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.

My homemade, unpasteurized sauerkraut (and photos of it) will be on display and up for trade at the exhibition Non*Mart at Y2Y Gallery in San Francisco from November 6 till January 15, 2010. See more details about eating some at the opening at my post about it on awesomepickle.com or at the show and gallery links. Click the pic for a bigger flyer.

Sometimes when I interview someone they give me too many good quotes. That’s what happened with artist Susan Danis, when I talked to her for an article in issue 10 of Craft magazine. Here are two that I didn’t manage to use where her enthusiasm and curiosity come through:

“I was going for a walk with my husband the other night and it wasn’t quite dark yet. And I was so happy because I found some dried worms on the sidewalk that I could use.”

“I was hoarding animal horns. Those you have to keep in the freezer for three months in case there are any bugs. My freezer is still filled with horns.”

I also focused on one of her works at the expense of others, such as Lingam, in the photo above. It’s so buried in bells and flowers it’s a wonder it can even stand up. I also couldn’t get into her future projects, which is a shame since I had to leave this quote behind:

“I want to build a crib with a big hairy turd slumped into it. So I’m going do that. I’m not going to try to explain it, but I am going to build it. That’s how it works, that’s the process.”

Enough said.

Sadly, this was also Craft’s last issue in print. But it seems that the crew will continue to run their very active website.

I landed an article on this giant UFO in the pages of MAKE magazine. Gail Simpson and Aristotle Georgiades of Actual Size Artworks built it in Wisconsin with wood from an old dairy barn they transformed into their house. Then they drove all 500 pounds of it to Philadelphia and put it in a tree. It sounds like this was half the fun for them, especially because they got to interact directly with people seeing their work.

Aristotle: It was a beautiful form in sections. When we shipped this thing across the country there were these two half-UFOs on the trailer. Every time we stopped, someone would ask, “Hey what’s that?” Gail usually said, “It’s a flying saucer,” and they’d say, “Oh, obviously.”

Gail: As though that was a perfectly legitimate explanation.

Aristotle: During the installation, the same thing happened. We enjoy that spectacle that the public gets from looking at the artwork and responding to it. And that was particularly evident in the process of moving the thing out there.

Here it is on the trailer:

Another favorite of mine is the Trojan Piggy Bank they installed in Chicago. Unfortunately, it’s not there anymore. I think a tree fell on it.

Why shouldn’t art be funny? If you like this still photo of In Natura (Coitus Bizzarus) by Krištof Kintera, see the odd coupling caught on video.

Kintera’s a real do-it-yourselfer’s artist; he builds sculptures out of appliances, bicycles, electricity-producing potatoes, and other stuff found out in the land of instructables and science projects. He’s also the kind of artist who doesn’t like to explain his work outright and give away the punchline. Scroll through Kintera’s website, and the jokes pile up like the sacks of cement he used to build a 23-foot leaning tower.

While Kintera would rather make a dirty joke with the master’s tools than try to tear the master’s house down, jeweler and sculptor Stacey Lee Miller, tears down the tools themselves and rebuilds them out of pennies:

It takes a lot of concentration and patience to cut all those coins and solder them together, which is part of the point — Webber’s tool pieces are a heartfelt homage to work, so investing hours in their creation makes conceptual cents. (Whoooooie. Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Here’s a closeup. Look at the detail!

But her work isn’t all serious, either. On Webber’s website there are images of altered quarters and nickles with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson sporting crowns. And Webber’s working on some screwball projects. Literally.

Click these links for stories I have out now on Webber and Kintera in volume 15 of Make magazine.