As I was jarring honey over the summer I re-watched Food Inc. and felt oddly satisfied that I was actively taking down “big honey”. As an urban farmer I’m really exited to eat local food and bring it to the community. I’d like to think that I’m a warrior in the battle against corporate food companies. Although at this point I’m not providing food for an entire community, I would like to in the future. While reading and researching (urban) farming I’ve learned a lot about food that we as consumers are completely blind to. For example, I wanted to get goats and I started thinking how awesome it would be to get milk from local goats, the more I read the more I realized that goats and cows milk works just like a human, they have to be pregnant or a new mother in order for them to produce milk. That means that I would have to birth a baby goat before I could have a goat to milk. That was a moment where I really realized how far away we are from our food that we don’t even know how milking a goat or cow works.

My inspiration for urban farming Novella Carpenter wrote in her book “Farm City” about trying to eat food only from her own locally grown organic garden or trading her own food with friends for other locally grown food for a month. I would love to be able to do this at some point in my life, Maybe I could try it for a week this year eating only eggs, honey and greens from my garden.

Recipe makes 1 serving with 2 eggs per serving.

Ingredients:  

• Eggs (2)

• Salt, Pepper or spices to taste. 

• Coconut Oil (1Tbsp.)

Cooking Instructions:

(Depending on how you choose to cook them, soft boiled eggs can be made differently)

In class I will remove eggs from the carton and crack them into the receptacle (after coating the tin in coconut spray) of the soft boiled egg maker. I will fill the machine with water and place the tray inside, then put the lid on and wait until the timer goes off. I’ll remove the tray and plate the eggs and allow people to add salt if they wish. 

At home you can make soft boiled eggs by placing whole untracked eggs into a saucepan, then filling the pan with water until the eggs are fully submerged. Bring the water to a boil on high heat. Once the water is boiling, reduce the heat to a medium-low and cook the eggs for 2-4 minutes (the longer you cook the eggs, the harder boiled they will be, if you like the yolk runny, cook the egg for 2 minutes, if you prefer the yolk firmer, cook for 4 minutes or more). Once the eggs are done, remove them from the water, and gently crack the top of the egg open and enjoy.

Nutrition: 

Contrary to popular belief, eggs do not increase cholesterol. Eggs are a superfood just like Kale and Salmon. Eggs provide very lean protein, with no fat, no sugar and only 78 calories per egg (and even less in the egg white alone) and provide high quality protein providing all the essential amino acids and will keep you full for hours after you eat them.

Sourcing The Food:

What’s really unique about this meal is that it only has one single ingredient, and that ingredient has come from my backyard. Socially, this egg means a lot to me because I’ve connected with my chickens and can see the process from animal, to plate. Part of what urban farming is all about is connecting with your food and when selling it to others, I believe it’s important to share it’s story. What’s awesome is that each egg I bring tomorrow will  be from a different chicken. I’ll be able to explain to people (If they want) which chicken laid which egg and their personality and why the egg is the size or shape that it is. For a detailed plan of how this will go, please refer to this Portlandia clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErRHJlE4PGI.

Again, these eggs have come from my backyard in Philly only 8 miles from school and the only fossil fuel used to transport them will be used by the bus that drives me to school. Unfortunately, my eggs aren't organic, while the chickens are cage-free, free ranging and the feed we feed them is organic, we also choose to feed them table scraps from our house that are not organic. Because the chicken and egg are similar to a mother and baby, the nutrients eaten by the chicken are passed on to the egg. 

One of the best part about these eggs is that they’re free. No one made money off of these eggs, the only real money spent was on the chicken, their food and the chicken coop.  Compared to the eggs you might get at a fast food restaurant, these eggs have much more protein in them, you can even see the difference, store bought eggs are noticeably less vibrantly orange than farm fresh eggs. 

I don’t feel like this is the place to lecture people on the differences between factory egg production and at home egg production, this is certainly a good hook to get people interested. If people are interested, I have pictures of my chicken coop and we can look up images of factory farming and highlight the clear differences between the two. Simple things like cage-free and free ranging and comparing that chickens are kept in cages 24-7 and their eggs drop through the floor and run down a conveyor belt compared to a chicken being able to roam around a clean spacious area and when they feel like laying an egg, they have the option of various nesting places where they can calmly lay their eggs. I can talk for days about chickens. 

Found Object Sculpture:

“Personal Jesus”

Before my grandparent’s house caught on fire, I was able to take this Jesus statue out of the house. I really wasn’t a fan of the color and I got inspired by the Depeche mode song that was covered by Johnny Cash and later Marilyn Manson “Personal Jesus”. The idea is that everyone has a personal Jesus, someone to hear their prayers, someone who’s there. 

