate what was once there. I think has come too perilously close to romanticizing the past and perhaps slipped a little. I am not aware of any time in the past when people have lead generally equitable, ample and ecological lives. (I am, for the moment, dismissing some primitivist philosophies as excessive romanticization based on in

sufficient information.) Instead of “Regeneration” I am in favor of “Reformation.” I recognize that the term reform is thrown around in government and industry too much, but I refuse to let them take words away from my vocabulary! Reformation means, among other things, “a radical change for the better” (SOED6). That is, I believe, what we want. Reasonably few of us want to burn down all of society and try again from a romanticized hunter-gatherer past. We want to root out the evils we see as evils and promote the good we see as good. We don’t want to cut something off and regenerate it, we want to take what we have and reform it, radically change it for the better.

And so, I humbly present my change of two words to the model above. I changed the form of the Equity and Ecology to Equitable and Ecological so that all three Reformation words could share the same ring to the word, as they did before. I particularly like this model, and I believe that my tweaks add to it.

Though, my tweaks are not perfect. As my friend Tank mentioned when I first proposed Ample as an alternative to Economy, it looses the E3 meme value that way. To Tank, as a community organizer and designer of memes which will hopefully take hold of the imaginations of large numbers of people, this is a serious loss. To me, saying what I mean more clearly is far worth while, but I certainly see Tank as having a valid point.

In either case, what this framework does is organize disparate arms of the movement into something resembling agreement and mutual interest.

This project is substantially different than the Making I’ve posted about here before. This is a Making of the mind and of ideas, which is wildly different but no less (nor, I hasten to add, more) valuable than the Making of the hands and of possessions.

Making can be Functional (In fact, it always is.)

James Carp — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:48:00 +0000

Long time no post. Sorry. I went on vacation and then had a mountain of shit to do. Hopefully relative normalcy will resume soonish.

A few weeks ago, just before I went on vacation, I built a dish dryer for my friend May. A wall mounted dish dryer, so his dishes could air dry without taking up precious counter space in his tiny studio. The idea for it came up with May’s wishful thinking. We were talking about trying to organize his kitchen, and he exclaimed “If only I could put the dish dryer up here!” and gestured at the wall. Naturally, I said “I think you can.” That was the beginning.

My plot for this dish dryer was to mount a rubber washtub to wall brackets and put the standard dish drying rack in that. The plan was simple to imagine and complex to execute, as many are. The most frustrating part came first, the hardware store.

I had to find some way to transition from the rubber tub (which had to be the right size for the dish drying rack available) to a drainage pipe and to attach the tub to brackets, all without leaking. The attachment to brackets was easy – rubber washers. The transition to a drainage pipe was not easy. The problem is that the intake needs to be basically flush with the bottom of the rubber tub, which is problematic, because it also has to lap over the top of the tub, or be welded to the bottom in a strong enough fashion to not pull out over time.

I did not want to fuss with PVC glue or some such, and so, after about an hour of pouring over plumbing parts, picked a vanity drain. That’s the drain that goes in the bottom of your bathroom sink. The nice thing about this is that the intake has a top that can be made flush. The problem is that it’s not in any way built for going on a thin rubber tub. That manifests in there being a good inch and a half that has to be filled by some sort of material for the vanity drain to be properly tightened (the intake is threaded with a bottom fitting). I decided to span that gap with large, 1 1/2 in, rubber washers. I’m not sure what those washers are supposed to be used for, maybe washing machines?

When I got back to May’s place

the first order of business was to prepare the tub for installation. This required marking and drilling holes for bolting it to brackets, and cutting a larger hole for the drain, pictured here.

Naturally, it’s never actually that simple. However, when the bolt packaging says “Use 3/8 drill” the hole I make with the 3/8 drill bit should be the right size. That is not asking too much! or, at least, it shouldn’t be.

In any case, I eventually got all the holes the right size and got the vanity drain installed. The vanity drain was the hardest part. Cutting a big hole in the rubber tub was nerve wracking – one slip and I would at best cut myself and at worst ruin the tub. Spanning a 1 1/2 inch gap with stacked rubber washers is not exactly best practice, and the bottom of the tub is not the shape that vanity drains are made to fit into. Fortunately, the water coming off May’s dishes isn’t under pressure, so all this has to do is be the easiest path for water to follow.

Plumber’s Putty is my dear friend. The bottom of the tub is curved in all kinds of entertaining ways. There were, after all the tightening I could do without starting to significant distend and abrade the walls of the tub, still a few gaps. Fortunately, I had thought ahead and put a ring of plumber’s putty in before I tightened it all (ok, I lie, I took it apart and put plumber’s putty in, but next time I’ll know better).

Finally, I was ready to put the tube on that would go from the bottom of the vanity drain to the sink itself. This was, again, no easy task. The tube is clear vinyl piping, sized 1 1/2 in exterior 1 1/4 in interior. The outlet of the vanity drain is 1 1/2 in. The trouble is, you want the tube to lap over the outside of the drain. That way water just falls and, because there’s no pressure, there’s no need for a perfect seal. No such luck. The fix was to force the tubing inside the metal drain. This was quite a tight fit and took a fair amount of pushing and swearing to finally get in deep enough to satisfy me. (Quote me, I dare you.) To be sure the tube wouldn’t slowly worm its way out I wrapped some duct tape around the joint. I also, with May’s help, wrapped some leak-seal tape, which is basically just super sticky rubber tape, around the harder rubber gaskets that were in the vanity drain.

