La Casa Grande Colectiva

Year: 2009

  • The Change of State Performance Project presents

    Come see Oakland-based Change of State Performance Project perform:

    “Take This House (and Float It Away)” 

    What will you do when the flood waters rise?

    UC-IMC
    202 S. Broadway, Urbana
    Thurday, 4.23.09
    8 p.m.
    $5-10 suggested donation (no one turned away)
    Allen Hall
    S. Rec Room, UIUC
    Tuesday, 4.21.09
    8 p.m.
    This tightly choreographed play raises questions about common attitudes towards water and “natural” disasters. A suburban couple grapples with- and denys the gravity of- the ‘storm of the century’ in a suburb of Sacramento. There will be 2 opening pieces by Urbanans: “hoprock”, for solo udderbot (an invented instrument) by Jacob Barton (that’s me!); and the multimedia-tastic “Water Finds Its Way” by Elizabeth Simpson. 
    ~~~~~
    playbill
    We’ll also be finishing up the Midwest tour in St. Louis on Saturday:

    The Tin Ceiling Theater
    3159 Cherokee St.
    St. Louis, MO
    http://www.tinceiling.org/
    Saturday 4.25.09
    8 p.m.
    $15 ($5 discount for students, unemployed, etc)

  • fingernail dirt

    I type to you today with filthy fingertips.  Today’s soil meets yesterday’s soil in the space between my flesh & fingernail.  Drew says he heard somewhere about some lovin’ chemicals that get released when you get down & dirty in the garden.  That helps account for this great feeling, perhaps, or at least explains it some.

    I might also attribute it to a distinct feeling of closeness with the mother.  For I have (at least) two wombs from which I sprang: a human womb, in which fetus-me grew these very fingernails (or some preliminary prototype), & an earthly womb, out of which all my particles came & will eventually return.  Carl Sagan said we’re all “starstuff,” & to that I add that we are more directly “earthstuff”.

    JP, Gretchen, Drew & I speed-dug a garden bed this morning, & then I had a fine time “double-digging” it — turning over the top soil, turning over the next layer, & using my bare hands to blast the clods to smithereens.  As I stepped on my shovel, the earth pulled me & the shovel into it, toward her core.  Indeed, every day of my life, my mother pulls me back to her.  She loves me far too much to let me go.

    These garden beds look like mouths of the mother.  The rich dark soil looks like her skin.  Breaking up these clods in my hands, I touch her so intimately.  What a fucking honor!

    And also, as visitors are quick to point out, these fresh, unplanted garden beds look like graves.  When I die, my mother will take me back, & out of me-made-her, will grow vegetables again.

  • perennial emergence

    Would anyone like to trade some images for some words? How many words are these pictures worth? ~JP

    I meet your five pictures with five poems.  Brownie points to those who guess th constraint. ~AndR

    bamboo shoots
    Bamboo Shoots

    blasting aggressively, my bamboo oozes out,
    striking hard only once: three shoots

    hops coming up
    Cascade Hops

    “climb! a skyhigh clamor! away, dread earth!”
    (how ordinary: pursuing sun)

    Apple buds blossom
    Apple bud blossoms

    a plump pink leafy existence
    but under drunk
    billowing laughter of some smiling ovary: my spectacle

    older asparagus bed
    Asparagus

    aerodynamic sunfed plant, arousing rustic “awwww’s”: give us splendor

    stinging nettle
    Stinging Nettles

    spines touch. i never go in nighttime gowns
    never ever tattle try like embers: sigh

  • office hours

    Jacob started keeping “office hours” a few weeks ago.  The hours themselves vary – sometimes he goes 6-8, sometimes 10-midnight, but he leaves his door open and openly welcome distraction.  Of course, he used to do that anyway, but now it looks intentional.

    We miss Jacob!  In his absence, Maria and I are holding honorary office hours, I at his computer, blogging (obviously), and Maria on his bed poking around at his books and DVDs.  Anyone with something on their mind is welcome to stop by.

  • Jacob Barton!

    Call your mother!

  • On the road: Minneapolis

    On Friday I left lovely Urbana for a two-week tour of the Midwest, in conjunction with elizaBeth Simpson and the Change of State Performance Project.  I hope to post occasional updates on this fortnight of adventure.  I also hope Urbana folks can come on April 21 or 23, when we hit Urbana, and that you can invite whoever friends near Iowa and Chicago and Milwaukee are arty enough to handle our art art art. 

