Bowling alley Community Center ready to open!

Today was my 40th birthday, well yesterday now as it is 1:30am tomorrow. It was a fabulous day. as it started out by staying up all night to finish the opening touches on the bowling alley community and teen center. Oh it is looking fabulous!

 Eight lanes, and in lane six you can see our mascot "Mr. Waffles" the penguin here.

 Pool Table and comfy chairs.

 Gaming corner on the back right, comfy lounging area on the left, and cafe seating in the front.

Bowling counter.

After the Funnest Toy Store Ever event this morning (the reason we stayed up all night to get this all finished) I went home for a nap. In the evening I made a fabulous vegan meal that was mostly made up from veggies from our garden, I don't have room for a rice paddy in the backyard so that came from the store.

So I am going to try to make this blog into a weekly posting/email to get the word out about AoR happenings as well as occasional musings on random subjects that interest me like science, gardening and cooking.

I am searching for a email service (preferably free) to post this same content for people who want to get it in their in-boxes instead.

  In this upcoming week we are hosting:
July, 15, Tuesday 12pm - Ephrata Merchants Meeting in the bowling alley
July 16, Wednesday 3-10pm -  Ephrata Teens Meeting and Open House in the bowling alley
July 19, Sat 4-6pm - Chelas and Mr. Nobody, painting and balloons at Hopeland Church Community Day event in the Hopeland Park
July 19, Sat 7-10pm - Teen and Community Center Grand Opening and Mr. Nobody"s 40th Potluck Birthday Party 


Sincerely,
Mr. Nobody Special

Building stronger communities - multi tiered economic structure

There is a  need for a multi tiered economic structure in order to provide tight knit local communities, which are inherently based on individual and personal relationships, which in turn require people to get out and interact with each other. The base of this economic structure is local services which are best provided by small local purveyors. Truly no one can provide a cheaper way to mow your back yard than a motivated teenager with little to no overhead and a great desire to have some money in their pocket to spend and be their own boss, even if it means that they will be making less than minimum wage. Equally true, to continue the same example, lawn care companies are generally best suited to being small locally owned operations even after they realize that paying insurance, taxes, and advertising can actually greatly increase their customer base and revenues. Similarly plumbers, locksmiths, bakeries and many local services thrive without the sapping of resources that can come with the development of a larger corporate structure. Local services with owners that are local citizens provide a quick turnaround to problem resolution with a checks and balances system that is often overlooked but inherently built into every community. When word gets back through a neighbors-friends-mother because an employee did a sloppy job it has a lot more weight and is more likely to be corrected than any amount of corporate infrastructure.
On the other end of the economic structure there are developments like the creation of the smart-phone that I am using to compose this essay that cannot be carried out by a small local business and requires a large amount of capital and people working together in a massive concerted effort to create a product that performs under a wide range of conditions and rarely fails at its purpose and is in my view nothing short of amazing.
Businesses do not need to fit in one extreme or the other of this economic structure, but it seems care needs to be exercised that businesses do not overgrow their bounds of reason.
Our small community art center has big dreams of massive influence on lives and the arts and the conservation of resources across all of the US and world, but that influence is dependent on local community members and local artists being individually involved in the personal lives of the people of their communities, and being able to assess the community needs and direct the resources to best address those needs. I feel that community spaces are crucial to forging relationships and those relationships are what community is.

Mr. Nobody Special's law of gravity, (possibly over simplified)

The basic premise is essentially the same as the Bernoulli's Principle. The speed of movement of the electron shell compared to the lack of motion of the nucleus (relativistically) creates low pressure area in the vicinity of the electron shell and a high pressure area at the core. The low pressure area in turn draws other atoms towards it.

You ain't got a scientific principle down proper unless it can be written down on a single piece of paper with one color crayon.

27 July 2013
Mr. Nobody Special

How to get the most out of the Our Neighbors, Scrapstores and Creative Reuse Shops list.

How to use the Our Neighbors, Scrapstores and Creative Reuse Shops list.

Maybe you've come upon this list because you are already involved in a Scrapstore or Creative Reuse and you think "There's too much to do in our own art center, I don't have the time or money to go flying around the world visiting all these other fabulous places." Yes we understand, we don't either. This list is here so you can travel by internet see what others are doing and copy it. Yes, I did it, I said copy, we are all in this upcycling movement together, (Pablo Picasso said it first, "bad artists copy, great artists steal") but It is always important, and of course nice, to give credit where credit is due. We got our inspiration for "15 second volunteering" from Austin Creative Reuse and boy does it work.

In this article I use Scrapstore and Creative Reuse Store interchangeably though I tend to favor Scrapstore as it is shorter.

Social Networking
I recommend that you use the modern social networking tools to their fullest and so I try to include all of those as an important aspect of this list. Almost every one on this list has a website and most have at least a Facebook page and many have Twitter and Pinterest pages too. Find out if your current and your potential clients are on other networks too and get on the ones they are already involved in.  

