Via the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) website:

“Spring 2012 will be a special season as it marks the centennial anniversary of Japan’s Gift of Trees to the U.S. To celebrate this anniversary, we’re giving you and a guest the chance to explore Japan inside and out. Read through all 6 itineraries, pick your favorite, and enter for your chance to win your dream vacation!”

Post nuclear apocalypse, the Cactoelho (Cacto = cactus, coelho = rabbit in Portuguese) is born from the fusion of a dessert jackrabbit and a cactus (the inspiration is the real cactus sitting on my desk). Cute, but spiny, he wanders the world looking for affection in the form of hugs. But that is alas, rather difficult.

Cactoelho is a new cartoon character work in progress.

Listen, love, and dance in a time of occupation.

lyrics
You, you, you
Are a part of me
The good part, the right part
The part that I like to see, now

Three, three, three
Three enemies
I face three, I face three
I fight three to keep you with me

Got a place, got a place, got a place
I got a place in my heart for you
With the things
That are secret to me

I, I, I can see
I can’t really be
I can’t be, I cant… be
I can’t be without you baby

Occupy me / occupy me / Occupy ME!
I give up, I give up my sovereignty
We are 3 / We are 3 / We are 3

The love, the hate, the love, the hate, the harmony
Dissonance is, dissonance is synthesis
And how I feel is just like this

Featuring special guest bassist Krys VanSlyke

This is my first foray into cooking here in Rio where I integrate Brazilian and Japanese influences.

Ingredients
Broccoli and cauliflower florets
Thin slice of alcatra (rumpsteak)
Olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 handful of sliced shiitake
1 garlic clove, minced
Tablespoon of soy sauce
Tablespoon of brandy
Tablespoon of red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons of French grain mustard
Dash of hot paprika
Hot sauce to taste
Freshly ground mixed pepper (black, white, pink, and green peppercorns) to taste – substitute black pepper if that is all you have
Salt to taste

Instructions
1. Boil broccoli and cauliflower florets in salted water until tender, set aside and keep warm. Reserve some of the water and set aside.

2. Season both sides of the alcatra with salt and pepper.

3. Heat a saucepan and coat generously with olive oil.

4. Sear the steak on both sides. Since the steak is thin, one minute per side is sufficient for medium rare.

5. Remove steak from saucepan and set aside.

6. Using the same pan and oil, add chopped onions, stir and scrape the meat bits to incorporate into the onion and oil mixture. Sauté until the onions wilt and begin to brown.

7. Add the garlic and shiitake and sauté until the mushrooms cook through. Then add the remaining seasonings. Dilute with some of the vegetable cooking water if the mixture gets too dry.

8. Cook the mixture until it reduces to a saucy consistency. If you want to be really fancy, you can whisk in a bit of cold butter, but that is optional.

9. Serve on a plate with the steak, vegetables and sauce on top.

10. Enjoy!

I have been making music as a writer, composer, producer, and performer since my teenage years, so I am well aware of the power of just three chords. Songwriter Harlan Howard once said “All you need to write a country song is three chords and the truth.” Just substitue “country” with “punk,” or a myriad of other popular music genres, and you get the point.

Colby and I visited Harvard, our alma mater, this weekend. I noticed and photographed the inscription on the music department building, which reads “to charm / to strengthen / and to teach / these are the 3 chords of might.” Although I have taken classes in the building before, I had only just noticed this inscription for the first time, perhaps because I was accustomed to entering and exiting from the opposite side of the building from the inscription. I later learned that this quote comes from a poem called “The Singers” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The quotation really struck me because I have been thinking a lot lately about the purpose of my life and work and how I synthesize and integrate the various streams of my interests and experiences as a musician, social innovator, and as an educator.

Longfellow offers a succinct and poetic framework that helps me sum up what I do:

To charm: I bring delight and inspiration to others through creativity.
To strengthen: I support the work of changemakers and social entrepreneurs, helping them articulate and communicate their ideas in a more effective and powerful way.
To teach: From my first post-college job on the JET Programme to teaching in the MFA Design for Social Innovation program at SVA next year, as well as my work at Purpose, whether I have been a “teacher” or a “consultant,” I find my greater calling to be that of fostering learning and critical inquiry, not just to “empower” others, a rather well-worn term, but to inspire in others a greater sense of the possible. Teaching also helps me to perpetually learn more.

My Halloween costume: a furry panda hat I bought from a street vendor in SoHo, and my plush velvet suit I bought in Reykjavík way back in 2000.

Nicholas DiBiase and I perform an acoustic cover of REM’s “Fall on Me”.

Also check out Scott Korb’s NY Times article “The Right Moves,” about Michael Stipe’s signature moves.

