It’s actually a cajón, a lesser celebrated instrument in the contemporary world of percussion. When struck, this seemingly simple wooden box has all the pitches of a drum set’s snare, tom(s), and bass.

At first glance, it looks and sounds like something from Stomp, but it has a rich and interesting history. Rather than rip from Wikipedia, I’ll credit one of my dear friends D.G. who said the cajón was invented by African slaves who struck rhythms on fish crates during their time at sea. And so the cajón was born.

Close your eyes when you watch this video, don’t focus on this guy’s crotch. Focus on the sounds emitting from this plain box:

Like any instrument, a cajón can be hooked up to an amp, fancied up to the nines with a gloss, feet, and a coating of paint. A high-end one such as this may run a couple hundred dollars or more. For DIYers, the web offers numerous resources for constructing one of your own.

I like it because not only is it an instrument you can bust out at any time like an acoustic guitar, but it’s also a place to sit. So if you’re not interested in being a drummer because it comes with a crapload of equipment and the headache of maintaining a creepy white van, you can opt for this fantastically cool (and compact) cajón.

Happy drumming, or rather, cajón-ing!

The main problem is that to make a delicious cup of hot chocolate you need to use solid chocolate and sticky dark brown sugar. Chocolate melts so easily as you handle it that when you try to grate or shred it (even using a food processor) it quickly turns to goo. Keeping the chocolate cold enough made the process slow and tedious, and using dark brown sugar means you need to find a way to stop it from sticking, clumping, and turning into a giant rock by the time you give the gifts. Well, as luck would have it, laziness solved these problems for me. Over the last year I’ve been making a lot of hot chocolate for my neighbors and the idea of hand grating chocolate every time was too much for me to bear. I took to cutting the chocolate with a knife (and not even a very sharp knife) and found that as you try to slice pieces off a block they quickly crumble to tiny meltable pieces. Couple that with my desire to have a thick hot chocolate (using cornstarch) and both problems were immediately solved. Below you will find the method and recipe I’ve developed for quickly and cheaply making 20 orange spice hot chocolate mixes, with real solid chocolate, whole spice ingredients, and delicious, sticky brown sugar, all for under $5 each.

Ingredients:

• 20 4 oz. jars
• 4 10 oz. bars of unsweetened or bakers chocolate
• 5 vanilla beans
• 1/2 cup of dried orange peel (you can get this at most bulk spice stores or brewing shops)
• hot paprika
• dark brown or muscovado sugar
• cornstarch

Method (makes 20 2-serving jars):

• wash and dry each jar and lid
• in each jar add 2 teaspoons of cornstarch and 2 Tablespoons of dark brown sugar and 1/2 teaspoon hot paprika

• using a small spoon stir the cornstarch into the brown sugar until it is evenly mixed and sandy looking. The cornstarch serves as a thickener for the hot chocolate and will coat the brown sugar while it sits in the jar so it doesn’t clump.
• add 1 teaspoon of dried orange peel and a quarter of vanilla bean (scored lightly down the middle) to each jar

• using a knife cut 2 0z. chocolate for each jar. Most bars of chocolate will be segmented making it easy to tell how much you are cutting. If not, lightly score the chocolate into sections before starting. This will be a lot easier than you think once you start. Try to cut it as if you were cutting cheese, about that thick. The chocolate will crumble as you cut and if any large pieces slip by you can easily cut them into smaller pieces afterward.
• add the chocolate to each jar and seal
• include a label for instructions: Add two cups of milk, mix well, and heat slowly. Makes two cups.

Photographs by Rosey Lakos.

Dandizette
What brought about the women’s programming classes?

CHICKPEA:
It in part resulted from a conversation between me and Yossarian – this was after a dissident island radio show (that I’m a part of). We were sitting in the London Action Resource Centre with electronica blaring in the background and cans of red stripe in hand. At some stage in a long conversation I admitted to Yossarian that I wanted to learn programming but that I had some concerns – like where to start, and how I was alienated by the (often quite) macho vibe that surrounds male-dominated techie situations – and the realisation that all the programmers I know are guys and that in the radical social movements in which I get involved a large majority if not ALL of the people involved in the geeky/techie stuff are guys. That’s all a bit shit IMHO.

Yossarian responded by talking about his experience in teaching programming, and also talked about his experience with the macho attitudes in these classroom settings – and expressed an interest in teaching a womyn-only class. And then the moment of “let’s just fuckin do it!” came out of that.
Several crazy summer months went by and then the class started in mid-October and totally kicks ass.

