sacred sticks

I find Dougherty's yard works intriguing in many ways, as play itself, as garden craft, as art that embodies the ephemerality of play capturing the wildness of nature for a short time in the stories and techniques of cultural give and take. The recumbent osage orange of la Gabelle has its sacred counterpart in a Mississippi pecan tree, pulled from the earth by a storm but surviving ship-like, parallel with its earthen dock, half its roots exposed , limbs still bearing fruit even as children walked casually among its vertical branches, up into the prow of its canopy. "Be It Ever So Humble" in Savannah reminds me of garconnieres (would it if not in the marshy, humid south?), or perhaps the more modest but secret and equally sacrosanct suburban treehouse. "Spin Offs" look like tiny tornadoes tearing away at the fortress-like architectural turrets of DeCordova. All these works remind me of the alternate realities created in child's play, those imaginary worlds formed in and of nature beyond the reach of adults.

(with apologies for the late posting)

Irland Response LATE!

Sorry forgot to post this. 

Do you accept late work, Catherine?

Sandra Postal's introduction sounds like a middle school paper, constant "we..." 

Anyways I like Basia Irland's ideas but she must be a scientist or is she just crazy about research, how can she study water so intently?  

I really like the picture of all the bottles of water, it is so captivating knowing they are full of water from so far away from each other.  Their close proximity on the shelf is great, and yet they are water which is so fluid and if combined would become one and thus unable to separate.

I really liked that the waters we then returned to a water source but not their own, it defiantly underlines that cyclical cycle.  It creates this beautiful feeling of oneness.

Response to Yardworking

Patrick Dougherty

Yardworking

I liked his analogy of a seamstress turned sculptor to him a woodsman turned sculptor.  I think its interesting to be able to see what else besides art interests an artist, through their art. 

I find it interesting that he thinks of his work as wild in concept in the wild, although it on another level cannot be wild, since he transforms it.  I love when he calls his work at La Gabelle a "primitive sapling temple," I didn't at first think of his work as primitive but I can see the comparison.

What an ingenious idea to work with found sticks on a large scale.  

I would love to experience one of Dougherty's sculptures.  I liked when they talked about drawing with sticks because of their shape.  I can defiantly see drawing aspect although he is obviously working in 3-D.

Victoria

yardwork

I love the idea that Patrick's works convey of the union of form and chaos. It is a metaphor for this wild crazy existence and its ever changing relationship with the constant of nature. Nature taking on a new form by the hands of chaos or is it the other way around? Perhaps a dance of taking turns leading by both.
I think the way he described them as being "shelters of transition" harmonized with what I think I am personally experiencing in my life in academic ways, personal ways, spiritual ways. Like an open-air cocoon. There is something about his work that is deeper than I can perhaps express, a knowing-ness I can't wrap around just yet. I can't tell if it is a very primal display of communication between himself and the elements around him, no matter where he is, or perhaps it is some kind of fantastical child's play that has been matured and honored by giving a visual voice to these young saplings. Baudelaire's "Morale du joujou" comes to mind. The child's toy introduces the child, just by its play, into the world of art, music, poetry, inviting it with its bright colors and curious shapes. The play of artists is very similar to the play of child with a toy. Perhaps all artists have an intimate memory/connection to their toys this way which lead them down the path of their rapture into creation. Daugherty makes us these brilliant toys to invite us to the world of nature and we become the creation in a sense, in our childlike awe.
I feel his work brings all the elements into play without literally doing so. Fluid like water, warm like fire, cool like the wind, with roots of the Earth.

Dougherty's Yardworking

There is a continuity in Patrick Dougherty's work that I love. His vision of himself as a woodsman first makes the relationship to his material, site-gathered trees and vines, more intimate.

The concept of "drawing in space" with materials found on site is marvelous. He says, "Sticks are both tree branch anda line with which to draw." That kind of 3-dimensional awareness is translated as he is working and making each installation site-specific allows for his energy to join with the site. I was particularlyl drawn to "Holy Rope" which is at Rinjyo-in Temple, Japan. The contrast that the author makes between Japanese artists and American artists is thought-provoking. The author talks about Japanese artists working with nature in "a precise and highly controlled way. ... This contrasts the way many North American artists conceive space as a free areas to work in." While I understand what the author is saying, I think there are many North American artists who approach their artwork with precision and control.

