links for 2010-08-16
Why can’t we do it ourselves?
I have recently been reading Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food”, and realizing more and more how much corporations have taken the things we used to do for ourselves for FREE and sold it back to us! For example, REAL FOOD, we have, since the beginning of time foraged and grown food to sustain ourselves, families and communities. Today 4 huge multinational corporations create and distribute 90% of all food and food like products. We do not need scientists or corporations selling us food like products and our government(FDA) promoting it. We need food, whole food, like greens, beans, roots, fruits and water. Now even the seeds and plants are genetically engineered so huge multinational corporations can get rich by selling trademarked seeds that have been created in a laboratory to withstand treatment by their own fertilizer! Monsanto is now taking small time local farmers to court for sharing seeds, for having traces of gmo corn in non gmo plants(this happens by pollen from gmo crops blowing across the road or even miles away and pollinating the non-gmo crop) This is really happening!
Our babies are born in hospitals, all power is given to dr.s and surgeons and totally striped from our mothers and women in our community. Yes in an emergency situation the only place to go is the hospital, but day in and day out women have been giving birth with a midwife and elders in the community since the beginning of time. Move the business of being born.
Even adventures as kids has been packaged and sold in the form of video games. As a kid in a Chicago suburb, we played outside nearly everyday even in the snow! We skateboarded to the store, mall and park, we traveled along the railroad tracks, built forts, got in fights, smoked cigarettes, started fires, shoveled driveways and played sports: football, baseball, tag, fast pitch, races, war, sledding, fighting, basketball, bmx and break dancing! Now kids are inside having adventures starring at the tv screen. What kind of stories will they have to share with their kids? How will their sense of adventure unfold as they grow up, looking for their boundaries?Children need adventure to learn their boundaries on their own, otherwise they will stretch out farther and farther trying to find their boundaries as they get older and more independent. With their limits set and regulated by you, their parents, they push and conflict with your limits instead of naturally finding their own. In turn giving them the confidence, intuition and experience they desperately need to evolve and become enlightened beings.
Music… Used to be that everyone was a musician and we all gathered in the community and shared and played, we all created together. Now we sit around and listen to a professional who sold it back to us. Don’t get me wrong I love music, all kinds of music and sound. But I know very few experiences in my life give me the power/vibration/warmth/joy/excitement that playing music with others does. You can not order a jam session off of the internet. Live concerts are getting closer to that experience but still is being sold back to us the consumer. We all gather and feel the power of the music at a live concert, we participate on a small level by dancing, whistling or cheering, but we have little to do with the actual making of the music, we instead took the route of the consumer and bought our way in.
Respect
“It’s different there, those people have tattoos”. Those people are black, those people are gay, Muslim, republican, those people…. WE are ALL one.
These people are friendly & look you in the eyes. People are who they are, WE ALL look, act, smell, eat, make love & pray differently. Get over it….. What Is it? racism, classism, bigotry or some ingrained societal fear of anything outside of your normal experience? WE are ALL the earths creatures and have a symbiotic relationship with OUR surroundings. Taking care of OUR surroundings because it & they effect our being. Experiences that we as the collective are sharing in. Not US and them.
People are beautiful. Respect that. Nature is beautiful Respect that.
WE are ALL part of something beautiful.
Graffiti ~ Public Art ~ Tattoos ~ Joliet, IL
Where I grew up there was not much in the way of creative outlets. Joliet Illinois is more know for its prisons then its art. There were plenty of artists, we had to create something to take our minds and hearts out of this depressing county. With Chicago less than 30 miles away, Joliet was on the outer fringes of the “Chicago-Land Area”. Basically You could drive south from Chicago on either I55 or I80 until you saw corn fields. Home of Stateville prison and the Blues Brothers. So this old steel workers town in the middle of corn fields has inspired some great artists and artwork, not sure to the extent yet, but I’m working on it.
Starting with Tattoo Art(that is really the first time I saw someone pay for art). My experience started in high school @ Joliet West in 1992, I was 15. Mark Tomac had got a tattoo from Jesse’s Tattoo, of the gangster with the top hat and a gun, of Bugs Bunny fame. I was blown away! How could he do that? Didn’t it hurt? What did his parents think? Wow…. In the years to come Mark received more tattoos from Jesse’s, one I remember on his neck looked painful and the ink was just not sticking in, I would watch the artist dig in a line of black and wipe it away, nothing stayed in the skin! I think Mark from that day thought about how he could have done it better, he could draw and enjoyed it.
Living in Joliet, tattoos seemed to be something of a way to focus the pain elsewhere. Mark begun tattooing all of our friends, trying to learn his new trade. I remember the first bad ass tattoo I saw was from this cat “Chucho”, He had tattooed two friends of mine. John’s piece was a wolf in sheep’s clothes, a farmer chasing it with a pitchfork, around his bicep, it was like a painting. His girl friend Corey had a pregnant mother with the earth as her belly, again just like a painting, not like any tattoo I had seen.
