Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Gestalt Gardner, Your Town Workshop, baby selection, i love podcasts

GESTALT GARDENER
Felder Rushing and Dr. Dirt make me smile every week. I love listening to these guys. They speak to things that are right up my alley, and they are big advocates of bottle trees. I wish these guys were on Alabama Public Radio. I would also like to say that i wish i had a garden to play in.
Check them out here.


YOUR TOWN
I would like to talk about the Your Town Workshop that i am working on in the Gulf Coast. I am extremely excited about this. I have been working on this for the past 3 months. Your Town is a program supported by the National Endowment for the Arts that holds workshops all across America that teaches people of rural America how to plan their growth, and their community.
The Carl Small Town Center is hosting one of these on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We are working to help people of the rural areas plan their reigon with all of the new development after the Hurricane.
This is not a workshop to devise a plan for a specific town or street. This is a workshop to educate the leaders of the community on how to plan, and what the planning decisions the communities make will mean.
We are going to be discussing three design problems. The first is a large scale reigonal planning. How do you plan for all of the new growth occuring north of I-10 and plan with the natural environment, mainly speaking of wetlands?
The second is a bit smaller in scale that of the town. What would you do if your housing numbers were doubled or trippled in the next five years? How would that be developed? Where would that housing be placed? How do you deal with infrastructure? How do you develop these areas smartly, and without loosing the community's character?
The third design problem is the very small scale. How you develop and build a new building that retains the local character?
I am extremly excited about this workshop, not only the possible long term impact it will have on the reigon, but also, the speakers that will be presenting. We have some amazing ones. Harriet Triggoning, who was one of the major players in the development of the Smart Growth movement. Geoff Anderson from the EPA. Gavin Smith, from the Mississippi Governers office.
This list goes on. It is amazing. It will be a lot of fun.

BABY SELECTION
The second thing i wanted to talk about today is the issue of Baby selection. This is the wildest thing i have ever heard. I was listening to NPR this morning and I heard a story on people who are selecting the sex of their baby. Now, i am not sure, morally what i think about this, but it does seem a bit weird. I did not know that this was even possible yet. I am not commenting on whether i agree with it or not, but i just was wanting to say that i heard it and it stuck out in my mind, and it is a bit weird to me.

The last thing:
I LOVE POD CASTS
pod casts i am currently getting
MOMA
HAUS29
Make Magazine
Adult Swim
New York Times-TimesTalk
KCRW's Art Talk
Comedy Centeral: Stand up
NPR: Books
NPR: This I Believe
SCAD On Demand
SFMOMA Art casts(this is trulyone of my favorites)

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