Posts Tagged ‘iSFair 2O12’

High Desert Water Wars

Sunday, June 23rd, 2013

INDIVIDUAL:  Annette DeMay; Ridgecrest, CA
GROUP SIZE:  Dozens
NATURE OF GROUP:  Various citizens of the Indian Wells Valley—Water Wise Friends group of loosely organized activists; small city and county high-desert residents fighting the competing interests of  the Water District Board representing their customers; individual well owners; small group well owners, small community well sharers, agricultural interests, large chemical company water user, and U.S. Navy well users.
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY:  High Desert Water Wars

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountain Range and Indian Wells Valley—view from our place in the high desert.

Editor’s Note
The high desert mentioned in this report is the Indian Wells Valley in the northern Mojave Desert of California, about 60 miles south west of Death Valley, with an average rainfall of 3 inches and July temperatures pushing 120 degrees fahrenheit. The Indian Wells Valley is also about 70 miles south of the Owens Valley, the water from which has been fought over in epic water wars for over a century, as detailed in Marc Reisner’s book and the related film Cadillac Desert, and loosely fictionalized in the 1974 Roman Polanski film Chinatown. This report chronicles the efforts of Annette DeMay, an Indian Wells Valley resident to educate herself to the level of scientific expert (perhaps “authority”) on wells and groundwater, in addition to bureaucraticize, and the mechanizations of groups who seek to “improve” (or steal) under the cover of implied custodial rights over resources. How far would you go to protect your ability to sustain life on your property?      

Author’s note
Versions of much of what is described in this report apply to groundwater use and conditions, as well as water politics, in other places around the United States.  This is especially true for smaller outlying towns in valleys around the southwestern region, but also applies in U.S. regions with different climates. The issues will apply to more areas as increasing populations deplete groundwater or water quality degrades.

Much of what was achieved to protect our local water supply during this protracted incident is credited to others whose names are held private.  But I praise these especially active and knowledgeable people with frequent recognition in local newspapers and public meetings:  Don and Judie Decker, Lyle and Sylvia Fisher, Dennis and Karen Sizemore, Tom DeMay. Some members of the Water Board are also due thanks.

As a “guerilla Sociometry” report, this lacks the scientific rigor that I applied when preparing information for Water Board members, local citizens, and even insufficiently informed “experts” hired by the Water District.  Despite importance of scientific rigor, it is useful and even fun to say something in an inflammatory way now and then.  This version is casual and much shorter—really—while still conveying ideas from our experience that may apply to an experience of your own.  You’re invited to review this water war intelligence one part at a time.

~ Annette DeMay, June 2013

Part 1.  Gaining Water Wisdom

This part gives a little background for the ongoing water war in our northwestern area of the Mojave High Desert.  Most of Kern County is on the west side of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range and has lots of water for irrigation.  But we’re on the east side.  We have lots of sunshine but no surface water, and the aquifer/groundwater has been in recorded overdraft since 1945. (See the California Ground Water Bulletin pdf)

WATER WISDOM BEGINS
Once my husband and I decided our 2007 vacation was over, we drove straight through to get home as soon as possible.  Driving mania would give us an extra night of rest at home before we had to return to work.  Nineteen hours later we were in our kitchen checking voice mail.  A message from a stranger got our attention before we could hit the delete button.

Yikes!  Tomorrow night the Indian Wells Valley Water District (the Water District) is planning to approve a Water Supply “Improvement” Project (WSIP).  It would appropriate (some say this means steal) water from many non-district wells in the area; maybe some would run dry.  Will it matter to us?

There are no creeks or rivers in our valley, so we depend exclusively on groundwater.  Our well is deep enough. The shallow wells of our neighbors are mostly 30 or more years old so probably due for replacement; and the Water District takes care of everyone else, right?   But hmm…the message sounds informed and like we have a problem.  If we are ever to have a say, we must attend the meeting tomorrow.  It would be best to say something meaningful but brief.

Tired or not, that night we started educating ourselves so we might say something cogent and well founded at the public voting meeting.

The Water Board meeting was 2 days after most people who would be directly impacted had first heard about the meeting.  Yet dozens jammed the meeting room and many commented.  The proposed project was outlined in a Draft Mitigated Negative Declaration. That kind of report is used when a project will cause no negative impacts or impacts are so trivial they can be easily mitigated without formality. The Board delayed the vote another month. So comments (though unofficial only) could be submitted until the end of the month. Whew! But the reprieve was temporary and floods of homework would have to be done by many. Beginners thanked their Water Wise Friends.

IN ABSENCE OF FACTS, MYTHS REIGN
It turns out that most people’s understanding of water in our valley was based on misconceptions.  Versions of them likely apply elsewhere:

  1. There is virtually unlimited groundwater under our valley.
  2. Our groundwater is recharged from the very nearby mountains—and from the north between the Sierra Nevadas and the White Mountains.
  3. The rate of groundwater use is pretty stable and reasonable.
  4. The Water District is a government department operating for the benefit of the people.
  5. The Water District provides water to the people of the Indian Wells Valley.
  6. Private well owners are a few who whine against the greater good.
  7. Private well owners don’t have to pay for their water.
  8. 1,100 new jobs will soon be offered in our valley (one “large” city with population bouncing around 25,000).  This means jobs! But more water will need to be pumped.
  9. The proposed project will improve water supply and not have negative consequences.
  10. Projects that may cause real damage require an environmental impact assessment with report copies sent to certain government offices and available to the public, and a Public Notice at least 30 days before a vote.
  11. Voting Water Board members have at least fundamental knowledge about water science and even geohydrology where groundwater is essential.

LOCAL MYTHS BUSTED
Based on actual facts, real science, and more recent and reliable data than in Water District environmental reports, these are some things we learned about each misconception listed above.

