Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/20/chan-zuckerberg-initiative-helps-east-palo-alto-with-water-shortage-and-affordable-housing/

VATICAN GRANT

http://grist.org/briefly/the-vatican-is-holding-a-contest-for-climate-change-startups/

And Happy Holidays to you and family as well!

To leave aside the question of mapping for a second, I wanted to touch bases with you about what I'd call "Facebook Thinking." You've brought up the need to think beyond the insular, "poor us" mind set that has plagued us (EPA/EMP) so far. (I say "us," because, if we are to think globally, as we must, then anywhere on earth that we can relate to, love, and know something about is our home. FB, which has more members that the religions of the world combined, is shaping up to be the way we speak to each other as a planet.) 

I'm going to look at the Google satellite map after this to see what is the geographical formation of land east of Bayshore. So far, I presume that "Facebook Town," EMP and EPA are clustered together, and form a potential separate area of governance...with EPA as the center. In such a scenario, FB would not be a competing organization overpowering us, BUT WOULD BE PART OF US. WE would, therefore, be the communication hub of the world. 

Meanwhile, there is this: http://grist.org/briefly/the-vatican-is-holding-a-contest-for-climate-change-startups/

A start up to address climate change should also address inequality, homelessness, gentrification, land use planning, historic preservation--all the issues that are prime for EPA. Why can't a proposal be made to situate such a start up in EPA? (I'd be glad to contribute whatever is usable to the proposal effort.) 

Charles Weeks, in his magazine and other writings, called "Runnymede" a university town, and didn't separate it from Stanford, to which it was connected by a foreplanned connecting rail line. Such was the vision of Weeks, exactly 100 years ago. An East Bayshore "city" seems to be building on that original vision for the area. 

I'd like to hear your thoughts before posting this on Real Community.

GROWTH

No one here believes that growth the way we have it now is survivable. It's also clear that down growing isn't feasible. It's a case where we have been prodded through capitalism to a precipice where many among the throng have started falling in. But a significant portion, exemplified by readers here, can see clearly that going forward with the cattle is fatal.

But, as with cattle, turning back means you get trampled by the throng of these to the rear earnestly charging in your direction. You can't go forward and you can't go backward. The logical thing is to freeze the action so that everybody stays precisely where they are, not moving an inch.

So how is that growth? Staying in one place requires great energy, since it equivalates to the energy that is embodied in building a dyke, and the physics involved in the function of the dyke. And let's say we are at zero in terms of building this system whereby everything can be frozen in place, there is an enormous amount of energetic work ahead to create this system of stasis and keep it going against pressures for unaffordable movement (that has traditionally been seen as natural and inevitable). Think developers.

But if developers knew what was good for them, they'd turn their attention to building the system--a huge growth project--to keep everything exactly where it is. A Christmas Present.

An  Introduction  to  Political  Economy

December 20, 2017John Michael Greer157 Comments

https://www.ecosophia.net/introduction-political-economy/

Last month, when I looked across the vast gray wasteland of the calendar page ahead and noted that there were five Wednesdays in November, I asked readers—in keeping with a newly minted but entertaining tradition here on Ecosophia—to suggest a theme for the fifth Wednesday post. This blog being the eccentric phenomenon that it is, it probably shouldn’t have surprised me that the result was a neck-and-neck contest between a post on nature spirits and a post on alternatives to capitalism and socialism, with a focus on democratic syndicalism. Nature spirits won by a nose, but there was enough interest in the other option that I decided to go ahead and write a post on that as well.

Nature spirits and democratic syndicalism may not seem to have much in common, but I’ve discovered one unexpected similarity: it’s very difficult to discuss either one in a single post. To make any kind of sense out of the ancient belief that the forces of nature are best understood and most truly experienced as persons rather than things, it turned out to be necessary to delve into the entire tangled mess our culture has made about the concept of personhood, and what does and doesn’t count as a person. Only when that was cleared away could we go on and talk about what it means to experience nature as composed of persons rather than things.

In the same way, if we’re going to make any kind of sense of the alternatives to capitalism and socialism, it’s going to be necessary to talk for a while about capitalism, socialism, and the third and usually unmentionable system of modern industrial economics—yes, that would be fascism. In the process, we need to pay attention to the thing that conventional economics systematically ignores—the mutual entanglement of political power and economic wealth—and that requires us to revive a science that has been dead and buried for well over a century now.

