Tis the Season to be shoveling

So, it's Sunday, my first official day home from Chicago, and I'm sitting in my Mom's house while she's at work, it's snowing like crazy outside and the phone rings. I answer it, it's one of my Mom's friends and she jokingly asks how the shoveling is going. I reply, "haha, it's not." She responds, "You aren't going to let your Mom do it are you!?" and so I thought, I am a terrible person. I, a 21 year old male, am going to sit at home all day flipping through an endless amount of feeds, while my Mom works all day, waiting for her to return home where she will shovel the driveway, and I will take her car to go sledding with my friends (yeah we never took the time to learn to ski or anything cool like that but we'll talk about that later.) So here I am, like "shit...I gotta shovel the driveway or else I am the worst son ever..." SO I bundle up, throw my Grado's into my iPhone, crank up the Beasties and hit the driveway.

My first thoughts are something like "it's cold, snow sucks." I start thinking of ways I could shovel faster, or how in the future you could avoid shoveling. I imagine laying down huge blue tarps over the driveway the night before a big snow then ripping them off the following morning with a truck, pulling all the snow right off the driveway. For a minute it seems almost legitimate. Maybe if I could design a seem which would split the tarp sending the snow to both sides then we wouldn't end up with a mountain of snow at the end of the driveway. I think about how the packed car-treaded ice/snow is so much harder to shovel and how I shoulda charged all those neighbors more as a kid if they had driven over the snow...It's at about this point that I recall all the winters I would spend shoveling snow at my Dad's house, how we'd always tag team the job and how it was fun for the first 5 minutes before I lost sensation in my extremities.

Across the street, a man pushes a snow-blower across his driveway throwing snow with the least amount of effort possible and my perspective shifts. I wonder how much carbon is slung in the air along with that snow, and how snow-blowers are just another piece of the problem. I realize, shoveling snow is actually a sustainable activity, compared to the snow-blowing and it's actually healthy. It gets you out of the house and exercising, not simply walking in lines. Snow-blowers are unnecessary, buy a cool shovel instead.


Though I remember hating shoveling snow as a kid, I look back on it as a good memory, time spent with my Dad. It's actually kind of fun if you have the right frame of mind. I mean, you can make patterns, try and figure out the best way to rid the drive of winters rain. Plus, if you are lucky, you have the opportunity to spend some time bonding with family. Lets face it, its not so often families collaborate to attack a common goal, so there is a sense of bond building. It's an experience I would like to do with my kids when I get a bit older. It must be exciting to be a parent and watch your kid all bundled up trying to shovel snow with their mini orange shovels, throwing the occasional tantrum while you try to explain why the snow needs to go bye-bye. I don't think I ever understood the whole experience of snow shoveling until now... In addition to the quality...ish time with the fam, you're also immersed in the season. There is nothing that symbolizes winter and the working man like snow shoveling. Now, I take the occasional break to look around and admire the newly created landscape. The mish mosh pattern created by driveways covered in snow contrasted with freshly shoveled drives. The genome like pattern created by car treads in the street, the mini snow mountains flanking the suburban driveways. I see now, that all along, snow shoveling was allowing me to really experience the season, an experience rarely cherished and often despised by the millions of Midwesterners who endlessly complain about the weather. I love the weather, the seasons, it makes life not so predictable. There is something refreshing about waking up to a landscape completely fresh from the day before.

Once my chore turned mini-adventure came to an end, I stepped inside the house, which now seemed 1000 times toastier than before. The warmth is a relief and the house is the most cozy it's been all day. I strip off my winter gear, grab a blanket, my mac and cuddle up on the couch to begin typing. Reflecting on the activity which, unexpectedly, provided me with so much fodder for thought and motivation.

Receipt Notebook

If you're anything like me, you use your card to pay for EVERYTHING. Living in a big city, I just feel a little more safe not having to carry cash around...even though I carry around my iPhone, and sometimes my laptop...but no cash! Anyways, it's also just a hassle to have to find the right ATM all the time or pay $2.00 charges at everyone else's ATM's. The consequence of always using your credit card is the mound of receipts you quickly obtain every time you buy something, and being a preservationist, I hate the thought of wasting paper every time I buy lunch. I understand that some people may save their receipts for accounting purposes but I keep track of all my expenses online these days. So I had to come up with a use for all these receipts. So let's see...they are small, hand held size, usually have one blank side...you may see where I am going with this. An on the go notebook! This way, every time you buy something, instead of wasting paper, you're adding paper to your mini sketchbook! If you want to get all trendy with it, you can take an altoids can, or any variety of metal candy tin and store them in there. Maybe it's a stretch but I'm just telling you what I do. I know journals and sketchbooks can be very personal but I can never seem to stick to one journal. The used receipt does not confine me to pages, I can change the order, I can organize my notes, I can pin it up on my wall, etc...it's just my style, it doesn't have to be yours...




I carry 4 things on me at all times:

iPhone (phone, mp3, calender, web, video, camera, etc...)
Pen
Receipt Notebook
Wallet

With my Iphone, I suppose you could do this with any phone too, I don't take business cards, I simply put all the contact information given and immediately enter it into my contacts list then hand them back their business card. I know, I know...one might think it's a bit extreme, but if you consider the amount of receipts and business cards one consumes in a year, you might be surprised at how wasteful we can be. And I am quite aware that there are much larger problems out there to be solved, but I believe that sustainability is a lifestyle and it should effect everything you do, at least when you call it your profession....

Ask "What If?"

"but it's just not realistic..." ...right?

