Posts tagged with "What we're up to"

Free garden

By Ari | Jun 22, 09 10:58 PM

We made a garden this year almost for free. The seeds and seedlings were all given to us - someone always has too much of something, and gives away the surplus. (We too had so many seeds we passed them on. And I look forward to sharing and swapping produce!)

We made a raised bed out of an old shelf and cinder blocks, and traded for tomato cages and plant pots. We dumpstered some plastic buckets that have really come in handy. And the Dacha gave us a lot of compost they'd picked up, and we got more of that and mulch for free from Ithaca. Yay Ithaca compost! The only thing we bought was, early on and out of convenience, a couple of bags of organic potting soil. We needed it for some seedlings, right then.

It's much farther along now than it is in this photo - we'll have to post an update soon! Today we potted all of the remaining seedlings, moved everything around so they get better sun, put in mulch, and pulled out some weeds. Most of these plants are in pots, the rest in a raised bed, because the soil is full of asphalt driveway bits. The tomatoes are thriving, very tall and sturdy. There are also large pots of things we sowed directly in the soil, weeks before the last frost, that are probably the healthiest, strongest plants besides the tomatoes - onions, broccoli, carrots, and zinias, and some lavender and mixed perennial flowers from Lea. The eggplants and peppers are still very small, only a few leaves each. The cabbage, just a little bigger - maybe six small leaves apiece.

Well, that's the garden report. You can keep tabs on the action in the Flickr pool we made just for our garden (you'll get to see our old Brooklyn garden and our houseplants, too!).

Clouds and rain and sky and deer and music and freedom

By Ari | Jun 22, 09 09:00 AM

Shira drove us to Albany this weekend to visit Jesse and Nitya. It was a fun, relaxing time. The drive both ways was beautiful - we went around Binghamton by taking a more rural route, and were able to cruise along in almost zero traffic. It was raining on the way over, and I saw lots of deer outside: two does walking through bushes, the one in front looking back to check on her friend; a watchful doe and her fawn standing in a pond, drinking; and someone standing under bushes, craning her/his neck up to pull at the leaves.

On the way home, we were listening to a playlist Shira made called "Peace and Protest" and I was reading Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass, a young adult novel in the Golden Compass series. The book is about reclaiming your soul from organized religion. The songs were about giving children freedom to be themselves, about getting on the peace train, about people crying for freedom, about the poor rising up to get what they deserve.

As we drove we went in and out of the rain. I could look up at the sky and see the clouds go on and on for miles - dark and heavy with water, with sun peering through; patches of blue sky, with thin wisps of cloud floating off high in the distance. I love looking at the sky like that - something about the vast scale of those mountains of vapor, pouring over this horizon and trailing off over that one, reminds me we're on this little round planet, swaddled in air and water.

The book had me crying. The music and the beautiful world helped the tears out, I'm sure. I looked around and thought, how lovely, this. How incredible and beautiful. How lucky we are to have the senses we each have, to be able to enjoy this extraordinary place. The words of the songs and the book filled me with hope and awareness of others, who for generations and generations have been waking to the world's beauty and to our own power and strength. The people are rising up. The people are seeing heaven is on earth and not through some locked door guarded by people with power and privilege.

Are they? Are we? I hope so. As we drove, my mind flitted from idea to idea, ways to spread the bliss I was feeling; how do you tell others that another world is possible - that is is here right now, and that all we have to do is claim it?

Can you just write it on your blog? It's a place to start.

Ahimsa evolves, and an a-frame emerges

By Ari | Jun 19, 09 11:01 AM

Ahimsa has evolved from an ecovillage to a network - I think. We're still figuring it out. But it seems that everyone in the group is very motivated to work around the intersections of social justice, animal rights, and environmental sustainability - and we're all into community building. I'm kind of sad to see the idea of an ecovillage be pushed off into the indefinite future, but we were working on it steadfastly and it just wasn't something folks seemed ready to build right now, so we'll see what happens. Fortunately we've met a lot of awesome people and everyone has great ideas and energy - hopefully the convergence we're talking about holding later in the summer will happen, and then we'll see what comes out of that.

So, housing-wise, Shira and I are thinking again about what the two of us can accomplish on our own - or maybe with a friend. Something smaller. Something to help us become more self-sufficient.

I'm kind of in love with A-frames. I don't always blog when learning about this stuff, but I'm not sure how many people read our delicious links (rss feed), and I do think this info is worth sharing.

Why an A-frame? They seem to be easy to build. Based on the reading I've done and the things folks have told us, natural building requires so much labor that it may not be as affordable as it appears. It turns out that using available plans and simple conventions like a pier foundation can really cut costs (including labor). With the use of salvaged and freecycled materials, limited resources can stretch even farther. We like the idea that building something ourselves will give us and education and a workout, and will allow us to avoid a mortgage. We've also considered building something mobile so we could lease land and then take our home with us if/when we leave, but it would have to be very small, and that's probably not best for packrats like us.

So, we don't have to make an A-frame. A small cottage or cabin could work too, one with proper walls. Or a yurt, we've talked about that. But basically, it seems we're headed toward buying land and building something on it.

I think the reason I love A-frames is not only their easy construction but their aesthetics. I like that they look like cute little hills. I love the weird triangular areas that people usually block off and turn into closets - I want to just keep them open and put storage bins and things back there. I love the huge open floor feeling, the lofts. Here are a few links to linger on:

I've got even more links up on Delicious, if you like looking at this kind of thing. Check out our tags, and try grouping them to find specific things! I'm pretty into tagging, that way. Here are the best groupings on this topic, I think, and some interesting other areas we've explored:

Anyone out there have even better ideas for sustainable, cheap building methods? Please leave a comment!

Fresh websites, hot off the Wordpress

By Ari | Jun 19, 09 10:04 AM

Recently I've made the switch to Wordpress, where I used to use Movable Type. I like that they've been committed to Open Source from day one, whereas Six Apart, the company that makes MT, has always seemed more profit-driven to me. I was shocked at how easy WP is to install, and at how deliciously comfortable it is to use. I'm able to search for, install, and configure plug-ins from within the WP admin area. Same with themes.

Many of the folks we work with are on a very tight budget, or have no funding at all, so being able to create an inexpensive or free site very quickly is something I've been wanting to learn to do for a long time. With WP, I can make a beautiful site that anyone can keep up-to-date in just a few hours. Finally.

What this has meant is that suddenly I'm able to do much more work for many more people, much more quickly. Here are a few recent sites I've made or worked on. These folks are really cool, visit their sites to find out more about them!

Service Women's Action Network - SWAN needed a new logo as well as a new site that they could update easily and use to reach out to potential funders. This site is the result - it features a Vertical Response mailing list, Google Analytics and AddThis sharing. Before it was even online they were talking to Congress with their new logo printed on new business cards. Go SWAN!
Using Their Words - This site is an activist effort by a woman we've worked with over at NYCORe. I initially helped her polish a Google Site and created this new illustrated header for her. Then we found out that her radical web host, MayFirst (to whom Shirari Industries is now migrating!) wouldn't even support her domain pointing to Google, since they're so commercial. So we moved the site onto their server and installed WP. I set up the front page to look less bloggy since the site's primary function is serving up radical curricula - and I used tags and categories to help visitors find the kind of lesson plans they're looking for.
AEI Convergence 2009 - This site was particularly fun because it was a barter! In exchange for making my friend Emily's logo and putting together this quick WP, I got my bike fixed and she and Shira and I had a lovely meal together that she cooked and brought over one day. I love the little site, too - it's simple but it does what she needs it to do, and she can keep it updated easily, herself. And what a cool convergence she's planning! I love the photos she's adding to the site.
Share Tompkins - This one was particularly fun because I wrote the resources page, too. Well, the first edition. Now others have been invited in and hopefully the page will grow and evolve. The site is made using the free, hosted version of WP, in keeping with the Share Tompkins ethos of making life more sustainable and affordable through sharing resources. Using the free version of WP gives us less control over the site's appearance and functionality, but the important thing is to get this content out and usable - not to have it be 100% beautiful and customized. That might come later - this is only the beginning for this fledgling mutual aid network. Our friends Jason and Joe are working on an even more useful sister site, where members of the network will be able to list haves and wants, to facilitate easier sharing and bartering. In the meantime, folks can check out the many trade networks listed on the resources page, or they can come to our community swap meets.
freeDimensional - This site is still evolving, and has made some real progress lately! It's the only one here that's not a WP site - I built the splash page with some simple HTML, and the rest of the site is a Ning. Shira and I are very organizationally involved with these folks - we're both on their steering committee and we may soon have staff titles. Not sure - it's a horizontal network, and we're still discussing as a group how to best handle roles and responsibilities. But what all of this involvement means is that Shira and I have been intimately involved not only in the visual design of the site, but in creating the content on it, and even in making the organizational decisions that go into how the network presents itself and how it functions. It's an exciting process, with all of us volunteers and freelancers and staff people figuring out how to share power and how to talk about it. Mad props to Tricia Wang for her feedback on the site - I think we're making more and more sense, and becoming more and more easily navigable and comprehensible, and useful to everyone in the network that depends on the site.

That's it for now! Many more sites are currently in the works, and I'll share them when they're complete. Also on the table is a massive overhaul of this site right here, Shirari Industries. We're experimenting with a very new, flexible, open-feeling site navigation that we hope will be easier for us to keep up to date, and which will give a much better idea of all of our current projects. If there's anything you want us to keep or change or add as we do our redesign, please leave a comment with your ideas! We'd love to hear from you.

Stuff going on in Ithaca

By Ari | Jun 12, 09 12:37 PM

I just made two Google Calendars, for Ithaca events and for Ithaca Freeskool. Both are pretty empty right now because I'm hoping the folks I invited in start adding their own stuff - I didn't want to do the fun, easy part.

I hope that having collaborative, public calendars will help us all to avoid conflicts when scheduling stuff - and that this could be a useful place for progressives to post stuff, a one-stop shop. Right now it's hard to stay on top of all the progressive stuff happening in Ithaca - what calendar should you subscribe to, where do you look? Everyone has their own calendar but it's hard to find it all in one place. So maybe Ithacalendar can fill that gap. Thanks to everyone who thought of it last night at Shira's DIY filmmaking class!

If anyone wants to be an editor on either or both of the calendars, and if I haven't yet invited you (sorry, I'm doing this rather haphazardly, any omitted invites are not meant to be slights!), please let me know and I'll get you access.

