Go cart design, assembly and testing by the inimitable Team Tinker with snippets of boat model design and other moments of singular, whimsical tinkering mastery. Thanks to Moby for his song, Porcelain.

When I first moved away from Alaska nearly 5 years ago, there was one thing I wasn’t anticipating having to deal with: allergies. For years I was allergy-free living in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. That all changed quickly upon making my new home in the Middle West.

I tried over-the-counter remedies, which left me feeling speedy and just “off” until one of my pals told me about the solution: locally made honey.

Honey has anti-microbial properties and has for centuries been used for medicinal purposes of all sorts, including as a dressing for serious wounds. It’s also high in antioxidants and tastes real good on cereals, in sauces, lemonade and all kinds of stuff. Still, the most interesting use I’ve ever heard of for honey is as a natural remedy for seasonal allergies. According to various natural health practitioners, pollen found in locally-grown raw honey works over time to desensitize the body to allergens much like traditional allergy shots work.

It’s working for me. The season so far has been allergy-free, even amidst rumblings from pals that it is unseasonably allergy-ish, and I would like to thank the East Side Co-op for selling multiple varieties of the stuff – it’s saved my sanity and made my summer completely enjoyable again. Thanks, bees and beekeepers out there : )

thinfilms is pleased to have the honor of working with Gever Tulley this summer in San Francisco.

Gever is a gifted, self-taught computer scientist and developer, having started his professional career at age 16. He is an inspiration to me and to many, many others. His work with the Tinkering School enables children as both learners and teachers, working towards the goal of bringing the next generations back into touch with play, discovery and the other whimsical tools that put our minds in closer natural proximity to innovation.

Here’s Gever’s most recent talk at TED, worth watching because he explains this like no one else can:

Part 1

If you didn’t care what happened to me,
And I didn’t care for you,
We would zig zag our way through the boredom and pain
Occasionally glancing up through the rain.
Wondering which of the buggars to blame
And watching for pigs on the wing.

Part 2

You know that I care what happens to you,
And I know that you care for me, too.
So I don’t feel alone,
Or the weight of the stone,
Now that I’ve found somewhere safe
To bury my bone.
And any fool knows a dog needs a home,
A shelter from pigs on the wing.

Easy to take this all for granted. Breathing. Walking. Seeing. Feeling. Any sense. Pick one. And it’s even easier to stroll through this whole thing blind to the possibility that this may just very well all be some dream. We know nothing about what any of us are doing here.

In the meantime, we find things to make it about: for some, it’s about love and a sense of belonging. For many it appears to be money and fame. That’s surprising, isn’t it? Celebrity only seems to present new problems. It doesn’t change anything. It steals privacy, creates further issues with identity, but doesn’t provide any solutions for this singular dilemma. Nothing does.

So I am writing this to myself.

When people die, people close to us, it kindles something. What is that feeling? It makes me calm, reminds me of our connectivity to everything. It may be morbid, but I am oddly comforted by that loneliness, walking around in that stupor. Pleased to be again so intimately conscious that we have no control over any of this schwack. I am at peace within the moments of tragedy in a way I cannot be to quite the same degree otherwise. i don’t need anything in those times. I’m not hungry or thirsty. I’m not tired. I just seem to be picking up some signal that can’t be known coming from somewhere, everywhere. Call it shock if you want. There’s something more going on there, something unseen that has properties. As if ocean waves generate this frequency that we haven’t even considered the possibility of, or clouds being ghosts that have trapped themselves here, not having let go of their lives here on Earth yet. I laugh at what we think we know. Even if it is correct, it is always, ALWAYS, only the tip of the iceberg.

We can buy this, travel there, pretend to be this or that but it doesn’t help.

As Vonnegut used to say:

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”

Are we evolving closer or further away from this awareness? What are the advantages of each? Disadvantages?

What could this awareness do for us? Is it important?

Does it change how we treat each other? Ourselves?

Do we care?

These were the words spoken by one of my young, student directors as she attempted to motivate her 3rd grade counterparts appropriately during one of our practice shoots:

Team action in Senegal: