Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Unlimited Free Hours of Fun...

As Marky's place in NC doesn't have a TV I can watch without it echoing all over the loft, I've been delving into the wonders of iPod-fodder. I've been a big fan of the TED.org talks for years, and this next link is one of the reasons why...

Brewster Kahle: A digital library, free to the world
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/brewster_kahle_builds_a_free_digital_library.html
Brewster Kahle is building a truly huge digital library -- every book ever published, every movie ever released, all the strata of web history ... It's all free to the public -- unless someone else gets to it first.

http://www.archive.org/index.php
The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in the Presidio of San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Another Xmas, another year...

So it's another xmas (my 49th), and another year (coincidentally, also my 49th). Where does the time go? Barbie(tm) and I will be turning 50 in 2009, and I've yet to be President, an astronaut, a NASCAR driver, a cheerleader, a Celtic Princess, or 43 other things her handlers have pushed her through (want to see the list?). Now, in the real world she'd be considered a job-hopper and would be, like so many of the disposable aging, unemployed and too young to collect SS. In other words, totally screwed. But you know, the rules are different for the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) crowd. So what HAVE I been doing? I've spent most of the past year plus, working on two books on sustainable design. You know, that old "saving the world" thing I'm into.

The first,
Packaging Sustainability, just hit the store shelves, and the second, Sustainable Graphic Design, will be out in the first half of '09. Check 'em out.

Overall, I've learned as much doing these books, as has gone into them for others to learn from -- really solidifying and deepening the ideas about eco-design I've been exploring for the past ten years. I guess that's part of the appeal for doing them. To give yourself license to dive into a topic and roll around in it. You know what you know, but try stopping a minute to explain it to someone else. Where normally you spend your days lurching from one client deadline to the next, taking the time to really figure out how to explain the idea of changing -- everything -- we as a species do, and then have the person you're talking to nod in agreement that it's a good idea, has been the best part of all. The talks I give on eco-design and business are becoming a real splash-out of humor, sarcasm, and pound-it-home revivalist style thumping. All delivered of course, with the cool subtlety, aloof calm, and glorious visuals expected of a working designer.

The books too have allowed me to get to know some of my colleagues better, plus make a TON of new contacts. Never a bad thing in a business that seems to survive purely by word of mouth, and project based personal connections. But as much as I've gotten out of the book experience, I am looking forward to getting back to my real life (until they drag me back for the second printings?). Anyway you know the "life" I speak of, one filled with couch and wind surfing (yeeeees, I still consider myself a windsurfer). And of course, taiko. Lots and lots and lots of taiko.

For those of you who rather miss the old WendyZworlD chatter and quips -- hang in there -- I have plans (bbwwWAHAHAHAH). For those of you who follow such trivia, it was through WendyZworlD that I cut my journalistic teeth. With the pressure to become expert in both Quark and PhototShop in under 5 days as part of the terms for my hiring (waaaay back in 1993), I dove into WendyZworlD as my vehicle. Needless to say, I made it happen, and ended-up with a snarky little rag to mail-out to boot. WendyZworlD Online edition? I needed to learn how to do websites. So what extra bang am I wrangling out of my WendyZworlD buck this round? I'm trying to figure out how to get blogs to work for an upcoming (book related) project.

And you all thought I just loved talking about myself... ;-P

New for 2009: I've updated my calendar with everyone's birthday. If -- you -- told me when your birthday was, I've got an automated reminder rolling. If you like to get birthday greetings, it's on you now to make sure I ever knew what the heck day that was. There is an endless supply of "Casey Jones Happy Birthday Songs" in me.

For those of you who have been wondering what the heck it is I pound you with at mach-12 on the occasion of your birth...

Happy, happy birthday, to every girl and boy!
Hope this very special day, brings you lots of joy!
Hope that birthday present you get from Mom and Dad,
Will make this very special day, the best you ever had!


But you know, you really should see/hear the original...

