Also in Baltimore, home of Vegan SoulFest!
Food is culture đ and the vegan food here feels like Baltimore. It's awesome that other cities are doing the same.
Urban Design and Development: Theory of City Form | MIT
Institution: MIT
Lecturer: Julian Beinart
University Course Code: 4.241J
Subject: #architecture #urbanstudies #finearts #socialscience
Year: Spring 2013
Description: This course covers theories about the form that settlements should take and attempts a distinction between descriptive and normative theory by examining examples of various theories of city form over time. Case studies will highlight the origins of the modern city and theories about its emerging form, including the transformation of the nineteenth-century city and its organization. Through examples and historical context, current issues of city form in relation to city-making, social structure, and physical design will also be discussed and analyzed.
Course materials can be found on the MIT OpenCourseWare website.
Soft Landings
Source with pictures of example soft landing gardens, plant lists tailored to the North American Eastern Temperate Forests can be found:
https://www.pollinatorsnativeplants.com/softlandings.html
---
Oaks are universally the top keystone trees that support moths and butterflies. Across the United States, more than 940 types of caterpillars feed on oaks (Quercus).
Top genera: Oak, Willow, Cherry, Pines, Poplar
Lepidoptera in image: Great oak dagger moth, Luna moth, Red-banded hairstreak, Eastern buck moth
---
Many of the moths and butterflies that feed on oak trees must complete their life cycles in the duff and leaf litter (i.e., soft landings) near or beneath the tree, or below ground.
Lepidoptera in image: Blinded sphinx moth, Juvenal's duskywing, Hog moth
---
Creating soft landings under the dripline of oaks (as well as any other tree) invites all kinds of beneficial insects to complete their life cycles in your yard.
A number of beneficial insects such as fireflies, bumble bees, beetles, and lacewings need soft landings to survive.
Lepidoptera in image: Edwards hairstreak, Skiff moth, Pink-striped oakworm
---
Planting intentional soft landings under keystone trees builds healthy soil, provides food for songbirds and pollinators, sequesters more carbon than turf grass, and reduces time spent mowing.
Other ways to support insects that spend a phase of their life cycle beneath trees include eliminating landscape fabric and decreasing mowing to reduce soil compaction.
---
DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE THE LEAVES UNDER YOUR TREES!
Mr. Trash Wheel is pretty cool:
FreeSewing.org | Free Bespoke Sewing Patterns
>FreeSewing is open source software to generate bespoke sewing patterns, loved by home sewers and fashion entrepreneurs alike.
Mastodon instance: FreeSewing.social
I've seen folks online use Virginia creeper and pokeberry to dye fabrics, a soft green and vibrant purple respectively. I'd love to take a crack at them on cotton, maybe even a natural tie dye!
The US Forest Service has a chart with plants and their corresponding colors. I wonder if there's a dye community on lemmy đ¤
Dang, the goblin in me wanted some for my collection đ I bet they look awesome during a breeze.
Beautiful đ§ââď¸ I love the naturalized look, so much texture!
What's the tall purple flower in the second pic?
From May 2023 in Reuters: Some 25 types of mammals died in latest bird flu outbreak
Wikipedia says you're right! That's a hilarious origin đ
The egg-shaped green fruits 'may pop' when stepped on. This phenomenon gives the P. incarnata its common name, as well as the fact that its roots can remain dormant for most of the winter underground and then the rest of the plant "pops" out of the ground by May, unharmed by the snow.
I just checked vegantheoryclub.org and none of the newer posts on there are showing up on my subscribed feed. Last one is from 14 hours ago.
I see your other comment though! The colors remind me of a galaxy print â¨ď¸
I think there might be a federation lag? I can't see all the comments đ¤ I'll check back later, hopefully things catch up.
The planting time was coincidence đ I read the "pop" comes from the sound the fruit makes when crushed. Maybe "May" is from when they usually start blooming? Though wildflower.org says they can flower from March to November.
>A Database of Foods, Drugs, Dyes and Fibers of Native American Peoples, Derived from Plants.
A good companion: https://native-land.ca/
Do y'all have a community for socialism on this instance? I miss the veganarchism subreddit so much :(
The local cottontail raised her litter in my yard and the family didn't care for them, other than using them as a hangout spot. They did eat all the Virginia spiderwort and there's a bunch of violet stems around with no leaves, but mostly they stick to the plantains (Plantago sp.) in the lawn.
I had no idea deer lived in the city until I started doing this. Sometimes I'll catch one sleeping in my backyard which is a surreal sight. They munched the sunchokes, hazelnut, and chokeberry to the ground, but all are bouncing back.
