Young Maker Nabs Thiel Fellowship
Yoonseo Kang is one gutsy young dude. The 18 year-old Canadian robotics wiz resisted parental pressure to go to college and instead moved to the Open Source Ecology farm in Missouri to help make the world a much better place to live in. Now comes word that Kang has been selected as a Thiel Fellow which comes with a $100,000 grant that he will use to buy equipment and materials for his open source CNC circuit mill project.
The Collector of Bedford Street
Listen to The WBGO Journal on Friday evening, May 4th for a story about a Greenwich Village neighborhood that started a trust fund for a developmentally disabled man and has kept him in his own apartment with his beloved cat and dog. Larry Selman, who just turned 70, is the subject of Alice Elliot’s Academy Award-nominated documentary, “The Collector of Bedford Street.” Selman is known as the collector because he has spent years on the sidewalks of his West Village neighborhood collecting contributions for a variety of charities. True to form, Selman wasn’t shy about asking for donations from neighbors who showed up at his recent birthday party.
New Zealand Kite Maker Peter Lynn
Coming up in Make magazine… a visit with engineer Peter Lynn who has played a pioneering role in giant soft kites and traction kites used for surf boards, boats, sleds and sand buggies. We visit Lynn at his home an hour south of Christchurch and tour the kite factory where Lynn-designed kites are made.
Ed Sanders’ new memoir “Fug You”
Tune in to NPR’s Weekend Edition on Sunday morning, May 5th for a feature about the poet and troublemaker Ed Sanders. His new memoir, “Fug You,” deals with life on New York’s Lower East Side during the 1960’s, a neighborhood its bohemian denizens thought of as “a little zone of revolution.” The Fugs co-founder show us his archive in Woodstock and we hear from East Village Other alumnus Claudia Dreifus, who now writes for the New York Times, and musician Peter Stampfel of Holy Modal Rounders fame. The story can be heard here after its broadcast.
Tim Anderson
photo by Timothy Beaulieu
Listen to an 18-minute documentary on the Bay Area DIY super hero Tim Anderson on the web site of San Francisco’s KALW-FM. It aired on the program “Crosscurrents.” Listen to the doc on-line here.
Inside Etsy Headquarters
Read about the office decor inside Etsy’s Brooklyn headquarters on makezine.com.
Here are some more pix:
Adrienne Cooper Podcast
Listen to a podcast about the memorial for the Yiddish singer Adrienne Cooper, who died December 25, 2011 at age 65. Cooper’s family, friends and colleagues remember the woman who “had the voice of a diva, and the soul of a bundist.”
Helfgot Perlman Podcast
Listen to a podcast on The Forward’s web site about a forthcoming album and tour featuring Itzhak Perlman, Cantor Yitzchok Meir Helfgot and Hankus Netsky of Boston’s Klezmer Conservatory Band. In early December they were joined by a 20-piece chamber orchestra composed primarily of the violin virtuoso’s former students and several members of KCB to record cantorial and Yiddish music at Avatar Studios in midtown Manhattan.
Anti-Roll Away Device
Read a post on the Make blog about a new system that prevents truck roll aways. 44 year-old mechanic Tom Accardi of Long Island, NY managed to create it without the help of venture capitalists or companies that prey on aspiring inventors. His small company is here.
Open Source Ecology
On a farm in Missouri physicist Marcin Jakubowski is building tractors and a slew of industrial machines from scratch. Listen to a report on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday.
The CBC version of this story features 18 year-old Yoonseo Kang of Ontario, Canada. A robotics wiz in high school, he resisted parental pressure to go to college and moved to the Open Source Ecology farm where he’s working to build the “open source economy.” And here is the post for makezine.com.
Bill Adler’s Xmas Jollies
Give a listen to a feature on the eclectic holiday mixtape my neighbor Bill Adler has been doing for close to 30 years. It aired on WNYC this week.
Adler is married to Sara Moulton, the television chef and proud author of a new iPhone cooking app.
The man has a long history in the music business and it turns out that when he worked at Def Jam Records in the late 1980’s, he was responsible for Run DMC recording “Christmas In Hollis.”
You can listen to all 32 tracks of this year’s Xmas Jollies at the web site of Complex magazine, which features Adler’s comments on each tune. But be forewarned that you have to click to play each track.
Hackerspaces at Public Libraries
Listen to a report about two public libraries that are hosting hackerspaces on their property. Part of NPR’s continuing coverage of the DIY scene broadcast on Weekend Edition. Pictured above is the logo for the upstate New York Fayetteville Free Library’s Fabulous Laboratory.
Lower East Side Girls Club and L.A. school farms
Early on a recent Friday morning, a crane hoisted an old Airstream trailer onto the second floor of a building under construction in the Alphabet City section of Manhattan. The shiny aluminum trailer (circa 1958) is destined to become a recording studio inside of the Lower East Side Girls Club, currently just a concrete shell on Avenue D between 7th and 8th Streets. Read more at makezine.com.
Plans are under way to start the first of five farms at Los Angeles high schools. Filmmaker Mark MacInnis, whose feature length documentary Urban Roots chronicles the thriving urban agricultural scene in Detroit, is spearheading the project. Read more at makezine.com.
DIY Coffin Making
In October 2010, a woman named Marilyn Bader drove from Grand Marais in northern Minnesota to her home in downtown St. Paul. She was actually hoping that a cop would pull her over during the five hour drive. And who could blame her? It was Halloween and Ms. Bader had a freshly made coffin in her car. Read all about it at makezine.com.
Cooking for Change
The Community FoodBank of New Jersey in Hillside has a Food Service Training Academy that trains people as cooks. A new book titled “Cooking for Change” tells the stories of people whose lives were transformed by the academy. Listen to students and staff at the academy, along with Doris Friedensohn, author of the new book. It’s on the award-winning WBGO Journal.