Happy Birthday Song by Casey Jones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfSkqMP-L-4

And while I'm at it, let me close-out this personal chat section with this Wonderful Wintry Womble* of Wit. (Whaaat? It's WendyZworlD "we" live for W-based alliterations. Get over it.)

Walkin' in My Winter Underwear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBLxfvACQhE&feature=related

*(or however units of wit are measured in your area.)

___________________________________________________________

For those of you with whom I exchange gifts, this year, as the economy tightens even more, I've been moved to consider those who will suffer the most. As I pause to ponder, no matter how bad things may get for us, things are exponentially worse for many many many more.

As many of you recall, I called attention to the one.org efforts in past blasts. Some of you got -- ONE -- wristbands that round. Some of the issues they get involved in include: Developing world HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria impacts; Development Assistance; Education, Water and Sanitation; Trade; Debt Cancellation; Child and Maternal Health; Agriculture and Food; and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

This year, rather than send you a pile of wacky things that sometimes you love, but often just leave you scratching your head, I've made a more meaningful application of funds and contributed to the ongoing one.org campaign in our collective WendyZworlD name.

I'll be sending out wristbands again this year, and ask that you take a moment and look at what one.org is about. You'll get to enjoy the knowing nods from those who "get-it" as you wear your wristbands out and about -- but for those who might ask, one.org has expanded their programs well past the star studded roll-out many years ago, and are really hunkering down for the long haul. one.org/issues
A journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step.

Attributed to both Lao-tzu and Confucius.

EVERYone CAN make a difference.
Wj
___________________________________________________________

From my little family to yours...

Happy/Merry
Chanuksolstikwanzamas.


oxoxoxoxoxoxox
W-


Saturday, September 27, 2008

WendyZworlD Elections '08

Hey all,

I came across this site and wanted to pass it on in the interest of fair and balanced decision making. This is a head to head look at ALL of the candidates that will be on your ballot this November.

http://2008election.procon.org/

Remember, if you don't vote, you DON'T get to complain.

W-

Monday, June 30, 2008

I'm all verklempt


I finally got a chance to open the card some of my fellow taikomates gave me in honor of my 10th recital, and there was a too generous gift as well! "Yooooouuuuuu guuuuuuuys, I'm all verklempt."

In keeping with my geekish nature, I knew the second I looked at the gift card what I wanted. And of course it comes with a story. Yeah yeah Jeff, it will be TMI, but you'll endure...

About 4 years ago (more?) I noticed the Kokiriko at the Dojo (the snakey shaker thing) was coming untied. No big deal I thought, I'm a knot tying fiend from over 30 years of sailing, plus 7 years of Girl Scouts and a serious macrame addiction all through the 70's. This little bit of string and wood should hold no mysteries for me, I'll just take it home and whip it back together. (For you knot nuts, that was a pun. Whipping is a way of finishing off a line so it doesn't unravel. Seeeeee I TOLD you I was a geek for this stuff.)

Well I tell you, I must have retied that stupid thing about 20 times -- and still not tight enough to work right. For those of you who come over to my little space to play, you might recall it sitting on my bar. I see it everyday, mocking me -- "Heh, tie ME will ya!" it sneers each time I pass it laying there.

My mates' gift will cover getting a new one to replace the one at the Dojo (with a bit left over for something indulgent too!), and will allow me to be less conservative in my disassembly of the old one to really figure out how it works. They've given me a triple gift.

1) I can give a new Kokiriko to our Mu Daiko dojo we all get to use.

2) I get to kick the old one's metaphorical ass.

3) I'll know HOW to fix these thingies for the next time. As their mystery will have been revealed to me. HA take that you inanimate object that's been eating at my mildly OCD addled brain!

I tell ya, Taiko people are the BEST!

Saturday, June 28, 2008

With great sorrow...


