One day soon, I hope to write an actual, substantive post about our recent experience at Robolights. (If you aren’t already acquainted with this… place, nothing I can write in the next five minutes will help!)
Until that fine day comes, I send you a hearty Halloween hello from the Bay Area, and these snaps of our journey to Palm Springs to bask in Robolights’ monstrous glow!
UPDATE: Our bees got us in The New York Times! Happy to have gotten my 15 minutes of fame with a box of bees on my back.
The trouble began three years ago this June, when I wrote a blog post for a client about a couple of fun-loving guys from Pennsylvania who’d endeavored to disrupt beekeeping.
This was not a joke! They built a modular honeybee hive called BEEcosystem that combined the visibility of a classic observation hive (the kind you might see at a science fair) with the workability of a classic Langstroth hive (the kind you see dotting the idyllic, sheep-fuzzy farm in your dreams).
Thanks for the idyll, Homesteading.com!
It was cool. I enjoyed the fact that the hive’s inventors wanted people to know about and care about and see bees—these excellent creatures who are responsible for producing much of our food, and who offer us interesting ideas about our own behavior and habits. I also just liked that it was a wooden hexagon that hangs on the wall. That’s a good look.
But if you had told me that in the winter of 2018, my husband and I would make the nutty late-night decision to order a BEEcosystem and start shelling out hundreds of dollars for beekeeping classes, specialty accoutrement with names like “veils” and “smokers,” and (yes, this is how they do it) a three-pound package of LIVE BEES, well.
I would totally have believed you.
There is a LOT to know about keeping bees. (Did I think there wouldn’t be?!) We rushed out and got our copy of Beekeeping for Dummies, enrolled in a daylong beekeeping primer, and have been checking hourly to see when the UPS man is going to pull up with our booty so we can start officially freaking out.
The class was very informative, and enjoyable, led as it was by Andrew Coté, who I have come to understand is something of a giant in this world. He’s one of the main humans behind Andrew’s Honey, the New York City Beekeepers Association, and Bees Without Borders. This is him last Saturday, with the first slide he presented:
At least he was honest about what we’re in for!
Other highlights of the day included this slide that features his father next to a swarm of bees engulfing a statue’s head in the sculpture garden at MoMA:
And the live smoker demo fellow beekeeper Flynn gave us in Columbus Circle:
In reality, the class was much more substantive than these photos suggest. I suppose it’s just that nothing can prepare you a hundred percent for taking on a hardcore hobby like keeping bees. You just have to leap in—preferably veil on.
Ow!
Is there a five-second rule equivalent for saying, “Happy New Year”? Like, is it still reasonable to say it on January 13? I guess I’ll find out.
Happy New Year, readers! Let’s celebrate the arrival of 2018 by kissing 2017 goodbye in style: with my annual end-of-year newsletter!
Hark! The holidays!
This year, I got into…
If this year-end-stravaganza didn’t already hit your inbox, you can peep it here, and even sign up to get one next year!
Peace out—or really, peace in! I’m psyched to be starting 2018 with you.
We’ve all been there: our mother hurriedly vacates the four-bedroom house she’s been living in for 40 years and packs enough oriental rugs in the moving truck to carpet Lower Manhattan.
Whatcha gonna do? Sell those puppies!
Or, try to sell them.
Nice, huh?
It seems that on the Ikea-encrusted plastic fantastic landscape of home decor today, classy handmade oriental wool rugs are not a hot item. Since July, I’ve emailed dozens of my more domestically inclined friends about them, posted them on the neighborhood Yahoo group twice, flyered our local food coops and cafes with their visages, and enlisted fellow travelers to spread the word through their workplaces. Last night, I finally resorted to Craigslist.
The results? One sale, everyone! One measly sale.
Esteemed readers, please don’t tell me taste is dead—especially in a place known for its preoccupation with style! Please don’t tell me the Young People of Today, walking around in their skinny pants with their double-digit lattes, don’t care about aesthetics, or don’t want to splurge on nice things. Even worse, don’t tell me that the Old People of Today left their dignity in the checkout line at Target and forgot what they were always nagging us about when we just wanted to play Nintendo: the importance of craftsmanship, the wisdom of buying things that last, the value of maintaining tradition and culture.
Or, hey, if you do want to tell me these things, go ahead. I’ll steel myself. But you know what would really salve the wound? If you wanted to buy a rug! All reasonable offers entertained.
You can probably tell by the excited tone of that title that I’ve never worked for the government (except as a census-taker! those were good times) or for any other organization that produces white papers. Therefore, my first experience with writing one was exciting and heady. And it made me Google “what is a white paper?”
