Survival Postures is the latest project from Cleveland-based organizer/visionary Kate Sopko. It is "about practicing a culture that can take care of itself, re-linking culture and survival deep within our own bodies." More info at: survivalpostures.weebly.com
This winter in Cleveland, Ohio, 17 people took part in a group experiment. Each chose a task essential to their survival or well-being that they didn't know how to do. Then, over the course of February, they learned how to do it. How to build a cook stove out of soup cans, how to process wool and weave with it, how to sew homemade menstrual pads... Their Survival Postures were exhibited at a community dinner held at SPACES Gallery on March 20.
This site documents their projects, and our larger experience of working together to re-learn a myriad of lost practical skills. We invite anyone who likes what you see here to consider doing a Survival Posture of your own, and to use this forum to share what you learn with others. Contact stewardsoflostlands@gmail.com with your projects.
PROJECT BACKGROUND:
Survival Postures takes a cue from feminist performance artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who, since the late 1960's has used her art to make visible a hidden, stigmatized world of maintenance work that shores up our whole society. She once said that her work is a conscious attempt to re-link cultural practice with how we practice our own survival, saying that "Art begins at the same level as basic survival systems."
Lately in Cleveland, we've seen a huge growth in interest in re-localizing the work that provides for our community's basic needs (for example, there's been an exponential increase in urban farming). Many of us are volunteering to do the hands-on work of growing, processing and distributing food; salvaging and reusing building materials; remediating soil on polluted urban lots; and supporting local production of things like clothing, energy and shelter.
In doing so, it's become pretty clear that as an overall culture, we are very much in infancy when it comes to being actors in our own survival. Many basic skills are no longer in our vocabulary, and we rarely flex the muscles that make us producers (rather than consumers) of what we need. At this moment of cultural atrophy, re-learning practical skills will take practice, and in that practice, we will have to allow ourselves to be tentative, uncomfortable and inexperienced.
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http://survivalpostures.weebly.com/
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
The Service Industry: Turning workers into little entrepreneurs
Service workers who refuse to identify with their jobs often do so in the name of a "true calling" that they pursue outside of work hours with this same enterprising spirit. As art, adventure, and social life are all absorbed into the logic of productive investment, it becomes easy to look at your time at work as a capital outlay that enables you to pursue your dreams off the clock, like a new business owner paying rent on her storefront in hopes of future success. The flexible, temporary nature of service employment encourages this attitude; if additional free time is "more valuable" than extra wages, we have the freedom to work less, and if not, we can try to work more. In this way, the mentality of self-employment is extended to individuals who might otherwise contest employment itself...A worker's personal quirks and secrets, previously the only territory beyond the reach of the market, become commodities to be sold like any other. In this regard, the service industry represents a front in the total colonization of our social lives.
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Exerpted from "The Service Industry," in Work: Capitalism. Economics. Resistance.
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Exerpted from "The Service Industry," in Work: Capitalism. Economics. Resistance.
Saturday, April 09, 2011
The Embrace of 360 Degrees
by Matt Dineen
Life really does come full circle sometimes. I guess this is no surprise since our lives are not single linear journeys of constant progress. We are on a continuum that ebbs and flows and our personal histories often have the pesky tendency to repeat themselves. Our current selves are an amalgamation of all of our ups and downs, and the journey we’re on is a complex one.
On the cusp of 30, I feel like I’m 15 again. Half a lifetime ago I spent the summer washing dishes at Nonnie’s Country Kitchen in Orleans, MA—my first job. I was paid under the table, in cash, to scrape the remains of chocolate chip pancakes larger than my face, scrub lipstick stains off coffee mugs, and listen to the classic rock station that the sexist cook would sing along to all morning. It feels like yesterday.
Actually, it was yesterday.
I arrived at my new job to discover an envelope in the back room with my name scrawled in full-caps: MATT. It contained a (small) pile of 20 dollar bills for my previous week of labor. After counting the bills, I stuffed the envelope in my backpack, grabbed a glass of ice water, and squeezed into a fresh pair of bright-yellow dishwashing gloves. Something was different though.
Instead of elderly retirees filling Nonnie’s counter (and inhaling her second-hand Lucky Strike smoke), there were tables full of people gazing into laptop computers, sipping lattes and eating pasta salad. Instead of AC/DC and Van Halen on the transistor radio in the back, Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire were playing on an iPod through the surround-sound speakers of the café. Everything has changed. But as I stood in front of the industrial sink scrubbing lipstick off a coffee mug it hit me that, actually, everything has stayed the same. In one week, I will be a 30 year old dishwasher with a college degree.
How has my life reverted to this, 15 years later?
It would be pretty easy to wake up on the morning of my 30th birthday in despair that my life is not going anywhere; paralyzed by an internalized classism, making me feel like an utter failure of a human being. Luckily, I have dedicated a lot of my time since school to analyzing, rejecting, and documenting alternatives to the dominant culture that defines people by what they do for money, first and foremost. I have spent more than half of a decade now interviewing activists and artists about the dilemma of following their passions, doing what they truly love, while surviving in a cutthroat capitalist society. So I have thought about this stuff a lot.
Over the years, when people I meet ask me, “What do you do?” the answer is always complicated. “Well,” I’ll reply. “It depends what you mean.” We are all so much more than our wage jobs. We are complex, multidimensional creatures. And this should be celebrated.
As I approach 30, I think back to that requisite thought exercise throughout many of our childhoods: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Is this it? Am I grown up now? At one point, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. Apparently I told my mother (who was 29 when she had me) that I would become rich as a Major League star and buy her a house. She lovingly reminds me of this broken promise every now and then. Sorry mom!
It has been essential for me to talk to people who have spent their lives redefining what success means—prioritizing happiness and community over the accumulation of wealth and power. This is also true of the aging process.
In my mid- to late-20’s it was really inspiring to talk to people in their 30’s who were truly embracing getting older. Actually, I have found that if you ask people who have passed the 30 year milestone, almost across the board they will talk about how much better life is than in their 20’s. So why is it then that many twenty-somethings in our society are so scared of this moment?
I wear a pin on my jacket that reads: “Growing up is awesome!” The person that created (and gave me) this pin explained that it was in response to the popular subcultural slogan: “Growing up is giving up.”
In a culture that fetishizes youth and perpetuates “glory days” mythology, that teaches us to fear and misunderstand the natural cycles of life, embracing one’s 30’s is a radical act.
The vision I have for my 30’s is to actualize all of the things that I talked about doing in my 20’s. I want to take inspiration from, and further cultivate, the best aspects of my youthful past. Simultaneously, I want to learn from the mistakes I’ve made, the low points of my personal continuum. This is not to say that it will be easy or that history won’t continue to occasionally repeat itself. My life will inevitably come full circle once again, but I am hopefully for what the next 360 degrees holds for me. Turning 30 is awesome. I am not giving up.
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Matt Dineen lives in Philadelphia, where he turned 30 on April 7, 2011. This essay is part of his 360 Months project, which features 30 essays by 30 different people about turning 30. Contact him at: passionsandsurvival(at)gmail(dot)com
Life really does come full circle sometimes. I guess this is no surprise since our lives are not single linear journeys of constant progress. We are on a continuum that ebbs and flows and our personal histories often have the pesky tendency to repeat themselves. Our current selves are an amalgamation of all of our ups and downs, and the journey we’re on is a complex one.
On the cusp of 30, I feel like I’m 15 again. Half a lifetime ago I spent the summer washing dishes at Nonnie’s Country Kitchen in Orleans, MA—my first job. I was paid under the table, in cash, to scrape the remains of chocolate chip pancakes larger than my face, scrub lipstick stains off coffee mugs, and listen to the classic rock station that the sexist cook would sing along to all morning. It feels like yesterday.
Actually, it was yesterday.
I arrived at my new job to discover an envelope in the back room with my name scrawled in full-caps: MATT. It contained a (small) pile of 20 dollar bills for my previous week of labor. After counting the bills, I stuffed the envelope in my backpack, grabbed a glass of ice water, and squeezed into a fresh pair of bright-yellow dishwashing gloves. Something was different though.
Instead of elderly retirees filling Nonnie’s counter (and inhaling her second-hand Lucky Strike smoke), there were tables full of people gazing into laptop computers, sipping lattes and eating pasta salad. Instead of AC/DC and Van Halen on the transistor radio in the back, Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire were playing on an iPod through the surround-sound speakers of the café. Everything has changed. But as I stood in front of the industrial sink scrubbing lipstick off a coffee mug it hit me that, actually, everything has stayed the same. In one week, I will be a 30 year old dishwasher with a college degree.
How has my life reverted to this, 15 years later?
It would be pretty easy to wake up on the morning of my 30th birthday in despair that my life is not going anywhere; paralyzed by an internalized classism, making me feel like an utter failure of a human being. Luckily, I have dedicated a lot of my time since school to analyzing, rejecting, and documenting alternatives to the dominant culture that defines people by what they do for money, first and foremost. I have spent more than half of a decade now interviewing activists and artists about the dilemma of following their passions, doing what they truly love, while surviving in a cutthroat capitalist society. So I have thought about this stuff a lot.
Over the years, when people I meet ask me, “What do you do?” the answer is always complicated. “Well,” I’ll reply. “It depends what you mean.” We are all so much more than our wage jobs. We are complex, multidimensional creatures. And this should be celebrated.