I also like the idea Dougherty presents on the transience of his work. It speaks to value, both intrinsic and concrete, and presents a question that I struggle with constantly. Who is the authority that assigns "value" to a piece of artwork, in essence, giving a definition of artwork.

the unfettered wild

“Certainly gardens are a kind of rendition of the unfettered wild” – P. Dougherty

Patrick Dougherty’s work inspires me. I love the way he articulates the cultivated and the wild. Also, his discussion of Japanese artists like Tadashi Kawamata and the Japanese perception of space is fascinating. What they have in common is an abiding connection to site and the tectonics of expression. I think there must be a similar voice running through Southwestern and traditional Japanese architecture.

I often find myself rebelling against those seemingly strangulated and coerced geometries that many architects, both of the land and the built environment create (for me?) …everything all in rows and boxes and crisp clean orthogonal lines. I love his idea of freeing the surface. Really! And of having it flow and surge with purposeful logic! These concepts remind me of the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and of our national psyche. There is freedom in the American back yard. It is a place to do what you want. Is there such a thing as a typology of experience not form?
Some would argue there is not. But if there is, Dougherty’s work and thoughts about tracing humanity’s presence with a process of familiarization is it.


I own a lot next to my house and one of the ways I got through my Master’s degree was by walking through it. There, within the chain link and block boundaries, was a tangled cultural landscape that exists here in New Mexico but is barely recognized as such- ragweed forests, piles of brush and pinon stumps, several appliances, a road sign and some old lawn chairs all clumped together and sprawling over a city lot barely contained by the wooden gate that kept blowing over. This was paradise to me. Something that the world of architecture, a world that I was immersed in night and day, couldn’t touch.

I also like the backyards visible from the train as it leaves Albuquerque traveling north. This is where living is familiar; messy some say. I listen to people’s comments during my journeys to Santa Fe.

On Irland

The Basia Irland article both inspired and bothered me. Water is a critically necessary component of our bodies. We can live much longer without food than we can without water. Dehydration can be lethal...and yet, microscopically little water ever leaves our planet. The water remains almost exclusively within our hydrological system.

I love Irland's concept for the water sculpture, Poem for Yemanja. In fact, I felt that all the constructions and installations were powerful and I would have loved to be able to walk through Desert Tides. I admire, and maybe even envy, the dedication of time it took to complete this series. I do not have the physical or economic freedom to even consider doing a project of that magnitude. Yet in Poem for Yemaja, I had a difficult time reconciling the near-obsessive need to return the water to the original source.

Returning the water to the system in which it was removed seemed both poetic and logical-completely in keeping with the conceptual image of global waters. Where my difficulty comes in is the logic in the dispersal method. The effects on the environment via traveling to different areas to disperse the water seems somewhat counter to the concept of global water. Much of of the article flows around ritual and narrative within Irland's work so the dispersal method would make sense within that context. But the symbolic blending of these waters into one global community might have made the point more concisely (albeit less dramatically).

Reading Irland

Yes. I suppose I am Irked at Irland. She expresses such wide ranging wise sentiments concerning the hydrologic cycle. She draws from many cultures and is clearly passionate about her work. But couldn't the arrangement of text and image be a little more sophisticated? It doesn't seem as delicate or intricate at all. I find the blocks of text and image scattered poorly reproduced and not cohesive. I want more. Or I want less with more skillful editing. Concinnity maybe? Her subject is like streams of molten glass woven with concepts and cultures into a remarkable mesh. However, concinnity - the act of skillful putting together is needed. Cannot her captioning, words, images be of the same thread as her subject matter? I love the image on the first page and yet graphically I am underwhelmed.

Re Eco Art / Esthetics of Sustainability / Topfer Cultural Politics / Silko ---Laurie

It's exciting to see these readings in print, as I’ve worked on verbal maps in some of this territory. The Cartesian split is a large geography underlying much of where we’ve gone awry in our relationship with the planet. So often in our culture we simply don’t touch the earth anymore, we think and talk instead of touch. She, or she/he is the largest maternal/parental context we have, and there is a reciprocal relationship with her. How would we survive as children if we didn’t touch our parents? And if one is a parent, one comes to know that as parents we are affirmed by the touch of our children. When we don’t touch earth, our relationship with her is broken.

