Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
—Thomas Jefferson
A friend of mine that came with us said he had come up with a narrative for his time at Transformus and I thought that was a good idea.
Before our trip we spoke to many people about where we were going. Have you heard of Burning Man? 9 out of 10 people had no idea, and the 1 would have only heard of it but didn’t understand it. Due to the nature of that I don’t expect everyone who reads this to understand it. Transformus is a regional offshoot of Burning Man. The same tenents are in place, there should be no spectators but participants, a gift economy, and ecologically leaving no trace.
None of these little ideas give it anything but some basic ephemeral bounderies. You can call this event by a number of names, experimental, self-actualizing, random peculiarity, human acknowledgement and expression, acts of kindness and absurdity which is what it is, what it isn’t and the myriad of terms in between. That is the reason why explaining the spectacle is so difficult. It is really something to just experience.
We were asked to attend by our friend Mike, a member of the Tiki Torchures. A bunch of metal oriented people who were gathering a drama-free zone of self-reliant behaviors along with a stage-show for some metal mayhem. A counterpoint to other touchy feely groups that generally exist. The point is very tongue-in-cheek, but makes for excellent polarity. Most of the core group arrived on Wednesday to begin assembling the last few months of work. We came out on Thursday packing up the Pathfinder from trunk to roof full of equipment and toys to last us the duration.
I bet you all think I’m next to a pool, drinking coffee with a little absolute and just floating the summer away. In my mind. If I had room. hehehe. The summer has really been a whirlwind.
Transformus is upon us and the last two weeks that has drained most of my mental capability. Our theme camp TikiTorchure is ready to go with the big head, fire, and rock and roll. It’s going to be an event I’m sure will be hard to condense into words…but I’ll try.
Bill Dietz, my father-in-law, and owner of Mostly Muffins has taken a position with Sonoma Restaurants in Charlotte and we couldn’t be happier. Bringing Bill & Karen up to Charlotte has been on our list since a lot of how we unfold our future strategy in the food service market is dependent on Bill being near. Once he consolidates, migrates, and has time to get comfortable in the area we’re going to start one of those devious little plans we’ve been cooking up. Weeee!
I’ve been gaining slow traction on our local Slow Food website. One of those part-time volunteer efforts but it’s going to be great. We plan on pulling our local contingency together through events, discussions, personal blogging, editorials, and regional harnessing of our food resources. On top of that the group wants to take charge of a few activism stances which will surely be an interest to watch.
The day job is producing some interesting results as well. Jeff has been really really hard at work the last few months building a new stock-gift transaction service and I think it’s going to blow the doors off of the way you do stock transfers. On top of that Jeff and I have been inchworming our own solution to scratching itches we share. Maybe it’s cliche to say it’s a great time to be in technology, maybe it always is, but it is. heheh. Hopefully in the next 30-60 we’ll start our private alpha/beta and see if others like what we like. I think the koolaid tastes graperrific.
I’m around, busy as a bee. I just can’t seem to sit long enough to staple my thoughts into a post recently. You’d be ashamed at some of my to-do-graphs!
Pulse ok, breathing ok, EEG..well he’s breathing.
-a