As I approach 30, I think back to that requisite thought exercise throughout many of our childhoods: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Is this it? Am I grown up now? At one point, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. Apparently I told my mother (who was 29 when she had me) that I would become rich as a Major League star and buy her a house. She lovingly reminds me of this broken promise every now and then. Sorry mom!
It has been essential for me to talk to people who have spent their lives redefining what success means—prioritizing happiness and community over the accumulation of wealth and power. This is also true of the aging process.
In my mid- to late-20’s it was really inspiring to talk to people in their 30’s who were truly embracing getting older. Actually, I have found that if you ask people who have passed the 30 year milestone, almost across the board they will talk about how much better life is than in their 20’s. So why is it then that many twenty-somethings in our society are so scared of this moment?
I wear a pin on my jacket that reads: “Growing up is awesome!” The person that created (and gave me) this pin explained that it was in response to the popular subcultural slogan: “Growing up is giving up.”
In a culture that fetishizes youth and perpetuates “glory days” mythology, that teaches us to fear and misunderstand the natural cycles of life, embracing one’s 30’s is a radical act.
The vision I have for my 30’s is to actualize all of the things that I talked about doing in my 20’s. I want to take inspiration from, and further cultivate, the best aspects of my youthful past. Simultaneously, I want to learn from the mistakes I’ve made, the low points of my personal continuum. This is not to say that it will be easy or that history won’t continue to occasionally repeat itself. My life will inevitably come full circle once again, but I am hopefully for what the next 360 degrees holds for me. Turning 30 is awesome. I am not giving up.
---
Matt Dineen lives in Philadelphia, where he turned 30 on April 7, 2011. This essay is part of his 360 Months project, which features 30 essays by 30 different people about turning 30. Contact him at: passionsandsurvival(at)gmail(dot)com
Sunday, March 27, 2011
The Return of Honest Living
A couple years ago now, I shared a similar project to this called Honest Living by Isabell Moore. The mission was to explore various strategies and issues for activists around "striving towards an 'honest' living in a 'dishonest' world." After a break to focus on teaching, Honest Living has returned!
Check out the new post on academia and public workers. I look forward to reading more from this important project.
Check out the new post on academia and public workers. I look forward to reading more from this important project.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Collective Impact
Growing up next door to each other and being just one month apart, I have known Tyler Gumpright my entire life. Recently he began participating in a project with some buddies from college called Collective Impact. The first post explains:
I'm launching a hub that will allow us to motivate, encourage, and advise one another. It will be a forum for shared experience, thought, and innovation. As much as we are willing to contribute them, our collective energies can make a significant impact not only in each other's lives, but throughout society.
I recognize tremendous untapped potential in every one of us. Inevitably, it is sometimes wasted. It is lost to distractions; television, Angry Birds, facebook, football/hockey season, etc. We have all spent several hours in the past week on these. Distraction, procrastination, and laziness sap so much unproductive time. I know that every one of us still has lofty hopes for ourselves.
Sadly, those hopes often just remain hopes, never coming to fruition, never even recorded. As we settle into adulthood, we are in danger of comfortable complacency. We have not become the heroes we hoped to become when we were young. Life is alright, though, and we make enough to pay all the bills (usually) and splurge on fun once in a while. We become homeowners. Family men. Account holders. Office Zombies. These are not all bad things, but they sap so much of our attention that little is left for our dreams.
What was the last truly remarkable project that you pursued wholeheartedly? Can you easily think of three things you did in the past year that you are most proud of? Aren't you capable of so much more?
Here's to actualizing our biggest dreams despite the challenges of the current society. Check it out yourself at: collectiveimpact.blogspot.com
I'm launching a hub that will allow us to motivate, encourage, and advise one another. It will be a forum for shared experience, thought, and innovation. As much as we are willing to contribute them, our collective energies can make a significant impact not only in each other's lives, but throughout society.
I recognize tremendous untapped potential in every one of us. Inevitably, it is sometimes wasted. It is lost to distractions; television, Angry Birds, facebook, football/hockey season, etc. We have all spent several hours in the past week on these. Distraction, procrastination, and laziness sap so much unproductive time. I know that every one of us still has lofty hopes for ourselves.
Sadly, those hopes often just remain hopes, never coming to fruition, never even recorded. As we settle into adulthood, we are in danger of comfortable complacency. We have not become the heroes we hoped to become when we were young. Life is alright, though, and we make enough to pay all the bills (usually) and splurge on fun once in a while. We become homeowners. Family men. Account holders. Office Zombies. These are not all bad things, but they sap so much of our attention that little is left for our dreams.
What was the last truly remarkable project that you pursued wholeheartedly? Can you easily think of three things you did in the past year that you are most proud of? Aren't you capable of so much more?
Here's to actualizing our biggest dreams despite the challenges of the current society. Check it out yourself at: collectiveimpact.blogspot.com
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Permanent Autonomous Zone: A conversation with zine writers Erick Lyle and Jeff Miller
by Matt Dineen
What if our lives were filled with moments of liberation from the everyday? Is it possible to carve out spaces that challenge the dominant logic of the market, where we can pursue meaningful work and actualize our dreams? This most daunting task must begin with conversations between co-conspirators.
At the end of this past summer, I had the pleasure of sharing such a conversation with two writers who were on a tour together with their recently-published books. Erick Lyle and Jeff Miller both come out of the underground zine community and had just released anthologies of their past work, Lyle’s SCAM and Miller’s Ghost Pine. The morning after their reading at the Wooden Shoe anarchist bookstore in Philadelphia, I escaped my stifling wage job—still on the clock—to interview them in a park in West Philly.
Do you guys want to start by talking about the tour you’re on? You did an event here in Philly last night. You’re heading to Baltimore tonight. Can you talk about the idea behind the tour and also your books that have come out recently?Jeff Miller: Originally, the tour was my idea. I’ve been doing a lot of promotional events for the book in Canada and I kind of wanted to break out a little bit. I also feel like there’s not enough cross-border, cross-pollination of zines. Erick came up to Canada in 2008 and we did a couple shows and that went really well. I just thought it would be nice to meet some people in the States, try to sell some books, tell some stories, and travel around a little bit.
Erick Lyle: Yeah, it’s neighborly to get together like this—fostering international camaraderie. Jeff’s anthology came out pretty much the same time as mine. We’ve been pen pals for almost 10 years, so the timing was pretty good. I probably wouldn’t have gone on this trip, honestly, but since Jeff was gonna do it—it just seemed like a good idea. Like, “Oh that would be fun to team up on this.” And the timing was great because I have the SCAM anthology out now as well.
I think what’s cool about this tour is that we’ve read with a lot of different folks, and it’s been all over the map. Like in New York we read with Cristy Road and Mike Taylor who have made zines for years, but also with this guy Colin who does a blog about how he’s gonna eat pizza in every pizzeria in New York City. Or with this woman Eleanor Whitney who writes about art and design, and also food. We are reading with China Martins tonight who has done a zine for years about being a mom. So I think what pulls it all together, what it all has in common, is that it is the underground press; it is indie press. And we’re reading in indie stores, and that this is about supporting underground and independent alternatives. That it’s a vital thing to do, and that there is a community that exists outside of the mainstream that’s trying to continue this tradition of independent stores.
So like last night, we read here in Philly at the Wooden Shoe which is a place that’s been carrying my zine for like 20 years. They’ve got a great new space. It’s better than ever, so it’s nice to see that. Just trying to be a part of that all the time is really important to me. We’re going to Red Emma’s in Baltimore which is a worker-owned place. So that’s pretty cool.
And it’s interesting because Jeff works at a bookstore in Canada. I have worked at a bookstore before, and I’ve seen the corporate tour where the author comes and there’s 2 people. And our shows have been pretty packed, I would say. There is a vitality in the independent scene. It is a real deal. So it’s cool to see that. We’ve put a lot of work into this over the years and work’s coming back to us too. We’re enriching it together.
JM: I feel like one of the best things about being independent is that you’re resourceful enough and economic enough to get around and there’s a community of people that will help you get around and come out and support. And yeah, it feels really good to know that more people came out last night at the Wooden Shoe than come out when we do an event at the kind of corporate bookstore where I work in Canada. There, some best-selling author will read and there’s like 3 people, 4 people. So, like Erick was saying, it is a real demonstration of independent community, and not necessarily just a zine community. I think we’re really blessed to have a lot of overlap with music communities and activist scenes. People love to come out and hear stories. Our lives are so under-represented by current media and current literature that when independent voices come along, people respond strongly and it’s really amazing.
Well Jeff, you mentioned that you’ll be going back to Montreal to work at this bookstore. I was wondering if you could both talk about life after this tour in terms of how you’re supporting yourselves while continuing to create your art and everything?
EL: Well, I recently moved to New York City—I guess it’s been about a year—and, theoretically, it’s the most expensive city in the entire country. Although I moved from San Francisco and I feel that San Francisco is even more expensive in a certain way. So, it’s a hustle. But I don’t know, for me, it’s a lot of tried and true methods; like I steal all my groceries. New York is full of plentiful, dumpstered food. I was just talking about this with a friend at this cafe here. He was like, “Yeah man, last time I was in New York I dumpstered a bike and a bag of weed.” [Laughs] People are so rich they’re like, “I got a bike at home. I’m just gonna throw this one away. I don’t feel like riding it today.” [Laughs] So there’s plenty of excess, and that’s what we’ve been living off all these years. There’s plenty of copy scams to get the zines printed. We go on tour and sell the zines. So that’s a profit. But I don’t know. It’s the same old thing: scraping by, selling writing here and there.