If you take an introductory course on economics, you can pretty much count on being told that the modern science of economics was launched by Adam Smith. Like so much conventional wisdom about history these days, this is false, and it’s false for at least two different reasons.

First of all, economics isn’t a science. What sets apart a science from other kinds of human knowledge is that the assertions of a science are tested against what actually happens. When a scientist makes a claim, at least in theory, other scientists run the same experiment or observe the same phenomenon and see if they get the same results. If they don’t, the claim made by the first scientist—again, at least in theory—goes into the wastebasket alongside such discarded notions as phlogiston and the luminiferous ether. Nowadays, this doesn’t always happen, and that’s one of the core reasons that the sciences these days are facing a catastrophic crisis of legitimacy, but that’s an issue for another post; when a science does what it’s supposed to do, every claim is tested to see if it can be replicated. That’s what makes it a science.

Economists don’t do this. They don’t even pretend to do it.  Mainstream economists like to make claims about what will happen when their preferred policies are put into place, mind you, but the mere fact that those claims simply aren’t true never gets considered when repeating them. Consider the way neoliberal economists to this day rehash David Ricardo’s claim that free trade will make poor countries rich. They’re wrong; history shows that when poor nations embrace free trade, they become even poorer, while poor nations that reject free trade schemes generally prosper. Yet the total disconfirmation of free trade theory in practice has yet to register on the economic mainstream.  As far as economists are concerned, Ricardo said it, they believe it, and that settles it.

So economics isn’t a science. It also wasn’t founded by Adam Smith. What Adam Smith founded, rather, was political economy. You won’t hear much about that field of study these days, and that’s not an accident. Political economy, as the name indicates, explores the relations between wealth and power in a society.  For reasons that I suspect my readers will have no trouble understanding, this is something that a great many wealthy and powerful people in today’s industrial nations don’t want to discuss—and that, my children, is why we don’t have courses on political economy in universities today. We have courses on political science, which claim to study power without taking wealth into account, and courses on economics, which claim to study wealth without taking power into account, and both of these highly praised, well-funded fields of study by and large duly churn out vast amounts of poppycock instead of offering useful insights into the societies in which we live.

We’re going to talk about political economy in this week’s post. We’re going to do that because it’s not really possible to understand why the world’s industrial nations are running themselves into the ground without understanding the self-destruct button hardwired into capitalism, and it’s impossible to understand that latter bug—or is it a feature?—without talking about the ways that wealth and power form feedback loops in an industrial society.

The most important thing to understand, if you’re trying to make sense of political economy, is who owns the means of production. Means of production? That’s a convenient bit of shorthand. Every human society produces goods and services; the means of production are the sum total of the arrangements made to do this necessary task. Now of course a category this diverse is going to include things owned by an equally dizzying array of people, but in most societies, ownership of the most important means of production tends to follow specific patterns.

Examples? Consider a feudal society—early medieval England, let’s say. It’s an agrarian society in which most people are employed in farming, and the means of production that matter most can be summed up in one word: land. Who owns the land? That’s a simple matter. The king owns all the land; he grants the right to use it to his immediate vassals, the great dukes and earls of the kingdom, in exchange for their loyalty and obedience; they pass on the same right to barons, the lesser fish of the feudal system, on the same terms; the barons then do exactly the same thing, and we proceed straight down the feudal pyramid to Higg son of Snell in his peasant hovel. Higg has his hovel and the farmland that goes with it because he’s a vassal of Sir Hubert de Ware, who is a vassal of Baron Fulk of Lewes, who is a vassal of Duke Geoffrey of Sussex, who is a vassal of the king. Understand that pattern of ownership of the means of production—that pattern of political economy—and you understand early medieval English society.

Okay, let’s consider another example: early twentieth-century America. It’s an industrial society. and factories and offices are the means of production that matter most. Who owns the factories and the offices? That’s also a simple matter. The factories and offices are owned by corporations. Who owns the corporations?  Their investors. How do you get to be an investor? By having enough capital to purchase stocks and other investment vehicles. How do the investors exercise their ownership? By electing boards of directors in elections in which each share of stock has one vote; the boards of directors then hire and fire the people who run the factories and offices. (Remember, this is early twentieth-century capitalism; things are different now.) Understand that pattern of political economy, and you understand early twentieth-century America.

