Consuming Interests: Make it yourself, fix it yourself: Maker Faire - News and tips for consumers on shopping, saving money, deals and credit

Darn it! The Maker Faire, a celebration of DIY culture, was a lot of fun this weekend. I ran into Hampden resident Aliza Sollins manning a table about permaculture and talked to her a little about why she was so excited about the event.

Sollins blogs about green living and DIY life at The Baltimore DIY Squad. Check it out for some great tips for conserving and making things.

She's also a member of Baltimore Food Makers ...

... which promotes homegrown and homemade food. The group has held workshops to teach skills such as canning and cheesemaking.

Now, doing things yourself can be less expensive than buying things at a store, but not necessarily. So why even bother to make your own bagels? Well, so much of our lives now revolves around shopping: tourism, holidays ... all of our rituals have been transformed into demands to buy buy buy.

This also requires toss-toss-tossing all that stuff to make room for new stuff. Buy new clothes every season -- and dump the last season's. Buy new electronics for new features or appliances if they break. Buy disposable cleaning wipes, as if a rag couldn't do the job.

Knowing how to fix a bike or to make cheese can be tangible skills that free you from dependence on others. If you learn how to darn a hole, like I did this weekend, you won't have to toss all your sweaters once they develop holes in the elbows (I must be using my mouse too aggressively, or something).

And that way, when the flood comes, or the dystopian future with the crazed killer robots, you'll know how to take care of yourself.

Comments

I'd also point at Bruce Sterling's "Veridian Design" essays, specifically: http://www.viridiandesign.org/2008/11/last-viridian-note.html. He makes some pretty outrageous suggestions when viewed in light of "consumer culture".

Paraphrased:

Sustainable practices navigate successfully through time and space, while others crack up and vanish. So basically, the sustainable is about time – time and space. You need to re-think your relationship to material possessions in terms of things that occupy your time. The things that are physically closest to you. In earlier, less technically advanced eras, material goods were inherently difficult to produce, find, and ship.... That era is dying. It's not only dying, but the assumptions behind that form of material culture are very dangerous.... The hours you waste stumbling over your piled debris, those are hours and spaces that you will never get back. Every moment you devote to them is lost to your children, your friends, your society, yourself.

Along the makerfaire and Make:zine lines, there are a few hackerspace orgs starting up this summer in the Baltimore area: check out the Harford Hackerspace and Baltimore Node for more info.

Thanks, Adam! --- lfk.

Posted by: Adam B | June 3, 2009 4:09 PM