Ever since this time I have always had great respect for Chucho. Over the years I have seen his Murals around town, some he has done with this organization Friends of Community Public Art in downtown Joliet. His murals can be found here Chucho’s Public Art Pieces . This organization has been painting blank walls all over town, on schools, bridges, tunnels & train stations, turning once dull gray, brick and white walls into beautiful murals that speak volumes. They also do amazing mosaics all over town. The great thing about FCPA is that not only are they teaching local youth how to be creative and take pride in there community, but also beautifying and raising cultural awareness with the narratives of the art.
I know that Mark was inspired by Chucho’s work and the two worked together for a while at Mark’s Westside Tattoos. Today in the same space, Chucho tattoos still, but under a new shop Ace of 4 Hearts. Mark is in Ft. Lauderdale and is following his passion and creativity, Mark Nicholas Clothing. on Facebook as well as tattooing.
On the subject of graffiti, I am by no means an expert, I definitely am inspired by most and have an eye for good writing (graffiti art pieces). After high school I went on to play baseball for Moraine Valley Community College, where I met Winston. He turned me onto to a whole new world of graffiti writers, (along with jazz, hip-hop and vegetarian cooking) from Chicago’s south side. An underground “crew” that would break the law by tagging there name and their crews name on train cars, walls, any piece of wall they could find. Artistically speaking it was raw, fast and not all that appealing, but there were a few special artists out there creating some beautiful pieces.
Around this same time I would see pieces back home from “Quetzal” but never put two and two together. Chucho can write!
Westside Tattoos Joliet, Il 2008
You can find more of Chucho’s art on his Myspace Page and his Flickr Images.
These are some of my favorite murals he did in Joliet.
2001 "150th Fire Station" 7’ H x 17’ W
1999 "La Herencia Mexicana" (Mexican Heritage Mural) 10” H x 36’ W
After living in Florida the last 11.5 years, I had an art show last Thanksgiving weekend at Friends of Community Public Art, downtown Joliet. My friend and comrade Sue Regis blows glass there, in her flameworking studio, Regis Glass Art. It was the fist time I have ever shown my work in Joliet and to my surprise it went very well, my family and friends came out to support us, along with many new friends and it felt great! We are looking forward to doing it annually.
Success & Art, shows in Joliet ~ wow… who would of thought?
Joshua Michael Poll is a glass artist and part owner of Zen Glass Studio in St. Petersburg, FL ~ Zen Glass on Facebook.com/ZenGlassStudio.
The BreakDown on facebook ~ email glassjash@gmail.com
He also is part of a non-profit organization Tampa Artist and Facebook.com/TampaArtist
Florida pollution tops 164 countries!
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Report Findings:
-The U.S. far exceeds all other nations in cumulative emissions since 1960, accounting for nearly 26 percent of all the global warming pollution emitted in that period.
-The US emitted more carbon dioxide than 171 of 184 countries combined.
-The top state in cumulative emissions (1960-2005) was Texas. If Texas were its own country, it would have ranked 6th out of 184 countries in total emissions, trailing only China, Russia, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom, and exceeding the emissions of current major emitters like Canada, India, South Korea, and Iran.
-Vermont, the state with the lowest emissions since 1960, still accounted for more total carbon dioxide emissions than 87 nations.
12 ways to start living greener.
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compost, worms, gray water, water conservation, carpool, native plants, growing food, buy local, Recycling: The best way to reduce any environmental impact is NOT to recycle more, but to produce and dispose of less, nutrition, teach this to your friends family and community.
Elections and Civic Duty
Now more than ever we the people need to be talking, communing, sharing, growing and most of all gathering, to hold our own when whoever it is, gets selected, not elected by the people, selected, the country is run by those who show up! We the people are very few who show up to vote, look at the stats for voter turnout for the 2004 election. 48 million people did not vote, 16 million registered voters and 32 million unregistered.*
In 2000 Al Gore actually received 543,816 more popular votes than the winner, George Bush, but lost the election because of the electoral college, Bush’s 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266. In 2004 John Kerry lost to George Bush with 251 electoral to Bush’s 286 and in the popular vote Bush received 62,040,610 to Kerry’s 59,028,444 that is 3,012,166 votes. So why does it matter if we vote or not if the Electoral College determines the president? And if our votes are not counted by the electric voting machines, with no proof or paper trail, these machines could be handing votes to the winning republican candidates in the last two elections.
The reason it is so important to vote is not only are you casting a ballot for president, but there are a host of local amendments and local offices up for vote that are part of our communities and effect you and your property directly. I do not like to say “what if” but if the over 30 million voters who never cast a ballot all voted, there would be such an upswing in the actual numbers that our nation and the electoral college would have a stark reality of sheer numbers to sway their decisions.