  1. There may be a version of unlimited groundwater under our valley but most of it isn’t drinkable (potable). There’s way too much that contains arsenic and/or dissolved solids (hard water) and/or is too brackish (badwatersalt pans seen in old cowboy movies).  More heads are being taken out of the scientific sand; revealing most of our groundwater requires expensive treatment to be potable. Our remaining known bowl of potable water of any significant size is in the Southwest Field of our aquifer. It is both limited and located under our neighborhood, above which very few Water District customers live. No, the groundwater is not really just one big bowl that we all share.  It’s lots of “bowls” with flow among only some of them. And no, dissolved arsenic is not just a naturally occurring problem; careless pumping of groundwater can increase or even create such a problem in the southwest not just in Bangladesh.
  2. A detailed isotope analysis of our valley’s aquifer was begun in the early 2000s with the final 2008 report publicized in 2010. It showed the Southwest Field’s bowl of potable water to be almost entirely from the Pleistocene Era, with tiny recharge each year compared to extraction.  Did the Water District know these chemical results were coming, so the 2007 Negative Declaration was timed to omit this “best available” data? What about Sierra snow melt? The East Fork of the Kern River rages immediately on the west side of the mountains.  Oops!  Sierra snow and rain virtually all flow to the west side.  Although some recharge enters very near our side of the Sierras even that groundwater was aged back to 7,000 years ago.  Recharge that we expected from the north was zero “no thanks” to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power that sucked dry the 15-mile long Owens Lake just north of us; the underground northern river no longer feeds our aquifer.  (LA DWP takes water from most of the eastern side of the Sierras north beyond Yosemite contributing to desertification and drought.)  And what about that recharge flowing under Walker Pass?  Well, some water comes through but it falls over an underground cliff (old earthquake fault?) before it reaches the central valley floor.
  3. Since first measured in 1945 our aquifer has been in overdraft, more water taken out each year than recharged.  From around 1960 until around 2000, the water table under us was lowering about one foot per year.  In the early 2000s’s we observed that it was going down 2 feet per year at our well, so we figured a 3 to 4 feet annual lowering may occur later.  In 2005 we drilled a new well that would last more than our lifetimes (we thought).  We spent $20,000 for a deeper well.  But our adjacent neighbor’s water level made an unusual drop of 8 feet from 2011 to 2012!
  4. The Water District is not a part of the local city or country government. It’s actually a private entity that is a “service providing agency” under California law.  This exempts them from many local and county laws, such as zoning and local controls over water use.
  5. The stated goal of the IWVWD in 2007 was to provide the best and cheapest water “for its customers” (and @#$%^& to everyone else?) That wording hadn’t made an impression on many of us until 2007.  By the way that phrase was gone in 2012.
  6. Non-Water District well users are by no means just a selfish little group of individuals.  According to a Water Board member, as stated in two public meetings, there are about 800 wells in the valley.  The Water District has about a dozen active wells of which it alternately operates a few at a time.  Yes, their pumps are 40-50 times bigger than the typical private and small community wells, and there are three other big entities pumping water from our valley’s aquifer.  The Navy and North American Chemical have been using pumps less than half the size of the “improvement” project’s proposed wells; agricultural water use seems almost uncontrolled, a 4,000 gallon-per-minute pump was approved in 2013.
  7. The cost to replace our 23 year old well (that’s almost $1000/year) only hints at the fact that private and small-community well users are not getting free water.  This is a second capital expenditure for a well for us; others are experiencing the same.  Some private wells also have to pay for monitoring and for filtering.  All have to pay for electricity to pump the water.
  8. New jobs were indeed offered by the Navy, as part of moving work to a better location.  But, as has happened under previous Base Realignment and Closure efforts around the country, less than 25% of the offers were taken.  This lack of influx was expected and acknowledged by informed people in the valley.When carefully analyzed, the Water District’s own data showed the redundant (extra) water needed for emergencies already existed.  The census after people had arrived for new jobs revealed a population of about 25,000, representing the same minimal population variation that had been occurring over decades.
  9. If the agency that wants an expansive project is also designated as a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQE) reviewer (for some things), and that agency writes the report finding no negative impacts, and the public is too naïve or uninformed…then the project can move swiftly forward without regard for all the consequences.  But in 2007 the Water District was found out.
  10. Even for a project supported by a negative declaration, the law requires at least 30 days for review initiated by a Public Notice (e.g. legal notice in local newspapers and distribution of an environmental report. After being prodded, we remembered seeing a Public Notice before going on vacation but it described something trivial that had already been in the plans with public input.  It turned out that was the notice for this destructive project.The Water District did not give copies of the negative declaration report the to the required government offices 30 or more days before the vote. In fact some didn’t have it yet on the July 9th voting day.  This was likely the most important reason the Water Board backed off from voting that first time.
  11. No, elected voting members of this Water Board (and many public boards) are not required to have scientific or technical expertise in matters over which they will vote.  They may be well meaning but ignorant, as in lacking detailed knowledge of the subject.

Short Canyon—15 minutes west of our home. (Springs in such canyons above valleys just west of Death Valley were sought and missed by the lost 49ers during Gold Rush days.)

Part 2. Water War I — 2007

REAL IMPACTS EXPECTED
We read the “negative impact” declaration report for the 2007 WSIP (supposed improvement project).  It revealed a plan to install 2 very large production wells on property across the road from us.  Each well would have a pump twice as large in capacity as the largest formerly used and thought safe to operate in our valley.  And they had plans for 3 more big wells, all too close together and too close to our neighborhood.  None of these wells would be in ground occupied by Water District customers.

Dozens of non-district wells, used by people who actually live above this field of the groundwater, would be affected. Our well would go dry much sooner than we had planned but others would “run dry” almost immediately. The report claimed there would be no adverse impacts on adjacent private wells without any justifying data.  It was obvious that pumping this much water would lower the local water table significantly. And what about the plunging effect from turning those big pumps on and off; wouldn’t that stirring of the groundwater affect quality too? There was no consideration of water quality impacts.

2007 SKIRMISHES
Once we learned the truth about the misconceptions and the proposed project, we became concerned and active.  This was important! not just for us and our neighborhood but also for the whole valley.

Understanding groundwater chemistry and issues became my new hobby, with contributions from my husband too.  (This sadly left quilt making in the desert dust; but I was looking forward to retirement soon, so artistic dreams were put off again.)

At work I was a critical quality analyst of new high-tech systems, so was accustomed to learning details about new things quickly. I also had a little useful background from a former professional lifetime—biology, chemistry, and some exposure to aquatic toxicology. So I worked on getting smart about the science and politics and began educating (lobbying?) Water Board members.  Silly me, I thought that with factual science and data they would naturally make the right choices for long-term sustainability.

We joined a group largely unknown to each other but loosely connected via phone tree and email.  Dozens attended Water Board meetings and many made comments, from worried complaints to serious refuting science.  Collectively, we wrote hundreds of letters to the Water Board, county planning office, and the regional water district.  (A memo to one, with CC to others easily increases the distribution.)

Many wrote letters to the editors of local papers.  Fortunately, the local Daily Independent supported thorough exposure of the controversy.  It was a huge and important topic but I managed to mostly keep each of five memos/articles to the important limit of one side of letter sized paper.

  1. Request correction to misleading statement in July 11, 2007 issue,” This presented real facts in rebuttal to a self-serving and misleading quote of the Water District’s engineer in a newspaper article.  It was also effective in enlisting the Executive Editor as an ally, rather than criticizing the journalism.
  2. Regarding “INDIAN WELLS VALLEY WATER DISTRICT INITIAL STUDY AND DRAFT MITIGATED NEGATIVE DECLARATION FOR THE 2007/2008 WATER SUPPLY IMPROVEMENT PROJECT, MAY 2007,” Document was dated May but not distributed as required, so most people heard and agencies heard about it at the time of the first scheduled vote to approve the project. This document, summarizes my 12 most egregious problems with the declaration.
  3. Subtitle “effects of lowered groundwater locally and across the aquifer,” addresses proximity of wells, faulty study in report, and failures of process.
  4. Subtitle “concentrating arsenic in groundwater, discusses water quality issue very relevant in our valley but ignored in negative declaration.
  5. Subtitle “increasing total dissolved solids (TDS) and subsidence,” discusses another water-quality factor omitted and subsidence that is speciously disregarded in the negative declaration.

A few of us even wrote extensive guest-writer articles to the papers.  The Deckers and I all had major articles published the weekend before the Water Board’s final vote.  Articles were spread across multiple pages of the Sunday paper on August 11-12, 2007.   I tried surrounding the more hardcore content of my four earlier letters with generally understandable language.  I was arguing against the Water District with facts, while trying to maintain some good will.

When making public criticism, it’s also important to avoid unnecessary insults to those whose agreement you are soliciting.  Thus, when an editor changed the meaning of some of my words, I apologized to the Water Board, making it another chance to take a potshot at their poor hydrology.

These actions provided education for the public and a wake-up to county officials about what was occurring without their proper notification.  All our informational letters moved the Senior County Planner. She wrote a long letter of condemnation to the Water Board for its poor project. She also showed up at the final voting meeting to read her letter into the public record.  She demanded that it be part of the official comments appended to the Negative Declaration, on the basis of the document not having been distributed to government offices as required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

At the August Water Board meeting, before the final vote, several people made informative comments on the record.  I appealed to the Board’s responsibility and self-respect.  Most were and still are well meaning but sorely lacking in understanding of the relevant science and technology.  You can read what I briefly read into the public record on August 13

2007 VICTORY
By the end of the 30-day extension of the comment period, our many actions resulted in formal condemnation of the Negative Declarations’s project, by both the public and the county.  The Water Board itself repudiated the proposed project.  Rumor had it that the Board chose to back off before even taking a vote, rather than have the Senior County Planner read her letter into the record that night.  Among other things, she designated the Water District to be appropriators and mentioned some laws that could be used by the opposition, though her office didn’t have water-prevue authority to invoke them directly.