I’m not quite sure how Silko’s sensibilities fit in here, but I think they do. Perhaps “the land telling the stories” is another way of saying the same thing as that the earth affirms us when we actually reach out and touch her. Once I worked with a wonderful fellow who’d been a chaplain for schizophrenics for much of his professional career, with whom our conversations---those of us in the program--- ranged over a wide spectrum. We somehow came to the subject of being in love with earth as if with a person. I’ve come to know this one-on-one love with Sandia Mountain. And when I had to wait a month to become the “owner” of the land I’m now stewarding behind the mountain, it came to me that the meaning of the wait was like that of a bride, because the moment of taking her was going to be a marriage. She was worth a long wait if that’s what it took.

The other thing I was so glad to see in the Lipton,Watts / Kurt / Topfer writings is the expressed recognition that esthetics and beauty are essentail in forging a new perspective on the environment. As part of the solar and renewable energy community, I’ve been amazed at the lack of attention to esthetics in RE installations (the color and sparkle of photovoltaics can be celebrated or ignored, as one simple example). The colors, textures, visual and kinetic attributes of RE devices as well as how they’re sited in a landscape are often utterly unexplored, in stark contrast to how thoroughly the technology has been developed and perfected.

Renewable energy installations can put us so palpably in touch with the elements. I’ve been monkeying with solar fountains for several years and can offer this example: With a solar fountain, if you put your shadow on the PV that runs the fountain pump----the pumps stops working. So there’s a kinetic relationship between sun and shadow, motion and pause that we create with our body. If we have esthetic objects in our homes that provide this kind of sensual information about what the sun is doing today, or water, or the wind, we touch the earth in a way that’s not available otherwise. It’s like making love with a mountain away from her, or knowing the wind by a kite string tied to your belt.

A question: What does “ratio” mean as used in the first sentence on pg 240 of the Kurt article?Am not familiar with the word used as it is here.

laurie here

Response

I have read the Delicacy and Strength of Lace and Ceremony I found them both very interesting. What you don't get from this short passage is how much the land plays a role in her works. It takes on its own character and without it you wouldn't have a story. There's so much I could talk about in terms of her work. Like Ceremony is very site specific, you can't take that story and put in any other setting and make a successful is it. So in that respect its a lot like site specific visual art.

My interest in the other reading just how much ecoart is out there and the difference between ecoart, land art and so on. I'm amazed that one object or idea can create such a positive affect. Even if its one person saying holy crap I didn't know that we produce so much waste and they try to change the work has done its job. Once again there's so much to talk about its all amazing to me.

Reading: Silko and Ecoart

Wow I love Leslie Marmon Silko! All of the few things I have read of hers are so powerful and true.  I adore the tone in which she so eloquently writes.  Her prose is so natural, delicate and powerful at the same time.

This past June I lost my mother to breast cancer, her comment on the Laguna view of death was so beautiful. 

"Death never ends feelings or relationships at Laguna.  If a dear one passes on, the love continues and it continues in both directions- it is required by the spirits of these dear ones who send blessings back to us, maybe with rain, or maybe with the feeling of continuity and closeness as well as with past memories...but here, it seems to me, we have an idea or memory or concept of a person enduring long after the actual, physical person is gone."  

And I loved that saying of a little knowledge of Plato is dangerous.  I personally dont care for Plato.  However when I hear small quotations of Plato, I find myself wondering why I didn't like him, then after more thought I recall that I do in-fact don't like Plato.

I liked reading about Ecoart and its various forms.  I really didn't have much of an idea of what I signed up for with this class, but I am so glad I am learning.  The Maintenance Art sound very intriguing, what comes to my mind is that stuff made out of Capri-Sun pouches.  I also liked the Silueta Series, that idea speaks on so many different levels.  Especially so now with global warming.

water & art

Reading round these pieces on water and art and (intentionally) flooded places, ice fishing and lost memories, I've returned to Basia Irland's hydrologic cycles, the fog, the dew, the iceberg, steam, and find myself considering the beauty of light and vapor as well as the beauty in fire and darkness. Is it a matter of perspective and time, of the near and the far, today or tomorrow that corrupts edenic desires to make life in a garden? Or is it just our nature to push and shove geology, hydrology, vegetation--is there any beauty in that process? What sort of garden are we making? Irland's emphasis on the ephemerality of slow, often unseen, processes in nature echoes the non-manifesto of slow food. Life as art in a water garden....

