'Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity', TED.com

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity

‘An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports. The term also broadly refers to any enterprise that is potentially fraught with physical, financial or psychological risk, such as a business venture, a love affair, or other major life undertakings.’
(‘Adventure’, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

When I think adventure, I think khaki. I think Indiana Jones. I think old double prop sea planes.

But when I try to define it, I think of adventure as what happens to you when you pursue a course of action that puts you at risk, especially when it is outside the normal routine of your everyday life. I don’t just mean physical risk. I mean the risk of embarrassment, the risk of getting dirty, the risk of being laughed at, the risk of being stranded, the risk of creating an awkward situation, the risk of failure, the risk of rejection.

Last year, I made it one of my goals to go on a personal adventure once a month. Go mountain bike trails I haven’t biked before, or walk around part of the city I’m not familiar with, or rescue my wife from an evil voodoo priest who is about to pull her still-beating heart out of her chest.

I haven’t made that a goal this year, but having worked that philosophy into my life a little, I was more quick to say yes, or click yes, to the opportunity to go see an old friend who I really don’t know all that well, in a city I’ve never been to, in a country who may not send a plane for me if the entire civilization breaks down around me, by a train I’m not familiar with, for an amount of money that seems ridiculously prohibitive, without my wife who keeps me from doing things like forgetting my immigration form on the train or arriving at the customs line three minutes before they close it.

And – if you are good at guessing endings then you already know – it was epic.

Allen Gathman, flickr.com/photos/agathman/4895653801/

I was in my chiropractor’s chiropracting room not long ago and he was telling me about his finances. I like to think my wife and I have a very special relationship with our chiropractor, but I’ve known him long enough, and sat in his waiting room enough time, to know most of his patients feel this way.

He is that rare breed of modern healthcare worker who you could easily see meeting up with at the local tavern at the end of the day to shoot the breeze over a few beers before heading home to your farm or blacksmithery for the night. You know, the old country doctors who went around to people’s homes and could prescribe remedies for  everything from arthritis to indigestion. And I’m pretty sure he would prescribe remedies for both of those, too, if you asked him.

He was telling me how much he pays in school loans every year, how it was enough to pay a mortgage or his kid’s college fund, and how he’ll be working for the next twenty years just to be free of that burden and actually keep the money he makes. I said, ‘Just like indentured servitude.’ He replied, ‘Yeah, it is. Exactly like indentured servitude.’

Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of indenture. Wikipedia

Europeans were so eager to get to America, the land of possibility, they were willing to trade in years of their lives to get there, just for the chance at a better future than the one they saw for themselves in their homelands.

For Americans, the ticket to the promised land is now a college degree, usually more than one. Now it is an education which represents the greatest opportunity and the greatest threat to our futures. Without a college degree we have only waiting tables, answering phones, or cleaning bathrooms to look forward to for the rest of our days. With a college degree, we have the chance to do something we love, to make great money, to be successful.

My chiropractor loves his job. He is incredibly passionate about helping people live better, healthier lives and he is convinced chiropractic is the best way he can do that. He could probably never have become a chiropractor without taking those loans, so for him mortgaging away part of his future income on doing something that mattered made sense. It made sense again when he had to get a loan to start his own practice, which added more debt to his family’s plate. For him it was worth it to take his future into his own hands.

What about you? Is it worth it to get a bachelor’s or master’s degree if it means paying it off for the next ten years?

Feel free to quote that.

Or put it on a t-shirt.

First off, Grain & Gram is beautiful. The site design, the layout, the photography. Even if you’re not interested in the articles, check it out and just appreciate the talent and discipline that went into the finished look and feel of the site.

Second, I think the creators of Grain & Gram have tapped into a really powerful current of thought, feeling, and desire that runs under the surface of twentysomething (and older… and younger) men. Despite the almost universal move away from manual labor and away from hands-on craftsmanship, men, or at least the guys I know, love an excuse to work with their hands, and to learn the skills and tools used in making real things in the real world.

We were interested in showcasing and writing about guys who were doing great old world things with purpose and quality, in an age where things are growing increasingly digital and standardized. (Furfur Rusland)

Grain & Gram: The New Gentleman’s Journal

John Hardy: My green school dream

When you first see or hear about Kickstarter, your immediate reaction is, ‘That’s so cool!’ Your second reaction, once you find out how they make their money – by taking 5% off the top of every donation – is, ‘How did I not think of that?’ And who knows, maybe you did. But it’s not just the idea – a website to help people raise funds for their creative projects – that makes Kickstarter great. The whole thing has been amazingly well executed.

And that includes their ‘2011: The Year in Kickstarter,’ which is a beautifully designed web page linking to several blog posts which celebrate and document Kickstarter’s achievements in 2011. I especially like the Replacing the “N-word” with “Robot” in Huck Finn video, the first one on the 2011: The Videos blog post.

2011: The Year in Kickstarter

If you have a moniker, it’s thanks to a small group of travelers in Ireland known, logically enough, as Travelers. They are like the people called Romani elsewhere in Europe and North America (and commonly known as Gypsies), keeping to themselves, living in vans, moving from place to place, and living on odd jobs and trades such as barn painting and selling linoleum. But the Irish Travelers are Irish.

Like the Romani, Irish Travelers have their own secret language or cant. Theirs is called Gammon or Shelta. Its origins are uncertain and disputed, but to some degree it derives from the Irish language, which belongs to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family. From Irish ainm developed Shelta munik, meaning “name,” and somehow speakers of English managed to decipher that word and adopt it as moniker. It had spread to London as an English slang word for “name” by 1851.

In Ireland’s present-day population of three and a half million, there are about 20,000 Travelers. A recent estimate is that 6,000 of them speak Shelta. That language, along with the Irish Travelers who speak it, has spread to the rest of the British Isles, where it is spoken by an additional 30,000, and to the United States, where there are an estimated 50,000 speakers of Shelta.

Here is the first line of the Lord’s Prayer translated into a modern version of Shelta: “Our gathra, who cradgies in the manyak-norch, we turry kerrath about your moniker.”

“moniker.” The World in So Many Words. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999. Answers.com 22 Jul. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/moniker

The goal is to connect creative revolutionaries with the people, stories, and ideas of the creative revolution. What’s the creative revolution? It’s a an idea that represents a movement away from comfort, consumerism, and selfishness towards adventure, creativity, and generosity.

Creative revolutionaries are changing the world, in big and small ways, for the better. We want to be a part of that movement and we want to show you what it looks like.

I am a fan of Canon SLR cameras. I like their controls and the fact they can use virtually any manufacturer’s lenses including Nikon. Some people like Nikon’s controls better and feel more comfortable with them. The two companies compete so heavily there are practically head-to-head matches in all equipment. I’ll focus on Canon where I have more experience and will only reference Nikon equivalents occasionally.

My recommendation for anyone interested in buying a digital SLR (single-lens reflex) camera for the first time is to go with the Canon EOS Rebel XSi (450D) body for around $560. If you are interested in Nikon, the equivalent camera body is the D3000. The camera body is basically a small computer and will become obsolete roughly as fast. Spend your money on timeless lens technology, not rapidly evolving electronic technology.

The 450D used to be the base model within Canon’s digital SLR lineup. They have now added a couple models that are priced below the 450D as entry level options which have had some of their performance compromised for the sake of a lower price. For example, the Rebel XS (1000D) has an auto focus that is slower than the 450D. This means a noticeably higher number of action shots come out blurry.

As you move up through the Canon SLR lineup, there isn’t a major jump in quality or performance until you get to the baseline full frame camera, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II which currently costs $2,500. Unless you become a professional photographer there is no need for a better camera than the 450D.

The Right Lens(es)

The next decision you need to make, and the biggest one of all, is what lens or lenses you want to use. Most professional or serious amateur photographers use more than one lens because it is not possible for one lens to cover all your needs without making compromises in quality. However, there is value in the convenience and simplicity of using a single lens so there are options that try to cover all of the focal ranges the average person would want in a single lens.

No one can tell you which option is better: the convenience of a single lens or the quality of multiple lenses. That is something you have to think about and decide for yourself. Obviously, if you decide to go with multiple lenses you don’t need to buy them all at once. You can start with a general purpose lens and then add lenses as you feel the need for additional functionality. A general purpose and telephoto lens will cover 95% of the photography you are likely to want to do.

Here’s an absolutely fantastic primer on lens selection. Read through all the articles in the first section of the page, then refer to the articles in the bottom section as you consider each additional lens purchase. I agree very strongly with the author’s recommendation to add a UV lens filter and hood to every lens. Compared to the cost of your camera and lens, they are not very expensive. They improve the quality of your pictures and MOST importantly they protect your expensive lens from damage. Use both!

The Do-It-All Lens

Referred to by serious photographers as a ‘travel’ lens, the Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens is for people who really value the convenience of a huge zoom range without having to carry and change multiple lenses. This is a high quality Canon lens, but the necessary compromises in image quality have been made in order to cram so much functionality into a single lens. For many the convenience is worth it. Check out the sample photos and decide for yourself. The Nikon equivalent lens is the AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II.

A General Purpose Lens

If you are willing to use more than one lens to cover the same focal range to achieve much higher image quality, then the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM Lens is the one for you. What should jump out at you first is the aperture of 2.8. This means you will be able to hand-hold this lens and use natural lighting in the same conditions where other people with lesser lenses will need to get a tripod, use a flash, or just deal with blurry pictures. For the focal range it covers, this lens will allow you to capture pictures that everyone else misses because they couldn’t get enough light.

A Telephoto Lens

As you may notice, the general purpose lens above stops at 55mm which is still pretty wide and will not be able to ‘reach out and touch’ subjects that are far away. For that you’ll need a telephoto lens with a longer focal length, depending on how far away your subject is. This is where the world of lenses gets very large and very expensive. Generally around 200mm is considered the limit of useful telephoto photography without getting into equipment setups that are basically horizontal telescopes and cost upwards of $15,000.

To cover the upper middle focal ranges where your general lens leaves off, there is no better lens than the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM. It is just as ‘fast’ (captures just as much light) as the general purpose lens but has increased focal length to reach out and touch distant objects, along with the image stabilization required to do so without a tripod. BUT, as you will quickly notice it is a very expensive lens at $1,800. (And we haven’t even gotten into the large telephoto lenses that you see on the side of football games yet.)

Fortunately, Canon recognizes that while this focal range is an important one, the price is out of reach for many people. So they actually created this lens as the top of a line of four lenses that cover the same focal range, each with increasing light sensitivity and image stabilization. Basically, all four lenses cover the 70-200mm range and represent a matrix of two variables, 2.8 or 4.0 aperture, and image stabilization or no image stabilization. The top of the line lens reviewed above costs $1,800 and the base line version with 4.0 aperture and no image stabilization costs $630. So you have quite a range to work with to dial in your budget.

In the review above, the author talks about the tradeoffs between each lens option and how to find the best combination of features to fit your budget. There are also dedicated reviews for each of the four lenses: the EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L USM Lens, the EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L IS USM Lens, the EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM Lens, and the aforementioned EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM Lens.

Resources

The single most valuable website I have found for Canon equipment reviews and insight is The-Digital-Picture.com. There are very thorough reviews of virtually every piece of camera equipment Canon makes along with galleries of great photos taken with each piece of equipment that also serve as creative inspiration.

The-Digital-Picture.com serves as a sales link for B&H Photo Video, which is one of the best retailers in the world. They have an amazing website with phenomenal selection, product information, reviews, and even demo videos for many of their products. They will rarely be the absolute lowest priced vendor, but their prices are reasonable and their service the best there is. There are a lot of skanky vendors out there and camera equipment is one of their favorite subjects on which to prey. Stick to the reputable vendors like B&H Photo Video or Adorama Camera.

Like every other artistic pursuit, many people believe that you cannot learn photography from a book. While I agree this is true fundamentally, books can provide useful reference and inspiration. Listed below are the two best photography books available. Together these two form a library that covers 95% of what you would ever need to know about photography.

‘Photography’ 10th Edition, by Barbara London, Jim Stone, and John Upton is considered the ultimate photography bible. If you REALLY want to understand how cameras work and what all the technical jargon means and why it’s important, this is the ultimate reference book. Because it is used as a textbook in photography classes, it’s pretty expensive. But you can find older versions like the 9th Edition used on Amazon for considerably less than the newest release.

‘Understanding Exposure’ by Bryan Peterson is considered the ultimate book on developing your photographic style through an understanding of the most important element of photography: light. The book assumes you already know the basics of photography and are looking to take your skills to the next level. It is considerably less expensive than ‘Photography’ and, depending on your previous photography experience you may get more out of it.

Steve Evans (flickr.com/photos/babasteve/3618157129/)

I remember my first walk through the old city of Jerusalem.  My body was jet-lagged, walking with two of my best friends.  We started going down famed King David Street, and before long it was a scene I had never seen before.  The streets were so narrow and crowded that you had to squeeze your way through.  The men were yelling loudly in Arabic, and some of the women were fully veiled in dark black.  Lining the streets as far as the eye could see were small garage shops selling wooden camels, hookahs, and fancy chess boards.  For the record, camels do not live anywhere around Jerusalem.

The second the shopkeepers realized that three Americans were walking towards them, we heard a constant echo of a broken English, “Hello, hello, shopping?  Shopping?  English, shopping?  Hello?”   After about twenty minutes wandering lost through this new chaos we arrived at a bright green door that led to a clearing.  It seemed like the best way out and we were ready to leave the claustrophobic streets behind.  When we were just a few feet away from walking through the door, we were turned away by two confused armed guards yelling harshly at us in Arabic and pointing their guns up in the air.

This was not what I imagined when I first decided to take a six month pilgrimage to the Holy City.  We were made to turn around and head back through the dense sprawl.  We were tired, confused, and disorientated.  Finally, a shop keeper came up to us speaking perfect English.  We figured he would explain where we were, so we decided to enter his shop.  Immediately he turned to a boy sitting on the street and he snapped his fingers at him. The boy got up and ran down the street.  The shopkeeper invited us into his shop, telling us that all green doors were entrances to the Holy Temple Mount, which in 2001, were only open to Muslims.

Within a minute that small boy was back with a tray of steaming tea.  The man quickly brought out four folding chairs and passed us each a steaming porcelain cup.  It was a Moroccan mint tea with about as much sugar as water can dissolve.  It was the first moment in the past half hour of confusion that felt normal.  We sat there for ten minutes sipping our tea and talking about the Holy City.  I started to think to myself that maybe living in Jerusalem would not be such a bad thing, but the story ends with us getting up to leave without buying anything, which turned the nice shopkeeper into a mad shopkeeper.  He started to yell what I assumed was profanity at us in Arabic, and off we were again through the narrow streets to find our way back to our school.

I do proudly say though that by the end of our six months living in those streets we considered ourselves masters of the area and could get to any point in the city without hesitation.  We also enjoyed countless cups of Moroccan tea with two shop keepers who became dear friends.  In the end, it was that first day’s mishaps that taught me an important life lesson.  Tea makes a good travel companion.

Fast forward 9 years and, yet again, tea played a pivotal role in my life.  I was sitting on a boat in the Beagle Channel off the port of Ushuaia, Argentina.  Ushuaia is on the island of Tierra Del Fuego, and it is the port that 90% of people heading to Antarctica travel through.  Yes, it is the furthest south city in the entire world.  As our small boat left the harbor, it passed huge cruise vessels that were about to embark to the cold southern continent.  They looked more like high-tech whaling ships than pleasure cruise boats.

Now, the entire time I was in Argentina I was hindered by my lack of Spanish.  Luckily for me my lovely wife is fluent and she did most of the conversing.   However, I was longing for real interaction.  Our guide and captain seemed like pleasant enough guys so I tried to make small chat, which did not seem to work too well, until they pulled out a thermos and started pouring hot water into a gourde with a metal straw.  I recognized that they were making real Mate the Argentinean way. I had read about Mate, the strongest of all tea which they were about to brew, but had never had the opportunity to taste it before. They saw my interest in it and offered me a sip.  We began to pass it back and forth, and started to talk.

Mate tastes like a hyper concentrate of a bunch of grass and twigs.  It generally grossed out the other members of the boat who tried it, but I was hooked on the insanely strong flavor.  I think that impressed the native Ushuaians.  It was here that I fully began to understand how one small beverage can connect people.  After two full weeks of travel, I finally felt like I belonged in that beautiful country.  It felt like the people there were happy I was there too.

Thinking back, my life is filled with other tea traveling memories, including drinking a steaming cup of Stash’s Licorice Spice Tea after spending a long day in the Icelandic back country.  Another was pouring a cup of Sleepy Time tea near the top of the world in Barrow, Alaska to help me fall asleep after spending a day being toured around by an Inuit guide.

I’ve also learned that it does not have to be an exotic location that makes you enjoy or remember a cup on your travels.  Just last week I brought a thermos full of raspberry herbal tea on an 8 mile pouring-rain hike through the woods around my home in Massachusetts.  Tea traveled just as well there as it did in Jerusalem.  Some lessons are hard to learn, but this one has been easy.  Tea is now always by my side.  It is a good, faithful, and memorable friend on all my travels around this world.

FEAR & FAILURE

Nothing incredible happens in your comfort zone. Trust me. For seven years, I commuted an hour each way to a barbershop. It was worth it because I was making great money, but I peaked four years in. Even after I hit the ceiling, I couldn’t leave the comfort. I mean, the thought of leaving a thick clientele I had spent years building is right on par with trading a jacuzzi for a shark tank. The more I sat in the jacuzzi, the more I realized this: nothing astounding happens in a jacuzzi (place sex joke here). A shark tank is dangerous. Danger excites the spirit and can absolutely reveal your ability! This is a great place to be. Scary, but great.