Part 3. Water War II — 2011, 2012

HERE WE GO AGAIN !
The Water District fired its first salvo in July, again.  Of course, they would engage the public in July.  That’s when many people from our valley go on vacation.  Outside temperatures typically reach 110 – 115 degrees during July.  On Monday night July 11, the District announced they were in the process of doing an initial study for a 2011 WSIP.  Public input was invited.  The Water District would host a meeting to consider this input on July 13—yes, just 2 days away.  The gist was that, if you have anything to say, now’s the time; otherwise, don’t complain that our project displeases you.

Fortunately a few Water Wise Friends were in town and attended the Board meeting.  They activated the phone and email trees.  We got the message as we arrived in Steamboat Springs for a three-day visit with family.  I was furious but a contribution was important.  Among other bad ideas, the Water District was again planning to put the two big production wells across the road from us where more than 50 non-District wells were within a half mile.  With frequent feelings of @#$%^&*, I spent a day and a half writing a document to be read into the record.  Meanwhile my husband had a good time with the family.

CAREFUL BUT HOLLOW PROCEDURES
The Initial Study meeting was held, comments accepted, deadline for comments extended until the end of the month.  Later, a couple of “informational” meetings were held for the public.  These meetings were first steps towards following required procedures when intending environmental or cultural damage.  But steps were taken in very narrow ways.  The Water District made clear that some of their meetings and the final hearing were unrequired gifts to us.

Obvious deficiencies in the 2007 project and its environmental report led the Water District staff to have prepared a more extensive Environmental Impact Report.  Five years and $250,000 later, the Water District’s contractors published a revised EIR for their supposed improvement project, now the 2011 WSIP.  The inputs they had gleaned through the early meetings were evidently used to seemingly convey in the EIR that the public’s issues had been settled.

The EIR gave extensive justifications for its impacts, and admitted that there would be significant adverse impacts on existing non-District wells.  But the justifications were based on ignoring some important data, providing incomplete data to contractors who were doing modeling, and stating conclusions unsupported by the best available data.  Vague promises to mitigate for lowering the water table would be on a case-by-case basis, no details.  Promise was made to never mitigate for water quality impacts because according to their EIR:

“The increased pumping from the Proposed Project, however, is a very small fraction of the existing total pumping from the basin that has created the groundwater depressions. Thus, the contribution of the Proposed Project to the change in groundwater quality is miniscule and cannot be quantified, measured, or monitored.” [EIR section ES.6.3]

It’s too well established that water quality can be measured thus monitored.  It’s ridiculous to compare a localized potentially catastrophic damage in one depression to a huge area with many depressions, in order to make it seem small.  One is prompted to ask, “Are they stupid or are they liars?”  Maybe they think everyone else is stupid or just too busy to read the document and catch them?  We were told the latter applied to some officials who could have stood against this.

DONE AND NOT DONE
Some Water Wise Friends wrote letters and/or met with county officials.  Some letters-to-the-editor appeared (far fewer than in 2007).  New editors at The Daily Independent seemed mostly interested in reporting what Water District and Board members had to say, as if there was no controversy except on the part of a few whiners.  Some of the Water Wise were still worn down by the 2007 effort.  During the first months of this effort, I was working overtime to wrap up my career so I could retire. Others and I invested extensive effort to educate Board members but not the general public this time.  Many non-District well users in the impact area declined to participate this time.  Rumor has it they felt punished by the Water District after the 2007 effort.  Old District wells near them had been re-equipped without any environmental assessment.  The water table near them dropped so much that their existing wells became unusable.

To those of us who studied the EIR, including the county’s CEQA reviewer, it was obvious that the conclusions therein were decided before the report was begun, and adverse impacts were admitted only when there was no way to wiggle out of them.  (See Kern County’s CEQA review letter.) Clever wording was frequently used to seem to address concerns expressed as early as 2007.

From July 2011 through February 2012, the Water Wise Friends worked hard to educate the Water Board.  Informative comments were made at Water Board meetings.  Some of the wise offered individual meetings to explain data and science.  We developed educational materials for the Board.  Subjects addressed what was poorly covered or altogether missing in the EIR.

This illustrates egregious overlap of drawdown cones of proposed wells, not shown in the EIR. Large cones 4 mi diameters, small 2 mi.  Extents are as if each well were run alone, the plan is worse. Cones also intersect many private wells plus other District wells.  Many drawdown figures are in the EIR but none show this dramatic interference.

SHAM PROCESS
Public comment about the EIR was solicited, and many people made thorough comments supported by data. Had the Water District been sincere about doing an excellent job for the people of the valley not just a short-sited grab for its customers, this would have been a factual treasure trove of solid reasoning.  Comments questioned multiple specious bases of the EIR while others explained data (missing from the EIR) that showed different EIR conclusions to be incorrect or unfounded. At this point, you won’t be surprised to find out that the 2008 AB303 water sampling and analysis study was still not included in the modeling used for this supposedly more thorough 2011 environmental report.

But the Official Comments were essentially ignored in the Official Response process.  Often supposed responses to legitimate critical comments merely repeated (copy and paste) the original poor EIR wording that had been so carefully questioned by commenters.  Other times, the response said something irrelevant to the specific question posed by a commenter.

One of my official comments was about how arsenic solubility problems can be created by the nature of their planned pumping scheme and closely spaced wells. In my case at least, the response to this critique stated incorrect hydrological chemistry with an erroneous conclusion in order to falsely claim that my comment was incorrect.

A Final Public Hearing and vote by the Water Board was set for February 23, 2012. Some of us put in more effort to try to overcome the sham responses to the issues on which we had been focusing. Prior to the hearing, I clearly pointed out why I was actually indeed correct in my statements about prospective water quality damage.  I produced a set of graphic slides with explanatory notes.  This was delivered to Board members.

The night of the hearing, I accused their “hired lackey” of an EIR-geo-hydrology “expert” of lacking relevant knowledge and crucial understanding of the science.  My accusation was backed by scientific explanation supported by national experts and respectable references. What the Water District’s contractor did was so disgusting that I couldn’t even get a laugh out of how red he turned while begging those siting near him to believe he really was an expert.

So many people had submitted factual and helpful official comments. Many also made very well thought and substantiated criticisms at the February 23 hearing prior to the vote. As promised, they let us talk extensively because that would be the only way to get our positions into the record.

WATER WAR II LOST, OR MAYBE NOT?
After about 4 hours of public comments, the 5 elected Board members were ready to vote. Their lawyer explicitly asked something to this effect: Do you understand that approving the project means that you acknowledge significant impact to water quality that you will never mitigate?  They voted on each of several motions. It was unclear exactly how many 4, 5, 6?  The Water District’s lawyer cleared it up enough for the Board to actually be able to vote, though at least one seemed to remain uncertain about precisely what some motions meant. There was complete denunciation of the EIR and superficial process by one brave Board member who cares deeply about preserving availability of quality water in our valley. There was limited dissention by a couple of other members.

Bottom line? The EIR for the destructive project was certified.  But it wasn’t funded.

Why wasn’t it funded?  Some Board members were worried they really were too ignorant of the facts to actually proceed, even under pressure from their colleagues.  But they didn’t have the money either. The Water District had raised rates in a way that encouraged much needed conservation. Many people got serious after learning conservation was really needed, and the alternative hurt their wallets. So the Water District laid people off but was still losing money and heading for the accounting red zone.

The District’s lawyer told us at the next regular Board meeting that the Board having certified the project did not mean it would occur.  More motions would have to pass in future votes.

Changes occurred later in 2012.
The Water District raised its rates again to avoid the financial red zone. They blamed it on cost of arsenic treatment but lots of people felt they were being punished for conserving. This time the little water users carried a heavier burden than the big water users and wasters.

One Board member moved away and an interim member was appointed. The one who left was pro-growth with less regard for other factors. The interim member had been on the Water Board years ago, hadn’t sat in the meeting audience for several years, but was chosen as most qualified. The appointing majority expected him to be in the pro-growth at-any-long-term-cost camp but he wasn’t. A former Board member who had attended essentially all meetings for the past many years applied but was rejected, although she was more knowledgeable than some serving members. The General Manager of the District retired and was replaced.