This track is like Monteverdi meets Massive Attack. Opera meets trip hop and makes a hot atmospheric mess. This is my first foray in recording vocals in Italian.

lyrics
Lasciatemi morire,
Lasciatemi morire;
E che volete voi che mi conforte
In così dura sorte,
In così gran martire?
Lasciatemi morire.

Let me die,
Let me die;
And what you would think could comfort me
In such a harsh fate,
In such a great martyrdom?
Let me die.

My additions to Clay’s commentary:

“Coherence” as a concept has inherent class and cultural biases skewed in favor of those in with more power in the social and economic hierarchy.

Our socio-economic operating system doesn’t exactly making any f@#$ing sense to a many people in the 99% either.

#OWS is hardly radical. It is inherently a conservative response to the loss of a social contract from the 20th century. It seems like a call to return to the spirit of that post WWII-1980s social contract.

The Delancey Underground project seeks to transform an abandoned trolley terminal into New York City’s first underground community green space.

Beneath one of the least green areas of the city, the Lower East Side, lies a massive, unused space nearly the size of Gramercy Park.

This project envisions using an advanced solar technology to channel sunlight underground, enabling plants and trees to grow.

Coverage in New York Magazine

The Team

James Ramsey created the Delancey Underground idea and the related solar technology. He is the owner and founder of RAAD Studio, an architecture and design practice on the Lower East Side. James is also a former engineer for NASA, where he focused on satellite technologies.

Dan Barasch is Co-Founder of the Delancey Underground project. He is currently VP at PopTech, an NGO focused on promoting socially innovative applications of technology. Dan has previously worked within New York City government, as well as at Google, UNICEF, the 9/11 Survivors’ Fund, and the World Affairs Council.

R. Boykin Curry IV is a founding board member of the Delancey Underground organization. He is a partner at Eagle Capital, an investment firm based in New York. Boykin is a co-founder of Girls Prep Lower East Side and Girls Prep Bronx, and a co-founder of Democrats for Education Reform.

Lee-Sean Huang is advising the Delancey Underground project on online outreach and campaigns. He is a designer and strategist at Purpose.com, and a faculty member at SVA’s MFA Design for Social Innovation.

Leonard Bernstein

My purpose is to serve
to enable and to empower
others and ourselves
to expand our realm of the possible

My purpose is to unlock
the creative force
in myself
in my team
in my community
in my world
so we can give each other license to dream
to dream big
to dream bold
to dream crazy

My purpose is to fly
the freak flag of freedom
evangelize
radical freedom
freedom in the agility that comes
from embracing unexpected outcomes
the joy
the ecstasy
of serendipity

My purpose is to believe
to preach
faith
faith in alternatives
to our reality
faith in what is beautiful
faith in what is true

My purpose is to doubt
spread doubt like a virus
doubt about our preconceptions
our prejudices
doubt that the injustice that is
must be
doubt that I have all the answers
but we
come closer
to finding them
together

I recently appeared with my colleague Alessandra Orofino in the Fast Company article “An MFA Degree For Designers Who Want To Change The World” by Michael J. Coren.

So you want to change the world? Cynics may send you off to Wall Street or a white-shoe law firm. Those with gumption will look for another way. The new Master’s of Fine Arts in Design for Social Innovation has opened its doors just for them.

“We’re adamant this not be a program where people sit in a classroom and talk about how great it’s going to be when they go out and change the world,” says program chair Cheryl Heller at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, and a board member of PopTech. “It is helping designers go beyond self-expression, which is how most designers are taught, and how to put [design] into practice to create a change.”

Read the full article here.

James Slezak: Creative Energy: Renewing the fight for renewables
Jeremy Heimans & Alnoor Ladha: Doing Good Globally: Cosmopolitan Activism
Stephanie Gerson: Social Design Fractals
Lee-Sean Huang & Alessandra Orofino: DIY Design for Social Innovation
Wesley Adams: Foundations for Change: Structuring Social Good

We look forward to your comments and thanks in advance for your votes.

For Movement strategy Director, we want someone who can architect major projects for clients, and create and run new partnerships and incubated ventures. As you know, our 3 core disciplines are marketing/communications, strategy consulting and political organizing — so the ideal candidate will be very strong in at least one of these areas (e.g. a super talented political organizer who has helped to start or build a movement organization). Full job description

For CTO, we’re looking for a world-class team leader to oversee all aspects of technology, from the overall vision, to the buy/build/integrate decision-making process, to development and deployment of the organization’s applications and web presence, and management and growth of the technology team. Demonstrated interest in technology for social change and mass digital participation is a must. Full job description

Please let me know if anyone springs to mind – whether currently employed or not. For the right person, these roles are an opportunity to shape and direct major areas of a rapidly growing (approaching 50 people) organization.

We’re also offering a finder’s fee of $5k to the person who makes the referral (cheaper than hiring a recruiting firm) as a token of thanks.

