Something that I think should be an important part of solarpunk aesthetics is screws.
Look at your smartphone. No screws. You’ve got to have specialized tools to get inside your phone to repair something. There are certain pieces of tech that are glued in place and glue can’t be undone without permanently breaking the bond.
But screws!
You can take apart a broken old radio, repair what’s broken, and, if you were careful in taking it apart, you can put it back together and have a fully functioning radio and all you need is a common screwdriver!
It’s hard to build screws and other mechanical fasteners because it requires more planning than clamps and glues, but isn’t that what solarpunk is all about‽ It’s about care and sustainability and and a radio or a computer built carefully with repair in mind is a sustainable computer that stays out of landfills and in use.
i think this is probably true of every office, but there’s a middle aged woman working in business who doesn’t hold any particular place in the chain of command but is Sovereign. i was running support and she has access to more secure network drives than i do. im pretty sure she has an admin account. i was having trouble with my parking pass and my boss just said to talk to kristen- one day later i had parking in any garage on campus. she’s not even in charge of parking in our building
This is also true of academia. In pretty much any department of the university — in my experience at least — there’s a person with a small-but-private office and an unassuming title (probably including a word like “secretary” or “assistant”), usually an older woman, and she actually runs the place. Faculty defer to her; department heads come and go, but Jill has been there for thirty years and knows how everything works, and she’s the person you go to if you want to get anything done. You’ll know her because when a professor directs you to her they won’t say “you need to talk to the Office of So-and-So because this falls under their purview”, but “you need to talk to Jill.” Her official job title is basically irrelevant because her actual role is acting as eminence grise for this whole operation.
I’ve personally had the experience where my advisor told me “you should do such-and-such certification, go talk to Jill,” and I went to talk to Jill & she said “actually you can’t do such-and-such because XYZ,” so I went back to my advisor to relay this, and he just kind of shrugged and was like, “well if Jill says no, then it can’t be done” and that was the end of it. Complete veto power, no higher authority to turn to, because the only reason Jill can’t do something is if it’s literally impossible.
Honestly there’s probably a whole dissertation about invisible labor and gender dynamics in there waiting to be written.
The one in my undergrad department was Linda C, and I think her hypercompetence must have risen to the point of allowing her to manipulate time itself, because in my experience, every time you needed to talk to Ms. C, you would end up chatting with her for at least an hour (which was both enjoyable and informative) and yet she got so much work done–it just didn’t seem physically possible.
Take secretaries and administrative assistants out of any organization and you’ll see it crumble in no time. They are the holder of the secrets to understanding red tape and other administrative nightmares.
The whole project of corporate IT was trying to get rid of this type of person and it’s why nothing works anymore and we’re all dying
I was reading the top end of this and thinking ‘just offices? I’ve never worked anywhere vaguelly functional where this wasn’t true’ BUT in certain really female dominated workspaces I’ve been in, this indispensible, middle aged woman is the boss, or at least upper management. This is bliss if it happens.
She doesn’t just know HOW to do stuff, she gets to decide what’s worth doing in the first place!
Learning how to weave! After a brief attempt at card weaving, I discovered pick-up weaving and immediately switched over to weaving with a heddle. And since I need to make everything as complicated as possible, I’m working on creating my own patterns as I learn.
Still figuring out how to maintain an even tension when I move my set up around. Ultimately, I’ll get a loom and that should solve most of my issues. They’re a tad wonky, but I’m pleased with my patterns and excited to come up with more! :))
Here’s a peek at what playing around with these patterns looked like on paper!
The red and white speckled effect reminded me of mushrooms, so I turned all the houses into mushrooms for my last repeat. I also added in a fox (mostly successfully) and tried to turn the hill into a hobbit hole (less successfully). I’ll iron out these motifs in a future band!
The ducks were my first attempt at creating a pattern and you can see how much I adjusted things as I went along! (The left being the beginning and the right the end)
I’ve learned a LOT about pick up pattern creation by working on these guys, especially where one should and shouldn’t add pick-ups/push-downs. I’ll continue tweaking these patterns as I learn more and hopefully have a nice proper pattern to share with you all at some point!
ALT