Even the February 23 motions that passed did not fully approve the project, so more votes were required.   A pro-growth-and-others-be-@#$%^& Board member pushed hard to vote to approve the project at the first meeting with these new personnel. Another Board member said she would agree if the motion included language requiring measuring and monitoring of water quality. It passed by 1 vote. She apologized later that she didn’t realize she had failed to include mitigation.  She was very nervous because of strongly competing pressures from questionable EIR “expertise” versus science-and-facts versus business. Some very limited funding for a preparatory study passed. And the Water District’s lawyer told the audience this did not eliminate their right to sue.

Though we had lost much, the arsenic monitoring was a small consolation to the water drinking public.

Indian Wells Canyon—runs west above valley floor to Sierras.

Part 4.  Status to Date in 2013
Elections occurred in November 2012. The Water Board gained 2 new members to start serving in 2013.  The most knowledgeable person running lost by a couple hundred votes.  But our election efforts did spread the truth about water issues. And both new members are thoughtful and have been revealed as caring deeply about protecting the whole valley’s water supply (not just the District).  An incumbent who is knowledgeable and thoughtful was also re-elected.

A system of monitoring wells is being established in 2013.

At the April 2013 regular Board meeting, that aggressive member again pushed even harder for the Board to vote to fund the project.  He harangued at length multiple times.  Finally a vote was taken:  2 in favor, 2 against, with the water newbie member abstaining.

On June 10, the Board voted to fund a study to determine revised costs for re-equipping two wells with big 2,200 GPM pumps. Some Board members asked their engineer lots of challenging questions about this.

New Board members welcomed water-quality educational materials from me. We found out that 3 Board members (a majority) are currently against actually funding any wells with such big pumps.  They are working hard on viable alternatives among limited options.

So as of this writing, our position in the High Desert Water Wars is looking less bad.  There’s hope for  more reasonable solutions to the valley’s water needs.  Chances are now good that remaining potable water will not immediately start to be pumped in ways that would allow relatively cheap thus wasteful use, reduce access by overlying land owners, and damage water quality.

But we are wary.  Unfortunately, agriculture is still allowed unfettered use of water.  The Los Angeles DWP, that already takes much of the water from the Sierras north of us, is making arrangements to bank and take water from the valleys south of us.

The informal Water Wise Friends are converting to a group registered in our state, and thus gaining some legal status.

Bottom Line in 2013
The High Desert Water Wars, even beyond our valley, will likely continue throughout our lifetimes.  The issues for our valley will be more serious each year.  We’ll continue to serve on the front lines to the extent of our abilities—or until dry wells force us to move away, pushed by the dry desert winds.


Part 5.  A summary of What Works and What Doesn’t
The things in the What Worked section applied to our 2007 Water War, except for the campaigning that occurred in 2012.  The What Doesn’t Work section represents the tired effort on the part of many Water Wise people during the 2011-2012 water war. These activities likely apply to other kinds of efforts to influence public decisions and can be successfully applied to almost any community organizing project against city and county interests that involve a process allowing for public input and comment.

What Works

  • 100s of people simply attend public meetings—lots of voters make an impression
  • Lots of people make simple comments at meetings—be smart or just complain
  • Some knowledgeable people speak at public meetings
  • Lots of newspaper coverage—short letters to editor with 1 topic each, guest editor educational articles
  • Stress negative cost and health aspects
  • Convince business community that your position is better for growth
  • Educate voting Board and government representatives through multiple contacts over time
  • Expose bad science and data with simple explanations
  • Talk in person, don’t rely on others to read even important long documents
  • Campaign to elect wise people running for relevant positions

What Doesn’t Work

  • Too few attend public meetings and hearings
  • Failure to get business community on board
  • Failure to bring along regional and county government officials through many contacts
  • Too little newspaper exposure
  • Failure to convince public about incorrect Environmental Impact Report
  • Some Water Board Directors/members not reading the EIR or its repudiating comments before voting
  • Failing to do the What Works activities

—–

High Desert Water Wars was originally published on a tri-fold display at iSFair 2O12  in San Francisco.

STW – Spread The Word

Sunday, May 19th, 2013

INDIVIDUAL: The deceptive Grey
GROUP SIZE: 6,974,000,000
NATURE OF GROUP: current era humans of the planet earth

INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: STW – the Spread The Word discernment and resistance movement

 Grey aliens, the most frequently cited and described perpetrators of alien abductions of humans, are a controversial phenomena. Obviously the parent controversy is whether or not they actually exist, followed by whether their existence is physical or psychologically manifested, whether they are extra-terrestrial sentient beings who have arrived on earth through intergalactic travel or whether they are humans from the distant future coming back to our time through inter-dimensional or time-travel to modify their present through genetic banking or influencing of events, whether they are our brothers in arms in an inter-dimensional war with universally reviled reptilian aliens or merely our allies in an enemy-of-my-enemy scenario, whether they are in-cahoots with black-ops factions of the shadow government, and lastly whether they are ultimately benevolent and acting in the interest of current-era humans, despite actions seemingly to the contrary, or whether they are deceitful and acting in their own self-interest at the expense of current-era humans.

Ghana | all images reposted from STW

In the early 90’s, during a surge in DIY mass-stickering campaigns – anyone remember Andre the Giant Has a Posse? – IS came into contact with agent V2 and their group Spread The Word who distributed free round stickers of the globally recognized grey alien face with the red circle/slash NO symbol overlaid on it. Initially interpreting the image as a non-sequeter “fun” graphic campaign, IS took advantage of the generously large free sticker packs that would arrive in the mail from the return address PO Box 911 in Stanwood Washington for redistribution in our own Special Agent Kits.

Egypt | all images reposted from STW

Over twenty years later, STW continues unchanged. The same graphic on the stickers, the same PO Box (augmented now with the enviable domain freestickers.net), the same anonymous special agent in charge – V2. While many other graphic sticker campaigns have come and gone – some, like Andre The Giant Has A Possee, morphing into graphic art empires – STW remains steadfast in it’s mission of spreading the word through free stickers. It’s difficult to estimate the sheer volume of stickers distributed but it is safe to say millions distributed to every corner of the globe.

IS came to understand several years into our postal relationship that STW’s longevity of mission derives more from an ideological purity than an mere appreciation for graphic campaigns and mail art exchanges. STW really IS oriented around spreading the word about deceptive alien entities. One of our founding IS agents – stationed in Washington state attempted to make face-to-face contact with V2 in the late 90’s and was politely declined. To paraphrase, V2 told our agent that due to the nature of their crusade they had a firm policy of anonymity and no face-to-face contact. Although they were pretty certain they could trust an IS agent there was no underestimating the level of deceptiveness deployed by the Grey’s in pursuit of their evil agenda and no one outside the STW core-cell could be trusted.

T-shirt at Stonehenge | all images reposted from STW

To attempt to codify the belief system driving the campaign; the Grey’s are physical extraterrestrial beings, likely in cahoots with or in control of a shadow government, that if at all involved as allies in a struggle with other entities are doing so in their own self-interest exclusively but are more likely to be floating a mythology about an intergalactic war as cover for their own evil agenda, that they are abducting humans, spreading psychological fear, and banking genetics as part of an insidious plot that is in no way beneficial to humans who are either their enemies or at best collateral damage. Most importantly to the mission of STW is the belief that Grey’s can be thwarted in their agenda through simple awareness, discernment, and resistance. They are effective only through their use of fear and intimidation and like every school-yard bully the Universe over can be thwarted with a firm and brave resistance. Their intrusion into our lives, psyches, and genetic lineage can be resisted by standing up with-out fear to say NO to their deceptions and intimidations. The stickers remain unchanged after decades because they are the perfect encapsulation of the message. Just say NO to deceptive alien entities.

Mexico City | all images reposted from STW

For free stickers and further education on the topic of deceptive Grey’s please visit STW at freestickers.net or on their Facebook page.
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STW hase been a contributor to ALL FIVE Sociometry Fairs going back to 1996 including the most recent iSFair 2O12  in San Francisco.