Tonight I'll be performing with a pair of bachi I had the honor of Oguchi Sensei signing for me many years ago. He will be greatly missed, but his spirit will be with us through every beat. W-






TOKYO (AP) — Master Japanese drummer Daihachi Oguchi, who led the spread of the art of "taiko" drumming to the U.S. and throughout Japan, has died after being hit by a car (June 26), an official at his ensemble said. He was 84.

Oguchi was crossing the street when he was struck by the car Thursday. He was rushed to the hospital but died of excessive bleeding early Friday, said Yuken Yagasaki of Osuwa Daiko, the group in Nagano prefecture (state) in northern Japan that Oguchi had led.

Oguchi helped found top U.S. taiko groups, including San Francisco Taiko Dojo, which has performed in Hollywood movies and on international tours since its founding 40 years ago.

A former jazz musician, Oguchi was one of the first to elevate the traditional folk sounds of taiko to modern music played in concert halls, not just festivals and shrines.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j_ROXYfj2cyUNeYpnSNc-KjWR0xQD91I5TMG8




Thursday, May 29, 2008

A little something from the archives...

The Guest:
A Comedy in One Act

They were saying winds 15-35 out of the Southwest that late summer morning. I suppose Mark had already gone to the beach because I was alone getting ready for my aunt’s funeral. I was just pulling on dress clothes over my bathing suit when the doorbell rang. "Geezus, who the hell can that be." I mumbled to myself. I was pumped to go sailing, a bit weirded-out by my aunt’s sudden death, and the quadruple espresso I had just finished was kicking in. I was definitely in no mood to deal with some GreenPeace-veggin-Jesus-freak stumping for the Fascist Family Party. As soon as I opened the door he pushed past me and grabbed the remote for the t.v. laying on the table, no hello, just a muffled "Mig langer til ao sja islenzka glimu" as he plunked his big ass in one of my comfy chairs.

I’d seen his work many times, but have only actually seen him in person twice. The first time was in Kentucky when I was 15. I saw him watching from an overpass as my well fueled lover and I finished the curve off the on-ramp doing 115 mph on his Harley. I saw him once again in Illinois, standing in a wheat field. I was 16 this time, riding with a new boyfriend in his street-rod doing 105 mph into oncoming traffic as our passing gap squeezed smaller and smaller. Now after 18 years, here he was again, installing himself in my living room. I’m not afraid or anything. It’s just that, I had never seen him up-close before, and wasn’t planning to for several years yet.

He wasn’t really at all what I had expected. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of Bergman films and Bergmanesque metaphors derived from classic Teutonic literature and folklore. He was supposed to be lean and imposing, ethereal, menacing. And well, rather more Swedish anyway. Yet there he sat. "Big boned" is how he would be described in polite company (but in his case it should be taken more literally), legs sprawled immodestly, flipping frantically through the channels looking for, oh yeah, "What the hell does ‘Mig langer til ao sja islenzka glimu’ mean!?" I barked.

"Oh, like, sorry. I just got done with a gig in Iceland, I just said ‘I should like to see some Icelandic wrestling’ - you don’t have cable do you?" he asked dryly.

"Look I really don’t have time for this" I snapped again, not trying to hide my annoyance.

"Oh no, YOU have plenty of time" he smirked, managing a wink.

"Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I really must be going. Help yourself to a drink or what ever" I pointed to the kitchen, "then leave through the garage, it’ll lock itself behind you." As I left I saw him riffling through the liquor selection, I could hear his brittle fingers clicking on each bottle as he moved them. God, I hate that SOUND!

My aunt and I were never super close. Though living only a few miles away at this point, we simply lived in different worlds. I think we’ve shared maybe 10 full paragraphs of conversation spread out over the past 34 years. But I always really liked her, we're family, and I was really sad she passed. She had gone to sleep, and just never woke up again (aneurysm). Now at the funeral, my cousins (her children) and I engaged in idle chit-chat in front of her open casket. ‘This is too weird’ kept running through my brain on some continuous loop as we discussed the pitfalls and rewards of packaging design as a career choice. The loop would be occasionally underscored with injections of piped-in organ music and the drone-like hum of the pump which supplied the Gurgling Waters Weeping Wall (tm) behind the coffin stand. Was my uncomfortable chatter of "any" comfort to my cousins? My religious training is Christian Science, there is no such thing as death. I am the first to admit, I suck at the whole funeral thing.