Andy Warhol Cats:

For my copy a master I chose to focus on Andy Warhol and his collection of cat drawings. These  pen and water color pieces are fantastic and really capture Warhol, they were unique and simple but filled with character and color.

#ENGCHAT:

This fall I’ve been working on a giant rebrand for Engchat, A website that encourages communication collaboration and conversation in english teachers. The site it run by SLA’s very own Meenoo Rami. I worked with Ms. Rami on lots and lots of variations of the logo. 

The logo when through many stages (pictures shown below) and finally we decided to strip down the entire logo to just our typography and to incorporate our favorite aspect of the logo, the pencil hashtag. I made the hashtag pencil colored and we came up with something that we absolutely loved. 

Christopher Isherwood is known as a pioneer of gay literature. He wrote many fictional books based oh his life in Berlin’s gay community in the early to mid 1900s. Christopher and His Kind, is one of Isherwood’s few non-fictional books and is very much an autobiography. The book was written as a reflection on ten years of his life from 1929-1939. The book was published in early 1976 and gathers Isherwood’s, diary entries, letters between Isherwood and his close friends, excerpts from his books and personal memory into one intellectually gripping book.

Christopher and His Kind was in many ways Isherwood’s tell all book. He writes of his outlandish friends and what characters they inspired in his previous novels, We meet Gerald Hamilton, the main character from Mr. Norris Changes Trains. Gerald is an older gay man who is known throughout Europe as a slimy conman who Christopher (like many others) is drawn to. Isherwood also writes about the Dramatic Jean Ross, the Lead character in Sally Bowls, she is a loud and theatrical British woman to which Christopher has a sisterly connection to. 

We also get to meet Christopher’s Personal friends and Colleagues like Wystan Auden, a satyrical poet who invites Christopher to Berlin in the first place; E.M. Forester, Author of the widely successful A passage to India and Isherwood’s mentor; Stephen Spender known for his many books of poetry. Then there is of course, Heinz Neddermeyer, Christopher’s love interest for the majority of the book, who he explored Europe with in the mid 1930s.

The story begins as Christopher takes a short vacation to visit Wystan Auden in Berlin. Auden takes Christopher around berlin, showing him the underground bars where Berlin’s gay culture thrived. After this trip, Christopher falls in love with Berlin and shortly after, moves there permanently. Christopher Lived in Berlin, moving to new parts of the city and meeting new people and writing new books, until the Nazi takeover in 1933. Christopher spent much of his time after leaving Germany in England, writing screenplays and trying desperately to get Heinz out of Germany. Christopher begins to develop a hatred for the U.K. and struggles to get both he and Heinz to the United States.

Christopher and His Kind as a book in entirety, is incredibly interesting because of the way that it is narrated, Isherwood talks in both the first and third person at any said time, attempting to distinguish between his past self and his present self. This leads to a multi-layered story, with the almost novelesque writings of his experiences in the 20s and 30s, but with an overlying narration from Isherwood, where he looks back and explains why he did something or how he feels about a certain topic now that he is older. In this  overlying narration, he adds in interesting things for the reader like diary entries, letters and poems. This makes Christopher and His Kind a fascinating theory book to boot, Isherwood deals with homosexuality and human behavior and contemplates them in a way that one can only do many years after the fact.

BBC released a movie based on Christopher and His Kind in 2011. Needless to say, it is very different than the book, having Christopher and all of his friends live in the same apartment building together when in reality, they may never have met each other at all. BBC did a fantastic job casting the rolls for the movie and the actors look exactly how Isherwood describes them in the book. The visual of the characters from the the movie crossed with the depth of the characters from the book created a very 3D and real aspect to story.

The movie has a phenomenal cast, starring Matt Smith who gives a remarkable performance as Christopher. Smith captured many of Isherwood’s mannerisms and plays a remarkably believable gay man. Watching the movie, then reading the book can be very interesting in terms of contrast, Smith gives such a wonderful performance as Christopher that one can’t help but prefer to imagine him rather than Isherwood in the role. Although That’s not to discount Isherwood’s writing style. Isherwood is known as one of the most influential Gay writers of his time. If you’re a fan of gay and lesbian literature, read any of Isherwood’s books, and know that they are the first of their kind. 