The stuff that’s in this new issue of SCAM was originally freelance journalism that was printed in a newspaper and I wanted to re-present it to the punk scene. It was in the San Francisco Bay Guardian so I knew people weren’t gonna know about it. The usual SCAM readers weren’t gonna see that so I wanted to get it out to the bigger punk scene.
But it’s the same old scam, basically. Making it happen in any way. I just live in such a way that my priority is time, more than money. And that’s always been what SCAM magazine is about to me: the idea that you’re taking your life back, to devote it to the things that you want to do. That’s its own kind of work but it feels meaningful to me. I basically just spend all my time writing and doing things as much as I can for the creative stuff I want to do. And I’m always broke because of it, but I feel pretty good about it.
Oh also, the government of Canada pays me to not write zines. [Laughs]
JM: I don’t understand. [Laughs] Yeah, as far as money goes, it’s always been a struggle. But I feel like when you start monetizing the things that you care about, that’s when everything goes wrong, basically. If I were to say, “I’m gonna put, like, 50 hours into this zine and after I scam the copies I better make 10 dollars an hour.” If that’s your goal then you’re kind of doomed from the start. It’s just not gonna work out for you. So, I don’t know. It’s like Erick was saying, just living cheap and trying to keep as much time free as possible. I have a bunch of friends who are writers in Montreal and some of them have tried to find jobs where they can make enough money so that in the summer they have time to write or whatever. But I’ve always felt like that’s sort of a bad idea. The key, really, is to find a way to live on nothing. It gives you endurance as a writer if you’re scraping by somehow.
But yeah, in the 13 years of doing Ghost Pine it hasn’t been too much of a struggle. When you decide you want to do something you just have to fuckin’ do it and make it happen, despite all the obstacles that get thrown in your path. And maybe now it’s a lot easier just because I know the ins and outs of it through trial and error. And I’m more confident in myself, knowing that I can do it, pull it off and get better. So my advice would be just to accept being poor, strive on, and make whatever you need to make...
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The remainder of this conversation is published on Toward Freedom.
Matt Dineen lives and conspires in Philadelphia where he is part of the Wooden Shoe collective. He is also a publicist for radical activists and artists with Aid & Abet booking. You can write to him at: mattdineen@aidandabet.org and see things that he’s written and collected at: http://passionsandsurvival.blogspot.com
For more information about Erick Lyle and SCAM check out: http://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zines/3124/
For more information about Jeff Miller and Ghost Pine check out: http://ghostpine.wordpress.com/
What if our lives were filled with moments of liberation from the everyday? Is it possible to carve out spaces that challenge the dominant logic of the market, where we can pursue meaningful work and actualize our dreams? This most daunting task must begin with conversations between co-conspirators.
At the end of this past summer, I had the pleasure of sharing such a conversation with two writers who were on a tour together with their recently-published books. Erick Lyle and Jeff Miller both come out of the underground zine community and had just released anthologies of their past work, Lyle’s SCAM and Miller’s Ghost Pine. The morning after their reading at the Wooden Shoe anarchist bookstore in Philadelphia, I escaped my stifling wage job—still on the clock—to interview them in a park in West Philly.
Do you guys want to start by talking about the tour you’re on? You did an event here in Philly last night. You’re heading to Baltimore tonight. Can you talk about the idea behind the tour and also your books that have come out recently?Jeff Miller: Originally, the tour was my idea. I’ve been doing a lot of promotional events for the book in Canada and I kind of wanted to break out a little bit. I also feel like there’s not enough cross-border, cross-pollination of zines. Erick came up to Canada in 2008 and we did a couple shows and that went really well. I just thought it would be nice to meet some people in the States, try to sell some books, tell some stories, and travel around a little bit.
Erick Lyle: Yeah, it’s neighborly to get together like this—fostering international camaraderie. Jeff’s anthology came out pretty much the same time as mine. We’ve been pen pals for almost 10 years, so the timing was pretty good. I probably wouldn’t have gone on this trip, honestly, but since Jeff was gonna do it—it just seemed like a good idea. Like, “Oh that would be fun to team up on this.” And the timing was great because I have the SCAM anthology out now as well.
I think what’s cool about this tour is that we’ve read with a lot of different folks, and it’s been all over the map. Like in New York we read with Cristy Road and Mike Taylor who have made zines for years, but also with this guy Colin who does a blog about how he’s gonna eat pizza in every pizzeria in New York City. Or with this woman Eleanor Whitney who writes about art and design, and also food. We are reading with China Martins tonight who has done a zine for years about being a mom. So I think what pulls it all together, what it all has in common, is that it is the underground press; it is indie press. And we’re reading in indie stores, and that this is about supporting underground and independent alternatives. That it’s a vital thing to do, and that there is a community that exists outside of the mainstream that’s trying to continue this tradition of independent stores.
So like last night, we read here in Philly at the Wooden Shoe which is a place that’s been carrying my zine for like 20 years. They’ve got a great new space. It’s better than ever, so it’s nice to see that. Just trying to be a part of that all the time is really important to me. We’re going to Red Emma’s in Baltimore which is a worker-owned place. So that’s pretty cool.
And it’s interesting because Jeff works at a bookstore in Canada. I have worked at a bookstore before, and I’ve seen the corporate tour where the author comes and there’s 2 people. And our shows have been pretty packed, I would say. There is a vitality in the independent scene. It is a real deal. So it’s cool to see that. We’ve put a lot of work into this over the years and work’s coming back to us too. We’re enriching it together.
JM: I feel like one of the best things about being independent is that you’re resourceful enough and economic enough to get around and there’s a community of people that will help you get around and come out and support. And yeah, it feels really good to know that more people came out last night at the Wooden Shoe than come out when we do an event at the kind of corporate bookstore where I work in Canada. There, some best-selling author will read and there’s like 3 people, 4 people. So, like Erick was saying, it is a real demonstration of independent community, and not necessarily just a zine community. I think we’re really blessed to have a lot of overlap with music communities and activist scenes. People love to come out and hear stories. Our lives are so under-represented by current media and current literature that when independent voices come along, people respond strongly and it’s really amazing.
Well Jeff, you mentioned that you’ll be going back to Montreal to work at this bookstore. I was wondering if you could both talk about life after this tour in terms of how you’re supporting yourselves while continuing to create your art and everything?
EL: Well, I recently moved to New York City—I guess it’s been about a year—and, theoretically, it’s the most expensive city in the entire country. Although I moved from San Francisco and I feel that San Francisco is even more expensive in a certain way. So, it’s a hustle. But I don’t know, for me, it’s a lot of tried and true methods; like I steal all my groceries. New York is full of plentiful, dumpstered food. I was just talking about this with a friend at this cafe here. He was like, “Yeah man, last time I was in New York I dumpstered a bike and a bag of weed.” [Laughs] People are so rich they’re like, “I got a bike at home. I’m just gonna throw this one away. I don’t feel like riding it today.” [Laughs] So there’s plenty of excess, and that’s what we’ve been living off all these years. There’s plenty of copy scams to get the zines printed. We go on tour and sell the zines. So that’s a profit. But I don’t know. It’s the same old thing: scraping by, selling writing here and there.
The stuff that’s in this new issue of SCAM was originally freelance journalism that was printed in a newspaper and I wanted to re-present it to the punk scene. It was in the San Francisco Bay Guardian so I knew people weren’t gonna know about it. The usual SCAM readers weren’t gonna see that so I wanted to get it out to the bigger punk scene.
But it’s the same old scam, basically. Making it happen in any way. I just live in such a way that my priority is time, more than money. And that’s always been what SCAM magazine is about to me: the idea that you’re taking your life back, to devote it to the things that you want to do. That’s its own kind of work but it feels meaningful to me. I basically just spend all my time writing and doing things as much as I can for the creative stuff I want to do. And I’m always broke because of it, but I feel pretty good about it.
Oh also, the government of Canada pays me to not write zines. [Laughs]
JM: I don’t understand. [Laughs] Yeah, as far as money goes, it’s always been a struggle. But I feel like when you start monetizing the things that you care about, that’s when everything goes wrong, basically. If I were to say, “I’m gonna put, like, 50 hours into this zine and after I scam the copies I better make 10 dollars an hour.” If that’s your goal then you’re kind of doomed from the start. It’s just not gonna work out for you. So, I don’t know. It’s like Erick was saying, just living cheap and trying to keep as much time free as possible. I have a bunch of friends who are writers in Montreal and some of them have tried to find jobs where they can make enough money so that in the summer they have time to write or whatever. But I’ve always felt like that’s sort of a bad idea. The key, really, is to find a way to live on nothing. It gives you endurance as a writer if you’re scraping by somehow.
But yeah, in the 13 years of doing Ghost Pine it hasn’t been too much of a struggle. When you decide you want to do something you just have to fuckin’ do it and make it happen, despite all the obstacles that get thrown in your path. And maybe now it’s a lot easier just because I know the ins and outs of it through trial and error. And I’m more confident in myself, knowing that I can do it, pull it off and get better. So my advice would be just to accept being poor, strive on, and make whatever you need to make...