Ecoart; ecological art response

This reading really struck a chord...or maybe a little bit of a nerve with me. For many years now, I have felt like I have had to justify and defend the aesthetics of Ecoart along with a variety of experimental art/installations/non-canvas-and-oil artwork. I found myself muttering "yes!" and "exactly" while nodding vigorously. The article says "All in all, a constructive dialogue beneficial both to art and to sustainability can take place only when it is accepted that art has, ever since the start of Moderism, increasingly become a form of knowledge. Far from restricting itself to designing surfaces, art is involved in designing values, and increasing becoming a medium for exploration, cognition and for changing the world." The frustration is acute when I hear "That is not art!" And my question in return is "Who is the judge of what constitutes art?"

Once the basic skill set is learned for the creation of art, the development of the individual's art is up to the individual. I believe that artists also have an obligation to consider not only how their work physically impacts the environment (materials used and consumed and disposed of) but how the artist can impact the viewer. As an artist, it is tempting to present moralistic personal opinions. However, it becomes irrelevant if the viewer is alienated and defensive. To be able to present a concept that encourages thinking and contemplation is a difficult task. I really concur with the phrase, "...an area of theoretical and practical responsibility" (referring to Aesthetics of Sustainability). An artist to be responsible and congizant in all areas of the creation of art: the concept, the materials used (and disposal/reusing of byproducts and waste), where it is viewed and the impact on the environment and the viewer. I do believe that artists can (and should) try to make a difference.

Lois B

Water and EcoArt

Water; Water; the Joy of Water!
Being raised in desert water has always been a type of gold to me, and at many times in my life of more value than gold. The reading Life-sustaining Cycles brings highlights to the cycle of water, becoming award of this cycle is crucial to the understanding of the earth and its cycles that sustain us. The quote of Tao Te Ching; “The highest good is like water.” How very true this is to me; it cleanses not only the external of my body but the internal as well, it is one of our greatest gifts that are provided to us. The gathering and returning of the “Poem for Yermanja” was a beautiful piece to me. The joining of waters from other lands: WOW! Enough said, to say more it would take a book to explore all of my thoughts about this piece.
May times as humans we do not recognize the “value” of places till they are gone. Nor do we look at what damage we may create by replacing nature with man-made items. Art should be fleeting in many areas allowing the earth to reclaim the item. This is not to say that man made Art had no permanent place in nature rather the permanence should be carried in the heart. Does art make a difference in the world? As an artist; please let it be so. I must believe that art can and does make a difference in the world. Sometimes it is just one person at a time.

Reading Response - The Making of Eco-art or ‘I am here to Say’

Silko expresses a constant theme - that ‘memories dreams and names of places live on regardless of their physical location’. This is restated by Jackie Brookner - “Sustainable technologies are... a small part of our humanness; it is a small part of what makes us care about what we care about. To affect values, to create desire, to make people care about something, you have to affect people’s hearts, and bodies, our unconscious dream lives and our imaginations. This is the work art can do so well.” The sentiment is re-stated by Lucy Lippard in a slightly different way. She says that artists are attracted to ancient art and sites because what is signified is not the thing itself but the secure linkage to the pattern/place of making. In other words there is an indeterminate ‘territory’ of making. This territory is verb and is wildly exciting- like lightening.

In the story about the boy who was named for the Grandmother and he catches a lot of fish -Grandmother always did catch a lot of fish. Grandmother’s name is a good place if you want to catch a lot of fish. The name Grandmother connects the whole story. And yet the story interferes with thoughts of reality. Just as Basia’s ‘stories of water cannot be contained in one place’, but they are water and they are a place. There is a way to go in. We feel connected as if we WERE the signifier and signified all at once. It is an endless hall of mirrors I guess.

I think we need places to tell stories from and yet we crave to arrange these stories as if they were written on our own skins.

Slow food

Slow Food

In response to the readings; Slow Food is always a joy. Time can be a great restriction of this. Once a month several of my friends gather to “break bread” and share the month. The dinners are pot luck. We all take the time to create fresh home cooked food, though raw fruit and veggies are always welcome. We do not plan the meals allowing all of us to bring what we want. We do not do desert except on special occasions. IT IS THE BEST MEAL OF THE MONTH! Eating with friends and family is a joy that has gone by the wayside in many lives. There is no better gathering that can be shared among people.