YOSSARIAN:
It’s been cool to get back to geek teaching – I’ve taught a bit before but not for a long time. Since programming is mainly a male-dominated profession and the overwhelming majority of geeks I deal with in my day job as a programmer are men, I thought it’d be interesting to just get into a different environment. It’s been a good learning opportunity for me.

I was particularly interested in trying to figure out what it is that makes programming such a male-dominated profession, whether it’s general sexism, something going on with the educational system, or a general lack of interest in the subject on the part of women. The answers are not totally clear to me, but one thing we can say is that the level of interest in learning about computers has been overwhelming – with no advertising or outreach at all we had six women willing to haul themselves to a Brixton squat every Monday night for three hours, dual-boot their shiny new computers with Linux, learn about how computers and networks function, and start learning to program.
As an anarchist, I’ve got a responsibility to try and challenge privilege and power in society where I find it, so it was also in some ways a political duty for me to address the sexism that keeps women out of technical professions and social movement tech in particular; and teaching women to geek out seemed to me to be a better response than giving boy geeks a lecture about sexism.

Lastly, as someone who does a lot of coding for political projects, I’ve got a lot of work to do, so the opportunity to train up some new programming talent is hopefully going to work out in my favour – I am hoping to get some useful code out of the crew if they’re interested in working on some projects we’ve already got going!

Dandizette
Why did you decide on Ruby? How have the sessions gone so far?

CHICKPEA:
Sessions have been great, really entertaining and interesting. I really feel like my little universe is expanding every week, that there are possibilities being opened like doors everywhere…the realisation that I can learn the skills to make things for myself (DIY or die!) – which has been the case with other areas but so far hasn’t extended much into the world of how computers work…until now! And that is incredibly empowering. Yossarian makes a point of talking about how things can be used, what functionality certain things have, which is also motivating.

YOSSARIAN:
Ruby or Python seemed like a natural choice, since they’re both expressive, object-oriented, interpreted languages with good standard libraries and what I think are good programming cultures. The obvious question is, “why not PHP?”. PHP is easy to install and use but there’s a lot of shitty code and too many sloppy attitudes for my liking – I find it difficult to take seriously a language which uses a backslash as a namespace separator, for example. For me that design choice is symbolic of a whole set of PHP stupidities which I just couldn’t in good conscience pass on to a group of people who could potentially become good programmers.

Java, C, or C++ require too much messing around with the programming environment to be useful in a once-a-week class – they’re often used in university courses which get thousands of applicants to “weed out the dumb students”, but the goal of this class wasn’t to take 1000 applicants and turn them into 10 units of cubicle-fodder, it was to get a bunch of people together so they could find out whether they would enjoy programming.
So far the classes have gone pretty well, we’ve gone through the basics of object-oriented programming, Ruby, HTTP requests, DNS, html, css, request routing, database tables and fields, and object-relational mapping (all this in six classes!). I don’t think anybody in the class could stand on their own feet yet and just attack a project by themselves, but I think at this point we are ready to maybe switch formats and move from a sort of traditional teacher-student setup to more of a people-hanging-out-working-on-a-project-together setup. We’ll see how it goes.

Dandizette
What’s the setup for the group? Have you hosted these kind of sessions before?

CHICKPEA:
Setup? Monday nights, 7pm, the Library House (a social centre in Camberwell) – we have use a room (which comes complete with tea, a heater, a projector, a big table, lots of chairs) – we sit around with our laptops and geek it up.

Yossarian plugs into the projector so we see his desktop and mainly leads the class but we’re always talking to each other, asking questions, cracking jokes, helping each other out…all class participants, besides Yossarian, are womyn and this is the only stipulation to get involved at this stage.

YOSSARIAN:
Everybody showed up on Monday night at 7, installed Linux on their computers in the first class, and then it was a whirlwind tour of web application building, mostly with me talking while using an LCD projector and madly dashing around helping people to get their programs running. So far we’ve had six classes; like I said above, I think that if we continue in the new year the format will change somewhat. It was the first time we tried anything like this so I’ll be more prepared next time – this one was pretty rough in terms of lack of planning or anticipating problems, if there is a next set of classes I’ll have some ready-made lesson plans and example programs, so it’d be a lot smoother.

