Amanda Palmer commands attention. The singer-songwriter-blogger-provocateur, known for pushing boundaries in both her art and her lifestyle, made international headlines this year when she raised nearly $1.2 million via Kickstarter (she’d asked for $100k) from nearly 25,000 fans who pre-ordered her new album, Theatre Is Evil.
But the former street performer, then Dresden Dolls frontwoman, now solo artist hit a bump the week her world tour kicked off. She revealed plans to crowdsource additional local backup musicians in each tour stop, offering to pay them in hugs, merchandise and beer per her custom. Bitter and angry criticism ensued (she eventually promised to pay her local collaborators in cash). And it's interesting to consider why. As Laurie Coots suggests: "The idea was heckled because we didn't understand the value exchange -- the whole idea of asking the crowd for what you need when you need it and not asking for more or less."
TED2013 offers an interesting presentation by musician Amanda Palmer on the importance and art of asking and receiving.
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Today culminates another National Day of Unplugging, sponsored by the Sabbath Manifesto. It encourages people to take a 24 hour break (sunset to sunset) from technology. They also are posting photos of people holding up signs reading their completion of "I unplug to..." The San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate challenges folks to go a step father, however, and make a more long-term change. From the National Day of Unplugging site: Do you have multiple cell phones? Take your ipad to the beach on vacation? Ever find it hard to get through a conversation without posting an update to Facebook? Is your computer always on? Caille Millner writes a challenging article titled, "The real reason some won't take the bus." She talks about distinctions between forms of public transportation in San Francisco, and why many rationalize away why they avoid the public buses. I watch people's faces when they see me waiting at a bus stop. Many of them, especially drivers, look at me like I'm doing something vaguely unsavory - like I'm drinking out of a paper bag or flashing "designer" watches for sale.... If this is true for any of us Christians, what does this mean when we follow Jesus, who famously hung out with the poor and always advocated for them?
Photo by lensovet on Wikipedia. Sojourners reports on an ecumenical Christian community (including Lutherans, Catholics, and Mennonites) in Minneapolis who have covenanted to pay a voluntary "tax" on their gas purchases. They collectively decide where the money will be contributed. The photo on the left, by Andreas Solberg, shows gas prices in Norway. Gas prices outside the United States are significantly higher. Why intentionally pay more for gas than it costs? According to CSM members, this is precisely the point: The price of gas in the U.S. doesn’t reflect the actual costs that U.S. society and the global community incur as a result of the country’s dependence on oil. Those costs include fossil fuel’s contributions to air pollution and global warming. Also hidden at the pump are the costs of U.S. strategies to maintain an inexpensive supply of oil, often through political or military interventions in oil-producing regions—not to mention $4 billion a year in tax credits and subsidies to Big Oil. Grist.com has published an interview with Elizabeth Kline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. Kline outlines how the clothing industry and shopping has fundamentally changed, with far-ranging effects we don't realize.
"[S]he set out on a nearly three-year journey behind the scenes of the fashion industry, traveling from sweatshops in China to overflowing Goodwills to a mostly shuttered New York garment district haunted by ghosts of U.S. industry’s past. The resulting book... is a revealing look at how fashion arrived at where it is today. Before you write off apparel as low-hanging Fruit of the Loom, keep in mind that clothing is easily the second largest consumer sector, after food." Newsweek reports on new research about how technology and our online activity contributes to loneliness, depression, and compulsive behavior. "The first good, peer-reviewed research is emerging, and the picture is much gloomier than the trumpet blasts of Web utopians have allowed. The current incarnation of the Internet—portable, social, accelerated, and all-pervasive—may be making us not just dumber or lonelier but more depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders, even outright psychotic. Our digitized minds can scan like those of drug addicts, and normal people are breaking down in sad and seemingly new ways." "People tell her that their phones and laptops are the 'place for hope' in their lives, the 'place where sweetness comes from.' Children describe mothers and fathers unavailable in profound ways, present and yet not there at all. 'Mothers are now breastfeeding and bottle-feeding their babies as they text,' she told the American Psychological Association last summer. 'A mother made tense by text messages is going to be experienced as tense by the child. And that child is vulnerable to interpreting that tension as coming from within the relationship with the mother. This is something that needs to be watched very closely.' She added, 'Technology can make us forget important things we know about life.'" The Boston Globe reports on a study where a team of UCLA anthropologists and archeologists studied 32 middle-class Los Angeles families over four years: "The rise of Costco and similar stores has prompted so much stockpiling — you never know when you’ll need 600 Dixie cups or a 50-pound bag of sugar — that three out of four garages are too full to hold cars." "Managing the volume of possessions is such a crushing problem in many homes that it elevates levels of stress hormones for mothers." "Even families who invested in outdoor décor and improvements were too busy to go outside and enjoy their new decks." "Most families rely heavily on convenience foods even though all those frozen stir-frys and pot stickers saved them only about 11 minutes per meal." "A refrigerator door cluttered with magnets, calendars, family photos, phone numbers, and sports schedules generally indicates the rest of the home will be in a similarly chaotic state." Read more... |