The Gleaners by JuliaGF

The Gleaners

Jean-Francois Millet; The Gleaners (1857) Oil on canvas (32-7/8 x 43-3/4 inches); Musée d‘Orsay, Paris

Manifesto. The quintessence of the American Way of Life is excess. The current crisis does not only endanger the American economy; it threatens the very excess that has defined the core of American identity. Knowing this, the Obama administration is striving hard to keep the excess alive – by providing subsidies which are supposed to keep consumption levels steady. These subsidies are questionable. They might turn out as risks for the economic system as well as for the consume – that is, in the end, these subsidies may rather endanger excess than assure its continuity. So we have to look for other ways to guarantee the continuance of excess. Exess and waste go hand-in hand. Excess generates enormous amounts of waste. For the purpose of our study, we perceive waste as all kinds of goods which currently nobody takes care of, the unused, underused and thrownaway counterparts of excess. In this study, our aim is to reveal ways in which waste – the flip side of excess – can provide its own stream of consumption. Hungry? In dumpsters you might find tasty leftovers. Abandonned spaces along railroad tracks or highways? They might serve as fertile land for your crop. As more and more office spaces become vacant, Use them as a barn to breed your own sheep. By viewing waste as a new potential resource, US citizens may save the funds otherwise spend on food and rent and rather blow money on cars, flat screens and cruises on the Carribean. The American Way of Life is endangered. This manual is an attempt to enable the continuance of excess.

Growing wine. After we mentioned roof gardening on flat roofs, we have to put emphasis on the use of the vast, sunlit roof areas of suburban detached houses. As their roofs are mostly raked, they qualify especially for wine growing (alternatively: cotton). Furthermore, using your roof as a surface for cultivating something would also cut-down on costintensive attempts to individualize your prefab house, such as christmas lighting. Please note that vines, when full-grown, may deteriorate your television receiving.

Pool breeding. Your neighbour might be affected as well As more and more homes get reposessed by the bank through foreclosure. Their private swimming pool mcould be turned into a fish farm: Breed your own carp or trout. The first step is to stop chlorinating. Make use of a pump to manage the water circulation. Take care of the water temperature and avoid excessive heat during the summer. You could do so by adding ice-cubes. While trout have to be fed (fish meal, fish oil), carp live on the necromass; so do not remove the algae, but allow it to propigate with the fish dung. Moreover, their nourishment could be supplemented in the winter with soy, for example. Take care of cats. HARVESTING: Use a brailer to catch the full-grown fish. Hit their head with anything of heavy weight (screw-wrench, hammer, cell phone) in order to kill them. See a cookbook on gutting and preparation. Using wire mesh, you could also divide your pool in two, so swimming will not be disturbed by the fish. Nonetheless, some people highly estimate the touch. 04

Rucksack To gain additional space for growing your vegetables, keeping your animals, storing stuff etc. it is very helpful to build extra space outside through waste (E.G. an old garage door) In the example it is shown how you install a garage door at the wall in front of your house. Be aware that this space may not be used as living space, because it is not dependable construction. Approximately one can estimate the collision load (look at maual of garage) equal to the bearing load of the garage. This is the amount of weight that can be placed upon such a construction. If you decide to hold chicken, add a fence. If you grow crops/vegetables add soil. ( min 4 inches )

Garage farming. Suburban garages tend to be overdimensioned. Don‘t you think there is enough space to revive the homestead chicken coop? Take wire mesh and separate an area of about 5 square metres along the wall. It seems to be quite feasible to use rather the front than the side panels, in order to not constrain the boarding make use of wooden latches and create a laying battery (quite similar to a bookshelf!). Do not drive into your garage backwards – otherwise, you might gasify your chickens. Before parking your car, you should remember to keep the windows closed – most drivers suppose feathers or ejections to be annoying. Abandonned rain gutters might be used to drain off the cages. you can use the manure to fertilize your roof garden or highway farm. 05

Worthwhile Food Container

Worthwhile Tool Container

Waste Tags. Dumpster diving is supposed to be the most simple way to make use of waste. Drive to a wealthy neighbourhood, look for dumpsters. Do not forget your flashlight. elderly should bring a ladder. Get in and grab whatever you like. The American Artist Posterchild designed a collection of tags to help dumpster divers to share information on the most lucrative spots to find useful waste.

Cow breeding. All over the US, there are affluent office spaces. The current crisis might Ramp even aggravate the situation. Subsequently, rental prices are falling. In order to assure the maintenance of the building, the owner might even entrust the rooms for safekeeping to you for free. It is one of the biggest advantages of the open plan office, that it might serve for different purposes. So why not breeding cows? Forage may be stored in the nucleus, toilets may serve as drinking through. If there is a suspended ceiling, the extraction of excrements becomes a cakewalk. The number of floors used depends on your agrarian ambition. You might either engage the whole building or just single floors, breeding cows next to the lawyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s desk. As cows do not require parking space, you might create grazing land next to the building. As the breeding of animals may lead to acoustic and olfactory disturbance, it should be warranted by the lease contract. 08

Bottle Pipe. Remove the bases of old bottles, thread the bottles on to a hosepipe and spread them out to catch the sun. Run water through the hose-pipe slowly.