Dandizette
Are there plans to run more of these or similar projects you’re involved in?

CHICKPEA:
Heck yea – I hope so! I hope that after this session of classes ends we can all pick up again in the new year, providing people have time/energy/capacity to do so. What form the class will take will probably depend on the people interested…

YOSSARIAN:
It’s unclear at this point what’s going to happen; a friend of mine has been really interested in how things are going and would like to do a similar class focused on server administration (he’s a sysadmin geek). I could easily consider doing another beginner’s class for women if there was interest.

There has also been a lot of interest in the project in both Hacktionlab and London Indymedia circles; one of the inspirations for the class actually came from the training programs run by Brasil Indymedia when they needed a new crop of geeks to run their network infrastructure a few years ago – they educated a whole lot of women, who now run quite a bit of the tech infrastructure for brasil.indymedia.org.

It amazes me how much–for someone who professes to so anti-capitalist, anti-consumerism and anti-bourgeois culture– I struggle with the acts of consumption and spending.   I first threw off the shackles of cravings for Wet Seal bangles as a teenager, discovering the joy of thrift stores after a trip to the local Value Village yielded an entire new wardrobe for thirty dollars, one infinitely more interesting than the leggings and floral baby doll dresses I’d been coveting in the window of Contempo Casuals. Almost twenty years later, I remain engaged in a dizzy tango with both the (implanted) desires for material items and the knowledge that a life lived outside of the false strictures of capitalism is a more interesting life, indeed.

Two books have got me thinking about this topic , and have got me reinvisioning the possibilities of my own life outside of prescribed desires and assumptions. The first is one is The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove.  Written by Cathy Erway, another entry in the long line of bloggers turned book writers, the book details the author’s two years of living in Brooklyn without ever eating out at a restaurant.

The whole blog to book phenomena has become quite the gimmick but there are some nicely surprising inspirations that I didn’t expect when I started reading. First, I love the detail with which Erway writes about food. She documents her meals and the experiences over the meals with loving attention to not only the food, but the context for the meals. There is a simplicity to her love for the act of preparing and eating good food that is endearing, one that I yearn to replicate. Second, Erway delves into the different ways to step out of the restaurant/eating out cycle by looking at urban foragers like “Wildman” Steve Brill–who gives tours of New York parks where fabulous edible plants grow like special treasures–as well as freegans who scour the streets of New York, finding incredible amounts of perfectly edible day-old bread, donuts and vegetables. Like the dumpster-diving punks that have been doing that shit for years, though I have never been brave enough to do that myself. It got me thinking about my own food consumption habits, and how the way we go about procuring and preparing our food can be a political act, not a new concept, but one I hadn’t given thought too in a while.  Also, choosing to prepare food at home can be step towards simplifying, and escaping the cycle of fast consumption without thought. I’ll never view my styrofoamed burrito takeout meals again after reading Erway’s study of the the incredible amount of waste that goes into these one-off meals, when you look at all of the extra napkins, plastic cups and utensils and paper bags. Inspired by the book, my husband and I are trying not to go out to eat for a month. We’re currently in our first week of cooking all meals at home. I won’t even talk about how many dishes I’ve done this week, but otherwise, it’s been pretty smooth. I’m actually using the slow cooker that was gathering dust under the kitchen counter for the past few years.

Another book that’s got me thinking about how much is enough is Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin. Originally released in 1981, and revised “for the 21^st” century, the book is basically a manifesto about the reasons to live a life characterized by “ecological awareness, frugal consumption and personal growth.” It’s funny because many of the things that Elgin talks about are concepts that I’ve understood for years, especially since my early instruction in frugality and living outside of the mainstream inspired by the DIY/punk rock movements of the nineties, when it was cool to use and consume as little as possible (except for beer). Yet, I’ve seen those ideals fade among a large segment of the community as people grow older and take on mortgages and have kids. It’s like, what the hell happened? I know that many people have been able to maintain a life of conscious consumption and anti-capitalist ways of existing, and I would like to return to that fold. But I will need to do it in my own way, and in my own time, and by reading books that get me inspired to live in ways more aligned with my dreams and ideals.

Photo by Flickr user maureen_sill

For the past five years, Pete Bernhard has been touring with his punk-influenced string band The Devil Makes Three, and has learned many of these lessons the hard way. He spoke with Is Greater Than about what he wished he had known before heading out on the road the very first time.