You have to manage fear. Fear is like a friend of a friend that shows up randomly to your cookout and feels strangely comfortable enough to invite all the worries you never wanted. It’s tough to calm down and realize that fear is the main problem. Once he leaves, a lot of the worries will follow him out. He’ll come back, but now you know how to deal with him. My biggest fear was failure. What if I start this thing, sink a bunch of money in it and it goes belly up? I would have to return to my job and explain what happened to each of my 200+ clients. No thanks. After I dissected that thought, I came up with this: If that’s the worst thing that can happen, who cares? I still have my health and the fact that my old job is still available is a huge plus. Anyone busting my chops for trying and failing is not a person who’s opinion I value anyway, so I let it rip.

You really have to look at failures as lessons. BOOM! I just dropped that sentence like it’s possible on the first try. It’s a paradigm shift. This is the single toughest concept to believe in. It can rattle around that cranium of yours, but getting it into your heart is tough stuff. However, doing this will change the way you look at the whole process. I convinced myself that every time I fail, I’ll chalk it up as real-world experience. I’m literally paying for my own education and it’s way cheaper than college. Now you are out of your comfort zone, managing your fears; it’s time to get busy.

VISION vs GOALS

Visions are dreams and goals are the means. Someone, put that on a t-shirt! I’m kidding, but it’s that important. You absolutely must have a vision! We all want to be our own boss and make our own schedule, but what’s your vision? For me it was to create a modern barbershop with an old-school sensibility. What’s yours? Make sure you dream a lot and add as much detail as you can. Write it all down and read it for a week. Share it only with people who know you well and are supportive. Sometimes our own families can be the greatest saboteurs. I mean, we are all human and it’s natural for humans to thrash an idea that’s unfamiliar.

Behind the vision should be your purpose. What is the fuel to your fire? What’s your purpose for opening said business, besides making money? For me, it was to work closer to home so I could spend more time with my wife and have more time for creativity. Write down the purpose under your vision. This little package of ideas will serve as the life-force throughout the process. It will be the only thing that gets you back on the road after a flat, and flat tires will happen. Here’s a few: frustration, hidden costs, screw-ups, permits, licenses, deadlines, spats with spouse/friends, self-doubt, and compromise. Take a breath here. Misunderstandings, broken glass, busted budgets, lost tools, late nights, early mornings, sleep deprivation, and nay-saying will happen. Every time you are up against these, your vision and purpose will remind you of your final destination. They can resolve and untangle the mess.

Time to set goals! Like I said, they’re the means; the road map. I wanted to open on January 1st and I signed the lease on my store front November 5th. I had two months to get the place built, painted, furnished and licensed. Also, I needed to line up some advertising, signage and utilities. I created a basic to-do list on a schedule. This is tricky.  For example, the floors need to be done before the chairs are delivered and the walls need to be painted before the floor is done. I don’t wanna paint the walls until the phone people are here in case they need to put holes in there. But I really can’t do anything until the lights and heat are on, which I couldn’t start until I had a tax ID. I couldn’t get that until I had a business license. Whoa! You can see how the scheduling is key. What are your goals for week one? Week two? Be open to changing them around every day.

NEXT

This is a boiled-down synopsis of a two-month, life altering journey. There are entire sections of libraries dedicated to this topic and countless professionals with more experience. Again, this is not a how-to article as much as it’s a motivational tool to get you on track with practical application. Get going!

In addition to the endless support from my wife, I got a lot of fuel from these resources.

The Dave Ramsey Show

Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast

48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

The Appalachian Trail: the East Coast’s own icon of adventure and wilderness, your ticket to freedom and the majestic beauty of the natural world. Plus a few highways here and there, but you probably don’t even see them in the summer when the flora is in full bloom. This is the great outdoors. Over 2,000 miles of it, if you’re willing to walk the whole thing in one shot, from Georgia to Maine. It takes a person a good four to six months to hike it all straight through. It’s looking like it’s gonna take me a lifetime or two.

From time to time I adjust how the straps of my thirty pound backpack sit on my shoulders. That backpack, a loaner from a friend, is my whole world this week. Besides that all I’ve got is the clothes I’m wearing, a waistpack (it must not be called a fanny pack), and the ever faithful trekking poles. Well, that’s not true. I’ve also got three compadres to share this whole adventure with.

Leading the pack this rain-drenched Wednesday morning is Chris, trail named Scott. Funny story. We ran into a guy named David our first morning, then we met him again while eating lunch, or rather he met us. We had given him our names that morning and he went down the line calling each of us by name, until he got to Chris. Instead of Chris, he called him Scott. It became an instant inside joke as so many things do when you’re out in the woods with friends for a few days with no television.

Chris has been on this Appalachian Trail more than the rest of us. This will be his fourth time. He’s also quit the Trail early more than the rest of us. This will be his fourth time. Chris is energetic, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Which is good, because none of the rest of us are any of those things. His favorite phrase during conversations with the trail folk we meet: ‘Well, and you know how it is, ….’

Next in line is Darius, possibly the most reluctant man to ever step foot upon the AT. He is our – and evidently the rest of the Appalachian Trail’s – token black man. Darius’s trail name is Chocolate Thunder. If you can believe it, that name was not his choice. He is here because he carelessly said he would go with us if we ever went again, fully expecting us to give up after the last trip Chris and I took together in 2009.

What you need to know about Darius, besides the fact that using the woods as a bathroom is as close to hell on earth as he ever cares to get (before he hiked Kelly Knob of course), is that he is one of the most likable people I have ever met. DK knows how to make good conversations happen, no matter who he’s talking to. One of his many gifts.

I am third in line. I have no trail name, because no trail name can adequately express my sheer awesomeness. Mostly I am called are you seriously eating again? This is my third time on the Appalachian Trail and I consider myself, along with Chris, to be co-founder of this bi-annual ritual, even though I couldn’t make the second trip in 2007.

Last in line is Jeff, who is last because he does not like to be followed closely, which all the rest of us have a bad habit of doing. Jeff is that curious variety of walking contradiction, the analytical adventurer. This is only my second time meeting him and like Darius, it is also his first time on the Trail. Unlike Darius, he couldn’t be more excited about the whole experience.

Jeff was the smartest of us because he was able to borrow almost all of his gear from friends and coworkers. It’s probably because he works in finances. Working with giant sums of money in every kind of currency probably keeps him financially grounded in his own life so he doesn’t spend similarly giant sums of money on the kinds of things no one ever needs to have in their normal day to day lives. He would probably make an excellent money launderer if he were inclined to lead a more criminal lifestyle. As it is he uses his powers to do good, helping one of the largest Christian organizations in the world to keep tabs on the dollars, cents, pesos and rupees that fund hundreds, if not thousands, of humanitarian projects around the world.

We got on the Trail early-ish on Monday morning after getting into Hiawassee, Georgia on Sunday afternoon and eating Zaxby’s for lunch and Subway for dinner. We stayed at the Hiawassee Inn which caters to hikers and bikers (motor, not pedal) and they have a free shuttle service that dropped us off at Unicoi Gap, which is where Chris and I left off last time.

I don’t know if I mentioned this, but we are trying to do the whole Trail in sections. They call people like us section-hikers. The people who do the whole thing at once, they call thru-hikers. And yes, you are supposed to spell it T-H-R-U. It’s a hiking thing. You wouldn’t understand. Anyways, this is our third or fourth time out, depending on how you count it up, and we are still in Georgia. That’s why I said earlier it’s gonna take me a lifetime or more to finish.

So what’s the first thing you do when starting a five-day hike on the AT? That’s right. You take group photos. And so we did. Fortunately a guy named Josh showed up looking thoroughly beat, like the Trail had eaten him, chewed him up for a while, partially digested him, then vomited him onto a state highway which he walked across to get to us. He could see we were trying to take a group shot and he offered to take it for us. We stood shoulder to shoulder in front of a giant rock, looking clean and shiny, grinning from ear to ear. ‘You guys are just starting today, aren’t you,’ he sort of asked, sort of stated.

In an ironic twist of fate, we saw Josh again our last day, he coming back to the Trail full of blueberry pancakes and all-you-can-eat buffet calories, freshly showered, laundered, and bed-rested, looking nothing like his former self, and us now looking the partially digested and vomited ones. ‘I saw you guys a few days ago, didn’t I,’ he sort of asked, sort of stated.

The Trail north from Unicoi Gap goes nothing but steeply up. Switchbacks as far as the eye can see. We were all out of breath inside of ten minutes. They say it takes three to four weeks to get your ‘trail legs’, which sounds like a really awful venereal disease, but Chris and I have never been on the Trail longer than four days. So, for better or worse, we have no idea what it feels like to have trail legs.

By the time we got to Tray Mountain Shelter around four thirty in the afternoon that first day, we were wrecked. We stopped at the first empty campsite, dropped our crap and fell on the ground in heaps. We eventually went and filtered and refilled our water bottles and bags (called bladders – gross), set up our two two-person tents, cooked up some ‘just add boiling water’ dinners, put our remaining food in bear bags, which we strung up from a line hanging close to the shelter and far from our tents, made a fire and meandered over to check out the spectacular evening view from a nearby rocky outlook.

There’s no way to describe how your body feels after a day like that. You wake up the next morning and put that same thirty pounds on your back to do it all over again. You’ve probably experienced something similar enough to sympathize. As soon as the backpack goes back on it’s like you never took it off. All the soreness you thought you had recovered from over the last sixteen hours is right where you left it the day before.

We made a choice the second day. Chris and I had come to realize after our first two trips together that pushing ourselves to do ten miles a day or more, especially in that Northwest Georgia section, is just pure masochism. So we decided on this trip to plan shorter, more relaxed days, which he and Jeff had calculated ahead of time. On the second day we had a choice between a four mile day to Addis Gap or an eight mile day to Deep Gap Shelter, which would mean going up Kelly Knob (also known as Double Spring Knob, also known as why the hell am I doing this?), climbing just shy of 1,000 feet in one mile with no switchbacks to take the edge off.

Because we felt brave, and we would have been bored otherwise, we opted for the eight mile option. I won’t go into the play-by-play, but basically it was a few hours of trudging from shady spot to shady spot, about twenty or thirty feet at each go, spending as much time catching breath as actual walking. Except for me. I was eating while they were catching their breath. What? I have a quick metabolism.

We had one break about two-thirds of the way up when one of our number – I won’t say who because it feels like a breech of the unspoken trail code – decided it was time to take care of some business. He put down his pack, grabbed a bright orange trowel and a smashed up roll of toilet paper, and marched off into the brush like a man. As far as I know that was the only time any of us went number two in the actual raw, natural, woodsman way. Our campsites all hid privies this trip, which were basically outhouses set out from the campsite a bit where a toilet seat was attached to a shelf of wood with a hole in it, about five feet off the ground underneath. You throw in a handful of mulch after you are done and it keeps it from being awful.

When we finally arrived at camp later on, after coming down the equally steep backside of Kelly Knob, we were able to get a little cell service. We checked the weather, which reported rain starting that night continuing off and on for the next three days. The rest of our trip. We did our best to prepare for bad weather and went to sleep.

Side story: that night, Chris noticed a mouse crawling on his tent. I can’t remember the details, but he woke up in the morning to find mouse droppings in his boot. It would have been a nice boot to sleep in, warm and cozy after being hiked in all day. I think their may have been some kind of food in it too, before the mouse ate it. Other than mouse droppings, we woke up to dark skies, but no rain. That’s promising, I thought. Jeff cooked himself some instant oatmeal, which he had been looking very forward to. Then as we were packing up to head out, the rains came. We ran over to the shelter to finish packing under cover.

The shelters on the Trail in Georgia are like big backyard sheds. They’re nice because you don’t have to set up a tent, but as long as we are on the topic of mice, they have a bad reputation for mouse infestation and, as Bill Bryson points out in his authoritative work on the AT, A Walk in the Woods, you could die just from breathing in the same place mice have left feces behind.

By the time we were ready to go the rain had tapered off some. Like many AT campsites, Deep Gap Shelter is a little bit off the actual AT on a side trail. There was a stream on the way back to the main trail, so we stopped to fill up our water. It was still raining, but only drizzling. We finished up and started back towards the Trail and that’s when the bottom dropped out.

This brings us back to where our story started. Wednesday morning and soaked.

Despite the weather and the cold (I’m a big wuss when it comes to cold, so I may just be speaking for myself on that point), the hike that day was easy. Really nice. And beautiful too. Even with the rain, or maybe because of it. It began to let off after the first couple hours and by the time we came out at Dick’s Creek Gap, it had mostly cleared up. The gap was at an intersection between the Trail and a main road, U.S. 76, so we crossed the road and were met by a large middle-aged man standing next to a red pickup with a makeshift fence built around the bed of it. He kept telling us how we needed to get to town, how there were great all-you-can-eat restaurants and finger-licking good barbeque joints and motel rooms with warm showers. He was like an evil seductive temptress, but a really unattractive man version who was too scary to be tempting. He was charging five bucks a head for rides into town.

So far there have been pull-offs at most of these places where the Trail crosses a main road and this one had a big sign and picnic tables, so we walked up to a table and set our stuff down. Chris checked the weather again on his iPhone and we waited to hear our collective fate. It would be clear for the afternoon, the iPhone told us, but it would start raining again that night and into tomorrow and probably Friday as well.

If we kept going, there would be no other place to get a ride to our car. We would have no choice but to hike the rest of the sixteen miles to where it was parked at Deep Gap – another Deep Gap – in North Carolina. At present, we were nine miles from the Georgia / North Carolina border, my personal goal for the trip.

We took a vote. It was a split. Two wanted to continue, come hell or high water, and two wanted to call it a trip and quit while we were ahead. Darius referred us to the Code of the Trail, as laid down by the hikers Morgan and Bartholomew, which explicitly states that any tie goes to the man with the keys to the 4Runner. He could also have cited to us an ancient proverb I heard a few weeks later at church, ‘The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.’ Either way, the decision was made; we were going home.

Well, there was still that minor issue of getting to our car. Not long after the guy in the red truck left, a mother and daughter pulled up in a small SUV and dropped off three hikers. They stood outside the car chatting, so we took the opportunity and rushed over to ask a huge favor. They happily agreed to take two of us to our vehicle in North Carolina (not a quick trip) while the other two stayed behind with the gear. Thank you again, Hiawassee mother and daughter whose names I forgot to write down.

They call that ‘trail magic’, a kind of pay it forward, love your neighbor culture that is a rich part of the Appalachian Trail experience. We got to be on the giving side of it when  we finally made it back to our car and saw a group of hikers sitting down for a rest. We walked over, asked if they wanted our leftover hiking food, and laid a massive pile of energy bars, ramen noodles, tuna packets, oatmeal, instant hot chocolate, and random other goodies at their feet. They looked like they had just died and gone to McDonald’s. Happy to help, brothers, happy to help.

We made it back to our boys and the rest of the gear about three hours later, having made a point of not stopping to get hamburgers or cokes or any of the other stuff we were already craving after not quite three days away from society. We went into an Arby’s to change and try to fill some of those cravings. And then we drove straight home. Since we were all still free from responsibilities for the next four days, we went to the beach and hung out and did all the stuff you can’t wait to do when you get back from the Trail.

And there lies the strange thing I’ve experienced about the Trail every time I’ve been on it. All you can think about leading up to the trip is getting out there in the woods, away from all the noise and distraction, close to that wildness of the barely touched earth each of us craves in some back corner of our souls, sharing an adventure with friends just as dumb as ourselves, eating pre-packaged food and sleeping under the stars.

Then you get out there and it’s nothing but pain from sunrise to sunset, and probably all through the night too. And there is no entertainment and no stimulation and nothing fried or grilled or baked, and pretty soon, much too soon, you are talking about how much fun it would be to be home playing Risk around a nice smooth table or playing Driver 2 on Playstation or watching Firefly or Long Way Round or playing tennis or drinking Chick-fil-a milkshakes or just checking email, for crying out loud.

Then, finally, you either finish the section you intended to hike or you get forced off the Trail early by bad weather, and you’re totally ready to get home, thinking it’s going to be a while before I ever do that again. And guaranteed, within a month, you’re thinking about how much you can’t wait to get back on that trail again and planning to buy some new gear that will make things so much better than last time and telling stories about all the crazy times you had out there, or writing about it for some obscure online magazine.

And that’s the crazy irony of the Appalachian Trail, or any uncomfortable but fun experience for that matter. You leave everything behind looking for some kind of contentment, but the true contentment comes when you get back to everything you’ve left. And that’s a great side-effect of any experience.

So here’s to the AT, and to every other trail, to things not usually going as planned, to good and bad surprises along the way, to happy hiking Josh, for whom eighteen miles a day was a fun day in the park, to British guy Warren, the business consultant with a six month visa and nowhere else he’d rather be, to home-made banjo-carrying boat-crafting David, whose enthusiasm for hiking was more than the four of ours put together, and to the bears, for not eating us or our peanut butter Cliff bars. Bon voyage and happy trails!

If you want to learn more about the AT, the unofficial Bible of the Appalachian Trail is unquestionably ‘A Walk in the Woods’ by Bill Bryson, and it is an amazingly good and funny book, even if you have absolutely no interest in ever hiking the Appalachian or any other trail.

I blame my friend Jon. One harmless afternoon, a year and a half ago, we began talking about coffee, and I just haven’t been the same since. Thank goodness. It’s that conversation about coffee that began my own education – a journey he’s been on for some time now.

An Artisan

Just a few weeks ago I met up with Jon as he was finishing up work for the day at the roaster. Perhaps dish duty might be a more accurate picture of the end of his workday. Shot glasses, coffee mugs, water glasses, ceramic cone filters, and teaspoons filled the bottom of the stainless steel sink. We tag-teamed the cleanup so as to escape to a nearby pub as soon as we could, yet Jon’s workplace isn’t one that a person may really want to leave. Perhaps Jon’s co-worker, a person responsible for roasting the green coffee beans, put it best: ‘I never not want to come to work.’

