GeoClark

Amy’s Documentary Project

geoclark — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:39:17 +0000

A documentary project is in the works about one of my coolest college friends, Amy Van Meter.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Santa-Barbara-CA/The-Angriest-Unicorn/118583831515056?ref=sgm

Amy’s got pretty much the worst kind of MS that you can get, and this documentary is telling her story. You can support the film and buy swag at http://www.cafepress.com/amydoccie .

Implement of Destruction

geoclark — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 01:36:40 +0000

New song up: Implement of Destruction.

Depression Storage

geoclark — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:46:38 +0000

Hydrologists have a technical term they call “depression storage.” As it seems, it’s the volume of water in an area of interest held at any given time in recesses in the ground. Most people call it puddles. It’s an interesting case of jargon at its worst and best. At its worst, because it takes a simple concept and makes it more complicated, more opaque. At its best because it has an unintentional effect of describing the emotional state that many people have in dark and wet weather: storage of depression. One of language’s unexpected beauties. It’s the third of a series of rainy days here in New England. Remember that children in rubber boots encounter joy when they jump into depression storage.

The Arts When Visa Isn’t a Payment Option

geoclark — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:41:32 +0000

Dan R. reminded me of the experiment a while back that the Washington Post arranged where world famous violinist Joshua Bell played his Stradivarius next to a subway escalator at rush hour in DC http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html .

My thoughts: Good one, Dan. Yes, I remember that article. I thought how in some ways, “quality” in the arts really is a social construct, depending to some extent on validation by others in the form of nice venues, favorable reviews, advance publicity, and simply giving ourselves permission to stop and observe and support what we like, rather than simply charging past to the subway, or thinking it’s somehow wasteful or a sign of weakness to give a busker a dollar rather than saving it for ourselves. Motivation to open up to artists that we like, whether they are selling tickets or simply opening an instrument case on the subway platform.

When was the last time that you supported an artist when Visa wasn’t a payment option? Myself, I can’t remember.

Nurturing Participatory and Live-Performance Arts

geoclark — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:51:32 +0000

I was just suggesting to friends on Facebook that we need to figure out ways to nurture participatory and live-performance arts in a culture of “efficiency,” commuting, and commodification. My friend Patrick asked more of what I was thinking, here’s what I said:

“I did some small group shape note singing this summer which was the most fun. So, obviously, just do it is one important thing. But policy-wise, everything is so interrelated.

“At the risk of two much information, here’s my two cents: Public transportation; arts education in public schools; nurturing families of all sorts, since our loved ones are often the vehicle for passing on arts as a shared experience.

“Out where I live [in the suburbs], improvements in town planning including cohousing and others that facilitate informal and intergenerational interaction would all go a long way, as well as subsidising arts venues that can get easily overwhelmed by seemingly unrelated regulations–like the cost of a modern sprinkler system in a dive bar that happens to be a center for local music acts.

“Cities that haven’t destroyed their pedestrian and human-scale infrastructure have a big advantage in forming critical masses for the arts.

Even forms that we consider “country,” like bluegrass music, I’m told developed in amazing ways as “old time” musicians met as they sought jobs and found practice and performance venues in mill towns and other cities in twentieth century America. The growth of blues from the Delta into cities like Chicago is another example. “

I’d love to hear what others think, either as comments here or post links to your own blog posts or good urls.

Singers Glen

geoclark — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:31:10 +0000

My friend John Haugland singing a song we wrote together: Singers Glen. I think of it as the love child of “Ashokan Farewell” and “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.”

EPA Core List of Reference Publications

geoclark — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:37:36 +0000

U.S. EPA has recently published a long bibliography of key reference book titles:

Core List for an Environmental Reference Collection

United States Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Environmental Information
EPA 260-B-10-001, March 2010, 155 pp.
Table of Contents.

“A listing of information resources in the areas of environmental protection, management, and science as selected by librarians supporting the United States Environmental Protection Agency. […] Many of the entries include a brief description of the resource as well.”

To help librarians and other interested people quickly see if it would be of use to them, and to facilitate printing, here is a picture of the table of contents as it appears within the document. To find pages online, add three to the page numbers in this image of the table of contents.

Bytes of Note — Suburbia

geoclark — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:24:44 +0000

–From the Vault– Environment, October 2007 and November 2007. A two part column on suburbia:

Part 1: Unsustainable Suburbia. “One-half of the U.S. population lives in suburbia, and the proportion is growing—by comparison, 30 percent live in cities, and 20 percent live in rural areas. Meanwhile, suburban land use, development, transportation, and consumption patterns foster a host of environmental ills. For example, the presence of impervious surfaces, such as concrete or asphalt, coupled with pollutants from lawns and automobiles, can change the composition….” (more)

Part 2: Seeking Solutions for Suburbia. “As suburban population grows, so does a complex constellation of environmental ills—and as last month’s column showed, many of these ills revolve around car travel. As a result, the most familiar efforts to solve them strive to make commutes and other drives less harmful to the environment. Public transportation is an obvious choice, but coverage and convenience leave much to be desired in many metro areas. A look at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s website….” (more)

Bytes of Note — The Changing News Environment

geoclark — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:37:39 +0000

Environment, March 2010 — “People who care about the environment should care about the news. The quality, quantity, and topics of information, analysis, and opinion from news providers influence what people do to the environment, who gets elected, and what laws get passed. Whether by choice or circumstance, people get their news from different media and on different platforms: print, TV, radio, the Web, mobile devices, and mixtures of all of these, each source having its own….” (more)

Bytes of Note — Design for the Global Household

geoclark — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:29:42 +0000

Environment, January 2010 — “Design for sustainability is a confounding concept. On the one hand, there is much good information about how to make the products that we buy and use more environmentally friendly to produce, use, disassemble, and recycle. On the other hand, popular design, even of products specifically marketed to simplify our lives,is, in the end, about comfortable households consuming more—not exactly the embodiment of sustainability. Fortunately, there is an area of design practice that has a loftier goal: to meet the needs of the global poor….” (more)