appalachianfuturism

[appalachianfuturism]

Hi

[appalachianfuturism]

Finally finished the video I've been working on for months! It's an hour and 21 minutes and I make 3 different leaf bolero vests in it.

I'll post more pictures later but right now my eyeballs are very tired and I need to go do non-screen tasks for a while.

[appalachianfuturism]

OH West Carrollton - Mural 2 by Ken

[appalachianfuturism]

[appalachianfuturism]

One of the things that’s really struck me while rereading the Lord of the Rings–knowing much more about Tolkien than I did the last time I read it–is how individual a story it is.

We tend to think of it as a genre story now, I think–because it’s so good, and so unprecedented, that Tolkien accidentally inspired a whole new fantasy culture, which is kind of hilarious. Wanting to “write like Tolkien,” I think, is generally seen as “writing an Epic Fantasy Universe with invented races and geography and history and languages, world-saving quests and dragons and kings.” But… But…

Here’s the thing. I don’t think those elements are at all what make The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings so good. Because I’m realizing, as I did not realize when I was a kid, that Tolkien didn’t use those elements because they’re somehow inherently better than other things. He used them purely because they were what he liked and what he knew.

The Shire exists because he was an Englishman who partially grew up in, and loved, the British countryside, and Hobbits are born out of his very English, very traditionalist values. Tom Bombadil was one of his kids’ toys that he had already invented stories about and then incorporated into Middle-Earth. He wrote about elves and dwarves because he knew elves and dwarves from the old literature/mythology that he’d made his career. The Rohirrim are an expression of the ancient cultures he studied. There are a half-dozen invented languages in Middle-Earth because he was a linguist. The themes of war and loss and corruption were important to him, and were things he knew intimately, because of the point in history during which he lived; and all the morality of the stories, the grace and humility and hope-in-despair, was an expression of his Catholic faith. 

J. R. R. Tolkien created an incredible, beautiful, unparalleled world not specifically by writing about elves and dwarves and linguistics, but by embracing all of his strengths and loves and all the things he best understood, and writing about them with all of his skill and talent. The fact that those things happened to be elves and dwarves and linguistics is what makes Middle-Earth Middle-Earth; but it is not what makes Middle-Earth good.

What makes it good is that every element that went into it was an element J. R. R. Tolkien knew and loved and understood. He brought it out of his scholarship and hobbies and life experience and ideals, and he wrote the story no one else could have written… And did it so well that other people have been trying to write it ever since.

So… I think, if we really want to write like Tolkien (as I do), we shouldn’t specifically be trying to write like linguists, or historical experts, or veterans, or or or… We should try to write like people who’ve gathered all their favorite and most important things together, and are playing with the stuff those things are made of just for the joy of it. We need to write like ourselves.

[appalachianfuturism]

As a farmer.. homie thinking he is hot shit for hauling ONE BALE is so fucking funny let me put a rack on the back of my 02 dodge and i can haul fuckin 10 bales without needing the headers

[appalachianfuturism]

Sculptured Web by anncarringtonart

[appalachianfuturism]

Golf Courses ARE Being Converted

The Solarpunk "fantasy" that so many of us tout as a dream vision, converting golf courses into ecological wonderlands, is being implemented across the USA according to this NYT article!

The article covers courses in Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Colorado, and New York that are being bought and turned into habitat and hiking trails.

The article goes more into detail about how sand traps are being turned into sand boxes for kids, endangered local species are being planted, rocks for owl habitat are being installed, and that as these courses become wilder, they are creating more areas for biodiversity to thrive.

Most of the courses in transition are being bought by Local Land Trusts. Apparently the supply of golf courses in the USA is way over the demand, and many have been shut down since the early 2000s. While many are bought up and paved over, land Trusts have been able to buy several and turn them into what the communities want: public areas for people and wildlife. It does make a point to say that not every hold course location lends itself well to habitat for animals (but that doesn't mean it wouldn't make great housing!)

So lets be excited by the fact that people we don't even know about are working on the solutions we love to see! Turning a private space that needs thousands of gallons of water and fertilizer into an ecologically oriented public space is the future I want to see! I can say when I used to work in water conservation, we were getting a lot of clients that were golf courses that were interested in cutting their resource input, and they ended up planting a lot of natives! So even the golf courses that still operate could be making an effort.

So what I'd encourage you to do is see if there's any land or community trusts in your area, and see if you can get involved! Maybe even look into how to start one in your community! Through land trusts it's not always golf course conversions, but community gardens, solar fields, disaster adaptation, or low cost housing! (Here's a link to the first locator I found, but that doesn't mean if something isn't on here it doesn't exist in your area, do some digging!)