Skate Detroit

Consider it's a given that Detroit has a problem or two. Every year Detroit demolishes about 2000 vacant homes considered dangerous to the community, and another 2500 become vacant. Currently, there are 15ooo vacant lots in the possession of the city of Detroit, in which it cost 4 million dollars yearly for the city to maintain. In addition, the city consistently ranks in the top 10 most dangerous cities and top 10 poorest cities in the United State. There are very few places children and teens can go to stay out of trouble and do something productive.

It's easy to look at these things as liabilities, creating a city famous for death and destruction. The Detroit trap isn't money, it isn't race, it's a viewpoint. A viewpoint which chokes the city endlessly. The city has been dying for 60 years now. So it's just a wasteland right, let it fester, move away as quick as possible. Like a gazelle being left for dead after a lion has it's way, the city sits and rots. The gazelle no longer has a purpose to this earth, it lived got caught in a bad situation, and now it's the end. But wait, so the gazelle is dead, but has it nothing left to offer? Once the lions have cleared, buzzards will soon flock, picking through the left overs, then the crows, then perhaps another lucky animal that happens upon it. Still, the animal will continue to decay, now lending it's remaining nutrients to the local vegetation and insects, which will in turn provide food for other animals. Finally, the gazelle will become earth, again one with mother nature. Though it may have seemed that the gazelle was worthless, useless, purposeless after it's fatal run in, it is clear that the animal still had much to offer to the community through it's remains, bringing new life to the inhabitants.

Skate parks originated in the streets and parking lots of America. Teens would build ramps and courses out of anything they could find. Sliding down handrails, jumping up on concrete benches, building ramps out of garbage cans and found materials. For years, the skateboard culture was seen as a menace to society. In the 90's, the movement began to gain acceptance, people were taking to these makeshift skate parks on boards, bikes, and skates. Soon these activities became dignified sports, gaining mass media attention through major TV carriers like ESPN and ABC. Communities began to realize that these activities could actually be constructive and keep kids from getting into trouble. Positive role models emerged like Tony Hawk and Dave Mirra. Skate parks began to spurt up all over the nation, in community parks and recreation centers. Companies began making brand new ramps and parks out of wood and plastic. These parks have been full for years, providing America's youth a place to constructively engage in activities helping to keep them off the streets and off of drugs. Though these pre-made skate parks draw neighborhood skaters, many skaters claim that the best parks are those that most resemble the days of the street skater, with picnic tables and abandoned cars. Detroit doesn't have any skate parks but they do have abandoned cars and abandoned buildings.

If you proposed to City council to build a skate park, they would simply laugh at you saying, "We don't have money to pay our cops, why on EARTH would we build a skate park!?" Then you tell them it could begin to solve all there problems, and they would laugh even harder. What would a skate park have to offer a community ridden with abandoned house and vacant lots? A chance perhaps? A renewed purpose??

Well lets see, the obvious benefit, as stated above, would be getting youth off of the dangerous streets and into a positive environment where they can interact with other youths and compete in individual sports, improving their abilities, as well as their confidence and character. What else can a skate park do? Well, if it's good enough, it could attract teens from neighboring cites and suburbs to the city. People keep leaving Detroit, it would be nice to give them some reasons to at least visit. If it was really good, it could even attract national attention and people from all over the world might come just to skate at this park. This would certainly help local businesses, bringing people into town means hotels, restaurants, and shops have increased traffic, the common effects of tourism. "But this is clearly out of the question, we would need tons of money and space to create something like this." Detroit, clearly doesn't have money, but it sure does have space.

So basically, a skate park could be great for Detroit but the city definitely doesn't have the money or time to even consider an undertaking such as this. All of their time and capital is tied up in demolishing all the dangerous abandoned houses that just never seem to go away. Well, what if building a skate park could somehow help the city in the demolition of houses and somehow save the city money. "Well that's just preposterous, you have GOT to be kidding me. This is just getting out of hand... I can see how a skate park might help the youth but I really don't see how it could possibly Save us money, and magically demolish abandoned houses!" At this point, you would be thrown out of the city council meeting.

But, out of curiosity, lets take a look at this idea. Obviously, a brand new, professionally built, out of the box skate park would be very expensive, especially if were talking about making one of the best in the United States. But, we've already seen that skaters actually prefer skate parks that contain elements of the street, parks that are clearly built by skaters and not by contractors. Parks which consist of stairs, cars, handrails, and not just pre-manufactured ramps arbitrarily placed on a slab of concrete awkwardly cut into a suburban landscape. Using this logic, it's safe to assume that a great skate park would be one that uses street elements and is designed by the skaters who will be using the park.

Detroit's many abandoned streets are full of elements that could easily be used by skaters to make a park. Railings could be used for grind rails. Houses could be dismantled and the wood could be used to build ramps. Doors can form walls and transfer boxes. Pitched roof trusses are basically ramps in themselves and we have plenty of those. Detroit has enough vacant land that it could easily give a portion large enough to create the largest skate park in the US, and save money by doing so. Skaters would jump at the opportunity to build their own skate park. A skate park, built by skaters for skaters, out of reused elements from Detroit's many abandoned streets. Carpenters, architects and community members would volunteer to help in the effort, suburban teens would drag their parents out to help. A skate park, built out of the community, by the community. Dozens of houses would be razed without any cost to the city, saving approx. 4000 dollars a house that the city would have to pay to have it demolished. People would come from the suburbs, from the US, from Europe, to see and skate on America's largest and greatest skate park.

Now, it's important to note that a skate park isn't the answer to the problems in Detroit, rather the mindset that a skate park could actually help. The perspective in which the city and it's constituents, both animate and inanimate, are hopeless. Change takes heart, it takes people, not money. Though the gazelle may be dead and seemingly empty of life, it's really just beginning to serve it's community.

NEEDS: Citations, more evident examples, Web 2.0 connections, pictures