M Ljin

Judith Browning wrote:

I asked a hundred painters
and a hundred poets
how to paint sunlight
on the face of life.
Their answers were ambiguous and ingenuous
as if they were all guarding trade secrets.
Whereas it seems to me
all you have to do
is conceive of the whole world
and all humanity
as a kind of art work
a site-specific art work
an art project of the God of Light
the whole earth and all that's in it
to be painted with light.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(1919 to 2021, American Poet and Publisher)

Strange…I was at the library the other day and felt inexplicably drawn to pulling out A Coney Island of the Mind. I think it was the same day you posted this.

Les Frijo wrote:The thing I always thought about college or even trade school is why would I want to go learn how to do things like we have done in the past that got us here. I don't. There are better ways. Look where we are, The results speak for themselves. College serves our masters not us.

The title of this thread is pretty specific. The only reason I come here is because most of the answers that I haven't come up with on my own are already here. Thanks to Paul. Wheaton Labs is a great idea manifesting as we speak. But we need millions of them at this rate.

The last thing I ever want is another "job". It would be nice to be able to make a living though. Like before "jobs" were invented. That's what jobs and whatever masters we serve have taken away from all of us.

I have thought the same thing. Another thought of mine maybe aligns with yours:

That we choose who and what shape our minds, and this is a serious decision.

If I were to choose who my foremost teacher is, the one I listen to above all others, I would call it “mystery”. Or myself. Or both. Trusting yourself leads to creativity, to wisdom, to perception. Whenever I gave my mind to others, I would find that the language-mediated reality they offered was only partial. When I gave my mind to mystery, finally I would learn. Not knowing is knowing truly.

I am not trying to imitate sustainable people, or anyone, just follow what I know in my heart to be true. That has always lead me well, even if it has taken me to places that seem like madness or irrationality.

I flipped open a book yesterday: “This is your mind on plants” by Michael Pollen, the chapter on caffeine. It was just the right section—it was describing how caffeine, in effect, shaped the patterns of thought and perception in society and ushered in the age of rationalism. (I don’t use caffeine and it makes a difference!) If we took that one substance away, would the whole paradigm crumble, would our perception of reality change entirely? And culture works the same way. If you only work within one cultural context there is no room for contradicting it. If you free yourself from cultural context, it opens up into the vastness of the world. And that is where we find what we need to create real change.

Not saying people in college don’t think (not at all!) but that working alone, self in concert with mystery, is a very different and very valid approach, and allows for a lot more creativity and novelty than working within an existing cultural paradigm. (It might be said that that is the work of the shaman, even…)

Oh, what a shame! I forgot to make crabapple honey candy to go into town and hand out children. Maybe next year.

Maybe I could’ve even made them something with acorn. Now that would be diabolical indeed.

Maybe Schizophyllum commune? I am not sure—maybe someone else knows better.

https://www.mushroomexpert.com/schizophyllum_commune.html

Les Frijo wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:I hear from many people (and see it all over the internet):  gotta stop AI; gotta stop the bots ...    "DEY TERK ER JERBS!"    ...   it strikes me as twisted to desire jobs so much.

I had huge hopes that we would embrace the scenario I laid out, and then explore permaculture solutions.  

With a humble home and a huge garden ...

  - maybe it doesn't matter if you lose your job

  - maybe you have a MASSIVE advantage

  - maybe all this stuff becomes interesting rather than scary

  - is better than living in the city with a lot of money ...  which will drain away

  - maybe you can share your bounty with friends

Community seems the hardest thing to build and grow. Maybe the best thing that could happen is for jobs to go away and peeps will have no choice and more time for building community.

That would be interesting and exciting.

I was overhearing a conversation yesterday at the library. That’s exactly what they’re talking about is happening here. Their children going to college, getting into debt, not finding places to live/jobs, coming home, and how to build community and get younger people together and coming into the library.

I am hoping some of it will involve foraging and permaculture… but will let things pan out as they will. It seems like mostly middle aged and older people who are interested from what I have seen.

I have noticed that the fiber on died-back twigs of my mulberries looks astonishingly beautiful and excellent as a fiber, like a pure white linen. This is just the  ordinary white mulberry, not paper mulberry.

A fascinating article describes the Choctaw use of mulberry to make cloth, along with an illustration of their unique loom. It also mentions other tribes’ use of that and different species for cloth-making.

https://www.choctawnation.com/news/iti-fabvssa/trial-by-fiber-mulberry-bark/

I might need to get more spawn as mine all died out… should not have wasted trying to get them to grow in sawdust!  That is fine, my mushroom growing adventures are just beginning and they were the one so far that has fruited for me aside from a small fruiting of wine caps.

In other news I was looking through Mycelium Running and came across this fungus’ entry. It says that they grow wild as parasites decomposing the roots of Apiaceae. He has even gotten them to grow on carrots. This is interesting and makes me want to try growing them on parsnip roots if I can. Though parsnips are so good in themselves!

I seem to have no trouble growing Queen Anne’s Lace (wild carrot), nor parsnips and marshmallow. Cultivated carrots always turn out small, but they are better the more I ignore them, grow them in natural soils, and treat them as wild. Probably, this increases their soil moisture.

I have tried wild carrots for the first time and love the richness of flavor and aroma. They are abundant in my low nitrogen, high carbon soils. I also like the seeds as a nibble and sometimes as flavoring. But they are nowhere near as big and substantial as the cultivated kind can get, and of course in my soil they don’t get very big either (though decent if I treat them right). Parsnips (wild) therefore form the staple root.

On another note, Paul Stamets has grown king oyster parasitically on carrots. They grow natively on the roots of wild Apiaceae, he writes, especially Eryngium.

That is interesting. This also sounds as if it might be a potential design for making solar hot water, too? Quite function stacking if so. But it would remain to be tested whether that would actually heat up significantly in winter to work for a household. I suppose it depends on the size of the reflector compared with the water.

I would rather eat a root.

I tried to grow licorice, many times, but failed… they never got beyond seedling stage before flopping over and dying.

Wait—wouldn’t candy corn literally have been candied corn in former years? That I want to try making!