Jon works for one of the local independent coffee shops. If I were to tell you that we live in Portland, Oregon, and if you were familiar with Portland at all, you might well understand the significance of Jon doing what he does. It’s not easy to get a coffee job such as he has. Coffee is significant in our town and not just any coffee. Artisan coffee. Coffee that is done right with care and craft, from the grower to the mug. In our big corner of the city I can count on two hands the number of large chain coffee outlets. I can’t count the number of local independent cafés serving coffee roasted in the Pacific Northwest. There are too many. We’re a town serious about cafés, roasting, and this thing called coffee.

Portland is a place where coffee is found on nearly every corner. Good coffee. Coffee that has come to be known as artisan coffee, the third wave of coffee, or specialty coffee. It’s coffee that may exhibit traits such as single-origin, or direct trade, or blended varietals of a specific geographic region, or locally roasted, or extracted by a method that many may not have ever heard of. It’s coffee where the supply chain is more familiar to the people who drink the coffee. Prepared with methods where the baristas draw out the subtleties of the roasted bean with knowledge and experience. I love this holistic approach to coffee. And I love that we simply just know this as coffee in our town.

Coffee, Historically Speaking

Here’s the thing, coffee has been loved passionately for many centuries, and likely much longer than that. The naturally occurring effect of the plant, namely caffeine, appears to have been well recognized by the Ethiopian ancestors of today’s Oromo people.

The legend on the discovery of the wonders of coffee finds an Arab boy named Kaldi working the East African trade route. As a goat herder in the country of Ethiopia he found one particular night his goats were disturbed, making noise and apparently agitated through the night – characteristics unbecoming of a goat and disruptive to the shepherd tending them. Kaldi found that his goats had been eating a mysterious cherry, and so he tried some for himself. The tiredness of the night faded. The cherries gave an energy, a stimulation unbeknownst to him previously. Kaldi and his goats had found our beloved coffee bean, hidden in the likes of a cherry.

The popularity, or perhaps drive for the ‘beverage as black as ink’ drew interest along the trade routes and by the mid 16th century the bean had found it’s way throughout the Middle East, Persia, Turkey and northern Africa as not only a drink but an agricultural product. Similarly, just following this expansion, the coffee beans were being introduced in Italy and England, where the first coffee house is believed to have opened in Oxford right around 1650. By 1675 it is estimated that 3,000 coffeehouses populated the country of England. North America was introduced to coffee and the coffee bean around this time, though popularity during the Colonial Period waned and never quite found the footing represented in England, that is until modern day.

An Education

Jon and I met back in the early parts of 2010. He, newly arrived from traveling Taiwan and Thailand, back in his home state of Oregon, and I, a recent transplant into the city of Portland from parts unknown. We had the opportunity to share a house for a bit in Southeast, and I like to think this is where my education of coffee began.

Jon spends his hours at work as an educated and trained barista. He’s good at what he does, really good. More importantly, I think, he loves what he does and he inspires others with his passion, further empowering fellow baristas and customers to properly and passionately enjoy the coffee whether by learning a particular extraction method or simply knowing where the coffee came from.

Understand that the depth of our early conversations ran the gamut of the coffee bean’s life. As a knowledgeable barista Jon is well versed in the methods of brewing or extraction (pour over, press, chemex, espresso) and certainly how to best prepare the bean for those methods of extraction (how to grind the bean, what grind size). Yet much of our conversation also rested on where that bean came from. Were the coffee bean farmers given a fair price? Who was involved in that process to get the bean into my cup?

The Bean We Call Coffee

A coffee bean is the seed of the berry from a shrub or small tree of the coffee plant, a woody perennial evergreen dicotyledon. The two main species of coffee plant commercially cultivated are Coffea Canephora and Coffea Arabica, also known as Robusta and Arabica. Three-quarters of the cultivated coffee in the world is Arabica, prized for its flavor based on its greater number of oils and sugars. Robusta, though bitter and less flavorful, makes up for this in it’s improved body and nearly half again as much caffeine. Arabica is the species that is used in artisan or specialty coffee. Robusta is at times blended with Arabica, even within specialty espresso roasts, or used on it’s own, most often in those tins of coffee you might find on the supermarket shelf (i.e., lower grade). However, there are many more genetic subspecies, commonly known as varietals, of coffee plant cultivated commercially and, in fact, primarily provide the base for the different roasts you might find at your corner artisan café (Typica, Bourban, Gesha).

Coffee plants are grown and cultivated using a variety of methods: shade grown and sun grown are terms often used in literature. Shade grown is regarded as the ‘traditional’ method and is done so within the shade of much larger, and often mutually beneficial species of trees. Shade grown produces lower quantities and lengthens the ripening time for the berries, but arguably provides a higher quality coffee. Sun grown, as the name may imply, is row grown and generally a full sun exposing operation producing shorter ripening of the berries and higher yields in shorter time frames. The expense of this sun grown method is the habitat destruction, deforestation, and soil erosion resulting from the changing landscape. Both methods of growing the coffee plant are used throughout the various growing regions of the world.

Of great debate both now and in recent history is the most sustainable growing method for producing coffee – a debate not simply limited to shade grown or sun grown. Sustainability is not just an environmental discussion but must also include those that grow the coffee – the farmers, the supply chain of our coffee drink. The production of coffee has historically seen themes of oppression of those that grow and work the plants. In terms of our Western uses, the coffee plant was introduced to Great Britain, The Netherlands, and the fledgling United States during a time when the Caribbean slave trade was at its peak. Coffee became a staple of the Caribbean plantations, eventually spreading to the Central American countries where the slave trade was also well established.

The oppression continues today as the price for coffee on the commodities markets swings wildly, a price most often controlled by what the large coffee purchasing giants are willing to pay. Arabica coffee, for example, is grown at latitudes of 16 to 24 degrees, with altitudes between 1,800 and 3,600 feet, and latitudes of 10 degrees or below, with altitudes between 3,600 and 6,300 feet. If one were to compare those latitudes to a global map indicating the third-world or developing nations it would appear quite clear that the coffee we drink is grown in nations far below the wealth of where most of that coffee is enjoyed.

While you might argue that the growth provides employment to the people of these nations, I would turn that argument back to you and ask you to consider that coffee is grown, harvested, and processed by subsistence farmers and laborers. The coffee they produce is seeking to be produced with the lowest possible cost for our developed world markets. When we demand cheap coffee with our purchasing power we also demand cheap labor – cheap labor that cannot afford to be paid any less.

And Coffee Found Him

Jon found himself in a dilemma during the college years of life. ’What to study?’ His leanings were toward a business degree with an international twist, but as only he can so eloquently put it, ‘I didn’t just want to work in business, I wanted a business I could believe in.’

And here we enter into the depth of what Jon is saying. If you were to meet him, you would recognize his welcoming personality and easy approach, yet it may take more than one conversation to grasp the depth within him. He doesn’t do what he does simply because coffee is a beverage he enjoys. In fact, he wasn’t even drinking the stimulating drink until college – he didn’t even like the stuff. It was during this time in college that Jon began working at a campus coffee shop, and as he learned the techniques of producing various coffee drinks from the roasted beans his search for knowledge began.

‘I began doing my own research. Learning about coffee and the process,’ Jon noted, ‘I began to understand the craft, the artistry of preparing a coffee drink, the complex route the bean travels.’

Some two years after beginning work in the campus café, Jon completed a bachelor’s degree in international business. His search for work eventually led him to Northeast Portland’s Pearl District where his application for a managerial position at a café morphed into his being hired for preparing coffee as a barista.

Jon spent 14 months working at the Northeast café, further learning the varying techniques of preparing coffee drinks, understanding the attitudes and approaches of customers who came to him requesting liquid stimulation, and thinking upon how the coffee beans his café prepared came to arrive in this eclectic corner of the Pacific Northwest.

From Ripened Cherry to Roasted Bean

A black mug of coffee. Rich, thick, bold, tasty. Truth be told many of us enjoy a bit of milk or creamer, sugar, and, heaven forbid, flavored syrup. Truly, a mug of coffee on a cool, rainy, dark day (a typical Portland winter day) is heavenly.

The route of a coffee bean, once ripened on the branch of the farmer’s coffee plant, is simple, but not as simple as it may sound here. After 3 years a plant will begin to produce its first cherries, which are good for harvesting around year 5 or so. Those cherries are picked, most commonly by hand, on a per volume or per weight pay scale, or by mechanized picking. Trees are picked in a selective manner. Only the ripe cherries are picked or all the cherries are stripped off the tree, ripe or not. A good picker is capable of handpicking between 100 and 200 pounds of coffee cherries a day, eventually producing only 20 to 40 pounds of green coffee beans for export.

The cherry is then processed as soon as possible to remove only the green coffee bean within, leaving behind the pulp (outer flesh of the fruit), as well as twigs and leaves and the overripe coffee cherries. There are two main processing methods (existing also in a number of sub-variations): the dry method and the wet method. The dry method is the traditional, or natural method. The cherries are placed out in the sun on large, flat surfaces, and are rotated by raking multiple times a day, often for days or weeks until the moisture content of the cherries drops to around 11 percent, the debris being sorted out in the process.

The wet method, requiring plentiful water resources, uses water to sort the debris and cherries and extracts the beans through a pulping machine leaving a silver skin and parchment layers still attached to the bean. The green beans are also sorted in the wet process through flotation methods and left in a fermentation tank to further remove the skin through enzymatic action. The final step to any wet method is to allow the green beans within their parchment layer to dry in the sun until, like the dry method, the moisture content drops to about 11 percent.

Worth noting here is that the processes described above will factor into the flavor characteristics of the coffee. In fact, the type of processing used is likely the single largest contributor to the flavor profile. The local climate and soil of the growing region would be the second major contributor to the flavor profile.

The parchment coffee is put through a hulling machine to remove the parchment layer from the wet processed coffee. Or, in the case of dry process, the hulling removes the entire dry husk of the dried cherries. Following the hulling some beans go through an optional polishing step. The final step, prior to exportation, is to grade and sort the coffee beans based on more precise size and weight evaluations and a removal of color flaws or other imperfections.

The commodity chain of coffee includes producers, middlemen exporters or cooperatives, exporters or traders, importers, roasters, and retailers prior to reaching us, the end consumers. Either the producers, cooperatives, or middlemen exporters may bring the coffee cherries through the processing described above. The chain may not appear so concisely, nor have all pieces – it’s rather complicated to understand how coffee exists as a commodity yet understand that it’s arguably the roaster who operates the most ‘control’ in any given chain.

‘Traditional’ roasters (think coffee tins at the supermarket or your favorite instant coffee) are accustomed to ‘selling large quantities of relatively homogeneous and undifferentiated blends of mediocre to poor quality.’ Due to the fact that they sell large quantities, they require very large supplies of green coffee beans. The economics and commodity chain of this supply becomes involved, to say the least.

Specialty, or artisan roasters, (read ‘not traditional’) make up a small, but increasing percentage of the overall market (20% of the domestic market in 2002, which does not include a well known green mermaid). There is insufficient space to carry on within this text regarding many notable efforts by small roasters to establish fair buying agreements directly with coffee growers or cooperatives. Such efforts at greater transparency and fairer practices with coffee producers serve to bridge the usually unknown gap between end consumer and point of origin.

And so it is the roasting of the coffee that often becomes the defining moment in the life of the bean – as a fine wine is uncorked so a green bean is roasted. Roasting is the transformative process that turns the green bean into the aromatic brown beans we are accustomed to. Additionally, roasting hastens the time in which we as the consumer must prepare the finished drink as the roasted beans begin to lose their flavor characteristics as soon as they are roasted.

At the heart of the roasting process is the heating of the internal bean temperature to around 400 degrees Fahrenheit, whence the caffeol, or oil begins to emerge from inside the bean. This process, called pyrolysis, allows the aromatics, acids, and remaining flavor profile to become fully realized as the bean is now prepared for the long anticipated brewing of the coffee. And, not desiring to gloss over the roasting process, I must leave the discussion of roasting for another time, in all likelihood when a simple method of home roasting can be shared for all to enjoy.

Can Coffee Drive Passion?

For Jon I think it fair to say that coffee is not everything. In 2009 Jon left his job in Portland to pursue other endeavors. Namely, he and a couple friends shoved off of the West Coast shores, destination: Southeast Asia. The thought was to travel a bit, exposing themselves to the culture and people of these eastern nations, and hopefully to sign contracts for a year of English teaching in Taiwan. Jon’s stories of this venture are a fun listen in and of themselves – the short story is, in Jon’s words, ‘I decided not to sign.’

Five months after leaving the United States, Jon returned, not out of a place of failure, rather stepping into a place of hope. It’s clear in sitting across the table from him at a local pub that his desires had not strayed as he sat foot again on American soil, rather his travels had strengthened his character, resolve, and pursuit of holistic living. It’s at this point in his life we meet, and the cascade of events begin that land him into his present working situation.

Jon’s return from Southeast Asia, however unplanned, held in it a series of surprises, not least of which was a recent wedding to his beautiful wife. I recall conversations with Jon in early 2010 about what he was hoping to do now that he had returned to Portland. He was looking to gain some further experience in the coffee business as a barista, maybe toying with roasting, or with a hand in the management side of things. But, as will resonate with many, jobs were scarce in our city at the time, notably jobs within the niche cafes of Portland.

Yet it was a bit of networking and a heap of Providence that Jon soon found himself hired on as a barista at a nearby café for his current coffee roasting company. He’s continued learning how to extract beautiful coffee and become more knowledgeable in roasting and other aspects of the coffee bean lifespan.

Jon’s love for coffee isn’t found completely in the full-bodied shot of espresso which he pulls out of the espresso machines countless times a day. It’s Jon’s personality, his desire for knowing the overall process, his ‘love for the international, complex, and consumer’ oriented nature of this coffee business. He’s found a business he believes in. And not only a business but a way of life – for those farmers in so many nations that grow and care for the coffee plants, for the harvesters that pick each berry, bringing them to the place of processing where they are hand-sorted and dried, for the roasters who carefully weigh the temperature to which dried beans will be exposed, and for the baristas at your corner café who prepare roasted beans into potent double-shot tall lattes or the beautifully smooth and undressed mugs of single-cup method.

On Preparation

Grinding is significant. The grind size directly relates to the longevity of brewing – the smaller the grind size the quicker the brewing method must be. Of the two grinders most commonly available the burr grinder is preferred for its uniformity, yet it is expensive for the home user. The common blade grinder, found in my home and many others is the amateur version and disliked for its named ability to simply ‘grind’ the beans by whacking them with metal blades.

Methods of brewing coffee, or of extraction, are vast. An Internet search will display any number of brewing methods or variations on these brewing methods. Only a handful of brewing methods are recommended by those who are in the know. While the other steps of cherry to bean are vital, it is in this last step of brewing where coffee can truly display its complexity – in aromatics, taste, acidity, and body – through means of proper extraction (over-extraction commonly results in bitterness or undesirable characteristics). Commonly used in the artisan coffee world are the French press, chemex, moka pot, vacuum pot, Melitta filter, café solo, siphon pot, pour over, and the ever-loved espresso.

Brewing is the collision of the art and the science. It is a land where knowledge and experience can conquer the all too common mediocre coffee. It is a place where the complexity of the aroma, acidity, and body of a particular coffee can be fully realized and appreciated. It’s here where one can appreciate the more than 1,000 aromatic compounds coffee has to offer (compared to wine’s 700).

One of the first resources at the bottom of this writing will take you to a trusted Internet place to research on your own the methods of brewing. However, I’ve left you with a step-by-step guide in just a few paragraphs that will allow you to brew a simple and great cup of coffee at home.

A barista who is trained, knowledgeable and experienced in what they are preparing and how they are preparing it can likely blow your mind with an amazing cup of coffee (small tip – no flavors added and go light on the sweeteners). It’s likely a cup of coffee that you will not be able to repeat at home – notably so if it’s an espresso based drink.

The Bottom of the Cup

Jon is a motivator. He motivates those he works with by attempting to find how they are motivated. He loves witnessing his fellow baristas ‘being able to see that they can do it right.’ His desire for that perfect pull of espresso, or the aroma of a fresh, properly prepared pour-over communicates to his co-workers, in his words, ‘knowing that I know what I’m talking about.’  His passion is contagious, and I believe that is why he is effective in doing what he does.

At the end of the day Jon notes this final word: ‘I’m excited to share with people – to make a cup of coffee that will blow them away and to explain to them how complex and how many hands are involved in executing that coffee in a way that results in the delicious cup.’

Coffee is often labeled a commodity – a product that is treated as an equivalent regardless of how it differs from supplier to supplier. Yet when a coffee bean is enjoyed, its taste and aroma taken in, geography of growth and farmer appreciated, and route to your cup understood, an epiphany awaits.

You’re enjoying a beverage similar to how many enjoy wine, or micro-beers – yet you may be doing so without giving credit where it’s due. Enjoy coffee responsibly by learning that a good cup of coffee is not a cheap cup of coffee – the farmer who grew that bean for you depends on it. Travel down to your local roaster or artisan café. Begin asking where the coffee comes from, how it travels from the producer, where the baristas receive their training. Get to know that mug of coffee before you get to the bottom of the cup.

Demand good coffee. Demand fair practices with the coffee farmers. Demand transparency.

Vote with your dollar.

A Good Cup

As a final, parting word, the following will describe the steps for a good, simple pour over (also known as single cup or Melitta) style cup of coffee. This method does take a couple attempts to master.

1. Obtain a ceramic (or plastic) ‘Melitta’ style cone coffee filter with paper filters. Purchase fresh roasted coffee beans and grind these beans to a medium course consistency (the roaster may be able to do this for you).

2. Place the cone with paper filter inserted onto the top of the waste cup or mug. Pour hot water into the paper filter to wash the paper filter and to preheat the cone (if ceramic).

3.  Move the cone to the top of your drinking mug. Add three heaping tablespoons of fresh ground coffee for 8 oz. of prepared coffee. A total of 12 oz. of water will be used to prepare 8 oz. of coffee in your drinking mug.

4.  After bringing the water to a boil, allow to cool for 45 seconds and make the initial pour. The initial pour is just enough water to saturate the grounds in the cone filter – little to no water should be dripping through the cone on this initial pour. Allow to sit no longer than 15 seconds.