NWMMP // MMXII

Sunday, May 12th, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
Agent Brian Dick tag-team alternating with Agent Christen Sperry-Garcia
GROUP SIZE: two or three at a time, sometimes up to ten, collectively hundreds over a decade
NATURE OF GROUP: unsuspecting art fans and/or uneasy museum managers
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: The Nation Wide Museum Mascot Project

NWMMP at MOMA

Though the origins of shamanism are cloaked in a Joseph Campbell style myth-mash and/or ivory-tower navel gazings, humans have been putting on goofy animal costumes and accosting strangers since the paleolithic era. Though the practice exists close to it’s original form among arctic Inuits and in the highlands of Borneo and Burma, it’s experienced in the arena of western society in the form of mini-tramp front-flip slam-dunks from an anthropomorphized cartoon jersey-wearing panther or a waddling purple dinosaur leading a trail of children pied-piper like into to flabby arms of television-aided consumer-capitalism. Costumery that was once a holy vessel for a divine messenger is now bouncing and waving from an Ford-land tent-sale commercial.

above and below: NWMMP at DAG

Around the turn of the 21rst century performance and prank artist (and upper echelon IS agent) Brian Dick wanted to get some fresh faces off the street and into a San Diego performance art space. Recognizing that there IS nothing better than a mascot to disarm and draw in the passive consumer, The Museum Mascot project was born. Shortly after, Brian, and ‘artner Christen Sperry-Garcia started seeking permission to “mascot” venerable art museums such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Though met with the type of snobbishly paternalistic stonewalling tactics typically deployed by the permission granters at such public art institutions, they decided to just show up in costume and see what happens. Something about the benevolence of the mission – convincing the passer-by that art is fun – and the bad-p.r. security takedown of a friendly dancing manimal surrounded by a gaggle of happy kids lead to tacit permission to do their thing.

NWMMP at SFMOMA

Developing a found-object and improvisational approach, the pair typically hits town a day before the gig to scrounge neighborhood dumpsters and garage sales for spent piñatas, children’s imprinted sleeping bags, and county-fair size stuffed animals to frankenstein together a mascot costume with multicolored duct-tape. By pulling together cast-offs from the community they create a character which mediates the low-culture of a city neighborhood with the high-culture of an art institution much in that way shamans use masks to communicate the concerns of an earth-bound culture to the spirit realm.

And the kids love it! And, the “Fine Art” patrons find it terribly awkward…

NWWMP IS fun indoors and out!

In 2012 the duo crowd-sourced funding to take the Nation Wide Museum Mascot Project coast-to-coast with a 50/50 invite vs. guerilla target list tour of 21 acronym institutions – including MCASD, MOCAD, OCMA, MOMA, SFMOMA with a stop at iSFair 2O12 along the way.
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The Museum Mascot has been the official mascot of Sociometry Fair 2008

… and iSFair 2O12.

A Gift For You!

Sunday, May 5th, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
 Jim Kiel
GROUP SIZE: 677 – possibly thousands
NATURE OF GROUP: People executed by the death penalty world wide in 2001 (Amnesty International
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: A Gift For You!

Jim Kiel, of Aurora Colorado, sent a letter to the editor of Denver’s Westword newspaper in which he advocated a 100 point criminal justice system resulting in capital punishment. (See Pg. 8 of Westword Vol. 35, #15). His home address was easily retrieved from a simple google search.



“Assign point values that increase with the seriousness or violence of the crime, and when your convictions total 100 points, you’re executed” – Jim Kiel, Aurora

Almost a year later, every day for the month of October (National Crime Prevention Month, and including Oct. 11th World Day Against The Death Penalty), thIS agent mailed Jim Kiel clippings related to the death penalty around the world, starting with photocopies of two letters on the topic Jim Kiel had written to local newspapers, then initially a series of seemingly pro death penalty clippings, segueing to clippings on the death penalty internationally – mostly focusing on China and Iran – before concluding with a series of anti or educational death penalty articles.

An Innocent Man’s Tortured Days on Texas’s Death Row – ACLU

All of the clipping were mailed in identical envelopes with a letterpressed return address for the Institute of Sociometry partially obscuring the pre-printed gold-ink “A Gift For You!” vintage stationary and addressed to Jim Kiel with a typewriter. No personal information was included in the letters – only the photocopied clippings.



File copies of 31 death penalty related clippings sent to Jim Kiel. 

 No response was received to the letters. The 31rst and last planned letter, postmarked on Halloween was returned to sender marked “not deliverable as addressed”.



“NOT DELIVERABLE AS ADDRESSED” – USPS. Apparently the preceding 30 letters were fine with the same address.
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ThIS report was originally released at iSFair 2O12.

Old Black Dickies. New Black Flags.

Sunday, April 21st, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
IS agent Wendell M. Kling
GROUP SIZE: Looking to grow the ranks
NATURE OF GROUP: Flyers of the black flag
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: Old Black Dickies. New Black Flags.

Your black Dickies got you through high-school hazing, multiple mosh-pits, summer community-service at the animal-shelter, and looked pretty good washed and ironed for your Aunts funeral. Now, knees shredded from skateboard-slams, ass worn thin from the leather of your bike-seat, and pockets blown from too much spare change, they lie clean-and-folded at the bottom of your IKEA bureau.

How to memorialize your “wasted youth” in black dickies? You can’t toss them out with the baby diapers – because you have a laundering service for the re-usable nappies. You can’t use them to change the oil in your tan Aerostar because you have that done at Eco-garage™. Now that you’re a permaculture dad, how do you up-cycle this durable fabric into a functional reusable item for the enjoyment of you and your family?

Send them to IS agent Wendell M. Kling and he will sew and send back a hand-crafted black flag!  !¡!¡



Hands OFF the Outback parking pig!

You can proudly wave your black flag at the next NO-GMO rally with the wife or to put it in that unused flag holder out in front of your home to let The Man know they’d better think twice about putting that street-sweeping ticket on your 2006 Outback! And… when night falls and your gated-community security-guard leaves his white CRV idling outside the Albertsons you can demonstrate to your teen son how the complimentary 1.5″ flag dowel penetrates a windshield like a hypodermic through a birthday balloon!

Get your black flag TODAY! Here’s how:


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Black Dickies flags and solicitations for more black Dickies were distributed at iSFair 2O12.

I Dare You

Sunday, April 14th, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
IS agent JK
GROUP SIZE: Approximately 238,035,525
NATURE OF GROUP: English speaking Women of the Earth
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: I Dare You

Grace Kelly, Ellen, Jacky-O, Frieda Khalo, and Jennifer Hudson

The word cunt is often seen as a vulgar, harsh, disgusting way to put a woman down. (The Urban Dictionary definition of cunt.) This word has acquired a power all it’s own that is intended to hurt the women it’s directed at. Most of us just call it “the c word” feeding into the hold this four letter word has against emotions and self worth. It’s no secret that if a man wants to put a women in her place or emotionally hurt her, all he as to do is call her a cunt. This word above all others, above bitch, hoe, tramp, etc. holds such a power over a majority of women and this has to stop. It is another way to create the gap between the sexes, to “knock us down a peg or two” – a battle all too familiar for women.

Women’s rights have been in the spotlight for quite some time now. A major example of this is the ERA, or Equal Rights Amendment, which was put up to congress in 1972  but not ratified by the states, expired in 1982, and has yet to be put back up for a vote. The ERA was supposed to give equal pay to men and women along with other ways to make the sexes equal. Women’s rights have been an uphill battle since we were given the right to vote – long before the ERA was proposed. From unequal treatment in the workplace, to the idea that we shouldn’t be able to make decisions about our own bodies, this issue seems to never get resolved and is pushed back into the recesses of society. That is until the idea of women’s rights becomes useful, like in times of a presidential election.

Katie Couric inviting you to Forever 21 at the mall.