What were some of your misconceptions about what touring would be like?  How does it differ from what you envisioned?

Touring turned out to be way more work than I anticipated and I had to learn to take care of myself in order to finish a tour and not feel like a walking corpse. I think movies like “Almost Famous” and other band movies have led people to believe that between partying in the limo and doing tons of coke you can always somehow find time to get laid by some a beautiful stranger and that’s what playing music is all about “man”. That has not been my experience but then again I may just be in the wrong band. If you’re going to be in a DIY situation you might as well put those kinds of things out of your mind for a while. I never thought touring would be easy but it is hard in ways I never thought it would be.

You can’t expect people to do everything for you. For example, the promotion ball often gets dropped. To be a touring musician with no backing you need to be a lot of things: a booking agent, a business person, promoter and a mediator all while performing and writing songs.

What tricks have you found to ensure band harmony while on the road?

The biggest and most important lesson lest we all end up like Metallica and get a group therapist (I’ll die first) is to communicate with your bandmates. If you can’t talk to them and you secretly hate them, trust me–its no secret in a cargo van. There are no secrets in such close quarters and the more you can be honest with everyone the longer you will last and the more fun you will have.

What are four things you wish somebody had told you before you went out on tour? What did you have to learn the hard way?

The first thing I wish I had known is that you don’t need to play clubs when no one knows who you are yet. Play house shows and have fun. Empty clubs kill band morale and just generally slowly suck the life from your soul. Even a bad house show is still just a party.

I wish someone had told me to listen to criticism and ask for some help along the way. Trying to do everything your self is a form of torture and sadly I didn’t know everything it turns out. Come to think of it I did hear this advice along the way and I didn’t listen, so there you have it.

I also could have used some advice about being honest concerning what you want out of the band or project. People usually have goals or limitations and the sooner you know this the easier it is for everyone. If the drummer wants to be a rock star but the lead singer wants to work at the comic book shop and live in his moms basement then maybe its not going to work out?

Last but not least, it is worth spending money to keep yourself sane. Always cutting corners and sleeping on the ground will catch up with you quick and end your tours before you finish the all the dates.

Truth be told, all of this was learned “the hard way”. We did everything wrong before learning to do it right and the main ingredient to making it work is not giving up.

What are the most useful/important things a band heading out on the road would need?

Money! Prepare to not make any and you will be happy if you do. On your first tour you will be lucky to make gas money and eat dry ramen noodles. Everyone in the DIY community seems to hate the mention of money but it really can be quite useful in a pinch.

Your van breaks down in bumfuck nowhere. How should you have planned  for this possibility and what’s the first thing you do?

This is where you can get out of the car and start screaming, crying and throwing around instruments and kicking inanimate objects to really show the world how hard your life is! I have tried this method and  seen others use it the outcome is always the same. It won’t change anything, everyone in attendance thinks you’re an asshole and you’re still stuck on the side of the road. God is not torturing you–god doesn’t care about you that much. Breaking down is just part of touring and having a reliable vehicle and a road side assistance plan (get AAA) to fall back on is all you can really hope for. Again skimping on your van is like moving into a cardboard box because it’s cheaper than your apartment. You have to live in the thing sometimes, so why not save up a bit more cash?

Any other bits of hard-earned wisdom?

The only other thing I can think to say to aspiring musicians is: don’t be a dick and people will like you more. It sounds so simple and yet some people never figure it out. If you show up when you are supposed to and treat the people putting on the show and doing the sound with respect they will want you back. People in the business are used to being treated like shit and will bark at you because the last bunch who came through may have made them sort through all the M&Ms so they could have only the green ones. If you don’t act that way. it’s better for everyone.

BOOZE:

I recommend using swing top bottles (like old Grolsch bottles) if you have them, or mason jars, since they are usually easiest to find or most likely to be lying around your house.  If you are someone who brews beer, feel free to bottle them in any capable sterilized bottle.  You can sterilize bottles by adding 1 Tablespoon of bleach per gallon of water or Sanitabs if you have them available.  If you use bleach, rinse the containers thoroughly before using to avoid a chlorine taste.

