Xandari Pysanky

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Sample eggs in the Xandari gift shop

Over the last four days, I made six sample eggs with parts of the designs I had drafted and shared in my last post on the subject. With a slightly limited palette of dye colors (black and purple so far) and an attempt at a home-made coffee-based dye (i.e. coffee), I followed three very simple color schemes and tried a couple different design themes.

I also tried my hand at some vinegar etching, which I had read about recently and seemed like a cool way to  Continue reading →

The Missing Link In The Museum Of Natural History

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PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/GETTY

PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/GETTY

Thanks to Alex Carp over at the New Yorker‘s website, and specifically the increasingly awesome Elements section, for keeping us up to date on the acquisitions at one of our favorite museums:

The insect collection at the American Museum of Natural History holds approximately sixteen million specimens, collected from some of the most remote corners of the world. But until earlier this year, the museum lacked a single ant from a place that scientists have traditionally neglected to look: the sidewalks and street medians of Manhattan. Almost by definition, natural science tends to begin its examination of wildlife only after travelling as far away from people as possible. Continue reading →

Roger In Kerala

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Roger Mahoot

When Seth and Milo Inman heard that Roger would be in India, and that he wanted suggestions on what he would be missing given his short time available, they thought he might be interested in visiting some of Raxa Collective’s stomping grounds in the south of the country. He would be able to get back to nature, and in an authentic way.

Seth has worked in Kerala, and Milo lived and worked here for two years. During that time, Milo took the photo above, not realizing until today that he had captured an image of Roger moonlighting as a mahoot. We hope Roger will return to show us his best moves.

If You Happen To Be In Big Sur (But You Don’t Have to Be…)

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Big Sur fallen redwood auction: Proceeds benefit the Henry Miller Memorial Libarary

Big Sur fallen redwood auction: Proceeds benefit the Henry Miller Memorial Libarary

Although we’d never wish damage to a tree of this age and history we’re happy to hear that the rare and beautiful wood will help a cause near and dear to our hearts.

Profits generated from the redwood auction will be used for the following purposes:

Upgrading the Library to meet State and Federal regulatory requirements. This includes a water-treatment system, ADA compliant bathrooms, upgraded septic system, and more. Bringing the Library into compliance will ensure the Library can remain operational while also providing exceptional programming, including our acclaimed short film screening series,workshops, audio series, etc. This will require paying for building and maintaining a water system as well as paying related legal and administrative fees. Continue reading →

Thinking Of Greece, 2014 And Beyond

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Of all the links we have provided in recent years to stories in varied media, on various topics, this one surprises and delights us more than most.  The photos here may speak to anyone who has been in Greece and seen musicians play in out of the way places, those who keep traditions alive for the sake of the music and its cultural import.

Several La Paz Group contributors have heritage in Greece, in particular to one of the great folk music conservationists. Two La Paz Group scouts were in Greece this month investigating opportunities to collaborate, and this story captures more than one among many reasons why we expect to be operational in Greece in 2015:

Hunting for the Source of the World’s Most Beguiling Folk Music

By AMANDA PETRUSICH

On Sept. 20, 1926, the Greek violinist Alexis Zoumbas recorded one of the most devastating bits of music I’ve ever encountered. The song, “Epirotiko Mirologi,” is a pentatonic lament — mirologi — that, for millenniums, has been sung beside fresh graves in Epirus, a historically contentious chunk of land on the Greek-Albanian border. The performance is a little over four minutes long, instrumental and largely improvised against the low anchoring drone of some unnamed accompanist dragging a bow across a double bass. Zoumbas was a technically proficient musician, even virtuosic, but his real gift was in effectively articulating disintegration. There is a palpable hysteria to his playing; each note trembles, as if he has recently suffered an emotional collapse of unknowable magnitude.

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Sustainable Development Oddball

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Mark Peterson and Greta Pratt for The New York Times. The Tamatea Nui Lana’i Polynesian dance group. All of Lanai’s owners have sought, in one way or another, to refashion the island into a paradise on earth. Larry Ellison hopes to transform it into the “first economically viable, 100 percent green community.”

Mark Peterson and Greta Pratt for The New York Times. The Tamatea Nui Lana’i Polynesian dance group. All of Lanai’s owners have sought, in one way or another, to refashion the island into a paradise on earth. Larry Ellison hopes to transform it into the “first economically viable, 100 percent green community.”

