moosemoosemoose

Momo keeps warm on a chilly, rainy day.

love momo

this is my job…

…harvesting lettuce for an audience. Apparently, even university photographers use their cameras “high-contrast, black-and-white” setting.

vanillaandlavender:

cuntymint:

jackscoresby:

(Source: nirak)

“Fuck heteronormativity” (the queering of “You Belong With Me”)

You’re on the phone with your partner
Zie’s upset
Zie’s going off about something that you said
You should probably just apologize to hir

I’m in the room, it’s a typical Tuesday night
I’m listening to the kind of music zie doesn’t like
Because zie and I have different taste in music

Not everything in the world needs to be
Part of some big dramatic hetero fantasy
Waiting for the day when you wake up and find
Your fantasy doesn’t fit me — I’ve been queer the whole time

If you could see the multiplicity of ways
People live their genders and sexualities every day
You’d say with me
Fuck heteronormativity
Fuck heteronormativity

Walking the streets with you in your worn out jeans
I can’t help thinking this is how things ought to be
Because of the dominant romantic narrative that rewards these kinds of things

And you’ve got a smile that could light up this whole town
But it doesn’t come out much when you keep getting mispronouned
I know our love didn’t come with a script
But those get written by people like T-Swift

Sometimes you wear short skirts
Sometimes you wear t-shirts
Sometimes you wear both
And sometimes you wear neither
I like you naked
And I like you clothed
I really just like you
I think you’re fucking great, I suppose

If you could see the multiplicity of ways
People live their genders and sexualities every day
You’d say with me
Fuck heteronormativity

Queer romance is so commonly erased
From songs and stories and histories — it gets replaced
But it shouldn’t be
Fuck heteronormativity
Fuck heteronormativity

I remember how my gender was policed
How my body was controlled
How I couldn’t ever enact
The masculinity I was told to
Dominant narratives of romance
Leave so many bodies out
Let’s hear those silenced stories
Let’s really, really shout

If you could see the multiplicity of ways
People live their genders and sexualities every day
You’d say with me
Fuck heteronormativity

Romance takes so many different forms
Let’s free it from the limits of societal norms
Sing it with me
Fuck heteronormativity
Fuck heteronormativity

newspaper article about me and permaculture

a pretty sweet article written in my hometown newspaper about ryan and I. apparently i am a permaculture guru…… if only corey hadn’t pulled the “obesity epidemic” card.

—

UMass permaculture gurus to be featured Saturday

By Dustin Luca STAFF WRITER The Andover Townsman Thu Apr 28, 2011, 09:49 PM EDT

For three Andover High graduates, digging in the garden is producing a bounty beyond the food for their tables.

Ryan Harb, a 2004 Andover High graduate, and Nathan Aldrich, a 2006 grad, will be featured on “Real Green TV” on Saturday at noon, on ABC affiliate WMUR, locally channel 9. They will primarily be featured for their roles in creating a permaculture gardening movement at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the last couple of years that, for Aldrich and Harb, has led to new careers at UMass.

Creating the garden started last year as Harb and Aldrich, working in conjunction with around 150 volunteers, established a 12,000 square foot area for the garden on a university-owned lawn that was not being used. “Real Green TV” will capture their efforts this weekend, but what brought them to this point goes back much farther.

INVESTING IN THE COMMUNITY WITH PERMACULTURE

According to Aldrich, permaculture isn’t about gardening or agriculture. It’s about building a community.

“It is a tool for community development and community empowerment,” Aldrich said, adding that the term could also be used for building construction and more.

The original idea for creating a permaculture garden at UMass Amherst came up a couple of years ago when the university was preparing to make use of an empty lawn. Aldrich suggested the idea of creating a community garden, which the university liked. But ultimately, it decided to create a parking lot instead.

When the paving never materialized, Aldrich brought the idea of the garden to university administrators. Meanwhile, Harb was completing his thesis by using a garden at his apartment that used no machinery, no power-dependent tools and a multi-layered approach to growing agriculture and preserving the eco-system.

At the end of the season, Harb grew so much food that he had to start giving it away, he said. The project was a success, he received the master’s degree in green building he had been pursuing and the university gave him a job with its own new title, Sustainability Specialist.

Now, he and Aldrich — who will graduate from the university next week with a degree in sustainable agriculture and a similar career at UMass waiting for him — are expected to create a much larger permaculture garden.

Creating the garden is time-consuming but worth the effort, according to Aldrich and Harb. It begins with soil preparation, where a corrugated cardboard layer protects the soil, topped with a layer of compost that provides growing plants nutrients and, on top of that, a natural layer of leaves, straw or mulch keeps what is outside from getting in.

“Soil preparation is about layering on top of the earth and grass,” Harb said. “Instead of killing the soil, which interferes with the biological community, we’ve built on top of it.”

From there, a garden covering the 12,000 square foot area of lawn was designed to best utilize the space. Vegetables are now being planted. In the planting process, the gardeners will cut through the natural layer, compost and cardboard to get to the plantable ground beneath.

“The cardboard is really moist and easy to cut,” Harb said, adding that because of the extra layers, other weeds and unintended plants will not grow in the garden. “It’s a low-maintenance system. There will be less work in the long run.”

Among the estimated 150 volunteers is Corey Colbert, another Andover High grad from the class of 2008. Colbert, a junior at the university, is set to graduate from UMass in two years with a degree in operations management, and there may be something more waiting for him as well, Harb said.

“There’s going to be two of us from Andover as paid staff in Amherst,” Harb said. “Who knows, maybe Corey will graduate in two years and they’ll have a job for him too.”

For Colbert, permaculture gardening is about educating people about their diet.

“It gives students a chance to be educated and really understand how all the food gets on their dinner plate,” Colbert said. “We have obesity issues, and we’re eating processed food. Being more involved and engaged with this has really opened my eyes.”

CREATING A SUSTAINABLE GARDEN AT HOME

Local residents can create similar permaculture gardens at home. It is something Harb encourages.

“It is taking care of the earth,” Harb said. “The earth will take care of you back. It is working hand-in-hand with nature more than against nature.”

For local property owners, the estimated cost to creating a permaculture garden is around $50, given that many of the materials needed to create it — compost, discarded leaves and more — can be found for free.

For creating a cardboard layer, use corrugated cardboard only. Corrugated cardboard is most commonly used as shipping boxes.

Getting soil tests is also helpful, according to Harb.

“You will know what you are lacking in terms of minerals” in the soil, he said. “From there, you should mulch and figure out a design that you want to put in there. Your soil test will tell you what will work well.”

The process to create a permaculture garden, which works best when moving from one year to another but can also be micro-executed from one season to another, takes only a couple of weeks with the help of a few individuals.

For more information on permaculture gardening, visit umasspermaculture.com or email umasspermaculture@gmail.com. To get a permit for obtaining growing materials such as compost and leaves from town composting sites, contact Andover’s Plant and Facilities department at 623-8280. Permits are available to Andover residents only and issued on a per-calendar year basis.

gogoltotem:

slumber scrote

Diane Cluck & Jeffrey Lewis - The River

i will never, ever, ever get tired of Diane’s voice.

my sisters visited yesterday! and we decided to play an over-4-minute song in under 2 minutes. i maintain we still could have played it faster.

“Gee Mark, what do you want to do tonight?”

“The same thing we do every night Nathan…TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD.”