Words Count

"It's never too late to be what you might have been"- George Sand

changes

Stitch work on satin, part of a bigger 'something." Inspired by TSA Calendar.

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." Andy Warhol

I agree with Andy except that time does take care of a few inevitable things...eventually. Live on all levels while you can, 'be the change.' (Ghandi)

Happy Winter Solstice

with a total lunar eclipse tomorrow, MagicK!

fiber art work made for the special occasion...cheers

Anna Herman on the Air

red silk Anna Herman dress

well not actually. On the air was a term used for analog radio days, but now? Air plays a part as sound waves travel through the air unless one is using a headset or earbuds to channel the vibration. Still and all, on the air sounds nice.

Besides it's the content that counts and my friend Anna Herman spoke right up last week on Womens Radio.com to let the USA know we of the eco fashion world may be small in numbers but we are passionate, dedicated and growing. Helping each other help the world change some industrial model fashion concepts is a big job, but we are doing it anyway.

Fashions ability to enslave some very sophisticated and intelligent women for centuries is getting a shakeout as we now understand that looking, feeling, being and enabling good is do-able and a standard we want to share with everyone. We are the world and we are next door, we care and we ask you to care as well, it really does matter and it will make a huge difference.

Need to Know Basis!

fashionRIP Project started with an ethos of re-use and re-invent in the discipline of art, function and dreams, called fashion. It was a way to mitigate the environmental, religious, social, ethical, cultural and economic clashes between what was deemed true and what I was experiencing. I started to explore further afield, trying to figure out what was really going on because it just didn't add up.

In the meantime, I started to sew and paint the new stories on old garments. (phoenix skirt, tree of life skirt, etc.) Giving them new life was part of the process towards my own re-design. Right now i am calling it faith in life(force) and in my 'knowing' self. ( its an emotional, solar plexus, greater heart based thing- you know it when you feel it!)

Like many i kept thinking there had to be rational, intelligent someones that were at the root of our great institutions. There are. The bad news is that they are usually locked into the systems these institutions have built over time. The very concepts behind these systems that shape our reality, our 'way of life' are full of myths that developed from our early human ethos of fear. This made sense at the time; we were in a war for our species survival and we fought it on a daily basis. I mean we had some big, nasty ol' predators back in the day.

Well, we did good, we survived and in fact, are such a thriving species we are now destroying our very ability to maintain our own life without an ethos make-over. To our collective chagrin, we are hampered by the knowledge that brought us here. This is what we know. We know what we did and are good at doing that thing better, we even call it progress. We are not so good at experimenting with new ideas, in part because so much of our energy and resources are trapped in the old systems and institutions. These constructs have hard won, almost hard wired concepts involved in their make-up, so letting them go isn't easy.

But yikes, to get us out of the mess we made, we need to let go. We need to support mass creative innovation and diversity, give perks for curiousity and embrace mindsets of 'whole concepts thinking.' We need to grow up (consciously evolve) and take responsibility for our actions and thoughts.

Why not imagine the best designs ever and go towards them? There will be plenty to choose from once they manifest. This will provide the incentive of competitive systems, yet allows for more collaboration, cooperation, sharing and fusing of designs because the mission statement has changed. Its a new dynamic for multiple diverse approaches in order to understand 'the whole' in a way that makes sense now.

This will take us to the next paradigm change but we can cross that bridge when we get there!

Economics isn't a Science!

Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera co-authored "All the Devils are Here" a book on the unseemly behaviour that enabled the biggest economic collapse since the Depression. The regulatory and sub prime mistakes made by corporations and Congrees that enabled this huge economic collapse (even when warned by consumer lobbyists that it was flawed) are still a problem.

The huge salaries to be made by playing the game, also make for self delusion, enables greed to look acceptable and creates the delusions that "the market is always right," " the sanctity of rating agencies" and other myths of capitalism created by those who need us to support thier theories in order to take home those large sums. Its a wheel of fortune that suckers the public into playing the global casino against their real best interests.

CONNECTED is about giving ourselves the gifts of the new story for the next reality. Stories based on todays wealth of knowledge and our access to it albeit beyond the wall of distractions so everywhere will further conscious evolution.

A new system of checks and balances will be enabled as we learn to work together for a resource aware economic system that looks to creating healthy populations via healthy lifestyles. This would be trustier because it is by default transparent, diverse, collaborative and contains the ethos that Darwin actually spoke to; that the human's ability to cooperate, bond and share was key to our survival.

The survival of the fittest was coined by another dude, Spencer (an economist) and because it gave the Victorian elites a tool to justify their own delusional outlook - we deserve to have more than our share because we are the best!- it took off as a "truth."

Its way time for the new truth and that new reality to kick in!

Ethical Markets

I am reading "Ethical Markets Growing the Green Economy" by Hazel Henderson (2006) and came across the term Post Cartesian, which I like enough to pass along!

On page 202, HH writes that people are losing trust in the current industrial medical model. "The almost excessive specialization that affects our current medical approach is part of a 300 year academic tradition of reductionism: the idea that the wholes can be understood by dissecting them and studying their parts.This so called Cartesian approach-named after the French mathmatician Rene Descartes-led to an explosion of scientific knowledge. Now we are beginning to put these pieces back together in a larger worldview and more systemic approaches, which I have called the Post Cartesian Scientific Worldview (Henderson, 1981) We are slowly remebering that our bodies, minds, attitudes, spiritual lives, social circumstances and physical environments interact to keep us well or make us sick."

Now in 2010 that thinking is expanding to incorporate the economic mythos as well. WTO blew big time by thinking that currencies and wealth would be retained within the trading countries (that is one of the excuses used to offset World Bank et al responsibility) however global markets that are a mouse click away have altered the story -shock!

The CONNECTED approach has a history we need to share.

CONNECTED

Still from a presentation/lecture/discussion I set up last year at SCCC Sustainable Fashion -how one industery is re-inventing itself

School is almost over, 1 year down and 1 to go! It's funny -I am in a teaching and learning constant, it's a good recipe..

Meeting with Anna Herman and Mark Pomerantz, putting puzzle pieces together is fun, generates proactive energy that is solution oriented and makes more sparks. When i meet the sparks i will write about them. You never really know what sparks will become lights on the path and which ones will just fizzle.

A Social Entrepreneurial Hub has just opened in San Francisco and forward thinking people are asking "why not Seattle?"

I hope the answer is "Yes Seattle is behind innovative, creative, socially just, new startups that will generate local sustainable businesses that will enable a new vision of economics and Seattle can grow her own!!"

Okay beyond mere hope, some of us are getting together to set the scene. We already know Seattle can deliver when encouraged.

Seattle has Style

Men who wear great vintage garb and ride the public's transportation are the best. Social justice style doesn't need armbands or protest buttons, it needs socially conscious decisions made visible. Joshua does all of that and more. Leaders are out there and looking good!

good garb

This from summer days, like the look -urban skate with cyber hardware or something...just great!