This Times Sunday Magazine article attempts to help us understand the challenges inherent in one of the more unusual sustainable development stories we have heard of in recent years:

Henry Jolicoeur is a retired French Canadian hypnotherapist and a glass-products importer who enjoys making very low-budget documentary films. In the summer of 2012, Jolicoeur read that Larry Ellison, a founder of the Silicon Valley giant Oracle and the fifth-richest man in the world, had bought 97 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai — not a 97 percent stake in some kind of company, but 97 percent of the physical place. Jolicoeur was curious, so he booked a flight and packed his camera. Continue reading →

Greening Headquarters

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Thanks to Alexandra Lange and the Culture Desk at the New Yorker’s website for this explanation of the latest, greatest in green building:

Two recent dispatches from the frontiers of office design: a drone video of the vast circular excavations for Apple’s new Cupertino headquarters, and the news that Weyerhaeuser, the tree- and forest-products company, was selling its own earthwork-like 1971 building to move to Pioneer Square, in downtown Seattle. These projects have more in common—for better and for worse—than you might think. Weyerhaeuser (shrinking) is giving up the suburbs of Federal Way, Washington, for the dream of urban connection, even as growing companies drape themselves in vines to make their out-of-town locations seem like the earth-friendly choice. Continue reading →

Chai Wallah Surprise

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Thanks to the BBC we learn that Roger Federer will be in India soon. He has not made reservations at any Raxa Collective properties yet, but we await his arrival and the opportunity to learn his moves:

Swiss tennis ace Roger Federer has run into a problem familiar to most people who travel on business – he’s going to India later this year but won’t have time to see the sights. So he has asked fans to help him. Continue reading →

Sovereign Lepidoptera

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The seasonal migrations that occur in the animal kingdom annually vary in scale on many levels and cover nearly all classifications and all ecosystems of land, sea and air. Climactic conditions and other environmental changes impact these movements on a regular basis. In the case of the monarch butterfly migrations from North America to Mexico, the fragile balance is especially evident as populations are noticably dropping due to habitat loss, insecticide/herbicide use and extreme weather. (An interesting note in this case is that the migration itself was initially caused by human impacted landscape changes when the great North American forests began to be cleared for agriculture in the 1600s.)

Milkweed is the sole food plant for the monarch caterpillers. Continue reading →

World Tourism Day

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September 27th is World Tourism Day! As the UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai said in his address this year,

Tourism is a people-based economic activity built on social interaction, and as such can only prosper if it engages the local population by contributing to social values such as participation, education and enhanced local governance. At the same time, there can be no real tourism development if such development damages in any way the values and the culture of host communities or if the socio-economic benefits generated by the tourism sector do not trickle down to the community level.

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Lionfish, Prized Case Study In Innovative Environmentalism

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A lionfish caught near Homestead, Fla., by researchers for the Reef Environmental Education Foundation, which is trying to curb the species’ proliferation. Credit Angel Valentin for The New York Times

A lionfish caught near Homestead, Fla., by researchers for the Reef Environmental Education Foundation, which is trying to curb the species’ proliferation. Credit Angel Valentin for The New York Times

We have hosted a series of posts from Raxa contributor Phil Karp, with citizen science and entrepreneurial conservation angles to the story; and now the New York Times considers the story fit to print in a well-detailed reportage:

A Call to Action Against a Predator Fish With an Import Ban, an App and Even Rodeos

By

MIAMI — They eat anything that fits in their mouths. They reproduce copiously and adapt effortlessly. And they have become as ubiquitous and pesky as rats — only prettier and more conniving.

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Pysanky (Part Three)

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Egg blueprints

Egg blueprints for a previous project

Access Part One and Part Two if you haven’t checked them out yet!

As we reach the end of September, it may seem strange to be posting about a traditional art form that generally revolves around the festivities of Easter. Even though none of my egg creations have had religious foundations behind them, I’ve still always worked on them in the springtime around holy week because that’s the accepted time to be fashioning and gifting “Easter eggs.” Being at Xandari for the past several months, however, where the gift shop could always use another little shelf of locally-crafted artwork souvenirs, I’ve been thinking about making a round of trial eggs to put up for sale and see how it goes. After all, we could dedicate any profits to more artwork supplies for the Tacacorí school or another good local cause.  Continue reading →

Radio Simplified

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The Public Radio can be programmed to one station and one station only. Courtesy of Zach Dunham

 

National Public Radio (USA) can be forgiven what seems like a potential conflict of interest, giving media attention to a product that shares key brand attributes. There are enough distractions in the world that we can but pick and choose those to pass on here, and this one passes the test due to its innovative simplicity relative to its capacity to induce a smile:

Mason jars have been riding a huge wave of popularity thanks to hipsters who embrace them for pickling projects, cake containers and all sorts of craft creations. Now, two engineers from Brooklyn are turning Mason jars into simple sound machines, to play your favorite FM radio station. Continue reading →

Pysanky (Part Two)

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A finished egg with most of its wax still present to give texture and a stained glass effect
my favorite traditional pysanky accomplishment so far
For my high school government teacher
a fun design
Darwinian
for a statistician
for a Northwestern University student
an unusual blue
an intense but rewarding design

To continue learning about the process of creating pysanky,  Continue reading →