Solar Farm

Solar Heater. Mount a domestic radiator, painted black, in a matress of glass wool, and put it inside a box with a glazed lid. Place ist at an angle of 45° to 60° to catch the sun. Join this to your water system and collect the heated water.

Sidewalk Farm Empty Plots. Vegetables may be bred in empty building lots as well. Look out for a lot that ist not shaded by neighboring buildings. Before growing wine or hops on the adjacent walls you should ask the residents‘ permission. 09

Climbing Aids

Greenhouse

Compost

Animal Cage

Rooftop bed

Reservoir

Roof gardening. As cultivable area is a rare good in the cities, you might install a farm on your roof. Check out the carrying capacity first. Screw together four laths, clad them with a plastic foil in order to prevent that the roof is damaged by roots. Fill it with soil. Collect rain water for irrigation in summer. As wind at the top of the building might be too strong to grow crops, plant vegetables like radishes or potatoes. Rejected windows may serve as a glass house. For your own safety: Take care of the rim. Think about installing a railing. Interrupt farming during storm and lightning.

Air ventilation. Ventilators are energy suckers. Save moneyâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; let the ventilator produce energy itself! While one of them remains under the ceiling, another one is installed at your facade. The latter one has to be turned up â&#x20AC;&#x201C; finally it will look like a windmill. Falling winds will move the ventilator, the energy produced hereby will run the ventilator on the inside, in order to cool your apartment. 10

Mobile Garden. If you go on a journey, take your garden along. A vegetable patch may be placed on a fan.

Highway Water Drainage System

Cool Storage Spaces

Highway farming. Along traffic junctions, vast unused spaces can be found. Those spaces can easily be transformed into acreage. Park your car at the curb. Do not forget to put up a warning triangle. A bright warning vest might be useful as well. Look out for sunlit areas, avoid spaces which are shaded by bridges or on-ramps. rotate the soil before planting your seeds. In order to irrigate them, make use of the highway drainage. to fertilize your crop, you might either use conventional fertilizer or bring your dog. Moreover, you might collect the human waste produced in your hausehold. As exhaust gases are quite agressive, biocides will not be necessary. As the sight of you growing vegetables along the highway might be quite unfamiliar to other drivers, you should work beyond the 11

FACTS.

LINKS & REFERENCES. Land Rush The Land Rush of 1889 was the first land run into the Unassigned Lands and included all or part of the modern day Canadian, Cleveland, Kingfisher, Logan, Oklahoma, and Payne counties of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The land run started at high noon on April 22, 1889, with an estimated 50,000 people lined up for their piece of the available two million acres. The Unassigned Lands were considered some of the best unoccupied public land in the United States. The Indian Appropriations Bill of 1889 was passed and signed into law with an amendment by Illinois Representative William McKendree Springer, that authorized President Benjamin Harrison to open the two million acres for settlement. Due to the Homestead Act of 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, legal settlers could claim lots up to 160 acres in size. Provided a settler lived on the land and improved it, the settler could then receive the title to the land.

Gleaning Gleaning food from supermarkets at the end of the day that would otherwise be thrown away. There are a number of organizations that practice gleaning to resolve issues of societal hunger; the Society of St. Andrew, for example, is dedicated to the role. When people glean and distribute food, they may be bringing themselves legal risk; in the Soviet Union, the Law of Spikelets criminalised gleaning, under penalty of death, or 20 years of forced labour in exceptional circumstances. In the USA, The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, a law enacted in 1996, limited the liability of donors to instances of gross negligence or intentional misconduct, alleviating gleaning from much of its definitions of the Good Samaritan Act, to consistently deliver surplus food from restaurants and dining facilities to emergency food centers. In rural areas and some ancient agricultural societies, a similar process was known as gleaning and some medieval houses had „poor boxes“ where still edible food was placed for the poor to take.

Dumpster diving is the practice of sifting through commercial or residential trash to find items that have been discarded by their owners, but which may be useful to the dumpster diver. The practice of Dumpster diving is also known variously as urban foraging, curb shopping, binning, alley surfing, aggressive recycling, Curbing, D-mart, Dumpstering, garbaging, garbage picking, garbage gleaning, dumpster-raiding, dump-weaseling, tatting, trash picking, treasure hunting, skally-wagging, skipping, or trashing. The term originates from the best-known manufacturer of commercial trash bins, „Dumpster,“ and the fanciful image of someone leaping head first into a dumpster as if it were a swimming pool. In practice, the size and design of most dumpsters makes it possible to retrieve many items from the outside of dumpsters without having to „dive“ inside. Legal status: The U.S. Supreme Court held that there is no common law expectation of privacy for discarded materials. Because dumpsters are usually located on private premises people may occasionally get in trouble for trespassing while dumpster diving, though the law is enforced with varying degrees of rigor. The California v. Greenwood case in the U.S. Supreme Court held that there is no common law expectation of privacy for discarded materials. Dumpster diving per se is probably legal when not specifically prohibited by state or local law. Abandonment of property is another principal of law which applies to recovering materials via dumpster diving.

