Photo By: Lanny Headrick

Your immediate response is to yell, “What, are you freaking crazy?” Followed by a list of reasons from food to hygiene to exhaustion that it is not possible.  And ultimately, a seed is planted and you start to think what would a lifestyle based on your experience during that one week in the desert really look like.

Over the past 6 months I have visited 25 communities around the USA and Canada and I have found that living “like this” all year round is not only possible, it takes on a wide variety of shapes and sizes.

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Whoa. Yep, it seems worse than expected.
“Radical Inclusion” + Awesome Experience + [Supply < Demand] = The reality of our current situation.
And ya know what? This may not be a bad thing.

**NOTE: I AM NOT AN OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF BURNING MAN. I am merely a Participant with a passion for the event, people, and Principles of Burning Man. **

NOTE:
Feb 22 – Secure Ticket Exchange Program (STEP) opens
March 28th – Open Sale (10,000 additional tickets)

I admit it. I search for related communities around the world embracing and incorporating collaboration and gifting into their everyday lives. With this lens, I stumble upon many interesting projects, ideas, and happenings around the globe. Given this years’ Burning Man theme, Fertility 2.0, the following example seems rather topical.

Ai Wei Wei holding the seeds from his Installation Sunflower Seeds at The Tate Modern

You can love it or hate it, but the theme this year is an interesting and timely one. The beauty of the theme is this: the myriad ways it can be interpreted. I’m sure there will be lots of mother-earth-vagina-art, which is beautiful in its own way, but I choose to view this year’s theme as a metaphor; one of sowing seeds. Seeds are an eloquent imagery that describe the process of dissemination, care-taking, timeliness and growth. These elements also aptly describe the formation of an idea, a community or a movement. There are many varieties of seeds in all sorts of shapes and sizes, all of which have evolved to interact with their environment. Seeds can be receptive to light, others to moisture, some even need fire to start their process of germination (hmmmm, I seem to like this one best). Their diversity is spectacular. Some seeds must germinate within a specific time frame, and some can survive for thousands of years.

And now for an example of seed sowing; the Incredible Edible project in the town of Tormorden in the UK.

Surplus vegetables grown at the high school go on sale, with all proceeds going directly back to the school. Image from wakeup-world.com

The lofty goal of Incredible Edible is for the town of Tormorden to become totally food self-sufficient in 7 years. How did the seed of this idea start? With a bit of something familiar to us – that good old gift economy. Three years ago Mary Clear, co-founder of Incredible Edible, did a very unusual thing. She lowered the front wall to her yard and encouraged passers-by to walk into her garden and help themselves to free vegetables.

There were signs asking people to take something but it took six months for folk to ‘get it’.

Now there are 1000’s of vegetables grown around town in 70 large beds. And one of the biggest recruiters for the project is officer Janet Scott. She watches from the station’s security camera as townsfolk come up and pick from three large raised flower beds in front of the police station.

“‘I watch ’em on camera as they come up and pick them,’ says desk officer Scott, with a huge grin. It’s the smile that explains everything.”

Why the smile, these vegetable enthusiasts are not thieves. These veggies are for taking. They are Free.

Have you seen examples of other seeds that have been sown? Please share them here.

And to find out more about Incredible Edible, visit: http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/ and Follow: @incredibledible

The Border Burners with Their Effigy

Here’s a great story we’d like to pass along … as our global community has grown, we’ve heard about more and more “Orphan Burns”, where Burners who can’t make it to the playa for Burning Man get together to celebrate on Burn night.

And while we’d rather use a term like “Alterna-Burn”, since “Orphan Burn” implies one is without family, which clearly isn’t the case here, to each their own! It’s quite possible that down the line, as this phenomenon grows, this natural extension of Burning Man will simply be called “The [insert your locale here] Burn”. Time will tell.  Stevil of the Border Burners writes:

Spinning Poi at The Burn

“Representing one of the world’s smallest communities of Burners, the Border Burners from El Paso, TX, Las Cruces, NM, and Juarez Mexico, held their first “Orphan Burn” on Saturday, September 3, 2011; while over 1200 miles away, The Man was burning in Black Rock City. While not a sanctioned/official Burning Man event, it was a time for the few Burners from this area to get together and keep the Burning Man flame lit, even though we couldn’t make it to the Playa this summer.

