When we’re not out running, TeamHammock is all into food. And we’re especially into food that is part of the locavore movement.
What’s locavore? Well, for one thing it’s a word so cool that the New Oxford American Dictionary selected it the 2007 “word of the year.”
To quote the word watchers:
“The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better.”
Since 2007, the word locavore has given way to the easier to explain term, “local food.”
And that’s the food TeamHammock is pulling together to support these days.
We’ll be posting here about lots of local food related activities we’re involved with. We’ll be posting photos and videos of the gardens many of us are busy planting. And we’ll also be posting videos and photos of the food boxes we receive by participating in a Community Supported Agriculture program.
For this post, I’ve embedded above a slide-show of my first (2006) effort at Square Foot Gardening. Well be creating several of these “Local Food Diaries” and posting links to them here on TeamHammock as we move through the planting, growing, harvesting, cooking and eating seasons.
And at least one member of TeamHammock, Lisa Ask, is maintaining a blog to chronicle her impressive garden. (Did I say impressive?)
Check back here often, as we’re growing our gardens — and sharing our ideas about local food — rapidly.
As for now, here are some links to whet your appetite:
Find farmers’ markets, family farms and other local food sources near you:
Nashville & Austin (Places that are local for TeamHammock):
Austin:
Edible Austin: A quarterly publication promoting local food in Austing and Central Texas. (Sidenote: Edible is a magazine franchise concept. Here is a list of other communities you’ll find the magazine.)
Nashville:
Nashville Farmers’ Market (On Twitter: @nashfarmmarket)
Local Table: A guide to food and farming in Middle Tennessee.
Our friend Carrington Fox’s first Nashville Scene “Bites Blog” post about her “urban garden.”
Sometimes, when I see something like Why You’re Fat: Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks (warning: not safe for the queazy), I think about how hard it would be to get such an elegantly simple, yet deep-fat fried idea past all the committees and lawyers and boards of a business or organization devoted to preventing heart disease.
But one look at it can make anyone (and by anyone, I’m thinking of some teenage boys I know) start thinking more about what I eat.
Lesson: Using conversational media is not all talk.
(Sidenote: The site is being run on Tumblr.com, the same platform used for PassionCreatesCommunity.com, some similar — but much less graphic — story telling.)
[Cross-posted in RexBlog.com.]
I’ve been live-blogging (blogging about something while it is taking place), and more recently, live-tweeting, conferences for a long, long time.
The first time I ever attended a gathering of bloggers (it was, supposedly, the first time any group devoted to “business blogging” ever gathered), I knew that the world was changing because the most interesting conversations were taking place real-time among the people in the audience, not those on the panel (see #9 on my post after the meeting).
Conferences that are filled with tech people have long recognized the reality of the “backchannel,” or electronic ‘note-passing,’ taking place at any gathering. The early geek-favored backchannel of choice was (and for some, still is) IRC, but Twitter is now the audience real-time conversational medium of record. I witnessed, and I guess participated in, one of the first and still most famous melt-downs caused by such audience conversations: a session at the 2008 South by Southwest Interactive Festival that involved the lack of interview skills of the individual moderating a session feature Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Last Friday, I was on a panel at a conference put on by the Online News Association attended primarily by TV and newspaper journalists involved in their companies’ online efforts (with some bloggers also in attendance). A large number of people in the room were online or taking photos or shooting video. While I’m on lots of panels and speak to different groups quite often, this was the first time I’ve been so aware that a back-channel was actively occurring. (Although, come to think of it, a few months ago at BarCamp Nashville, something I said from the audience to a panelist lit up Twitter among those in the room.)
Fortunately, last Friday, people were saying nice things on Twitter and the blog posts I’ve seen were kind to me.
But this morning, conference organizer, the Knoxville News Sentinel’s Jack Lail, posted the accompanying video and I winced at my choice of a phrase to describe how I wouldn’t care if I upset people by moderating comments on a newspaper forum.
I apologize if I p-o’d anyone.
Here’s a book publishing news-note that is refreshingly appropriate.