Notice, before we go on, that there are two crucial differences between the political economies of feudal England and industrial America. The first has to do with the relationship between power and wealth. In feudal England, that’s totally explicit: the king is the head of state and also the landowner of last resort; the dukes and barons are political officer as well as economic magnates. In industrial America, it’s not explicit: in theory—mind you, only in theory—the government is entirely separate from the economic sphere. In practice the wealthy buy and sell political offices and voting blocs the way they buy stocks and bonds, and since there’s no explicit relationship between power and wealth, there’s nothing to keep them from doing whatever they want.

The second difference has to do with the distribution of wealth. In both societies, wealth is very unfairly distributed—the rich are very rich and the poor are very poor—but the feudal system has a counterbalance to the tendency of wealth to flow uphill. If you, dear reader, were a duke or a duchess in early medieval England, and you had the brains the gods gave geese, you would know that your influence, your security, and your survival depended on having plenty of vassals who would come running with drawn swords any time you needed them. How do you get vassals? By granting them landholdings—that is, transferring wealth down the ladder.

But your vassals are in the same situation you are.  They need vassals of their own, and their vassals need vassals, all the way down to Higg son of Snell, who will not only come running with a billhook in his hands when Sir Hubert needs him in battle, but puts in the daily labor that puts bread on everyone’s tables. Thus feudal societies constantly move wealth down the pyramid. As a direct result, they tend to be extremely stable—so much so that when complex  societies collapse, a feudal system is almost inevitably what takes shape amid the ruins.

Capitalist societies don’t do this. Quite the contrary, in a capitalist society like early twentieth century America, all the incentives keep wealth flowing up the social ladder, and nothing brings it back down. The investors who own stock in corporations have an understandable interest in maximizing the return on their investment, so they reliably vote in boards of directors who will hire management who will force down wages as far as possible.  The investors who own stock in corporations also have an understandable interest in keeping as much of their wealth as possible out of the clutches of the tax man, so they reliably pressure and bribe government to spend as little as possible for the benefit of anybody outside the investor class.

As a result, capitalist societies are anything but stable; they suffer from savage cycles of boom and bust. The process at work here is quite easy to understand, and in fact it was very widely understood three quarters of a century ago; regaining that understanding is a crucial step toward making sense of the mess we’re in today.

Here’s how it works. Since working class wages get driven down, and government expenditures aren’t allowed to rise to take up the slack, people in the working classes can’t afford to consume the value of the goods and services they produce. Sales accordingly falter, and so do profits in productive industries. Since the investor class is interested solely in maximizing the return on its investment, in turn, investment money flows out of productive industries and into financial instruments of various kinds, where it drives speculative bubbles. As the bubbles inflate, they suck even more money out of the productive side of the economy. When the bubbles pop, in turn, so does the economy, and down we go into a depression.

That’s what happened all across the industrial world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, over and over again, until the Great Depression hit and the investor class realized that something had to give. What convinced them of that? The rise to power of two rival economic systems that rejected the basic presuppositions of capitalism, and—ahem—worked.

The first of these systems was socialism. Let’s stop right here for a moment and explain the meaning of the word, shall we? Plenty of people, especially but not only in the United States, have been using that moniker “socialism” to mean any number of randomly chosen things, but the word does actually mean something specific.  Socialism is the system of political economy in which the means of production are owned by the national government. That’s what it is, and that’s all it is. (Most of the things that currently get labeled “socialist” in the English-speaking world are actually social democracy, which is an entirely different system that we’ll discuss in a moment.) If it doesn’t have to do with government ownership of the means of production, it’s not socialism, full stop, end of sentence.