Peanut tattoos

By Ari | Jun 12, 09 11:28 AM

lovebirds
Originally uploaded by picklepuff

Shira and I post a lot of our photography and art on Flickr with Creative Commons licenses so it can be used and shared. A while back I posted this sheet of tattoo art ideas that I sent to my brother Ant in Massachusetts. And then the other day I heard from picklepuff on Flickr; she wanted to know if she and her friend could use this little peanut guy I drew for matching tattoos! Ant said yes, so they got inked. Here's a photo. Eeee!

This is the second time that I know of that someone's actually gotten art by me tattooed on them. I've had some other art requests but I don't know if they panned out... I'm always too shy to check in. What do you say, "hey, did you get my goofy sketch permanently painted on your body?" Anyway, wow. I'm so happy to get this photo. Thanks to picklepuff and friend for bringing this peanut to life.

Check Out My Article About Food, Inc. at Documentary.org

By Shira | Jun 11, 09 02:44 PM

I had a chance to see a preview copy of the new documentary Food, Inc. and interview the Director, Robert Kenner. This is my first article for the International Documentary Association's blog, and I'm psyched to get a chance to write about a topic so close to my heart:

Here's an excerpt and you can read the full article online:
Change: It's What's for Dinner: 'Food, Inc.' Takes on Agribusiness

In a world dominated by corporations, it is no surprise that the American food system has been hijacked by the relentless drive for profit. Under the pretexts of affordability and convenience, modern industrialized agriculture has consistently ignored the unintended consequences of their "efficient" practices on our health and livelihoods, the environment and other species.
Equally implicated is the United States government, which simultaneously subsidizes and fails to adequately regulate the agriculture industrial complex. This reality, explored by Frederick Wiseman in his 1976 cinema vérité documentary Meat and more recently by Nikolaus Geyrhalter in the unnarrated montage film Unser täglich Brot (Our Daily Bread; 2005), is more explicitly tackled in Robert Kenner's Food, Inc., which opens June 12 in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and nationwide on June 19.

The issue of food and the many ways in which it affects our lives is an enormous one, and the film is a broad undertaking, exploring everything from the health impacts of ever ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup (one out of three Americans born today is expected to develop early-onset diabetes), to water and air pollution caused by intensive factory farming, to human rights violations perpetrated against undocumented workers by mega corporations like Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer. Viewers are aided in processing all of this information by motion graphics created by Big Star NYC, which worked with Kenner to create an entertaining and helpful visual language for the film.

Ultimately, Food, Inc. is an examination of free market capitalism's disregard for anything other than the bottom line. "This is a film that's about more than food," says Kenner. "It's really about corporate consolidation and irresponsibility and about the relationship of these companies with government. It's not that different from what happened with the financial crisis. These companies have been totally irresponsible and at the end of the day, we're the ones who pay the price."

Organizing, procrastinating, fixing, cleaning, sorting

By Ari | May 25, 09 04:15 PM

I have all these in-boxes. Big cardboard boxes and plastic containers full of unfinished projects, collected memory-type stuff, cards and other mail from friends, postcards and things picked up from our travels, broken things that need to be fixed.

They weigh me down and worry me, these boxes - I'm always seeing them and tripping over them and feeling anxious that they're piled up. But it's not like more boxes are arriving, so why sit on them forever, worrying for no good reason? Today I'm spring cleaning, going through them and sorting stuff out and putting it away or recycling it or fixing it. Such a relief.

The cost of living for the future

By Ari | May 8, 09 08:46 AM

Lately Shira and I have been thinking about moving, to save money. Our vegan ecovillage project is going well, but slowly. (And rightfully so.) In the meantime, we're continuing to love our big Ithaca apartment - it's far larger and more beautiful than anything we lived in in NYC, and it's cheaper, too. When we first moved here we were staggered by how much you can get for so little - from our jaded Brooklyn perspective. But now that we've been here for a while, we're making connections with a lot of people who are avoiding paying a lot to live, in some very creative ways. We're realizing just how much we're spending per year on housing, and how many hours of freelance work that translates into - and it's a lot of hours!

Helen and Scott Nearing, early back-to-the-landers, figured out how much cash they needed per year - the amount of cash money they'd need to pay for the few things they couldn't provide for themselves or barter for. They worked enough to make that amount of money and then they stopped working, in the belief that accumulating profit is wrong. That meant that if they finished getting their needed cash in April, they could just make music and write and work their land for the rest of the year with no need to make any more cash at all. Shira and I have been very inspired by the Nearings and love this idea, and are working toward it, though a portion of our cash outlays will ideally go into savings each year (we're planning a family, and want to be able to give our future kids something to start off with when they're grown).

So, getting into a cheaper housing situation would be very prudent. The trouble is, moving is a real pain in the ass when you have as much stuff as we do (we have hundreds of books...), and we're really enjoying having a space where people can stay with us, and where gatherings are possible. Our apartments in NYC were sorely lacking in this department. Our Ithaca apartment feels like an event space sometimes, or a B&B - we've got two private, comfortable, extra rooms where people can stay over. Our well-stocked kitchen (thank you family and friends and freeganism!) can feed a huge group of people. We've got so much stuff in here that sometimes I feel like we've got the makings of a common house right here in our apartment - when I feel stressed about how many power tools and kitchen gadgets and art supplies and children's books and toys we have, I think, it's okay, our kids will love it all, in the future. Our ecovillage will use it all, in the future.

Some time ago, I remember feeling burdened by our stuff, and the cost of having a place that fits it all. I was reading Home Work and admiring the cute wagon-houses and yurts and tiny cabins, and I wished I had so little I could put it all in a backpack. We could pack up our few belongings and traipse off to Mexico to visit our friend Emily, or bike cross-country, or whatever. But we have cat friends now who depend on us, and our belongings aren't a burden, but a hope chest.

The question is, could we find a cheaper way to live anyway, in the immediate future, while we wait for Ahimsa to crystallize? We've been looking at smaller apartments and even tiny houses that are cheaper than this place, but we've also been looking at larger houses with friends. But would it be worth the bother - and breaking our lease - to pack up our nest and move it? Do we want to work those hours to pay the extra cost of living in such a big, bright, comfortable space?

Making stuff and doing things

By Ari | Apr 25, 09 09:49 AM

So much has been happening, and I don't think we've posted a general update in a really long time. So for those who are interested...

Shira and I went to Winter Camp in Amsterdam with our friends from freeDimensional back in March. The event was a convergence of networks held by an organization that studies network cultures. People from all over the world came together to work within their network (on whatever their network works on - tech manuals, volunteerism, women and technology, whatever) and the Institute of Network Cultures watched us work and engaged us in learning what networks really are, how they're different from other cultural institutions, and how networks can work together in metanetworks.

We learned a lot. I'm always so challenged and excited by meeting with activists from all over the world - it really shakes up my ideas and understanding and makes me open my mind to other ways of thinking and doing. The hackers and open source folks in particular really spoke to me. I love the idea of technology being free and for the people, and am realizing that I want to help make that happen.

Our freelance business has been booming, which is nice, because traveling costs money! We've been working on some amazing projects for some very cool clients. The people we work with are all non-profits, culture workers, activists, and other progressive folks, and sometimes when I'm doing layout I'm also reading the text I'm formatting and thinking, "holy shit this is awesome!" (I'm talking about you right now, Scenarios USA!) Our clients really are helping to change the world.

However, a lot of work also means tough scheduling - sometimes a project goes longer than planned or an event date changes and suddenly a production schedule that was manageable becomes insanely difficult to navigate. There are only so many hours in the day! Recently I had three long documents (a gala journal, a curriculum, and a tech manual) due on the same day, over and over again, the deadlines constantly shifting as the projects got drawn out with extra edits and last-minute content updates. That was rough. But as I said, our clients are awesome, and even late nights and early mornings and weekend emailing is cool when it's for such amazing projects. It's nice to not only get a check and some nice print samples at the end of a project, but to really feel like whatever you've contributed to is going to make life better for people.

Ahimsa, our vegan intentional living project, is going so well! It's a very exciting process, meeting with people to create sustainable and affordable housing alternatives - the coolest thing is that we have no idea what we'll end up with. This open-endedness is a hallmark of our project; everyone in the group has been so flexible about the final product, which is really freeing. It's life as a design problem: Here are our needs, here are our resources; now how can we meet those needs with those resources? Easy! You go step by step and you can't go wrong. Diana Leafe Christian's Creating a Life Together has been such a help to us. She's helped give us confidence that even if people drop in and out of the project, and even if the project changes and takes on new forms, or splits, that that is progress and that is forming community. (For instance, there seems to be a greater need in Ithaca for increased access to and understanding of mutual aid, so Shira held a meeting that built on other community efforts to help that to form. This is a totally separate project from Ahimsa but is in other ways very related and overlapping. It's cool to see the "multiple centers of initiative" that Diana says are an indicator of a healthy community, in action, right here in our town. This flexibility is more freeing and useful than thinking anyone can come up with a single, perfect solution that will meet all of everyone's needs.)

Where is the project at right now? We're in between meetings, which we've been having every 2-4 weeks in Ithaca. These are consensus process meetings where we've been crafting a shared vision statement and educating ourselves about our housing options. We're gearing up for a spring retreat, where we'll camp out, do some storytelling and make food and music together, and have a bunch of big dialogues that will further define what we're all creating. And we're looking at properties, in case we find something we could afford outright that will allow us to escape the rent race so we can all save some resources and work together more easily. We're thinking hard about whether we want to pay a premium to be downtown in closer physical proximity to the greater community, or get more for our money by living out in the sticks. I'm leaning towards living out in the woods somewhere, personally. I want to do some building! Also, I dig how cheap it is to do natural building and I would like to influence policy by making alternative structures and getting them approved by building inspectors. Every dent we can make in the industrial housing complex with livable, healthy, DIY alternatives, is a step toward equitable housing for us all.

Shira and I have both been very productive creatively lately. Shira played at a house show at Ghost Cat Collective, and we both had work in an Ithaca Underground art show at the Underground Pirate House. Thanks to Ithaca Freeskool, I led a two-session workshop on DIY web design, and Shira's been going to a great photography group. I've been so inspired lately by all of the self-publishing and activism and organizing I've seen around me. When I have ideas sometimes I just write them down and don't act on them - but lately, I've been trying to just act immediately. I made a little zine I've been meaning to make for years, and some Ithaca buttons, and have been passing them around, curious to hear what people think of them so I can make them better.