But it has been proven time and time again that we the people need to do more than just show up to vote. We need to have meetings, dinners, parties, community forums and any thing to gather people in the community from all walks of life, all parties and beliefs and become familiar with each other, listen to each other. It is a call to our civic life, a very important part of being an American. Instead of nit picking, whining or bitching and moaning with no action, we create a dialog, where actual change happens from the only place it can happen, YOU! We are so divided between rich and poor, red and blue, jackass and elephant, gay or straight, we are all one, in our communities we can work together to see our ideas, policies and leaders become our voice, our true voice not of the few, not of corporate interest, the voice of the masses. It does not matter what each candidate promises to get elected, when we are involved at the local levels we have a direct connection to the decisions being made in our name.
We all have heard about strength in numbers, when we gather for meetings, dinners, speeches, community forums and debates to talk about everything that is affecting our way of life and let our voices resonate with the truth and the vision that we see everyday. We are building a powerful community with first hand knowledge on issues affecting all of us. We cannot expect our government to do it for us or to read our minds on these issues. It is up to us to create our community, to empower ourselves, to speak truth to power and to do it together, regardless of any of the divisive labels that are thrown on us. Together we can.
I think some of the first issues we desperately need to solve are election reform. We the people in this day and age of information can make educated decisions on which we elect our president and abolish the electorate college, which is out dated, arcane and a slap in the face of a modern democracy (as of the 2000 census 281,421,906) estimated over 303,111,027, civilians. As for campaign financing, why is it set up to elect the candidate with the most money? We are better than that and we want a fair chance for all candidates on our public owned airwaves. Also the two party system is broken and needs to evolve to an open forum for all parties to compete at the highest level. The only reason 3rd parties are blocked from the debates is because of fear of bringing up real issues and arguing them for the people against the corporate interests, that fund both the democrat’s and republican’s campaigns, TV ads and policy. Which in turn commands favors and breaks for these corporations in return for their contributions, which has been shown clear as day by our current administration.
Today is a brighter day, a perfect day to talk with co-workers, family, friends, fellow community members in line at the grocery, and begin gathering together and creating a space for all of us to listen, learn, express, grow and communicate with each other about the pressing issues of our time. It is up to us to be the change we wish to see, start a dialog with others and plan events where we can all share in our civic duties. Make it a function of our community, where everyone brings a dish if they can, bring books, letters, music, clothing and canned goods for the poor and hungry, bring video cameras, start a blog, plan the next meet ups, invite city officials, business professionals, church pastors, teachers, elders, children, lawyers and artists.
I can see, I believe, yes we can, we have before and will again, change starts from within, strength in numbers, speak truth by your living experience, extend a hand, and we are all one.
Joshua Michael Poll 9.4.08 4:50am
I welcome comments, feedback and contact at joshuamichaelpoll@gmail.com
Think about it – Food
Where does your food come from? Is it locally grown and organic, from markets and locally owned businesses? If so you are not only consuming the best fuel for your body (space suit). You are also taking good care that our planet (space ship) is sustainable by reducing the petrol carbons and chemicals used to a minimal, local distribution only. Many food products are transported in 18 wheel semi trailers, across the country, to your local supermarkets. Grown in factory farms with GMOs‘ (genetically modified organisms), pesticides and growth hormones, these manufactured foods are not fulfilling, they only fill the pockets of large multi national corporations. Check the labels on boxed and packaged goods and support local economies. 10 out of 10 times, you can produce better flavors and add fresher organic ingredients than manufactured foods. Save time, packaging, transportation, pollution and your insides by not buying manufactured foods. Canned foods are ok in case of emergency, but bulk organic grains and beans are best. No other ingredients have been added. Just soak and sprout for life. We use our soak water for sauces and to water the plants.
Is your food fresh or living? If not how long since it has been living? Dried seeds, nuts and beans can be sprouted to unlock the dormant nutrients and enzymes. Bulk organic seeds, nuts and beans can be bought by the pound for a surprisingly low price. Live, raw food has the highest possible levels of nutrients. Once you cut a plant or fruit you have a finite amount of time before all of the life giving nutrients dissipate and die off. Cooking further reduces digestible enzymes and nutrients in your foods.
Where does your food go when you are finished with it? Do you just throw it away and buy more to repeat the non cycle? Complete the cycle, compost your food scraps and leftovers with THIS NON TOXIC RECYCLED NEWSPAPER! Grow your own food with the fuel of your scraps. Bring your own bags with you to the store and encourage others in line to do the same. Bringing your own bags is one of the hardest habits to get into and a great way to begin the cycle.
Joshua Poll is a glass artist, small business owner in St. Petersburg, Florida, maintains the Web site www.zenglass.com and designed and built www.higherselfgifts.com
keeping up!
Wow there are so many things to keep up with to be “web savvy”.
Twitter (for Higher Self)
Twitter (for Zen Glass)
Myspace (Personal)
Myspace (Zen Glass Studio)
Myspace (Higher Self)
del.icio.us (Higher Self)
del.icio.us (Personal)
vodpod (personal)
vodpod (higher self)
Websites
Skype: glassjash and infinateabundance
