Occupy Design

Article from The Daily Good

Occupy Design: Visual Tools for the 99 Percent


Last weekend, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. hosted spontaneous "Hackathons" to brainstorm how to use various platforms to help Occupy Wall Street. One of the ideas hatched was Occupy Design, a new website that gives a "visual language" to protesters across the country. Jake Levitas, a designer from San Francisco who's heading up the project, says it's a chance to fight back at media who characterize the movement as directionless.

"These are people who have valid concerns grounded in reality and grounded in data that can be communicated visually," Levitas says. "If we get these signs on CNN instead of the ones that say 'Screw capitalism' on a piece of cardboard," viewers don't see a generic grievance but "exactly how people are being screwed and by how much. It’s a lot harder to argue with statistics than it is with talking points."

The site provides big-think infographics that illustrate data on the wealth gap, symbols for overarching concepts like "justice" and "community," and practical signs to use on the ground like "toilet" and "landfill." Levitas says it's a chance for designers and techies to contribute to the movement, even if they can't make it to a protest.

"There’s all this untapped potential for people who are extremely talented," he says. "It's essentially a way to connect occupiers and designers. Everyone has a different role in this movement."

Voting this Saturday? Here are some resources

Curious about all the stuff the ballot this Saturday? Here are some resources.

There are several amendments on the ballot which will require you to do some homework to make an intelligent decision.




Here are some websites that explain the ballots in plain english:

The Bureau of Government Research
The Bureau of Governmental Research is a private, nonprofit, independent research organization dedicated to informed public policy making and the effective use of public resources for the improvement of government in the New Orleans metropolitan area.

They have created a comprehensive report that details - in everyday English - each of constitutional amendments on the ballot. This is the place to go to make a wise decision on the amendments.


SOS.LOUISIANA DOT GOV
The Louisiana Secretary of State
Here you can find sample ballots by Parish

Vote Smart dot org.
By typing in your zip code on the top of the page, you will
be presented with all the information you need in making decisions in
this election. It doesn't include the amendments, but is chock full of
information about the candidates and incumbents.

CABL dot org
The Council for a Better Louisiana
In depth information of both the candidates and the amendments.

LA-PAR dot org
Louisiana Public Affairs Research Council
For a pdf guide to the constitutional amendments (my favorite of these sites) click here

Vote LA dot org
By putting in your address at this website you will be given a sample ballot to familiarize yourself with the candidates and amendments. This site doesn't explain the amendments, though.


Proposed Amendments

1. Funding TOPS and Sustaining Cigarette Tax Revenue
2. Reducing the Financial Liability of State Retirement Systems
3. Protecting the Patient’s Compensation Fund
4. Managing the Budget Stabilization “Rainy Day” Fund
5. Updating the Census Change in a New Orleans Tax Sales Law

So there you go. Vote informed.

A Change in Plans

This week's post was supposed to cover the Crescent City Blues and BBQ festival which we were excited about attending.

Unfortunately, the little criminal below decided to derail my husband from descending the stairs on Friday night, forcing us to spend Saturday morning in the ER instead of heading to Lafayette Square in New Orleans.



Lucky for Beignet, the use of those blue eyes and cat charm has kept her from being evicted from our home.

So instead of wonderful pictures of Tab Benoit or Kenny Wayne Shepherd all I have are pix of our beloved Deuce (McAllister) still trying to figure out what 'retrieve' means.

I apologize ahead of time for the fact that I recently did a post on Deuce a few weeks ago. But I spent the day in a dang E.R. and didn't have anything else to post about at this late date. Besides, the pictures are great and he's a pretty dog. (just kidding in case you didn't know).

We're proud of Deuce and can't get enough of him and he can't get enough of our stuff. Heck, this morning he stole the medicated pain patches and aspercream I pulled out of the cabinet to help hubby and spread them all over the back yard after chewing them up.

So here are a few of the 500 pix I took of Deuce in his first class of retrieving yesterday (Oct 14th) in the Bogue Falaya River in Covington, Louisiana.








I love his concentration in this pic















Check out the water droplets at the end of his tail in this picture











Hopefully I will put together something for next week's post that doesn't involve our pets.....or not! Have a good week, y'all

American Zombie: Forget tar patties...

American Zombie: Forget tar patties...

Art Comes Alive

We did a weekend pass at the Gretna Fest this year and were treated to one of the most magnificent displays of pride and beauty on Friday evening: The Mardi Gras Indians paraded thru the festival grounds and - thanks to a tip from one of the Indians who was staying at our hotel - I was ready to take their pictures. We were sitting in the lobby of the hotel when he saw our cameras and told us that he was marching. He's the pink Indian in the following pix.


They were preceded by the Treme Brass Band


The colors were brilliant.

















While taking the pictures I caught the sense of pride that the Indians felt as they marched in their beautiful costumes. I could see it in their eyes, hear it in their cries. I was in awe witnessing the intricate the beadwork in each piece. Each costume tells a story and takes nearly a year to complete: all hand-sewn. A quote from the above link says it all: To see the Indians in their suits marching, dancing, and singing is to see art come alive!

Keith Olbermann on Occupy W.S.

RIP Steve Jobs

 "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose"

-- Steve Jobs

Here's a link to a video of his Stanford Speech "How to Live Before You Die"

And here is the transcript of this awesome speech:

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Who are the 99%?

Check them out here.

They're not unbathed hippies or drugged college students, they're real people.

