The Refugee Biz

I considered "Buzz" in place of "Biz".

No one thinks of the "refugee biz" as the big business of the Americas in general, let alone of the United States. But then I right away have to walk that back, as the Statue of Liberty beckons and it's built into the warp and weave of the nation that this is a place for émigrés. Come here and resettle. Uncle Sam needs you.

That message keeps changing over the years. Come pick our fruit but don't expect to be treated much above the slave level, meaning you will need to stay undocumented so we might keep our 2nd tier of exploitable labor.  We'll kick you out when we feel like it.  Sorry, we got here first.

If you switch lenses and see "going west" as adding to the "refugee bucket", then the whole saga of spreading westward, coast to coast, was the Refugee Biz in action.  Which is not to say they couldn't be enslaved or conscripted, forced into indentured servitude, onto poor farms or whatever.

Once you remember the role the military plays, of warehousing and disciplining scads of men, turning them into fine specimens, and once you see military types as socialists escaping capitalism, i.e. as economic refugees, then the "refugee biz" takes on its more monstrous proportions, size-wise.  The refugee biz is still the biz then. Makes sense: providing refuge.

However, too much focus on the economic component leaves too many stories untold.  People come to the Americas to get lost, to escape being found, to start over, to gain a clean slate. Providing asylum.

When I see the impressive ability of Chinese crews to crank out whole cities in China, I go back to Old Man River, the stadium-shaped city that dwarfs a real stadium.  

Not as dense as a Paolo Soleri perhaps, but certainly a real city, like a crater, not necessarily sprawling.  It could be surrounded by a wilderness, with a few roads and train tracks coming and going. Canals.

One could build a few to get the hang of it, e.g. do the "movie set" version. Make some cartoons. Script the project. Do a few smaller ones? Perhaps we already have?  Do stadiums count?

The Americans would add more aerospace, continuing to take these new designs to the next level of ephemeralization.

By the way, I currently know next to nothing about "fifteen minute cities" although I've heard the meme.  Does that mean it takes no more than 15 minutes to get from any point to any point within the city?  Is that on foot or by Segway?  Like a Florida mobile home park but with more amenities?

I do imagine an OMR would have like trains or monorails, like we have at the bigger airports.  Individualized people movers (driverless)? Who has the best storyboards?

Fashion Statements

I'm thinking more about an Asylum City wherein the refugees, fleeing more negative circumstances, mingle with adventurers, professionals, students and journalists, without needing to switch into uniforms.  

Asylum City derives from associations with "mental hospital" and both patients and faculty "dress up" in the context of a medical care facility of almost any kind (exempting clinics and some outpatient diagnostic facilities). 

In a hospital, patients don't stay in their street clothes, just as faculty tend to go for various costumes I won't go into, but which have a lot to do with sanitation (i.e. hygiene). But that's not what I'm going for, even though hygiene remains a core workflow. 

Does your site provide clothes cleaning? A resort hotel might well, whereas a campsite might not, or have a laundromat option (a popular mobile home park template). You have to design around plumbing (the use of water) and sanitation, with any engineering project, adding networking, air ducts and piping, whatever else is offered as a hookup service.

"Derives from" in the sense my neighborhood, anchored by Hawthorne Boulevard, is informally named the Asylum District, for the 1800s mental hospital located somewhere between SE 12th and the river, a large estate in a largely rural setting back in those days. 

To some extent, I transplant "the vibe" in this area to my target model campus (campus model). Also, in place of "Spaceship Earth" I hot-swap in my "Global U", U for University, an institution revolving around teaching care for humans, other animals, as a primary subject of research and evolving practice. I'm one of my own city-as-campus role modelers.  And no, I've never been to Burning Man. I come from an urban planning family.

So the target lifestyle need not involve uniforms, but might in some instances i.e. when you're dressed for some martial art or construction trade. Just like in the Asylum District in that sense. Plus we have lots of used clothing stores, and Good Wills.  Buffalo Exchange. Red Light. Gold Door (not used clothing, but adds to the atmosphere). Come check us out.

So just as we mingle containers of used home stuff (furniture and so on), so do we have an Exchange going for clothing. 

For some, it's a matter of casting, having lots of role play costumes on hand in different sizes, and not shopping to buy on the spot.  The screenwriters take on questions of wardrobe ahead of time, ala The Incredibles.  Indeed, some camps are very much about product placement in the fashion sense.  Just check TikTok for a sense of the product placement ads.

Speaking of fashion, I got to mingle with some interesting folks at an annual shindig last night, in a part of town, high up and looking west, that specializes in a kind of west coast lifestyle, one might call it "high ranking" in a Silicon Forest context. Whereas the term "Silicon Forest" draws attention to chip fab and software development, telecomms, movie making, that doesn't mean all fortunes get made in these endeavors. 

You still need surgeons and cemeteries, wherever you go.  I wore my suspenders but under a Python (computer language) branded sweater. This logo proved a useful conversation starter.

The military does have uniforms, but doesn't discourage "competitive dressing" in the sense of how one is encouraged to display rank as a part of the dress code (it's literally a code). 

Males and females are both highly fashion conscious, but society nudges them with different cues in different ways. I suppose I'm stating the obvious, and skating above much actual ethnography.

What type of city are we talking about? 

I always look back on Old Man River (OMR) for inspiration. That was stadium-shaped, with a terraced interior, of mega-project size. Bucky Fuller did some plans.  Don't confuse him with Small is Beautiful E.F. Schumacher. Bucky was more of a "broad band" conceptualizer. Pattern languages occur at all frequencies.

Cooking is Chemistry

One of the long running themes in these blogs has been the curriculum around "fooding" (as we say in the high Himalayas). 

Cooking shows on TV are an inspiration, as are "home ec" courses, as is Food Not Bombs (FNB), a theoretical workflow I've often practiced, with skillful others, including during the Occupy chapter. 

One could say we were being "more militant" but I prefer the word "disciplined". From there, I went on to haunt an abandoned building (my Ministry of Education), what would later become Revolution Hall.

My ministry wants kids involved in food logistics, cooking for groups, cooking for others, cooking for themselves, while folding in a lot of that dietary talk we get from the health care sector, regarding insulin resistance, high fructose foods, or whatever theory the school wants to showcase. You're walking your talk in the cafeteria, whatever it is. Or not, if you're lazy.

I'm not saying without adult supervision. I know a food handler's license is something worth having, adding to bragging rights. That you work in catering or delivery or cleanup or whatever it is, does not "look bad" on your academic record. 

On the contrary "community service" means "cultivating a skill set" i.e. don't always mistake the admissions officer for always on the lookout for saints. No, you just need to know how to slice onions without hurting yourself, going up the rungs from there. High powered cooks are admired, even on enemy ships.

The number of roles here grows quickly, even more so their interrelationships. That we're recording the operation, making videos (say YouTubes) about our Food Not Bombs episodes, involves all the logistics of filmography, atop of those of cooking. Anarchic in this context means improvised, ad hoc, with rotation (more like in Quakerism), but not without rules and protocols. Think of sailing an old-timey ship.

I'm not suggesting every neighborhood is going to adopt a "not bombs" aesthetics, as many livelihoods depend on bomb manufacture. The goal is to mitigate waste while offering worthwhile opportunities to work out. 

In my fifties, I was pulling two trailers, piled with vegetables, behind my bicycle, all the way across town, from warehouse to church kitchen. I'm not aware of many roles that actually put food on the table that also help an older guy stay sleek. I've found ways to bulk up since those days, having entered my sixties.

:: yesterday's main meal ::