The Golden Scarab Synchronicity – Inspired by Carl Jung

Took a trip to Austin. Read some Carl Jung. Got inspired. Had a conversation. Recorded it. Made a video with Tinny.

Molly Gray, a graduate student from USC, recently visited our humble abode and wrote a wonderful article about us in her blog entitled Molly Reports. The report talks about our community and one other called Villanova. Molly is an Annenberg Fellow working toward an MA in Digital Journalism at the University of Southern California. Thanks for coming over and spending time with us Molly!

You can check out the beginning of her report below and then go to her website to see more. We also posted the slideshow and video she created.

Update! Molly’s article was just accepted to the Huffington Post, so feel free to also read her article via the HuffPost!

Artistic communities are a haven for artists in the middle of the city

by Molly Gray…posted April 25, 2012

Aside from a few small details — a bronze peace sign above the front door and a turquoise bus parked in the driveway — this craftsman house in a quiet West Adams neighborhood looks just like any other.

Once inside, the sounds of the electronic pop band Passion Pit and the smells of vegetarian Thai curry drift throughout the home.

It’s nearing 8:30 p.m. and pretty soon a hand-carved wooden whistle will signal to anywhere between 10 and 20 people that dinner is ready… all of molly’s article…

Slideshow!

Video!

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Mr. Bolivar – Waste Vegetable Oil vs. Diesel Emissions

Rogelio Bolivar lives in Denver and converts diesel engines to Waste Vegetable Oil as a hobby and way of life. A day after Tin and I met him he was on his way to a diesel emissions test center to see the difference in emissions between diesel and WVO.

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Buxom Beet!

Our first full-sized beet of the year! Look at those curves...(harvested from our garden 3/19/12)

Tags: beet, garden
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DIY Culinary Adventures at Synchronicity

Hot Tub Yoghurt

I spent some time in Bolivia, and whilst working at a cafe/bar, i feasted daily on homemade granola and yoghurt made in my boss’s backyard. I’ve always dreamt of waking up and tasting that homemade deliciousness here in LA. So I researched making homemade yoghurt and it turns out the trickiest part to making it is keeping the yoghurt at 105-115 degrees for 6 to allow the cultures to spread. I was struggling to find a way, then it hit me! That’s the temp of our hot tub in the backyard! hooray! So Ever since january I’ve been keeping Synchronicity stocked with gallons of homemade yoghurt by sealin’ that yoghurt up tight, thrown it in the tub, and lettin’ it cook!

100% Orgasmic Granola

Rounding out my bolivian dream.. my dream of a lady (above) and I have been cooking up some homemade granola to top off that yoghurt! Yummy concoctions of late have featured pumpkin spices, quinoa, flax seed, crispy rice, and maple candied nuts! Oh me oh my. Lately we’ve made a batch to raise money for a trip to Bangladesh, where we are helping start a One for One Restaurant company that could feed many hungry kids around the globe. Learn more and donate if you wish here!

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These Days at the Synchronicity LA Salon

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Love Letters to the End

An interactive web series featuring the talents of Synchronicity LA and the surrounding BLVD!

Love Letters to the End – Teaser from Love Letters to the End on Vimeo.

Love Letters to the End – Episode 1 from Love Letters to the End on Vimeo.

The world might end this year. Well, that’s what people are saying anyway. You and I may not think so, but let’s make believe for a moment.

If the world were to end this year, what would you want to share with it? What memories, yearnings, gratitudes, regrets, triumphs, and wonders call out?

This is an invitation to be a part of a community art project. “Love Letters To The End” is a dramatic interactive world wide web series and collaborative community letter-writing project. Your letter might be short or long, pivotal or insignificant, melancholy, joyous, or sublime.

Write your love letter to the world before it ends.

The anonymous letter you send to the address below will be shared on the website, and could even be included in the narrative of the web series. This project will bring in collaborators from all over and what we make together might just inspire others. We hope you will join us on this journey.

Love Letters to the End
P.O. Box 17693
Los Angeles, CA
90017-0693

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Synchronicity LA Salon Presents Ariel Climer

Cycling is live music!
Ariel is one of the founding members of Synchronicity LA. Hear her speak some poetry in the Synchronicity LA arts studio.

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Participating in the Gift Economy

Yes! Magazine put out an article entitled “37 Ways to Join the Gift Economy.” I love thinking about an economy that is thriving without the addition of what most people think economies need—money. So I took a look at the list. It turns out that our little house already participates in many of the suggestions!

To see all of the suggestions, check out the original article.

Here’s how we bring the gift economy home:
“1. Start a dinner co-op. Rotate among the homes of friends and neighbors for weekly or monthly potlucks.”
We have group dinners four nights a week! People from our house as well as neighbors and guests cook for each other and eat together.

“3. Put up a traveler.”
Guests come through our doors all the time. Already this year we have hosted strangers from Texas, British Columbia, and Idaho.

“5. Harvest wild or unwanted fruits and vegetables.
6. Grow your own, and give some of it away.”
We have fruit trees in our backyard we eat from and give to our neighbors.

“9. Buy food or supplies in bulk and share with friends.”
We buy all of our food as a group and often share food with friends and neighbors. Though not everything we buy is bought in bulk, we try to get rice, beans, and other items in this way.

“10. Form a home-repair team to fix your own place and others’.”
This effort has recently taken the form of work exchangers – offering housing in exchange for special projects around the house, which has brought us lovely additions such as our table and outdoor shower!

“18. Throw a block party.”
Happened two years ago… I might try to make it happen again…

“19. Show up at a soup kitchen and ask to volunteer help.”
We have volunteered off an on at our local food bank.

“21. Convert a duplex, apartment building, old nursing home, or seminary into a cohousing community.”
Though our home is not any one of these cool locations originally, we did convert an old, early 1900’s home into a cohousing situation.

“22. Convert a barn or warehouse into a space for artists and start-up businesses.”
Our studio! Also, Andress Yourself = start-up business.

“23. Create a space for neighbors to keep and share infrequently used tools and extra garden supplies.
32. Exchange lessons, for example, cooking for carpentry.”
We have recently begun to share more tools on the block through a skill/stuff share. If you live nearby and would like to exchange skills, email us about it.

“25. Hold a monthly clean-up of a beach, park, roadway, river bank; get coffee houses to donate goodies.”
Royce, a friend from the block, had the idea to clean up the street once a month. We’ve done a street clean up twice now and hope to continue it and to get more people on the block involved!

“28. Share a car.”
We share cars a lot as many of us bicycle goers have random long distance trips to take to see family or to get home safely late at night. Thanks car people!

—

And last but not least… a couple of ideas we should consider…
“35. Work with your neighbors to develop a vision for your neighborhood’s future.”
We are still dreaming of making the lot for sale at the end of the block into a park. Looking into it right now. I think there is a lot of potential for involving neighbors in this as well as more group activities such as in street cleaning, food growing, and skill sharing.

“36. Hold talent shows. Give kids lots of recognition, and everyone opportunity to discover their hidden talents.”
A local talent show?! Yes! I think we could pull this off with our Salon experience. Spring talent? Where would it be located? I’ve always wanted to make use of the parking lot at the end of the street by Washington.

Oh and this one…
“15. Give co-workers neck and shoulder massages.”
Tin just got back, so… gift economy…?

-Ariel

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