Survivors....insects and other critters will be what's left of civilization after the End of the World.  Are we ready?  I am working to make sure there are plenty of them before December.

This is an interesting and "fun" process:  Rolled clay, let it dry very slowly, so I could burnish it with a smooth rock until it's very shiny, then into the bisque it goes.  After bisque, comes the pit fire.  We dug a big hole in the ground, tossed in sawdust, then added the pieces - some wrapped in such things as seaweed, banana peels, steel wool, copper wire, Chore Boys, and whatever copper things were avaiable.  Miracle Gro, Calgon, copper carbonate, baking soda, and various types of chemicals, mostly containing copper, were tossed in, along with wood, newspapers, and cow dung before the whole thing was lit, and blessed to the four elements with a bit of rum.  Covered with corrugated metal sheets to limit the oxygen in the pit, everything was left overnight.

In the morning, after coffee and bagels, we lifted the metal sheets, and looked into the ash-covered pit before gradually pulling out the finished pieces.  This time, the small ones came out with the best color, but it's always like Christmas....and always a mysterious surprise.  True survivors, these....some even survived, bloodied but unbowed, from the big human shoes that landed on them...

Next phase:  Bringing out the living creature in these empty shells by adding fabric, wire, buttons, and all sorts of flotsam and jetsam from the Apocalypse.

If you are gonna survive past 12/21/12, you gotta have "Inspiration"!  I think of this as "creativity", "innovation", and "vision" too.  Have you noticed that a lot of future-oriented people are figuring that the next big era will be the Creative Era?  Businesses are wanting to hire us creatives to help them develop new ways of looking at - and doing - things.  Perhaps it's the lousy economy: artists and creative folks are the ones.  In fact, just today, I see a post from the NEA (www.arts.gov) that addresses the same thing.  "Lifting the Lid", which I have (partially) copied here.  Survivors are tough, innovative, and a little bit crazy, like me.

Afternoon Coffee by flickr user psd

I’ve wandered into many a coffee shop where the slogan was “Good things happen over coffee,” or some variation of the theme. But take away caffeine, conversation, and service with or without a smile, and what’s left? Coffee lids.

For Paul Romer, legendary economist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, the coffee shop of the 1990s helped to clarify his central thesis about the nature of economic growth. Romer has noted that as late as 1995, coffee shops “used to have different-size lids for the different cups.” Then someone experienced the everyday phenomenon that Romer flags as the basis for sustainable economic returns: he or she had an idea. What if coffee shops were to design differently sized cups that all used the same lid size? “That small change in the geometry of the cups means that a coffee shop can serve customers at lower cost,” Romer writes in a chapter for The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (2007).

Store owners need to manage the inventory for only one type of lid. Employees can replenish supplies more quickly throughout the day. Customers can get their coffee just a bit faster. Such big discoveries as the transistor, antibiotics, and the electric motor attract most of the attention, but it takes millions of little discoveries like the new design for the cup and lid to double the average income in a nation.

By now you’ll have divined that the coffee lid is a metaphor for the kind of growth model that can emerge when an economy is powered by ideas (e.g., innovative design) instead of things. Nor is the metaphor ideal: as Romer himself admits, “The critical difference is that only one person can use a given amount of paper. Ideas can be used by many people at the same time.”

This distinction underlies the economic theory of “new growth” or “endogenous growth” that Romer has been so effective in promoting. The stock of ideas, according to Romer and his colleagues, is virtually boundless. Other resources such as capital, labor, and raw materials are, by comparison, finite and, hence, ma