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Local Crowdfunding Feast at Ann Arbor SOUP

Presenter at SOUP event

Patrick Haggood spoke about the Grange Junior Makers

In spite of the cold weather and the continuing general malaise of winter, Jim and I motivated ourselves to attend Ann Arbor SOUP‘s third crowdfunding event, and we found the experience completely worth the effort.

The fundraising event/ community supper was held at LIVE, only a few blocks from home. We navigated the icy sidewalks of Ann Arbor and found ourselves welcomed by enthusiastic volunteers excited about being involved. The air was filled with strains of jazz and the scent of curry soup as we settled in to enjoy a cocktail before the presentations.

For a suggested donation of $5, we got soup, salad, and a vote. Four local groups had been selected to give 5 minute presentations on how their projects contribute to the community and what they would do with additional funding. We heard from A2Share, the Grange Junior Makers, Pilar’s Community Wellness Room, and the Wednesday Night Ann Arbor Farmers’ Market. After the presentations, it was time for supper and conversation. Jim had a fantastic lentil soup, and I tried the Curry Chicken. The meal included soups and salads as well as breads, cookies and cupcakes, both donations from local businesses as well as homemade contributions.

The winner of the evening was the Grange Junior Makers, represented by Patrick Haggood. He spoke of the joy of watching kids and parents building together and his group’s goal to involve more families in making projects at the Grange. His presentation won the support of the crowd and $943 from the evening’s donations.

Volunteers at the Ann Arbor SOUP Event

Volunteers at the Ann Arbor SOUP Event

I spoke to event organizer Isabella Morrison about starting the group and future plans. Ann Arbor SOUP was inspired by Detroit SOUP and an international range of community-based crowdsourcing events. In its short history, Morrison said that SOUP has moved from being an event largely attended by University of Michigan students to more of a mix of residents and students. The success of the event attracted 15 groups to apply for the chance to present at the third SOUP evening, and Izzy said selecting the presenters for this evening was not an easy job.

Izzy plans that SOUP will host another event in April, before she graduates from the U and moves on. She hopes that the organization will continue to bring the community together around supper and ideas that enrich the place where we live. With a full belly and a full heart, I do too.

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By 20 Minute Jan – February 24, 2014

5 Things I Re/Learned at the Harlequin Creature Typing Bee

Harlequin Creature Typing Bee

When Jim came home from a meeting at Boundedition, our local print-oriented Maker space, with news of a Harlequin Creature Typing Bee happening the next day in Ann Arbor, I signed up online right away. Actually, I volunteered to help after he assured me that the call was for helpers, not just excellent typists.

What is Harlequin Creature? It is a journal of poetry and prose that is hand-typed at typing bees by a circle of friends and volunteers from Los Angeles to Ann Arbor to New York. Copies are hand-bound and numbered; a limited number include artwork by a feature artist. The journals are available at 9 bookstores and shops across the globe, as well as by pre-order online for the next issue. As an organization, Harlequin Creature is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation founded in 2012 in New York.

I showed up at Boundedition on Sunday morning, ready to type and learn. From a table of vintage manual typewriters and one electric one, I choose a noble vintage Sears Roebuck Tower on which to type my copies. Here are my 5 take-away lessons:

1. Many hands make light work.
More accurately, many hands make work fun. Sitting around a table with a group of people working on a common project is a lovely way to feel motivated and connected. Like a barn raising or a quilting bee, the results of our typing labors were right in front of us: a small stack of finished typed pages.

2. Clear expectations help people relax.
I was worried about whether my typing abilities would be up to snuff, but Harlequin Creature creator and editor as well as the host of today’s event, Meghan Forbes was very clear that perfection was not the expectation or the goal. In fact, she said she encourages mistakes, which made me smile. In typing the pages of the journal, each typist becomes in effect its author, leaving his or her marks on the pages. White Out? No way! XXXing out is the way to go!

3. Mistakes add character.
Like a quilt with a built-in flaw (which may be a myth, I recently learned), our copies were individualized by the choices and errors of the typists. I worried that maybe my copy would be unusable, but again Meghan assured me that my typing was “good enough.” I wish my 8th grade typing teacher had ever once said that!

