Mikey Sklar & Wendy Tremayne
The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living is - Available for Preorder
I'm excited to announce that the book that I spent 2012 writing is available for preorder. The official release date is in June. I am writing this post to share with Holy Scrap readers the inspiration for the book and a little back story not in the book. It starts like this. . .
Brand awareness crept into my awareness early. I was in grade school in the 1970s in Nassau County just a short stint from New York City when I first noticed it. Money earned in Manhattan and spent on Long Island affected consciousness in the form of designer clothing. I couldn't afford to wear designer clothes, my dad worked as an electrician for the NYC Housing Authority. But the kids I went to school with knew the brands that earned social value. A tomboy I delighted in torching forts that I made from scrap and burned in the woods behind my home. A ratty pair of jeans suited this lifestyle fine. Still I noticed the priorities of my culture and felt the pressure of growing up in a commodified society with an insatiable appetite for more.
In my twenties I wrestled with the commodified worlds illogicalities. Searching out a way to earn money I noticed that advancing my career meant overriding my common sense. Jobs made strange demands: wake before your rested, work when your mind is not clear, eat at a set time and not when you are hungry, lie for sake of the mission of the company, get the best of another, and mostly adapt.
The commodified world never taught me how the real world works. I learned how it works and how to work in it. But I knew that just outside the boundary of commerce that the skills I'd acquired to succeed in it were useless. At the proper point of fedupness I took the skills of my profession that I once used to develop the commodified world, and I turned them around. I used them to dismantle it. This is where things got really interesting and it is the start of my book.
The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living is my story of how Mikey and I created another way to live and what we discovered along the way. It is a contemplative and practical guide book for a post-consumer life. Memoir and tutorials. I offer a view of the way that the commodified world shapes people so that we may each a way to wrestle free. The book is about invention, responsibility, creativity, economy, technology and value. It is about being an outlaw when that is the only sane thing to do. I show how we make a world: appliances, food, domestic goods, community, fuel and buildings. Perhaps the greatest of what I have to share has to do with what it is to be alive and connected to a living world. We can tune ourselves to life. If we do we have a source of wisdom. And then we can do anything.
I want to thank you for being with these years us as we blogged our way through seven years of taking chances, making mistakes, celebrating, and having a downright silly time.
The good folks at Storey Publishing filled the book with art, illustrations from 20 different illustrators and printed it with a open bind making it a work of art. If you have ants in your pants and want to get your order in now you can preorder through Amazon (ships in June). If you wish to wait until June the book will be available in all retail outlets on line and off and also through our own Holy Scrap store. And of course. . . pass it on. : )
The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living is - Available for Preorder
I'm excited to announce that the book that I spent 2012 writing is available for preorder. The official release date is in June. I am writing this post to share with Holy Scrap readers the inspiration for the book and a little back story not in the book. It starts like this. . .
Brand awareness crept into my awareness early. I was in grade school in the 1970s in Nassau County just a short stint from New York City when I first noticed it. Money earned in Manhattan and spent on Long Island affected consciousness in the form of designer clothing. I couldn't afford to wear designer clothes, my dad worked as an electrician for the NYC Housing Authority. But the kids I went to school with knew the brands that earned social value. A tomboy I delighted in torching forts that I made from scrap and burned in the woods behind my home. A ratty pair of jeans suited this lifestyle fine. Still I noticed the priorities of my culture and felt the pressure of growing up in a commodified society with an insatiable appetite for more.
In my twenties I wrestled with the commodified worlds illogicalities. Searching out a way to earn money I noticed that advancing my career meant overriding my common sense. Jobs made strange demands: wake before your rested, work when your mind is not clear, eat at a set time and not when you are hungry, lie for sake of the mission of the company, get the best of another, and mostly adapt.
The commodified world never taught me how the real world works. I learned how it works and how to work in it. But I knew that just outside the boundary of commerce that the skills I'd acquired to succeed in it were useless. At the proper point of fedupness I took the skills of my profession that I once used to develop the commodified world, and I turned them around. I used them to dismantle it. This is where things got really interesting and it is the start of my book.
The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living is my story of how Mikey and I created another way to live and what we discovered along the way. It is a contemplative and practical guide book for a post-consumer life. Memoir and tutorials. I offer a view of the way that the commodified world shapes people so that we may each a way to wrestle free. The book is about invention, responsibility, creativity, economy, technology and value. It is about being an outlaw when that is the only sane thing to do. I show how we make a world: appliances, food, domestic goods, community, fuel and buildings. Perhaps the greatest of what I have to share has to do with what it is to be alive and connected to a living world. We can tune ourselves to life. If we do we have a source of wisdom. And then we can do anything.
I want to thank you for being with these years us as we blogged our way through seven years of taking chances, making mistakes, celebrating, and having a downright silly time.
The good folks at Storey Publishing filled the book with art, illustrations from 20 different illustrators and printed it with a open bind making it a work of art. If you have ants in your pants and want to get your order in now you can preorder through Amazon (ships in June). If you wish to wait until June the book will be available in all retail outlets on line and off and also through our own Holy Scrap store. And of course. . . pass it on. : )