    The theme of the tour is WATER; Qilo and Andrea perform a play about water & its politics, Beth has created a seaside multimedia romp, and I play an udderbot solo piece called hoprock.  The udderbot is a musical instrument we’ve invented which must be filled with water to be played; check out the blog ‘n’ wiki when curious.

    Stop One was Minneapolis.  Staying in a house with hairless cats, who are more like giraffe-bats, eating ginger snaps, studying maps.  A hurried visit with Philip Blackburn, a soft-spoken and highly-accomplished sonical practitioner who’s planning to plant a circle of 52 different varieties of apple tree in his backyard.

    Then we had a show this afternoon, and a good audience came, despite the inclement Easter.

    That’s all for now.  Maybe one of these other folks will lend me their camera for further illustration…

    Hold down the fort!

  • A Feast for the Ages

    Last Monday, Jacob and I toiled away in the kitchen for many many hours. He made bread while I prepared things for open-faced sandwiches.
    Homemade Bread
    Here is the dough being made.
    Kneading
    Being Jacob’s protégé, I helped with kneading. It’s fun. And gets tiring. But you can build some guns in the process.
    At one point, the chickens escaped from the coop, making a mad dash for the compost pile. With the help of Ronna, we wrangled them in and went back to our toiling.
    Homemade Bread
    Here it is! The bread was toasted in the oven. You can also see some curried eggs in the back that Jacob made.
    My Sandwiches
    Top: sauteed leeks, chard, shallots and swiss cheese. Bottom: fresh arugula, tomato, avocado, goat cheese. Right: sauteed mushrooms, shallots, swiss cheese. And then a curried egg. It was quite the feast.

  • Walking Onions from the Garden

    Walking Onions from the Garden

    On Monday, Jacob and I cooked a ridiculous meal (post coming soon!). We ran out of onions. Jacob went out in the garden and pulled out these beautiful walking onions. There was even snow on the ground.

  • Mama Marrrrria’s Salsa

    salsa2
    Ronna got the house on a salsa kick after she made it a couple times. Here is how I make my salsa:

    1. Throw the following into a food processor: 1 can diced tomatoes, an onion, green pepper, some bunches of cilantro, garlic, chives, hot pepper (or substitute with chili powder), cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, fresh black pepper.
    2. Press the button on the food processor several times.
    3. Dump into serving bowl and watch it disappear before your eyes.

    salsa1

  • Things La Casa Likes, 2

    Mismatched Socks

    socks
    Because sometimes (or most of the time) your sock drawer isn’t organized.

  • Happy Birthday!

    jacobbday
    Jacob can be seen here sporting his infamous Tiger Sweater™

  • Beer Dig

    Yo! La Casa hosted a BEER DIG yesterday, which means we bribed our friends with alcohol to help get our pit ponded!  Something like 40 people showed up, some of them with shovels, for a muddy-fine time digging, grunting, drinking, heaving, hoeing, and drinking.

    Some La Casans went out round about 10AM to imagine a desirable curvy shape for our pit-pond to take, wiggling our garden hose and some electrical cords around until everyone ok-ed it.  Maria threw down some white spray paint to make it official.  “Dig here.”  We made a design with two shallow, wiggly fingers and a mound in between.

    Pond shaping up

    In the picture above, Liya (purple shirt and fabulous overalls) stands in front of the mound and between the two fingers. You can see how high the water table had gotten from the night before!  We bailed out the pit more than once, and it quickly filled back in with fresh water from the ground.

    Towards the end of the day

    Above: Towards the end of the dig, you can see even the new fingers filled with a bit of water.  The north finger is the close one, and on the other side of that soggy mound, you can see a bit of the south finger.  We made a lot of progress, and we have more digging to do yet!

    Bonnie in the low contrast of the sunshine

    Anna, Brett, & Bonnie in a dramatic pic!

    Many beds were prepared as well

    Above: Meanwhile, some of us worked on digging new garden beds and raising them up with soil from the pit-pond.  We carried sod to the front yard to replant it in a strange patchwork under a tree, hence Vinnie with a wheelbarrow of sod.

    The hungry laborers

    Post-dig din: whole wheat macaroni with tomato sauce, quinoa, (leftover) delicious chili, and home-made bread-machineless bread.  The sun going down, and the crowd dwindling a bit.  The alcohol finally catching up with me….

    Post dig bonfire

    And finally, as we digested our elbows and beer, we enjoyed a big-ol’ bonfire, the first of the season.

    Post dig bonfire 4

    Thanks for digging with us, those of you who did!  I, for one, thought it went swimmingly, pit-ponds, garden beds, soddy jigsaw puzzles, bowls of quinoa, and raging fires considered.