from siftung-interkultur:
Gardens as everyday culture – an international comparison
International conference May 22nd–24th 2008

New gardens of everyday life and use are becoming widespread in cities around
Germany and other European countries. Whereas experts still concentrate
on traditional types of gardens, changed kinds are emerging, especially joint
projects such as “International Gardens” by and for migrants, “selfharvesting-
gardens” or vegetable patches in public parks. Phenomena like
these are identified as forward-looking elements in urban development which
require closer examination. The conference “Gardens as everyday culture” is
seen as a step in that direction.
What are the ideas and expectations behind these initiatives? What is the
role of such gardens in the context of urban development and public open
space supply? And above all: what do they mean to the gardeners themselves
and their everyday life? These are some of the questions the conference will
touch in an international comparison. Projects from different parts of the world
will show experiences gained so far as well as obstacles and future prospects.
The conference is perceived as information exchange platform between science
and garden practice.
www.stiftung-interkultur.de

The benefits of keeping it aside to feed the plants:
‘the problem with urine is that it is the main source of some of the chemical nutrients that have to be removed in sewage treatment plants if they are not to wreck ecosystems downstream. Despite making up only 1 per cent of the volume of waste water, urine contributes about 80 per cent of the nitrogen and 45 per cent of all the phosphate. Peeing into the pan immediately dilutes these chemicals with vast quantities of water, making the removal process unnecessarily inefficient.’
from the New Scientist on urine-separation toilet or NoMix toilets

Big bad Johnny Bird, the notoriously feisty founder of the Big Issue, is living up to his reputation as he yells down the phone about Wedge. ‘I’m totally opposed to the ’supermarketisation’ of the land. Our local shops are disappearing in front of us, the high streets have turned into monstrous clones, and it’s destroying our communities.’ The solution? ‘We have to stand up and fight.’
And a fight is what John Bird has organised, although one that utilises small plastic cards rather than fists (allegedly his choice of the past). ‘Wedge is going to help those shops that make the community tick by encouraging the public to buy in the local market place. Because it’s in the family owned cafes, butchers and bookshops that people get to know one another, and become part of their community. If you don’t have a community then you’re more likely to be lonely, and you’re more likely to be lost. The
supermarkets don’t make up for that kind of alienation.’

The Wedgecard is a practical way to help you support your local high street. It gives you the means to help by giving you extra reason to shop locally.
John Bird: ‘The Wedgecard sees the marketplace as a place to sort out social justice issues. That the defence of small and independent shops is a guarantee to ensure that comunities continue. The fight for our high streets is similar to stopiing the destruction of the rain forest, the mass pollution of rivers, and the wars over oil and scarce resources. They are the one and the same thing.’

Benjamin Zephaniah says `supermarkets are bullying, brainwashing, exploiting and bland’. He prefers shops that look like people live in them. ‘Where you can see there its their house, and out back there is a living room with a telly on. I want to feel I am doing business, trading, with a human being, not a company.’
Get your Wedgecard at www.wedgecard.co.uk

The corporate image factory spends a huge amount of money on billboards, posters, flyers or ‘guerrilla’ marketing campaigns masquerading as street art. They fill your lives with an unrelenting barrage of preposterous ideals, numb values and false icons. No one asks for your permission before they push these images in your face so neither should we seek consent in order to leave our own mark on the city.

www.streetblitz.org propose a 2 week blitz of street art in London
between 1-15 July 2007.
Whether you make murals, stencils, stickers, posters, sculptures, street projections, sign modification/removal/additions, billboard subverting/defacing/destruction etc; whether creative or destructive; whether to convey a message, brighten up a dull spot, rewire some corporate brainwashing tactics; whether to leave your mark, remove a stain, express yourself or simply to show your disgust – it’s all valid and all adds to The Blitz!

As cell phones multiply, phone books get slimmer: the fat phone book, a fixture of the urban American household in the last century, is losing some of its girth as more people give up their land lines for cellphones. When they do, their names disappear from the phone book.
In Manhattan, the population in recent years has been growing at an annual rate of about 10,000 people, to about 1.6 million residents now.
But the 2007 Verizon White Pages was 142 pages smaller than the 2006 edition. At 1,796 pages of listings, it is the smallest residential phone book for Manhattan since Verizon began publishing them in 2001.

The story is the same in other cities. Phone books in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix have also been shrinking, even as the populations have grown. And in fast-growing Las Vegas, white page listings grew by a meager 12 pages this year over last. At the end of last year, 7.2 percent of American households used only a cellphone, up from just 0.7 percent six years earlier, according to TNS Telecom, a research company. Americans have not been eager to list their cell numbers in phone books. Consumers and privacy advocates balked at the idea in 2004, when most of the big wireless carriers said they wanted to compile a nationwide directory.

Cellphones may make it easier for people to reach each other, yet Americans are very guarded about whom they want calling them. But what people gain in privacy is lost in a sense of community, reflected in shrinking phone books, said James E. Katz, chairman of the communications department at Rutgers University.
”People would meet someone, want to know where they lived, and look up their name in the phone book. And there was a certain ritual aspect to it when people would look forward to the new phone book,” Mr. Katz said. ”So in a sense, it was a way of social visibility and social involvement. That whole way of doing things, it seems, has largely disappeared.”
from Arthur Cordell