Entrance Slip: Building Change from the Ground Up

This first "stop" for me in reading this chapter was right in the very first paragraph. Kallis says,

"Participants can acknowledge where their skills are best suited to aid the community and where their own internal needs for creative fulfillment can be satisfied."

It's been a long-standing personal belief of mine that I'm "just not a creative person" or "I don't need a creative outlet". I have therefore focused on a lot more of my efforts on the former part of that quote (aid the community) than the latter (creative fulfillment). However, I've come to realize that many of my endeavours that I've previously just identified as problem solving are actually my version of a creative outlet. For example, my partner and I recently designed a carriage house (which is now under construction on our property) for us to live in. I considered this to be a strictly administrative and problem-solving task: where would the windows need to go to get the best winter sun? How does one move about the space, and can we organize it more efficiently? What are the geotechnical constraints and how do we work with them? It turns out, though, this act of design was actually a creative process veiled as problem-solving. Crafting could, similarly, be seen as simply a necessary and practical way to obtain the goods we need. And indeed it is! But it's also a way to express ourselves and explore our world creatively. 

I also enjoyed Kallis's discussion of backsourcing as a way to "re-[claim] what we outsourced when factories took over" for political/ideaological reasons, practical reasons, and individual reasons. 

And finally, I tried out the 7-strand braid by cutting up an old piece of climbing rope and rigging it up onto a coathanger. I found the process to be very meditative (once I got the hand of the method) and was actually a little disappointed when I got to the end of the rope because I wanted to keep going. The result is a beautiful (and huge!) flat braid.