Sears Roebuck Tower Typewriter

4. Typing is hard work.
My hands were tired by the time I finished typing the poems for my copies (#7 and #8 of Volume 5, by the way). Using a typewriter is a very physical process. It took some time for my fingers to remember the rhythm, and to be frank, they didn’t do a great job. In addition to accuracy, I had to think about strength and timing. The keys are mechanical, on a manual typewriter that is; hitting too softly results in faint characters appearing on the page. Hit too hard, and the middle of the “o” might pop or at least the character will appear darker than its neighbors. In terms of speed, I had to try hard to hit that gold pace of pretty steady, but not too fast. Trying to speed along can result in a key-pile-up with a mashed up mess on the page. In addition to the action from the keys, I had to remember how to deal with the action of the typewriter. As I worked, it scooched across the table, so I had to recenter it every couple of returns.

5. It’s nice to be appreciated.
Meghan was a welcoming host who made the experience very fun. She was also a gracious and grateful leader, which is something every volunteer likes to see. She answered all of my questions about the journal and the creative process. We enjoyed bagels and conversation as well as the gift of a little handmade journal, along with her thanks.

I’m so glad I had the chance to experience a Harlequin Creature typing bee, and I look forward to doing it again!

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By 20 Minute Jan – February 23, 2014

Home-Made Music – Happy Memories of Hootenanies

The death of folk legend Pete Seeger reminded me of how my parents found extraordinary ways to make music a part of everyday life. The true meaning of “folk music” for me is that home-made quality, music for folks by folks, not primarily a product that is bought and sold. Music done right is as nourishing as soup made from scratch and should be shared with friends like a potluck supper.

The living room of my childhood home was filled with instruments: a baby grand piano, and underneath it my dad’s viola and classical guitar, my mom’s clarinet, my trombone and cello. Across the room stood an actual wooden pump organ, one rumored to have been salvaged from a ship. A bellows connected it to a wheezy old pump downstairs that had to be switched on for it to play. In the closet was a box full of percussion instruments, maracas, wood blocks, bongos but these only came out when my folks had a Hootenany.

Of course, my folks never called them “hootenanies,” but then again, they didn’t really have a name for the low-brow musical events that seemed to happen from time to time. Some of the most vivid childhood memories I have are of a room full of grown-ups, all of them singing, laughing, some clanging away at a drum, or strumming a guitar, while my mother played piano and my dad played organ. I grew up assuming that everyone’s family had these song-drenched get-togethers, and I remember feeling odd when I discovered they didn’t. I was the sole youngster at these events, one of the benefits of being an only child.

Our repertoire was as motley as the musicians. We sang show tunes and spirituals, hymns and folks songs. My favorite was the one about boxes filled with ticky-tacky although I also remember puzzling over the Laredo cowboy who was made of modeling clay. My mom loved “Climb Evr’y Mountain.” We sang nearly everything, including the political and topical songs of folks like Pete Seeger.

My father was a life-long Republican, a school teacher, part-time church organist and choir director. He was a teetotaler as well; these hootenanies were fueled by neither beer nor booze. My dad was as non-radical as one could imagine. But as an adult, already an accomplished keyboard player, he bought himself a nylon stringed guitar and watched a show on PBS TV to learn folk music. He’d record the lessons on a reel-to-reel tape recorder so he could practice until he got them right. And he shared the songs he learned with friends at these joyous, noisy soirees. That’s what folk music means to me.

Pete Seeger’s death reminds me of the loss of that festive, non-professional community music. The best tribute to both Seeger and my dad is to squeeze a bit more home-made music into my everyday life. An obvious start is a carol or two at the next Christmas party. Maybe next time we have guests for dinner, I will insist we share a song before we leave the table. A neighbor used to sit out front and play banjo during summer afternoons and, when he moved away, I honestly kept anticipating the day that new owners would pick up the tradition of that musical porch. I suspect if music is going to be played on anyone’s porch, it had best begin with my own.

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By 20 Minute Jan – January 28, 2014

Thrift Store Joy: Recycling as Rejuvenation

We are fortunate to have Treasure Mart, a pretty amazing consignment shop in our town of Ann Arbor. The store is chockfull of all kinds of amazing things and makes for enjoyable browsing and reminiscing too. Jim spotted this pretty cookie jar on such an excursion not too long ago. He wasn’t hunting cookie jars in particular, but sometimes you don’t know what you are looking for until you find it.