---
The remainder of this conversation is published on Toward Freedom.
Matt Dineen lives and conspires in Philadelphia where he is part of the Wooden Shoe collective. He is also a publicist for radical activists and artists with Aid & Abet booking. You can write to him at: mattdineen@aidandabet.org and see things that he’s written and collected at: http://passionsandsurvival.blogspot.com
For more information about Erick Lyle and SCAM check out: http://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zines/3124/
For more information about Jeff Miller and Ghost Pine check out: http://ghostpine.wordpress.com/
Friday, September 17, 2010
The Big Life Challenges Facing the 20-Something Generation
People in their 20s are taking longer to start careers and get married. What's going on?
By Aliza Bartfield
People in their 20s are taking a perplexingly long time to grow up these days -- at least that's the story we're hearing in the media. According to this narrative, young people are stuck in a phase of arrested development, moving in with their parents more often and committing to jobs and marriages later. Most recently, the notion that young people refuse to grow up is the premise for a widely discussed New York Times magazine cover story, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?”
The title alone is enough to put a 20-something-year-old on the defensive. In the piece, "growing up" is defined by five goals: finishing school, leaving home, financial independence, getting married and having kids. Apparently, we're taking much longer than the previous generation to fulfill these goals, and therefore are failing to enter true adulthood.
While author Robin Marantz Henig concedes in the piece that these milestones can be fulfilled out of order and some never fulfilled at all, she nevertheless insists that 20-somethings are taking too long to grow up. We are “slouching toward adulthood at an uneven pace,” she claims, and this seems to be cause for concern.
The article explores a theory put forth by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a psychology professor who believes that those of us in our 20s are forming a new stage of life. He chooses the term “Emerging Adulthood” for the fickle time between student life and independent adulthood. It’s a unique stage, according to Arnett, that requires careful examination. For 10 years, he has been advocating for Emerging Adulthood to be recognized as an official developmental stage.
Henig explains this would necessitate new social accommodations; attitude shifts and programs to prevent what might otherwise devolve into years of aimless meandering. Proposed solutions include expanding post-graduate options like the Peace Corps or City Year. (Although a year or two of service work may leave one rich in experience, the meager education award of under $6,000 is barely enough to pay for one semester of college. This doesn’t seem like an optimal step toward financial freedom in our 20s.)
The classification of these years as a stage suggests we are less evolved on an emotional level, and maybe even in our mental abilities, than those who are older or went through this time in prior generations. Even if that's true, doesn’t everyone progress emotionally over time? If, instead, we see the odd behavior young people exhibit as the result of economic, cultural and social changes we may have a better shot at some pragmatic solutions.
--
Read the rest of the article on Alternet.org
By Aliza Bartfield
People in their 20s are taking a perplexingly long time to grow up these days -- at least that's the story we're hearing in the media. According to this narrative, young people are stuck in a phase of arrested development, moving in with their parents more often and committing to jobs and marriages later. Most recently, the notion that young people refuse to grow up is the premise for a widely discussed New York Times magazine cover story, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?”
The title alone is enough to put a 20-something-year-old on the defensive. In the piece, "growing up" is defined by five goals: finishing school, leaving home, financial independence, getting married and having kids. Apparently, we're taking much longer than the previous generation to fulfill these goals, and therefore are failing to enter true adulthood.
While author Robin Marantz Henig concedes in the piece that these milestones can be fulfilled out of order and some never fulfilled at all, she nevertheless insists that 20-somethings are taking too long to grow up. We are “slouching toward adulthood at an uneven pace,” she claims, and this seems to be cause for concern.
The article explores a theory put forth by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a psychology professor who believes that those of us in our 20s are forming a new stage of life. He chooses the term “Emerging Adulthood” for the fickle time between student life and independent adulthood. It’s a unique stage, according to Arnett, that requires careful examination. For 10 years, he has been advocating for Emerging Adulthood to be recognized as an official developmental stage.
Henig explains this would necessitate new social accommodations; attitude shifts and programs to prevent what might otherwise devolve into years of aimless meandering. Proposed solutions include expanding post-graduate options like the Peace Corps or City Year. (Although a year or two of service work may leave one rich in experience, the meager education award of under $6,000 is barely enough to pay for one semester of college. This doesn’t seem like an optimal step toward financial freedom in our 20s.)
The classification of these years as a stage suggests we are less evolved on an emotional level, and maybe even in our mental abilities, than those who are older or went through this time in prior generations. Even if that's true, doesn’t everyone progress emotionally over time? If, instead, we see the odd behavior young people exhibit as the result of economic, cultural and social changes we may have a better shot at some pragmatic solutions.
--
Read the rest of the article on Alternet.org
Monday, August 23, 2010
Looking Back on Capitalism, in Haiku
By Matt Dineen
In the recent past
before the revolution
everyone worked.
Things were different
work was separate from meaning
work was meaningless.
Back then, some were rich
the rest were poor or in debt
work was survival.
Time was limited
true passions were not valued
they were just hobbies.
Greed and boredom ruled
imaginations suppressed
by clocks and bosses.
One year all that changed
seeds were planted all over
a new world was born.
We refused to work
wild dreams were cultivated
passions were realized.
Money disappeared
and life had meaning again
work was redefined.
We wake up each day
grateful of this great struggle
and what we now have.
---
Submitted to a collection, a "large-scale reimagining," proposed by Cleveland-based writer and activist Kate Sopko who writes, "We’re in new times now, and new times call for new myths that answer to the times, making sense of the world as we know it. So, I want to start asking people a question: what could you use a myth to explain for you?" Read more on her blog: Stewards of the Lost Lands.
Contact Matt Dineen at: passionsandsurvival@gmail.com
In the recent past
before the revolution
everyone worked.
Things were different
work was separate from meaning
work was meaningless.
Back then, some were rich
the rest were poor or in debt
work was survival.
Time was limited
true passions were not valued
they were just hobbies.
Greed and boredom ruled
imaginations suppressed
by clocks and bosses.
One year all that changed
seeds were planted all over
a new world was born.
We refused to work
wild dreams were cultivated
passions were realized.
Money disappeared
and life had meaning again
work was redefined.
We wake up each day
grateful of this great struggle
and what we now have.
---
Submitted to a collection, a "large-scale reimagining," proposed by Cleveland-based writer and activist Kate Sopko who writes, "We’re in new times now, and new times call for new myths that answer to the times, making sense of the world as we know it. So, I want to start asking people a question: what could you use a myth to explain for you?" Read more on her blog: Stewards of the Lost Lands.
Contact Matt Dineen at: passionsandsurvival@gmail.com
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Reorganizing the Workplace: Call for Submissions
Reposted from Briarpatch:
Queries due July 2, 2010
How can we reorganize our work - the means by which we sustain ourselves - to be more fulfilling, empowering and socially beneficial? What would a workplace that reflected our deepest values actually look like?
Briarpatch’s annual labour issue, “Reorganizing the Workplace” (Nov/Dec 2010), will explore alternative models for structuring workplaces. This theme is timely indeed, as Briarpatch itself is presently undergoing a shift to participatory economics and balanced job complexes in an effort to organize our workplace in a way that reflects our values of solidarity, self-management, cooperation and equality.
Especially at a time of economic uncertainty and ecological catastrophe, how are people within and beyond the labour movement responding in creative ways that change not just the balance of power in the workplace, but the nature of work itself?
If you’ve got something to contribute to this discussion, then we want to hear from you. We are looking for articles, essays, investigative reportage, news briefs, project profiles, interviews with luminary thinkers, reviews, poetry, humour, artwork & photography that shed light on issues related to workplace organization and activism. We are particularly interested in contributions informed by an anti-capitalist and anti-oppression analysis of labour and the workplace.
We also invite unions and other organizations who could use this issue of Briarpatch as an organizing/educational tool to get in touch to discuss opportunities for shared distribution, bulk issue orders and possible in-kind exchanges.
Possible topics include (but are no means limited to):
Please review our submission guidelines before submitting. Send your queries/submissions to editor AT briarpatchmagazine D0T com.
We reserve the right to edit your work (with your active involvement), and cannot guarantee publication.
Queries due July 2, 2010
How can we reorganize our work - the means by which we sustain ourselves - to be more fulfilling, empowering and socially beneficial? What would a workplace that reflected our deepest values actually look like?
Briarpatch’s annual labour issue, “Reorganizing the Workplace” (Nov/Dec 2010), will explore alternative models for structuring workplaces. This theme is timely indeed, as Briarpatch itself is presently undergoing a shift to participatory economics and balanced job complexes in an effort to organize our workplace in a way that reflects our values of solidarity, self-management, cooperation and equality.
Especially at a time of economic uncertainty and ecological catastrophe, how are people within and beyond the labour movement responding in creative ways that change not just the balance of power in the workplace, but the nature of work itself?
If you’ve got something to contribute to this discussion, then we want to hear from you. We are looking for articles, essays, investigative reportage, news briefs, project profiles, interviews with luminary thinkers, reviews, poetry, humour, artwork & photography that shed light on issues related to workplace organization and activism. We are particularly interested in contributions informed by an anti-capitalist and anti-oppression analysis of labour and the workplace.
We also invite unions and other organizations who could use this issue of Briarpatch as an organizing/educational tool to get in touch to discuss opportunities for shared distribution, bulk issue orders and possible in-kind exchanges.