A new book from the the O’Reilly “Missing Manual” series called “Wikipedia: The Missing Manual” is today being published simultaneously in print and is being posted in the Help section of Wikipedia.
In other words, in addition to publishing a $30 version of the book in print, O’Reilly is open-sourcing a free version of the book’s contents in a way that can keep its contents up-to-date — indefinitely.
The drive to post “Wikipedia: The Missing Manual” to Wikipedia was spearheaded by author John Broughton, a registered editor at Wikipedia since 2005 with more than 20,000 edits.
My observation: I have a print version of a similar book sitting on my desk — O’Reilly’s MediaWiki, by Daniel J. Barrett — and I can see how having this new book’s contents online will help promote book sales, rather than cannibalize them. A book that serves as a manual has a certain functionality in print that, despite the belief of many, is unique when working in an environment that is new and complex. My copy is dog-eared and sitting there, just where I want it when I’m trying to figure out a nuanced hack. It’s like another monitor, dedicated to some esoteric stuff.
Having a resource that is simultaneously online and in print adds to the functionality and productivity-enhancing roles of both.
Better still would be also having a video-enhanced version.
[Cross posted on Rex Hammock’s RexBlog.]
On Friday, I’ll be participating on a panel at an all-day workshop the Online News Association is hosting in Nashville at Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt. Registration for the all-day program ends today ($35 if you’re not a member of ONA).
The panel I’m on (at 3:45) has the auspicious title: “Bloggers & Journalism: A panel of traditional newsroom and independent bloggers talk about what journalists do right and wrong in blogging. Learn how to be a better blogger.”
On the panel with me are Christian Grantham, WKRN’s Nashvilleistalking.com; Michael Silence, Knoxville News Sentinel’s No Silence Here blog; and Tammi Marcoullier, editorial director of Publish2.
See: Jamie’s posts
from the
Inauguration
See: The
rest of us
back at the
office.
Our Jamie Roberts is “on the ground” at the Inauguration festivities and is blogging her impressions of the event. She and millions more are adding their individual voices — and photos and videos and maps — to the conversation of this historic event. In addition to listening to Jamie, here are some other ways to monitor the online conversation related to the inauguration of Barack Obama, 44th President on the United States.
The Official Inaugural Committee is using conversational media: The Presidential Inaugural Committee‘s website is covering all the events, officially, on their site and on YouTube, Twitter and Flickr.
CNN.com:They are trying to integrate as much conversational and social media as possible using their “iReporters” and a Facebook app that will stream video and chat w/ your friends during the speech. One big experiment to check out is: “The Moment,” which will use Microsoft’s “Photosynth” to morph together into a single image the thousands, or tens of thousands, of photos from all different angles of the moment at which Obama in sworn in.
The ‘Tag’ for monitoring the Inauguration conversation: On all the social media sites, i.e., Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, etc., people who are creating content and talking about the inauguration are being encouraged to tag their content with inaug09. For example, on Twitter, you can go to Search.Twitter.com and search the tag, “inaug09” (with or without the “#”) and see a steady stream of “tweets” from around the world. (We’ve created the widget on the left that displays the most recent “tweets” displaying such a tag.)
Flickr: In addition to the inaug09 tag, there is an Inauguration 2009 Group that is filling up with photos taken by those attending the inauguration. (I’ve embedded above a widget that display recent photos posted to it.)
Mashups: There are lots of interesting Google maps user-created mashups. Here’s one that displays on a Google map the location of YouTube videos being posted. The person who created it also produced this drive-through of the Inauguration parade route using Google Earth (and some really bad music).
(For more ways to follow the inauguration online, visit RexBlog, where I’m keeping a running list of inauguration-related online activities that are making me go Wow!)
[Note: This article appears in the January/February 2009 issue of American Spirit magazine. Used with permission. To see a digital version of how the article appeared in the magazine, click here or scroll to the bottom of the page.]
Three decades ago, I married into a family whose members love furniture made during the early days of America. By merely tagging along on tours of historic house museums and trips to antiques dealers, estate sales and the occasional flea market, I grew to understand the subtleties of design and craftsmanship that provide clues to the style, period and origin of a chair, table or chest. Through the years, I grew more and more curious about the craftsmen who transformed the wood from the trees they found in the New World into utilitarian objects—boxes and stands on which we sit, store items, work or eat—as well as uniquely beautiful art that has lasted centuries.