Coquito (Puerto Rican Eggnog):
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1 can of coconut milk
1 can of cream of coconut (not the same as creamed coconut, check the ingredients for sugar, there should be LOADS of it)
1 can of evaporated milk
1 egg
1 t. cinnamon
¼ t. nutmeg
1 t. vanilla
1½  c. Puerto Rican rum (i.e. Bacardi)

Blend all ingredients in a blender, pour into sterilized swing top bottles or Mason Jars, refrigerate until needed.  Any eggnog or coquito that contains more than 20% alcohol can be aged in a refrigerator if kept under 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  It is suggested you age it at least three weeks, but you can drink it right away or age it up to a year.  The alcohol reacts with the milk and egg proteins meaning the longer you age it, the better the texture and softer the taste of the alcohol.  Seriously, though, we have never complained while drinking young Coquito.

VEGAN VARIANT:
1 can of coconut milk
2 cans of cream of coconut
2 c. soymilk
1 T. cornstarch
1 t. cinnamon
¼ t. nutmeg
1 t. vanilla
1 ½ c. Puerto Rican rum

In a heavy bottomed saucepan heat the cornstarch and soymilk until thickened.  Remove from heat and blend together with remaining ingredients.  Pour into sterilized swing top bottles or Mason Jars and store in the refrigerator until needed.

Mulled Wine:
1 gallon of cheap wine
1 c. vodka
2 c. orange juice
1 c. muscovado or dark brown sugar
1 thumb sized piece of ginger, sliced
6 whole cloves
4 long cinnamon sticks (about 6 inches each)
4 whole star anise
1 T. of whole black peppercorns
½ t. of cayenne pepper

In a large stock pot combine all ingredients and heat just below a simmer for at least 10 minutes. Add vodka after removing from heat and bottle using sterilized swing top bottles or Mason Jars. If you jar this while hot you do not need to refrigerate. If this makes you uneasy feel free to refrigerate it until needed.

Mulled Cider:
1 gallon of unsweetened apple cider
2 c. bourbon
¼ c. muscovado or dark brown sugar
1 orange slice
6 whole cloves
4 long cinnamon sticks (about 6 inches each)
4 whole star anise
1 T. whole black peppercorns

In a large stock pot combine all ingredients and heat just below a simmer for at least 10 minutes. Add bourbon after removing from heat and bottle using sterilized swing top bottles or Mason Jars.  If you jar this while hot you do not need to refrigerate. If this makes you uneasy feel free to refrigerate it until needed.

TEA:

Lavender Tea Blend:
1 c. loose black tea (unflavored)
3 T. culinary grade lavender
1 T. rosehips
1 T. sweet orange

Combine ingredients in bowl and stir together.  Store in an air tight light-free container such as a tin, or in a plastic bag wrapped with paper.

Red Flower Tea Blend:
1 c. loose black tea (unflavored)
3 T. hibiscus blossoms
3 T. rosehips

Combine ingredients in bowl and stir together.  Store in an air tight light-free container such as a tin, or in a plastic bag wrapped with paper.

Bottled Chai Tea:
6 long cinnamon sticks
8 whole cloves
2 T. cardamom pods
¼ freshly cut ginger
2 T. whole black peppercorns
½ c. honey or to taste
1 c. black tea
1 gallon of water

In a large stock pot combine spices with water and honey and bring to a rolling boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add tea.  Let steep another 5 minutes. Strain and bottle in swing top bottles or Mason Jars. Refrigerate until needed.

FOOD:

If you haven’t made fudge before, don’t be afraid, it is ridiculously easy and decadent enough that most people won’t make it for themselves. As with most recipes, the quality of your fudge relies heavily on the quality of your ingredients, in this case your chocolate.  Use high quality chocolate for good tasting fudge.

Dark Chocolate Fudge with Crystallized Ginger:
3 c. semisweet chocolate chips
1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)
pinch of salt
1 c. chopped Crystallized Ginger
1 ½ t. vanilla extract

In a heavy saucepan, melt chocolate, sweetened condensed milk and salt over low heat stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and fold in chopped ginger and vanilla extract.  Pour into a foil or parchment lined 8″ square pan and spread evenly.  Chill until firm (about 2 hours).  Remove from pan (flipping it upside down and peeling back the foil or parchment), cut into squares and wrap portions well in wax paper.  Store at room temperature.

White Chocolate Fudge with Cranberries and Pistachios:
3 ½ c. white chocolate chips
1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)
pinch of salt
½ c. dried sweetened cranberries
½ c. chopped unsalted pistachios

In a heavy saucepan, melt chocolate, sweetened condensed milk and salt over low heat stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and fold in chopped pistachios and cranberries.  Pour into a foil or parchment lined 8″ square pan and spread evenly.  Chill until firm (about 2 hours).  Remove from pan (flipping it upside down and peeling back the foil or parchment), cut into squares and wrap portions well in wax paper.  Store at room temperature.