Socialism has its problems. In its most popular form, the version that more or less follows the recipe laid down by Karl Marx, it so consistently produces bloodthirsty dictatorships that a good case can be made for chucking it into the rubbish heap of failed ideologies. The fact remains that as an economic system, it works about as well as capitalism—that is to say, not well, but well enough to stay in power—and it does a much better job of distributing wealth to the working classes than capitalism does, which is why capitalists hate it so much. On the other hand, given a choice, the working classes favor it, for the same reasons capitalists hate it: if you’ve got a choice between two dysfunctional systems, why not choose the one that benefits you most?

Then there was the other rival system, which has been so obscured by shrill rhetoric over the last three quarters of a century or so that we’re going to have to approach it by a roundabout route. Suppose, then, that some charismatic figure in today’s American scene—somebody toward the center of our overheated political spectrum—were to propose a new system of political economy to replace the mess we’ve got now. We’re going to keep capitalism, she says, but it’s going to have its excesses curbed and its abuses prevented, not by the government, but by an organized movement of citizens under my leadership. Each year we’re going to sit management and labor down at the bargaining table, everybody in a given industry all at once, and make them bargain in good faith, with the citizen movement watching both sides to make sure a fair settlement is reached; there will be no more strikes, no more lockouts, no more labor troubles, just a new contract every year, and the citizen movement will enforce that by whatever means happen to be necessary. What’s more, she tells adoring crowds, the citizen movement will take on the same role in the political sphere, and be ready to yank the chains of officials when they get out of line. Of course the citizen movement will have to have special powers to do this, she says, and here’s the enabling act to give it those powers, just as soon as I become Chancellor…

That is to say, we’re talking about fascist economics. Yes, I’m aware that this isn’t the sort of thing that comes to most Americans’ minds when you mention the word “fascism,” but that just shows how thoroughly ignorant most Americans are about history. Fascism was never about the unrestricted rule of the capitalist investment class—that’s a falsehood originally manufactured by Stalin’s flacks back in the days of the Third International, and repeated by the misinformed ever since. Fascism attracted the masses in the 1920s and 1930s because it offered an alternative to unrestrained capitalism with its lethal boom-and-bust cycles. Did it work? Not very well, but then neither did unrestrained capitalism, and here again most people forced to choose between dysfunctional systems will choose the one that benefits them personally.

It was in response to the popularity of the socialist and fascist systems that social democracy came into being. (This, remember, is the thing that Republicans these days call “socialism.”) Social democracy was an attempt to take the best parts of fascist economics and combine them with constitutional government and the rule of law. In place of the “citizen movement” of my sketch above—that’s spelled “The Party” in its historical examples—social democracy puts the elected government of a constitutional representative democracy. In a social democracy, capitalism still exists, but at least in theory, it has to put up with legal checks that keep it from running too far off the rails: laws against monopolies, laws against insider trading, laws forcing banks to have deposit insurance, and so on.

It’s not a bad system, all things considered—which is to say it’s dysfunctional, but slightly less so than any of the three other alternatives we’ve discussed. Its great weakness was that it came into being because the investor class realized that they would end up dangling from lampposts if they tried to keep unrestrained capitalism going much longer, and it could only survive so long as the investor class stayed scared. Once the Great Depression and the age of rising fascist states faded out of historical memory, though, a new generation of capitalists convinced themselves that all this social-democracy stuff was a useless hindrance to their God-given right to engage in a kleptomaniacal orgy of profiteering at public expense.

That was when the Republican Party in the US, the Conservative Party in Britain, and their equivalents elsewhere embraced the view that the sole business of government was to make rich people richer while kicking the poor in the face, and when the Democratic Party in the US, New Labor in Britain, and their equivalents elsewhere embraced the supposedly opposite view that the sole business of government was to make rich people richer while mouthing vacuous feel-good verbiage at those of the poor who were sufficiently politically organized to be annoying. The results are predictable: in Britain, a resurgence of old-fashioned socialism under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who will probably become Britain’s next prime minister if the clown car that passes for a Conservative government keeps bungling things as badly as they’ve done so far; in America, a crisis of legitimacy that’s already catapulted a populist demagogue into the White House and may well replace him with something much worse in the years ahead.

There are alternatives. Next week, in place of the usual ask-me-anything open post, we’ll talk about some of them. The following week? 2018 will have arrived, and it’ll be time for the annual round of predictions about what the new year will hold. Stay tuned!