Specifically, I grew curious about the men who made and sold Windsor-style chairs. Why the Windsor? Perhaps it’s the variety and ubiquity of the style. In portraits of founding families, for example, you can often see a distinctive Windsor feature—perhaps the leg of a chair—peeking out from behind fancy attire. The Windsor style was not limited to highbrow furniture you’d find in the formal rooms of the well-to-do. Chairs in this style could be found nearly everywhere in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, from chapels and schoolhouses to taverns and barns.
My curiosity about the early chair makers grew to the point that I decided to truly understand what these craftsmen were like, I’d need to make a chair myself. I decided to concentrate on a loopback (or, as some would call it, hoopback) side chair. I knew that decision would prove challenging because, previous to that, the only experience I had in woodworking was watching episodes of “The New Yankee Workshop” on PBS.
Fortunately, there is a small but passionate network of Windsor chairmaking enthusiasts around the country—and many have the patience and skills necessary to teach people like me how to make a beautiful chair of our own. (See “How to Make Your Own Windsor Chair” to find out where you can receive instruction on Windsor chair making.)
My seven-day—and 60-plus hour— adventure took place at the John C. Campbell Folk School in southwest North Carolina. (For more information about the school, see “Creating Your Own American Craft.”) Early one Saturday morning in July, I found myself with 12 other students standing around a pile of firewood. At least, that’s what it looked like to me. In hindsight, it seems odd that I was surprised we’d begin the chair-making process with logs from a recently felled white oak tree. But before that weekend, all of my previous Saturday morning projects had started with visits to Lowe’s or Home Depot.
I quickly learned that a key to making a long-lasting loopback Windsor is using hand-rived, or split, wood from trees that have grown on flat land. Such trees produce beautiful, long, straight grain—the secret sauce that provides amazing strength to the spindles (or “sticks” as the early chair makers called them) and “loop” of a Windsor’s chair back. Riving the wood rather than sawing it ensures long, uninterrupted grain lines. When steamed, bent and formed into the shapes of the chair back pieces—then cured and dried for an appropriate time—these delicate-appearing slivers of wood possess the strength to last centuries, if cared for properly.
Who’s Making Windsors?
The desire to make a Windsor chair knows no demographic boundaries.
Our 13-person group included—among others—a medical doctor, a State Department employee, a private investigator, educators, small-business owners, a corporate executive, a “period interpreter” at a historic house museum and a young woman who had graduated from college a few weeks earlier.
We came to the class with different skill levels, but each left with a beautiful Windsor chair. (The John C. Campbell Folk School may be called a school, but since its founding in 1925, the instruction has never been about competition or grades.) We were given the opportunity to make the chair with modern power tools (the school has state-of-the-art equipment) or with nonpowered tools traditional to the early 19th century. A few of the group went completely unplugged, except for the use of modern lathes. Early American chair makers used lathes powered by foot pedals, or, once the Industrial Revolution began making its way into 19th-century America, by waterwheel.
Even those of us who used tools such as power-drill presses to ensure correctly angled holes spent at least 30 to 40 hours of the week doing traditional hand shaving, shaping, carving and sanding on each individual piece that would be used in the assembly of our chairs.
The Chair-making Process
One of the reasons the Windsor chair proved popular—and ubiquitous—among 18th- and 19th-century Americans was its sturdiness relative to the limited amount of materials necessary for its construction. No screws or nails were needed, and the chairs could be made from a wide variety of lumber from trees growing throughout the Eastern Seaboard from New England to South Carolina.
What the chairs didn’t need in materials, however, they required in the skills of the maker. It is no small challenge to overcome the laws of physics necessary to make a delicate chair able to withstand the force applied to it daily by men, women and children through the course of decades, even centuries.
While the chair’s style originated in England, where artisans developed it into formal and ornate furniture, it became a utilitarian workhorse when it arrived around 1720 in Colonial America. Two humorous scenes in the Mel Gibson movie “The Patriot” make reference to the disparity in the quality of the Colonial Windsor and its fancy British cousin.