Waste. Waste Production: Americans are the major waste producers in the world. An average emerican produces 4.5 pounds of solid municipal waste per day. That amounts to 4.46 pounds per person per day, and over 600,000 tons per day for the entire U.S.. In comparison an UK 29 tons citizen produces per anno, and german citizen 23 tons and an indish citizen 4 tons. Waste consists to 25 percent out of garden waste, to 13 percent of household waste3%. Al those are recyclebale. Waste mainly origins in cities. Waste minimaziation: Waste minimization is a waste management approach that focuses on reducing the amount and toxicity of hazardous waste that is generated. In addition to hazardous wasted regulated under RCRA, the EPA encourages waste minimization techniques that focus on preventing waste from ever being created, (source reduction) and recycling. There are three general methods of waste minimization: source reduction, recycling, and treatment.

Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit and herb gardens planted at private residences in United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany during World War I and World War II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort these gardens were also considered a civil „morale booster“ — in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. Making victory gardens became a part of daily life on the home front. “I hope every American who possibly can will grow a victory garden this year. We found out last year that even the small gardens helped. The total harvest from victory gardens was tremendous. It made the difference between scarcity and abundance. The Department of Agriculture surveys show that 42 percent of the fresh vegetables consumed in 1943 came from victory gardens. This should clearly emphasize the far-reaching importance of the victory garden program.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt Inspired by the first lady, Mrs. Americans, moved by patriotic even city rooftops were con-

Eleanor Roosevelt, who planted a „victory garden“ on the White House lawn, nearly 20 million fervor, began planting vegetables wherever they could find space. Backyards, empty lots and verted into vegetable gardens.

Fruit and vegetables harvested in these home and community plots was estimated to be 9-10 million tons, an amount equal to all commercial production of fresh vegetables. The program boasted morale, drew the people together in a common cause, and gave everyone a sense of pride, that they too were making a meaningful contribution to the war effort. Unfortunately, when the war ended in 1946, most Americans foregot their gardens and returned to their former ways. Michelle Obama‘s recent decision to plant a „victory vegetable garden“ on the White House lawn is also intended to mobilize and inspire Americans. America today is engaged in a different type of war – the crisis. Crisis. Late-2000s recession: In 2008–2009 much of the industrialized world entered into a recession, the late-2000s recession, sparked by a financial crisis that had its origins in reckless lending practices involving the origination and distribution of mortgage debt in the United States.Sub-prime loans losses in 2007 exposed other risky loans and over-inflated asset prices. With the losses mounting, a panic developed in inter-bank lending. The precarious financial situation was made more difficult by a sharp increase in oil and food prices. The exorbitant rise in asset prices and associated boom in economic demand is considered a result of the extended period of easily available credit, inadequate regulation and oversight, or increasing inequality. Foreclosures up 75% in 2007 The number of foreclosures soared in 2007, with 405,000 households losing their home, according to a report released on 23th june 2009. That‘s up 51 percent from the 268,532 homes that were repossessed in 2006. Total foreclosure filings soared 97% in December alone compared with December of 2006, according to RealtyTrac, an online seller of foreclosure properties. For the year, total filings - which include default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions - grew 75%. More than 1 percent of all U.S. households were in some stage of foreclosure during 2007, up from 0.58 percent the year before.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Title, MacLean, Alex; Houston Texas; Designs on the Land Exploring America from the Air; Thames&Hudson 2003 Page 4,5, MacLean, Alex; Sun City, AZ; Designs on the Land Exploring America from the Air; Thames&Hudson 2003 Page 6,7, MacLean, Alex; Houston Texas; Designs on the Land Exploring America from the Air; Thames&Hudson 2003 Page 8,9, MacLean, Alex; Boise, ID; The American Landscape at the Tipping Point; Abrams 2008 Page 10, 11, MacLean, Alex; Houston Texas. Designs on the Land Exploring America from the Air; Thames&Hudson 2003 Page 12,13, MacLean, Alex; Boston, MA, Over -The American Landscape at the Tipping Point; Abrams 2008 Page 14, Defitions are quoted from www.wikipedia.com, Legalisaton article , feed://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_realestate.rss, Les Christie, CNNMoney.com;January 29 2008

Epilogue. So â&#x20AC;&#x201C; will these proposals change the face of the US? hardly. By following the tips shown on the previous pages, American citizens can maintain their living standards throughout the crisis. Keep the excess alive!