Posted by Reverend Billy TalenI live next to the Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, where thousands of soldiers are on their backs, staring into the earth above them, their last memory a moment of pain in the Civil War. Their bullets were removed, and their bodies carried on wagons and trains back to New York where their loved ones stared at them hard and sang to them and wept, and then one by one they too lay down next to their fathers and brothers and sons.
Photo by magnetomotive via Flickr
In the United States, we won’t remember these things on Memorial Day. Not in the way of a strong memory that moves us. Our minds will be cleared of the images so that we are ready for our next directed act of consumption. For instance, we will be readied to experience war as visual entertainment, war as an event without meaning, battles as ads – so that we will forget Viet Nam and buy Iraq, forget Iraq and buy Afghanistan.
And personally, I live in a time of my life when my body is mimicking the memory loss of society at large. If the culture of the USA is memory-erasing, I too have to fight for the sensual details of my personal past. We are hyped literally out of our minds until Memorial Day turns into a three-day weekend. I hope today that we are able to remember the dead and resurrect the future.
The Massey coal blast, and BP’s poisoning of the gulf – these are interruptions that worry the corporate marketers because they revive our memory. These two disasters are man-made, but oil and coal is the Earth too and the Earth is finding inventive ways to excite our memory. That oil won’t stop because that bleeding wound is necessary. Nothing that comes from modern culture can shock us. There are no Picassos or Elvis Presleys anymore. But the Earth, the Earth can more than shock us.
We are Earth’s rogue species. The Earth says that this is the time that our drilling down into the ancient sunlight of oil and coal be replaced by a view of the millennia of life there, that we see the original life buried beneath the mountains and oceans, that we see it and remember it. Our personal ancestors live too, with untapped energy, beneath our mountains of disinformation. My neighbors died so that we would not enslave our fellow Americans. If we really remembered this on Memorial Day, we wouldn’t be afraid of the corporations and fundamentalists. Remembering is a radical act.
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Tags: Afghanistan war, brooklyn, civil war, earth, environmental justice, iraq war, Memorial Day, memory, war
Posted by Affinity
Oil Spill Mapping in the Gulf Coast Region Photo: Stewart Long
Last week Andrew Johnstone of Burning Man Earth said:
This morning Stewart Long, who does all our hi res aerial stitching, flies out to Louisiana with equipment designed for BRC to provide imagery for the clean up efforts. I am again humbled that our efforts to record Black Rock City are applied to real world problems to make a tangible difference.
I knew that Burners around the world would want to know more about how Burners are taking it upon themselves to make a difference. Stewart says we can follow their mapping of the oil spill at Grassroots Mapping. And here is Stewart’s report posted today:
One week into the grassroots mapping of the Gulf of Mexico crisis, the first local New Orleans team is now in place. Support coming in from regional agencies, fishermen, universities, various media: PBS: DIY Mappers.
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Tags: burning man earth, diaster relief, Environment
Posted by Jess HobbsThe Shipyard has been home, storage or workspace for many Burning Man installations; Kiki Petit’s Eugiera, Nates Smiths first Fire Vortex, Ryon Gesink’s Eye Arch and Fuck Machine, Jim Mason’s Stockpuppets v2 and ICP, Jake Lyall’s Riot wheel, Borg 2, Liam McNamara’s Clocktower, Neverwas Haul, Lepidodgera by Rachel Norman, Mike Thielvoldt, Lira Filippini, and Jake Haskell. Currently, projects for this year’s Burning Man, FishBug and Gee-Gnome, are busily being completed. Non-Burning Man projects abounded here as well: Girlmark’s Jonny Appleseed processor, Kristies Flyer by Liam Mcnamara, Matt Synder, Peter Luka, Shannon O’Hare and Kimric Smythe, Exxon Valdez Disaster, the Peef-O-Matic powertainer off-grid solar biodiesel 3 phase power system, Destroy the Universe 4 and 2, Dan Goldwater’s Monkeylectric Project, Osseus Labyrint’s Modern Promethius performance (developed here), Barbara Kruse’s Firebirdees built as part of Therm and the Escape From Berkeley (by any non-petroleum means necessary) road rally.
 Egeria by Kiki Pettit photo by meuon |  Clockworks by Liam McNamara and crew photo by Gabe Kirchheimer |  Eye Archway by Ryon Gesink Photo by Mike Woolson |
In the beginning of its life, The Shipyard confounded the logic of proper Berkeley Building Department etiquette, by falling in love with the flexibility and durability of the Shipping Container. Unfortunately, in Berkeley’s eyes, the shipping containers the artists favored as architecture were not considered proper building material. This innocent misunderstanding prompted the city to turn off power to the facility. Berkeley being in the dark as to the renegade gang that occupied The Shipyard, did not realize the avalanche of creativity and power hacking they instigated by pulling the plug. The artists, scientists, gearheads and junkyard enthusiasts, promptly started making their own power and ran the facility off grid for five years.
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Tags: alternative energy, art of burning man, DIY, GEK, the shipyard
Posted by Summer BurkesWed. May 27, 2009
New Orleans, LA
(the backbone of middle Amerika; the soggy bottom of Old Man River)
Hi. I’m Summer Burkes. I just moved from the crispy Bay Area to the sweet warm fog of New Orleans and as a DPW/Gate desert rat, I experience a swampy deja vu on the daily. Here are the top ten similarities between Burning Man and New Orleans I’ve noticed so far.
1. You can walk down the street with booze in your hand, all the time.
2. You encounter random parades, second-line marching bands thrumming with brass and drums to hoardes of ass-shakers, and sexy “pony” girls pulling a modified shopping cart chariot with a man dressed as a flamingo.
ya heard?
3. Sometimes it smells. And you love it.
4. Everybody parties, including the teetotalers, because they know that death is certain – but life is not.
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Tags: community, disaster relief, new orleans
Posted by Andie Grace
Red Eye Diner, 2008; image by Nightshade
If you dropped off your Burning Man recycling at one of the free 24-hour drop off centers in Reno-Sparks, perhaps you’re wondering what happened to your cans and bottles? Here is a summary of the free drive-thru recycling project operated by Save Mart in the Reno~Sparks area for burners during and following the week of Burning Man.
The total amount of recyclable materials dropped off in ’08 was about three times larger than in 2007.
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Tags: black rock city, black rock solar, leave no trace