Christopher and His Kind

Christopher Isherwood

Publisher: Mc-Graw Hill

Year Published: 1976

Pages: 339 

Gay, Drama, Romance, Autobiography 

 Wynn Geary,

Friday May 3^rd 2013 

E Band

 #1

IAGO:

#2

Emilia appears in Act 2, scene 1, Act 3 scenes 3 and 4, Act 4, scenes 2 and 3, and Act 5 scenes 1 and 2. In the beginning o the play, she not only observes, but is an instrumental pawn in Iago’s plan to “dethrone” Othello. She gives Iago Desdemona’s handkerchief. Secondhand, I feel like Emilia is somewhat out of the loop in the play, She doesn’t realize how absolutely insane Iago is until like the last scene. I think that Emilia being “out of the loop” explains a lot about her “motivations”. She really doesn’t fully get what’s going on, and for anyone that’s out of the loop, not just her, that can lead to uneducated decisions being made. I think that essentially, Emilia being out of the loop shows that her actions are neither right nor are they wrong, they are simply uneducated and while they still are critical in the progression of the story, they don’t have either a positive or negative motivation behind them. If we zoom in on one of her scenes in particular, in act 3 scene 3 she picks up Desdemona’s handkerchief and gives it to Iago, if you focus on only this scene, her actions only become increasingly more disjointed.  

#3 

Iago: 

When Iago was a boy, he grew up in a small house in a northern Italian town called Padova. His father was a metalsmith for the army; his mother, a stay at home mom who kept watch of Iago and his brother and sister. Iago and his siblings spent their days in the woods and meadows just outside of town; Iago (being the youngest) always had to be the villain in any games they played. Some say that the oppression of his siblings lead to Iago becoming coldhearted and jealous, explaining to an extent his becoming twisted and doing the awful things he did later in life. As a teenager, Iago studied and he spent more time with books than girls - and as a result had few relationships. 

That all changed when (to the excitement of his father) he joined the army and moved to Venice. He met a girl there, also from a small town. Iago and Emilia braved the city of Venice and soon found themselves in love. Even after they were married, Iago’s jealousy showed, he would become angry with Emilia when he saw her talking to men, even in the market. After years of living together in Venice, As Iago moved up in the army ranks, he and Emilia moved to Cyprus, where “Othello” takes place. 

There isn’t a whole lot we could do with our scene, yes, 2 people die, but we just didn’t feel like we had tons of control over the way that it happened. A couple of the things that I (Iago) do are, run onto the stage panting a little bit, yelling a couple of curse words, and then doing a little choreographed stabbing of Emilia. My plan is to make a cardboard dagger, it’d be great if I could find a legitimate looking dagger, but I don’t think that’s possible given the amount of time. I also have a cool puffy white button down shirt that I think will be the perfect thing to wear during the performance. I think that the main thing that makes our group’s performance stand out is that we have the finale. Everyone except for Iago dies and I think it’s the only scene where almost everyone ends the scene lying on the floor. In terms of things that our group has planned out, the biggest thing is the stabbing, we have a little choreographed thing and it seems to run smoothly in rehearsal so, fingers crossed it goes well tomorrow. 

“I told him what I thought, and told no more than what he found was apt and true.” This is a line that brings the audience up to speed on what has happened and brings Emilia up to speed as well so that she finally realizes all of what’s been going on. In rehearsal I spoke this line with a partially guilty tone, although I’d realized that Iago isn’t guilty at all, so I  to switch it to more of a sly tone. I was really surprised at how great everybody’s performance was, last minute I felt like I totally had to step it up. I messed up once because I thought I had one more line before it was my cue. I had to fumble with my script to deliver my last line. Otherwise, I think our presentation went really well. We all remembered our lines for the most part and our choreographed stabbing went really well. I was a little lost at the end because no one clapped and we had to announce that the scene was over, but other than that I think it was great. 

I’m proud of remembering my lines, honestly, if I had one more day with my script I wouldn’t have needed it at all. There are more things that I wished I had done then hand’t done, I think we could have been more creative with our skit for sure. I think that it would have been awesome to have a full on long rehearsal before the real performance so that we could have noted what other groups were doing and had time to make some minor edits to our own skits. I know this is a really simple answer, but watching the full play all the way through made me have a fuller understanding of the play. Being able to sit down and see the entire story of the play all in one sitting opposed to reading the book, stoping and leaving parts of the story disjointed and rough. This really connected the story completely and shed light on parts of the play that may not have made sense when reading the book. 

This quarter, I worked on a number of different art/design projects. The main project that was officially for art class was the Vans Custom Culture competition. I was in charge of designing and applying a design for the BMX, surfing and skateboarding themed classic vans shoe. My idea sprouted from the idea of transpiration and Philadelphia transportation (SEPTA) in the form of a subway map. 