Finally, it's spring here in Ithaca! I'm taking great heart from the warm wet smells of earth and blossoming trees, and from the sight of green life coming up from the ground so effortlessly and abundantly. I love how the seasons change, and how each transformation impacts us. We've been able to go out in just t-shirts, no hoodies! We've planted seeds! The windows are open and the cats are joyously sunning themselves in windowsills!

This has been a long and rambling post and I've barely covered half of the things that have happened in the past few months, but maybe the above gives you an idea of how deliciously, marvelously, inspiringly jam-packed our iCal is. I feel so grateful every day that I live in such a vibrant (local and global!) community that's challenging me on so many levels to create a better society in the here and now.

Going Green, One Film at a Time

By Shira | Apr 15, 09 08:56 PM

My interview with Larry Engel, Co-Author of the recently released Code of Best Practices for Sustainable Filmmaking, was just published on MediaRights.org and featured in their newsletter to over 20,500 members:
Going Green, One Film at a Time

Here's a choice excerpt:

Shira Golding: Do you think documentary filmmakers have a particular responsibility to be sustainable?

Larry Engel: Yes. Those of us from Filmmakers for Conservation and the Center for Environmental Filmmaking, are very much in the forefront of contact with the most exotic and fragile environments. We’re in the face of animals who are threatened and near extinction, and we make stories about them. It’s important to do that so that the public sees how beautiful and precious our world is, and exactly how fragile it is. Yet, for many many years, it didn’t matter how many Land Rovers you had – it didn’t quite matter what imprint you made on the land or the animals. And that didn’t make any sense.

This came to me many many years ago when I was working with a dear friend of mine and Co-Producer, Tom Lucas, out in Yellowstone. We had done an hour-long film for the National Wildlife Federation and PBS called Wildfire. We were tracking the ‘88 Yellowstone fires, and in the winter we went back to see how the park was doing, and we witnessed many many elks starving.

One of the researchers with whom we were working said, “You know, we’ve been doing studies about the caloric impact of human contact on animals from the back-country, and we learned that one contact can burn up hundreds of calories. Even if the animal doesn’t run or leave or do anything, just the stress and awareness, the adrenaline, consumes calories. In a marginal year, human contact could make the difference in the life and death of individual animals.”

At that point Tom and I looked at each other and we said, “Well you know what? We don’t really want to film anymore of these animals.” And she said, “You can keep filming them, but back off. Let’s make sure to use blinds and work in the trees so we minimize contact, instead of clomping around among hares and elks and buffalo. Let’s change our behavior.” Tanya really emphasizes that we have to change the behavior and sensitivity of the whole filmmaking world, from distributors, to programmers, the filmmakers, the manufacturers, all through the line.

Because if we can’t come around to figuring out how to create a sustainable lifestyle as filmmakers, then we’re doing a disservice to our subjects and therefore also to the audience.

Take a read and let me know what you think!

Happy-Go-Lucky in My Top Ten

By Shira | Apr 3, 09 03:12 PM

Ari and I finally watched Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky on DVD last night. It's been less than 24 hours, but I feel comfortable saying it's one of the best films I've ever seen. There are so many movies about fucked up people doing fucked up things. Here's a story about someone who is compassionate and vulnerable and has a sense of humor, which somehow manages to steer clear of cliches and devices. Perhaps the only real device is how the film was made - Leigh's improvisational, collaborative approach gives the actors the opportunity to create their roles from the ground up, so that by the time the cameras are rolling they can simply "be" the character and allow the scene to unfold.

Has anyone else out there seen the film? Did you totally fall in love with Poppy like I did?

Human Scale Living

By Shira | Feb 24, 09 03:28 PM

A big part of why living in Ithaca has been so good for us is its small-but-not-too-small size. With a population of 60,000 (30,000 of which are students at Cornell and Ithaca College), there are plenty of people to create culture and innovation. But at the same time, it only takes a few social events to realize that this is a "small town." When I meet someone new, I'm no longer surprised to find out they know at least one other friend of mine, or that they've even "heard of me" - which always makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

ari teaching a freeskool class on web design
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

When we were living in New York City we had a lot of great friends and yet we didn't ever have a sense of community. Part of this was that we dabbled in a lot of different subcultures - independent filmmakers, freegans, socialists, lesbians, radical marching bands, artists, academics, recreational volleyball players - instead of choosing one to call our own. These groups rarely overlapped and I found myself doing a lot of code-switching. Our friends were ideologically and geographically dispersed. The distance between a Red Hook freegan and an Upper East Side grad student is a lot greater than a few subway transfers.

milk with teresa, jeremy and some other folks
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

Back in college I took an amazing course called Architecture as a Cultural System in which we explored, among other things, the concept of Human Scale. This is the idea that humans are best suited to live in an environment that is designed to meet their spacial needs. This means walkability, easy access to necessary resources, closeness to the ground and appropriate population size.

meara and serena jamming in the library
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

According to Wikipedia, "Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150."

raw vegan potluck!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

Ari and I counted, and in just the last week, we've had 25 different friends over to our house, some of them more than once (you know who you are...Joe). Our friends Jeremy and Teresa came over for dinner on Sunday, Ari taught a freeskool class on web design on Wednesday, we had a ton of extra veggies from our CSA share so we had a potluck/cooking party with a bunch of folks on Thursday, more friends stopped by on Friday after watching Milk together at Cinemapolis (the art house theatre on The Commons), on Saturday the Phillips family came to stay with us for the weekend and Ben and Grace stopped by to join us for dinner and on Sunday we had our second official founders' meeting for Ahimsa Ecovillage with eleven guests, including three kids.

looking at our future
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

The amazing thing is that there are numerous ways in which all these folks are connected outside their relationships to us. This makes for a very tangible social fabric and a feeling of interdependence that I haven't truly experienced since sleep-away camp as a kid (I went to the socialist Jewish kibbutz-like Camp Moshava for six summers.)

this is what feminists look like!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

As we move forward with Ahimsa, our sustainable, vegan ecovillage project, human scale will be a key concept. How can we create a community that is big enough to create innovation and cross-pollination, but small enough to maintain accountability and trust? How many people does it take to be self-sufficient? How will our size and location (rural vs. urban) impact our connection to the broader Ithaca community? I don't know the answers yet, but I'm loving the process of finding out. In the meantime, I'm enjoying being part of the monkeysphere.

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #6: Economies

By shirari | Feb 4, 09 02:33 PM

Tune into the Wednesday, February 4th edition of our podcast to check out our snappy new format! We've broken the show into three segments to make it easier for folks to selectively listen to parts they're interested in:

Local Updates, in which we tell you about wonderful and exciting new developments in our local area, the Fingerlakes region of New York. You'll hear about permaculture organizing, the new Ithaca Freeskool calendar, and a new vegan group. (We can't wait to go to their pizza party on Friday!)
Be the Change, in which we give you two tips, both of which, now that we think about it, are pig-related. (And yet, somehow, relevant to a general audience. We think.)
Discussion: Economies, in which we look briefly at some issues with non-profit funding, venture capital, microlending, and global capitalism, as well as with socialism and other isms, before giving an overview of different interesting alternatives (featuring copyleft, coworking, freeganism, CSAs, relocalization, and other awesomeness).

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Links mentioned in the show:
Hook up with other Fingerlakes Permaculture folks at flxpermaculture.net
Ithaca Freeskool
Ithaca Zine
Ahimsa Ecovillage
Ithaca Vegans Yahoo Group
Vegan Chai is so over bacon!
Ari's Twitter
Find a local CSA at localharvest.org

If you listen to our podcast, tell us what you like about it, and what could be improved! And if you don't listen to our podcast, why not? Tell us what you might like to hear, so we can do a better job of it. Thanks and peace to all who tune into this edition!

Previously:
Previous show notes

"Sometimes It's Hard to Breathe" - I finally edited my footage from our trip to India in 2006

By Shira | Jan 18, 09 06:28 PM

Sometimes It's Hard to Breathe from Shira Golding on Vimeo.

Shot in India over three weeks in November 2006, Sometimes It's Hard to Breathe is an experimental, personal travelogue. For more context, check out our photos from the trip:

Shira's India Photos
Ari's India Photos

freeDimensional: Birthing a web 2.0 child

By Ari | Jan 12, 09 06:44 PM

I hope executive director Todd Lester of freeDimensional doesn't mind if I quote him with the title of my post here, but this is how he described the collaborative experience of launching fD's new site this weekend, and I think it's particularly apt: We all birthed a web 2.0 child. You can go meet it here: freeDimensional.org.

freeDimensional is an organically-growing, partnership-based organization that links activist culture workers (journalists, artists, writers, and the like) who are facing repression and censorship with support services, including safe haven placements in artist residency programs. The power of the organization is in its social networks around the globe. These programs, these services, these people, are all out there - the challenge is only to connect everyone so we can all engage more effectively in mutual aid.

I met Todd way back at the end of 2005, through Shira and their work around the Media That Matters Film Festival. He needed a site, and at the time, I remember seeing that they'd need something much more interactive in the future, but that for now, I could make a small, informational site to give them a web presence while they built their organization. For a long time I thought that in the future we'd hire some big web design firm to come in and create some perfect glittering website for them that would magically fulfill all of their many needs.

In the interim, I had a bit of an awakening about the internet, via my understanding of web 2.0 (collaborative, online) technologies. The internet can be an extension of our physical lives, a way for us to transcend space and time. Our blogs and Flickr photostreams and Tweets and Delicious links and Facebook updates are extensions of and aids to our imperfect human memories. Email and messaging and Skype and the like allow us to connect with each other across great distances, often instantly. We're all learning how to use the internet most effectively to meet these great needs, and in the process, I believe we're gradually realizing our commonality, and creating new solutions to age-old problems that formerly seemed unsolvable. (I have a theory about web 3.0. If anyone reads this and is interested, comment and I'll write about it!!)

So when fD finally outgrew their little site and was ready for something new and more useful, Shira and I were ready to craft a solution for them. It was time for them to clarify what they were all about, explain it well, and then provide an online platform for the incredible social networking that had been happening in the real world. fD was ready to go web 2.0.

Shira made a short video intro for them and helped them rework and refine their mission statement and other organizational copy. I helped them look at their many technology options and to select free services that will allow them to grow and extend their reach with minimal cash outlays. The site is built on the Ning custom social networking platform (the free version for now). We're transitioning the mailing list to Vertical Response and their lovely nearly-free non-profit program. Shira chose the beautifully high-res-capable video service Vimeo to host fD's intro video. We integrated Twitter, Flickr and YouTube feeds into the site. We'd settled on Network for Good to collect donations a while back. fD also has accounts on other social networking sites, which we've been using to meet and collaborate with even more people around the world.