Manjar:
1 can of sweetened condensed milk

If you are unfamiliar with the many names of milk caramel (dulce de leche), Manjar is the Chilean name given to this sugarbaby-like treat.  I learned how to make this at a very young age from my Papa’s family.  We use it on toast or on top of pieces of white cake like icing. Most people I know use it as an ice cream topping.  It is popular in many different cultures and made in a variety of ways with a variety of cooking times.  The easiest method is to boil a small can of sweetened condensed milk completely submerged in water for anywhere between an hour to 4 hours.  For a soft, lightly colored syrup boil the can for an hour, for stiff, dark-colored paste-like spread, boil close to 4.  Make sure you keep the can completely submerged in water or you risk a very sticky explosion.  You can boil as many cans as you like in one pot as long as they stay completely submerged, and if you use smaller cans you should cook them for a shorter amount of time, larger cans for a longer amount.  I recommend starting with 1 ½ hours and going from there.  To remove the can use tongs, dump into a sturdy sink, or just wait for the pot to get cool enough to remove them (this could take several hours).  Once the cans are cooled, you can apply your own decorative labels.

HOUSEHOLD:

Many health food stores (including chains like Whole Foods) have herb sections where you can buy essential oils and various different containers from tins to jars to bottles with spray tops.  Likely, wherever you find the essential oils to use for these recipes you will find containers you can use to package your gifts.  If not, ask a clerk in that section and they should be able to help you find something in your neighborhood.

Bath Salts:
Epsom Salts
essential Oils
jars, tins, or plastic bags

For every cup of bath salts add 10 drops of essential oil, mix in a large bowl before portioning.  Good quality oils are important, and I strongly recommend choosing a different fragrance over a different brand if you find the one you want is too expensive.  Vanilla and Sandalwood are often the most popular and most expensive, so try scents like Sweet Orange or Lavender instead.  For more complex recipes see this site.

Air Freshener:
1 c. distilled water
1 T. vodka or rubbing alcohol
10 drops of essential oil

bottle in a small, dark colored glass or aluminum spray bottles.

Glass Gem Magnets:
Glass gems
¼ inch strong magnets
magazine images
crazy glue or glue gun
Modge Podge or silicon glue

Cut out roughly circular images (a little smaller than the gems) from a magazine. Using modge podge or silicon glue, glue the images to the bottom of the glass gems and let them dry.  After they are completely dry, use a glue gun, crazy glue, or other industrial strength glue to apply the magnet to the back.  You can find glass gems at a floral shop, gaming shop, or craft supply store.  Make sure you buy clear unadorned gems, no shiny iridescent surfaces or they will obscure the image.  You can buy magnets at hardware stores, craft stores and some office supply shops.

Toy Magnets:
Small plastic toys
¼ inch strong magnets
glue gun or crazy glue

Go to a toy store or dollar store and pick out bags of small toys: plastic army men, plastic animals, floral arrangement birds, etc.  My favorites are rubber goldfish.  Using a hot glue gun or crazy glue, apply the magnet to the part you want to be the “backside”.  You might need to use wire cutters to trim off pieces of the toys that stop them from lying flat.

Maps and Pictures and Books on Tape:

The American Memory site run by The Library of Congress has a wealth of images. We spent months picking out maps and photographs to have printed for our family members this year.  Nearly all of them are copyright free, and while this project might seem quick and easy it’s surprisingly time consuming.  Here are a few quick tips:

1.     do your searches in the “gallery view” so you can quickly identify images vs. text or sound files.

2.     unless you have a converter, don’t bother with MrSID images, confine your picks to jpegs.

3.     make sure you adjust the file size to the DPI and image size you want to have printed before you take your file in

4.     search specific collections, such as Panoramic Photographs, Maps, Panoramic Maps, or Advertising

5.     check the copyright information, while most of them are public domain, some collections are not, and companies like Kinkos will refuse to print them if they suspect copyright infringement.