[appalachianfuturism]

thinking about CRUST punks

[appalachianfuturism]

when i was a lil kid i thought these were the angels my nanna always told me were watching over me

[appalachianfuturism]

[appalachianfuturism]

Experts Demonstrate How Solar Farms Can Become Hubs for ‘Biodiversity Enhancement’ at Every Level https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/experts-uncover-side-effects-of-solar-farms-they-become-hubs-for-biodiversity-enhancement/

[appalachianfuturism]

Learning from the land: Using indigenous knowledge for climate-sensitive circular lifestyles

Indigenous techniques like natural resource renewal, tree-based farming, traditional mud-and-wood housing, and consuming local, uncultivated foods, can address some aspects of climate change and also bring about a sense of responsibility and connection with nature. Promoting agroforestry and integrating trees into farms can improve biodiversity and soil health. Adopting drought-resistant crops and traditional methods like rainwater harvesting, mulching, and using organic manure is vital for conserving moisture, enhancing soil fertility, and minimising external inputs. Building on these approaches, there is a powerful social dimension that further amplifies their impact.

But before proposing viable solutions, we need meticulous landscape mapping: understanding community environments, traditional knowledge systems, and specific vulnerabilities. Fully understanding these dimensions can pinpoint exact strategies to reduce our ecological footprint, and promote lifestyles that minimise electricity consumption and resource use, while drawing on ancient wisdom to enhance our modern lives.

[appalachianfuturism]

Repair shop by Alariko

[appalachianfuturism]

Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses is the best writing craft book I've ever read. It has completely reoriented what "craft" means to me by situating it as what it is: a set of cultural expectations about how stories should be told and to whom. There's sometimes a chasm, at least for me, between what I know theoretically and what I have adequately applied in all the relevant contexts in my life. Reading this book let me know that I was neglecting to apply what I knew about how language, culture, and literary traditions work together to my prose writing and recontextualized how I see "craft" and approach writing advice. I'd recommend reading even just the Google Books sample; the whole first section is included and introduces the concept well.

The biggest takeaway is that craft is not neutral. Craft is inherently cultural. It's obvious in hindsight with the literary traditions born out of very specific cultural movements that define "good craft" in specific periods of time. It's also obvious in hindsight because I've been well aware that language holds and is shaped by culture and worldview, so how we use language is always reflective of culture and culturally defined value systems. And yet, somehow, it was a revelation to me to learn that the "rules" of craft are also cultural, and the most prominent ones are those that reflect the dominant culture of the West. This, like the book says, means that "learning the rules before you break them" necessitates learning the expectations of the dominant culture before you're "allowed" to "deviate" and take on a voice formed by your own outside cultural values. This has destabilized all writing advice and craft concerns for me and made me deeply question what I hold as "experimental" (could it just be the unspoken traditions of the non-white, non-cishet, disabled or otherwise "non-normative" writers that I don't yet recognize?). I'm questioning so many of my past reading and writing and learning experiences and I'n getting a lot of value out of that questioning.

Several sections of this book stood out to me, but some significant ones are under this cut with some further resources I've looked at.

craft as cure or injury:

2. cultural expectations vs cultural exceptions

3. examining craft terms (conflict)

4. experimentalism vs. writing to other traditions

5. "the reader," and who we write to

This is not even half of what stood out to me, but it's a start. It also invested an interest in me to seek out other resources about craft written from a non-dominant perspective. I've found this incredibly helpful website linking to a bunch of other books and essays offering racialized perspectives on craft:

And to keep things in one place and obvious, another link to the Google Books sample of Craft in the Real World:

There's also a bibliography at the end of Craft in the Real World that has some relevant additional texts.

And I'm just on the lookout now to collect more. Suggestions welcome.

[appalachianfuturism]

Entire guilds and co-op businesses built around textiles from invasive species and in conjunction with ecosystem restoration and possibly phytoremediation?

Super fine twine from the roots of invasive barnyard grass.. imagine the sewing potential!

[appalachianfuturism]

“For activists and experts who keep a close eye on the oil and gas industry, Eureka’s troubles raise doubts about the economic viability of using Pennsylvania’s fracking wastewater as a source for lithium, since Eureka is the only company in the state to successfully extract lithium from wastewater. It’s also the latest example of the problems created by a sprawling and under-regulated oil and gas waste disposal system.”