These free and low-cost services have limitations - you're fitting your own complex self into a sometimes-imperfect template, and you don't have the same level of control over your content that you'd have if you were hosting the whole thing on your own server. However, they make an extraordinary array of sophisticated communications features accessible to organizations that don't have tens of thousands of dollars to drop on a new custom-crafted interactive site every few years. The internet is changing so fast that production cannot keep up with the technology if we follow old models of design and interaction. This solution can and will grow and evolve, flexibly adapting to and taking advantage of new technologies as they come.

This project would not have been possible if Shira and I, or fD, worked in a more mainstream and less openly collaborative way. Shira's and my cooperative approach to design problems and fD's trust and willingness to experiment made for a very organic design and production process that drew on the strengths and knowledge of everyone involved. This web 2.0 child we've birthed together reflects that process, and is stronger for it.
freeDimensional.org »

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #5: Top 8 Activist Strategies

By Shira | Dec 16, 08 05:51 PM

December 16, 2008 - 71 minutes - 95.5MB

After an update about Ithaca, Shaleshock and our vegan ecovillage project, we discuss our top eight best practices for changing the world and conclude the show with some ideas for a d.i.y. anticapitalist holiday season.

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Show links:

Some Places Worth Donating To (there are so many more, here are just a few):

Arts Engine supports, produces, and distributes independent media of consequence and promotes the use of independent media by advocates, educators and the general public. Donate
East New York Farms! is a collaborative project whose mission is to organize youth and adult residents to address food issues in their community by promoting local and regional sustainable agriculture and community-based economic development. Donate
freeDimensional is an international network that advances social justice by hosting activists in art spaces and using cultural resources to strengthen their work. Donate
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) strives to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. Donate
Just Vision is a nonprofit organization that informs local and international audiences about under-documented Palestinian and Israeli joint civilian efforts to resolve the conflict nonviolently. Using media and educational tools, they raise awareness in order to encourage civic participation in grassroots peace building. Donate
Scenarios USA is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that that uses writing and filmmaking to foster youth leadership, advocacy and self-expression in under-served teens. Scenarios USA asks teens to write about the issues that shape their lives for the annual "What's the REAL DEAL?" writing contest, and thousands have responded with their raw and revealing insights. Donate
Shaleshock Citizens Action Alliance is a grassroots group of Finger Lakes residents who are concerned with understanding and protecting our communities and environment from exploitation by the energy industry with regards to drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale. Donate

Previously:

Shale Shocked

By Shira | Dec 6, 08 03:05 AM

There are many factors that contribute to the fertility and productivity of land that are beyond a landowners' direct control. One of the major issues we need to consider in New York State is natural gas drilling. Ever since the development of more commercially-viable drilling techniques around 2000, major oil companies have been going to town on the Marcellus Shale. One of the main ways they get access to the land is by leasing land and drilling rights from local landowners. While this can be a good source of income for struggling farmers, there are numerous environmental impacts including the distribution of toxic chemicals into the soil and water table.

We've been getting involved with Shaleshock, a local resistance group, and we recently designed their logo and a new website. Check out the site to get up to speed on the issues and take action. One thing you can do now is comment on the DEC's draft scope...

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has released a draft scope document that outlines how they will regulate natural gas drilling of the Marcellus Shale. In addition to commenting at public hearings around the state, you can submit your comments via letter or email by December 15th.

Submit comments to:
Attn: Scope Comments
Bureau of Oil & Gas Regulation, NYSDEC Division of Mineral Resources
625 Broadway, Third Floor
Albany, NY 12233-6500

Or email to dmnog@gw.dec.state.ny.us with "Scope Comments" as the Subject

Download the pdf of the scope

Tortillas and Cider, Delivered to Our Doorstep

By Shira | Dec 5, 08 12:43 PM

A lot of people have been talking about eating local, and the arguments are pretty straight-forward: when you eat local you save energy/fuel, build community, and develop your local economy. Not to mention, your food is a lot less likely to be processed with preservatives and other nastiness.

Eating local in Ithaca is pretty easy and it seems to be getting easier every day. The Ithaca Farmer's Market is open April through December and has amazing produce - plus local crafts, live music and hot food. A lot of the stands are organic and there's even one place where everything is veganically grown - Unexpected Farm from Watkins Glen.

the glorious ithaca farmer's market
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

live music, local food
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

veganically-grown!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

breakfast at the farmer's market
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

We've been getting most of our produce from the Farmers Market since we moved here three months ago, and supplementing from Greenstar Cooperative Market - where we're members. Greenstar is definitely not 100% local, but they have really great signage, which makes it so much easier to know the distance food has traveled. But as winter sets in, the Farmer's Market closes up shop and buying local produce at the coop gets too expensive, so we decided to join a winter CSA. We just picked up our first share last week and it was an amazing bounty - carrots, potatoes, leeks, cabbage, turnips, garlic, kale, squash, radichio, bok choi, and salad greens.

ithaca chocolate!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

The cool thing about the CSA model, is that it enables the farmer to get paid up front so that they have the money when they need it most for buying supplies, paying laborers, repairs, etc. And usually, by paying a fixed price at the beginning, the individual CSA member gets a really good deal on a lot of fresh, local food. It is probably the best way to eat seasonally, if you're not growing your own food.

What's really exciting right now is that all these small grassroots distributors are popping up to fill holes in the local market. A couple of months ago, it wasn't uncommon for us to go for a walk and pass by an unsupervised produce stand in front of a house on a quiet residential street.

there's a can where you can leave a quarter
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

Recently, our friend Emily was thinking about how there are no local tortilla makers, so she started making vegan, organic, wheat tortillas and delivering them to people on her bike. And then Travis and Ellen announced on the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute's email list that they had pressed a huge amount of cider and could deliver a half gallon or gallon to any one who wanted some.

beach or tortilla?
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

gaia tortilla
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

sunrise apple cider - delivered to our door!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

And these projects are inspiring new ones. A couple of guys who got Emily's tortillas one week, made some hummus to put on them, and it was such a tasty combination that now they're planning on making and delivering hummus. I sampled some of their recipe at the hat band party and it was amazing. I can't wait for them to start distributing!

All this activity has gotten us brainstorming like crazy, especially whenever we meet up with our new friend Joe. He's a true renaissance man - a guy who knows how to build his own house, convert engines to run on vegetable oil, code websites and play death metal. We've been talking about collaborating on a vegan baked goods enterprise in the future.

But with all these microbusinesses launching, it seems like we could take this whole thing a step further. What if once a week, we all met up in one centralized location (maybe a rotating potluck at different people's houses) and we just swap stuff - no money involved. So Emily could bring her tortillas, and Travis brings his cider, and Ellen brings tea, and Dusqkee brings hummus, and Ari brings vegan cookies, and Joe brings vegan muffins, and Danila brings garlic, and Mer and Uriel offer massages, and Rachel teaches yoga, and I bring knitted hats and cozies etc. etc. And instead of paying each other, we would just swap in a mutual aid, take as you need kind of way. And maybe it's one big coop and we all put in cash when we can and take it out when we need it. And there's a local community center with an industrial kitchen and craft studios and workshops. And before you know it, we're a totally self-sustaining community.

This is where we are heading!

Cool folks we're working with in Ithaca: Ithaca-Area Vegan Meetup Group and Shaleshock

By Ari | Dec 2, 08 03:05 PM

Are you in the Ithaca area, and either vegan or vegan-curious? Come check out the Ithaca-Area Vegan Meetup Group - we have a weekly coffee and tea hour at Autumn Leaves Cafe, 3pm on Sundays. Lately folks have been talking activism, which is awesome! Come over and get involved if you're in town and love animals. Whoo! If you want to help promote, here are handbills and a poster. (Designed by me.)

Another project Shira and I have been participating in is Shaleshock - the site was hacked before we arrived in town and so they haven't had a very good online presence. We're helping to get content up there and organized. It's my first time working with WordPress (I'm usually a Movable Type girl), and it's a lot of fun. Big thanks to Joe for setting this thing up!

Expanding My Musical Horizons

By Shira | Nov 24, 08 02:41 PM

I've been playing guitar for twenty years. I started taking lessons at the Jewish Community Center across the street from my school in the third grade, after tap class. This guy named Tom taught me how to read music and play classical tunes. Later, I learned a bunch of Flamenco pieces. But really, I've always wanted to be in a band.

I was born in Portland, Oregon and even though we moved to Maryland when I was two, we have strong ties to the Feuer family, who have lived there for decades. Throughout my childhood, we visited them every few years, usually for Passover, when they host a seder with upwards of fifty people. The Feuers know how to have a good time, and a big part of that is music. Everybody plays something, or multiple instruments. Yoav plays the trumpet and can sing like Louis Armstrong. Avi plays guitar and taught me how to play folk music - the first non-classical song I learned to play was Tracy Chapman's "Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution" and it was Avi who showed me how to strum. Kimi's son Asher is a year younger than me and he can play a bunch of stuff, including the didgeridoo! In my nostalgic memories, every night at the Feuers was one extended jam session, with the players dropping in and out, spirited singing, and toddlers banging on drums.

Now that I'm a more seasoned musician with a bunch of songs and performances under my belt, what I'm still longing for is the jam. I want a community of people who I can get together with and make music. And I think I'm finding it here in Ithaca! The musical culture in these parts is really strong. When the weather is warm, it's not uncommon to see a person walking down the street playing the banjo, or stumble upon a drum circle in one of the parks.

And I'm jumping in. I haven't done an open mic yet, but I'm going to be performing on December 19th with my "hat band." I went to this party last week where a bunch of folks got together and put their names in a hat. Bands were picked at random and each group is going to perform as part of a group show. The catch is, we're supposed to play an instrument that we're not proficient in. I just got a mandolin a few weeks ago, so I think I'm going to play that! Wish me luck and stay tuned for details...

"The role of trust in high tech work- The case of Freelance Web-Designers in NYC"

By Ari | Nov 10, 08 03:36 PM

A while back I participated in a study by a Columbia sociology student named Matthias Thiemann, who has written a 120 page thesis in German based on his research. He's translated a four-page section of it which may be published as a chapter in an upcoming book, which I really got a kick out of and wanted to share here: The role of trust in high tech work- The case of Freelance Web-Designers in NYC (PDF)

Some highlights that I really identify with (and I guess I should, since I was part of the sample):

In sending away clients to cheaper, better suited competitors or building little devices free of charge, freelancers establish a reputation of putting the clients’ welfare first, generating trust. Such acts of gift-giving then can lead to overcome the volatility of market-demand by generating referral networks for the freelancer and binding the gift-recipients for the long term.