The Internet Archive, archive.org, is an excellent resource for books on tape.  While I’m generally not a fan of books on tape, tending to prefer the printed versions, I found myself completely entranced with the archives of public domain readings on this site.  There is everything from childlike readings of popular folk and fairytales, to authors reading their own works, to old radio programs.  So, even if you are not a fan of books on tape, chances are you have an Internet challenged loved one who does.  A great gift is a CD collection of various books on tape or old radio programs.  I recommend you start with these links:

Old Time Radio Programs

War of the Worlds, October 1938, Orson Welles

The Whistler

Dragnet

Or browse by subject

Audio Books for Children or Adults Who Act Like Them

Fairy Tales

Children’s Literature

Audio Book Classics

Charles Dickens

Joseph Conrad

Bronte Sisters

Jane Austin

Russian Classics

Edgar Allen Poe

Sun Tzu

General Philosophy

Audio Book Pulp

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Sherlock Holmes and other Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Jules Verne

Short Science Fiction Collection

Audio Book Cool Kids

William S. Burroughs

Allen Ginsberg

Jack Kerouac

e. e. cummings

T. S. Eliot

“Punk” Works

Last Minute Wrapping Paper:

Newspaper
Acrylic paint
Water

My housemate insisted I include my last minute giftwrap in this article because she thinks it’s adorable.  Make a mixture of white paint with a little bit of color and water.  You want it fairly runny or you will end up using a LOT of paint.  Find some old newspaper, preferably something with lots of images, and preferably not with totally depressing headlines… I mean, unless that’s your thing.  Laying it out flat in a stack, paint it quickly with watered down paint.  Hang it up to dry or lay it out flat in a place where animals or children won’t attack it.  You don’t have to use white paint, but I do because it washes out the print a little better and the pastel colors make the paper seem more cohesive.  Also, white paint is cheaper.

This doesn’t mean these holidays have to be a complete blowout. There are plenty of DIY gift ideas floating around there that can allow you to treat your loved ones without having to resort to any more toxic loans. And thanks for the wonders of the Internet–you are still paying those DSL bills, right?–just about anyone can whip up some homemade holiday cheer that has no resemblance to those itchy knitted sweaters your grandmother used to make.

The DIY movement has reached critical mass online in recent years, with tons of sites offering tutorials and inspiration for gift items as far-flung as screen-printed T’s and knitted iPod cozies. Here’s are some of the best:

Curbly should be your first stop if you want to enter the world of DIY gift-giving. An online community for both pro crafters and wannabes, the site is full of inspiring ideas alongside incredibly helpful video tutorials for items such as art-nouveau birdhouses and old books that have been repurposed into small works of wall art. The site offers a robust discussion forum where crafters trade tips and talk shop, and the overall ethos of the site favors finding economical solutions to grandiose visions.

If Curbly is your first stop, make Instructables your second. A veritable clearinghouse for craft tutorials, if you can’t find the perfect homemade gift here, you’re probably not sold on this whole DIY thing to begin with. The wealth of tutorials on the site–ranging from classy homemade lamps to USB memory sticks encased in Lego bricks–is mind-boggling, and a bit overwhelming. Since the tutorials are user-submitted, their quality can vary, but user ratings allow you to quickly find the best submitters to the site.

Both an online magazine and quarterly print digest, Make magazine is like a virtual Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory to nerdy DIY’ers, with a preference for projects that are technical and eccentric. You’ll find tricks to make bizarre and wonderful devices out of typical off-the-shelf items, and if you have the will (and a bit of technical or engineering prowess), the magazine is full of ideas that will make the face of the plugged-in iconoclast in your life glow. Word of warning: the projects in Make are rarely for the faint of heart, and the materials of choice may end up being pricier than an off-the-shelf gift.

More accessible than Make–in both tone and project difficulty–is its sister publication, Craft. Craft offers tons of tutorials for homemade knitted gear, ornaments and what have you. Keep the Bedazzler in the box, though–the overriding aesthetic of Craft’s projects is cutesy, hip and urban. The site’s updated-daily blog serves as a fount of idea inspiration, displaying the most impressive DIY projects from around the web, and the tutorials are sure to help those who suffer from fumbling finger syndrome. Unfortunately, a subscription is required to view the tutorials, but they are hard to beat for sheer thoroughness and user-friendliness.

Still can’t find inspiration? Try craft discussion forum Craftster, or head over to the Holiday DIY Gift Ideas Flickr Pool, which includes hundreds of photos of homemade gifts by members of the Flickr community. And if you just can’t bring yourself to pull out the glue gun, or are just impossibly clumsy, you can always fake it and head over to Etsy, an eBay for crafters, to find a slew of affordable gifts by DIY mavens gone pro.