On my mother’s side of the family (a strange mixed bag of Presbyterians, Universalists, and Christian Scientists) we don’t do funerals, just reduce the body to ashes, and dump it somewhere. Some of my relatives are in pots under little brass plaques in a cemetery, others are part of the silt at the bottom of their favorite lake. As a memorial, the living get together, eat, and tell bad jokes about the deceased. Apparently my aunt’s family is into the more formalized send off.

Keeping true to his nature, my uncle got his wife the package deal: lacquered coffin with modest detailing, "reviewal prep," rental of the wake chapel, rental of the service chapel, nameless clergy to deliver the eulogy ("and though I never knew [decedents name here], she was my age and it [freaked me out that it could be my ass laying there] made me think..."), hearse service to and from the funeral parlor, grave excavation, headstone, and grave filling. All for $5000 (or was it $8000). The souvenir programs were free, courtesy of my aunt’s (now) former employer. My mother and I agreed, the whole thing was both an unnecessary and expensive burden on my uncle and, well frankly, a little too much reality, done in a very surreal way.

After the last rites, as we walked away from the grave site, my uncle told me he was happy I had come. I gave him a big hug and told him I was going to go home, get my boards, and go windsurfing, "That’s good," he said "have some fun, she would have liked that. I wish I could go too, but all these people are expecting me at home. You know." I gave him another hug and made a beeline for my car, imagining my uncle (built for comfort, not for speed) clad like a waaaay overstuffed sausage in neoprene (think more haggis than sausage), sheeting in and flying. "It's already 2:00," I mummbled looking at my watch. If I was really lucky I could be on the water by 2:45, I thought.

As I loaded out my boards from the garage I could hear HE was still upstairs, right where I had left him. He had the t.v. on too loud and I could hear "Championship Wrestling is brought to you by... ‘ENOUGH WITH THE COMMERCIALS ALREADY!’....it’s the real thing, and by....". I shut the garage door quietly and finished tying down my boards, hoping he wouldn’t notice I had been there, and headed for the beach.

As I had hoped - and feared - the wind was raging and there wasn’t a parking space to be had. I circled the parking lot for half an hour before one of the mindless lumps who like to park, meander around the lake, and ‘watch them perty windserfboards’ moved their car. We boardsailors go around and around with people who HAVE TO take the few places we have near our launch sites because they want to park close to the lake when they go for a stroll. They don’t seem to grasp that it is the same distance to walk around the lake from ANY of the lots at the lake, but for the people carrying 50lbs of gear it’s quite different.

One time when our lot was full and the pedestrians were trolling our places, as each big-haired bimbo (of both sexes) would pull up and ask "Ahhh, are you, like, leaving?" I would point to the nearly vacant lot on the other side of the lake and try explaining the upwind-downwind launch preference thing and that there was always parking where the windsurfers weren’t, as their eyes glossed over. "Well why don’t you guys, like, just park up there all the time?" they’d say thinking they were very, like, clever. "No I’m not ‘like’ leaving." I’ll be buried in this spot before I give it to you, you lard-brained dweeb, I’d add in my head.

As is my custom, after obtaining a parking place, I scope out the wind, unload my board choice (I usually bring at least two), put on my wetsuit and knee braces, then unload my rigging. Always in that order. It was a rather warm day though, so I skipped the wetsuit and braces for a moment while I unloaded. I guess I was a little too preoccupied from the morning, because I turned my knee on the gear I had left on the ground. I did it good too. I could hear THAT SOUND of bone on bone grinding and pulling out of joint - GOD I hate THAT SOUND!