I totally do this! I learned this from Tekserve, where I first worked when we moved to NYC - and it's not something I do to get something out of people, with the expectation of returns. I do it because, like Tekserve, I care about the people I'm working with, and about their projects, and if I can do something that's perhaps small and easy for me, but of great value to my clients, I'll do it in a heartbeat. This is also why Shira and I sometimes refer clients to other designers - if we know someone who can do a given job better or more economically for some reason, we pass it on, because it's in our client's interest. And rather than losing us clients, often those same clients come back because they know we did them a good turn.

In the sample, the more successful freelancers deserve special attention to the communication process, attempting to include the wishes of the customers and providing them with the feeling that they are in command. This strategy does not only bind their clients to them and leads to several referrals due to the pleasant process of cooperation, it is also a lucrative strategy in itself. The increased trust into the interaction partner seems to arouse the desire to actively engage in the process of production. This not only increases the satisfaction with the final product, it also increases the amount of work time spent on a project which adds to the income of the designer.

Here too, we don't use this strategy so we'll spend more time and make more money, though of course those are nice side effects which do happen on some projects. Shira and I treat every design job not as merely a service for pay, but as a cooperative partnership - we specialize in helping to give form and reach to our clients' ideas. The result is that the client is usually very, very happy with the product, and the product is very, very useful to them. We do give advice and make calls as designers, because we often have a deeper understanding of communications strategy and visual design principles than do our clients (which is, after all, why they hire us), but we don't steamroll our clients into accepting things they don't dig. We like to work with people to make things they love, and which will last. It's good for the client, and Matthias's study is helping me see how good it is for us, too.

Click here to read the paper, and let me know if you too are a web designer who'd like to talk to Matthias. His research goes on...

The Ithaca Green Buildings Open House

By Shira | Oct 17, 08 04:25 PM

Ari and I spent the first weekend of October climbing on people's roofs, investigating their toilets, and befriending their goats. No, we weren't being inappropriately nosy - it was all part of the 2008 Ithaca Green Buildings Open House!

In partnership with the American Solar Energy Society's National Solar Tour, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, Ithaca Green Building Alliance and the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association organized the two-day event in which twenty-seven sites were open to visitors.

As aspiring owner-builders with a vision for a naturally-built, sustainable ecovillage, the tour offered an amazing opportunity to see what building and energy techniques work locally, and to meet a bunch of really cool people. In addition to a lot of photovoltaic systems, we checked out some amazing living/green roofs, unconventional stoves, outhouses, vegetable gardens, and really, really long driveways.

Folks were using a variety of building-techniques including timber-frame, strawbale, earth-berming and round construction. We also learned, not surprisingly, that a lot of green home-owners love animals. We made friends with many cats and dogs and even a couple of goats!

We managed to visit six homes, but my favorite was the first - Sarah Highland's straw-clay timber-framed house-in-progress. Sarah designed and is building the house herself, with help from friends. It's surrounded by beautiful land featuring a pond, an adorable sauna, and a composting toilet outhouse, which Sarah and Liz lovingly refer to as their "room with a view" and which is also temporarily housing their solar panel equipment.

While some of the other homes on the tour were just as beautiful, Sarah had designed and built the house mostly by herself, which is pretty damn impressive. The masonry stove itself, is something to behold.

All in all, it was a great tour. My take-aways are:

It's all about the land.
If you're not too far from the road, being on-grid has some benefits, even if you're generating most of your own power.
Wood is a beautiful building material.
Solar systems are easier to maintain if they're not on your roof. Unless of course, if you have a solar hot water system on top of your earth-bermed green roof like the Bensons.
Water catchment is easy - all you need is a barrel.
Being a bit of a gadget geek is good.
It makes sense to design a home where you can age in place.
Salvaged and vintage stuff is awesome.
Make friends with your local saw mill.

Here are some of my favorite photos from the tour...

liz says she likes big "crazy" ideas like bike generators - me too!

approaching tina macdonald's place

visitors on the bensons' earth-sheltered living roof

the bensons' roof is so cool...

Hopefully it won't be too long before our home is part of the Ithaca Green Buildings Tour...

Spreading the Word About Ahimsa Ecovillage

By Shira | Oct 6, 08 04:03 PM

On September 20th, 2008, we presented our idea for Ahimsa, a vegan ecovillage, with members of Club Veg Southern Tier and the Ithaca Area Vegan Meetup. The discussion took place at Smart Monkey Cafe where the group convened for a delicious vegan meal. Thanks to Ben Bristoll for video taping the event and to Bill Huston for taking photos!

Ahimsa Ecovillage Discussion from Shira Golding on Vimeo.

I love this photo of us. Doesn't Ari look like a visionary?

Photo by Bill Huston

Check out more photos from the event on flickr...

A new vegan cat community

By Ari | Oct 1, 08 10:31 PM

I've been frustrated for sooo long by my inability to hook up with other folks who have vegan cats. I mean, I've met a few people online, but it's hard to really share information in any kind of organized way. Where can I ask people for advice on how to talk to our vet without getting instant judgement? Where can I share tips on how to best prepare Vegecat homemade vegan cat food?

Well, I finally decided (as if I don't have enough to do), that I should just go ahead and start a community and see what happens. Maybe I'm the only one out there looking for this kind of thing, I don't know. But it's worth a try!

You can visit the community here: vegancats.ning.com

Please feel free to fire questions at me if this is the first time you've heard of vegan cats! And be sure to check out the always adorable Sid, Zora and Snow, our own dear vegan cat housemates.

This is my first time setting up a Ning from scratch, rather than just customizing an existing one, and I've got to say, it's awesome. Very easy to set up and integrate with third-party services. This one is a bit of a practice run for me because I may be setting one up for our friends at freeDimensional in the near future. Go Ning.

13 changes we've made to help the earth

By Ari | Sep 26, 08 09:38 AM

Here's a photo of a card in our last set of little outreach materials we distributed around NYC before leaving for the greener streets and gorges of Ithaca. We used the little cards that we have left over from when we had our wedding invitations printed up, pasting handwritten and printed bits of paper over the parts with text. Presto - new outreach cards, less waste, and no printing costs. Yay!

I thought I'd post about some of the things Shira and I have done to reduce our environmental impact. We've been trying a lot of things and have really reduced our footprint in tangible ways - and we're still living just as lush and happy a life as we were before we started making these changes. In fact, reducing our impact on our planet not been an experience of deprivation or bother - it's actually enriched our lives and brought us a lot of happiness and relief and fulfillment. Read on for some ideas, from quick and easy things to bigger lifestyle changes, that you too could try on for size. The earth, the animals, and the next seven generations will thank you!

Continue reading "13 changes we've made to help the earth..." »

If only there were more Garbage Warriors

By Shira | Sep 17, 08 02:12 PM

My friend Jolene from Arts Engine just told me about this movie. I haven't seen it yet, but the trailer looks great. Hopefully Ari and I won't face as many governmental challenges as we move forward with our natural building dreams...

While Michael Reynolds has focused on the earthship approach, which makes perfect sense for New Mexico (and perhaps post-Katrina New Orleans), it looks like strawbale might be a better technique for upstate New York, where we recently moved. We've got a lot to learn about building, but we have a community vision. We're giving a presentation about our ideas for an Ahimsa Ecovillage this Saturday at 6pm at the Vegan Meetup at Smart Monkey Cafe in Ithaca. RSVP and come!

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #4: In Ithaca...

By Shira | Sep 10, 08 04:48 PM

We moved to Ithaca! Listen to us discuss brimming gardens, local pirates, mushroom-growing workshops and more...

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Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #4: In Ithaca... »
September 10, 2008 - 26 minutes - 23.7MB

Show links:

Our Fortunes

Ithaca Pirates

Another Awesome Ithaca Bumper

Always Keep Ithaca In Mind

Previously:

Living with Solar and Wind Power in Ithaca: Lessons from an Energy-Efficient Lifestyle - Sept. 24th

By Ari | Sep 10, 08 10:42 AM

Another event we're excited about in Ithaca: Living with Solar and Wind Power in Ithaca: Lessons from an Energy-Efficient Lifestyle, coming up on Sept. 24th, 7-8:15 pm, at Greenstar Coop. It's 100% free and... 100% awesome? We hope so. Visit Greenstar's Community Calendar for more info or call 607.273.9392 to register.

Read on for the full event description.

Continue reading "Living with Solar and Wind Power in Ithaca: Lessons from an Energy-Efficient Lifestyle - Sept. 24th..." »

The Grandmothers Speak - October 5th, Ithaca

By Ari | Sep 10, 08 09:51 AM

We're going to this event on October 5th, The Grandmothers Speak. Thirteen indigenous grandmothers from all over the world will do a prayer of healing for the earth, something even this 1/64 Cherokee atheist is excited to see and hear. You can visit the grandmothers online here.

More info and tickets. Read on for a longer description of the group and the event.

Continue reading "The Grandmothers Speak - October 5th, Ithaca..." »

An update on Ahimsa, our vegan ecovillage project

By Ari | Sep 9, 08 10:35 AM

Club Veg Southern Tier has invited us to the Smart Monkey Café outing they've planned with The Ithaca Area Vegan Meetup Group. If you're in the area, please join us - you can RSVP here.

We've just updated and improved the project webpage and ic.org listing. We hope that it now provides a clearer and more useful way to get involved than our previous request that people email us (which we always took waaaay too long to respond to). It also provides some guidance as to where to go from here, once you've joined the list. And finally, it now answers a lot of questions that kept coming up in our discussions.

If you're interested in community living and would be willing to live in a sustainable, cruelty-free way in or around Ithaca, we want to meet you! Check out the page for more info and to get involved.

Previously:
A community can look like this
Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #2: Housing
Ahimsa Ecovillage

8 Vegan Restaurants We'll Miss When We Leave NYC

By Shira | Aug 20, 08 07:08 AM

We're moving to Ithaca in a couple of weeks after over six years in NYC, and there are a lot of things we're going to miss so...we're making a Google map of our favorites. So far, we've just done restaurants, but there's more coming.

And...here are our 8 favorite restaurants (that happen to be mostly vegan), in no particular order:

Foodswings
The best vegan sandwiches in NYC, not to mention amazing drumsticks and mac 'n' cheese. They catered our wedding!