From the link above, here are some excerpts:

Lost my job in 2006. Sold my home and moved in with my 87-year-old mother.
Worked temporary jobs on and off for over 5 years with little or no benefits.
Cancer survivor. Need medical care. Can’t afford health insurance.
TOO YOUNG TO RETIRE.
Watching my retirement funds and savings shrink.
Moved to Mexico to get medical care. Rent a room and live on $250 a month. No car. No phone.
Mom is in the hospital and I wonder if I can afford to come home.
I AM the 99%.



I am a state C.N.A. with 20 years experience, I now make $10.33 an hour & have only 47 paid hours a month, do to state cuts. My 21 year old daughter is blind an has autism. Her income for personal care needs have been cut by 75%. My husband & I care for her 24 hours a day 7 days a week. My husband is a full time student. We have four children at home and live off of $1300.00 a month. We are reduced to eat low grade foods, live in a very little tiny 2 bedroom house. We have no medical or dental an i have had an abscess tooth for 4 months now. Our car is dying & who can afford $3.78 a gallon for gas anyways? The best part is unemployment says both my husband and I owe them money, because we had our jobs taken from us…. How does that work? So 1% how is life? READY FOR CHANGE… WE ARE THE 99% !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Occupy Wall Street

For the past three weeks I have been hearing rumblings about some sort of protest going on in New York City.  I finally took the time last night to look into it and I like what I have found.  The small group of news organizations covering this story are comparing this group of INTELLIGENT people to the wacko Tea Party movement.  From an abc news report: 

What's different here? "The Tea Party seemed to be a movement of older Americans, more conservative, whiter," he says. OWS protesters "are younger, more diverse." They've got a sense of humor and they play better music.

I wish this group and its sister organizations across the country the best of luck and hope that somehow change for the good will come out of it.  What follows is their Declaration:

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

Posted on September 30, 2011 by NYCGA

This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on september 29, 2011

Translations: French, Slovak, Spanish

 

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

 

Fox news got served by this guy and never aired this interview. I have the transcript in the 1st comment below.

Puppy Love

In July we adopted a 5 month old puppy from someone whose son moved away without the dog. Hubby found the dog through a facebook friend.

I'm a cat person. I have had cats for most of my life and currently share my home with five felines. I enjoy their company and love the fact that cats make it easy take weekend away from home and not have to worry about them; cats are - for the most part - quiet critters. But I figured "what the hell". Hubby and my daughter have been pining for a puppy. So we drove to Chalmette, Louisiana one rainy Monday to pick up our new pup.

While thinking about a puppy, I envisioned a small, fuzzy baby dog. I'll never forget the first time I laid eyes on the Deuce. My first thought was "he's very tall, look at those legs!!".

The pup's owners named him "Duke", which really didn't click for us. On the ride home we played with names and finally decided on "Deuce", after the former New Orleans Saint Deuce McAllister. It fit and that was "dat".

Deuce is quite a dog. He's responsible for turning me into a dog lover.

The few months that we've shared our home with Deuce have not been dull. He has grown like a typical puppy: gnawing on furniture, full of energy. A few things that stand out in my mind:

- Deuce eating a pork tenderloin that I put out to rest on the counter (I forgot how tall he is)
- Finding my phone in pieces in Deuce's bed.
- Realizing that I could not leave magazines around because the newly acquired dog is a live shredder.
- I have never seen a dog de-stuff a dog toy as fast as Deuce.
- He drops bones and heavy "chew toys" on the hardwood floor which causes my 17 year old cat to have seizures.
- He eats anything (wood, cloth, CDs, etc).
- When he jumps on me, his paws are as high as my shoulders.
- Dog spit is sticky.
- I have seen this dog eat things he regurgitated earlier (ugh!).

With that said, I would like to present the pictures of Deuce's debut in da bayou today.

He made me a dog lover today. There is nothing like seeing a dog discover his calling, his breeding.

Deuce is part Labrador, part Chesapeake Bay Retriever, which makes him a true water dog. Hubby was worried that our pup would go brain crazy and swim away from us once he touched the water, so he tied Deuce to 50 feet of nylon rope to be sure we didn't lose him.


Deuce's first dive


He looks pretty happy about things here


Deuce wanted to be sure he found a "stick" suitable for his size


We brought our pup to the bayou unprepared, and the only sticks I could find were not enough to keep Deuce happy. He promptly ate this stick


After eating the "excuse for a stick" that I presented him, Deuce rediscovers his stick



Does this dog looks upset? Nope!




Trying to shake of the water while he's still in the water




Deuce swam up and down the bayou for about 20 minutes, completely satisfied


After about 30 minutes we noticed that something under the water was taking Deuce's attention and decided to get him out of the water. Hubby thinks it was a gator. Me? I think it was crabs.



Here's a peaceful shot I took looking down the bayou. This has got to be one of the prettiest places I've ever spent time in.

It was a well-spent Saturday. Our adopted "puppy" experienced his first of many swims and we were there to share it with him. I'm glad that Deuce has come into our lives, making it a little richer.

A true Saint

Here’s a link to an incredibly moving story about former Saint Steve Gleason who is suffering from ALS 

http://www.nola.com/saints/index.ssf/2011/09/new_orleans_saints_cult_hero_s.html

And here is the final, inspiring quote from the article

 

"And am I afraid now? Yeah, I'm afraid," he said. "I'm afraid to walk in public, because people look at me. But I'm not going to stop. I'm afraid because if I want to commune with my friend Shad (Meier), I have to ask him to cut my chicken for me. But I did it. And I'm afraid to go back and see my teammates and coaches because I know that I'll feel envy. But I'm going to do it anyway. Because fear is just a feeling, and if you can acknowledge that fear, digest that fear and overcome it, the rewards are incredible."