Most of the flowers are divisions of plants, some volunteers and others I got as plugs in summer 2022. I decided to start small and expand over time. The coneflower was four plants last spring which I divided into 12, then into about 30 this spring. Rose milkweed and late boneset are just as prolific.
I have spread some seeds around and others have blown in. The groundcover in the second photo is all volunteer.
The mulch was leftover from a chipdrop. I used it to make the beds look "intentional" when everything was sparse and muddy back in February :) The plan is for everything to grow so dense that I won't need to mulch it again.
Front yard pocket prairie with rain garden groundcover bonus pic
Huffin' the flowers has been a huge stress relief here in the Southeastern USA Plains.
The shrub on the right is buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis). Flowers are: orange coneflower (Rudbeckia 'goldsturm'), sweet Joe-Pye (Eutrochium purpureum), anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum), pokeberry (Phytolacca americana), and catmint (Nepeta Ă faassenii).
Closer to the ground there's: wood sorrel (Oxalis sp.), three seeded mercury (Acalypha rhomboidea) and blue violets (Viola sororia). The empty space has wild stawberry (Fragaria virginiana) slowly creeping and a young little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium).
The image below shows the opening of the rain garden where the runoff enters. Plants are 4 - 5 inches max. Here there's: Virginia pepper (Lepidium virginicum), blue violet (Viola sororia), wood sorrel (Oxalis sp.), nimblewill (Muhlenbergia schreberi), prostrate spurge? (Euphorbia sp.).
Also seen: white clover, creeping cinquefoil, and Bermuda grass.
Around here, it's spotted lanternflies. The almost glee some have for squashing them is disheartening. I get why they do it, believe me, but I've encountered little to no zoomed out perspective that these little dudes didn't choose to be here.
To really go off the deep end... the spotted lanternfly's favorite tree, Ailanthus altissima, is just trying to do what its ancestors have done for millennia. Not saying these trees shouldn't be removed, but they also didn't choose to be here.
Of these things we speak venom and deem trash. Though, this attitude seems pervasive in how western culture treats the other in general.
They donât want most of the crap people plant trying to be Eco friendly anyways or so the landscape architect told me.
The research of entomologist, Dr. Doug Tallamy, and his team at the University of Delaware have identified 14% of native plants (the keystones) support 90% of butterfly and moth lepidoptera species. The research of horticulturist Jarrod Fowler has shown that 15% to 60% of North American native bee species are pollen specialists who only eat pollen from 40% of native plants.
Dense plantings help keep it at bay. For flowers and grasses, cut in half the recommended plant spacing that you'll find on gardening sites.
I have orange coneflower bordering a pocket prairie, planted one foot apart (center of plant to center of plant). Bermuda grass grows around the edge, but rarely enters it.
Let Nature Play: A Possible Pathway of Total Liberation and Earth Restoration
Dan Fischer Let Nature Play A Possible Pathway of Total Liberation and Earth Restoration April 2022
>In short, this is a proposal for an abolition of compulsory work for all beings. It involves rewilding at least 75% of the Earth with guidance from local and Indigenous communities, and ensuring that the remainder of the planet âabolish[es] the wage system, and live[s] in harmony with the Earthâ as proposed by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (2021).
The Philosopher's Tarot: The Major Arcana of Philosophy
"Tarot & Acid Communism" Live at Tenderbooks in London >The launch party for 'The Philosopher's Tarot' at Tenderbooks in London on November 23, 2022. > >Acid Horizon's first live event extends Mark Fisher's concept of 'acid communism' through prominent figures featured in the work of the podcast.
This Middle to Late Woodland shoe made from a plant called Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium) was recovered from a Benton County bluff shelter in 1932.
>Despite a common popular image of prehistoric Native peoples of the Southeast clad only in sewn leather, including footwear, the majority of archeologically recovered shoes were made using woven plant fiber; specifically, the leaves of a plant known as ârattlesnake masterâ (Eryngium yuccifolium).
Naomi Klein: 'Let Them Drown: the violence of othering in a warming world'
>n her 2016 Edward W. Said lecture, Naomi Klein examines how Said's ideas of racial hierarchy, including Orientalism, have been the silent partners to climate change since the earliest days of the steam engine, continuing to present day decisions to let entire nations drown and others warm to lethal levels. The lecture looks at how Saidâs bold universalist vision might form the basis for a response to climate change grounded in radical inclusion, belonging and restorative justice.