Cookies2

He didn’t buy it right away. He thought about it for a couple days. Did we need a cookie jar? (Yes!) Did we have one? (No!) Was this the right one? He decided yes. He anxiously made the trip back to Treasure Mart, where luckily enough the cookie jar was still waiting. He brought it home, where it sits on the shelf above the stove and fits right in with a few other residents.

Jars

A little internet research, motivated by this recent purchase, revealed that these are Kromex spun aluminum canisters from the 1950’s. We inherited a couple canisters, namely Coffee and Tea, which both hold tea, in our case, and now we have a small set. We don’t need a full set, but we may keep our eyes peeled for the companion container labeled “Grease”.

Why do we love thrift shops and second-hand stores? One reason is that second hand stores give items that still have good use in them the chance to continue to be useful. We Americans live in the land of plenty; it’s not hard to accumulate belongings and often we all find ourselves with duplicates or with things we no longer need. Donating good items saves them from a direct trip to the landfill and raises the possibility of those things meeting up with people who need them or want them.

Even though we shop at thrift stores, we also have an ingrained habit of regularly donating things we don’t need anymore to places that re-sell them and that raise money for good local causes and groups. Our favorite is the Kiwanis Shop, conveniently located in our neighborhood; we also donate to the PTO Thrift Shop, the ReUse Center, the Salvation Army, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and St Vincent DePaul. It’s a circle of life thing!

Shopping second hand is also raises awareness about consumerism. It makes me consider questions like need versus want, brand new versus good enough. Caring for and storing belongings takes time, energy and space. We need to be conscious of our choices so we are in control of our spending and not vice versa.

The final reason I love second hand stores is that they are fun places to browse, even if we don’t buy anything. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis are right: hunting, looking, and finding hidden treasures makes second hand shopping an adventure. Thrift stores are always interesting, and you never know what you are going to discover.

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By 20 Minute Jan – January 8, 2014

New Year’s Painting Project

Two part epoxy paint provides great coverage

Two part epoxy paint provides great coverage

Although we have enjoyed various methods ringing in the New Year, we have a tradition of starting the New Year with a painting project, an activity that goes back for at least 10 years. Jim instigated the policy one New Year’s Eve when, while waiting for the ball to drop, he began painting a dingy basement staircase with left-over blue and white paint. That good use of idle time caught on with the family, and shortly thereafter the basement walls were covered with an irregular, enchanting pattern of blue and white swirls– a decided improvement over the old yellowed paint. (Do note: another New Year’s Eve found the basement painted with a more distinguished design in two shades of gray.)

We’ve been planning this year’s project for a few months. Here at the new house is a small room in the basement that we’ve dubbed the “Tinker Room,” a great place with space to work and to store art supplies. We’d spend some time clearing out and cleaning up the room, and along the way put a couple of coats of white on the interior walls, which really brightened up the place.

One problem with the basement in this old house is an uneven and somewhat dusty cement floor. Even after sweeping up the dust, it needs another sweep. In the Tinker Room, we skim-coated with patching cement containing vinyl, finished with a broom to give a pretty smooth, slightly textured surface. Jim then used a floor scraping tool to knock off the points. Then we waited 60 days before painting as advised by the experts at Anderson Paint.

Anderson Paint is a business that we’ve been frequenting for over 30 years. It’s the kind of place where a salesperson will gladly spend a half an hour explaining product choices and answering the questions Jim and I manage to come up with about a project we haven’t done before. We decided to go with a water-based epoxy product called Aquapon from PPG Industries. It proved to be easy to mix and use and provided great coverage; plus, it didn’t smell too strong or awful– an especially nice aspect given that it’s deep winter here and no windows were opened.

A sturdy, shiny, practical surface

A sturdy, shiny, practical surface

Jim suggested a trim effect with a 6-inch border of the gray paint on the walls around the room. Although the bumpy textured walls resisted total cooperation with the painter’s tape, we managed to do a good enough job. I mixed the paint in small batches, and Jim put on 3 coats over 3 mornings. Then we waited a couple days before moving the table and shelves back unto our newly painted Tinker Room floor.

The new floor is even nicer than I had hoped. It makes the room cleaner and brighter, and the basement one step closer to being a great space. Marking the New Year with a painting project is a satisfying tradition at our house, and one we plan to keep.

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By 20 Minute Jan – January 5, 2014