It is also very important that we all "like" each others Facebook pages and Pinterest images etc because it allows social networks to categorize us and then in turn recommend in their 'you might also like' similar pages. This will help us grow as a scrapstore movement and we are all in this because we think a change needs to be made in the world and fast.

Watch and get ideas of what other art centers are doing like when they start a seed swap, or Christmas shop, or debut a new recycled craft.  

Website Design
Look at the pages and headings of other groups websites and see if there are important gaps of information that you are not providing to your clients. Do you have links to your social networking pages in an easy to find spot on every page of your website. Is it easy to find the address to your location. Are your hours posted clearly. What is your mission statement. What type of donations do you take. Etc.

 Funding
It is so sad to see scrapstores close due to a lack of funding. We understand that grants may be hard to get so we must be prepared to think creatively. Some have an additional Botique or Art Gallery selling recycled arts and crafts. Some require membership with these fees providing most or all the income and a per visit or per shopping bag or per shopping cart payment scheme. Still others allow you to chose how much you think it is worth with pay-as-you-will pricing. This list can help you see the breadth of funding possibilities that are available to your Creative Reuse.

For example here at Art of Recycle have a highly diversified financial platform. Because our Scrapstore only provides about half of our financial needs we need to think creatively. We have chosen to not have membership because we wish to be as inclusive as possible. One thing we do is craft birthday parties, as do many Scrapstores. We include face painting and balloon art as part of the whole package to help us have a competitive edge in the local birthday party business. We have an artist/volunteer who uses her talents to paint on the guests using faces, arms, and legs as her canvases, and we have a balloon artist/volunteer who at didn't even really want to at first, but is now amazing (two weeks on YouTube, a five dollar pump and twenty bucks of balloons is all you need to start). But our need of funding doesn't stop with the currently small number of parties we have at the art center (although the word is spreading rapidly and the bookings are increasing),  so we do face painting/balloon art party entertainment outside the center too. About a third of our income comes from the parties. It's not easy juggling the financial maters and sometimes we are very exhausted, but the work is too important and we love it! (more on love in a moment)

Another facet is that we get the local preteens (they love to hang out and be helpful) to take apart the odd broken things like old tools and small kitchen appliances. They get life skills seeing how things go together and we get motors for recycling (to the local metal recyclers) and cool and odd parts to sell as random art parts.

We have the coolest donation box in the world, that helps a bit.

We do workshops. Most of our workshops are free and when we do list a donation price on them (generally only the cost of supplies) we still never turn anyone away for lack of funds. The workshops do not directly bring in a significant amount of money, but the scrapstore sales on those days are great. 

We have a free bin of stuff that isn't the quality we want to sell but shouldn't go to the landfill. Speaking of which, and I am not sure how to word this without it getting misinterpreted, we take donations of almost everything yet we still, through proper display and appropriate cleaning, take great care to make sure that even the snootiest of customers feel comfortable browsing our wares. Even the stuff in the free bin is cleaned to like new.

Our Craft Castle is a free crafting area. (Some scrapstores charge for their crafting areas.)  We give things and services away for free and get more donations, both monetary and scrap items, because of it! People return the love!

We leased a building in a great location that needed quite a bit of work and had sat vacant for several years and put a lot of 'sweat equity' into it instead of money which we didn't have.

We obtained a license as a re-upholstery location and take odd jobs when we can.

For four years we worked full time jobs and put another full-time workweek into this project not because we are workaholics but because we knew that we were investing in our future, a future where our every moment was immersed in art. And it is working, although no one is getting a paycheck from this yet, but we don't have to work full-time jobs to actually support the art center anymore, as it is paying its own basic bills. Instead we volunteer fourteen hours a day on art center business. We have lowered our own need for money by growing a garden at home and canning food, and we still take every odd job that comes to us and...Well you get the picture, It's a lot of hard work, but it's getting better (and easier) every day.

Love
When there is love, it shows. Love is in the little details. I had one of our regulars hand me a fifty dollar bill a few weeks ago, she thanked me/us for being there for her and her two grandchildren when she couldn't afford anything. The thing is we didn't treat her any different than anyone else, well that's kinda my point. We treat everyone like they are important, and don't discriminate. I still don't think that she could really afford to give us that money, but she saw a need for the services we provide to the community and wanted to make sure we could keep going. If you don't love art or recycling or humans (preferably all three) then this might not be the way for you. On the other hand if you have a passion for all three, then there is a need for your help in a local scrapstore, and if there isn't one within ten minutes of where you live then you might consider starting one. Scrapstores don't have to be open to the public so you can start one in a basement or garage and grow from there. Websites can be had for free with no programming skills. Start with what you have available and if there is love the rest will come exactly on time. Love is in the details. If you love something it will show because you will do your best in every little thing you do.