The concept of I Dare You is to draw attention to this lack of equality, to the power we are giving away. Allowing anyone to use a word to emotionally harm us is something we have control over. In order to get this idea across I choose to use the desensitization approach, place the word on women of all types, shapes, color, and political stances, but all iconic, and make it big. In order for this approach to make the biggest impact possible and evoke emotion from the viewer., it needed to be bold and in your face. The variety of women selected for the posters is diverse. Some of them might be described as a cunt by some and not by others and vice versa. The idea behind this is to get the viewer to think “why would I call Hillary Clinton a cunt, but not Zooey Deschanel?” The dialogue that is created is the first step in realizing that cunt is just a word. If women can take that power back from the word, it can no longer be used to keep us in the box society has placed us in.

Through this project I hope to bring attention to many things; the power a word has that it shouldn’t, gender issues and roles, as well as problems in society. By creating a dialogue between the message of the posters and the public that views them, I am hoping to make a difference in how women view their own worth. Your importance cannot be determined by your sex, your self esteem cannot be hindered by a word, and your worth as a person should have nothing to do with your anatomy. Far too often successful women are labeled by the people underneath them, or they aren’t taken seriously, however, there is no male equivalent to the word cunt, and if you call a man that, it doesn’t hold the same power.

Hello Barbara Walters!

The beauty of language is we are able to make it grow and change as our society does. Words that once held heavy weight, such as whore, or bitch, no longer hold that same power. As a society, we have taken those words and desensitized them, made them less threatening. The origin of the word cunt “quna” in several African languages was used to identify a woman as a queen. In other parts of the world today the word cunt  it isn’t seen as bad at all. It’s used in New Zealand and Australia to describe a person as stupid, and in Britain it may be used with a positive qualifier such as good or funny. The cunt is a part of female anatomy, nothing bad about it at all. However, in American society today it is seen as the most derogatory word a woman can be called and labeled as the only word left to still cause genuine shock when used and is called a vulgar word.

Women have the capability to choose to not let this word hold this power. We can take it back and take away the negative connotations it has developed and make it a word of the past, one that no longer shocks and offends people. This poster campaign is my way of contributing to this movement and the movement of gender equality.

~ IS agent JK
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Documentation of thIS wheat-pasting spree was first exhibited at Render in Denver Colorado, on idareyou-21 and was on display at iSFair 2O12.

The Emperor’s New Nose

Sunday, March 24th, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
IS agent Mark Romero-Davis //
GROUP SIZE: including my parents? //
NATURE OF GROUP: History Revisionists, Body Modifiers, the Vain, the Self-Loathing, the Easily-Manipulated, those who are somewhat interested in noses //
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: The Emperor’s New Nose //

The following is a probable excerpt of Chairman Mao’s diary from vindicatingmao.com

“…..a comrade servant came into my bedchamber, and offered me a glass of Ensure. I exhaled heavily and slowly sat up, feeling weaker than I ever have before. I leaned forward and opened my mouth, ready to receive the beverage as the comrade lifted the glass to me. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass, and my gaze immediately fell upon my nose. If it were not for that blasted Ren Mei Rong, who when we were only children, likened my nose to the nose of George Washington. I wish I could forget this comment. But it has stuck with me through the decades. I even sent him and his family to a labor camp after I became chairman, but the memory of this insult remained with me. A grand symbol of Capitalism sits in the middle of my face! I mustered the strength to knock the glass of Ensure from the servant’s hands, spilling it on the royal red bedsheets. I had the comrade servant executed for spilling on me. If only I had undergone a procedure to alter my nose. I had the opportunity all my life and yet did nothing to put the nose hatred to rest. This, is my only regret in life…”

~ Chairman Mao – September 8, 1976

I was initially interested in exploring some aspect of revisionist history after hearing a report about a lesser-known dictator. The picture painted of the man was hardly representative of the “true” history. This then led me to think about plastic surgery and body modification and how people change their appearance for various reasons, but never change other aspects of their life (their terrible personalities, addictions, extreme bias, etc). I then started writing this fictitious narrative weaving the two ideas together that Chairman Mao did in fact hate his own nose and wanted to have it altered though never found the time (this is how my easily-distracted brain works).

Then came a website with The Nose Vote, ‘zine with carnival mask, thesis exhibit to confused and/or bemused Communication Designers and display at iSFair 2O12!

Winner of the Nose Vote: Groucho Marx! Although he was not on the ballot between candidates Castro, Engles Lenin, Trotsky (dark horse) Ghandi, and Karl Marx there were a number of write-in votes (4) that pushed him past Trotsky in the running (poor guy can’t ever win). ~ Agent Mark Romero-Davis



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ThIS report was on display and a final Nose Vote were conducted at iSFair 2O12. The Chairman Mao masks were the #1 hottest item at the fair.

10 Hottest Prophefits!

Sunday, March 17th, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
Agent Nima*
GROUP SIZE: Approximately 2.1 Billion
NATURE OF GROUP: Muslims (through the Shias and more-so Sufis could probably care less.) 
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: Malcontent #4 – 10 Hottest Prophefits!

*Name IS slightly altered to protect the wantonly reckless.

In 2010, while working in my day-job and agent cover as an art and design academic, I served in an advisory and contributor capacity on Malcontent – a ‘zine authored and détourned together by IS agent Nima – operating in his cover as a design student.

(Below) A previous project by Nima – which resulting in him being conferred IS agent status. The Typography course assignment was to create large scale environmental graphics and photoshop them onto pictures of billboards. Nima wrote Ahhh Snap! on the outside of my 2nd story office window in post-its. (Note: he had to scale the awning of the campus police station to do so and write the message backwards for correct legibility on the inside of my office). I gave him an A+ (though it was marked down to a C- for being turned in 7 weeks late…)

Malcontent #4 The Prophets & Profits Issue was the culmination of a 16 week four issue spree. Fresh off of #3 The Animal Totems Issue – agent Nima was interested in continuing to explore the dialectic between the physical and metaphysical. He came into my office with thIS pitch for issue #4:

“I want to depict Muhammad.”


For context – here is a brief history of the “Depiction of Muhammad” controversy in the 21rst century:

It is debatable whether Islam prohibits the depiction of Muhammad. The Qur’an doesn’t forbid depictions of Mohammed (Allah was concerned with less petty things at the time) but there are Haddith – supplemental teachings – which expressly prohibit depiction of the Prophet. There is a general prohibition in orthodox monotheisms, including Islam’s prequels Christianity and Judaism, of worshipping “graven images” as a substitute for God. Sunni Islam pretty much toes-the-line on this but Shia Islam (which includes the Sufis who could care less because they’re too busy dancing and chanting) doesn’t seem to mind a respectful image of Muhammad. No one likes denigration of the Prophet in any form. It’s worth noting here that Agent Nima – a first generation Persian-American – would likely ascribe to Shia Islam if he didn’t instead pledge allegiance to good old ‘Merican Fight-Club n’ The Joker style Post-Modern Ontological Anarchy.

The recent cycle of controversy around depictions of Muhammad, crass muslim baiting with retaliatory fire-bombing, started in 2005 when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten began publishing culturally crude but satirically clever political cartoons depicting, among other themes, a borderline racist caricature of Muhammed with a lit bomb for a turban. Ostensibly Jyllands-Posten was making a statement on the self-censorship of media regarding criticism of violence in Islam but more likely they were throwing wood on the smoldering fire of Scandinavian anti-immigrant racism as a way to either editorially sympathize or more likely just to sell newspapers and consequently more full-page furniture outlet adds. The cartoons were reprinted in over 50 publications resulting in a downward spiral protest from Muslims around the world descending from diplomatic and legal challenges to street riots leading to over 200 violent deaths and attacks on Danish and European embassies in Muslim countries.

The ‘Merican sophomoric practically stick-figure cartoon South Park tackled the issue of censorship with their own spin on depictions of Muhammed in the 2010 episode 200, a complex narrative weaving together many pre-existing plots culminating in Tom Cruise spearheading a celebrity class-action lawsuit against the town of South Park that he will only withdraw if the children produce Muhammad. The children do produce Muhammed bit he is kidnapped by the Ginger Separatist Group of fair-haired children prior to being delivered to Cruz. Depictions on Muhammad had a tradition on South Park going back to 2001. He is part of a gout of prophets, including a cocaine snorting Buddha, referred to as Super Best Friends and even cameos in a group shot of the shows credits. Despite the depiction and treatment of Muhammad being largely respectful (especially for South Park standards) and a sub-plot in their vehement take-down of their arch nemesis Tom Cruz, Comedy Central and show creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone were besieged with multiple and humorless death threats.

