On the West lawn of the South Carolina State House in Columbia, the capital city of the state, resides the ninety-nine. Their numbers may be closer to a fifth of that, however it was difficult to know for sure as it was before 10am when they hold their morning General Assembly. I found a few folks up and I was able to talk to one occupier, Tim.

There is a porta-potty on the east lawn, they use the facilities at a nearby homeless shelter to shower, supporters have been donating food, one woman brings a thermos of hot coffee every morning, and the mild weather, sixty degrees that morning, is quite comfortable. Tim informed me of their activities as well. They form protest lines in front of neighboring banks, they hold their general assembly meetings twice a day, it all seemed pretty calm that morning.

Despite the tranquil appearances, they have had some excitement recently. Nineteen protesters had been arrested last month which led some of them to sue the Governor Nikki Haley. They had won a victory just a few days earlier in this case, temporary restraining order against their state Governor Nikki Haley, and a federal ruling that allows them to reside for the time being on state grounds, sleeping bags and all.

I sat down with Silas, just as everything was winding down at 169 Mass Ave in Arlington, about a quarter till close. He was dialing in shots, trying to get a good taste of a new espresso in our line-up when we started. “Tell me about the first time you met Jaime” I asked.

I WAS BAFFLED THAT COFFEE HAD DIFFERENT TASTES BESIDES, YOU KNOW, JUST COFFEE. 

I WAS LIKE, HOLY CRAP THAT TASTES LIKE BLACKBERRY! … THAT WAS A CLEAR DEFINING MOMENT, THIS IS WHAT COFFEE CAN BE, AROMA CAN BE FLORAL, BERRY, CITRUS, VERY COMPLEX. 

SPENDING TIME ON THE GROUND AT ORIGIN HAS SHOWN ME THAT EVERYONE ELSE IN COFFEE IS JUST ABOUT AS CRAZY AS I AM. 

I began working with Artisan’s Asylum as a design intern and stopped by to take a few photos of the space. This is a period of expansion for this Somerville community maker space, so from these images it may not be quite obvious what Artisan’s Asylum is or what they do. However it is exciting to see this work in progress and I can tell you a bit about what it is.

Artisan’s Asylum could be called a maker space, however I like to think that it is much more than that. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a maker space is a communal workshop that usually runs on memberships. The reason I believe Artisan’s Asylum is much more than that is the mission to teach. Besides giving you access to welding torches, wood working tools, robotics, photography and other massive, noisy equipment that your neighbors would have a problem with, Artisan’s Asylum provides regular classes with expert teachers to help guide your creativity.

As I mentioned Artisan’s Asylum is going through a growing period, they are building out their new space at 10 Tyler St. in Somerville, MA in an old factory space. They had previously been located in two separate locations closer to McGrath Highway in East Somerville. This new Location is both bigger and more conveniently located to folks in the Cambridge/Somerville area. As this project progresses I will have more on when they will be opening, it should be just in time for their November and December classes!

If you are interested check out their list of classes at www.artisansasylum.com

Jumping into the Hard Cider process midway is as good as any place to start. At this point in the process you could actually drink what you have made, which seems to be a good thing when ever it come to alcohol. Even though it will (should) be alcoholic at this point, it may not taste all that great just yet.

Why? There are two why’s and I will explain them in chronological order. First of all, you will (should) have alcohol in your cider at this point (1-2 weeks fermenting) because the yeast has spent that time eating away at sugars, turning them into alcohol. Now, for the second why. It may not taste that great because there may still be yeast in there, over time it should fall out of the cider, allowing you to siphon again in a few weeks.

This process illustrated in the photos is called “racking”. Racking is the second major step in the cider making process. The first general step is fermentation. I am racking this micro batch after about 12 days of fermentation. During those first 12 days the yeast in your cider will eat away at the natural and added sugars turning them into alcohol. I will be making more batches of cider which i will document so you can see how to begin the fermentation. This is a nice introduction for now to set you up for the next few posts which will explain in detail how to make hard cider at home.

You may have noticed above my note that you (should) have alcohol at this point. You might have, as I actually have in one of my jars, vinegar. eww, gross. Some bacteria will actually eat the alcohol and turn it into vinegar, not cool. This is why it is important to keep things sanitized. There are many microscopic biological happenings between the living yeast, and other living organisms and available sugars and other compounds which will affect the eventual taste and alcohol content.

In order to get a better understanding, I have been taking advantage of online resources, however there are as many ways to make cider as there are people writing about making it. It is healthy to take in many approaches, read from some books, and run a few experiments of your own. This is by no means a definitive or expert guide (yet), however I expect to learn quite abit along the way and will pass that along as it comes.