Possible topics include (but are no means limited to):
- Case studies or profiles of alternative models for workplace organization, either locally or internationally;
- Creative responses to the recession, both within and outside the organized labour movement;
- Experiments in extricating ourselves from the capitalist economy through skill-sharing, mutual aid, bartering, local currencies, etc.;
- The non-profit industrial complex: the role of non-profits and service provision in social movements and the politics of working in these sectors;
- Organizing among migrant and undocumented workers, exclusion of migrant workers from Canadian labour laws and barriers to unionization;
- The crisis of child care in Canada;
- Challenges facing the labour movement, efforts to reinvigorate traditional approaches to labour organizing;
- The role of the labour movement in fostering international solidarity;
- Reviews of relevant books that tackle these or other related issues.
Please review our submission guidelines before submitting. Send your queries/submissions to editor AT briarpatchmagazine D0T com.
We reserve the right to edit your work (with your active involvement), and cannot guarantee publication.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Seeds of the New
A talk by Nowtopia author Chris Carlsson
"My whole work life, for years, was always characterized by the fact that I was doing something for money but I wasn't that--I was something else, usually quite a few other things. And I think that's a pretty characteristic experience for a lot of people in the last 20 to the 30 years. It's that our lives are split, in a really profound way, between how we survive in a capitalist world and what we do to feel fully engaged as human beings."
Listen HERE for a recording of a presentation by Chris Carlsson from Setember 1st, 2006, at Bluestockings in New York. Chris is discussing the book he was writing at the time, tentatively titled "The Seeds of the New," which was released by AK Press under the title "Nowtopia" in 2008. The talk was recorded by Stevphen Shukaitis.
"My whole work life, for years, was always characterized by the fact that I was doing something for money but I wasn't that--I was something else, usually quite a few other things. And I think that's a pretty characteristic experience for a lot of people in the last 20 to the 30 years. It's that our lives are split, in a really profound way, between how we survive in a capitalist world and what we do to feel fully engaged as human beings."
Listen HERE for a recording of a presentation by Chris Carlsson from Setember 1st, 2006, at Bluestockings in New York. Chris is discussing the book he was writing at the time, tentatively titled "The Seeds of the New," which was released by AK Press under the title "Nowtopia" in 2008. The talk was recorded by Stevphen Shukaitis.
Monday, March 08, 2010
Call for Submissions from the UK
Class (still) Matters*
This is an informal call-out for contributions for a zine/pamphlet I am putting together on class, it feels overdue, but also in good time, what with the recession and ever widening socio-economic inequality in the UK (and elsewhere); the use of class by political parties recently to try and win support in the forthcoming election; class stereotypes around how particular ‘classes’ feel about immigration; climate change policies that tend to involve raising prices, which in affect means that working class/poor people are asked to contribute and sacrifice more, but arguably benefit least, but also I am interested in less conventional explorations of class – class as a process, feeling etc.I am particularly interested in the loose themes outlined below, but I want to know what class means and feels like for you, in your words, pictures or however you express yourself.
-the relationship between economic and emotional scarcity
-notions of the ‘poverty mentality’
-intersections of class, race, gender, sexuality, nationality and so on, and experiences of inhabiting multiple marginalities
-being working class and in academia
-the need to prove oneself
-creativity and class/art and survival – i.e. staying in touch with your creativity when meeting basic needs are a struggle.
-class and the body -how class is worn/felt/affects how you use space.
-class and trauma – I am especially interested in notions of bodily remberance (the relationship between memories and flesh), how trauma lives on the skin and so on
-how you understand class/your class? i.e. is class a position or process, how does education effect ones class location etc?
As you can see this is all very rough, but meant merely as an impression of intentions and suggestions. If you are interested in contributing please contact me at: Sabr1na_s@yahoo.co.uk preferably by mid/late March to express interest or send contributions. In order to include as many contributions as possible I ask that contributions don’t exceed 4 pages. Thanks!
-Sabrina
* a nod to the wonderful Bell Hooks and her book Class Matters.
--
Reposted from Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Recession Diaries
Tales of Philly's young, educated and underemployed.
By Daniel Denvir
[Excerpted from the Philadelphia Weekly...]
Twenty- and 30-somethings are heading back to the basement in droves. According to a recent AFL-CIO report, about one in three workers under the age of 35 has been forced to move back in with their parents. Wall Street boosters and politicians may herald an economic recovery (despite the unemployment rate creeping past 10 percent or 17.5 percent if you include the underemployed and those who just gave up looking for work), but it’s more than clear that the so-called comeback has not trickled down to young people, who are more unemployed than at any time since the government started to keep track in 1948.
While people of color and the less educated are getting hit the hardest— 17.1 percent of black males are unemployed—things are quickly deteriorating for the college-educated work force. Experts say that one in five college graduates say they’re overqualified for their current jobs. It’s no surprise that I myself haven’t had the easiest time cobbling together a paycheck given that I’m somewhat blithely walking into a collapsing news industry. Many of my friends, however, young people with bachelors and graduate degrees and more reasonable goals, are struggling, too. Here in Philly, where the unemployment rate is just above the national average (11 percent in September), many of my peers—knocked way off their career paths—are joining countless others working in so-called survival jobs.
---
Daniel Denvir is a freelance writer independent journalist based in West Philly. He is a contributing writer at the Philadelphia Weekly and more can be found at http://www.danieldenvir.com/
Read the article in its entirety at: philadelphiaweekly.com
By Daniel Denvir
[Excerpted from the Philadelphia Weekly...]
Twenty- and 30-somethings are heading back to the basement in droves. According to a recent AFL-CIO report, about one in three workers under the age of 35 has been forced to move back in with their parents. Wall Street boosters and politicians may herald an economic recovery (despite the unemployment rate creeping past 10 percent or 17.5 percent if you include the underemployed and those who just gave up looking for work), but it’s more than clear that the so-called comeback has not trickled down to young people, who are more unemployed than at any time since the government started to keep track in 1948.
While people of color and the less educated are getting hit the hardest— 17.1 percent of black males are unemployed—things are quickly deteriorating for the college-educated work force. Experts say that one in five college graduates say they’re overqualified for their current jobs. It’s no surprise that I myself haven’t had the easiest time cobbling together a paycheck given that I’m somewhat blithely walking into a collapsing news industry. Many of my friends, however, young people with bachelors and graduate degrees and more reasonable goals, are struggling, too. Here in Philly, where the unemployment rate is just above the national average (11 percent in September), many of my peers—knocked way off their career paths—are joining countless others working in so-called survival jobs.
---
Daniel Denvir is a freelance writer independent journalist based in West Philly. He is a contributing writer at the Philadelphia Weekly and more can be found at http://www.danieldenvir.com/
Read the article in its entirety at: philadelphiaweekly.com
Sunday, September 20, 2009
"Redemptive Moments Without Disaster"
"We devote much of our lives to achieving certainty, safety, and comfort, but with them often comes ennui and a sense of meaninglessness; the meaning is in the struggle, or can be, and one of the complex questions for those who need not struggle for basic survival is how to engage passionately with goals and needs that keep such drive alive...Much in the marketplace urges us toward safety, comfort, and luxury--they can be bought--but purpose and meaning are less commidifiable phenomena, and a quest for them often sends seekers against the current of their society."
-Rebecca Solnit, from her latest book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
-Rebecca Solnit, from her latest book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Whittled Down Inspiration
I was delighted and honored to discover a really insightful post on my friend Libby Reinish's blog today. As you'll see below, she articulates her struggles (and recent breakthrough) with the dilemma that I have described here over the years, and graciously cites my old radio show and this project as an inspiration for her thoughts.
Libby was an early pioneer in the creation of Valley Free Radio before I joined the station's board of directors. She left the area to be the Prometheus Radio Project's full power-FM coordinator, guiding social justice organizations through the FCC bureaucracy to start their own radio stations. Now that I live 2 blocks down the street from Prometheus' office in West Philadelphia, Libby is Santa Fe, NM where she founded her own nonprofit, Santa Fe Community Gardens empowering local folks with the education and resources for growing their own food.
This self-described "community media activist turned urban homesteader" has also spent the last couple years, "[d]ocumenting my attempts at reducing the amount of trash I accumulate, the energy I waste, and the money I spend, while improving the food that I eat, honing some new skills, and learning to have fun without consuming so goddamn much," on her fantastic blog Whittled Down.
It's funny how inspiration works. After a few months of dormancy I have something to share with you all here, and an urgency to share more soon about my own experiences and observations. For now, here's Libby's...
-Matt Dineen
---
Passions and Survival
My friend Matt Dineen used to have a wonderful radio show on our local station, Valley Free Radio, called Passions and Survival. He still maintains a blog by the same name, which you should check out. His show explored what has been a central question in my life; how do we manage to follow our passions in life while managing to meet our needs for survival? I have struggled with this problem particularly since relocating to Santa Fe, where the job market was tight even before the recession and interesting organizations were hard to come by.
My initial solution was to separate passion and survival completely. I got a regular job so that I could make money to survive, and I endeavored to maintain my passions (which are outlined in detail on this blog) in my "spare time". As it turns out, this is a terrible plan. Being stuck in a chair in an office under the watchful eye of your boss, doing pointless work and getting treated like crap, is, as many of you are keenly aware, unbearable. It becomes more and more difficult to tend to your responsibilities at work because all you want to do is go home and plant things or play music or organize a gardening workshop or what have you.
