The Crap Caper and other GOOD writing
I have been writing, mostly for GOOD magazine. For starters, I wrote about a group in Chicago that has saved 1,500 gallons of precious human waste and is turning into compost. It’s not legal, and if you read the Crap Caper, you’ll discover a technique for hiding a barrel of poo in plain sight. The project’s mastermind, Nance Klehm is a renaissance woman. Please go to her website because she’s doing loads of cool stuff.
I had a lofty plan to create a one-page how-to that urbanites could use to compost their business. Unfortunately, I didn’t succeed. Making humanure is complicated and I’ve never done it, so I couldn’t draw on experience to make my own guide. Check back with me in two years, which is how long it takes to turn human waste, mixed with sawdust or other carbon-rich material, into rich, loamy soil that is free of human pathogens and other bad things. (Nance can do it in a year, because she’s good at it.)
Done right it is safe. But do be careful. If you do want to try your hand at it, you can get started here:
-A general how to in MAKE magazine.
-The Humanure Handbook, the ultimate guide.
-The Handbook on the sterilizing effects of heat and time.
-How to make a sawdust toilet and a box for it.
-Some dos and don’ts.
While I failed to produce a soil-making onesheet, I did write close to half a dozen other how-to stories for GOOD’s past two issues. In the Slow Down issue, read my impassioned defense of time off and find cooking tips and ways to take a vacation from digital communication. May Wired’s editors forgive me; some days I just don’t want to be a cyborg at all.
For the Neighborhoods issue, I learned how to share my yard with the neighbors without getting into a shouting match and how to be a regular. Lastly, I talked to artist Ted Purves about the Reading Room, a storefront he opened with Susanne Cockrell in Oakland, California, to distribute free local fruit and collect local history about the neighborhood’s origins. The place took on a life of its own and Purves’s advice on how it happened falls somewhere between tips for a small business owner and tips for an art experiment. For more on the project, go here.
No Comments Yet