NY Dosas
An amazing South Indian food cart! Our favorite is the Masala Dosa with a veggie drumstick on the side. Ask Thiru for his cell number and you can call ahead to place your order. If it's nice out, sit and eat in Washington Square Park.

Sacred Chow
Vegan tapas with a romantic atmosphere. The best brussel sprouts in town.

Vegetarian Palate
Delicious vegan Chinese food. We used to order from these guys all the time when we lived in Park Slope. Our favorites are the ribs, Duck L'Orange, and the spinach dumplings.

Kate's Joint
We used to go to this place all the time when we lived in the Lower East Side. Kate's Benedict is a great brunch, and comes with a Bloody Mary or Screwdriver and all-you-can-drink coffee.

Temple in the Village
Possibly the best vegan buffet in NYC, and it's all organic. We usually pile up on greens, tofu, and fried veggie pancakes.

Mighty Diamond
Really cool murals and adorable table signage explaining tofu and tempeh - our faves are the curry "goat", mac 'n' cheese, collards and the veggie patty. they also have vegan corn bread!

Red Bamboo
One of the fancier vegan joints - a bit pricy but the food is great. We love the "Sole on a Roll" with a Lambic Peche (deliciously sweet Belgian beer).

Check out more of Shirari's NYC Favorites.

Old photos are fun

By Shira | Aug 12, 08 11:23 AM

That's me on the left and my dad on the right. Our friend Tricia posted some awesome old photos of her and her family to flickr a while back, and it inspired me to do the same. Check out my new family album set on flickr.

6 best practices: Engaging in social networking for social change

By Ari | Aug 9, 08 03:56 PM

as a vegan lesbian, i find this doubly gross
Originally uploaded by arimoore

I'm a Flickr addict. I have nearly 450 contacts and am in over 280 groups; I admin or moderate an additional 8 groups, two of which I started. Sometimes I worry I'm spending too much time on the site, but I get so much out of it I think the effort is more than worth the return - I've gotten feedback on my drawings that's been a huge motivator and inspiration for future work; I've had dialogues with activists and others that have gone on for days and changed minds all around (including my own, many times); folks have found my work and used in their own projects or published it with their articles - and even an upcoming book - while I've found images to use in pieces for our clients, in lieu of stock photography. All in all it's been a very positive experience, and I've picked up a lot about how to be more effective as an activist and as a member of the Flickr community. I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned.

Continue reading "6 best practices: Engaging in social networking for social change..." »

A community can look like this

By Ari | Aug 9, 08 10:47 AM

a community can look like this (color version)
Originally uploaded by arimoore

Shira and I continue to do research on our future housing options. The drawing here is me puzzling over certain house types and just messing around with pretty shapes. (I feel like I'm getting better at drawing trees freehand thanks to all of my tree drawings! I guess that's what happens when you don't draw much else for a couple of years.)

Making these drawings, and reading about natural building and the owner-builder concept, is liberating and empowering. Reading through Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter and Shelter, you can see how capable and powerful ordinary people are at creating beautiful and livable solutions themselves, without any help from "professionals." You begin to see that folks have been making their own homes and workshops and such for as long as we've been able to improvise tools and manipulate our environment. Over time we've come up with better and better ways of housing ourselves. Strawbale, cob, stone and other natural building materials are safer, easier to use, more energy-efficient, and far less expensive than the chemical-leaching, wasteful drywall and vinyl siding and asphalt shingles and other stuff that so many of us use in new houses today.

Continue reading "A community can look like this..." »

Strange Overtones

By Shira | Aug 8, 08 12:02 PM

"Strange Overtones" is the name of the new track just released by David Byrne and Brian Eno. I was just listening to it a few minutes ago, and I could not keep myself from getting up and dancing. It's pretty awesome. You can download it for free from the album site - I guess they're experimenting with new distribution techniques a la Radiohead with their album, In Rainbows.

I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't know much about Byrne a few years ago, but he'll definitely be a part of what I remember about our time living in NYC, which is rapidly coming to an end! And apparently he likes some of the same stuff as us. He was in the same movie theatre as us when we saw the amazing Korean monster comedy The Host at the Sunshine and I spotted his glistening white hair in line at McSweeney's "The World Explained" fundraiser for 826 NYC in April 2007. He also curated what was definitely the best concert experience I have had in many years - the "Welcome to Dreamland" show at Carnegie Hall, a showcase of the "freak folk" movement featuring Devendra Banhart, Vashti Bunyan, CocoRosie and others.

Most recently, we checked out Byrne's installation "Playing the Building" at the Maritime Building en route to the Figment Festival on Governor's Island. Here's a little video clip...

So now I have to start learning more about Brian Eno. Our paths haven't crossed nearly as much, but coincidently he did the music for the 1997 BBC series "How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand (embedded below), which I was just watching a few days ago on Google video. It's a great introduction to the way that buildings are shaped by humans and the environment. So can I assume that Eno shares our passion for permaculture and natural building? Just maybe...

In Our Future Home...

By Shira | Jul 30, 08 04:16 PM

...I want to generate my own energy by dancing and walking.

Radical Change Design for Green Earth Design Competition

By Shira | Jul 23, 08 04:03 PM

I just submitted this design to the green earth
international graphic design competition.

Here's my little artists statement. I'm not used to doing these!

Being "green" means living sustainably with the earth and all of its inhabitants. To do this, we must reconnect with nature on a deep level. As we become one with the earth, radical change will happen.

rad·i·cal 1. of or going to the root or origin; fundamental: a radical difference. 2. forming a basis or foundation. 3. existing inherently in a thing or person. 4. Botany. of or arising from the root or the base of the stem.

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #3: Travel

By shirari | Jun 30, 08 06:26 PM

Get ready for an hour and twelve minutes of non-stop queer vegan rambling! Wait, that didn't sound particularly attractive. Rest assured it'll be worth a listen - in this third installment of Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast we talk about our recent trip to Israel, Amsterdam, and Iceland, and how we attempted to take best advantage of the fuel used to have a experience that was as low-impact and culture-rich as possible. You'll hear about a kibbutz that turns soda cans and other trash into eco-friendly buildings, bikes by the boatload, naked showers with Europeans, friendly ducks interrupting breakfast in a tent, a town where street art is loved and not hated, and delicious, delicious falafel.

Shira's voice is kinda quiet in this one, sorry about that! We're still working out the technical kinks here. If you're actually downloading and listening to these, please comment and tell us what you think! Thanks to those of you who've written to us or commented already, we're so happy folks are giving these a listen.

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #3: Travel »
June 30, 2008 - 72 minutes - 32.9MB

Show links:

Previously:

Columbia study on independent new media workers

By Ari | Jun 30, 08 01:10 AM

Any freelance web designers out there who want to help sociologists understand what's going on with our field? I spoke with Matthias at Columbia last week and had a great conversation about networking, relationships with other freelancers, quoting/estimating and fees, unionization questions, and other interesting facets of the freelance life. Here's info on the study if you'd like to participate:

You have been chosen as a participant for a study on employment conditions in contingent labor markets. This research is directed to gain a better understanding of this expanding form of labor markets and the exigencies it imposes upon workers in them.

Recent changes in organizational structure and employment relationships in the American work place have created an increasing amount of workers that work as singular self-employed. This study will scrutinize the actual demands that are exerted upon workers in this situation when the acquisition of future work becomes of major concern. For this purpose freelancers in the new media industry are a fitting target group, as their industry is characterized by a high percentage of freelancers, temp agents and independent contractors.

The study looks at how individuals adapt to the direct exposure to the labor market in terms of work load, skill development and life work arrangements and if and in which ways they use peers to delimit work load and secure continuous employment by leading guided interviews and collecting network as well as socioeconomic information. Of course all information gathered will be used confidentially and names will be anonymised.
Your cooperation might allow us to understand better the specifics of the new media labor market and to formulate policy recommendations to improve the situation for workers. Therefore, your participation would be highly appreciated.

If you agree to being interviewed, please email mt2430 -at- columbia -dot- edu or call the following number (646 552 2803) and we will set up an appointment according to your wishes

With our Best Wishes
Prof. Seymour Spilerman
(Principal Investigator Columbia University, Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Social Sciences)
Matthias Thiemann
Co-Investigator
(PhD-student Columbia\ Sociology Department)

Camp it up with Rude Mechanical Orchestra - Party tonight, NYC!

By Ari | Jun 27, 08 02:18 PM

Folly Day 2008 - RMO Horns Advance
Originally uploaded by LarimdaME

If you've never seen an activist marching band perform, and you're in NYC, tonight is the perfect opportunity to catch an amazing show. Our friends in the Rude Mechanical Orchestra are having a big benefit party, and we're bringing along some hand-drawn peace and love buttons and a poster in a hand-made frame for auction. We'll post photos of the stuff we made later on Flickr, or you can come see it in person tonight! For more info read on:

CAMP IT UP! with the RUDE MECHANICAL ORCHESTRA
Friday, June 27th at DCTV
87 Lafayette Street, NYC (just south of Canal)
$0-$20 suggested donation - $20 gets you a special gift!
Doors open at 7pm
Wear something CAMP-y!
HELP US GO PROTEST THE RNC! ***
Bike valet! Silent auction! S'mores! Stripes! Khaki shorts! Fun!
Buy a raffle ticket and win your chance to have the RMO perform at a personal event of your choosing! Yes, we're serious. 1 for $3, 2 for $5, 10 for $20. Available now until the party. Your event must take place after our tour and be in one of the five boroughs.
Also featuring:
Veveritse
Inner Princess
Melora auf Rasputina
Frank London
Jennifer Miller of Circus Amok!
DJ Dusty Walker
And, of course, the RMO
*** In August 2008, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra is taking our show on the road - in a low-impact, environmentally-friendly manner (no stretch SUV limo for us). We will be converting a school bus to run on waste veggie oil and traveling cross country for a two-week adventure -- to cross-pollinate with progressive grassroots organizations and other amazing movers and shakers, and to loudly register our dissent at the Republican National Convention. Along our journey, we plan to raise awareness about and support groups and individuals fighting against racism, sexism, homophobia, war and violence in all its forms. So come party with us and help one of the hardest-working bands in town send our rabble-rousing brassy selves to speak music to power!

Previously: Send the Rude Mechanical Orchestra to the RNC

My photo is in the "Click!" show at the Brooklyn Museum!

By Shira | Jun 26, 08 04:12 PM

This is the photo I submitted to the Brooklyn Museum's "crowd-curated" show, "Click!" and...it's going to be in the show!!! Can you tell I'm excited? You can explore the show online or come see it at the Brooklyn Museum, June 27–August 10.