5.  The second pour will be at an even pour rate, saturating the grounds as you move in back and forth or spiraling motion. The top of the bloom should be an even color with few dark or blonde spots appearing.

6.  Once you have 8 oz., or have filled your drinking mug, quickly move the cone filter to the waste mug.
ENJOY!

RESOURCES:

http://www.brewmethods.com/
http://www.ocdc.coop/fairtrade/intro.html
http://www.ethicalcoffee.net/direct.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_trade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coffee_varieties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Wave_Coffee
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/scbi/migratorybirds/coffee/
http://www.sweetmarias.com/library/categories/the-coffee-trade/
http://www.portafilter.net/2009/12/decades-top-ten-in-specialty-coffee.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee:_A_Dark_History
http://www.foodarts.com/webfeature/show/id/3510

Our fallback topic is lesbians. Lesbians and the lesbian lovers who love them. No one knows why. It just is. We mostly talk about work, church, television, our pasts, and current events, pretty much in that order. Women always outnumber men, usually three to one. The storytellers tell their stories while the armchair comedians throw in their one-liners. The three year old used to get all the attention until after dinner, when she would happily go to bed in our room until it was time to leave, but now her baby sister is stealing it away from her.

Wendy and I moved to Massachusetts in the summer of 2008. For the first year our apartment was tiny. We know people who have had much tinier apartments, but still. It was small. Technically it was a studio, but we slept in the attic. So it was kind of a one bedroom.

The main thing we missed during that time was having people over for dinner. We didn’t have a dining table, and only one person could fit in the kitchen at a time. Other than the few occasions when people came to visit from out of state, we thought it was better not to try until we had a bigger place.

We decided that our next apartment needed to have a dining table, and we needed to have people over for dinner once a week. We had hit a wall in our new friendships. We weren’t getting as tight with people as we wanted to. Part of the problem was they were mostly New Englanders, closed off to the outside world with hearts covered in thick or thin layers of ice, depending on the season. (Just kidding. Always thick layers.)

So we did. We moved in to a new place with a real bedroom and lots more space. Some friends gave us a nice big dining table and chairs and we announced our decision to host weekly dinners, to much fanfare and hoopla. Actually, it took a couple months to really catch on. Plus, it was the hottest part of summer and we didn’t have air conditioning. But once it caught traction, it really got to be a thing.

In the beginning we weren’t sure which day of the week to host dinner. We rotated back and forth between Thursday and Friday, finally settling on Friday as the much superior dinner-hosting night. I thought having it on Friday would interfere with people’s weekend social activities, but it turns out people don’t have the exciting lives you probably give them credit for. It’s great having an established routine with good friends to kick off your weekends.

So what about the cost? What about the cooking and before and after clean-up and extra groceries? In our case, we knew this was something we wanted to do for our friends, because we are really amazingly generous, kind and loving people who only think about others. So we made it clear we didn’t want anyone to bring anything. We wanted to practice that special kind of hospitality that only exists in places where people have almost nothing to give but give everything they have. Or in places where you ask for water and get sweet tea and anything worth eating is fried in butter fat and bacon grease.

Because this is our thing, we invite whoever we want and no one can say no. It’s interesting when your coworkers meet your church friends meet your neighbors from down the street. Very interesting. Since the beginning there has been a core group of people we can count on coming almost every Friday (the protons) and others who come when they can or when it suits (the electrons), which provides an always interesting mix and keeps things exciting for us (the neutrons).

I am fascinated by the idea of community. What is it? How does it happen? How do you keep it working? How do you make it better? Why does it sometimes fall apart at the drop of a hat while other times you can’t break it if you try? How many people is too many? How many is not enough? Why does it get harder the older we get? Why do so many people substitute real life community with televised or virtual alternatives? Why do we feel lonely without it, and angry, sad, hurt, and self-conscious with it? Is it really ever as good as it looks on TV?

The interesting thing about our Friday Night Dinners is they haven’t created community. The people who have continued to come are the ones who already knew each other outside of FND. In our case, the groundwork was laid. The Legos were connected. But, when you get together a bunch of people to eat and talk, every week, with no agenda other than hanging out, something really powerful happens. You don’t even know it’s happening until you go without it, then you come back and suddenly realize, wow, this isn’t just a random group of friends any more. This is family.

What has truly and continually shocked me about Friday Night Dinner is how much it means to everyone else involved. Wendy and I started doing it for ourselves. It was really a trade-off. We give you food, you give us social interaction. It totally caught me off guard when people started to ask questions like, are we having Friday Night Dinner this week, or started to ask on Tuesday what would be for dinner on Friday, or started to say things like, it was really hard for me to go out to dinner with my coworker instead of come to FND, and, Friday Night Dinner is one of the best parts of my week.

Like so many important discoveries in my life, in trying to figure out something like community by reading books and theorizing and trying to recreate experiences of the past, I blindly stumbled onto the simplest, easiest, possibly most effective method I’ll ever find: routine meals with friends. Go figure.

Special thanks to everyone who’s been a part of FND so far: Kim, Nancy, Brenda, Takashi, Anna, Lilly ‘Megatron Jane’, Ann, Steph, Chad, Cheeto, Kris, Jon Newbie, Jason, Janice, John, Kath, Kyle, Justin, Lisa, Scott, Beth, Geebee, Jake, Troy, and for a brief time, Lloyd the Betta Fish.

Photo: Fey Ilyas (flickr.com/photos/renneville/2731220043/).

Please introduce us. What is typography?

Typography is the study of letterforms and text. It is strange, but I just love looking at letters all day long.

If there were three type-related mistakes you could magically keep everyone from making in their documents, presentations, and websites from now on, what would they be?

1 – THINK about the typeface (the correct term for a font) you are using. Don’t use the default typeface of 12 point Times New Roman or Arial just because you are lazy.

2 – Don’t center text unless it is a headline on a poster. Centering text is something your mom does in Microsoft Word and it is a pain in the ass to read.

3 – Friends don’t let friends use Comic Sans. Unless you are making a comic book, just say no. (Nate: Especially don’t use Comic Sans if you are making a comic book.)

The biggest common problem is starting with 12 point for text. It is always too big. I’m not sure why Word sets 12 pt. as a default, but 10 pt. is much more manageable and, unless you are writing for your grandparents, you don’t need it so big.

Besides those three things, what are some of the basic principles of using type, either in print or on screen?

When designing something, keep it simple, stupid. Don’t use star bursts and drop-shadows and crap like that. If you can do it in Powerpoint, don’t. Keep your color palette to one or two colors. Black and red is one of the most classic and powerful combinations and many times, less is more.

For people who are happy to ‘fake it ’til they make it’, can you give an example of a template they can use in most situations so that type geeks don’t make fun of them?

I would suggest finding a typeface family that you like then learning to master it.

Body text alternatives to Times New Roman – Adobe Garamond, Caslon, Baskerville, Hoefler Text (a gorgeous Mac default font), Scala.

Sans-serif alternatives to Arial – Helvetica, Gotham, Frutiger, Univers, Gill Sans, and Scala Sans.

For others who want to delve deeper into the art and science of typography, what resources would you recommend?

The best resources for good typography are:

• I love Typography – you can learn good type by seeing good type in use
• ‘Thinking with Type’ by Ellen Lupton – a great beginners book that I assign to all my basic typography students
• ‘The Elements of Typographical Style’ by Robert Bringhurst – the Bible of type

Doug Wilson is directing a film called Linotype: The Film. Find out more about Doug and his highly praised work, or follow him on Twitter.

He is not filming now and I am not recording sound. I am filling in because the two guys who make up the film crew with him could not make this trip. I have slung over my shoulder this heavy, grey box that wears its own backpack and shows me a lot of lights I do my best to ignore. In my hand is a microphone that looks like one of those things that people direct airplanes with, but black and covered with a foam sleeve.

As we stop to see which lot the auctioneer is taking bids for, an older gentleman asks Doug what we’re up to. Doug explains that he is making a film about the Linotype machine, and we’re here to see what happens to the three Linotypes that are being auctioned off today.

The older gentleman shows no lack of enthusiasm in the subject and begins talking about friends who have worked in the newspaper industry, for The Boston Globe among others. We’ve already heard stories like this today and we will hear more before we’re done. Stories of men working their lives away at printing presses becoming obsolete almost overnight as the processes of print succumb one by one to their cheaper, faster, easier digital counterparts.

And that’s what this project is all about for Doug. What happens to a history-changing machine that used to be at the heart of an entire industry? What happens to the people who have invested whole careers getting to know these giant, unintelligible machines inside and out? And what happens if a whole generation grows up not even knowing of their existence, let alone how to understand or operate one?

Doug is focused and doesn’t have much patience for old men’s stories right now. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘Can you excuse us? We need to go film this.’ I smile and follow him over to the crowd gathered around the auctioneer. The next item is an old phone booth, made of wood and beautifully built. The real prize is inside though, hundreds of photos of scantily clad women taped to the walls of the booth. We’ve already met the fellow who is responsible for the photos. He used to work here at the City of Boston’s Graphic Arts Printing Plant. He proudly tells anyone who will listen. The collection took him years to assemble we learn.

We’re not filming. Whenever someone old starts telling Doug stories, he says we have to go film something. It has happened a couple times already.

A functioning Linotype machine

We taped for a while earlier. Now we’re just waiting for the Linotype machines to be auctioned. Doug flew in from Springfield, Missouri just to record it happening. He had never heard of an auction like this. An entire city getting rid of its whole printing department. Whole floors of paper, tools and equipment being auctioned off. It no longer made financial sense for the city to keep it running. From now on all print jobs for the city will be outsourced to private companies. They say it will save a million a year.

In the same area where the two healthier Linotype machines sit, and almost engulfing them, is the real prize of this auction for many who have come today. It is a massive amount of print equipment, enough to fill a room, all being sold together in one lot. There are cabinets and drawers full of metal typefaces of all sizes and kinds. Letterpress hobbyists go crazy over this stuff and they’re hoping to work out deals with whoever wins it. If they’re real lucky, the winner will be ready to resell stuff piecemeal on the spot.

Letterpress is Doug’s specialty. His thesis was setting up the old letterpress machine at Missouri State University along with all the necessary paraphernalia for operating it: the ink, the rollers, the typefaces all organized in their cabinets and drawers. He’s interested to see what happens with the lot, and I can’t help getting caught up in the excitement myself.

And that’s why the auctioning of the Linotypes, the whole reason we are there, totally catches us by surprise. We’re in the middle of the excitement of the big print lot, caught up in the drama as bidders drop out and it finally comes down to two. They’re back and forth working their way up to $10,000. One of them isn’t willing to go that high. Sold! And now the next lot, the first Linotype machine. Ohmygoshhitrecordhitrecord!

I hold the mic outstretched, like some sort of midget-sized fluffy lightsaber. Doug stands next to me, up against the wall, tiny camera on big frame with handles and weight (did I mention the frame the camera is mounted on has a weight on the back, because the camera is so light) over his shoulder, watching the camera LCD screen in front of him.

The auctioneer starts at one hundred dollars. Nobody bids. Then this guy says ten dollars. The auctioneer says you’re killing me. Fine, ten dollars. Anyone else? Anyone else? Anyone else?

Nothing.

Okay, the auctioneer says to the lone bidder, but you have to take the other one too.

Twenty bucks and they’re both sold. I should mention the cost of getting them out of the building is somewhere around two grand each.

And that is it. We hang out and get an interview with the guy who is proud new owner of two Linotype machines, another with the guy who got out-bid on the big print lot, and another with the auctioneer. We miss the third Linotype getting auctioned off because we have to move Doug’s rental car, but we’re not completely sure they even tried to auction it. After Doug is satisfied that we have gotten everything we can, we walk down the street and pick up some cannoli (you can’t go to Boston’s North End and not get cannoli) and head home. Another day in the life of a niche-documentary filmmaker.

Doug, Brandon, and Jesse. Linotype: The Crew

Before the auction adventure of February 24th, I asked Doug some questions over email about the film and other stuff. Here follows our interview.

Do you now or have you ever had a garden gnome in your possession?

I have never owned a garden gnome but I’m fairly sure when I was a teenager, I stole some from a neighbor’s house and set them in someone else’s yard.

I think it’s safe to assume the biggest thing going on in your professional life right now is ‘Linotype: The Film’. Why is this movie important to you?

‘Linotype: The Film’ is about an old printing machine called a Linotype. The Linotype completely revolutionized printing and communication similar to the way that the internet is changing everything right now – but it was invented in 1886. This major invention of the early 20th century was invented by a guy that no one has heard of although the impact of the Linotype is as big as Henry Ford’s car or Edison’s light bulb.

It is important to me because people need to know about this machine and its impact on society. This amazing thing was invented and changed society and education and no one really cares. No one knows about it and the guy that invented it died unknown and poor. I hope to change that.

Professionally, I have no idea where this will take me. I am a graphic designer and letterpress printer, not a film director. I actually have no idea how to make a documentary film. But I know a good film when I see it and I know how to communicate visually – all the rest is details, right?

What makes you think you have what it takes to direct this film and do a great job?

Honestly, I am pretty terrified to be making this film. I’m not 100% sure that I can actually MAKE this film – but that is the fun of it. If you totally know you can do something before you start it, what is the point? Where is the fun in that?

What’s a ‘normal’ week like in the life of a documentary director and his crew?

A normal week for me is writing probably about twenty emails a day for upcoming shoots and people interested in the film, staying on top of our website and twitter account, and scheduling upcoming shoots. Coordinating the crew’s schedule is difficult as the guys are full-time media freelancers and one is finishing up school. I hope he graduates after all of the weeks he is missing this semester….

Directing and producing a film is a LOT of work. I am actually mostly a producer. I only get to play director on film shoots about two percent of the time. The rest is actually making this film, connecting with people, and making sure I book a rental car at the right airport. Did I mention I write a lot of emails?

As film production ramps up, what do you see as the biggest challenges ahead? What is it about the project that keeps you going and keeps you optimistic?

Staying optimistic is easy and difficult at the same time. We have had such a great response to the film and the support from all over the world encourages me on a daily basis. It is very easy to get overwhelmed at all of the details of the film. I am very much a completer of tasks, and there is ALWAYS more tasks to complete for the film, so I can get discouraged by never really feeling that completion. But in the end, I believe and love what I am doing – how many people can say that?

Your professional career up to now has centered on graphic design, but you’ve been able to do a wide variety of work within that field, and now the film. Is there some central passion or mission that ties together everything you do?

Passion and curiosity are what drive me to create. I am always asking questions, always asking ‘why?’ That is why I started the film. I asked ‘why don’t people know about this amazing machine? Are there still people crazy enough to use these machines? Will they survive?’ And here we are, making a crazy movie that I hope people will like. Or at least not hate.

You can find out more about ‘Linotype: The Film’ on the official website and you can find out more about Doug on his website.

Stacey, a native of Canada, has been a resident of Christchurch for four years. She sent this email to her friends and family on March 1st and generously allowed us to republish it.

New Zealand Defence Force (flickr.com/photos/nzdefenceforce/5469814540/)

It has now been seven days since Christchurch was hit with yet another earthquake, this one proving to be the most devastating one yet. Here’s an update from my perspective, and I emphasize that this is my perspective only – for more detailed coverage, check out www.stuff.co.nz.

As I mentioned in my last e-mail, for the first 3 nights after the quake, 2 friends and I stayed with my friend Johnny at his dad’s place outside of Christchurch. We spent the days watching the news, which seemed bizarre and far-removed from our location, where we hardly felt aftershocks and had all services. On Friday, I heard that power and water had been restored to my house, so we decided to pack a lunch and spades, and venture into the city. Getting to my house took far longer than usual – road closures throughout the city are causing major congestion. Many roads have developed bumps and sinkholes – some spanning the entire width of the street. Many traffic lights are out, water mains have burst and buildings have collapsed onto streets. Let’s just say driving around town requires extra vigilance!

Royal New Zealand Navy (flickr.com/photos/nznavy/5469765922/)

We made it back to my place to find it relatively unscathed. It has definitely shifted a lot, as most of our doors don’t quite close anymore, and there are cracks in the walls. I have power, but my hot water cylinder needs repair, so cold water only. Also, water isn’t flowing into my toilet, so to use it we need to fill a bucket and pour that into the tank to flush. Not too bad, considering all water needs to be boiled before consumption anyways.

34% of the city doesn’t have water yet. If you do the math, that means that approximately 125 000 people have no water, and therefore, no toilets. These people have had to dig toilets in their backyard until a portable toilet turns up on their street corner. Apparently portable toilets are being shipped in from all over the country to meet the massive need. For those of us who can flush, the District Health Board has advised to conserve, telling us via the 6pm news, ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.’ Bizarre and almost comical getting these instructions in a press report on the news!

I have resolved to pace myself and be careful not to over-exert myself when it comes to helping others. It is clear that this will be a long road to recovery, and I will be of no use to anyone if I burn out after a week. So I am trying to alternate days of helping with days of rest for now.

About half of the city has been badly affected by liquefaction. I’ve spent a couple days helping clean it up. This is very heavy to shovel, and there is anticipated to be 200 000 TONNES of it removed from properties around town. It needs to be hand shoveled out of properties, and carried by wheelbarrow to the curbside, where the city council will pick it up.

The silt which has come up from the ground is often mixed with sewage, due to pipes bursting. So our city smells pretty bad, and now that it has been warm and dry for a few days, there is silt dust blowing through the air. On a hot day like today, you bike around town (best way to get around these days), only to get sweaty, which causes the poo-smelling dust to stick to you. Yum. Nevermind the fact that you’re breathing this dust in, and can feel it coating your teeth. I saw lots of people around town with dust masks today. If it doesn’t rain a bit to settle this dust, I might start wearing a dust mask while biking.