Some current influences and interest:

• PBS Video: The Botany of Desire
• Heirloom Varietals at Poverty Lane Orchards
• NYC Cider Week

It is tempting to reduce the complexities of existence to a purely mechanistic understanding, a biology book or chemistry text, more often than not will contain such an account. Observational views of reactions and regrowth, taking for granted the fact that they organize and behave as they do simply bypassing the question of overall organizational direction that takes place in complex systems.

Sacks presents the story of a man Jimmie who had seemingly lost his ability to retain new memories past a certain age. He lived as if he were perpetually twenty-four years old (though nearly twice that age at the time of the story) and as one can imagine the continual shock of unfamiliarity and uncertainty can be disastrous to being human. Sacks questions this purely mechanical view of being and goes on to deliver a volume of parables that shed some light on the matter.

“Hume wrote, ‘that we are nothing but a bundle or collection of different sensations, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.’ In some sense, he has been reduced to a ‘Humean’ Being–I could not help thinking how fascinated Hume would have been at seeing Jimmie his own philosophical ‘chimera’ incarnate, a gruesome reduction of a man to mere disconnected, incoherent flux and change.” (Sacks 30)

Sacks quickly returns to defining and describing neurological control systems, however one is unable to help but think of the implications these stories have against a purely mechanistic view. In the first few stories one is introduced to the system of proprioception, it gives us the ability to “feel our bodies as proper to us, as our property, as our own.” (Sacks 43) It is one of three main systems that give us a sense of the body, the other two being vision and the vestibular system or balance organs.

The story is given of a woman who due to a toxic shock was left without her proprioceptive system shows just how crucial this is to our perception of self and how easily we take it for granted, perhaps never even considered. The woman, Chris, was forced to rely upon her optical system to monitor and watch her body, but it was as if it were not her own. The stories that follow go on to illustrate different sense perceptions related to proprioception but in smaller increments.

Phantom limbs, many have heard of, give the sense that one possesses a limb where it had been removed. One man… “whenever he moved his hand toward his face–for example to eat or scratch his nose–he was afraid that his phantom finger would poke his eye out. (He knew this to be impossible, but the feeling was irresistible.)” (Sacks 67). This ‘irresistible’ feeling is enough to make one marvel at the complexity of neurology yet Sacks continues to provide even more intriguing thoughts.

“All amputees, and all who work with them, know that a phantom limb is essential if an artificial limb is to be used . . . One such patient, under my care, describes how he must ‘wake-up’ his phantom in the mornings. First he flexes his thigh-stump towards him, and then he slaps it sharply–’like a baby’s bottom’–several times. On the fifth or sixth slap the phantom suddenly shoots forth, rekindled, fulgurated, by the peripheral stimulus. Only then can he put on his prosthesis and walk.” (Sacks 69)

What exactly is proprioception and what else does it control? Where do the original spatial concepts come from? Are they passed on in ones DNA? Is it proprioception that drives embryonic growth, healing, regrowth, cell differentiation? How does the nervous system interact with  this overall control system? Why is it that without this system some may intellectually know but still lack the ability to compensate for a deficit? Like the woman with hemi-inattention.

“Sometimes, she will put on lipstick, and make up the right half of her face leaving the left half completely neglected: it is almost impossible to treat those things, because attention cannot be drawn to them [...] and she has no conception that they are wrong. She knows it intellectually, and can understand, and laugh; But it is impossible for her to know it directly.” (Sacks 77)

Do things such as faith, belief, and meditation enact these spatial controls in our minds thus driving and catlyzing things such as healing or positive feedback loops? The implications are intriguing.

The last section of the book is the ‘world of the simple’ where Sacks gives new perspective to individuals that are often overlooked and written off as simply mentally handicapped. His sensitive observations of one girl revealed how her sense of self of self-perception though handicapped in a traditional sense was instead expressed in a ‘narrative’ organization of the world. In fact she seemed to excel in her grasp of narrative as it connected her whole world. Other similar patients showed tendencies toward musical and narrative understandings of reality.

When one looks are the power of metaphore it becomes obvious how essential stories are to the basis of linguistics, morality, biology, religion, just to name a few. Sacks points out the common mistake of giving narrative and metaphore such little importance when approaching the mentally handicapped. This makes one consider how it may be lacking in their own personal life even though we may excell in other ’intellectual’ modes. Overall this well written volume causes one to reconsider the importance and function of healthy self perception. Most importantly it leads ones mind toward more questions.