My unhappiness at work was becoming so extreme and my desperation to escape so intense that I could barely stand it. What I did is probably a lot easier than for some people than it was for me. I quit. Without a plan (I really like plans). I had some savings that were supposed to go towards purchasing land, but I knew that if I didn't make this break now that before I knew it I would be a 30-year-old receptionist with a useless BA and no soul left in her body. I had no idea how much of this fund for my future would be exhausted as I held out for a job that meant something to me, but I was prepared to go the long haul.
As it turned out, I got lucky. Or the universe rewarded me for being brave. I found a wonderful new job that allows me to use my passions for history, media production, organizing, and even sustainable living. The position is part-time, and though that's a challenge financially, there are several benefits to working less than 40 hours a week. After a few months on the job, I can tell you that for me, running low on cash at the end of every pay period is much less stressful than feeling constantly drained at home and bored at work.
Working part time means that I always have enthusiasm and energy to bring to my job, because I don't feel overworked. When I need to put in extra hours to get something done, I don't think twice about it. Most days though, when 2 o'clock rolls around I breeze out of the office and find myself ready to get to work around the homestead by 3. Having more time and energy for projects at home means spending less money on stuff I can make for less, like bread, cheese, veggies, and household stuff like the bicycle wheel pot rack. Oh yeah, and there's more time for the nonprofit I run on the side. Are my savings growing faster than radishes, like they were when I worked 40 hours a week at a law firm? Hell no. Do I care? Yeah, it bugs me sometimes. But I think that I can find a way to save for my future without sacrificing my well-being in the present. With all this extra time on my hands, I just might be able to find ways to make a little extra cash without having to work for someone else. Now wouldn't that be nice.
---
Originally posted on Libby's blog Whittled Down which you can read here.
Libby was an early pioneer in the creation of Valley Free Radio before I joined the station's board of directors. She left the area to be the Prometheus Radio Project's full power-FM coordinator, guiding social justice organizations through the FCC bureaucracy to start their own radio stations. Now that I live 2 blocks down the street from Prometheus' office in West Philadelphia, Libby is Santa Fe, NM where she founded her own nonprofit, Santa Fe Community Gardens empowering local folks with the education and resources for growing their own food.
This self-described "community media activist turned urban homesteader" has also spent the last couple years, "[d]ocumenting my attempts at reducing the amount of trash I accumulate, the energy I waste, and the money I spend, while improving the food that I eat, honing some new skills, and learning to have fun without consuming so goddamn much," on her fantastic blog Whittled Down.
It's funny how inspiration works. After a few months of dormancy I have something to share with you all here, and an urgency to share more soon about my own experiences and observations. For now, here's Libby's...
-Matt Dineen
---
Passions and Survival
My friend Matt Dineen used to have a wonderful radio show on our local station, Valley Free Radio, called Passions and Survival. He still maintains a blog by the same name, which you should check out. His show explored what has been a central question in my life; how do we manage to follow our passions in life while managing to meet our needs for survival? I have struggled with this problem particularly since relocating to Santa Fe, where the job market was tight even before the recession and interesting organizations were hard to come by.
My initial solution was to separate passion and survival completely. I got a regular job so that I could make money to survive, and I endeavored to maintain my passions (which are outlined in detail on this blog) in my "spare time". As it turns out, this is a terrible plan. Being stuck in a chair in an office under the watchful eye of your boss, doing pointless work and getting treated like crap, is, as many of you are keenly aware, unbearable. It becomes more and more difficult to tend to your responsibilities at work because all you want to do is go home and plant things or play music or organize a gardening workshop or what have you.
My unhappiness at work was becoming so extreme and my desperation to escape so intense that I could barely stand it. What I did is probably a lot easier than for some people than it was for me. I quit. Without a plan (I really like plans). I had some savings that were supposed to go towards purchasing land, but I knew that if I didn't make this break now that before I knew it I would be a 30-year-old receptionist with a useless BA and no soul left in her body. I had no idea how much of this fund for my future would be exhausted as I held out for a job that meant something to me, but I was prepared to go the long haul.
As it turned out, I got lucky. Or the universe rewarded me for being brave. I found a wonderful new job that allows me to use my passions for history, media production, organizing, and even sustainable living. The position is part-time, and though that's a challenge financially, there are several benefits to working less than 40 hours a week. After a few months on the job, I can tell you that for me, running low on cash at the end of every pay period is much less stressful than feeling constantly drained at home and bored at work.
Working part time means that I always have enthusiasm and energy to bring to my job, because I don't feel overworked. When I need to put in extra hours to get something done, I don't think twice about it. Most days though, when 2 o'clock rolls around I breeze out of the office and find myself ready to get to work around the homestead by 3. Having more time and energy for projects at home means spending less money on stuff I can make for less, like bread, cheese, veggies, and household stuff like the bicycle wheel pot rack. Oh yeah, and there's more time for the nonprofit I run on the side. Are my savings growing faster than radishes, like they were when I worked 40 hours a week at a law firm? Hell no. Do I care? Yeah, it bugs me sometimes. But I think that I can find a way to save for my future without sacrificing my well-being in the present. With all this extra time on my hands, I just might be able to find ways to make a little extra cash without having to work for someone else. Now wouldn't that be nice.
---
Originally posted on Libby's blog Whittled Down which you can read here.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Solidarity in Slowmotion
By Charles Hale
Between sips of Miller High Life I glance down the length of the bar: there is a twenty-six year old PHD candidate in mathematics; the assistant to the dean of the graduate school in her early thirties; a girl with more tattoos than fingers; our 53 year old elder statesmen, and me a window cleaner.
It is Monday evening and after we finish this round of drinks at The Jubilee we will begin our weekly shuffleboard tournament. More than likely these same people will be in the same bar at least three more nights this week. None of us are married, only one of us has ever been, and none of us seem to feel any pressure to do so.
Outside observers may accuse us of living a prolonged college existence or wallowing in some kind of slacker lifestyle. Yet these people have serious work ethics, spending our energy on personal progress instead of professional goals. This is a choice we have made and continue to make despite sacrificing things like financial security and health insurance. Throughout this night and other nights the people that come by and say hello, are people who have, like I have, chosen this life of quiet autonomy and solidarity over doing what we have been told for a lifetime we ought to do.
To really understand how this life that I and so many around me here live is so different than what the American public thinks life ought to be, I only have to look at my brother. He graduated college a year after I did; during his sophomore year an older friend from church suggested he get a summer job with his company. My brother took him up on the offer and by the time he graduated they had offered him a professional position. He’s been promoted and transferred several times. He’s married to the girl he dated in college, they own a house, and in August they had their first child. Most of their college friends are married and have ‘real’ jobs. The ones that don’t are whispered about when they all get together. My brother has a good life and is happy.
His social network is small and doesn’t really grow. He probably has a couple of Bud Light’s in the fridge but he couldn’t tell you when he last had more than three in one night. His life is as normal to him as mine is to me. These are the choices he has made and most days he is pleased with them.
This essay is not about how much someone in this town can drink and on how many consecutive nights without being ostracized. This is not an essay about the ability to work below your qualification level without whispers of a life wasted. And this essay isn’t about me saying that my life is superior to someone else’s. There aren’t any bras being burned in front of the courthouse here, and no one is sticking flowers in the barrel of a gun, but this doesn’t mean the way people are living isn’t revolutionary. Slowly, significantly transformative.
Like the clothes I tend to wear and my general approach to life, this is a casual revolution. One without organization or manifesto and certainly without membership dues, or listservs. One’s position isn’t changed by the quality of their employment or any external factors. Actually there are no positions whatsoever. No one at the weekly shuffleboard tournament wants to live differently, and these lifestyle choices that have been made are made based on the only criteria that matter: their own pleasure, their own affiliation and affinity.
Some Mondays there are as few as six players in the tournament and some nights there are as many as 16, but the number of participants doesn’t much matter. Neither does winning, as I am often a loser, but hate to miss a week. This doesn’t mean that I’m a terrible shuffleboard player; if there is a beer or tequila shots on the line I can take out most anyone in the room. But the point of the shuffleboard tournament is a good time, is friendship, which always extends longer than the actual matches.
Winning doesn’t necessarily mean I advance to the next round of the tournament, winning is a condition of fulfilling the standards and expectations I place on myself. This is how the shuffleboard tournament and life in this town intersect. The people around here that I associate with are winning because they are fulfilling the standards and expectations they place on themselves. We have chosen to place personal progress above societal standards. We are living here; in the manner that we are because we have found what we are looking for. Of course there are some living here that are living lives nearly identical to mine because they haven’t found what they are looking for yet, and the difference in the two is merely in attitude.
There are people around here that leave, marry and have children, or get ‘real’ jobs and don’t get out as much. In the same breath we envy and pity them. The only standard on which we base our judgment of their decision is their contentment.
As a window cleaner my status falls somewhere between glorified housecleaner and unskilled construction worker. But it is the job I have chosen and the job I continue to show up for. I could wax nostalgic about the Zen qualities of the window cleaning profession, because they are there, but there are more significant reasons why I like my job. Almost everyday is different and I am able to see inside of people’s homes and lives without feeling like a stalker or voyeur. It is a job that allows me to be outside and away from a cubicle, and it is a job that I can leave at the job site. I could tell you that I take pride in clearing the view to the outside for my wealthy customers; that I hope giving them clean windows will change the way they view the world.