In 2011 the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo picked up the mantle with an issue guest edited by a charicaturized Muhammad. Their offices were firebombed and reduced to rubble on the issue release date.

In 2012 B-team fraudster and Coptic Christian Nakoula Basseley Nakoula youtube released 15 minutes of a budgetless D-movie titled Innocence of Muslims which depicted Muhammad as a pedophile and simpleton – just in time for the Anniversary of September 11th. The resulting world-wide protests quickly degenerated into violence which culminated in an angry mob and/or terrorists (the jury is apparently still out on this despite the Fox News hyperbole) in Benghazi Libya killing US Ambassador Christopher Stephens.


Back to Agent Nima’s desire to dive into these murky waters:

Considering the cons, (death threats, a Fox News van parked on the front lawn of the Art Building to “defend” Malcontent, being disrespectful to the many observant Muslim students on campus, and loosing my day-job at Politically Correct College) against the pros, (honoring the First Amendment to the Constitution of The United States of America, the philosophy of academic freedom, that after all it’s just a ‘sine, and Agent Nima’s uncanny ability to be patently offensive while riotously funny and likable), I acquiesced after a long cautionary conversation.

 Though given (and taking) carte-blanche, I feel ultimately that agent Nima’s resulting article and it’s neoclassical picture of Muhammed pulled off of google image search would offend Muslim’s more due to him being third runner up in the 10 Hottest Prophefits! to Branch Davidian founder David Koresh and Christ with rock hard abs that due to the inclusion of the graphic.

 “Yep that’s him. Get over it.”

Without further adieu here is the article (click on the image or here to read in PDF format):


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ThIS report was spawned from the Malcontent tri-fold display at iSFair 2O12

Death & Rebirth in the Analog World

Sunday, March 10th, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
IS Agent F.R. “Russ” Forster
GROUP SIZE: 4.6 million units in 2012 (up 17.7% since 2011) representing (our guess of) 1.6 million consumers
NATURE OF GROUP: indie-hipsters, club-kids, baby-boomers, throw-backs and forward-thinkers
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: Birth, Death And Rebirth In The Analog World

Part 1: BIRTH

“Lateral-cut disc records were developed in the United States by Emile Berliner, who named his system the “gramophone”, distinguishing it from Edison’s wax cylinder “phonograph” and Columbia’s wax cylinder “graphophone”. Berliner’s earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 5 inches (13 cm) in diameter, and were played with a small hand-propelled machine. Both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity. In the United States in 1894, under the Berliner Gramophone trademark, Berliner started marketing records with somewhat more substantial entertainment value, along with somewhat more substantial gramophones to play them. Berliner’s records had poor sound quality compared to wax cylinders, but his manufacturing associate Eldridge R. Johnson eventually improved them. Abandoning Berliner’s “Gramophone” trademark for legal reasons, in 1901 Johnson’s and Berliner’s separate companies reorganized to form the Victor Talking Machine Company, whose products would come to dominate the market for many years.

In 1901, 10-inch disc records were introduced, followed in 1903 by 12-inch records. These could play for more than three and four minutes respectively, while contemporary cylinders could only play for about two minutes.”

Wikipedia: “Gramophone Record”

My own adventure with Long Playing records (as 12” Gramophone records came to be known after the 1930s) started in the mid-1980s when I decided to start a record label named “Underdog Records” to put out records by some Chicago bands I was friends with. I rushed headlong into a world I had only known before as a consumer, naïve and fearless.  Through shear determination and a willingness to make plenty of mistakes along the way, I was able to put out six LPs, one 12” EP, and a handful of 7” records before I let a collective of bands and fans take over the label in the early 1990s.

By the time I gave up Underdog, I was disillusioned about the music business, the record distribution business, and the rapidly accelerating move from analog to digital formats for a majority of music consumers. I felt a bit burned by several early Underdog bands getting “deals” with a label started by a couple of seedy coke-snorting music industry types; I got sick of having to deal with Mafiosos and flakey slackers posing as indie record distributors to get paid; and I bought into the conspiracy theories that CDs were just a transparent effort for Major Labels to get a gullible public to re-buy all the music they already owned at double the price.

Disillusioned, I walked away from vinyl at about the time LPs were declared deceased by the music industry, unsure of whether I wanted to ever put out a record again. As luck would have it, I ended up being part of a group of ne’er do wells  who started a small press magazine (“‘zine”, if you will) as an act of satire against the push toward digital. We called the ‘zine 8-Track Mind and devoted it to the promotion of the 8-track tape as the ultimate fun music format. We had no idea of where this crazy underground experiment would take us.

Above: A selection of issues from the 101 run of 8-Track Mind with a Sears Mono-8 player.
Below: Agent Forster’s corresponding documentary So Wrong Their Right on VHS (obviously). 


Part 2: DEATH

“Ever since the mid-Sixties creative boom in long-playing records spearheaded by the Beatles and Beach Boys, the album has been the model by which any musical artist is measured. That may be about to change.

The album has endured changes in format (vinyl to cassette to CD), length (40 minutes on vinyl, today many extend to 70 minutes) and sound quality (mono to stereo to digital). Throughout, its concept has remained much the same. The ‘digital revolution’ – mp3 players, iTunes, song-swapping – is set to alter all that. And, as we have seen in virtually every recent musical revolution (Napster, The Grey Album, internet CD sales and so on) the music industry is slow to react.

The key change is in the way consumers listen to the music. At the primary level of exposure, the listener no longer relies solely on commercial radio or on the blind shelling out of a tenner for the latest LP. Digital downloads from iTunes, Napster and their competitors offer singles, album tracks, live recordings and other tracks side-by-side, available for the consumer to cherry pick.”

Spiked E-Magazine, 11/22/05

As 8-Track Mind Magazine was building some serious underground steam in the early 1990s, the Music Industry was pushing CDs in and LPs out in much the way it had done for 8-tracks vs. cassettes in the 1980s.  Impossible claims of indestructibility and music reproduction superiority were heaped upon CDs in articles and ads, and 8-TM staff and contributors took a jaundiced eye and pen to the proclaimed perfection that we considered “seedy”. And while vinyl was the intended target of the Record Companies, the fatal wound was actually sustained over the course of the decade by compact cassettes once CD players replaced cassette players in car stereos.

But certainly vinyl took a great hit, and got hit even harder in the ‘00s as iPods and 99¢ Mp3 singles captivated the imagination of a new generation and trickled up to an older one.  In a quirky and unexpected outcome of the format wars of the past two decades, 8-track tapes became collectible (thanks a lot, eBay!) and by the end of the 1990s 8-Track Mind stopped being the screams from the audio basement it started out as and was subtly morphing into a mouthpiece for the collector market. As editor/publisher I was finding myself increasingly alienated by the pressure to create price lists and engage in real moneymaking, and my own personal love for the ugly duckling format became less reflected in the pages of 8-TM.

A wall of 8-tracks at the IS home office. (In the mid 90’s IS agent m[i]le[s] was pulled into the apartment of agent Vollmer to watch So Wrong Their Right. The Compound (IS spiritual birthplace in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood) was already the location of weekly 8-track dance parties. After the viewing, agent m[i]le[s] began an analog correspondence with agent Forster that eventually resulted in multiple cross-submissions to each others projects and culminated in PRO a Chicago banjo and trash-can street-band covering 8-track era heavy-metal and punk classics. ~ IS ed.)