Design
One thing I notice as I peruse the pictures of scrapstores, is ugly gray metal shelves. I do understand that there is a place in the massive warehouse style scrapstores, and I do understand the need to cram as much as possible into whatever small space you have available, but most scrapstores are smaller community affairs with an interest in inspiring people.  Now I am an artist with no schooling but hard knocks, and personally I just don't find those industrial shelving units very inspiring. Frankly they depress me.

Our mission here is to grow and heal community and  teach and inspire recycling art, so we work hard to have an environment that does just that. We don't hesitate to use any fantastic donation to incorporate into the design of the facilities. When you see that fantastic whatzit and think that would look great incorporated into ____ part of the scrapstore, do it! Remember you are not using up a one of a kind item, you are permanently putting it on display and showing everyone that walks through the art center that this is a place of inspiration and also that there is a need for more items like it which are squirreled away in attics and basements. The more fantastic things people can see in your art center the more they will donate things that are similar. The work and the creativity that you put into your facilities and the materials that you use up in making your art center a wonderland environment is very important! Even if you are renting! We built our shelving (seven year leased space) in the image of a small village using the same materials that we are trying to teach the public how to make use of. Be Creative! Have Fun!

Bins work great for holding just about everything. Towards the end of our initial build stage we realized that old dresser drawers make fantastic large bins, tilt them slightly towards the front and attach three in a stack together with a few pretty pieces of wood like trim to the sides and viola much more inspiring than grey shelving.

For signs go crazy with decoupage with that vintage ephemera and little chalkboards are helpful when you have to change items out regularly (that new chalkboard paint is great). Above all remember that this is an environment that you are planning to spend a lot of time in and you want it to be a happy, fun, useful, safe, and easy to navigate space.

Advertising
One last thing, Finger puppets can be as simple as two small scraps of fabric sewn together in a u shape and turned inside out (use those tiny fabric scraps). These can be decorated in your free crafting area (we recommend low temp hot glue guns for quick and safe crafting) Beads become eyes and yarn makes great hair. You will be amazed at the creativity of some of your little crafters. Well, if you give them a fantastic puppet stage (put some love into the stage) and tell them the three basic parts of a story, Character(s) Location(s) and Problem/Solution, and then get them to create a story and help them along with a creative narrator; In a matter of about fifteen minutes many of these finger puppets become "Real" like the velveteen rabbit and then they go out into the world as your advertising army. In the past year well over 2000 of these fantastical finger puppets have gone out of our doors and those kids are excitedly (again, their love of a fantastic wonderland) telling their friends and boy does the word spread. And word of mouth is the best advertising.

Thank you for a few moments of your time and I hope this list helps you to to find out how you can make your local Creative Reuse/Scrapstore the best resource for your local community. 

Mr. Nobody Special of Art of Recycle

Flying cities

I've got a dream, a plan to send mankind into space. This won't be the last time I mention it here. It's very simple actually, I have an aerodynamic method of building cities in the sky and without too much of a leap of technology they become self-sustaining cities in space. It's not so much the technology that concerns me as the societal development that is required to live peaceably and which I am hoping is definitively assisted along by properly designing the city to promote co-operation amongst the residents.

Snow day

We took a snow day today. We had a really fun workshop scheduled, decorating Easter eggs. I can't really tell you if it was a "right" decision or a "wrong" one. It was snowing when we posted it at 10 am and the weather report said that it would continue all day through the evening. So we posted it on the two major networks we are currently using to get info out, Facebook and Meetup. We stayed in at home all day and watched OnePiece, a fabulously and intensely crafted weekly manga turned anime. We don't often take days off, my partner Chelas and I are working so hard at getting Art of Recycle started and there is always so much to do. We work an average of fourteen to sixteen hours a day between the art center and the website programming and the other administration of webformation. We believe that art is so important to making necessary changes in our decadently wasteful society that we pour all our energy into it. We also understand that it is important to balance. Today, no this whole weekend we spent most of our time in bed watching Luffy and his pirate crew battle evil and helping us to recharge our sense of values. We volunteered our services for two events to help promote the art center on Fri and Sun. We opted to let the balanced meal plan lapse a little and had less veggies and more carbs than optimal. :) I know we disappointed at least one family by re-scheduling the workshop, but I also know that it is likely the last day we will take off for possibly months and only the second weekend that we have lazed around for in the past year. Next weekend has almost nothing scheduled but with the weather looking better we need to be taking care of beautifying the outside of the art center and zoom zoom zoom on into and through the summer. Deep breath and goodnight.

Breathe in, breathe out, Move on

I still don't exactly know what it means to breath from my diaphragm, but I do know how to breathe. As a massage therapist I know how and when to tell people 'now take a big deep breath from your belly.' or 'from your chest.' or from both chest and belly.' Breathing right is about the most important thing you can do for your health. Breathing right burns calories, stretches muscles, loosens joints, relieves stress, increases blood flow to the brain and body and a host of other things. Breathing is the core principle of yoga, Ti-Chi, and other martial arts. I strive to always become better at breathing.

Really. Pay attention to your breathing. It will change your world.

Mr. Nobody Special