Robin, your comments kept me thinking about this today, so I added an addendum to the post, but realized in it I let my mind wander into an unoriginal, pseudo-economics rant. The culprit: too little sleep.

So I hacked off the last two appended paragraphs—bad form, I know—to preserve the original intent of the post. What I removed revolves around a question I frequently find myself pondering.

What effect do our purchase decisions, in aggregate, have on our local communities?

Here’s the text I removed.

I wonder about the effect we have as consumers. What happens if we spend more money locally than at Wal-Mart, or if we pay a premium for Whole Foods groceries with the assurance that the premium is benefitting farmers, producers, livestock, and the environment directly?

I guess what I’m getting at are the short and long term ramifications of cost savings. I understand there’s a personal impact in terms of dollars expended per year, but I’m also curious about the social and economic impact of a community acting in aggregate. How does that awareness affect personal behavior?

what might have been hobbies before now take on the mantle of art

This phrase reminded me of something I’ve thought before (by no means the first to do so) that a craft that is historically done by men tends to be called “art” and a craft historically done by women tends to be called a hobby or, well, a craft. When, really, I think it’s all art. But then again, I have very little respect for the mainstream art world anyway.

Oh, I’ve been trying to lay off this post, but now I must weigh in. “Art” vs. “craft”, there lies madness. I don’t think there is necessarily a blatent gender bias in art vs. craft (cabinet-making, traditionally masculine, is the quintessential craft), but I do feel like “art” is tossed around when “craft” is more appropriate for the artifact. But the semantics of “craft” often mean that “art” is better applied to the act of creating, calling someone a “crafter” seems demeaning. That brings a question of value that lends itself to a discussion of high vs. low art, another path to madness.
I always figured that the design process in costuming represented the “art”, while the construction of costumes was the “craft.”

Ooo, Christy, interesting turn I hadn’t expected. If you had asked me outside of the context of this post what I thought was the difference between craft and art, I’d probably have said that craft values utility over aesthetics and art values aesthetics over utility.

But I wasn’t trying to contrast the two. In fact I was more equating art with all things handmade, gourmet, artisanal, etc.

If anything I share with Robin a general distaste towards the “mainstream art world”, but I believe that people, empowered by internet, are chipping away at that hegemony. I like the idea of a personal art much more than an ordained art.

I could sum this up by saying, on the internet, one person’s craft is another person’s art.

Recently Make magazine published an issue devoted to crafting (though I’m not sure how different this was from their other issues, maybe less techie?) which included a Crafter Manifesto.

have you heard of yurtz? look up pacific yurtz on google. or maybe it’s yurts.

Ha. Melanie, in what context did you want me to look up “pacific yurts”? :)

re: yurts… i have this hippie californian neighbor i hang with and she is all into the yurts! i thought maybe being in cali you had heard of them. those eco-friendly houses, you know ‘em?

Ha. No I haven’t bumped into many yurt fanatics. :) I’ll keep my eyes peeled though.

yurts are very oregon. a lot of the state parks have them.

We have spent several beach trips in yurts. Much more coastal-rainforest-friendly than tent camping in the spring and fall.