I found “ Local Food and Agriculture” to be a positive step to developing local food supplies as well as addressing the hunger issue that comes with cities. Some of the items in the reading that I found interesting were; ABQ Ride Ensure that routes pass by farmers’ markets; add extra trips during farmers’ market hours and display information on the buses. Being a bus rider, I would enjoy this. Incorporate small gardens into early childhood development centers, is another wonderful idea. Why not senior center and community center as well? Use the city-sponsored after school programs to help! Create programs that enable edible landscaping and box gardens in all public housing. What no concrete jungle? All of the following ideas go hand in hand. Great ideas all of them; Focus the City’s forestry initiative on planting fruit trees. Put edible landscaping into all new developments. Include water harvesting for use in edible landscaping in all new development projects, planting edible trees in new landscaping, streets and parks. Add gardening projects and activities to summer camp programs run by Parks and Recreation department. If half of them work I believe we would be on a better path. Using “fallen fruit” could help our current homeless population to a better diet as well as a health hand up, which address hunger in the inter city.

reading response

“Aesthetics of Sustainability” – Perhaps the artist’s involvement with the “ecological shortcomings” has more to do with getting down in it, observing it, become sensitive to its calls and breathe a new sense of life and perception than mere aesthetical tactics can. It is almost like a Post Modernist approach in that, we are stuck with this decay and now we recycle it into our living and aesthetic is merely a habit at this point.
I definitely thought the whole entire time I watched Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” film and Christo’s valley project, what damage they had caused to the very environment they were pointing out. The endless fossil fuels Smithson burned in hauling and digging the rock, the fuel, diesel and oil put in the water, the soil and even in the air.
The new reality: Art as a form of sustainability, Art as the mode of resurrection. “Art as a form of knowledge”, empirical knowledge.
The interview with Basia makes me speechless and then only, inspired.

Reading response_Edible gardens and slow food

I support the goals expressed by the University of New Mexico and the City of Albuquerque in that they
realize the immediate prerogative of producing more food, supporting food shed development, making
agriculture a part of landscape design and engaging with the City political infrastructure. A “FoodPrint”,
is admirable.
I also find it curious that no mention is made of watersheds and linkages to wildlife habitat. I do
understand that these are issues of scale BUT our dependence on regional ecology and food in many
cases rests upon the backs of pollinators like birds, bees and bats. These creatures require sustenance
from a larger catchment area that includes native grasslands, seeds, and organisms large and small that
allow us to consume healthy food. I believe that the diagram for cultivation could look something like this:


The rectangular plot represents cultivated areas. Native
flora and fauna surround them in regular and irregular
patterning much like a dérive.
The longer stroke represents a protected riparian corridor.
That would be something indeed‐ if the city wild
crafted habitat alongside edibles to support the
larger biotic balance.
What it really seems to be about ‐the slow food and all ‐is
the gathering together of energy and the enjoyment
thereof. It seems sacred and secular all at once. Great!

I am reminded of the historic origin of basilica typology. It involves a long rectangular space with a table in the center.
Early Christians broke bread there.









This is a diagram for slow food too! The communion of tastes, pleasures… time spent.

I agree with Winne when she alludes to urban gardens’ value in bringing satisfaction and community building to the table of food competency. A society that gardens together laughs
together.

Two things‐
In older times than these, it was customary to leave some fruit unpicked in orchards and vineyards for widows, orphans and aliens to glean thereof.

A change in harvesting methods in the Chesapeake Bay region resulted in leaving some
unpicked corn in the fields. Geese that had been scarce for years returned and multiplied to the
numbers that had previously wintered in the area.
I would like to be part of both of these things‐
Wild geese returning and making a place for orphans at any table.

photos from chispas farm

Wednesday, Remember to post on water readings:
Leslie Marmon Silko's letter to Jim about Cochiti dam
Excerpts from Ecological Aesthetic - Prignann

attempt to post image

post image? hmmmm

Response to the readings:

I love the Slow Food concept and would probably be astonished if one were to pop up in Albuquerque. although we desperately need it on many levels. Not only could patrons benefit, but also culinary students, interns, hobbyists, farmers and gardeners alike would gain from the tender, slow rhythm and patient, tolerant passion all aimed towards food, our bodies and the planet. However, the key element: time. It takes time. We live in a society that is pressing for time. School, work, even play is rushed. What about the concept of Slow Learning, Slow Production, Slow Sleeping, Slow Playing, Slow Walking?