I started out in adobe illustrator looking at real world subway maps and designed my own. After much thought about how to actually apply the map to the white shoe, we figured that the easiest thing to do would be to use packing tape to make a template and paint the lines on the shoe. I stayed for a few days after school working on taping and painting and finally on the day it was due I finished and the shoe was complete and ready to be photographed and submitted. 

On top of the work in art class, I also worked on a number of personal projects. The biggest of them all has been launching my website. I used adobe muse and have been building the website since December. I went into building the website without a real theme for the website, my only real idea for it, was that I wanted there to be a business card on the home page with 2 buttons going to my graphic design portfolio and the other to a photography portfolio. I built the homepage like I wanted it and continued on to designing the actual portfolios. With the help of my mentor phil, we came up with a side scrolling circle concept. It took a few weeks to finally gt the website into a form that was simple and easy for the viewer to use. 

Now that the website is usable, I’m going back and re-designing the pages and taking a second look and deciding what might be better and adding features that some users asked for. One of the big changes that I’ve made already is re-designing the home page, this iteration pulls from my vans custom culture design and uses the “subway stops” as the buttons for the contact page and both portfolios. The URL for the website is wynngearydesign.com

I was poking around the easy measure app and I found their instructional video, and I realized how many uses the app (and the mirror method etc.) really have. In the video these people were trying to re-arrange their apartment and they were trying to figure out if they would be able to move the couch in a certain place and still be able to see the TV. So I think that’s a totally legitimate real world use.

What was the most exciting portion of this project and why? What was the least exciting portion to this project and why?

I’m always excited about a project involving art. Since I love art and all that junk it just makes the project a lot more mentally manageable for me, knowing that after I finnish all the calculations that I can do art. My least favorite part of the project was probably having to go measure the building, the realizing your measurements were wrong. Then having to go back and re-measure only to realize that your new measurements aren’t much better. I've realized that the mirror method is a little funky, anything that relies on human involvement isn't going to be super accurate. I'd like to compare all 3 methods and see if there is one that tends to get a more accurate answer. 

What did you learn from completing this project?

I don’t think I’ll be finding myself measuring the heights of building too often (but hey, who knows).  I think the easy measure app really showed me that there are a lot of different ways to use this concept.  I feel like I’ll use this to find the height of things in the future though, like in the video I could see myself moving furniture and having to make sure that everything would fit properly.  

I have no inspiration! I’m an artist right? Then why can’t I think of anything to paint? What’s wrong with me? I have my paint set out, brushes, a palette and then there’s a white paper sitting there mocking me. All I can draw it seems, are doodles, little scribble lines in bright blue and yellow. I paint these until the page is a muddy off-brown color sopping from layer after layer of paint weighing it down to the point of tearing. I take it and place it to dry but only to reveal another identical white paper beneath it. “Maybe I’m an abstract artist”, I think to myself, so I start to draw more squiggly lines, being careful not to overload the page like I had last time. After I was done I looked down to see a painting the likes of which can be found in the average kindergarden classroom. In that moment I realized how abstract art works: you still need to have inspiration for it to be interesting.        

So I dig down into a place of deep raw emotion, dip my brush into a blob of yellow paint and I draw a telephone phone, well... some might mistake it for technologically enhanced banana, next, I write the words “love you” squeezing out of the receiver, then, this time intentionally, I scribble it out. It’s harder to to artistically scribble something out than one might imagine, and I give this painting up, concluding that it too is a lost cause. 

To rationalize things, I tell myself “I’m only a sophomore in high school, I don’t have the emotions built up to the point that I am able to paint something in particular or well for that matter”. Feeling better, I sit at my desk doing nothing, as if to wait for some sort of inspiration to walk through the door and strike a pose in front of me. This, unfortunately does not occur, so I am left again with my mocking white paper. I start twirling my brush in the dollops of paint on my palate, mixing red, then white then yellow, then more red. I lift my brush from the palate and onto the paper, then slowly I drag the bush in a straight line 3/4 of the way across the page, then to my surprise the brush takes a sharp 120 degree turn, then another 60 degree turn, and then a final 120 degree turn returning the brush to finnish it’s straight line across the page. When I’m finished I have a read streak across my paper making the same shape you might see while watching one of those heart rate monitors in a hospital. I wash my brush off in a little plastic solo cup and watch the red paint disperse and dye the water. I mechanically like before dip my brush into a dollop of blue paint and draw a second line running parallel to the first. I look down and I have done it. I have made a successful painting, and I know what my lines symbolize too. This was the heartbeat that started my future as a painter. 