Finally, we were ready to attach the brackets. This was the easy part and was done with bolts, metal washers, hard rubber washers (for a water tight seal) and nuts. Like I said, easy.

It was then tested for water tightness in the bathroom and installed on the wall. I wanted to be sure to get one of the brackets in wood at the corner of the wall, because I REALLY did not want to be responsible for a load of dishes collapsing on May’s head. The other bracket went into drywall. I tend to use screw type drywall anchors. The ones I used are rated to 50 lbs each, but I don’t trust drywall to hold 50 lbs for long, no matter what you screw into it.

Finally, the tub to hold the dish drying rack was installed, the excess tubing cut off, and my work finished. If you look closely you’ll see that the cupboard just to the right of the tub is too close to the tub itself. That cupboard door doesn’t open well with the dish drying rack in it. However, if I moved the tub installation left far enough to put the left bracket into a stud he would have trouble opening his microwave. It’s an imperfect solution for an imperfect space.

Oh, yeah, that weird looking kid there is me. My hair had about quadrupled in length since then.

So, how is this making? It received all the focus, passion and attention of any other making, was a lot of fun, and is an artefact, in the original sense of the word. It is a product of human art and workmanship. It is beautiful, in that it is well built for what it is and what it is made with, and it is useful, in that it fulfills a legitimate need in an appropriate way. Does that make sense to ya’ll?

Trying to Express Making

James Carp — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:44:00 +0000

I went to the Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco last Sunday. It was a fascinating event. The throngs of consumers, of which I was a part, examining and buying from the booths of ostentatiously handmade, but often simply seller designed, wares was eye opening. First off, there was nothing ‘renegade’ about this event. (Renegade meaning a person who abandons their religion or principles.) There was an overwhelming abundance of cute ideas repeated ad nauseam until I thought I would have to set fire to the next flirty pop-culture reference t-shirt I saw. There were also a number of genuine artisans there who were selling great works. If I was really together I would publish some highlights. If folks actually care enough about my opinion to ask, I just might. It was a pretty mixed bag, but I was astounded by the amount of traction that some of these salespeople got for nothing more than cute designs. (Yes, a t-shirt you can write on with chalk is pretty cool, but how far do you expect to go on a one trick pony? – And, more to the point, how far will the public follow a one trick pony before they realize they’ve seen that one before!?) One more reason why I don’t hold out much faith in humanity.

The Renegade Craft Fair, and indeed the entire Crafter/Maker/DIY community (I recognize I’m making a horrible overgeneralization. Deal with it.) challenges my ideas of what I’m doing here, particularly my very conscious decision not to try to integrate into one of the many DIY/Maker/Crafter communities out there. I see many examples of what I might consider Making, but not labeled as such by the creators. (Well, naturally, this is language basically nobody else uses.) Yet Making is more than at tool for separating the cute but stupid gimmicks from the work which is truly beautiful and useful.

The copout here is to call Making a “Design and Production Philosophy.” This would be easy, and I could delineate many ways in which Making can be differentiated from other forms of creating. I don’t need the exercise in ego gratification and I don’t need to justify myself to whoever reads this blog. It might even be true to consider Making a kind of philosophy, but it allows, or even encourages, the positioning of Making in the familiar, and overused, realm of intellectuality (different from ‘intellectualism’ which is not only overused but becoming perverse). As a trained academic, having an intellectually defensible position is important to me. However, the intellect is not the only important tool in the pursuit of knowledge and truth. (Never mind hundreds of years of Western philosophy.)

When I am Making, the decisions and calculations that happen are not intellectual, indeed are hardly conscious. I work to tease out those decisions and the process of making them when I write here, yet the act of Making has almost nothing to do with conscious, intellect based thoughts. Though, in all fairness to my mind, once I decide what to do there is sometimes a fair amount of thought put into how to do it. This isn’t the intellect deciding how to build a chair as much as it is the intellect evaluating which glues will hold the wood best after the proverbial gut has decided the design of the cain. Nevertheless, as my sainted grandfather told me, and my father has reminded me time and time again, people can rationalize anything. That is how this writing is made, as much as anything else, it is a process of rationalizing what were almost entirely irrational (here meaning without reasoning) decisions. Yet that need not imply nonsensical. Simply because my intellect was not crucial to my decision making does not mean that it was a poor decision (again, disregard popular Western epistemological beliefs).

The point here is two fold. First, Making, unlike much other work (at least, in my experience), is informed by, not lead by the mind. Second, and less obvious, is that any philosophy of Making will happen in exactly the same way that Making happens. It will emerge as if (or, for the mystic in me, literally) by divine intervention, may require some translation into what can be done, expressed and shared, but will emerge when ready. The language available to talk about our non-intellect based knowledge is impoverished. I am not sure that I do my thesis justice here.

Nevertheless, that struggle is very much of the purpose of this blog. To explore these ideas and present these thoughts as part of the process of Making an expressible understanding of Making.