************

HAKEWILL

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Picturesque_Tour_of_the_Island_of_Jamaica

HERITAGE AND MURALS

Trevor Burrowes I'm trying to say that the same challenge to heritage (what was in a place historically) exists wherever the reader lives. In some cases, the reader may live in a brand new development that was formerly a farm or a meadow, or a ramshackle neighborhood. All of that was heritage. It would be nice to hear people's stories of how heritage preservation or loss affected them, wherever they live in the world. Maybe we can get some insight for SAB that way. BTW, looking at these two images of the printery I now wonder if a ghostly pale mural painting of the former facade might not be, a) a conversation piece, b) a tourist attraction, c) an expression of loss. This could be a project for art students maybe. The mural image could be an underlay of the inappropriate new window forms...

To Whom It Concerns:

2 Royes Street was owned for many years by my aunt, Iris Phillips, but that is only one of the reasons for my interest in MICO Care Center. It is a joy to see a new building that is sensitive to the historic setting of the town. It gives us at RSAB confidence that it is possible to restore St. Ann's Bay to a place of regional prominence, based on its important history and restored "old town" character. It would be nice to keep in touch with you and learn how your neighbors are doing, or what we abroad can do to help create a well governed town, including ways to develop its potential for tourism based on history. We hope you'll be kind enough to look at "Restoring St. Ann's Bay" on Facebook. We'd love to have you on board.

GROUP PURPOSE OF "RESTORING ST. ANN'S BAY (RSAB)"

St. Ann's Bay is central to the history of Jamaica. It is a mile or so from Sevilla Nueva, the first Spanish capital, built c. 1500. It had handsome British Colonial (mostly 19th cent.) buildings that have not been preserved. It has come upon hard times economically. A promising sign is a planned new Marcus Garvey center focusing on the childhood of Jamaica's first national hero, who was born and raised in St. Ann's Bay. A major purpose of the group is to share ideas on how to preserve what is left of the town's colonial heritage that the young Marcus Garvey experienced and that helped to form his ideas.

With Regards,

Trevor Burrowses (native of SAB)

MICO in SAB

http://themicocarecentre.org/?q=about

CHAN ZUCKERBERG INITIATIVE

Congratulations to Maya Papaya Ojany on her new role as Executive Director of Bay Area Forward! Maya is also an administrator of East Palo Alto Neighbors, and grew up in EPA.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

1 hr

"This work is about all of us. How are we going to face our greatest challenges as a region if we don't have practice working together to craft solutions that take into consideration a diversity of perspectives?”
— Maya Perkins, Executive Director of Bay Area Forward

With the Bay Area housing crisis at an unprecedented pressure point, it is now more important than ever to work across communities to find solutions. Bay Area Forwardis building a coalition that supports residents as they work to create a more well-designed, thriving, and inclusive Bay Area.

Under the leadership of new Executive Director Maya Perkins, and as a Special Project Fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Bay Area Forward’s mission to incorporate an empathetic approach to civic engagement is poised to help local resident groups throughout the region wrestling with shared concerns.

Bay Area Forward operates with residents’ voices at the center of their work, empowering people from all communities to leverage a network of local grassroots organizations leading the
way on creating housing and transportation options in their own communities.

Originally from East Palo Alto, Maya’s lived experience and professional background in the public sector informs her leadership, offering a promising way to navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is committed to promoting equal opportunity for all, especially here in our own backyard. Bay Area Forward is addressing the region’s housing crisis head-on, giving residents in our communities the resources to develop solutions that truly serve their needs. We’re excited to stand behind them.

What bugs me is that if we don't try something, we don't know if it's sure to fail...or why it fails, if it does. Since I don't have the irrefutable talking points about energy and why a) we have to max out on it *without any concern for what it destroys* I'm stuck with trying to stop the destruction while not knowing how that affects the "BAU" economy.

For instance, I can see ways to drill for oil that would halve the destruction drilling does to the land. In fact, Bush I said something about caribou nestling up with pipelines that SOUNDED reasonable at the time. If the issue is to keep BAU going as long as possible, why can't it be done while losing as few as possible of the natural/cultural resources that are after all needed in some way too.?

To what extent is it that people who disregard preventing breakage while doing BAU simply do not KNOW the value of what is being broken or how to reduce such breakage?