I think I get it now, and that’s a good thing, because my name is on it—right there on page 12 of “Unoffice the Office: Emerging Opportunities to Advance the Human-centered Workplace,” which I helped my client PLASTARC to author for their client west elm WORKSPACE (so many caps!).
Here ’tis!
While you might not imagine that reading a good 10 straight pages of social science research about how best to design workplace interiors would be a good use of your time, I just might beg to differ! Take, for example, this golden nugget about the roots of “collaboration” and “community,” two big buzzwords in the workplace world today:
Great inspiration for this research can come from one particularly multipurpose and unifying item of furniture: the ubiquitous kitchen table. In our homes, this one object is the literal and figurative epicenter of activity for both individual and collaborative work. We don’t have different tables for each task we do; we just clear the surface off and start something else! Why does this method work, and work so easily?
Building on the basic hierarchy of human needs described by Abraham Maslow in the 1940s, modern psychologists have posited that spiritual and cultural values must be integrated into design to give individuals a sense of a space’s meaning and of “collective well-being”—a combination of social cohesion, a sense of community and rootedness, and the presence of enduring links to place. Collective well-being is a broad and essential goal of workplace design, but it’s not a complicated one to meet.
Within families, individuals feel a sense of shared values and a sense of rootedness; at our kitchen tables, we feel the presence of an enduring place, one we can rely on to support whatever work we’re doing, be it individual or group-based. We can translate this community-centric spatial model—this central activity hub for meeting, talking, learning, creating (and, of course, eating)—from the home to the workplace by providing employees with functional, multipurpose, group-sized amenities. Simple furnishings that are easy to transform radiate a sense of residential familiarity that can do wonders for engendering professional cooperation.
See? Not boring!
Perhaps just as importantly, I think we steered clear of That White Paper Guy’s top ten “worst practices.” (Whether you’re going by the photo at the top left of him with short hair, or the one at the bottom of him with longer hair, I do not want to get on this pink-shirted fellow’s bad side!)
I’m no doctor, but I know a worthwhile mission when I read it.
For the past nearly-year, I’ve had the pleasure of working with PLASTARC, a social research, workplace innovation, and corporate real estate strategy firm, on many of their communications. PLASTARC was founded by the inimitable Melissa Marsh, who’s dedicated her career to making workplaces work better for people.
Dr. Nancy Mroczek: No relation to PLASTARC (that I’m aware of), but I shoehorned in a tangential connection below
Recently, PLASTARC began archiving their newsletters on their website (always a great idea, in my book), and I have to say I was impressed when I had a flip through them. Yes, I did have a lot to do with writing them, but that’s not the only reason! The ideas they grew from are all PLASTARC, and all interesting, whether or not you’re an architect, HR manager, or real estate nerd. Here’s a sampling of topics and tidbits:
Dang, that’s enough brain food for a week of lunch breaks! Thanks, PLASTARC.
If you’re hungry for more thought leadership on the future of workplace, subscribe to their newsletter and await the next knowledge drop. This month’s topic: SCIENCE.
I’m sort of cringing at that snippy, click bait-y title, but it really was not good.
I’d heard about this annual social good event for the past few years, but hadn’t had occasion to go. Then a friend of mine, who’s launching a new design and social good conference in Portland next year, asked if I would attend this year’s program in her stead and give her notes.
I was genuinely interested. Also, I’m sure I don’t need to say that when you offer a freelance writer a free ticket to something, she’ll always go. So I went.
A (good) freelance writer will also always try to show-not-tell you about their experience. So here’s what I saw, as reported to my notebook during the event:
At least they had one of those celebrity backdrops you could stand in front of.
I could go on, but I don’t want to embarrass anyone, exactly. And there were some gems:
A deservedly tired Bill McKibben spoke about, among other things, the similarities between tobacco and oil companies when their jigs have been up.
Moxie Marlinspike issued the very interesting thought that laws should be difficult to enforce: “How would we know that public opinion and demand was swaying in support of same-sex marriages if no one had ever seen an ‘illegal’ same-sex relationship in public? Same goes for marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado. We need to see how people act outside of what they’re told to do by laws in order to see what they’re really like; what they really want and need.”
Lara Logan was a tough and smart moderator who brought needed rigor and vigor to her discussions.
But overall, I was surprised by how much time and care went into something that wound up being so banal and providing such little value. My peanut gallery tips to conference organizers of the future:
That’s it. No hard feelings, Mashable (although I can’t recall seeing anything on your site that’s really grabbed me, either). Just… sayin’.
April Greene 