Anyway, look forward to going to more morning classes when my schedule permits, especially since I’ve been working so much this week I haven’t been able to make it in the evenings. I like how the morning classes have an extended warm up session on mats. If I can ever manage to get myself up early enough, it would be something I could do at home too.

Three firsts this week:

First time getting elbowed in the face. It was kind of my fault for not blocking, but I learned a valuable lesson that I will remember. Thanks LC! Tip from Ari: use your elbows to block your partner’s elbow and knee, it’s more subtle and less aggressive than using your hands. My cheek is still a little sore,

First time doing a pull up. I was inspired by a blogpost I stumbled upon on Art of Manliness and decided to go for it. I was I was at the academy taking a break by a horizontal bar and just pulled myself up. This is certainly not something I could have done a year ago. Next step is trying to do 2 in a row. Looking to build upper body strength in general so I can do queda de rins into a tesoura, like we were doing on Tuesday night in class.

First time doing a handstand away from a wall. After Ari giving me a valuable tip of folding my body more and getting my feet closer to my hands before I go up, I was able to go up into a handstand. It seems that the trick is thinking more about up, rather than forward. Forward is fine for doing a handstand on a wall, where the wall is there to catch you, but up is where it’s all about.

Another lesson learned this week, Grilo taught us how to do a tesoura while guarding the family jewels. Valuable tip indeed.

Curious about capoeira? Join us at the New York Capoeira Center.

Mona Eltahawy Speaking on Revolutionary Women from lee-sean on Vimeo.

Mona Eltahawy speaking at Purpose on women in the Egyptian Revolution.
Video documentation sponsored by Hepnova Multimedia

Video of me giving a Pecha Kucha-style talk at a Purpose.com event in March 2011. I weave together a story that combines design philosophy and movement building with anecdotes and metaphors from capoeira, pop culture, and literary history.

There was a camera glitch halfway through the talk, so please pardon the jump cut. Music by Hepnova.

The Analog Underground article got me thinking, and made some synaptic connections in my head that I am still trying to full grasp.  The author of the article, Ashlea Halpern, mentions the nostalgia as well as novelty value of anachronistic objects, which I totally get.  But she also labels this analog phenomenon a “neo-Luddite counterculture”.  I’m not sure if that label was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but I really don’t think “Luddite” correctly captures the motivations behind this trend.

According to Wikipedia:

The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the nineteenth century who protested – often by destroying mechanized looms – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their way of life.

I don’t think the so-called analog underground is rebelling against industrial capitalism.  They aren’t embracing the nostalgic novelty of vintage analog gadgets because the new digital ones are threatening their craft or livelihood.  I think the motivations are more personal, and inward focused.  Maybe it’s just an aesthetic thing.  Many people, from hipsters to old money trustfunders have favored old or vintage things for a long time now.  But maybe there are deeper psychological and spiritual needs too.  A need for a more physical, tactile connection with our objects.  It reminds me of the New York Aquarium ad I have been seeing in the subway that has a picture of a girl petting a starfish and the line “no screen, just touch.”  Maybe in the age of touch screens, we just want to touch something real.  Something analog.  The physical and the analog have a kind of permanence that ethereal and ephemeral cloud-based applications do not.  And we can really own them, hack them, and personalize them.  We don’t really own the apps on our iPhone or any software as service apps we run.  Somehow perhaps, all of these motivations are a reaction against the increasingly black box nature of technology.  We can’t open things up and see how they work.  After the magic and the seduction of these new shiny digital black boxes fade, what is left?  Alienation from our devices?  A desire for the real?  I don’t know, but it’s something to think about.

Other manifestations of this broader cultural phenomenon include the popularity of sites like Etsy and the spread of the Maker Movement.

Slimwhitman’s comment on the article really resonated with me:

The analog will always be more a more complex code than the digital, which has to approximate its curves, where the nearly infinite realm is. Although that sounds like pop-metaphysics, all you have to do is recognize how the record industry collapsed, it made the analog compressible into any digital file system and degraded our relationship to music. We went from live music to analog waves made in vinyl and magnetic tape to essentially finite squares out of binary codes. In order for a computer to synch with a neural net, like a brain or group of brains, it will require waves that cannot make errors or be approximate. The digital will never be the sole entrancer of humans, and probably, we will have to eventually build analog computers to achieve anything of value in the post-PC age.

I think there really is something to that observation. I have been feeling the same way in my own creative practice as a musician, but Slimwhitman’s articulation of the issue really gelled things for me. While I have been making electro-acoustic music since I was a teenager, and digital tools will continue to be important to how I work, I have recently been immersing myself in the analog music world by playing acoustic instruments. Even the joys of playing the humble ukulele has a kind of humanity and expressiveness that is quite different, and in many ways more accesible and immediate for me, the player, than any of my complex high-tech music making gadgets.

I’m still waiting for the analog blogging platform though.  Until then, I’ll still be sticking to my iMac and WordPress.  ;-)