Martin Luff (flickr.com/photos/23934380@N06/5470256572/)

The death toll has risen to 155 now. I am very fortunate to not know anyone personally, just friends of friends. We got some of our boys together for skate bible study last night, and it was amazing looking around the room and being more thankful than ever that we have each other. We had a great talk with the boys, probably the most intimate time I have ever had with them, with some of the boys who are normally very staunch opening up and sharing their feelings and fears. It was a really special time, especially hearing them pray and thank God for their safety and asking Him for help to get through this. I love our skate family so much, and am so thankful that we all still have each other.

It’s getting late, and I should wrap this up. In short, I am doing well. There are moments that the reality of this gets heavy. Everything from the enormity of this tragedy, and the reality that the CBD, where I spend almost every day, will be closed for weeks and weeks, to the smaller realities, like the 2 nearest supermarkets being closed due to earthquake damage. One is condemned, and the other has had a bad fire, and is closed indefinitely. This sounds small, but neither me or my flatmate have a car, so now we’ll be walking or biking with our household groceries from about 2 kilometers away.

I was looking forward to a better year financially, but now i have lost sources of income, losing my hours cleaning house, and Cheapskates is closed indefinitely. The uncertainty can be overwhelming. And many people are leaving Christchurch, which is hard too. But, we have each other, and we will stay strong. I am so aware that I am far more fortunate than many people in Christchurch at the moment. And seeing people pull together to help one another out gives us a lot of hope.

In closing, here are the lyrics to a song I find quite encouraging, which we sang on Sunday night, when friends gathered at my place for church.

“You’re the God of this City
You’re the King of these people
You’re the Lord of this nation

You’re the Light in this darkness
You’re the Hope to the hopeless
You’re the Peace to the restless

There is no one like our God

For greater things have yet to come,
And greater things are still to be done in this city. ”

New Zealand Defence Force (flickr.com/photos/nzdefenceforce/5474153291/)

I first read this quote on a photograph that was given to me by my friend Julie Anna back in 2008. The photo was taken atop a hill overlooking the New Zealand countryside. It brought a rush of excitement that made me want to take dynamic inspirational photos and video of other countries and cultures. It reminded me of what I was really passionate about and what I really wanted to do. However, for the next year and a half that photo would hang on my wall while I played video games and watched countless movies.

Growing up I’d always wanted to be in the movie business. It started, of course, with watching films such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Back to the Future. The real desire came when I saw the movies FX and FX2. I knew that becoming a special effects artist was my calling. Little did I know as a kid, in order to achieve that goal I would need to learn a lot about chemistry, physics and be quite handy with tools. While I’m not completely mechanically inept, I wouldn’t say I’m a guy who can get things fixed. After all, that’s what money is for. Pay someone else to do it, right? So with this new information, I decided that maybe becoming a special effects artist wasn’t my calling.

So I joined the military.

Nearly a decade later I found myself rekindling that desire to work within film. Not as a special effects artist, but as a cinematographer and editor. So in 2006, with the help of my cousin Bear, I started teaching myself how to do both. Over the next two years I educated myself, and it was a blast. I was learning a new skill as well as doing something I absolutely enjoyed. I did small videos for schools and friends and then in 2008 I attended a small film school in San Diego. That’s when I got the photo. It stoked the fire in me that was already burning. But like I said, soon after it merely hung on a wall while I sat on a couch.

Then in 2009 I read a book by Donald Miller called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It’s a book about living a better life. It’s about going after those things you desire. It’s about telling a better story than just sitting on the couch watching TV. It was a kick in the pants for me. I knew I needed to do something other than what I was currently doing. At that time, I was working for the military again and making decent money. But I didn’t like my job. It was so boring. So I looked for another one. One that I would love.

And I found it. On Craigslist.

So I applied and I got the job. My new title was cinematographer / video editor. When people asked me why I took job that paid me $6.56 less than my previous one, my response was simple: I was now doing something I enjoyed.

I absolutely loved it, but it wasn’t enough to get me off the couch. During the 2010 summer I reread Miller’s book and realized I was still living on the couch wishing I could accomplish my dreams. So finally in June of that year I told my cousin Bear, who I played video games with, that we should make a short film. He completely agreed.

Even though I lived in Anchorage, Alaska and he lived in Vacaville, California, we started the process of writing a short script and realized we had the potential to make something larger. So instead of writing for the short film, we decided to rewrite a trilogy he had written back in 2002. It was a lot harder than initially anticipated. But it was fun. I was moving towards what I wanted to do with my life.

The final thing that pushed me beyond the point of no return was the movie The Astronaut Farmer. IMDb describes the movie:

A NASA astronaut (Billy Bob Thornton), forced to retire years earlier so he could save his family farm, has never give up his dream of space travel and looks to build his own rocket, despite the government’s threats to stop him.

Film poster

Mark and Michael Polish wrote this movie back when they were making their other films, Twin Falls Idaho and Northfork. The brothers were told time and time again they couldn’t make indie films the way they wanted to. Yet they did. They not only made two films but they made a third called Jackpot. The Astronaut Farmer is basically about their experiences within the film industry, and the countless times they were told they couldn’t make it.

At one point in the film Charles Farmer (Thornton) is before a governmental review board and they ask him why he is building this rocket. His response: ‘You see, when I was a kid, they used to tell me that I could be anything I wanted to be. No matter what. And maybe I am insane, I don’t know, but I still believe that.’

That was the clincher. I did have things I wanted to accomplish in my life. I did have dreams I wanted to see fulfilled and the couch wasn’t the place they were going to come true. I wouldn’t find myself sitting around anymore. And I wasn’t going to listen to people tell me that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do.

It took four months to complete the rewrite for the first script. It was the most fun I’ve ever had writing. And now we have this full-length feature film script ready. Since then we’ve mailed out more than a hundred query letters to literary agencies for representation and have had good feedback. But we aren’t done. This is only the first script of five we are now working on. And recently I had the opportunity to work as a production assistant on a Hollywood film set here in Alaska. It may not be a big deal to many people, and others may think it’s a small step, but that’s just it. It’s a step towards a final objective.

I’m not looking to become famous and rich. I’m not looking for tons of money or a big house and nice car. I merely want to do the things I enjoy and have dreamt of since I was a kid. When I die I want people to say, ‘Geoff was a man who went after the things in life he wanted. He went confidently in the direction of his dreams.’ And those dreams aren’t going to be accomplished sitting on my couch watching TV or listening to those who say it can’t be done.

Because, just like Charles Farmer, ‘When I was a kid, they used to tell me that I could be anything I wanted to be. No matter what. And maybe I am insane, I don’t know, but I still believe that.’

Here are some tips on developing your Photographer’s Eye along with simple things you can do to take better photographs. Remember, it’s not the camera that takes great photos, it’s the person behind the lens!

1] The Basics

Simplify the Shot

Define your subject and avoid distractions. Oftentimes this just means moving in closer and filling the frame! This way you will be able to eliminate distracting backgrounds and draw attention to the subject.

Remember the Rule of Thirds

This is a strategy that pleases the eye, oftentimes without really knowing why. It basically means dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically. This provides four points of intersection. Placing the subject at any one of these points of intersection makes for a more pleasing image.

Follow the Lines

The human eye instinctively follows lines, so anytime they can be included in an image, they can make for a more compelling shot. The secret, however, is being sure the lines emphasize rather than detract from the subject. They should lead the viewer’s eye to the subject. There are diagonal lines, curved lines, s-curved lines, converging lines, and even triangles.

2] Developing Your Photographer’s Eye

“You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” Mark Twain

flickr.com/photos/babasteve/389730795/

You must always remember: People take great photographs; it’s not the camera. The camera is only a tool in the hands of a photographer. Beverly Schultz, photography instructor, said: ‘I can still remember how I felt when I bought my first expensive camera, took a set of pictures, had them developed, and found nothing of interest in the batch.’

She continued, ‘The point when I knew my photography had crossed the line from amateur to professional was when I could shoot a series of images and know that I’d captured the images I was after. I didn’t have to wait to see [them], because I had learned to see the images before I took them, and I knew how to use my equipment well enough to capture the images I saw.’

You can become a better photographer. The first step in doing so is to develop your eye. Learn to see the image before you take it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you know exactly what photos you will shoot and the contents of each one beforehand. It means that you recognize that the subject you see is exactly what you’re after, then you put into play everything you know about taking a good photograph and you capture that decisive moment. By being able to define your subject before you shoot, you can design other elements of the image to emphasize and support that subject.

So, don’t think you can’t take better photos because you don’t have a better camera. At the same time, don’t let the ease of a fully automatic point-and-shoot camera lull you into the idea that all you have to do is ‘point and shoot’! Mitchell Beazley of Kodak said: ‘The speed and ease of pressing the shutter release on a modern camera can be a stumbling block to imaginative photography unless you can recognize that most of the work involved in creating a picture should be done beforehand.’

3] Following Your Strengths

flickr.com/photos/babasteve/2374513580/

A wise man once wrote, ‘There are three things which are too wonderful for me, four which I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the middle of the sea, and the way of a man with a woman.’ This ancient sage must have had the heart of a photographer, for he captured in words what many photographers dream of capturing in a still image – the mystery and wonder of life.

When I first began traveling the world nearly three decades ago, I had visions of preserving with my camera every beautiful sight I encountered. I saw a lot of sights and shot a lot of film. What I eventually learned, however, was that more often than not, the camera could never fully or adequately capture what the eye beheld; at least not for me. I realized that it took someone of special talent to convey through the lens the surrounding natural beauty of the world. I tried. I shot sunsets and trees, waterfalls and mountains, wild animals and high tides. A few were good; some were okay; and many were merely ‘snapshots’ of mediocre quality.

As I began to analyze my work over time, trying to sort out the best from the good and the good from the volumes of the ordinary, a pattern emerged. My better shots were people shots. A look here, a smile there, a sense of pride and dignity found in one image or another, a person surrounded by the elements of his or her distinct culture and heritage – these were the photos that conveyed to me the mystery and wonder of life. They contained a ‘spark’ that my landscape, wildlife and still-life images never had. So I began to follow some very common but good advice: find your strengths and concentrate on them.

4] Shooting People (With A Camera)

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It has been said that ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul.’ This is so true. We all find, I believe, that when the eyes of the person in an image are sharp, clear and riveting, the photo becomes compelling and almost magnetic, drawing the viewer to it. Many times it is the eyes that reveal character, offer hope, reflect joy, portray sorrow, share pain, veil mystery, convey passion, hint at a secret, or project love. In essence, the eyes convey that ‘spark of life’ we want to capture with our cameras.

A photographer must do all he or she can to focus on the eyes, and when it can’t be managed with auto-focus, switch to manual focus. The best lenses to get these shots are telephoto or zoom lenses, and it is with these images that multiple exposures versus just one or two shots may make a difference. Within the matter of fifteen or twenty seconds and dozens of shots, a whole range of emotions and expressions can be captured, allowing for the selection of the one that is ‘just right.’

One of the most common mistakes made in taking photographs is that of putting the head of the subject in the exact center of the picture and leaving a lot of space around it – in particular, unused and wasted space in the top portion of the image. Don’t do this! Let me give you three words of advice: fill the frame! An alternative would be to creatively use space around a subject. For instance, offset the face to one side or the other, creatively filling the frame with a combination of the face and free space.

Nearly all of my portraits are taken with natural light and no flash. Direct use of a powerful flash tends to wash out colors, do away with the subtle gradients and shadows that provide depth and texture, and flatten an image. The best natural light to use is the early morning and late afternoon sun, when the light is filtered or soft and the shadows are long. The harsh midday sun should be avoided, since it causes difficult-to-deal-with shadows and can give an image that washed-out look.

Keep an eye out for natural ‘frames.’ Be on the lookout for someone standing in a window or a doorway. Take the shot and include the window frame or door frame in the image. This provides a natural boundary, border or frame around your subject. Framing could also be provided by branches of a tree or plant, or by any other objects that may box-in, encircle or frame the subject.

Open your eyes and observe life around you. Have a passion for photography and a compassion for people. View the world in awesome wonder and appreciation, always observing it as if through the eyes of a fascinated, excited and curious newcomer. Become inseparable from your camera and never stop taking photos!

Read Steve’s interview from a couple weeks ago if you want to know more about his life and passion for photography.

No, I have not been caught up in a Nigerian-prince-style marketing scheme (I hope). I have just been introduced to the only-in-the-21st-century-would-this-be-possible idea of microloans.

Actually, I was introduced to the idea a few months ago while scholarship-hunting on the internet and it has been a bug in my ear since, so I finally decided to try it out. Part of the double-edged sword that is globalization is that we now know about problems such as the horrors in Darfur, or the poverty in India and Africa and much of southeast Asia, and we feel the need to do something about it.

I think it speaks volumes about the nature of our society that we do feel such responsibility, and that there are many, many people working hard to save the lives and dignity of people they will never meet. Americans contributed $303.75 billion to charity in 2009, a full 2.1% of our GDP. However, when our international aid is assessed in real, ‘how much does it actually help’ terms, we rank 18th out of the world’s top 23 economies in effectiveness. There is no doubt that, as a nation, we want to help and we are willing to work to help. So the question becomes: what is the most effective way to help?

And that is where the other edge of the sword comes into play. Due to expanding global markets, instantaneous communications, and worldwide economic and social networks, we are able to find innovative ways to help others. Until recently, when you sent a check to UNICEF, or the Red Cross, or any international charity organization, you got no further information about how and where your donation was being used. You never saw the people you helped. You just hoped you helped someone, somewhere.

Large international aid organizations have other detriments as well: large operating budgets (decreasing the percentage of aid donated that actually assists those it is meant to assist), political and bureaucratic inertia that must be overcome in countries before the aid can be distributed, worries about damage to local economies and aid dependency; the list goes on and on.

Recently, a new paradigm of assisting the world’s poorest populations has begun to take root: microloans. The idea behind a microloan is beautiful in its simplicity, and staggering in its implications. You provide a loan of as little as $25, and that money goes to an entrepreneur in an impoverished region to start, maintain, or expand a business (a quick side note: the Small Business Association has been lobbying congress and banks to free up money for what they are terming ‘microloans’ here in the U.S. These are generally ‘tide you over’ loans of up to $10,000. These are much different in both scope and goal from the microloans discussed here. Just wanted to give the heads up in case anyone decided to google ‘microloans’ after reading this).

My loan went to a woman in India to buy fabric for her ‘shop’—a photo showed it as a lean-to next to a tree—where she makes petticoats to be worn under saris. My $50 (plus the lunch money of a few other donors) will allow her to stay open for the rest of the year. I think of it as a self-regenerating charitable donation. I get to help someone in need, and in a few months, that money will be back in my PayPal account to help someone else in need. Such is the beauty of the microloan.

The microloan boom began as an idea in the mind of Mohammed Yunus, an economics professor. Frustrated by what he saw as a cycle of poverty and exploitation in his native India, in 1976 he founded the Grameen Bank Project (‘Grameen’ is Farsi for ‘rural village’) to give loans to people who were traditionally outside the purview of banks. Most of his early clients were women whose only other option in securing loans for businesses or entrepreneurship were local loan sharks, and who often ended up in something akin to indentured servitude to pay back their loans.

Yunus offered them a safe, reliable alternative and the women of Bangladesh came in droves. What’s more, they repaid the loans on time, almost all of the time, showing that even those without traditional ‘credit’ could be helped by the right money in the right spot. The success of Grameen has caused an interest in expanding the model worldwide. The microloan model has sprung up banks throughout Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and South America, where people can go to get reliable, reasonably rated loans for small amounts.

One of the reasons these loans have the potential to be a vehicle for change in these societies is the often high rates of entrepreneurship poorer societies allow. Where you cannot go to Walmart to get everything you want, you must go from local vendor to local vendor, allowing people to produce and sell their own wares and be self-employed at a much higher rate than in industrialized nations. Peru, for example, has an entrepreneurship rate of almost 40% of the employed population, compared to just over 14% percent for the U.S.

A reason to hope for significant change from these loans is the growing recognition that economic freedom is freedom in many ways. U.N. studies have found direct correlations between economic freedoms and human rights throughout the world, and the Nobel Peace Prize committee has recognized the importance of economics in promoting a just and peaceful world, awarding the 2006 prize to Mohammed Yunus and Grameen Bank.

Microloans are certainly not a panacea—they have their faults as well as their promises. Studies attempting to confirm their societal level effectiveness have been inconclusive and contradictory (though most experts are waiting until enough data becomes available for true controlled random sampling to clarify effects). And there are those who would take advantage of microloans for profit and disappear. The very nature of the loans means those who get them would find it easier to disappear than those applying for larger loans. But with loan sites like Kiva.org and MicroPlace.com as well as Grameen Bank reporting repayment rates around 98%, even after the recent worldwide economic downturn, one must at least be comforted to know that almost all of the people who come to these places for help are willing to work for their economic freedom, and that these loans are indeed helping them do just that.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to help corner the petticoat market in Bangladesh.

The links for the U.S. Charity Numbers:
http://www.pursuantmedia.com/givingusa/0510/
And the ‘effectiveness’ numbers:
http://www.cgdev.org/section/topics/aid_effectiveness/quoda

Photo by Emre Ayaroglu.

When you meet him in person, Steve Evans is a little like Clark Kent or Peter Parker. Intelligent. Mild-mannered. Unassuming. A reporter. You probably wouldn’t notice him in a crowd. But, spend any amount of time with him and the facade quickly unravels.

I met Steve sixteen years ago in Africa on a family ‘vacation’ (my family, not his). We were on a two week outreach trip with a bunch of South Africans, or Afrikaaners, to some villages in Mozambique. Steve was one of the only Americans besides us, and he and my parents hit it off right away. They’ve been friends ever since, and for the past decade co-conspirators in teaching the world the value of storytelling in communicating more effectively with oral, non-literate cultures.

Steve is a cultural researcher, communications specialist, and world-class photographer. He has posted over 2,500 photos to Flickr, each one better than the last. He travels extensively and is currently based out of Johannesburg, South Africa. I interviewed him over Facebook, and he told me after spending three hours answering my questions he hit the wrong key and lost it all. Fortunately he was willing to start over.