Though I managed to reduce the dislocation myself, I was in real pain and rather unceremoniously wedged between two cars and a pile of gear. A guy who was rigging nearby kept asking if he should get help as I sat weeping in the pavement in frustration and pain. But I finally got up and convinced him I was o.k.-ish, at least in the more immediate sense. I reloaded that which I had just unloaded and left the still windy lake, my knee throbbing as I tried to use the clutch.

Of course, when I got home HE was still there. I could hear him rattling around upstairs as I unloaded my boards. He had both the t.v. AND the stereo going full blast. I HATE that! This guy has got to go!

I gimped up the stairs and opened the door. In the few short hours I was gone he had managed to trash the place. Two bottles of Madeira, a bottle of Bombay gin, dozens of cigar wrappers, and a jar of pickled herring lay empty on the floor. By this point he had returned to a heap in the chair, sucking on a particularly nasty smelling cigar and channel surfing while the stereo blasted ‘My Bloody Valentine.’ I just stood watching in amazement. I suppose if you weren’t already dead, the combination of gin, Madeira, cigars, and herring would never cross your mind. Well certainly not as a nutrition option anyway.

"Look man, I don’t know what your deal is...." He doesn’t hear me. "HEY!" His hollow eyes look up slowly "I don’t know what your deal is but I want you out’a here."

"Oh you won’t be rid of me that easily. I have more business in this area" he quipped. Oh great, now what? "I just thought I’d hang at your place ‘cuz you have a nice big t.v. and good taste in booze - I’m really disappointed you don’t have cable though, oh and could you get some of that nice duck pate when you’re out next time, no hurry" he said in one breath.

What do you do when death plunks his big bony ass in your living room, drinks up all your alcohol, and stinks up your house with big nasty cigars? In my case, you literally learn to live with it. I guess it could be worse. I mean, he keeps mostly to himself, and doesn’t have any friends over. As I see it, though he’s taken one family member by surprise, the other, my grandmother, was probably the one who told him about my new t.v. to get him to visit sooner. And since these things work in threes (don’t they?) his work is almost done, but that one will be a gift. Not because we don’t love the future decedent, but because it will be a long deserved release from frustration and pain, watching his own body die, inch by inch, for 20 years. For that service I think I can put up with this rude guest a little while longer. I just wish he’d lay off my neighbors in the mean time. I’ve lost TWO since I started writing this. And I really wish he’d.... "Hey, quit freaking-out my cat!..."I said HEY!..."

© 1996 by Wendy Jedlicka

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

My "Secret" Day Job...

For those of you who don't know, by day I'm a not so mild mannered eco-advocate for change specializing in Packaging Design -- and a full fledged packaging designer. I have my own design firm (jedlicka.com), am Co-Coordinator of o2-USA and chair of o2-USA/Upper Midwest -- all part of the o2-Global Sustainable design network (o2.org), teach Sustainable Design at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (mcad.edu/sustainable), and write the Sustainability Update section for Package Design Magazine (PackageDesignMag.com). I also lecture around the U.S. on eco/sustainable business and design.

As man's impact on the planet has become front page news (finally!) given what my day job is, it's been spilling -- actually more like Tsunami crashing -- into my spare time. Businesses in the manufacturing sector I serve are scrambling to meet new, more rigorous regulations, as well as try and meet new, more eco-minded, customer demands -- finally! Needless to say, as a working eco-designer and faculty for eco-design, things are hopping!

I'll try and keep you all updated on my latest goings on (I have 2 books coming out this year, track their progress at: http://www.indes.net/e-publishing ).

So -- Ciao for Now...Wj

WendyZworlD.com Embarks on Blogaliciousness

For those of you who can't send email, pick-up the phone, stop by my MySpace FaceBook LinkdIn or Orkut pages, can't find me in your favorite virtual world, don't know my Skype Jabber or iChat ID -- or even are able to operate a Google search (I'm up to over 2000 hits now) -- well, here's one more avenue for you to overlook....Enjoy...Wj