Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.

Mita Williams's Blog (23)

I have been working on maps recently

I've been taking a course at the Peer to Peer University - School of Webcraft called Online Maps with OpenLayers.

I've started with a current map of the branches of the Windsor Public Library using OpenStreetMap.

Added by Mita Williams on March 28, 2011 at 1:54pm — 1 Comment

Rain barrel for a data cloud

Geographically speaking, I live in a very safe area. No nearby volcanoes or fault lines. Flooding and fire might be a possibility but the infrastructure to proactively deal with these problems are in place.



The greatest threat in the natural disaster category are tornadoes but they are small, infrequent, and you don't really need a warning system to know that there's trouble brewing: the sky turns a strange sick colour that lets you know that you better find cover… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on April 30, 2010 at 1:32am — 6 Comments

Common Ground and Local Distinctiveness

The example of Maasi Weather Forecasting in Tanzania in The Traditional Knowledge Case Studies reminded me of one of my favourite environmental groups: Common Ground.



Common Ground's work is varied but can be based back to its tenant of "celebrate local distinctiveness". If we don't discover, care, and nurture about what makes a place unique, we will end up living in what has taken over most of…
Continue

Added by Mita Williams on April 30, 2010 at 1:14am — 2 Comments

A city built on rock and roll would be structurally unsound

The first result from my online search for "windsor ontario disaster plan" was for the Archives and Library where I am employed. This did not reassure.



But with some digging, I found a link to the City of Windsor Emergency Response Plan Bylaw (#98-2005 as amended, December 7, 2009) [pdf]. As I scanned through it, I kept seeing the word, radio which gave me pause.



The bylaw specifies who is in the Community… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on April 23, 2010 at 1:00am — 3 Comments

A collective story

Its 2020 and I still buy paper books for the library where I work. Not as many as in years past, but the library still collects and shares books of papery goodness. The death of the paper book was greatly exaggerated when the ebook revolution swept over us all.



And so it should not surprise me that I still get the occasional paper catalogue of new titles from various publishers for each season. I'm looking through them now as not feeling very well at the moment and my eyes are having… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on April 13, 2010 at 7:41pm — 2 Comments

The gift of literacy is the least I can give

Through GlobalGiving, I donated to this cause, Teach 4200 women in the Congo (DRC) basic literacy



These women suffered the unimaginable. The unspeakable.



The least I can give to them is the gift of literacy.



From that I hope they can give witness to their atrocities, find solace in the written word, and re-build and re-educate for a better future for themselves and their loved… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on April 11, 2010 at 5:29pm — 3 Comments

In 2007, a Canadian woman named Nazia travelled to Saudi Arabia to visit her father. Now, he won't let her go

I have to admit that I didn't learn about this story from WomenWatch.



I was alerted to this story from a high school friend of mine through Twitter. It looks like she heard about the story from Human Right Watch's Twitter and Facebook feed which actually points to… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on April 10, 2010 at 12:30am — 5 Comments

The first and last paper money of North America

When the government of Canada started the long and deliberate process of phasing out paper money as its population embraced and adopted electronic-only currency, no one stopped to ask, "But what about the children?"



As mandated in the 'Mon-E' legislation of 2019, every child in the country could start up their own currency credit account but until they reached the age of 13, such an account had to be associated with that of a parent or a legal guardian. That was one of the least… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on April 7, 2010 at 12:16am — No Comments

Community Credits at Your Library

Airlines have frequent flier miles. Business has reward point programs. What about the public service sector? How can we encourage and reward positive behaviour in our own communities?



I know of one instance in the library world. Bibliocommons is a new kind of library catalogue and it has a system in which members of the public library who share their book reviews and book lists or add tags to items in the catalogue can earn "… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on April 6, 2010 at 4:32pm — 3 Comments

I've got 12 inches in Detroit!

Kevin Kelly made the suggestion that an artist just needs 1000 true fans in order to make a living while making their art. But how to make such a connection between an artist and their fans?



One solution might be Kickstarter: "a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers.."



I tried it out and, using my… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on April 6, 2010 at 4:00pm — No Comments

Drawn into the rhythm of the sea

I've lived most of my life beside The (Laurentian) Great Lakes. Right now I live not far from Lake Erie but I grew up with the beaches of Lake Huron only a short walk or bike-ride away.



And so my lifetime of lake shore experience has taught me one thing: throwing small rocks into bodies of water is irresistible to most people. I think this is a universal characterisitic of people everywhere. I mean, what is haiku but an entire poetic form created to capture the experience of a tossed… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on April 2, 2010 at 2:23am — No Comments

The Other Great Lakes

I have lived mostly all my life near the Great Lakes. I should say, The Laurentian Great Lakes because there's another group of lakes called The Great Lakes.



And since they are in the continent of Africa, they are called the African Great Lakes. But Africa is a very big place, so let's call them by their preferred names (according to Wikipedia) : African Rift Valley Lakes or East African Lakes.



I… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on March 31, 2010 at 2:30am — 1 Comment

The Big Here Quiz for Watershed Awareness

You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a wh*** system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome. (See the world eco-region map ). At the ultimate level, your home is a cell in an organism called a planet. All these levels…
Continue

Added by Mita Williams on March 30, 2010 at 4:30pm — 2 Comments

Waste equals food

I love composting. I put in table scraps and by magic, it somehow turns into soil-food for my garden.