And b) why is the economy created around reducing breakage (tourism, conservation, etc.) not valuable along with other aspects of BAU that cannot be worked around?

Some quick and inadequate observations:

- Resist beginnings. My thought too. To resist middles and ends is futile.

- As in martial arts we win by yielding. Universally stopping resistance might disorient our opponents more than would continued resistance.

- What is really revolutionary is worldwide unity of purpose (if we could figure out what that would entail).

- A self organizing system.may, of necessity, depend as much on culture and psychology as on thermodynamics. How do you exclude anything from a self organizing system?

- There can be no single, local solutions. Solutions must be global and in line with the self organizing system

- Resistance is not so much resistance as it is appropriate self actualization. It is therefore a lot like art. It is more the beauty of your creation than your resistance to its nemesis that matters.

- It is part of the human condition never to know our destiny. We exist on a razor's edge...eternally.

- Art is the way--we're charged with making a good work of art, the value or success of which is judged through the self organizing system.

- The balance of aesthetic intuition with facts and reason is perhaps our best way to proceed.

- Aesthetic intuition and spiritual understanding are closely allied.

-

Hi Gail,

So many of us have said how much we’d like to see your message spread further in the mainstream world. I’m reposting something here that needs to be thought out more. If we decide on a course of destroying nothing, physical or psychological, we’d be stuck with all manner of abominations. How does this figure or not figure in a hopeless world? I don’t have an energy analysis that either supports or refutes the following. I’m looking for a paragraph or two from you that is simplified to the point that is truth is obvious to the fiercest denier. Any thoughts?

DESTROY NOTHING
I’ll have to return to the drawing board to figure this out. I was trying to bring intuition, religion, the sacred and analysis into relationship, but it’s still elusive. The part of it I’ll stick with–it’s the intuitive part that I was trying to combine with energy–has to do with land use planning.

– Any given scene in a built environment supports a social system.

– If you disrupt the scene, you disrupt the social system, in physical and emotional terms.

– The social system reflects energy flow of a certain type, along with its emotional corollaries.

– That energy flow is too complex and subtle to grasp intellectually.

– But the sense of the sacred, based on “aesthetic intuition,” can make physical disruption jarring and offensive. It realizes that subtle flows of energy are being disorganized and subjected to entropy.

– Ergo, it concludes that the purely intellectual calculation based on arbitrary rules of development are grossly destructive, and can only lead to deteriorated energy and social situation.

– But since aesthetic excellence tells you how to add new things without disturbing the old (to a significant extent anyhow), you can have a lot of new development as long as it is nuanced and camouflaged.

DESTROY NOTHING

I’ll have to return to the drawing board to figure this out. I was trying to bring intuition, religion, the sacred and analysis into relationship, but it’s still elusive. The part of it I’ll stick with–it’s the intuitive part that I was trying to combine with energy–has to do with land use planning.

Any given scene in a built environment supports a social system.

If you disrupt the scene, you disrupt the social system, in physical and emotional terms.

The social system reflects energy flow of a certain type, along with its emotional corollaries.

That energy flow is too complex and subtle to grasp intellectually.

But the sense of the sacred, based on aesthetic intuition, can make physical disruption jarring and offensive. It realizes that subtle flows of energy are being disorganized and subjected to entropy.

Ergo, it concludes that the purely intellectual calculation based on arbitrary rules of development are grossly destructive, and can only lead to deteriorated energy and social situation.

But since aesthetic excellence tells you how to add new things without disturbing the old (to a significant extent anyhow), you can have a lot of new development as long as it is nuanced and camouflaged.

A. S. Forrest (1869-1963), noted painter & travel illustrator.

Garvey article with Burrowes connection

http://ezinearticles.com/?Marcus-Mosiah-Garvey---A-Jamaican-Pride&id=4632603

The Masters students at UTECH Caribbean School of Architecture studied St Ann’s Bay this year...I managed to see parts of their work ... I think 3 of the 4 final year ones are doing thesis projects based in St Ann’s Bay

If it is indeed Garvey country then it must reclaim his house ..there needs to be a Place where all things Marcus should be ...