Representing the far other end of the statistics spectrum, there were about 20 people in attendance … 6 of whom had been to Burning Man before. Our effigy was built out of scrap lumber on the day of the Burn by Border Burners Gordon Howell and Fernie Fernandez.

Fire!

In general, the Border Burners try to keep our tiny community of a handful of Burners (and Burners at heart) connected while we’re waiting for the next Man to burn on the playa. We have a monthly poi/fire arts workshop in Las Cruces, NM. We have a few slide shows and documentary screenings throughout the year. We are starting to have a presence at many local civic art events, and have an active announce list with over 300 subscribers. We also try to establish a Border Burner’s presence when on the playa (semi-famous for our tamales); and we usually have a small group who attend the local regional Burns closer to home, such as Saguaro Man and the Arizona Decompression.

For any more information about the Border Burners, please contact Stevil at : elpaso here: elpaso (at) burningman.com”

Border Burners 2011 Orphan Burn from Tortilla Productions on Vimeo.

Happy new year!

When these words hit the Internet, there was one minute left in 2011 on the East Coast of the U.S. By now, we’re past that, even if only by seconds. We’re in that new chapter of the future, and people don’t call the years “two thousand” anymore. It’s “twenty” from here on out. Quicker. Fewer characters. Faster downloads.

Yeah, it’s the future, baby.

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Frog is not only part of our BMHQ ticket team, she also heads up the Playa Animal Welfare (PAW, get it?) team, assisting non-human animals on playa. She writes:

Ifaw and Kovu (rawr)

“It isn’t all that publicized but the Burning Man Organization donates proceeds from ice sales to many local Nevada charities each year. The posted list from 2010 is an example. I’m fond of one organization in particular, the Safe Haven Rescue Zoo. Located in Imlay, Nevada about two hours north of Reno, they take in big cats and other wild animals and give them a safe, healthy environment, free of the stress from their previous lives. A lot of the animals were kept as illegal pets and others were found orphaned. They always make room for those most in need, especially geriatrics and those compromised by previous substandard housing. The most common story is that of people who thought it was a great idea to have a wild animal as a pet and then realized the huge responsibility and danger involved and decided to find them a better home. Read more »

The Eiffel Tower at Sunset

I’ve long been fascinated by French culture—the fashion, art, film, music, and “je ne sais quoi” of French life—-and decided, after a busy Burning Man season, to hop a plane across the Atlantic and immerse myself in Parisian life. In preparation for my trip, I reached out to our French Regional Contacts, Filouz, Marc, and Eddy, to see if there were any Burner events happening during my stay. They assured me that there was always something going on in Paris and invited my friends and I to a lovely French dinner and to their monthly “Burning Café” event that draws in Burners and artists from all corners of the City of Light.

Burning Cafe at the Bric a Brac Bar in Oberkampf

The French Burners organization, which started as a small group of Paris Burners who decided to meet up each month at local cafés, has expanded over the past few years into a large and vibrant community that spans all of France. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the French Regional Contacts and the increasing interest in Burning Man culture in Europe, Burning Cafés now happen in the South of France, Aix en Provence / Marseille, Toulouse, Bretagne, and Dijon. These café meet ups are meant to be a place where Burners can get together to just hang out and get to know one another. They are a space where people make connections and where “Newbies” can get a sense of the community. Read more »

[Editor's Note: It's been interesting to watch the Occupy Wall Street movement take shape and gain momentum. Along with many other Burners, the Reverend Billy Talen is there on the ground, preaching his gospel.]

WATCH: Anti-Consumerist Preacher Reverend Billy Talen serves up a fiery sermon against the global economic machine at the ongoing Occupy Wall Street demonstration in downtown Manhattan.

There’s a term for the present American system: “Totalizing.” That means that consumerism/militarism comes all the way across the landscape – into every nook and cranny. It kills all the smaller systems, like the neighborhood economies, the gift-economies. This system is self-propelled to come into the arts, into medicine, into libraries, into our intimacy – and into our children’s lives at the beginning of identity.

At the Occupation of Wall Street you really feel this. Liberty Plaza is a small park where we say we’re free of that system. The difference is so dramatic. We are starting a culture here – a way of life from scratch. It is clumsy and beautiful and frustrating. But no-one regrets being here and everyone knows what leaving this small island means. Go back into America and our freedom is portable, hidden near our hearts.