Before the Industrial Revolution, individual craftsmen worked alone making the chairs. If especially successful, a craftsman may have been assisted by an apprentice or journeymen chair maker. In those early days, the craftsman prepared each piece of the chair—the shaving and shaping of the spindles, the carving of the seat (or bottom) and the turning of the legs and stretchers.
In the early 1800s, Windsor chair makers began to, in a modern way of describing it, outsource some of the preparation of the stock pieces. Young assistants would prepare batches of sticks, for example. Soon, however, each step in the chair-making process began to be carried out by specialists with titles like “bodger” —- an individual who worked primarily in the forest cutting down trees and splitting logs into the wood stock, or billets, used to craft individual parts of the chair.
Connecting With Early Craftsmen
Using the same tools as the Colonial craftsmen—two-handled drawknives and spokeshaves—our class sat at traditional shaving-horse workbenches carving, shaping and sanding the pieces of wood that we would fit together days later. After several hours of shaving, your hands and shoulders begin to ache, but some time later, the pain goes away. The repetitive movement of shaving down wood is hypnotic, but it requires enough concentration to prevent you from drifting off into a daydream. In the same way Eastern religions suggest that stress can be controlled by being “in the moment,” much of woodworking’s repetitive tasks can be simultaneously physically taxing and mentally relaxing.
It is during these moments that you are transported to an earlier time. The chair becomes more than the sum of its pieces—it becomes a time machine. As I whittled, shaved, carved and sanded, I had the same sensation you have when climbing to the crest of a mountain and viewing a majestic vista. I got it. I could understand the labor, the hard work and brute effort that the Colonial-era craftsman exerted. But I could also feel the gentle way in which each artisan applied his unique touch to a hundred different places on each chair.
With an inch-deep layer of white oak shavings at my feet and sweat pouring into my eyes, it was finally easy to comprehend the craftsman’s pleasure at discovering this most practical piece of furniture is a work of art that will carry on his legacy. I felt that way about my chair, too.
Among the hundreds of funny stories that our close-knit group of chair makers shared was one about a student in a similar class years ago. Tommy Boyd, our instructor, recalled that on the second day of the class, the student said, “I could sell this chair for $700.” On the third day, he said, “I could sell it for $1,000.” The next day, the man said, “No way am I ever selling this chair.” And on the last day: “No one is ever going to sit in this chair.”
Making my own Windsor chair was like that. I can put a price tag on what the chair may be worth in the marketplace. But in its value for making me appreciate the craftsmen who first made it in Colonial America, my chair is priceless.
Sidebars:
How to Make Your Own Windsor Chair
While attending a weeklong folk school course is one way to learn how to make period furniture or other woodcrafts, you can also find a place near your home that offers courses in beginning Windsor chair making. Craftsmen, schools and woodworking retail stores provide a wide array of instructional options.
For a beginner, making a Windsor chair can take up to 50 or more hours, depending on the materials used and the techniques followed. Some courses take place during the evenings; others on weekends. There are even options for one-on-one instructional and mentoring programs.
A good place to start looking is the online directory found at www.google.com/Top/Arts/Crafts/WoodcraftWoodworking/Schools_and_Instruction.
Independent and chain woodworking retail stores also offer instructions. Woodcraft , one of the largest such chains, offers Windsor chair courses in nearly every one of its locations coast-to-coast.
These stores have learned it’s a good marketing approach to follow an old adage that goes something like this: Give a man a chair, and he’ll have a place to sit. Teach a man to make a chair, and he’ll be buying power tools for the rest of his life.
Folk Art Schools: Creating Your Own American Craft
Long a tradition in Europe—especially Denmark—”folk schools” began as a way to preserve traditional means of artistic, agricultural, musical and culinary arts. Today, the schools not only serve individuals in the immediate region, but they also attract visitors throughout the nation who participate in short- and long-term programs.