Reach out to this dewaynewebb@gmail.com 533.9752 Duane Webb thesis student .. he doing a ‘viewing place’ to do with film... I think a Garvey swing could help him and the town

"Restoring St. Ann's Bay" Facebook Group

GROUP PURPOSE St. Ann's Bay is central to the history of Jamaica. It is a mile or so from Sevilla Nueva, the first Spanish capital, built c. 1500. It had handsome British Colonial (mostly 19th cent.) buildings that have not been preserved. It has come upon hard times economically. A promising sign is a planned new Marcus Garvey center focusing on the childhood of Jamaica's first national hero, who was born and raised there.

The hope for this group is to focus on the central town of St. Ann's Bay, with readers contributing memories, thoughts, anecdotes, photos, etc.. It would be welcome to hear about people who live or lived there, including seeing photos of them and/or their homes. A major purpose of the group is to share ideas on how to preserve what is left of the town's colonial heritage.

(Note: The above reflects an attempt to cater to the interests of my co-administrator at the time, a lovely man who had different views from mine and has since taken a leave. My interest is preservation and planning.)

GARVEY- Garvey Center (Jamaica Ntl Heritage Trust is in charge of project. No progress or vision information avilable)

- My connection to Garvey--my grandfather, Alfred Burrowes, was his apprentice master in printing, his godfather, his mentor and his lifelong friend.

- Printery Image

- Marcus Garvey Technical High School (FB message sent to Principal, no reply)

- Preserving what we can of the SAB that Garvey knew

DEVELOPMENT ISSUES & THREATS

Local Tourism

Prospects for Roadside tourism

Painting buildings

Color coordination

Cleaning streets

Vendor disorder

Cement Houses that erase historic cghharacter

Lack of education

Rumors of hotel plans but no transparency about it

GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE

No consensus on what is SAB

SAB not listed on latest regional tourist map

Complete eclipse by Ocho Rios, which also has a confusing identity boundary. Much of the public consider its borders as stretchinng east to the border of St. mary and west to Duncans.

St ANN HERITAGE FOUNDATION

Dennis Higgins- Chairman
St. Ann Heritage Foundation
15 Main Street 
St. Ann's Bay, St. Ann 
Phone: 972-2138 
Phone: 384-2692

dennishiggins596@yahoo.com

Mr. Higgins has done a lot of work with Seville Restoration and Seville appears to be his main focus (unlike those of Restoring SAB)

He seems to have had a program of Walking Tours of SAB that involved the Georgian Society of Jamaica

https://ayooutloud.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/the-st-anns-bay-walking-tour/

RESTORATION/PRESERVATION

6 Bravo

The Blue Bowl

Burrowes Prinery

Several Georgian ruins, large and small

PLANNING ISSUES

Trouble figuring out the government structure

Who issues permits

any effort for preservation

Need for photo documentation odff all streets with OLd Town (Police Station to Hospital)

.
THE RELIGION OF ENERGY

“These studies consider intuition and analytical thought as opposed systems, and while this is frequently applicable, previous research has found that in some people these two modes of thought co-exist to a high degree and are associated with supernatural beliefs.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/…/reason-versus-faith-the-i…
Someone recently posted on the relationship of beauty to what was found over eons to be good for our survival. I wonder if the same can be said about the sense of the sacred?
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search…

I don’t say that ether of these links are the best on the subject, but they are short and suggestive of a need to look further.

Our crisis today lies with energy, about which TPTB (the powers that be) are silent. You have to come to OFW () to hear the subject discussed. If the sacred, like beauty, indicates what serves us best, and if a low-energy future is all we can foresee, then might we grow to worship the non expenditure of energy? If so, we would need to see as sacred stasis and inertia regarding change to the visual environment. We wouldn’t demolish buildings, even if they could be deemed “ugly.” John Ruskin’s mantra that we have no right to destroy what was built by others before us, and thus belonged to them and not to us, would therefore be adhered to in practice. No demolition of anything. No cutting of trees. No scraping away of topsoil.