I’m going to start with a killer, and hopefully it isn’t as painful for you as it would be for me. As simply as possible, how would you state your personal mission or vision in life?

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Ever since my university days a sentiment of the apostle Paul has been core with me. In his writings he said that no matter what condition he found himself in – rich or poor, safe or in danger – he was content. I want that for me as well – no matter what the circumstances of life are, to be content.

Since then, however, I’ve added another. This came to me from a book called ‘Improving Your Serve’ by Charles Swindoll, and it’s really impacted my life. In the book Swindoll reminds us that the Bible teaches our purpose should be to be like Christ, and, if so, Christ came not to be served but to serve and give his life for others. I too want to serve and give my life for the benefit of others.

What does your work entail? You probably don’t have anything like an average day at the office, so can you tell us about a recent week in your life, what it looked like and what you were working on?

Wow. My life is so hectic. But it’s good and I love it. Take the last few months for example. I just finished serving as photo and video manager for Cape Town 2010: The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. This happens every 10 years or so, and it was a thrill for me to head up a team of about 25 photographers and videographers to visually tell the story and document this monumental and historical event.

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Prior to Cape Town, between brief and sporadic stays at home (I live in Johannesburg), I did three story coverages: one in the rainforest of Madagascar, one on an Arab dhow in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Mozambique, and one in South Africa where a small town is being devastated by HIV/AIDS. I did the writing and photography for these stories and had videographers along with me to capture the stories on video.

In addition to this I head up two very creative teams – one in Johannesburg and one in Nairobi. They consist of writers, photographers, videographers, graphic designers, and consultants in the area of the creative arts; music, art, drama, storytelling, etc. These teams create story packages like the ones I’ve just described which are distributed around the world through various channels. One of our major distribution channels is our own magazine and website called Africa Stories. By the way, a lot of my work is published under a pseudonym, so it would be difficult to find my name attached to it.

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On your Flickr profile, you give your location as ‘Citizen of the World’? Did you always know travel would permeate so much of your work and life?

Before I started serving overseas as a communications specialist I never dreamed I would be traveling the globe as I have. It’s hard for me to believe that my work has taken me to about ninety countries. That’s amazing! Some of it has been because of my role as a journalist, but much of it is due to another specialty and passion of mine and that is in the area of oral communication. Four billion of our world’s population can’t, won’t or don’t use reading and writing to communicate, so I work with multiple agencies around the world in helping them become better communicators within a local cultural context. That has been very rewarding and fulfilling, and it too has allowed me to see much of the world and experience many different cultures.

When did your fascination with photography first kick in? Did you know right away you had a talent for it? Has it always played a big part in your work?

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As a kid I grew up with a camera in my hand, but I never considered myself a photographer and never dreamed I would become one. It was during my university days, however, that I developed a passion for photography. While I was studying journalism I worked for the local newspaper proofing copy on Saturday nights for the Sunday edition. One night the sports editor shoved a camera in my hand saying his photographer didn’t show up and he needed me to go and shoot high school football games. It was then that my love affair with photography began.

After graduation my first job was as a photographer, working for a company called Southwest Films Associates. They had contracts with the U.S. military and I became a civilian photographer for the Air Force. It was quite a learning experience for me! After doing that for a few years, I was asked to be director of public relations at a small university in Texas, and that too involved photography to a minor extent. After a few years of that my wife and I went overseas and I carried my camera with me. My photography experiences and opportunities took off from there.

It doesn’t take long to realize 99% of your photographs are of people, and especially faces. Is that because of your work, or have you always been drawn more in your photography to people than say landscapes or buildings or animals?

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I wish I could take great landscape, scenic and fine arts photographs, but I can’t. At the same time I have a deep love for peoples and their cultures, and I guess that is reflected in my images. I guess it’s a way I can serve them. It’s been said every person in the world has the need to be acknowledged, and in one way I feel my photography does that – it acknowledges people and recognizes them – whether rich or poor, whether succeeding or down-and-out – all within their cultural contexts. I hope and pray that my images never exploit people but give them dignity. When I take images, I always aim to capture that unique look in the eyes or expression on the face that says, ‘This is me. This is who I am.’

You’ve licensed many, if not all of your photographs under a Creative Commons license (a much less restrictive form of licensing intellectual property than copyright, allowing the freedom to share and modify work, depending on the specific license). Was it an easy decision for you to do that? Have you had any resistance from people telling you you should be selling your photos instead of giving them away for free?

I have had people tell me I should sell my images, but I am very uncomfortable with that. Part of the reason is that I have a salary and am provided for, so I don’t need to sell photos to make a living. I have a great sense of satisfaction knowing that I can give my work non-commercially and for non-profit for the benefit of others. I am amazed that when a Google Images search is done using my Flickr name (babasteve) literally thousands of hits come up showing that my photos are being used extensively.

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Internationally acclaimed universities, publishing houses, government and non-government agencies, humanitarian organizations, religious and missions groups, as well as hundreds of small businesses have used my photos. That’s very rewarding. Just today I sent a dozen images to an exhibit in the U.S. that will sell the images and use the funds for missions causes. That’s neat. I’ve been involved in two other exhibits – one in Cyprus and a major one in Brazil – and that’s been cool as well.

How has the internet affected and even reshaped your life, work, and photography?

Two technologies, in fact, have redefined photography and photographers – the internet and digital cameras and photo processing. The internet has provided a platform for photographers of all kinds, offering exposure and access to their works that would have been impossible even ten years ago. There is so much talent out there, and now it can be seen and appreciated.

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Photographic communities have spring up online and this is tremendous. Just by putting images out there and having others see them drives one toward excellence, so the pool of photography literally improves day by day. Digital cameras and digital processing have made photography affordable, so everyone and anyone can do it. All of this applies to me.

To me, your life represents almost the epitome of the three qualities OCSPLORA cares about most: adventure, creativity, and generosity. For all of us in our twenties and thirties who are scared of missing out on all the adventure out there waiting for us, or the untapped creativity laying dormant inside us, or that we won’t be as generous as we could be with what we have, do you have any advice to share from your own experiences, successes, and failures?

Wow, that’s really humbling hearing that my life epitomizes the qualities of adventure, creativity and generosity. These are good qualities and it’s nice to know that people see these in me!

What advice do I have for others?

First I would say, “Go for it! Don’t hold back.” Sure, life is short, and we need to heed that, but also we need to put our priorities in order. Many times our priorities are driven by others’ expectations on us or by unrealistic or artificial expectations we put on ourselves. I don’t mean be irresponsible, but sometimes there is a higher or alternate calling in our lives that we need to be sensitive to, and we need to simply let go of what is holding us back and go for it.

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Second, I would say, “Let loose with the creativity inside of you!” For many of us there is a creativity inside aching to get out. Yet we might be thinking that we’re not good enough, or what would others think, or we don’t have time for it, etc. Do it; and do it with passion! At the same time strive for excellence. Always seek to improve; always seek to get better.

Finally, I would say share your life with others, respect others, seek out others, advocate for others, experience them and their cultures, see the world through their eyes, love them. The more we give our lives away, the more fulfilling life is.

All photos courtesy of Steve Evans.

[VIDEO] In his travels to Deadhorse for work, Geoff examines the act of travel and what it means to him and us.

Mo Riza (flickr.com/photos/moriza/175599244/)

While pilgrims are much more likely to land at JFK than disembark bleary-eyed on Ellis Island, the personal meaning of the journey can be just as deep. My family and I undertook this journey two years ago. Two of my friends make regular pilgrimages here. For them, New York City is an attraction in every sense of the word.

Here are the experiences of Polina, a fashion photographer in Indianapolis; David, an accountant and musician in Ireland, recently transplanted from Australia; and myself, a non-profit marketer and blogger in NYC. The reasons behind our journeys to Gotham range from an afterthought to a quest for purpose.

What was the occasion of your first visit to New York City and what was your experience?

POLINA: My first visit to NYC was in 1991. I was passing through on my way to Israel where I was going to spend 6 months on a Kibbutz with a friend of mine (only lasted about 4 days, but that’s a whole other story).

I fell in love with NY instantly. It had the pulsating energy that I had always envisioned and the sheer diversity of people, food, buildings, food and pretty much everything else was intoxicating. I was only in NY for about a week at that time, but vowed to return.

One memorable moment: I was 19 and had spent my youth growing up and going to school in Australia. I didn’t know very much about America or its culture, but had seen enough American TV to know that a white person wasn’t always welcome in a black neighborhood. So there I was, checking out Columbia University, because I was thinking about attending there. I love to walk and one of the joys of being in NY is doing all that walking and taking in the sights.

Mo Riza (flickr.com/photos/moriza/93944423/)

After I was done with Columbia, I wandered into Morningside Park. I didn’t really have a destination or a plan, so I just followed one of the paths through the park, came out on the other side of the park, and kept walking. It took a little while, but eventually I noticed that people in the street were looking at me like I was odd or something. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what the problem was… until I looked up at one of the storefronts and saw that I was in Harlem.

I was literally the only white person for blocks around. It was a very interesting experience – first of its kind actually for me, as neither Australia, where I went to school, nor Russia, where I was born and lived until I was 9 years old, have very large black populations. I didn’t feel in grave danger by any means, but I didn’t feel very welcome either. I think the folks who saw me walking around there probably realized that I was just a dumb tourist.

DAVID: July 1994 on a choir tour. It was around 1:00am, and for reasons I doubt I ever knew, our bus from JFK to Amsterdam Avenue brought us in via the 678 & 95, so we entered Manhattan in Washington Heights [note: a neighborhood near the top of Manhattan] and came down rather than what everyone was expecting, which was a trip through Midtown up.

The bus driver had to detour several times due to some street fighting. For a bunch of teens and twenties from Australia, many on their first overseas trip, and everyone’s first time in NYC, that was an interesting greeting. But I was hooked right from the start.

We had three free days out of the seven we were there, and I spent all of them walking the streets and riding the subway with a few mates anxious to see as much as possible. We went up the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building within two hours of each other.

I was hooked; still am.

Mo Riza (flickr.com/photos/moriza/171802464/)

ERIC: I feel like the latecomer, but I didn’t first set foot into NYC until October 2005. I spent my early childhood in the Northeast, so I think that I had visited as a baby, so that doesn’t count as ‘setting foot’ anyway. My wife and I came up from our longtime home of Gainesville, FL for a relatively whirlwind trip: three days, two nights over Veteran’s Day weekend. We booked the cheapest room that we could find in the heart of Manhattan: a relative matchbox in a Times Square Days Inn.

The main thing that I remember about the trip is the pain in my feet. In an effort to look New York Cool, I wore shiny black GBX low-cut boots instead of sensible walking shoes. By the first night, my poor feet throbbed and ached. We did our tourists’ duty and patronized the Empire State Building, Central Park, Times Square, Ground Zero, Phantom of the Opera, and many cheap well-reviewed restaurants that we researched ahead of time.

By the end of the trip, we were both confident in our opinion of the city: Nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there.

How soon did you return to the city? How many times have you been here?

POLINA: I was back in NY about 8 months later and have been back countless times since 1991. Each time has been an adventure and a joy.

DAVID: First went back in 1997 and I’ve honestly lost count of the total number of times I’ve been. It would be around 10 I think, but only twice since 2001, which is the year I met my wife. Our travel budget generally meant coming to Ireland from Australia rather than anywhere else. I always promised Diane I’d bring her though, and in 2007 at the end of a month-long visit to Ireland, we spent a week in NYC. She was initially very intimidated, even though I noticed just how much friendlier the city felt in general compared to my first trip in ’94. After a few days she was as smitten as I was. We returned again for a day in July 2010 en route back to Ireland (where we now live) at the end of a 2 month trip to the Pacific Northwest. Just like my visit in 1994, the most recent was oppressively hot. Usually that would be a killer for Diane, but on this occasion, just because we love the place so much, we still had a great day around the villages.

Mo Riza (flickr.com/photos/moriza/86314168/)

ERIC: We returned to NYC three years later in 2008, and we did want to live there. Since our last trip, we had gone to Europe a couple of times, we had a beautiful baby boy, and my longtime job in Gainesville ended. With unemployment looming, we asked ourselves what we wanted to do with our lives. With our 1-year-old, we felt that the time for going on crazy adventures was coming to a close. I wanted to reinvent my career, and during an impromptu but fateful discussion at Chick fil-A, the question was posed: “What about New York?” After two months of twists and turns and waves of excitement, anxiety, and doubt, we moved to NYC over Labor Day weekend. After another uncertain two months of job searching and hemorrhaging of our savings, I landed a job and we secured the beginning of a cramped and wonder-filled life in Manhattan.

What keeps bringing you back?

POLINA: I keep coming back because there is so much to do and see, but also because it is creatively invigorating. Living in the Midwest as I do, the pace of life here and also the things that are important are on a different plane, if you will. NY serves as a reminder of all that is possible and of how much life has to offer. It is the antidote to complacency, to settling and to living the easy, suburban life.

DAVID: We’re never going to come close to seeing it all. Just like Sydney (where we lived before) but on a far larger scale, it’s a huge clash of cultures all living together, bumping into each other and rubbing off on each other. It has a unique personality that keeps drawing us in.

ERIC: Delta or Jetblue; whichever has the cheapest flights for our short jaunts to Florida. I guess for us, the question is more like, “What keeps us here?” Life here is inconvenient and uncomfortable, especially after having our second beautiful baby boy, but we feel very alive. We experience mostly the best and occasionally the bad in people. As far as my career goes, the opportunities here are endless, and I’ve taken my strides to using my God-given talents to their fullest. Though in-home laundry would be a life-changing gift right now, NYC is changing our lives on much deeper levels.

* * *

Mo Riza (flickr.com/photos/moriza/149160158/)

For all three of us, New York City opened our eyes to the beauty, brilliance, riches, and roughness of humanity. It is the world conveniently housed in a 305 square mile area. This city is a lens that magnifies and focuses what is possible in our own lives. Whether the flight is three hours or 36, the impact of a journey to New York City easily qualifies it to me as a pilgrimage.

Then I went to the recording of his second cd, ‘Live at the Masquerade Ball’ which was also a live show (he likes to live dangerously). Not long after that he started talking about co-starting a record label which became Birch Beer Records. Next thing I knew, he and co-founder Kim Jennings had signed a new artist, Levi Schmidt, and were working to put out Levi’s first album.

Then I hear about this whole ‘I Support Local Music in Massachusetts’ Facebook page, which has almost 8,000 fans. Now there’s a blog (we-support-local-music.com) and no telling what Dan Cloutier and friends might do next. That’s just the kind of guy he is. I sat down with Dan at his home a while ago to talk about this stuff. Here’s a little bit of our conversation.

How did you get into music in the first place?

I got into music primarily through the alternative rock movement in the early 90s when I was in junior high school. I felt really good listening to all this teenage angst music. I felt that was really important at the time.

Is that when you started playing guitar and writing music?

from dancloutier.homestead.com

Yeah, I started writing poetry first, and my friends played the guitars. My mom had a beat up acoustic guitar. My uncle showed me some chords. And I didn’t start learning other people’s songs. I just started writing songs. They were awful. Just, like, absolute drivel. It took me, I don’t know, like ten years to write something that was quasi-coherently decent.

It’s just like any writing, it takes a lot of practice. I started right off the bat writing. It was even like a couple years before I could really begin to play other people’s songs.

It’s interesting because you hear stories about Bob Dylan, and Dylan did the opposite. Dylan learned thousands of songs when he was in his late teens and twenties. All the old folk songs, Woodie Guthrie, etcetera. All those people. He played all those songs so when he began to write songs when he was like 21, he had a thousand songs under his belt. He began to write brilliantly immediately. It took me a long time to begin to write okay, because I didn’t learn the craft of other people until much later on.

Besides music, what are the other things in your life that you are passionate about?

I’m passionate about traveling. I love to travel. I like to travel to kind of strange, extreme places. When I get my mind set on traveling to a place, I get super focused on it. I do all this internet searching on it. I go to my libraries and rent books and movies about it.

I’m passionate about my family. I’ve got a wonderful family and a wonderful wife. I’m passionate about my job. I work with people with special needs. We have a great time. I’ve been working there full time for almost eight years.

You went to seminary right?

I went to Gordon College. I went to undergrad. So I didn’t go to official seminary. I got my bachelor’s degree in biblical studies and ancient history and I was able to live in Jerusalem for six months studying the bible and studying that kind of ancient history. It was very interesting to study and has a huge influence on my songs.

It was interesting because while I was studying it I had a feeling that this is what I was supposed to be doing, but at the same time I think I was just being ignorant and not thinking at all about future. I was just very in the moment. I definitely didn’t give myself all that many options.

There was a time that first summer that I graduated that I was just– it struck me just how much some people have prepared for this moment, the real world, and how little I had prepared for the real world. It was a very important awakening. And a couple months depression.

(Laughing) I can relate.

I wrote some of my best songs out of that. It was the first time I was really writing good songs, like consistently. The first time I began to write songs that are still in my repertoire now were that summer that I was struggling through the depression and figuring out what the heck I wanted to do with my life.

So do you think artists have to go through a dark time if they want to bring anything good out of their art?

I think maybe people have to go through a dark time if they want to bring anything good to this world. Maybe not everybody. Maybe there’s people who get away with it, but the people who did a lot of changing for the good in this world went through a lot of suffering. I think they run hand in hand.

You mentioned this, but as an artist, how does the song writing and music writing process work for you?

from dancloutier.homestead.com, remixed

The inspiration for each song is different. A song is an interesting thing. It’s a process.

There are songs where I’ve written the lyrics first and I knew how it sounded in my head. There are songs where I wrote a guitar part, worked on it for a year trying to force lyrics on top of it. There are songs that I’ll begin to write lyrics and I have no clue what the lyrics are really about, then eventually by the end of the song they mean something to me. There are songs that I want to write a song about this specific situation and I’ll write a song about that specific situation.