These things are more or less true, but they are not the reason I go to work everyday. I go because I see a pane of glass differently than anyone else in this town. I go because I’m good at it, because it is something I do as opposed to who I am. I go because I know what a worse job feels like; one that strangles the life out of you and replenishes you with nothing more than a meager paycheck. I go because it allows me to enjoy the more important things in life; like Monday evening shuffleboard tournaments.
---
This essay is anti-copyright but republished here by permission from the latest issue of Fifth Estate. More info at FifthEstate.org
Between sips of Miller High Life I glance down the length of the bar: there is a twenty-six year old PHD candidate in mathematics; the assistant to the dean of the graduate school in her early thirties; a girl with more tattoos than fingers; our 53 year old elder statesmen, and me a window cleaner.
It is Monday evening and after we finish this round of drinks at The Jubilee we will begin our weekly shuffleboard tournament. More than likely these same people will be in the same bar at least three more nights this week. None of us are married, only one of us has ever been, and none of us seem to feel any pressure to do so.
Outside observers may accuse us of living a prolonged college existence or wallowing in some kind of slacker lifestyle. Yet these people have serious work ethics, spending our energy on personal progress instead of professional goals. This is a choice we have made and continue to make despite sacrificing things like financial security and health insurance. Throughout this night and other nights the people that come by and say hello, are people who have, like I have, chosen this life of quiet autonomy and solidarity over doing what we have been told for a lifetime we ought to do.
To really understand how this life that I and so many around me here live is so different than what the American public thinks life ought to be, I only have to look at my brother. He graduated college a year after I did; during his sophomore year an older friend from church suggested he get a summer job with his company. My brother took him up on the offer and by the time he graduated they had offered him a professional position. He’s been promoted and transferred several times. He’s married to the girl he dated in college, they own a house, and in August they had their first child. Most of their college friends are married and have ‘real’ jobs. The ones that don’t are whispered about when they all get together. My brother has a good life and is happy.
His social network is small and doesn’t really grow. He probably has a couple of Bud Light’s in the fridge but he couldn’t tell you when he last had more than three in one night. His life is as normal to him as mine is to me. These are the choices he has made and most days he is pleased with them.
This essay is not about how much someone in this town can drink and on how many consecutive nights without being ostracized. This is not an essay about the ability to work below your qualification level without whispers of a life wasted. And this essay isn’t about me saying that my life is superior to someone else’s. There aren’t any bras being burned in front of the courthouse here, and no one is sticking flowers in the barrel of a gun, but this doesn’t mean the way people are living isn’t revolutionary. Slowly, significantly transformative.
Like the clothes I tend to wear and my general approach to life, this is a casual revolution. One without organization or manifesto and certainly without membership dues, or listservs. One’s position isn’t changed by the quality of their employment or any external factors. Actually there are no positions whatsoever. No one at the weekly shuffleboard tournament wants to live differently, and these lifestyle choices that have been made are made based on the only criteria that matter: their own pleasure, their own affiliation and affinity.
Some Mondays there are as few as six players in the tournament and some nights there are as many as 16, but the number of participants doesn’t much matter. Neither does winning, as I am often a loser, but hate to miss a week. This doesn’t mean that I’m a terrible shuffleboard player; if there is a beer or tequila shots on the line I can take out most anyone in the room. But the point of the shuffleboard tournament is a good time, is friendship, which always extends longer than the actual matches.
Winning doesn’t necessarily mean I advance to the next round of the tournament, winning is a condition of fulfilling the standards and expectations I place on myself. This is how the shuffleboard tournament and life in this town intersect. The people around here that I associate with are winning because they are fulfilling the standards and expectations they place on themselves. We have chosen to place personal progress above societal standards. We are living here; in the manner that we are because we have found what we are looking for. Of course there are some living here that are living lives nearly identical to mine because they haven’t found what they are looking for yet, and the difference in the two is merely in attitude.
There are people around here that leave, marry and have children, or get ‘real’ jobs and don’t get out as much. In the same breath we envy and pity them. The only standard on which we base our judgment of their decision is their contentment.
As a window cleaner my status falls somewhere between glorified housecleaner and unskilled construction worker. But it is the job I have chosen and the job I continue to show up for. I could wax nostalgic about the Zen qualities of the window cleaning profession, because they are there, but there are more significant reasons why I like my job. Almost everyday is different and I am able to see inside of people’s homes and lives without feeling like a stalker or voyeur. It is a job that allows me to be outside and away from a cubicle, and it is a job that I can leave at the job site. I could tell you that I take pride in clearing the view to the outside for my wealthy customers; that I hope giving them clean windows will change the way they view the world.
These things are more or less true, but they are not the reason I go to work everyday. I go because I see a pane of glass differently than anyone else in this town. I go because I’m good at it, because it is something I do as opposed to who I am. I go because I know what a worse job feels like; one that strangles the life out of you and replenishes you with nothing more than a meager paycheck. I go because it allows me to enjoy the more important things in life; like Monday evening shuffleboard tournaments.
---
This essay is anti-copyright but republished here by permission from the latest issue of Fifth Estate. More info at FifthEstate.org
Monday, April 27, 2009
Honest Living
This is from Isabell Moore about her project Honest Living which is asking some of the same questions as Passions and Survival. Please post and forward...
Hey Friends,
I've been working on a project called "Honest Living" throughout this semester, as my final project for school. Its about how people who care about social justice and radical social change figure out how to make a living. A lot of folks I know (myself included) struggle with what direction we want to go in our lives, and how to make a living within a system we don't agree with, in a way that is personally sustainable.
Please check out this new blog that I started and get involved in the conversation!
http://honestliving.wordpress.com/
I'm hoping that through the blog, we'll be able to have some conversations about processes that help people figure out issues of vocation, and that I'll be able to share some of what I've been learning as I've done research for school.
Also, I want to learn more about your experiences with work, money and social change. Please visit my survey at:
http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=HLJKM_198ea0e5
Thanks!!!
Your pal,
Isabell
Hey Friends,
I've been working on a project called "Honest Living" throughout this semester, as my final project for school. Its about how people who care about social justice and radical social change figure out how to make a living. A lot of folks I know (myself included) struggle with what direction we want to go in our lives, and how to make a living within a system we don't agree with, in a way that is personally sustainable.
Please check out this new blog that I started and get involved in the conversation!
http://honestliving.wordpress.com/
I'm hoping that through the blog, we'll be able to have some conversations about processes that help people figure out issues of vocation, and that I'll be able to share some of what I've been learning as I've done research for school.
Also, I want to learn more about your experiences with work, money and social change. Please visit my survey at:
http://www.kwiksurveys.com/
Thanks!!!
Your pal,
Isabell
Friday, April 17, 2009
Chasing Windmills (Revisited)
Recently, I have thought about an article I wrote 7 years ago. Not so much the article itself but larger issues it addressed. Inspired by a 1960's antiwar activist's charge of living one's life in a way that "does not make a mockery of one's values," I reflected on the prospects of continuing to lead a principled existence after college--in the compromising, shark-infested waters of the so-called "real world."
The article, first published in the student newspaper and then in Clamor, told the story of my interaction with an alumna of the college and her thesis which I discovered on the life of the legendary anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman. I contacted her through the alumni association and soon learned that she had become a high powered, corporate lawyer working in the Manhattan office of one the nation's largest firms. This experience forced me to address the privileges of my idealism and negotiate a sense of self-righteousness with the complex implications of my own post-collegiate future.
After turning 28 last week, I now find myself in that future moment that I pontificated about as a student. About as far away from being a corporate lawyer as one could possibly imagine, I think that 21 year-old me would be proud of my resiliency in avoiding compromise or "selling out" over the past 7 years. But there's nothing glorifying about being in denial of student loan debt that still looms over me or being uninsured and unemployed. Or is there?
The title of my article was appropriated from the project about Emma Goldman: Chasing Windmills. Just as Goldman quixotically pursued her anarchist ideal after being deported from the US because of her incendiary beliefs, I pledged to continue to live in accordance with my politics.
What actually evoked the 2002 article was learning that someone I grew up with also moved to Philadelphia recently and reflecting on the vastly different paths that led us both to this city. He moved here to begin a career upon completion of a PhD. I moved here for love and to simply start over. In true 21st Century fashion, I only know this through the Internet, where we are "friends" on a popular social networking website. My old little league teammate has proudly documented his new life here through photographs of his upscale apartment and backyard patio along with brief life updates such as the recent gourmet meal he consumed at a ristorante in his neighborhood.
There might be a river that seperates where we live here but perhaps the social and economic barriers that divide us are more artificial than my initial reaction would indicate. Maybe not. We have both been invited to attend our 10 year high school reunion next month, to reunite with people that neither of us have seen since then; who, unlike us, have not left since graduation. I think about getting in touch with him and catching up. It would be interesting to see where our experiences and aspirations overlap and where they diverge. If nothing else, I could ask him for a ride back home for the reunion.