So now you have less to worry about and your path is clearer. If you’re not going to remove or subtract anything from your environment, then you can focus your energies where they need to be focused: You can hone in on how to add new things without destroying the old. That will require a considerable amount of attention and concentration. For you must not only not destroy anything in material, physical terms; you must not destroy anything in sacred visual terms. Among many other considerations, that will include building on piers, building at modest size, camouflaging structures in such ways as hiding them behind existing ones or behind trees…

So, by default, you almost have the makings of a land use plan. You do not subtract from anything that exists; you add more things to it, and in such a way that it cannot be seen. The alternative would be akin to visiting strangers and bumping into things and rearranging their furniture. Good manners in visits requires restraint, and good manners are required in new development.

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• Gail Tverberg says:

  December 7, 2017 at 4:38 pm

  Could you look at the links again? They don’t work for me.

  Reply
  • Artleads says:

    December 7, 2017 at 7:45 pm

    I got these to open. If they still don’t work for you I’ll keep looking for better links.

    Cinema Modeoff
    The Beauty of Islamic Art is based upon Sacred Geometry

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CULTURAL LANDSCAPE HISTORY

- Disney History: How does the project relate to the cultural landscape history of Madrid? Bethlehem Hill is said to have been a major inspiration for Disney's vision. Is there a way to relate this important history to the current AML program? 

- Coal Tourism: Tourism is the main industry of Madrid. How does this project affect tourism? Bethlehem Hill through to the Mineshaft complex is the center of the coal history of Madrid. The entire hillside is the nexus of coal history around which coal tourism in Madrid revolves.

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- Coherence: oherent picture of the hillside--the history found there should be collected somewhere that relates to that history

Flooding. can more water be kept on the hillside?

THE MINESHAFT HISTORY

Madrid originated as a coal mining town, on which its history is baseed. Its current economy is now based on "Coal Tourism." The Mine Shaft Tavern and History Museum (TMS) comprise the central core of Madrid coal history and coal tourism. It is the main local employer and tax generation. The previous work of AML in Madrid directly responded to musdslides into TMS. TMS is therefore the leading source of understanding about the AML work. You could simplify AML work as pertaining to the eastern hillside that is the major source of flooding, history, economy for the town. TMS has large buried water tanks that formerly had major significance for the town's water supply. These also seem relevant to AML's work. Currernt AML work needs to coordinate with TMS.

- Need to situate the AML program in such a way as to attract funding for coal tourism research, collection, dissemeination

MADRID PLANNING

water noff hillside and its destination

need for coherence in planning

Bethlehem history as the magnet for Disney and the genesis that contributed to Disney's vision

SEVILLE 

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Dore Tate Oct. 10, 1992 6:38 AM ET
KINGSTON, JAMAICA KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) _ A small wooden bird, a scoop and a statue of a man have focused archaelogical attention on a tiny cave in the hills of northern Jamaica.
The three carvings, presented to the public Friday by the Jamaica Heritage Trust, are thought to represent ''cemis'' or images of deities and other symbols sacred to the Taino, the people who met Christopher Columbus in St. Ann's Bay in 1494.
The artifacts represent the second largest group of Taino artifacts found in Jamaica - the last comparable find was 200 years ago.
The carvings were discovered by a Jamaican, Leonard Clayton, in an almost inaccessible cave in the north coast parish of St. Ann, said Dorrick Gray, the trust's acting director of archaeology. The cave will be the focus of studies sponsored by the trust.
According to Gray, two of the world's experts on Taino culture, Irving Rouse and Jose Arrom of Yale University, have authenticated the finds.
The carved figure of the man, about 5-feet tall, represents the tallest found so far in the West Indies, Gray said, and it gives an approximate height of the Tainos.
The bird statuette has a long beak and a cylindrical rod rising from its back to support a canopy extending over the bird's head.
Worshipers would have placed hallucinogenic powders on the canopy for sniffing during rituals.
The small carved wooden scoop has attributes of a human head.
The archaeologist said the artifacts are dated from between 650 and 1500. Further dating is to be done when the full excavation of the site is complete.
The pieces will be on permanent loan to the National Gallery of Jamaica, where they will form the foundation of a pre-Columbian collection.

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Elham Feanny Fabulous

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Trevor Burrowes Extraordinary!!!!! I wonder how we get Yale archaeology and architecture students to collaborate on a combined old town SAB/Seville restoration and development program?