Call to Earth - A Message from the World's Astronauts to COP21 (2015)
>The Association of Space Explorers reached out to their fellow astronauts to pass on a simple message of solidarity, hope and collaboration to combat climate change and reach our political leaders during such a crucial time.
"Gravity and Grace" by Simone Weil
Simone Weil (1909 â 1943) was a French philosopher, labor activist, ascetic and mystic.
The author of the introduction, Gustave Thibon, shares the circumstances of his meeting Weil:
>In June 1941 the Reverend Father Perrin, a Dominican friend then living at Marseilles, sent me a letter which I do not happen to have kept but which ran more or less as follows: âThere is a young Jewish girl here, a graduate in philosophy and a militant supporter of the extreme left. She is excluded from the University by the new laws and is anxious to work for a while in the country as a farm hand. I feel that such an experiment needs supervision and I should be relieved if you could put her up in your house.â
Thibon later shares how he gained possession of Weil's writings which would become Gravity and Grace:
>I saw her for the last time at the beginning of 1942. At the station she gave me a portfolio crammed with papers, asking me to read them and to take care of them during her exile. As I parted from her I said jokingly, in an attempt to hide my feelings: âGoodbye till we meet again in this world or the next!â She suddenly became serious and replied: âIn the next there will be no meeting again.â She meant that the limits which form our âempirical selfâ will be done away with in the unity of eternal life. I watched her for a moment as she was disappearing down the street. We were not to meet again: contacts with the eternal in the time order are fearfully ephemeral.
---
The Philosophize This! podcast has a four part introductory series on Simone Weil (with transcripts). There are short videos from this series on their clips channel on YouTube.
The Talk Gnosis podcast hosted a discussion about Weil's work featuring two poets.
The Cicada Reel -- Ken Kolodner on hammered dulcimer with the cicada chorus
>17 years ago, I was amazed by the incredibly loud pulsing chorus of cicadas in my backyard. I improvised this tune that I had to name "The Cicada Reel". I recorded the tune a year later on "Journey to the Heartland" (Maggieâs Music, 2005). And the cicadas are back in full force. Shortly after I recorded this video, they hit 93 dBâs. So here it is again: The Cicada Reel, played on a Dusty Strings D670 with dampers.
John Berger / Ways of Seeing , Episode 1 (1972)
>Ways of Seeing is a 1972 BBC four-part television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. Berger's scripts were adapted into a book of the same name. The series and book criticize traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The series is partially a response to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon.
CW: Around the 20 minute mark, footage of an execution is briefly shown.
Related essays can be found on ways-of-seeing.com
The Witch Trials and the Rise of Modernity and Capitalism
Interesting tidbit: the creator of this video was arrested in the 1990s during the Satanic panic.
Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Full text can be found on:
Wild Ones Presents "Weed Ordinances" w/ Rosanne Plante
>Join Iowa attorney and business professor Rosanne Plante as she explains what to do if the âWeed Policeâ knock on your door! > >Most towns, cities, and other municipalities have weed ordinances (local law) concerning what is a weed, what is not defined as a weed in their jurisdiction, and what is allowed to be grown on the property of local citizens. How do you know if you are really in violation, or if your âflowersâ just remind others of weeds? > >Rosanne presents a handy checklist to use if you are ever accused of breaking a weed ordinance. Many times, citizens are not in violation at all, but can use the citation or threat of a citation as a teaching moment for local government officials. > >As a past city attorney herself, Rosanne has extensive experience not only drafting city ordinances of all kinds but also prosecuting offenders. She truly knows what is needed to âprove upâ a weed violation. > >Download a Sample Native Planting Ordinance: https://wildones.org/resources/
Habitat destruction for cattle grazing in the South Texas desert
>In this episode we film more habitat destruction in South Texas, this time for the purposes of grazing cattle in a desert. > >Echinocereus enneacanthus, Coryphantha macromeris runyonii, Ancistrocactus scheeri and others are prevented from being destroyed in this act of senseless bulldozing. Ecotourism possibilities abound here due to the presence of numerous rare birds and cactus species and an abundance of winter texans that would happily pay to see and protect this land, but ranching and cattle are the convention here, and human beings rarely break with convention unless forced to by unforeseen circumstances which are sure to arrrive to the region, eventually.
Rain garden installed in February already attracting visitors
Monarch on rose milkweed, Asclepias incarnata.
I dug this out myself, roughly 6 feet in diameter and 4 inches deep. Given how fast everything is growing and self-seeding, I'll be able to expand closer to the street next year.
Southeastern USA Plains. This is the last stop for rainwater before the storm drain leading to the Chesapeake Bay.