More than 830 different weeklong and weekend classes are offered year-round at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, N.C. The school is named after the educator Campbell, who surveyed the people of the Southern Appalachians around the turn of the 20th century. Together with his wife, Olive, he worked to preserve the history of the mountain people and share the intricate crafts of the region. With a heavy emphasis on traditional regional crafts, music, dance and food, the school, founded in 1925, appeals to hobbyists, professional artists and craftspeople. The school makes it easy for anyone to immerse themselves in learning new skills and sharing old ones in the context of the rural, foothills setting.
The school’s Web site offers a complete listing of upcoming classes and programs, including several related to woodworking.
[Copyright 2009 Hammock Inc. Used with permission. Reprinted from the January/February 2009 issue of American Spirit magazine.]
If you are an association or corporate marketer who has decided that 2009 will be your organization’s year to join in the conversation taking place on the web, we suggest putting your toe in the water before diving into the deep end. But definitely get wet. Here are five resolutions to get you started:
1. If you haven’t already, set up accounts on these services: YouTube.com, Flickr, Twitter, GMail, FaceBook and LinkedIn. In later posts, we’ll be discussing each one in-depth, but for now, just make sure you have registered a username that is consistent across all of those services. Also, in later posts, we’ll provide you with about 15 other services to register on.
2. Purchase a digital camera small enough for a pocket or a bag: We’ll get very specific in a later post about which cameras to consider. But for now, just make sure you have a small digital camera that is always within arm’s reach. We have a saying here: “The best camera is the one you have when the picture appears.” The more bulky a camera is, the less likely you are to have it with you. Notice we didn’t say, “take some photos and upload them to Flickr.” At first, just resolve to carry a camera around with you.
3. Discover a wiki other than Wikipedia: We love Wikipedia, but unfortunately, it is so popular that many people think the term “wiki” means Wikipedia and therefore they miss out on the tens of thousands of other collaborative resources developed on a wiki format. Most wikis share some things in common, but they can differ drastically as well. Here are a couple of fun ones to explore: WikiHow, a collection of how-to articles and videos, and our favorite, SmallBusiness.com.
4. Write a review on Amazon.com: At some point, you’ve got to start viewing the web as something you don’t just read, but write to as well. We could suggest commenting on a blog or posting a “tweet” to Twitter, but around here, we believe the most meaningful content comes from your passions. If you love a book or song, write a few sentences why. You’ll feel like a champion when you hit that submit button. Promise.
5. Learn to search the World Live Web: One of the major challenges of explaining conversational media and the tools of social media is the notion that the Web is a “place” where people live and not a “medium” that people read and watch. We’ll be posting at length about “listening” to the web, but here are a couple of suggestions:
Subscribe to this blog, or visit often, as we’ll be sharing with you ways in which you can most effectively add your voice to the conversation.
Apparently (it’s all fuzzy now), a while back I added a comment on a story on Foliomag.com in which I said glibly, “This is the craziest time ever to launch a magazine, except for all the other times.” If you’ll notice, there were some big-time publishers featured in the actual story — and all I did was add that little comment.
I was just flipping through the current issue of the Folio: magazine and was surprised to see the first sentence in the cover story was that comment.
I’ve seen my comments, blog post quotes and even Twitter “tweets” end up in magazine and newspaper articles. I’m always happy when a reporter, writer or another blogger thinks what I have to say is worth picking up and passing along.
When I make presentations related to conversational media and the different ways in which individuals can now express themselves online, I’m typically asked how someone can get started. I always say: “Comment.” Commenting is easy and instant. And you don’t have to come up with a brand new topic to write about (although that’s not nearly as difficult as you think). Commenting is merely your personal reaction to, or clarification of, what someone else says. In other words, it’s what you do in “off-line” conversations.
So here’s the deal: Commenting on a blog post is quick and easy and it’s the simplist way for you to join in the conversation of conversational media.
[Note: A version of this post appeared on Rex’s RexBlog.com]
Why outsourcing makes sense in today’s economy.
Reaching, connecting and communicating with your target audience in today’s environment is harder than ever. You’re probably facing lots of challenges — limited internal resources, a small staff, a lack of social media expertise and management, a reduced budget — but at the same time lots of expectations from within your association.