There's also a panel this Saturday on Governor's Island as part of the Figment Festival:

Click! Panel Discussion
Saturday, June 28, 11 a.m.
Governors Island
Brooklyn Museum clicks with the crowd at FIGMENT 2008, a celebration of participatory art and creative culture held on Governors Island. A panel discussion about the process and outcome of Click! will be held on Saturday, June 28, at 11 a.m. Panelists include James Surowiecki, New Yorker financial columnist and author of The Wisdom of Crowds; Jeff Howe, contributing editor of Wired magazine, who coined the term “crowdsourcing”; Eugenie Tsai, Brooklyn Museum’s John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art; and Shelley Bernstein, Brooklyn Museum’s Manager of Information Systems and the organizer of Click! The panel will be moderated by Nicole Caruth, Brooklyn Museum’s Manager of Interpretive Materials and a freelance writer and curator based in Brooklyn. Please note: In order to make the panel you must take the 10 or 10:30 a.m. ferry, which depart from South Ferry and are free of charge. Specific travel instructions can be found on the Figment Web site. The panel will take place in Perkins Hall. Seating is limited.

We went to the Figment Festival last summer and it was awesome - hope to see you there!

More photos from Reykjavik, Amsterdam, and Israel

By Ari | Jun 26, 08 10:41 AM

shira and a troll friend
Originally uploaded by arimoore

Better late than never, here are my photos from our recent trip, finally all organized and described and tagged on Flickr. You'll find cute animals and magical forests, street art and graffiti, beautiful architecture and ancient ruins, macro experiments and lens flares, geologic wonders, funny and strange signs and art, and lots of ecological sustainability and animal rights stuff. Comments highly appreciated!

Previously: Two and a Half Weeks in Israel, Amsterdam and Iceland (Photos by Shira)

Bushwick Open Studios

By Ari | Jun 24, 08 12:26 PM

ladies looking at our art
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

This June 6-8, we participated in Bushwick Open Studios 2008. We had some art up in the Mighty Tanaka group show at Nut Roaster Studio (see photo), and Shira performed at Bushwick Open Studios Musicfest '08 on the 8th, at Don Pedro's Bar and Lounge. We got favorable responses and met a lot of cool people - and of course saw some awesome art and heard some great music, despite the heat.

The stuff we put up at Nut Roasters was a combination of photography and posters, much like what we put up last year at Office Ops - some choice photos, and some activisty posters you might be familiar with from our shop.

You can see some of my recent work on Flickr, as well as Shira's photography (also on Flickr), and Shira's got some music tracks up at myspace.com/shiragoldingmusic. Her complete first album is downloadable for free/donation right here.

Among the stuff we saw were giant subway photos by Daryl-Ann Saunders, a small lightbox/photography installation by Ryan Frank, photography by Lensflare, detailed drawings by Denise DeSpirito, paintings by Mishel Valenton and David Cahill, and some great prints by JeeYun Lee, probably our favorite work at the Mighty Tanaka show. I also seem to have picked up a card from a Mr. Nicolas A. Forker, and while I can't remember where on earth I saw his work, his site is pretty cool. Finally, we met a dude with a fun beard-and-hat combo who I believe is this very same Johnny Bubonic I've just hunted down - though I'm not 100% sure that's his link. He had stuff up at Ad Hoc, which we somehow ended up missing. (Odd, because that's usually our #1 art destination in Bushwick - sorry, Johnny.)

Thank you Arts in Bushwick for another great arts and music festival!

The Effect of Flickr on My Israeli Grandmother

By Shira | Jun 20, 08 03:12 PM

the effect of flickr on my israeli grandmother
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

My grandmother in Israel, Savta Margalit, got a computer this year and is a voracious and exuberant emailer. Every Friday afternoon, in a flurry of "Shabbat Shalom!" emails cc'ed to everyone in the family, I try to send some links to photos or videos that Ari and I have taken in the previous week. This is how she responded to the most recent batch. Thank you flickr...If only you weren't owned by Yahoo!

Happy List

By Shira | Jun 5, 08 07:20 PM

There is a cat posse in our apartment, same-sex marriages are going to be recognized in New York State, my cousin Amir starred in this Borat spoof (it's a video for his high-school graduation party in Haifa), crop circles on google earth, using skype as our land line, Senegalese hip-hop at the eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival Awards Ceremony, visiting Ithaca last weekend for a co-housing workshop at EcoVillage, looking for an apartment in Ithaca and finding an awesome one!!!, the plants in our window pots are starting to bloom, Obama is the democratic candidate for president, sharing our art and music this weekend as part of Bushwick Open Studios, picking up our first Hearty Roots CSA share of the season in Williamsburg, women's turkish oil wrestling at Galapagos, Renegade Craft Fair at the McCarren Park Pool June 14-15, Pineapple Express at BAM with Director David Gordon Green, tank tops, summer...

Check Out Our Music and Art at Bushwick Arts Festival This Weekend!

By shirari | Jun 5, 08 05:45 PM

This weekend (June 6-8) is the Bushwick Open Studios & Arts Festival and we hope you'll come check it out!

We'll have art and photography at the Nut Roaster Studio as part of a group show on display all weekend, and on Sunday night Shira is playing her music as part of a music festival at Don Pedro's. Here are the details...

Shirari Art and Photography
Mighty Tanaka Group Show
Saturday, June 7th - Sunday, June 8th
12-7pm
Nut Roaster Studio
120 Ingraham St., Brooklyn (at the corner of Porter Ave.)
L train to Morgan Ave.
Google Map

Shira's Live Music
Bushwick Open Studios Music Festival
Sunday, June 8th
Shira is scheduled to go on at 10pm
Don Pedro's Bar and Lounge
90 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn (between Boerum St. and McKibben St.)
L train to Montrose Ave. or J/M to Lorimer or G to Broadway
Google Map
www.myspace.com/shiragoldingmusic

We'll be in the neighborhood all weekend. Hundreds of artists will be having open studios, and there are tons of events including an art parade, cabaret and more.

Check out the full schedule.

Cat update: Integration

By Ari | Jun 5, 08 08:58 AM

cuddle fest part III
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

Let me give you a cat update! It's been a while. So, we adopted Snow. But it wasn't easy - it turns out cats are so territorial that when you bring in a new cat, not only do you have to keep the new cat in quarantine for health reasons, you then have to carefully integrate her into the household, once she's healthy, a process that can take weeks or even months. They're now successfully sharing food bowls, romping around the apartment together, and Sid and Zora are getting more and more cozily happy again (see photo), so we're pretty much done with this difficult stage. I thought I should write about it though, because when we were figuring it all out, online accountings were really helpful for us. So, to add to the dialogue:

We gave the cats safe spaces and lots of respect. The cats all needed a lot of space to feel comfortable in. The resident cats will feel very threatened if the new cat comes up on them unexpectedly, so we kept Snow in the front room of our place and gave Sid and Zora the rest of the apartment. Zora didn't like being picked up during this period because it made her nervous to lie prone in our arms with this other cat around, so we laid off that for a while. (She's now back to wanting to be cuddled like a baby!)

We did scent-mixing. Before the cats really started interacting, we switched their bedding and toys around all the time, and would occasionally rub a sock on them all in turn a few times, mixing their scents up and getting Sid and Zora accustomed to Snow before they even got to meet her properly.

We arranged more and more frequent visits. First just glimpses through a cracked door, then carefully chaperoned visits with an old window screen propped in the doorway, and then, while we were out of town for a while with a catsitter at our place (thanks, Sam!), with a screen door keeping them apart but allowing for more and more contact and visibility.

making a screen door
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

We used Feliway. Honestly, I don't know for sure if this worked, but it sure seemed to. This is a synthetic cat pheromone you can spray in doorways and in other areas that make cats nervous; when they pass it they catch the scent and feel happier and more at ease. Everyone did a lot of purring and seemed more open to playing in each other's presence when we used this.

We used separate food dishes and litter boxes. This way no one felt they'd be ambushed. Gradually we moved them more and more close to each other until they were so comfortable they were using them all interchangeably, and so we eliminated the extras and now they're all sharing everything. Yay!

We took our time. Every time we tried to rush the new relationship by not following our careful integration plan, Zora got very upset and the whole process was set waaaay back. Don't hurt your cat friends by rushing them into something that's very difficult for them, and you'll have a much more positive outcome. If I could change one thing about our integration process, it would be allowing even more time. The more slowly you take integration, the more quickly it'll happen successfully.

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #2: Housing

By shirari | May 14, 08 12:09 PM

We're sure that you've been on the edge of your seats ever since we released our first podcast. Well, edge-dwell no more - here's the second installment.

In this edition we discuss the topic of housing, focusing on our upcoming move to Ithaca, NY where we are exploring the idea of building our own home from local materials and maybe even starting a vegan ecovillage.

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #2: Housing »
May 13, 2008 - 48 minutes - 5.5MB

Show Links:

Recommended Books - check your local library or buy used:

Ahimsa Ecovillage

By Ari | May 13, 08 12:53 PM

Our ecovillage idea continues to gather steam - a bunch of people have been emailing with us about it! We're evolving the "radical solidarity" idea into an ideology of sorts so we renamed the ecovillage Ahimsa for now, instead. (Ahimsa, or non-violence, was the idea behind veganism back when it was first defined by Donald Watson in 1944).

To help get the word out about the project and to document its progress, we've put up a simple webpage for it at shirari.com/ahimsa/. Even if you're not vegan, or never thought you had the money for home ownership, there's room for you at Ahimsa - check it out.

Two and a Half Weeks in Israel, Amsterdam and Iceland

By Shira | May 12, 08 05:36 PM

Israel (232 Photos)

Amsterdam (232 Photos)

Iceland (207 Photos)

Photos from Ari and more about the trip coming soon :)

Our Eutopic Vision at Forbes.com

By Shira | Apr 11, 08 06:08 PM

Ari's rendering of our eutopia

When Ari and I posted our vision of a Radical Solidarity Ecovillage to the Intentional Communities Directory, we really didn't know what to expect. So far, we've gotten a couple of email inquiries from potential members who we're going to connect with in Ithaca, and we're eagerly awaiting more interest.

One thing we certainly didn't expect was to be contacted by Forbes.com. After Elisabeth Eaves interviewed us for her article Ecotopia we were kind of nervous. She had never heard of Community Supported Agriculture, not to mention Freeganism or an assortment of other strategies that we discussed. Considering that Forbes is entrenched in capitalism, we worried that maybe our earnest ramblings might be used against us.