In Resetting America’s Table, I found that I am living proof that the point the author was making was slightly wrong. Technically, I live in poverty. I have for years, since I am in full-time school, part-time work and single mother. Last year, I went on food stamps. I still, eat fresh organic vegetables, shop at the co-op and Whole Foods, and the like, and I do it very wisely. I think the point the author is missing, is being mindful. I shop every day, planning for my meals each visit. I resist the urge to grab whatever looks appealing, like some buffet. I only buy what I need. In regards to public schools and relying on them for their meals, I say, “Why?” Why rely on a stranger to feed your child, when you can use your leftovers, make brilliant choices based on their diet (and at times emotions), and know every single day what they are and are not eating? Go back to Little House on the Prairie days when…well, I don’t remember there being a kitchen at their school. What is needed is more community gardens and really, as Slow Food, suggests, we need more time (and less people). Indeed, it starts and ends in the home and extends to the community.

I love the Action Plan, but, if I remember/heard correctly, it was Mayor Marty Chavez himself who threw out the Landscape Architecture Student’s design and implementation of the medians all along Nob Hill, by ripping the original landscape out and putting in plants that require twice as much water and work, merely because it didn’t look pretty and they were going to shoot a film down that street (replacing drought tolerant plants for geraniums if my eyes served me right… geraniums, one of the thirstiest flowers, in the middle of the desert).

It is indeed, a very thorough, educated and well-thought plan with altruistic and wise intentions that I believe many would support. However, it seems to me that there are unspoken contracts between government and large corporations, that these authors and many like them, try to expose, that prevent a greener, more productive, efficient living potential that could bud into our reality. The question is how can we collectively come together to make it happen?

The true question is how can we free ourselves from this claustrophobic monetary system?

Response to the Readings for Sept. 11 class

I was particularly interested in the Climate Action Plan Task Force Report for Albuquerque. This is a thoughtful and comprehensive plan for steps that Albuquerque can take to reduce greenhouse emissions, reduce solid waste and encourage sustainable food production. I think the plan is very forward thinking and will face challenges in implementation. Japan uses a full recycling program and inflicts stiff penalties for those who do not comply. It would be good to educate the full population on the long-term benefits of these programs along with the projected consequences of doing nothing. It should be included in the educational curriculum at the elementary level.

The thought that food production could be a part of city landscaping had not occurred to me before the readings of this week (and last week). I absolutely 100% agree with the statement in "Resetting America's Table" where it said, "School food is a measure of how we value our kids." I packed lunches for my children when they were in school. I just could not bring myself to send lunch money when I saw what they were serving the children.

Growing up in the midwest, it was not uncommon for people in my hometown to put hand-drawn signs saying "help yourself" in front of fruit trees in their front yard. People would bring baskets of produce to church to exchange or simply leave for anyone who wanted or needed it. When I moved to to the Albuquerque area, I would not have even considered taking excess fruit from a stranger's front yard, even if it was going to waste. I do have a network of friends that share any excess from our gardens, however, most folks that I know have little time for the preserving of garden/fruit tree excess. I have a small garden and add just a little to it each year.

As an east mountain resident, I would love to see some of the projects for mass transit included in my area. If there were a reasonably priced, efficient method of mass transit, I would use it. At the moment, there is a bus that comes out to within about 3 miles of my home. It would add, however, about 2 hours to my commute per day which makes it unreasonable to utilize. At this point, it is also cheaper for me to drive. I hope that changes.

lecturer coming to UNM

http://www.unm.edu/~market/cgi-bin/archives/004240.html

la nourriture

thought you guys would appreciate this french photographer who takes a polaroid shot of their food/drink every single day......
http://notitleyet.tumblr.com/

Food: Assignments one and two

1. With our visit to the dining hall in mind, please make a portable food object referring to the system which grew/raised your object , its origins and results. Due in class 9/4. May be edible, not required.

2. Respond to the two different food supply experiences we have had, with a work facilitating a particular experience you value. Due in class 9/11.

Friday September 4

Thank you all for a great first class. Our destination on Friday is http://www.mapquest.com/mq/2-1o8l (229 Saavedra Road SW) Would the four people who volunteered to drive, please meet us behind the Pearl Building at 9 am? Please let me know if you do not want a ride, so we won't wait for you. We will meet at Chispas Farm, help them with their harvest and Eli has kindly offered to talk with us about their farming. Then we will head to Sanchez park, nearby, to discuss your work and have lunch.

Would any of you who have pictures from our tour of La Posada be willing to post a few? We'd all appreciate it. Thank you!