Up from the angry streets

I love living in an urban neighborhood. The framed art shown here is one of my most prized possessions and it is a home made wanted sign I ripped off a telephone booth down the street ten years ago. "Found Art" everyone called it then; but whatever you want to call it, it makes me laugh. Its cryptic and provocative warning makes me wonder who on earth this subject is and what did he do to the person who made the sign? This framed piece of paper has spawned more conversations than I can count. I have people over and invariably, "St. Pete Beware" finds its way into the discussion. So thank you anonymous sign maker.

Earlier this week, the kids over at WebUrbanist featured a story about a graffiti artist who goes by the name of Banksy and who works the streets and alleys in London. Graffiti artist sounds like a contradiction in terms, but what this guy does what art is supposed to do. Namely, his work shows an audience a different way to see their everyday lives and it provokes a response. I'm sure the City Beautiful people in London would love to see him flogged but I'd love to have him move to Saint Pete.

My new favorite thing on the Internet

Check out Wordle. I love this thing. I think I was playing around on it for an hour this morning without being aware that time was passing. That's always a good sign.

Wordle is a web app that takes text and creates randomized "word clouds" using the words you provide by pasting them onto their site or you can direct Wordle to a URL and it will go retrieve your text for you. Once you have your text in place, you can control the font, the colors, the orientation of the words, the general shape of the cloud. You can then upload them to their gallery or you can print them out. I love this thing.

I'm obsessed at this point. In the form of a word cloud, even the most mundane of things looks cool cool cool. I may even frame some of this stuff.

This is my resume.

This is an e-mail from a friend regarding vacation plans.

This is an excerpt from an Italian newspaper.

This is an e-mail from my niece Maggie.

This is my blog entry from Wednesday.

I'd like to propose a compost

I have a dear, dear friend whose yard is his pride and joy. The photo above is not his yard, though I wish it were. Hah! Anyhow, despite my incessant demands that he replace his resource-intensive and inefficient lawn, he persists. Like a lot of people, he spreads fertilizers on said lawn and then basks in the glory of an all-American patch 'o green surrounding his home when they kick in. Then, just like a lot of people, he cuts and trims that now lush and full lawn then throws away the clippings. So the nitrogen and potash and phosphate he spends all that money and effort on in their powdered form go into the trash in their grass clipping form. That makes no sense to me. Why not just buy a bag of fertilizer and then set it out in the trash immediately and save the effort extended on the intermediate steps?

What he could be doing is composting that yard waste. By composting his yard waste, he'd preserving some of his investment in fertilizers. All of that nitrogen and potash and phosphate he used to throw away would end up in his compost. When he spread his compost around his yard later, he could forgo the additional fertilizers. Once he started composting his palm fronds, oak leaves and kitchen scraps, he could forgo buying the tons of cypress mulch he buys every year too. Generating your own slow-release, non-toxic fertilizer and mulch. Imagine!

Well, he doesn't have to imagine and neither does anyone else. Enter the ComposTumbler, a device that's been around for 40 years. The ComposTumbler is made in Lititz, PA --a stone's throw from another picturesque little town in PA that begat me. The ComposTumbler comes in four sizes and each size has a specific indication and application. My beloved friend from the beginning of this post is a prime candidate for the Compact ComposTumbler. A model made for the home gardener. Slick urbanite that I am; if I had a yard I'd be the first in line for a Back Porch ComposTumbler. That's a model made specifically for the urban gardener. The original ComposTumbler is for the serious gardener and the ComposTumbler 2 is for continuous composting. Check out their website and consider a ComposTumbler of your very own.

Re-using your yard waste after composting it makes perfect sense from an economic standpoint. And you needn't be a member of the Sierra Club to realize that spreading fertilizers on a lawn that's near a body of water is a recipe for fertilizer run-off. That's something that you needn't be a Sierra Club member to admit is an undesirable thing. If you insist on keeping a lawn, use your head about it. Composting is a good start. Making use of rainwater and graywater recapturing is another great start. But let's start with the basics --buy a composter.

I just can't get enough of ETSY

I have been digging around on the great website ETSY since I found it last week. ETSY is a marketplace for artists and artisans the world over. In fact, it's a lot more than a marketplace. It strikes me as a virtual artists' community. The members network with one another in ways unavailable to them if they had their wares listed on Ebay for example.

ETSY's home page has a pretty advanced search function and through it, you can contact people who are local to you wherever you are. It was through this local search that I found a woman in Saint Pete who calls herself "craftyhag" and from seeing her name alone, I knew I was going to love her work. I'm using the images of her art here with full permission, so buy something. Craftyhag's work is impressive. It comes across to me as both knowing and carefree. Her wit and intelligence shine through some of her more primitive works and I love all of it. Craftyhag works in stained glass, linocuts and monoprints, ACEOs and paintings on wood. She even makes Shrinky Dinks. Shrinky Dinks?! Who doesn't love a ShrinkyDink? Of all of her stuff though, I have to say that I'm a sucker for her stained glass work. She uses shells and rocks and even sand dollars in some of her free-form stained glass work and to me all of it screams FLORIDA without resorting to cliches.

Check out this talented, talented woman's website, MySpace page and Etsy shop. Great local art needs local support and I think it's fantastic that a Brooklyn-based website like ETSY can help to provide it.

I hate it when my aerator's congested

I was trying to do the dishes last night and I noticed that my water pressure had been in a decline over the last couple of weeks. The I remembered that I hadn't disassembled and cleaned my aerator in a couple of months. Well, once I had the thing taken apart, it was pretty clear that my congested aerator was the root of my water pressure problem. I live in a house that's nearly 100 years old and the plumbing and most of the plumbing fixtures are original to the house. This is a mixed blessing at the best of times, but when it comes to maintenance I'm rarely grateful that I live in what is by Florida standards, an ancient building.

Metal pipes shed corrosion and mineral deposits and it doesn't matter how old they are. Although as my experience shows; the older the pipes, the more voluminous the material shed. Those deposits can't hurt you and I'd rather have the extra iron in my diet than the alternative to a metal pipe, PVC.

Most faucets, and kitchen faucets in particular, have an aerator on the end of them. This aerator performs two primary and one secondary function. It's primary job is to add air to a stream of water and this does two things. Aerated water won't splash as much when the stream hits something and aerated water has a greater volume. That greater volume means that even though you're using less water to wash dishes in the sink, it's not noticeable.

All aerators have a screen in them, and that screen is what gets clogged with the shed material from your pipes. All aerators need to be flushed out from time to time and if you have never performed this little bit of maintenance, you'll be amazed at the improvement in your faucet's performance.

First, wrap some tape around the end of your kitchen faucet to protect the finish. Then get a pair of channel lock pliers and unscrew the aerator. Remember: righty tighty, lefty loosey. Once it's unscrewed, turn on your tap and hold the aerator upside down in the stream of water. What you're doing is back flushing the screen in the aerator and all of the captured mineral deposits ought to become dislodged and rinsed away after a minute or so.

Then reassemble your aerator and reattach it to the end of your faucet. Tighten everything back up, remove the tape and you're done. Easy as pie.