It’s an interesting question. It all comes down to this concept of– an artist would usually call it the muse. How does the muse speak to you? It’s almost more like we’re fishing. You know, where you can be out there fishing for a long time and never catch anything, but you need to kind of know when to reel in when you have something good. You need to know when whatever that idea is is a worthy enough idea to write down.

How did the label come about? How did that get started?

It’s called Birch Beer Records. It started about a year ago. I was recording a live cd, my second cd, of thirteen brand new songs. One of my good friends was working on it with me. She was a piano player and a singer on that album. Her name is Kim Jennings and she was coming out with her own album later that fall. So this was in the spring, and I knew that my album would probably drop around the fall too, so we sat down together after the show in May and we were like, how do we go about getting this music out to the people? Like, what needs to happen?

When you’re a solo independent artist, the first thing most people say is well you need a record label to do anything. So Kim and I decided let’s make our own record label. And the more and more we talked about it, the more and more we became determined around the idea that people who are small, independent artists really don’t have a good shot, because all the big labels aren’t in Boston anymore.

We originally thought this idea for a record company was just to promote our two albums, but about three months into it we decided we’re just going to take all our proceeds from our albums and put it into the company so we can begin to sign some other people and begin to get this thing off the ground and begin to try to change the way the local music scene is looked at.

There’s a value to having somebody in your town you might want to see play. The way it works now in America, there tends to be like the fifty acts that get played on the radio and they just kind of roam from town to town, but there’s a beauty to that concept [of local music] just as there’s a beauty to the concept of like, you know, locally grown produce, locally grown stuff.

If there’s people out there who you could talk to who are wanting to get started in the music business, either just locally playing shows or they want to go all the way and make it huge, what would you recommend, you know, in 2010?

I’ve learned an awful lot the past few years. The most important thing is to be true to your craft. I still hold to the same thing I held to a year ago. Play a ton. Write, write, write. Listen to great artists of whatever genre you’re listening to.

But is that going to get you signed or even get you fans? No, probably not. There’s so many people doing it. Two years, three years ago, the way I was playing, for me to have real success at music I needed to win the lottery. That’s the position I put myself in. I needed to have somebody at some show who’s really important see me and love me, which is just– the chance of that is like finding a diamond in a sea of sand. There’s so many other people who are great.

from dancloutier.homestead.com

You need to do things differently. You need to think outside the box. You need to promote yourself. You need to think about how you can help the greater community. You need to work your tail off in terms of promotion, and it’s not for everybody. That’s where it’s completely fine to be an absolute brilliant songwriter and have, like, your ten friends and the people at your local open mike know who you are. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But, if you want to do [music] full time, seriously, you need to almost have a business degree. Even if you stand way out you need to have that business sense of having the good websites, doing the good promotion, talking to the right people, playing as much as you can, playing four times a week, doing it that way. That’s how you slowly build a fan base and then people will try to give back to you.

I’ve had a lot of success with doing this Birch Beer Records thing. I started this Facebook page called ‘I Support Local Music In Massachusetts’ and there’s 7,000 people associated with it now. A newspaper might be interested in what I’m trying to do musically, but also I’m trying to do these other things. It just gives you greater options and greater resources. It’s more interesting.

There’s a lot of singer-songwriter troubadours, there’s a lot of people who are great bass players, a lot of people who are great piano players, but what are you doing that’s different and interesting? What’s your purpose? What’s motivating that? Why should people pay attention to you?

If after hearing this people are wanting to get more involved in their local music scene and try to support that, whether they are musicians or just fans of music, do you have some good ways they can begin that process?

You gotta find some people who are local, brilliant locals, and when you find somebody who’s local, then you need to be their big supporter. They need you. You know, telling your friends about them, inviting them to shows, and trying to get them as excited about it as you are excited about it. It’s important.

And go see more shows.

I’ve never actually been on such a pilgrimage. I’ve never had a place to get back to. At least not geographically. I did lose my heart one time, and that in fact was a place I desperately needed to return to. In a lot of ways, my journey was forced but it was the best summer of my life.

It feels like I should write ‘how-to lose your heart’ first, but lets assume that none of us want to learn that. Here is how to get it back.

Initiate the expedition

I was going through a break-up and taking it hard. I cried and prayed so much. It was nuts. I wanted her back and couldn’t see any reason we should be apart. She said I was too stiff and always trying to be a super-christian. I blamed her for giving up and thought she was rude for criticizing my faith.

About a month in, this profound thought hit me. ‘What if it was you, Jake?’ What if it was me? What if I acted like a stiff and was ‘holier than thou’? Hmm. That actually makes more sense. It was me. Not entirely, but definitely 75% of it could have been avoided. Why did I act out of character? When did I become this weirdo? It was in my heart. I gave up my heart, my true-self. That’s how I got here. I want to go back.

Get a map / The 1st stop

I would pray for guidance every day. More like every hour. I had caught a glimpse of the old me and wanted a map back to him. I also began some counseling sessions. This is like having a GPS on your journey. You always have your own sense of direction, but being able to bounce it off a satellite a couple times a month is incredible. He would help me unpack thoughts and re-pack them. It makes for less baggage and the trip becomes a little easier.

First stop on the map was looking at everything I had been avoiding. The first thing I noticed was that I was so scared of being wrong. I put up a righteous front. This is the first sign of the false Jake. Solution: stop with immediate opinion-forming. It’s not necessary. Take in the information and spin it around a bit. This way you’re thinking more freely, not so rigid.

2nd stop: reconciliation with friends

I sat down with my two closest friends. I asked them tough questions. ‘Am I unapproachable? Am I tough to be around?’ You never really want to hear those answers, but its so necessary. I found out that I was awful to hang out with. Every time I would hang out with people, every time we got together, it was a bunch of, ‘You shouldn’t do that…. You should do more of this…. Well, my pastor says….’ It was a legalistic bonanza. This is the polar opposite of who I am. I’ve always been the dude to talk to about whatever was on your mind. I’ve always been inviting.

3rd stop: reconciliation with yourself

I started praying for fifteen minutes at a time, a huge boost from the usual two to three. I actually let God work with me and started listening to my heart. Tough questions started coming up and I would not run. He and I were in this together. He would show me some harsh truths and not condemn me but lift me over them.

Then I asked Jesus to guide me through the dirty, cluttered basement that is my heart. We would go through the crap together and he would guide me to the areas that needed attention sooner. This became the daily routine. More and more blemishes rose to the surface. I feel comfortable sharing them:

• I blindly chased righteousness.
• I never felt like a man, just a big kid all the time.
• I believed two lies:
  1. My parents relationship is my responsibility.
  2. I have nothing to offer a woman.

I started seeing where these things came from and decided it wasn’t my fault. I have made a lot of mistakes because of these things, and those I will take responsibility for. But the damage done was more of a character assassination than me being reckless. I tossed the lies and informed the enemy that I know what’s up now. I forgave my self.

4th stop: get a new map of your heart and go there… forever

I was on the right path now. It took me a couple months and the travel was exhausting. But as I stayed on the right path more and more, I started to see the old me, the true-self, come alive again. I could see the final destination: my passions. They were buried deep but couldn’t be killed and that gave me so much confidence. ‘Live from your passions’ was one of those phrases I would hear and think, ‘Yeah right. Who has time for that?’ Now I get it. Your passions are your heart’s desire. Your heart is wired by God. He gave you those, so use them. I found my heart. Pilgrimage: success!

Back to your everyday life

Use what you learn on the pilgrimage. It’s going to be hard but you will have some memories engraved to remind you. I actually kept a bit of a journal. It wasn’t typical, but basically just a line or two each day about what I learned. I have looked at that a dozen times since my journey. It gets me right back on the path. Don’t forget to live from your new heart everyday. You’d be surprised who comes back around.

Epilogue Jake ended up living life like he was supposed to and, about 3 months later, his ex-girlfriend initiated communication. She was able to see the changes made and wanted to be close again. A month of friendship rekindled their story and the two were just married in September.

Footnote A Lot of this journey was fueled by Wild at Heart by John Eldridge.

Three years ago I borrowed a book called The Art of Pilgrimage by Phil Cosineau from the library of a ship called the M/V Pacific Link, which at that time was floating around Fiji doing good deeds in some of the smaller islands. To be honest, the book is a little fluffy, but it was a really interesting take on travel in general and it helped me shape a better philosophy of travel for myself.

Pilgrimage is an interesting concept. Practiced by every major religion throughout history, and many non-religious people as well, it ties together some powerful elements: the anticipation of a destination, continual movement towards that destination, a common, shared experience, an interruption to normal life, an attempt to reach past the boundaries of everyday reality for something deeper and higher, whatever that may be and whether or not you even know.

There are plenty of ways we could benefit from practicing the art of pilgrimage in our lives and in our travels – it would be really cool to participate in an actual pilgrimage, maybe even join hundreds of others and take a long walk across the middle east in the possible footsteps of Abraham, great grandfather of three major religions – but, lets look at a more specific application that could be interesting for those of you who are church-goers.

Recently I loaned that book, The Art of Pilgrimage, to my friend Nancy who was doing research in preparation for a week of lectures to a bunch of high school students about the role Christian missionaries have played in foreign countries and whether, on the whole, they have done more harm than good.

One of Nancy’s passions is to see the Christian church become much more aware and thoughtful in the way it does good in the world – actually doing good rather than causing all kinds of collateral damage under the pretense of doing good. Sounds easy, right?

In certain branches of the Christian religion there is a phenomenon called short-term mission trips, where a group of people, usually high school or college students, will go somewhere, usually a developing country, and work with local missionaries or churches to do construction work and other manual labor, visit schools, orphanages, and hospitals, preach sermons and put on cross-cultural dramas to share some aspect of Christianity with believing and non-believing crowds.

Nancy was looking for books about world missions. I gave her a book about pilgrimage because I believe the idea of pilgrimage could help churches navigate the rough waters of short-term missions and all their inherent drawbacks. In some circles short-termers have developed a bad reputation for being loud, obnoxious, arrogant, impatient and actually getting in the way of local church and missionary work much more than helping.

So, what would be different? What sets a modern day pilgrim apart from a modern day tourist, or short term missionary, is a deep humility towards, and sense of respect for, the place and people and culture being entered. If tourists go to see something, or do something, then scratch it off their list and move on, a pilgrim goes with a certain reverence and awe and expectation. She is on a sacred journey after all, and every detail is filled with a kind of magic, a touch of the Creator.

She goes with a spiritual awareness, an expectation of not bringing God but actually finding him already present and at work. Every event, every conversation or chance meeting, every accident, every delay, every misfortune is ripe with possibility. Humble and aware, she marches forward with great hope for what might happen next and delight in all the welcome and unwelcome surprises that come.

She also goes to learn, both from the experience itself and from the people she gets to know along the way. She does not go looking to change people to be more like her. Instead she goes looking for a mutually beneficial alliance. She might even call it friendship.

The fantastic thing about pilgrimage is the agenda. Her only agenda as a pilgrim is to seek God and to be a blessing. If that’s not the true purpose of short term missions, not to mention life in general, I don’t know what is. If approaching all kinds of travel from the perspective of a pilgrim is actually something that is catching on in the world right now, I think it will be an important, though subtle shift in our way of life and a very good one.

Godspeed.

Maybe you’ve caught yourself looking at the drawn curtains of the house next door wondering why your neighbor appears to be sneaking into her house in broad daylight. Or maybe it is the tree next door that rains leaves down on your lawn each fall whose demise you are carefully considering. Perhaps your neighbor is a person who hurriedly walks his dog past your yard as if he is trying to escape some impending doom – only to later find a gift of dog poop on your manicured grassy knoll.

Regardless of how agreeable or how unpleasant your relationship with the next-door neighbors may be, we all have neighbors! Every person in this small world of ours must share life in one way or another with at least one other person whom we kindly refer to as a neighbor. Have you considered that our own response to our neighbors may make all the difference in our relationships with them?

Previous generations of people in various cultures have apparently lived quite happily with one another in close quarters of community – situations where the word neighbor didn’t cause immediate migraine headaches. However, creating such “neighbor friendly” spaces requiring close community in our Western culture carries with it negative flashbacks of communes, kibitzes, and chain-linked cults. Thankfully there is some light at the end of this neighborly tunnel.

A Modern Commune?

In the early 1980’s a pair of insightful architects brought some not-so-ancient ideas from Denmark over to the United States and begin to put words to the new idea of cohousing. Cohousing describes an intentional, participatory community formed from 20-40 households living in a planned neighborhood. This planned neighborhood would typically include privately owned homes or condos as well as a number of shared or communal spaces in close proximity. Most significantly, these cohousing communities integrate into the existing culture as opposed to the communes of hippie-era history located in the rural woods away from the apparent evils of the present culture.

So, you may not find longhaired, un-showered hippies opening the door to the inquiring visitor at a modern cohousing community. What you will find is a group of individuals dedicated to cultivating a community that not only lends itself to the social and relational aspects of being human but also to other principles such as environmental sustainability.

Cohousing in Practice

Popularity for cohousing has continued to grow since the early eighties here in the United States. Current estimates put the number of cohousing communities above 150 within the US alone. These communities range from planned subdivision style neighborhoods to renovated inner-city apartment buildings. The design and shared living arrangements vary just as greatly as the individuals who are a part of the community. However, it is worth noting that there are common characteristics among these varied cohousing communities.

A cohousing community is generally distinguished from other types of shared communities by the following characteristics (as paraphrased from the Cohousing Association of the United States):

1. The development and design of the community is a participatory process from the very beginning.
2. The physical layout of the community structures assists a neighborhood design. The specific design is intended to simply aid strong community growth. This may mean that pedestrian walkways bring foot traffic between front doors, and perhaps the walkway and layout is centered on the shared facilities.
3. Private residences with full kitchens are the usual living quarters, however, common facilities create a backbone for community life. There are many variations of the common (or shared) facilities but there is typically a common house including a common kitchen, dining area, sitting area, children’s playroom and laundry. A workshop, library, exercise room, craft room, and guest rooms may also be a feature of the common house or other shared structures. Where space is less of a concern common facilities may also include playground equipment, lawns and gardens.
4. Individuals of the community all take part to maintain the shared facilities and to maintain the community. This resident management is completing the work around the site or preparing common meals and coming together with fellow residents to communicate about the community.
5. The community leadership and decision-making is made through consensus or a democratic process. Thus, non-hierarchical structure and decision making is practiced and community roles may be given to members with specific talents or abilities with no specific individual or small group holding power over others.
6. The individuals of the community are not joined for economic reasons. With no shared community economy the source of income for the members must originate from the members themselves or the members households.

The real-life practice of the above characteristics may look very different from community to community. Touring one of the many established communities may be the best way to understand what cohousing is and to grasp how these characteristics set it apart from other types of shared communities. You may find it quite interesting to also know that the establishment of cohousing communities takes place without exclusion of specific religious, ethnic, or cultural beliefs. The community becomes what the contributing individuals choose to make it.

A Need for Others

Our Western culture upbringing may initially cause a knee jerk reaction to the suggestion that intentional community is an idea even worth considering. The dominant presence of single-family housing and the ever-present “American Dream” of our culture may color any thought that would move us against this status quo. However, a suggestion could be made that in spite of our Western culture ideas we have a basic human need for community that runs deep within our souls. Any number of historical and anthropological examples could be called upon – but, at the end of the day, a need for community of some sort must be answered within ones own self. How do you define who you are without thinking in the context of relationships, of community?

The success of intentional community in cohousing arrangements is difficult to measure from outside the community; however, cohousing may be an effort that is worth undertaking – we are human, we need each other! If we can’t escape our neighbors then we must ask the question, what will we do with the neighbors we have?

REFERENCES

• cohousing.org – The Cohousing Association of the United States
• npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102651496 – National Public Radio Cohousing Report
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohousing – Wikipedia entry on Cohousing
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community – Wikipedia entry on Community

Muse: What about your deepest desires contradict themselves?

Self: My deepest desires? My contradictions? Muse, there are so many. They drive me crazy! I want to travel the world and explore and write.

Muse: And?

Self: I want to be rooted, in one place, living quietly, with a dog and maybe an axe wielding male companion.

Muse: Those seem like they could very well be contradictions. What is it about traveling that you desire so deeply?

Self: Well, you see, Muse, the last few days I’ve been homesick for the world. I get this way a couple times a year. I start remembering the romance of Istanbul in the fall. The way the sun sets over the desert. The awe I felt when I came around the bend that revealed Jerusalem sitting on top of the hill—a city torn between beauty and hate. I miss the tranquil moments like sailing in the Gulf of Oman or swimming in the clear-as-glass waters of the Red Sea surrounded by Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The ancient places like Coba, Petra, the Pyramids and Ephesus. The way the noonday sun reflects off the marble of the Taj Mahal as you come through the entrance gate and see its minarets above the crowd of people on pilgrimages from all over the world, and, of course the rice. The endless amounts of rice…

Muse: Yeah, I remember those places. You could have never dreamed of all the places you would go. I remember on the bus from Delhi to Jaipur you kept pinching yourself. I don’t think I’ve seen you do that any other time.

Self: I think I did one day when I was on the bus in Seattle. I was on one of the bridges and the lake was filled with sail boats, the sky was clear and to my right were the snow covered Olympics, to the left were the Cascades and almost straight ahead of me, floating in an ethereal glow, was Mt. Rainer. I cried a little.

Muse: When don’t you cry a little?

Self: Hey now.

Muse: I’m just sayin’. But, what about traveling is difficult to enjoy?

Self: Do you mean the smell or the day ferry that turned into the night ferry from Jordan to Egypt? Or maybe you’re referring to my eighty-pound pack? Or the time I got lice? Or having to carve out a new place everywhere I went?

Muse: So being in Seattle satisfies those things?

