Turn Your Yard into a Food Forest

Thankfully, spring is approaching. It’s time to start thinking about your yard!! This year, consider this. Would you like to mow less? Water less? Use less expensive and potentially dangerous chemicals? How about going out in the yard and picking fresh food any time you want? Try Permaculture!! What exactly IS Permaculture, you ask? Although “Permaculture” would be a great name for a reggae band, it is actually a term coined by two Aussies, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren back in the 70’s from the combination of the two words, “permanent agriculture.” Permaculture looks at a given area, like your yard, as a whole system made up of lots of interconnected parts. Patterning designs on a natural system like a forest or a prairie, “Permies” (as Permaculture fans refer to themselves) aim to create a personal environment that mimics nature. They combine plants that are beneficial to other plants and beneficial to the local environment, including the inhabitants, like birds, butterflies, bees, and even humans! Like a forest or a prairie, once a permaculture garden or yard is established, it is self sustaining, with very little maintenance. [Read more…]

Refurbished Machines, Recycled Vinyl, Analog Sound Quality...Heaven!

CNN recently did a nice piece on Brooklynphono!  The PAST is the FUTURE of music!

E-Prime Week: E-Prime and Non-Violent Communications

Some here in the US of A get together with family and friends today for Thanksgiving. Many enjoy it. Some...do not. This obligatory face-time can be stressful, and can lead to conflict, or worse, creepy, smiley passive aggressive behavior. It's a great time for relatives to take cheap shots at your non-traditional lifestyle. But you don't have to take part in the weirdness!  Break the cycle of snark!!

E-Prime Week gives us the opportunity to start the holiday season off with just a little less conflict, and Non-Violent Communication  (NVC) can be a good addition to your semantic toolkit. Here are links to a couple of links to articles to help you tune up your communications skills and invite a little less ire, and a little more "irie!

Solar Values = American Values

“By the way, if you want to have a war over oil, leave me out of it- because I don’t think we need it. All I have to say is, go solar! Go wind! Let a little freedom into your life, and help your neighbors stay free, too.”
Richard Perez, Publisher, Home Power Magazine- keynote address, I-Renew Energy Expo, Sept.8, 2001

Home Power #1: 1987

Just three days before the terrorist attacks that rocked the nation, Richard Perez, the publisher of the independent renewable energy publication Home Power addressed a packed audience at one of the nations oldest gatherings of wind and solar power enthusiasts. He inspired the audience with a talk about the importance of freedom. Freedom to make one’s own choices, and accepting the responsibilities that come with that freedom. It has been more than 13 years since Perez gave that speech and the solar landscape has changed immensely. Solar is no longer primarily the purview of off-grid survivalists and back-to-the-land hippies. The installed price of solar has dropped from above $10 per watt to under $4. More states around the nation are encouraging solar development, and the economic benefits of solar are becoming more obvious by the day. And yet, there remains a strong anti-solar contingent in the United States. But why? In post-911 America, isn’t freedom still an American value?

E-Prime: It's not for (Semantic) Wimps! OR E-Prime: (Semantic) Wimps may not find it to their liking!

 Okay! Speaking E-Prime for a whole week can be harder than one might think! Yes, it may be! Or maybe it really is!

"To Be" in Their Bonnets

A matter of semantics  

Cullen Murphy Feb 1 1992

The Atlantic 

A few days ago I opened up a recent issue (Volume 48, Number 2) of Et cetera, the quarterly journal of the International Society for General Semantics, and within a few minutes of doing so got a bit of a surprise. The surprise came from an article by Emory Menefee, a former president of the ISGS, which bluntly calls into question attempts by many society members to promote something called E-Prime, a form of English that has for years ranked extremely high among the interests of the general-semantics community. Advocates of E-Prime, for reasons I'll come to, favor the elimination in English of every form of the verb "to be"—be, been, is, am, are, was, were, 'm, 's, 're, and all the rest. They not only promote E-Prime as a theoretical proposition but also try in daily life to erase to be and its inflections from everything they write. The most committed advocates use E-Prime even when they talk. Given all this, to see the E-Prime endeavor criticized in an official organ— to see that endeavor, indeed, termed "quixotic"—naturally raised an eyebrow. When I queried the International Society for General Semantics about the matter, the executive director, Paul Dennithorne Johnston, assured me that the society never did, and does not now, regard E-Prime as tantamount to some sort of "party line." Well, fine. But it has strong support among the nomenklatura, and I do not expect them to hold their peace.

Happy E-Prime week, Everybody!!!

(Hey Everybody! If you haven't already read it, you must get a copy of this book. Along with RAW's other writings, this one really redecorated my reality tunnel. Enjoy it, and please, help spread the word about National E-Prime Week!)

 

From Quantum Psychology 

by Robert Anton Wilson

published by New Falcon Press

E and E-Prime

In 1933, in Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski proposed that we should abolish the "is of identity" from the English language. (The "is of identity" takes the form X is a Y. e.g., "Joe is a Communist," "Mary is a dumb file-clerk," "The universe is a giant machine," etc.) In 1949, D. David Bourland Jr. proposed the abolition of all forms of the words "is" or "to be" and the Bourland proposal (English without "isness") he called E-Prime, or English-Prime.

A few scientists have taken to writing in E-Prime (notable Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. E.W. Kellogg III). Bourland, in a recent (not-yet-published) paper tells of a few cases in which scientific reports, unsatisfactory to sombunall members of a research group, suddenly made sense and became acceptable when re-written in E-Prime. By and large, however, E-Prime has not yet caught on either in learned circles or in popular speech.

Let's Celebrate National E-Prime Week!

I hereby declare the fourth week in November... NATIONAL E-PRIME WEEK!

HIP-HIP...!!...I said...HIP-HIP...hoo-ray.....

Okay, so maybe I'm alone in this endeavor, but I think that the fourth week in November is the perfect time to do a little annual semantic experiment. Hear me out! You may actually agree with this. But first, I know you may wonder: “What the FUCK is E-Prime?”

Alfred Korzybski. One cool cat.

E-Prime emerged from the study of General Semantics in the early 1960s. Alfred Korzybski, the “Father of General Semantics” found that the word “is,” and all of the other derivatives of “to be,” suffer from structural problems and lack validity. For instance, the statement “this song is horrible” can be completely subjective. Even the statement “The sky is blue” may not necessarily be accurate.

David Bourland, a student of Korzybski, suggested that a more accurate method of communication might completely eliminate be, am, is, are, was, were, been and being. Bourland pointed out that by using this method, which he called “E-Prime” or “English Prime,” language can become less dogmatic. “This song is terrible” becomes “I don't like this song” and “the sky is blue” becomes “the sky looks blue to me,” therefore, inviting discussion rather than conflict.

So, why do I think that we need to celebrate this obscure academic exercise each year during the fourth week of November? THANKSGIVING, yo! Because, this week, due to some societally enforced ritual, many of us find ourselves occupying the same space for an extended period of time with other spawn of our hereditary genetic pool, some of whom may have very different outlooks on life than we do. Let's face it, “IS” can be a semantic chip on our shoulder, one that invites alcohol-addled ancestors, cro-magnon cousins and other kooky kin to knock it off. What better time to practice a little non-confrontational thought experiment?