Luckily that was not the case! In fact, we're right up at the top of the article, and we don't sound (too) crazy:

After six years in the city, Shira Golding and Ari Moore want to try something new. The two 27-year-old artists came to New York after college, but now yearn for less urban and more affordable living. Rather than retreat to suburbia, the two are trying to recruit like-minded souls to join them in an artistic, vegan commune, which they plan to form in upstate New York.

"The number of people doesn't matter so much as shared values," says Golding, who then elaborates on a philosophy of animal rights, ecological sustainability and "freeganism," in which "you abstain from capitalism by getting things for free or [by] barter[ing]."

Golding and Moore's utopian vision is in its infancy, but they aren't alone in their desire to build their own self-contained community.

If we're going to be picky, freeganism doesn't really include "bartering," as much as giving and taking freely, and we prefer "intentional community" over "commune." But what really matters is that the mainstream media is paying attention to alternative visions for sustainable living. If Forbes.com, whose tagline is "Home Page for the World's Business Leaders," is doing a whole feature on utopias, who knows what's next!

Which brings me to the word "utopia." As our friend and wordsmith Orion pointed out at our Peace and Justice Passover Seder last year, “utopia” comes from the Greek for “no place” or “nowhere.” In other words a "utopia" is a better society that does not and cannot exist. That's not very optimistic. Orion suggested "eutopia" as an alternative spelling, meaning a "good, happy place." The article Visions of Utopia or Eutopia? at CommonDreams.org, puts it this way: "Eutopia is a vision of a preferable place - but one with a bridge that gets us from here to there. Visions of a better society don't attract a critical mass of people. Only future visions with a visible, viable bridge can do that - a lesson many progressives have yet to learn." Let's start building those bridges!

The Shirari Update: Recent Work

By Ari | Apr 11, 08 08:00 AM

So we're gearing up for this trip, and churning out a LOT of work before we go. In the past couple of months we've done quite a bit, much of which we've already written about. But here are some projects we haven't blogged about yet:

I worked with GLSEN to design a new look for StudentOrganizing.org and put fresh skins on their Day of Silence and Remembering Lawrence King MySpace sites.
We co-created a brand and launched a placeholder page for the new documentary Lioness, currently making the rounds at festivals. Posters and a full site are on the way... follow this film, it's a good one.
I made posters and other collateral for the freeDimensional / Casa Frela production OFF THE WALL.
Shira designed the DVD for the doc Innocent Until Proven Guilty, soon to be available for purchase at Arts Engine.
I handled the International Women's Day and May Day issues of The Socialist, the magazine of the Socialist Party USA. The May Day issue inaugurated our brand spankin' new redesign.
We designed a new film distribution brochure for Scenarios USA and rebranded (and re-designed and re-authored) their DVD collection. We also handled the collateral for their 2008 REAL DEAL Awards and Gala. (I made their site, too - though that was a few years back!)
I did a launch postcard for The Plant Republic's new site.
Shira's been a pre-screener and has been coordinating the jury process for Pangea Day, a project of TED Conferences.
I designed a guide to US citizenship and naturalization for South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) and a fresh cover for the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA), through the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL).
I made invitations, posters, programs, and a million other things for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center's Broadway Backwards 3 and Center Dinner 25th Anniversary Celebration.

I'm sure I'm missing a million things, so if we worked on your project and haven't mentioned it, apologies! We really love all of our work, though it can be hard (I got up at 7am and am currently running on empty...), and we've been very lucky in that we can choose to work only on projects we really want to stand behind politically and ethically. It's a good life, this. Thanks to all of our clients and friends who continue to bring these amazing projects to us.

Click! at the Brooklyn Museum - Vote for My Photo!

By Shira | Apr 3, 08 11:37 AM

This is the photo I submitted to the Brooklyn Museum's "crowd-curated" show, "Click!" Anyone can rate submissions. Check it out and give my photo a high rating, if you please :)

Shirari Industries Bought by News Corp for 2.5 Million

By Shira | Apr 1, 08 12:22 PM

We were as surprised as I'm sure you are right now when Rupert Murdoch himself called us this morning to "make a deal." We know that News Corporation is on a mission to take over the world, one media entity at a time, but we're still not quite sure why he wants our little queer, vegan operation. He must be getting pretty close to owning the entire "long tail" and Shirari Industries is just another notch on the empire's belt.

Stay tuned for a dramatically redesigned site, starting with our tagline, which is now "let's be mean!" - it has a certain ring to it, don't you think?

...April Fools!!!

I Never Thought I Would But Yes, I've Launched a MySpace Music Page

By Shira | Mar 30, 08 02:28 PM

shira playing
Originally uploaded by arimoore

There are many reasons that I dislike MySpace -- bad design, obnoxious advertising, the fact that it belongs to Rupert Murdoch -- but, the word on the street is that it's a good way to promote your music, so I've bitten the bullet and put up a page at myspace.com/shiragoldingmusic.

You can only put up six songs, so I tried to choose ones that represent the spectrum of music I like to make. Have a listen and let me know what you think. All of this is part of a plan to release an album, so I'd love feedback and any encouragement.

Radical Solidarity Ecovillage

By Ari | Mar 1, 08 03:57 PM

Hey, any activisty, creative vegans out there interested in cohousing, intentional community, or ecovillage life? Shira and I just posted a listing for a forming community, Radical Solidarity Ecovillage, in the Online Communities Directory.

We're relocating to Ithaca, New York, at the end of this coming summer, and are talking about buying a house, seeking freedom from rent - but do we really want to lock ourselves into a 30-year mortgage on a conventionally built house, is that freedom? We're very attracted to intentional community, co-housing, ecovillages, and other alternatives, but no matter how cool they are, we just can't stomach the idea of putting our labor and money into animal exploitation. (Unfortunately most communities incorporate some form of "animal husbandry".) So we thought we'd put a listing out there, see if we can find some kindred spirits. Check it out and let us know if you or anyone you know would be interested in something like it.

For a great overview of a family's experience building their own earth-friendly, mortgage-free house, check out A Low-Impact Woodland Home.

And for a glimpse at what ecovillage life can look like, check out The Farm's Ecovillage Tour:

Snow Kitten Found a Home - Ours!

By Shira | Mar 1, 08 02:42 PM

ari and snow
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

For those of you wondering if we found someone to adopt the kitten we brought in from the cold last week, the answer is yes - us! She is ridiculously cute and affectionate, and we have totally fallen in love with her.

We got her checked out by our vet, and she's in really good shape aside from healing ears (we think she might have had frostbite). She still is being quarantined from Sid and Zora since we have to wait another week to get her tested for FIV, but we have a feeling that they're all going to get along.

Our little family is growing - hooray! And her name is...Snow.

Related: Snow Kitten Needs a Home

Hello and welcome to our brand new blog.

By Ari | Jan 8, 08 11:19 AM

Well here we are. Finally! This website has been a long time in the making. The design couldn't keep up with how fast our work has been growing and changing, and had to be totally redone several times as we reconceptualized what on earth it is we're doing here. Shira will write about her end of things, so I'll just cover my own path to this new website.

I've been blogging in some form or other since 1998 or so; my most recent blog, several years in the running, was called pinkrabbitsays. Meanwhile, I was showing my work at arimoore.com - and was increasingly realizing that my politics, activism and blogging were overlapping more and more with my graphic design and illustration work, as well as with my self-education, art and writing. I've been thinking a lot about connections lately, and seeing the value in looking at things holistically. So I think this new site comes out of that - all of our work and play under one roof.

In college folks constantly mixed up our names. Our friend Diane jokingly called us "Shirari", at one point actually sending us a package addressed to "Shirari Molding-Gore" (our last names are Golding and Moore). So here we are starting a new site and a new business together. We're calling it Shirari Industries, because we're Shira and Ari, and we're industrious. I hope you dig it. Thanks for visiting.

P.S. Please contact us if you run into anything that's not working yet - this site is fresh out of the oven!

Shirari Industries

Posts tagged with "What we're up to"

Free garden

Clouds and rain and sky and deer and music and freedom

Ahimsa evolves, and an a-frame emerges

Fresh websites, hot off the Wordpress

Stuff going on in Ithaca

Peanut tattoos

Check Out My Article About Food, Inc. at Documentary.org

Organizing, procrastinating, fixing, cleaning, sorting

The cost of living for the future

Making stuff and doing things

Going Green, One Film at a Time

Happy-Go-Lucky in My Top Ten

Human Scale Living

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #6: Economies

"Sometimes It's Hard to Breathe" - I finally edited my footage from our trip to India in 2006

freeDimensional: Birthing a web 2.0 child

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #5: Top 8 Activist Strategies

Shale Shocked

Tortillas and Cider, Delivered to Our Doorstep

Cool folks we're working with in Ithaca: Ithaca-Area Vegan Meetup Group and Shaleshock

Expanding My Musical Horizons

"The role of trust in high tech work- The case of Freelance Web-Designers in NYC"

The Ithaca Green Buildings Open House

Spreading the Word About Ahimsa Ecovillage

A new vegan cat community

13 changes we've made to help the earth

If only there were more Garbage Warriors

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #4: In Ithaca...

Living with Solar and Wind Power in Ithaca: Lessons from an Energy-Efficient Lifestyle - Sept. 24th

The Grandmothers Speak - October 5th, Ithaca

An update on Ahimsa, our vegan ecovillage project

8 Vegan Restaurants We'll Miss When We Leave NYC

Old photos are fun

6 best practices: Engaging in social networking for social change

A community can look like this

Strange Overtones

In Our Future Home...

Radical Change Design for Green Earth Design Competition

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #3: Travel

Columbia study on independent new media workers

Camp it up with Rude Mechanical Orchestra - Party tonight, NYC!

My photo is in the "Click!" show at the Brooklyn Museum!

More photos from Reykjavik, Amsterdam, and Israel

Bushwick Open Studios

The Effect of Flickr on My Israeli Grandmother

Happy List

Check Out Our Music and Art at Bushwick Arts Festival This Weekend!

Cat update: Integration

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #2: Housing

Ahimsa Ecovillage

Two and a Half Weeks in Israel, Amsterdam and Iceland

Our Eutopic Vision at Forbes.com

The Shirari Update: Recent Work

Click! at the Brooklyn Museum - Vote for My Photo!

Shirari Industries Bought by News Corp for 2.5 Million

I Never Thought I Would But Yes, I've Launched a MySpace Music Page

Radical Solidarity Ecovillage

Snow Kitten Found a Home - Ours!

Hello and welcome to our brand new blog.

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