Self: I guess. I enjoy the freedom of not having to carry everything I own with me. I enjoy that I have a room to myself and am surrounded by things that bring me comfort and remind me of who I am—my books, my art, my favorite pillows. My friends are pretty constant here too; they used to rotate so fast. I think the most important thing about being in one place for a while now has been the space I’ve had to really process some things and to grow and heal. I can’t say my soul has gotten quieter or that I’ve become more steadfast, but I feel freer.

Muse: Do you see this lasting? You know as well as any that plans change and people change and whether we want it to or not, life reshapes itself in some pretty big ways.

Self: I know. I like plans, I do. But I don’t stick to them and the ones that I try to stick to fall through more often than I would like them to.

Muse: Do you want to stay in Seattle?

Self: Well, I think that is where the contradicting desires come into play.

Muse: Do tell.

Self: So, for the last week or so I’ve been working on a poem. It’s about an older me who is “alive and well and living on an island in the sound.” I have a dog and we explore and write. I have this quiet little life in which I’m a writer who has made enough to live on, and I have a little cottage by a lake and a little garden. I have an office that I write in when I’m not sitting on the porch swing. I’m in one place.

Muse: As you picture this, how old do you think you are?

Self: Forty, fifty maybe?

Muse: And when you look around what do you see?

Self: Well. I guess I see books—of course. And, I see things I’ve collected from all over the world: maps, rugs, tea cups, hooka pipes, masks, things I see but don’t even know what to call them because I’ve never seen them before. (Look at this stuff? Isn’t it neat?…)

Muse: How did you get those things?

Self: Well, I guess I got on an airplane, went to far off places and collected them as I went.

Muse: What does that mean?

Self: Well, I suppose it means that I packed up my stuff—the stuff I didn’t get rid of. And I put it in storage. I bought a plane ticket, and I walked away from the comforts knowing that they’ll be there waiting for me in the future.

Muse: Will they?

Self: I want them to be. I can see them so clearly. There is so much of the world to explore, but if I go, won’t I miss so much of life here?

Muse: I believe there are some hard choices to make if you truly want both and believe you can have both worlds. Maybe you can’t have them at the same time—but you are bold and adventurous enough to get them both.

Self: But what if I had my chance to travel? I love that time, I do. But I know that it wasn’t enough for me. When I see a map and I know I’ve barely started. When I was in Petra my friend took a picture of me standing outside one of the huge carved buildings. It was a crowded day, but somehow he got a picture of just me. I’m only this tiny speck at the bottom of the picture. Every time I see it I think to myself, “I am so small. The world is so big.” And I ache knowing that it only has one cure. But I want so many things, and life is full of so many commitments…

Muse: Let’s stop there. We weren’t here to have a discussion about the excuses. We were here to talk about the desires.

Travel is the change in location of people on a trip through the means of transport from one location to another. The word originates from the Middle English word ‘travailen’ (“to toil”).

Travel can be roughly stated as one simple mathematical explanation, or rule: Travel is the means of a being who changes from one state of being to another via means of transportation.

Travel.

Upon my “studies” I have learned that there are many factors, many ways and many distances to travel. But the main factors are under the following categories: purpose, distance, budget, method, duration and function.

Purpose. Basically, you can summarize the purposes of travel to a simple explanation: the purpose of travel is to leave one location either to move to a new location, or to find a new location. The purpose is to leave one state of life to go to a new state of life, or from one state of being to another state of being.

Travel is not just an action, but something that exists within you. But like many, people require the next few factors I will mention to “feel” travel, and achieve the purpose above.

Concerning distances, one can travel from your house down the street, to the other side of the city, to another city, to another state, to another country, to another continent, to another planet, even another system or galaxy; point A. to point B. Many do not realize it, but we do it every day.

Concerning budget, Cash, like any system in the world, is a factor within travel. Cash in abundance or the lack of cash affects the method of travel. There are many who travel under the idea that travel is a lifestyle void of cash. Some do it because of abundance. Without argument, budget, with or without cash, is a central factor of how one travels.

Concerning method, one can take intercontinental planes, ships, boats, cars, motorbikes, bikes, animals of various types, among other wheeled, organic or winged devices. Many choose to travel without owning or purchasing any device, and opt to hitch rides on any of the above. It is very easy. We have developed technology for centuries to help our need to travel, and it sometimes can be community activity.

Method may also concern the factors of “how” one travels, what one eats, where one sleeps, or how one contributes. How else does one participate, live, breathe?

Concerning duration, it can happen from mere seconds to years. There are seasons, periods, moments and eons of travel. Travel can last any amount of time, deliberately or not.

I have found that travel lasts for a “complete time”, because travel occupies ALL your time.

Function. Most do not even consider this aspect of travel although some evolve to this state of travel regardless. The function of travel is what you do while you travel. It is the lifestyle. It coincides with the purpose, but all in all, it mostly is the product of travel.

What does travel produce? Some travel for the function of a cause, or a job, of a state of survival or growth or to produce change in one’s life or in others. Some travel to explore, search,  for fun, for themselves, escape; or just to gain experience, knowledge, to challenge oneself, to lose oneself.

So with that said, why do people travel?

More often than not, we are born empty. Most of us grow up with neither external nor internal provision. Some have everything externally provided for them, and theoretically internally. But we still need to fill our empty hearts. We need to find this thing that will fill it.

Many have turned to the material and the actions we can do with ourselves or to ourselves in this physical world. Sometimes this stuff is enough to simulate a “fill” for our heart. Yet those who are awakened and aware, learn that one must leave such things as these “simulated fills” to truly learn what can fill a heart up.

If you have traveled, I am sure you have said, “There must be more,” and tried to turn to a new life by leaving your old life behind. This is the beginning.

Travel is the beginning of a journey, a pilgrimage, a search for that which fills us. Travel is a method of repentance, of a new life. It is a step of being born again into a new world. It is a liberating, exhilarating, empowering experience, and a free road.

We must become like children with nothing, and leave it all behind to step into a new life, but it too is a step of death. Travel kills and destroys your former life. Travel is toil.

But travel is not the answer.

It is just a method. Its purpose is to help you leave one state of being to become another state of being. It shows you that the world is bigger than the stuff which you tried to fill your heart with. It shows you there is more.

It is easy.

Check out the websites I have added as references at the end of this article. They provide short-term and long-term accommodation for free, social networks for travelers, ideas on cheap transport and how to travel the world. The biggest obstacle is yourself. Will you dare to venture out and die to your old self?

Take a risk, fill in the gaps of the factors provided above. Let the first factor be what it is, and let the last factor evolve with who you are and who you are called to be.  Begin to see that there is more in the world that could fill your heart other than what is around you. Learn that you can be filled internally, enough to be free of the world, free to move in it anywhere you choose. Learn that you aren’t of this world, and travel through it. Learn that your heart is filled by someone else.

But I know it is not the answer. If you are looking to travel as the thing that fills your heart’s hole: stop. The change from the old to something new must happen. But as the seasons always change, stop and travel away from travel. Use it to begin to be part of a bigger picture, the picture that travel is only a part of your over-all purpose of why you are a vessel in this world. Learn to travel not just the world, but life.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel
http://couchsurfing.com
http://helpx.net
http://hitchhikers.org
http://lonelyplanet.com
http://erideshare.com

Nate and one of his many fonts.

Nate Piekos (pronounced ‘PEE-kos’) is the man behind Blambot.com, a website well known in the comic book industry for fonts, lettering, and logo design. It’s not just the comic pros at Marvel and DC that use Nate’s fonts though. Everyone from The New Yorker to Kellogg’s Cereal to MTV to Hasbro to Hallmark have used Blambot fonts. Besides lettering comic books (which is an art in itself), designing fonts, and designing logos, he also keeps up a webcomic of his own called ATLAND and has written a few articles about his craft on Blambot. The cool thing about Blambot is for most commercial fonts Nate releases on the site, he releases a free font as well for independent comic creators. Nate was good enough to answer a few questions for us recently.

What’s your personal history with comics? Did you always want to work in the comics industry?
I can remember drawing my own comics as a little kid, laying on the carpet in front of the TV. I started collecting seriously in my teens. I thought working in comics was a pipe-dream, really. I just did it for fun — but I never stopped doing it. I went to college for a degree in graphic design with a focus on Corporate Identity design (logos). While I was there, I studied typography as part of my coursework. Simultaneously, I was drawing indie comics to amuse my friends and realized I needed good, (preferably free,) comic book fonts. So I started making my own. A buddy of mine suggested I put them online, and Blambot was born. After college I worked a miserable graphic design job for 5 years, all while working on comics at night. During that time I started working with Mike Allred who got me my first gig lettering his book (X-FORCE, later, X-STATIX) for Marvel, and that got my foot in the door. Once I started making enough money with fonts, lettering, logo design, etc. I made the jump to being self employed in the comics industry. It’s been ever-onward from there!

So, you’re constantly lettering books for the big comic companies (right now it looks like you’re working on 14?), you produce two new fonts every month or so, you keep up your own weekly webcomic, and on top of that you keep up a newsletter, website and active Twitter account. Have I missed anything? How do you produce so much? What does your average day look like?
When you put it like that, it does seem like a lot. I’m also a gym-rat. I lift and do cardio 5-6 days a week. I lost 75lbs over the course of about 6 or 7 years. I guess my secret is I work fast, and I work efficiently. I’m a type-A personality. I never procrastinate. I wake up around 7:30, answer e-mail and do all the clerical mumbo-jumbo that goes along with being self employed. I assess what needs to get done for the day, be it fonts, lettering, or drawing ATLAND, and I work at it until early afternoon. I take a break to hit the gym for two hours or so, come back and work until 7:30 or 8pm. Rinse and repeat Monday through Friday.

Wow, that’s a crazy-full schedule, Nate. Did breaking up your day that way come naturally, or did it take a while to figure out a good rhythm? Is that balance between work and play (if you count working out as play) important for your creativity, or productivity?
I guess it came out of necessity. It’s a pretty fluid process — a matter of knowing how to prioritize. The balance between work and play is very important. It keeps things fresh to have a lot of different facets to the day. I take weekends off, too. So that helps maintain my sanity.

How do you keep coming up with new fonts? And how do you decide which ones to make pro, and which ones to make free (for non-profit and independent use)? And while we’re at it, how did the idea to give some of them away for free come about in the first place?
Most of the time I’ll be lettering a book and think, “Man, I could really use a font like ______!” and I’ll start working on it for next time. It’s kind of a roll of the dice to decide which one to make a pay font and which one to make free. Intuition mostly. Sometimes I’m wrong, but most of the time I’m right. The idea to make free ones for indie comic artists came about from my own needs when I was an indie creator. Fonts were too expensive. Why should a poor college student be forced to go without good type for their comics? I’m there to support the up-and-coming artists. What’s cool is that now the guys who are becoming pros remember how Blambot helped them, and give me a yell to letter their books now that they’re working mainstream.

Do you ever get bored with your job and wish you were doing something else?
Are you kidding?  I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I get to work on comic books all day, I’m my own boss, and my morning commute went from driving 100 miles a day to walking down the hall! Not a day goes by when I don’t thank the universe for my good fortune. Even on days when things get stressful, I just remind myself, “My worst day now is still better than my best day working the old 9 to 5.”

(Although if I had to pick another career it would either be: librarian — it was my college job and I loved it — or a musician. I’ve been playing guitar since I was a teenager. )

In your opinion, what’s the best stuff out there in the world of comics right now?
My absolute favorite comic is USAGI YOJIMBO by Stan Sakai. It’s the only book that I have to read every month. Another favorite is GROO by Sergio Aragones.

Any advice for fellow comics creators?
My best advice for aspiring creators is to remember that comics is a business. It’s WORK, not just play. If you expect to get hired into the mainstream, you have to be talented, super fast, reliable, and have the ability to hit or exceed your deadlines. 90% of the creators who ask me for a critique have talent, but can’t force themselves to get work done when they don’t “feel like it”. That won’t fly in the big leagues. You have to be able to squeeze out your best work sitting at your drawing board, on a Saturday afternoon when all your friends are out having a good time… with a head cold… on your birthday….

If you’re okay with that, the flip side is that you’ll get to work from home, work with the people who were probably your heroes growing up, and get paid to play make-believe every day.

Secret Origins font and logo design and copyright Nate Piekos. Photo courtesy Nate Piekos.

These are the necessities for the adventures in my life. Greeting new cultures with a smile and knowing there will be times I must choose my attitude in order to gain every ounce of opportunity from my travels. There have certainly been times of laughter, times of tears, times of listening to people’s stories, and times of observing and taking in the culture. These experiences have allowed me to learn more about the world I live in, the cultures I’m surrounded by, and the person I’m meant to be. They have also left me with countless stories, sharing the things I’ve learned about our world and about my life.

Several years ago, I completed a Discipleship Training School through Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in Oxford, New Zealand. YWAM is an organization made up of adventure-seeking Christians from around the world who are willing to travel and share their life experiences with others. After completing discipleship training, I had the opportunity to staff the same type of school. I went back to New Zealand working in the office of YWAM in Oxford – but I passed up the opportunity to staff the school. After a few brief months I was on a plane back home. I’m not sure if I was overwhelmed by the responsibility of leading a team around the world or if I was simply feeling restricted by ‘rules,’ but I left. Immediately I knew it was a mistake, and the second my plane was in the air, I was in tears knowing I had given up the opportunity of a lifetime. I had grown to love the life of spontaneity, adventure, and travel, and I was heading back to my monotonous life of work and school in Michigan.

I was home for many months in agony, living with my decision to live a stationary life. My passion was buried along with my dreams of traveling the world again. I wanted nothing more than to teach others what it meant to dive into another culture and experience a different part of the world. I had no problem living out of a suitcase and adjusting to time differences. I didn’t mind eating exotic foods or speaking through a translator. It was difficult at times, but worth it when you were able to impact the life of another, sharing your story or listening to theirs. After returning home, I had difficulty connecting with this God I had such a close relationship with in New Zealand. I felt abandoned by Him when I returned home and didn’t know where to turn. I had given up my dream in New Zealand and felt I had lost my passion for God.

In the summer of 2007, I had been back in Michigan for five months. I finally began adjusting to life at home and had come to terms with the fact that I would just have to wait until I finished school before I was able to travel again. I found a church and my relationship with God was on the mend – it wasn’t perfect, but I was on my way. One fateful Tuesday afternoon, I received an email from the director of a YWAM base in Auckland, New Zealand saying I had been recommended by staff in Oxford and was being asked to staff a Discipleship Training School in Auckland. The only catch was school started in nine days. My faith had certainly shrunk since I had returned home and my first instinct was to disregard the email and go about my life. But there was a spark somewhere in the back of my mind that connected with this buried passion in my heart, and I knew that although the chances were slim, I had to go after this opportunity. The chance I had thrown away was being thrown right back at me.

I was working at a restaurant, I was supposed to start school the following week, and I had no money to buy a plane ticket, no travel insurance, and no way to pay the school fees in New Zealand. Logistically, staffing this school was impossible. I emailed a few close friends asking them to pray. Even though my faith had shrunk, I was being reminded of the miracles I had seen traveling in previous years and knew I had to try. In the following days, I was getting phone calls and emails from friends encouraging me to go to New Zealand. My parents, although reluctant, supported me going back to fulfill my dream. Then I received a phone call from a close friend who also worked with the YWAM base in New Zealand. She was planning to go back and staff later that fall. The previous Monday, before I had received the email asking me to staff, she had a dream. In the dream she was at the YWAM base in New Zealand sometime just after the beginning of the year. She was sitting in the office, and out of nowhere, I walked in to say hello. I was back in New Zealand, but she said in the dream I wasn’t living in Oxford anymore. I was doing something new in New Zealand and just stopped by for a visit. She awoke from the dream and checked her email and that’s when she received the email from me asking her to pray about this new opportunity of mine. She prayed for several days and was constantly reminded of her dream, which she then called to tell me about.

Before I knew it, I had quit my job, withdrawn from classes, and had the money I needed for a plane ticket to New Zealand. So one week after receiving the email, I was on a plane preparing to fulfill my dream of traveling to staff a Discipleship Training School. It was an amazing season of my life. I was given a lot of responsibility and had the honor of co-leading a team of nine students from eight countries from Guam to Saipan. After staffing the school, I was able to go back to Oxford for a visit. As I walked into the office to say hello to my good friend a few short weeks after the new year, I realized it was quite similar to the dream she had before I left. My passion for God was restored, my love for travel was rooted even more deeply in my heart, and my zeal for life was insurmountable. We can make wrong choices in life, but we can’t let those choices define us. I serve a God who is a lot bigger than a wrong decision. It simply took me a few trips around the world to realize it.

A couple days after that I was listening to a talk Donald Miller gave to a bunch of students at Harvard about relationships. He told a story about his friend who asked him one day if he wanted to go photograph Mt. Bachelor in Oregon one early morning. Donald reluctantly agreed and the two of them set out the next day around two in the morning to catch the sunrise. When the two of them were about sixty miles from anywhere, his friend pulled the car over, shut it off, got out of the vehicle, started walking down the road and finally stopped about twenty-five feet up the road and laid down.

‘Donald. Get your butt out here,’ his friend yelled.

Donald did as he was told and got out of the car. Once he laid down he realized what his friend was doing. They were looking at the stars. He said that he had never seen so many stars in the sky before.

And in the quiet Donald asked, ‘John. What’s all this for? Why did God create all this stuff around us? Why did he create all these stars?’

‘To dazzle you, Don,’ he replied.

Then it hit me. Romance. God created a lot of what’s around us to dazzle us. To romance us. His infatuation with us knows no bounds.

I live in Anchorage, Alaska. I’m not a huge fan of the isolation one can feel up here, or the intense cold. But I will honestly say that I do live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. After I heard that simple statement, ‘To dazzle you, Don,’ I saw something different every time I stepped out my front door. It’s all around us. God’s attempt to romance his people. To show them the love He has. It’s in the sky, the mountains, the trees, the oceans and in the people around us.

So this was it. This gave me an understanding that in creativity there is romance. I hope you see the beauty that God has placed around us in the places you live and the people you see and meet.