I remember the first time I saw I proper compost pile. It was my first summer job doing trail maintenance and there was a *huge* pile of grass and garden trimmings between the urban trail and a particular home. But it wasn't the size of the pile that impressed me. It was the heat. The biomedical breakdown work of the compost pile was radiating heat.



Normally, heat would have… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on March 26, 2010 at 6:40pm — No Comments

Letting go of power

My daughter is twelve today. Twelve, I suspect, is going to be a lot like eleven, but more so.



When she was 11, sometimes my little girl was happy being a little girl - a playful kid in the full throw of silliness and wonder. But, more and more often, I've started to see a more self-aware and self-conscious young person. She's like that today. And she's not distraught at all that her mother was not able to bake cupcakes for her birthday.



But I feel like I'm a "bad mom" for… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on March 26, 2010 at 4:00pm — No Comments

From Motor City to Maker City: The ‘Model T’ of wind energy

You would think that the prospect of new wind turbines coming to your community would be welcomed as more and more people are realizing that we are living in the age of peak oil. But when the community response to such investment is "it scares the living hell out of us", you know that there are some serious drawbacks inherent with wind turbine technology.



For 700 years, the only… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on March 22, 2010 at 3:51pm — 2 Comments

Farmers Feed Cities

The city I live is surrounded by farmland although I wouldn't say that farming is much on the minds of most of the city's inhabitants.



In fact, the farmers in the area have to hold campaigns just to remind folks that farmers feed cities. And some of their marketing efforts have been working. The local agricultural association produced a map where one can buy local food from… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on March 15, 2010 at 2:00am — 2 Comments

The Great Canadian Garlic Collection

Sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed when I do my research. Sometimes I hit a point when I just want to stop because every new bit of information I uncover only seems to add complexity and confusion instead of taking it away. When I reach this point, I do stop and I try a completely different strategy.



Food security is one of those topics that has the potential to overwhelm. Food is so integral to our being and ingrains so much of our history, our economy and our own lives that its… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on March 14, 2010 at 10:00pm — 4 Comments

Sunday Dinner - The Future Has Become More Like the Past

Despite all my best intentions, it is 2020 and I'm still living a busy life with hardly any time to curl up someplace quiet with a good book. With two lively teenagers in the house, this is next to impossible. But my family and I have somehow made it a habit to slow life down every week for a proper Sunday dinner.



And just like our in our grandmother's time, Sundays are now the only time in which meat becomes the primary main course. But that doesn't mean that we don't eat meat at all… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on March 14, 2010 at 7:10pm — 2 Comments

What would you do to transform a collapsing city if you had a free space in the downtown core for one month?

Literally just as I watching Evoke Agent EVO's video of a co-working space in New York City, I learned that the city that *I* call home is experimenting with something like it for a month in July.



I'm tempted to put in an application but what to do? Radical Reference Work?… Continue

Added by Mita Williams on March 11, 2010 at 5:25pm — 1 Comment

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Sophie C. commented on Asger Jon Vistisen's blog post Stinging Nettle
"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
Aug 19, 2020
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Fourth of July on the Lake

This past weekend was the annual celebration at the lake house in Connecticut. It is amazing that the lake is still so clear and beautiful after all these years. The watershed association has done a wonderful job protecting these waters from the damaging effects of development.The wood grill was finally ready to cook on, so we didn't miss the propane tank fueled grill anymore. The food actually tasted fresher than in the past and was easy to keep fueled.Dad was very proud of the solar hybrid…See More
Jul 6, 2020
Asger Jon Vistisen posted a blog post

Stinging Nettle

In this blog post I will focus on a plant that is abundant in our nature, and which is immensely nutritious. It's of course the Stinging Nettle. Let's start with the chemical constituents of this plant:37 % Non-Nitrogen-Extracts19 - 29 % Ash9 - 21 % Fiber4 % Fat22 % ProteinOnce the leaves are drid, their protein content can reach an astounding 40 %, which is much higher than beef, which even under the best of circ**stances can never exceed 31 % protein. In addition the Stinging Nettle consists…See More
Apr 13, 2020
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The meal

It is 7'oclock, I was late home from work due to an assignment that i wanted to get ahead on. By the time I get home I am feeling extremley tired and I cannot be bothered to make a proper meal. I walk to the fridge and open it to see what there is for me to eat. All of the out of date foodstuffs have been automaticaly thrown away by the fridge, they will be recycled tomorrow as animal feed or something. I see i have organic local eggs and some local cheese. Foods are vacc** sealded for easy…See More
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Future

FutureToday is 2020/1/1. It is just like yesterday. The war is still continuing. It has started since 2010. In 2010, that year was a horrible year. Almost every energy ran out. Every country’s governments were crushed down at the same time. There were riots everywhere. All of the big company’s bosses were killed xdeadx in the riots. Troops fought each other everywhere. Food was bought up xawayx at once. There were no more food supplies in any shops. The economy was all crushed down. All the…See More
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The exchange works directly for state and public workers and servants. It gives them credit in exchange for the amount of public work they contribute to the community. The more constructive they are based off a base rate the more credit they recieve.
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