All I feel like doing today, too. (Taken with instagram)
A sad song for an incredibly sad day.
Worried Shoes, Karen O and the Kids (from the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack)
The day may well be more monumental than my own last day of undergrad, last year.
Working with these kids has made me smile and laugh, provided endless hugs & high fives, but has also broken and mended my heart more times than I thought possible.
I’m going to miss all of them more than I’ll want to.
By PopTech Board Chair and Fellows Faculty Cheryl Heller
When Janine Benyus’ Biomimicry was published in 1977 it was an awakening. Like Rachel Carson and Silent Spring over a decade earlier, one slim book changed the way we thought – in Janine’s case about design – and stunned us by uncovering what had been in plain sight all along – standards for manufacturing that made even our most refined efforts amateurish in comparison; elegant, beautiful, effective, and restorative.
We are creatures of making and acquiring; most of the lessons that have stuck from Biomimicry pertain to the manufacture of physical things. We remember the conch shell, made as strong as ceramic without heating the ocean. Spider silk tougher than nylon filament made without waste or petrochemicals. Or my favorite, the prairie, an emergent, diverse mix of plant species that are vulnerable alone but impervious to drought or disease when together. These examples and others have inspired designers and manufacturers to think differently.
As some of us cogitate about the challenge of creating more equitable life on earth, our focus is shifting; from artifacts to systems, from transactions to relationships, from design as craft to design as thinking, from habits of destruction to an awareness of the need for resilience.
As individuals, we devote abundant resources to changing ourselves, but are lost when faced with the challenge of instigating a shift in our collective behavior. Most of us can’t even move our own families to change their entrenched opinions let alone our cities, countries or the population at large. But here too, biomimicry has important wisdom to impart. Just like the conch shell and spider web, the social lessons of biomimicry have been hiding in plain sight all along.
will be the 1 year anniversary of the first death of my Macbook Pro.
This is a plea to the universe that history does not repeat itself.
Settling in to a place that won’t be home for much longer. (Taken with instagram)
The poor man’s light box. (Taken with instagram)
Oh you know, just a typical Saturday evening outside my window.
I think they’re being fired off at Sigma Sigma on campus? (Taken with instagram)
In case you’d like to build your very own microgreen growing box (from approximately 1-1/2 pallets).
Fits two growing trays within. Won’t hold excess water.
The number of students I’ve been able I send to the dentist this school year.
235 from Oyler. 20 from other schools.
This probably required 50 hours on the phone with parents and 200 hours spent scheduling the visits.
And 100 hours spent walking in circles around Oyler collecting students for their visits.
Also, a design conference I hope to make it to in Cleveland next month.
(Source: blancaamore, via thingsorganizedneatly)
A thank-you card received this morning for taking a preschooler to the dentist last week.
Kids are absolutely the best.
(Taken with instagram)
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. (Taken with instagram)