Original:

I wasn’t able to have a fluid design process with this project, because of my trials and tribulations explained below. Originally I had drawn a mask with a zippered mouth representing the silence of the dead but (as explained below) The design ended up not being very practical. My “final” design is a very 2012 sugar skull, representing the hugely popular zombie fad sweeping the globe. I am still working on the mask as of now, but the idea is to cut the mask into a zombie-esque shape then paint it as if it were a sugar skull.

I was one of the few students willing to use my face as a mold. Along with spending 4+ classes getting plastered when I was finally ready to start painting my own mask I found that someone had taken mine and started paining it. After resolving the problem by yet again making a plaster mold let it dry for the next class. When I  came in for the next class I found that yet again my mask had been painted so for the next 2 1/2 classes I had to paint my skull from the red it had been painted back to white. During the last class I tried my original design of a zippered mouth but found that a zipper was quiet hard to draw under the conditions. I sat for a while returning the mask to its original white color thinking about what my next step would be when my zombie design came to me. The last part of the class was spent using a box cutter to cut the mask. 

1) Pollo Cazuelas 

Muy muy bien! Delicioso! 

Cilantro 

Húmeda

2) Tacos Durados

simplemente bueno

pollo 

de mal gusto 

3) Fijoles con Arroz

Delicioso! 

Frijoles 

Me gusta mucho 

4) Chuletas Tentación

Bueno 

Chuletas

Por lo general yo no me gusta chuletas, pero yo encanta estos Chuletas Tentación

La casa es muy pequeño.

No tiene una tele. 

Hay una habitación.

No tienes muchas cosas.

necesito limpiar mucho especialmente las ventanas. 

Tiene grande jardín.

  Clase: Bioquimica

  Professor: Sherif

 Actividades:  estudiar vida, dibujar, escribir, ver en cosas microscopios.  

 Responsabilidades: Hacer la tarea, hacer projectos 

 Materiales: la computadora,

Opinion: la clase es muy interisante. 

Clase: Tecnología  

Profesora: Hull

Actividades:  Nosotros ver videos y aprender sobre nuestro computadoras

Responsabilidades: completo ahorita

Materiales: La computadora

Opinion: Yo encanta la clase de tecnoloía

  Clase: Bioquimica

  Professor: Sherif

 Actividades:  estudiar vida, dibujar, escribir, ver en cosas microscopios.  

 Responsabilidades: Hacer la tarea, hacer projectos 

 Materiales: la computadora,

Opinion: la clase es muy interisante. 

Clase: Bioquimica

 Professor: Sherif

Responsabilidades: Hacer la tarea, hacer projectos 

Materiales: la computadora,

Opinion: la clase es muy interisante.

Clase: Tecnología 

Profesora: Hull

Actividades:  Nosotros ver videos y aprender sobre nuestro computadoras

Responsabilidades: completo ahorita

Materiales: La computadora

Opinion: Yo encanta la clase de tecnoloía

I learned a lot during my Moore collage of art graphic design 1 course. We started out with point line and plane studies, we had to arrange dots etc. into visually pleasing designs. This helped my designs immensely; it was a great thing to start out with because it had you essentially design something, just without the product. If you place 5 black dots in an aesthetically pleasing manor all you have to do is go one step further and replace the dots, with say apples or records, essentially anything round. You would do the same for lines, say a ladder, or a plane could be a piece of paper. Building off of this makes designing anything worlds easier, and made my designs look, close to professional. For the next part of the course we focused on photography, and we took pictures of natural points lines and planes flowers, sticks, and leafs. Then we moved to my favorite part of the course, we had to pick a singer or band and either make a CD case for. I chose to make one for my teacher at Project Learn. You can see his original, and then the one that I made. This is how I made it this far, and I’m looking forward to my graphic design 2 course this February.

Thank you 

¡Hola!

Mi llamo Wynn Geary. Tengo catorce años. Mi cumpleaños es doce en Febrero y soy de Filadelfia. En Filadelfia es mucho mucho frío y no me gusta nada. Cuando tengo tiempo libre me gusta escuchar música (me enchanta "noah and the whale" aquí aye vidéo), me gusta surfear la red y pasar un rato con amigos y depende del día ir a la escuela donde yo puede estar con mi mejor amigos. No me gusta nada bailar ni escribir. Mi es, sociable también artístico, creativo, Moreno, y muy extraño. me decencia europea, specifically alemáno, irlandéso, italiano y galés. ¿Y tú? ¿cómo eres?

Bueno, me voy porque tengo que completamente me tarea

Chow, Wynn Geary

P.S. Añádeme en facebook (Wynn Geary) y Sígame en twitter @WynnGeary

Are in Spanish, how do you know what day is going to be nice enough to go on your hike.