This latest installment of Preserving Our Independents doesn’t feature an official small publisher (as has been the case in past installments) but rather a small publishing venture. And just like the presses previously featured, this project uses a DIY approach to pursue admirable initiatives.

Are you aware of the incredible adaptations of cephalopods? Or that scientists have discovered a special virus that kills harmful bacteria in hot dogs? Do you know that people use different sets of muscles to create fake smiles and genuine smiles? Maybe these facts are new to you; maybe you learned some of them in school. Or maybe you were riding the train the other day and happened upon a little zine that cleverly explained some of these scientific curiosities.

In the latter case, you might have stumbled upon a publication from the Small Science Collective, a public education project that aims to put scientific information in the hands of non-scientists. The collective accomplishes this by publishing one-page zines and pamphlets on a range of enlightening topics—everything from smiles and cephalopods to stem cells and pheromones—and then distributing them in public spaces: at coffee shops, on park benches, inside the sugar packet containers at restaurants, between the pages of in-flight magazines.

The zines are written and designed by Small Science Collective founder Andrew Yang, as well as fellow scientists, friends, and his students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where Yang teaches courses in biology and the intersection of art and science. The idea originated when Yang was a student himself, and he kept finding Chick tracts—little illustrated booklets designed to be evangelistic tools—popping up around campus, particularly in the building where he was doing his graduate studies in evolutionary biology.

“I think the cleaning staff might have been putting them around surreptitiously—trying to convert our wayward souls to their view of things,” Yang says. But while he took issue with the content and intent of these booklets, he still considered them interesting on an aesthetic level. “Although the tracts can be pretty ridiculous, I have never picked one up that I haven’t read through. As little comics, they are really compelling and kind of beautiful objects,” Yang says.

Yang already had an interest in zines and handmade brochures as a way of disseminating ideas, but he was frustrated that science information wasn’t being disseminated as widely or earnestly as these religious stories. Yang began discussing these issues with a friend, astrophysicist Jeff Oishi. Both wondered how useful, interesting, and educational science could be communicated. “Science as an institution does a very bad job at educating people about its concerns, its findings, and how science works,” Yang says. “It strikes me as strange that as significant as it is, science doesn’t penetrate the everyday lives we lead, and…is often restricted to very formal venues, like the textbook, the museum, the standardized font.”

For these reasons, Yang eventually started making science zines with his students at the Art Institute. In this way, students who were already adept at combining visual and narrative content and thinking about ideas creatively could learn about science topics by actually communicating about science.

“There is this whole other issue about who gets to communicate science, how experts and teachers appear to be the ones exclusively with that authority,” Yang says. “But that lack of personal agency is so much of the problem of why people don’t engage with science or technology and feel helpless and daunted by it.”

The one-page zines certainly encourage engagement and discovery, and they do so with a sense of wonder and often a sense of humor. Some zines are typed; many are handwritten. Some contain field drawings and illustrated diagrams; others incorporate old sepia-toned photographs, comics, and collage. All of them present facts and scientific tidbits in an entertaining, easy-to-understand format.

There’s a zine about evolutionary biology called Snake Legs and Wisdom Teeth, which was designed to look like one of the aforementioned Chick tracts, and a publication titled simply Ants, which shares facts about such fascinating types of ants as the honeypot ant, leafcutter ant, and weaver ant. The Mini Book of Sexual Selection explains different traits in animals that contribute to their reproductive success, and Hole in Yer Head identifies the various uh, holes in our heads that make sensory experience possible.

Whatever the topic discussed therein, each zine attempts to explain scientific concepts and discoveries to people who might not otherwise be exposed to (or independently pursue) such information. In so doing, the collective hopes that everyone, particularly non-scientists and non-specialists, will feel empowered to learn more. “When folks spot me on the train dropping [the zines] around, it starts conversations and sparks curiosity,” says Yang. “In that sense, it isn’t exclusively an ‘anonymous’ format; it also provides a lot of opportunity to connect with people.”

And that’s what this publishing venture is all about: starting conversation, sparking curiosity. Via simple, easily distributable zines and pamphlets, the Small Science Collective is helping people more actively engage in their world. For copies of the zines, visit the SSC website and simply download, print, and fold the publications of your choice.