-Matt Dineen
The article, first published in the student newspaper and then in Clamor, told the story of my interaction with an alumna of the college and her thesis which I discovered on the life of the legendary anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman. I contacted her through the alumni association and soon learned that she had become a high powered, corporate lawyer working in the Manhattan office of one the nation's largest firms. This experience forced me to address the privileges of my idealism and negotiate a sense of self-righteousness with the complex implications of my own post-collegiate future.
After turning 28 last week, I now find myself in that future moment that I pontificated about as a student. About as far away from being a corporate lawyer as one could possibly imagine, I think that 21 year-old me would be proud of my resiliency in avoiding compromise or "selling out" over the past 7 years. But there's nothing glorifying about being in denial of student loan debt that still looms over me or being uninsured and unemployed. Or is there?
The title of my article was appropriated from the project about Emma Goldman: Chasing Windmills. Just as Goldman quixotically pursued her anarchist ideal after being deported from the US because of her incendiary beliefs, I pledged to continue to live in accordance with my politics.
What actually evoked the 2002 article was learning that someone I grew up with also moved to Philadelphia recently and reflecting on the vastly different paths that led us both to this city. He moved here to begin a career upon completion of a PhD. I moved here for love and to simply start over. In true 21st Century fashion, I only know this through the Internet, where we are "friends" on a popular social networking website. My old little league teammate has proudly documented his new life here through photographs of his upscale apartment and backyard patio along with brief life updates such as the recent gourmet meal he consumed at a ristorante in his neighborhood.
There might be a river that seperates where we live here but perhaps the social and economic barriers that divide us are more artificial than my initial reaction would indicate. Maybe not. We have both been invited to attend our 10 year high school reunion next month, to reunite with people that neither of us have seen since then; who, unlike us, have not left since graduation. I think about getting in touch with him and catching up. It would be interesting to see where our experiences and aspirations overlap and where they diverge. If nothing else, I could ask him for a ride back home for the reunion.
-Matt Dineen
Friday, March 27, 2009
Philadelphia Chronicles: Part One
I moved to Philadelphia on New Year's Eve with no safety net. Well, at least not economically. During the 3 months that I've lived here I have faced a number of challenges as far as following my passions while also managing to get by goes. Much of this has been related to the process of transitioning from one place to settling in somewhere new. From the bureaucratic nightmares of forwarding mail and opening a bank account to just figuring out how to frugally access resources in an unfamiliar city.
Before I moved to Philly I planned on structuring an independent work week in which I would get up every morning (at least Monday through Friday) and spend the days working on my own projects: Booking tours and doing publicity work with Aid & Abet, the activist booking agency I started with former Clamor editor Jen Angel, along with publishing my own writing. The idea was that if I worked on this stuff as if it were a full-time job then I could get paid enough to sustain myself, to at least be able to scrape by without an hourly wage job working for someone else.
The first challenge that arose involved my previous hourly wage job working for someone else, in Massachusetts. I was depending on my final paycheck being mailed to me in a timely fashion, as my former boss had promised, in order to get by during my first month in Philly. What actually transpired is a long frustrating story that, most significantly, involved that promise being broken/forgotten and me not having access to the money that I worked hard for until early February; over one month after the fact.
In addition to the immediate material problems that this situation posed, it affected me psychologically in terms of my ability to work on my own projects full-time. With no money in sight I was distracted from fulfilling this goal. The economic imperatives of survival trumped my motivation and desires. With basic needs like access to food becoming uncertain, I began to delve into the dark, disempowering world of job hunting. But because my heart was never in it, because I never intended to begin my experience here working for someone else, this process simultaneously impeded my own projects and only served to perpetuate my lack of income.
This brings up larger systemic challenges that I have been confronted with in this new city: The cultural and economic pressure to conform to the capitalist work ethic along with the dominant definitions of work and employment. Because our identities in the US are so shaped by our occupations, it's hard not to internalize a certain amount of shame around "unemployment." This is the case even as we struggle to redefine what work means by devoting endless hours to the things we are passionate about--often for little or no money. It can involve more risk than most folks are able to take though, as debts multiple or we become ostracized by family members and peers, among countless additional challenges. The system is designed to prevent many of us from even attempting to engage in new ways of living and working.
I continue to struggle with this especially amidst the economic crisis that seems to be profoundly affecting this city and the entire world. My work booking tours and writing still has not been able to provide me with enough money to live, but that continues to be the goal.
-Matt Dineen
Before I moved to Philly I planned on structuring an independent work week in which I would get up every morning (at least Monday through Friday) and spend the days working on my own projects: Booking tours and doing publicity work with Aid & Abet, the activist booking agency I started with former Clamor editor Jen Angel, along with publishing my own writing. The idea was that if I worked on this stuff as if it were a full-time job then I could get paid enough to sustain myself, to at least be able to scrape by without an hourly wage job working for someone else.
The first challenge that arose involved my previous hourly wage job working for someone else, in Massachusetts. I was depending on my final paycheck being mailed to me in a timely fashion, as my former boss had promised, in order to get by during my first month in Philly. What actually transpired is a long frustrating story that, most significantly, involved that promise being broken/forgotten and me not having access to the money that I worked hard for until early February; over one month after the fact.
In addition to the immediate material problems that this situation posed, it affected me psychologically in terms of my ability to work on my own projects full-time. With no money in sight I was distracted from fulfilling this goal. The economic imperatives of survival trumped my motivation and desires. With basic needs like access to food becoming uncertain, I began to delve into the dark, disempowering world of job hunting. But because my heart was never in it, because I never intended to begin my experience here working for someone else, this process simultaneously impeded my own projects and only served to perpetuate my lack of income.
This brings up larger systemic challenges that I have been confronted with in this new city: The cultural and economic pressure to conform to the capitalist work ethic along with the dominant definitions of work and employment. Because our identities in the US are so shaped by our occupations, it's hard not to internalize a certain amount of shame around "unemployment." This is the case even as we struggle to redefine what work means by devoting endless hours to the things we are passionate about--often for little or no money. It can involve more risk than most folks are able to take though, as debts multiple or we become ostracized by family members and peers, among countless additional challenges. The system is designed to prevent many of us from even attempting to engage in new ways of living and working.
I continue to struggle with this especially amidst the economic crisis that seems to be profoundly affecting this city and the entire world. My work booking tours and writing still has not been able to provide me with enough money to live, but that continues to be the goal.
-Matt Dineen
Friday, March 20, 2009
Update and 'Downward Mobility' Story
Hello everybody. First of all, I just want to announce that I will be updating this "blog" more often now. In fact, my goal is to post something new every Friday...starting today! So make sure to check back again next week for the next installment. It will be a mix of: my personal reflections on a variety of issues related to this topic of surviving under capitalism while simultaneously struggling to actualize my passions, what I truly want to be doing with my life; transcribed interviews with other folks discussing their experiences with this dilemma; and other essays and conversations that I find relevant to this project.
I have been living in Philadelphia since the final day of 2008 and have a lot to share about my experience here. That will likely be the theme of next week's post. For now, I just want to share one short story about something that happened recently...
In early February, I went back to Massachusetts with a friend who also recently moved to Philly from there. On the ride back we were talking about a cafe in my neighborhood here where a lot of punks and activists hang out and she mentioned the one time that she had been. She overheard a frustrating conversation some folks were having that inspired her to write some grafitti in the bathroom (where chalk to write on the walls is provided) about "downward mobility."
When I got back I discovered, and appreciated, what she wrote. Then a couple weeks later, I came across an essay on the excellent website Enough, written by its co-founder Tyrone Boucher, that was inspired by my friend's grafitti! I got in touch with Tyrone, who apparently lives in the same neighborhood as me, and shared this connection. We are meeting up for coffee next week to discuss issues around wealth, privilege, and "the personal politics of resisting capitalism." I'm obsessed with the potential of ideas spreading, and how they are like seeds being planted. We hope that they grow into something bigger eventually, beyond just words on a screen or a bathroom wall...
-Matt Dineen
I have been living in Philadelphia since the final day of 2008 and have a lot to share about my experience here. That will likely be the theme of next week's post. For now, I just want to share one short story about something that happened recently...
In early February, I went back to Massachusetts with a friend who also recently moved to Philly from there. On the ride back we were talking about a cafe in my neighborhood here where a lot of punks and activists hang out and she mentioned the one time that she had been. She overheard a frustrating conversation some folks were having that inspired her to write some grafitti in the bathroom (where chalk to write on the walls is provided) about "downward mobility."
When I got back I discovered, and appreciated, what she wrote. Then a couple weeks later, I came across an essay on the excellent website Enough, written by its co-founder Tyrone Boucher, that was inspired by my friend's grafitti! I got in touch with Tyrone, who apparently lives in the same neighborhood as me, and shared this connection. We are meeting up for coffee next week to discuss issues around wealth, privilege, and "the personal politics of resisting capitalism." I'm obsessed with the potential of ideas spreading, and how they are like seeds being planted. We hope that they grow into something bigger eventually, beyond just words on a screen or a bathroom wall...
-Matt Dineen
Monday, January 05, 2009
Final Episode of "Passions and Survival" on VFR
After nearly 3 years, Matt Dineen produced the final episode of Passions and Survival on Valley Free Radio WXOJ-LP in Northampton, MA on Monday December 29th. Since January 2006, the program explored the collective dilemma of following our passions while surviving and transforming capitalist society, mostly in conversation with amazing activists and artists in Western Mass. Listen to the recording here!
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