So I shut the magazine down in 2000 and walked away from the 8-track “scene” while I could still do so without animosity.  Certainly there were those who thought I was crazy to step away from “success”, but to cash in on the collector scene would have been too antithetical to the original “8-Noble Truths Of The 8-Track Mind” (which were concerned far more with fun and fraternity than with profit) for me to bear. My 8-track and LP collections became my own quiet personal seawall against the accelerating digital tsunami (which ironically I also participated in somewhat begrudgingly as music I wanted to listen to became impossible or prohibitively expensive to obtain on vinyl).

It cheered me somewhat that some of my favorite indie rock labels like Touch & Go and Matador and Sub Pop were still offering reasonably priced LP versions of many of their artists’ works, and I secretly applauded the dance DJs who were keeping many small vinyl pressing plants from bankruptcy, but I feared this underground support would not sustain long-term.


Part 3: REBIRTH

“As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl — the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles — is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.

Talk to almost anyone in the music business’ vital indie and DJ scenes and you’ll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.

Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today’s music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.

“For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release,” said Matador’s Patrick Amory. “The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music.”

Wired Magazine, 10/29/07

It defies logical explanation, but now in 2012 vinyl is not just staying alive on life support but is actually thriving!  With every passing year LPs present a measurably increasing share of all physical music format sales. Vinyl has a new generation of fans who weren’t even alive when it was declared “dead” in the 1990s.  The rise of Mp3s has actually done more to diminish CD than LP sales, in a highly ironic turn of events. Even used LPs retain value much more readily than used CDs


The Rise and Fall of Music Delivery Formats ~ by reddit user Dwellonthis

In 1996 I decided after half a decade of absence from the recording studio to write some new songs and tiptoe back in as an “extreme” solo artist, doing all playing, drum machine programming and singing myself. My first experiments proved to be quite unsuccessful, and disappointed I put recording aside in favor of my film/video and ‘zine efforts.

But the urge to get my music on tape (or hard drive) raised its head again a half decade later in 2001, when as part of a tour promoting my video Tributary (chronicling the tribute band “scene” in the US in the 1990s) I ventured into ace engineer/producer (and editor of the amazing DIY recording magazine Tape Op) Larry Crane’s Jackpot studio and recorded four songs in one day of fast and furious recording.

One of the efforts from those sessions turned out well enough that I vowed to get it on an LP within the next decade.  It took me another 5 years to get back in the studio to record tracks for the debut LP by RAKEHELL (my extreme solo project), and another half decade plus to finally get everything mixed and ready for public consumption, but now at this very table you can see a tangible bit of proof that vinyl has not died; my own modest effort to keep analog alive in the 21st Century.


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ThIS report was originally published on a tri-fold display at iSFair 2O12

RAKEHELL performing live at iSFair 2O12

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WEDUPT

Sunday, March 3rd, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
The urban camper

GROUP SIZE: “386 members of the homeless community … in the first four months since the ‘Urban Camping’ Ban went into effect on May 28, 2012” ~ Occupy Denver
NATURE OF GROUP: Homeless, hobos, winos, all night binge drinkers, transients and travelers
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: West Denver Urban Preserve and Trail

During the Winter of 2012, when the Occupy movement was in full swing, a small cadre of Denver protestors, and a mix of homeless and soon to be homeless citizens, took up residence on the sidewalk across from the Colorado Capitol building. On May 28th the City Council passed an “urban camping” ban as a likely pre-text for granting Denver Police the ability to quash Occupy’s right to peaceable assembly while stating it was to help the cities homeless by providing a mechanism to move them into shelters and services.

About two blocks south of the IS Home Office in West Denver’s working class SoHi neighborhood, is Lakewood Gulch – an east west chasm bisecting the cities grid. The gulch is a flash flood zone and infrastructure corridor for high capacity power lines that doubles as a bike-trail route, greenspace, and for the homeless prime urban camping sites. In 2008 (accidentally) on National Trails Day IS agents guerilla installed a trail marker system designating a route through the gulch as the West Denver Urban Preserve and Trail demarcating areas along the corridor for unsanctioned use such as graffiti tagging, leashless dog walking, drinking, and of course urban camping. (See WEDUPT // MMVIII)

In 2012 the Urban Camping ban and ongoing westward expansion of light-rail through the corridor presented a double threat to unsanctioned use in the gulch. WEDUPT needed to be freshly installed to draw attention to the endangered habitat for urban camping in the corridor.

After a month of foot research to determine the new route that homeless had established to accommodate the freshly laid light-rail tracks, agents began constructing DIY signs in orange and black to match the copious construction signage in the area. IS agents m[i]le[s], Handsome Jim and DDUB installed the signs in the wee hours of National Trails Day.

At 8am agent m[i]le[s] led a guided walk-through accompanied by a handful or agents and known associates and by reporter Melanie Asmar of Denver’s Westword newspaper. See Melanie’s article for Westwords Latest Word blog Lakewood Gulch art prank celebrates day drinking, off-leash dogs from June 5th 2012.

By the end of August the light-rail tracks were finished, the adjacent landscaping was planted and the last WEDUPT survey stake fell. In conclusion IS feels that the majority of the signage and trail flags lasted throughout the prime urban camping season and the mouthpiece of Denver’s Westword was significant in increasing awareness of the endangered habitat for clandestine urban campers. Now that a four year cycle has been established from the first incorporation in 2008 and the second in 2012 we have marked our calendar for May 2016 for a third incorporation of the West Denver Urban Preserve and Trail.

Supporting documentation:
WEDUPT v.01 2008 MMVIII
WEDUPT Spring Research

WEDUPT
 Summer Research
WEDUPT  Process

WEDUPT
Trail Map + Guide
WEDUPT Walk Through: Section 1
WEDUPT Walk Through: Section 2
WEDUPT  Walk Through: Section 3
WEDUPT  Walk Through: Section 4
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Different versions of thIS report was originally published on tumblr in June of 2012, and in two articles on Westword’s Show And Tell and Latest Word blogs. IS’s final WEDUPT report was prominently featured on a re-engineered tri-fold road barricade at iSFair 2O12, our quadrennial exhibit of reports generated between 2008 and 2012.

Man Made

Saturday, February 23rd, 2013
 
INDIVIDUAL: Agent Man Made 
GROUP SIZE: Under 5.4 /sq mile 
NATURE OF GROUP: Wyoming Rough Necks, Cow-Hands, & Pilgrims on Dérive 
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: MAN MADE 
 

For this census MAN MADE across Wyoming was tagged, mapped & photographed.

Central Wyoming is the least populated part of the continental United States. On a 531 mile foot survey of Wyoming’s Continental Divide 3 IS agents encountered 414 Pronghorn Antelope (and 647 ticks) yet only a handful of man.           
 

Despite a lack of physical presence in the area, humans have scattered the organic landscape with an unfathomable amount of MAN MADE ranging from infrastructure to detritus. Fences, blazes, trails and roads. Gas wells and flight markers. Salt licks and a huge bowl of kibbles. Signs with rotting type. Rust etched garbage melting into the desert.

The infrastructure maintained on the census route often performed a control function. Way finders, harnessers of resources, containers, blockades. Though aesthetically out of context the logic of their place in the landscape was incontrovertible.

< PLEASE CLOSE THE GATE >

Much of the detritus was straight trash, though some of it presumably had a function in the past. (i.e. There were no blatant instances of intentional sculpture.) The harsh environment of central Wyoming continually reclaims any MAN MADE, breaking it down until even its function is eroded. Bereft of a meaningful context abstract forms begin to clutter the natural environment – an exact inversions of weeds growing through cracks in the driveway.

In the depopulated zone along Wyoming’s continental divide, MAN MADE and the organic landscape perform a continual dialectic: the attempt at one way control and the cyclic entropy thwarting it. (See diagram below.)  Man fills unpopulated space with functional infrastructure and a hidden scatter of debris. Anything unmaintained is either consumed by the harsh environment or takes on a battered sculptural form. By tagging notable MAN MADE, this census aimed to heighten an aesthetic and psychogeographical awareness of our footprint in a place we rarely tread.

Supporting documentation:
All 111 MAN MADE images
Agent Cyberhobos report and route map
Typeset Report (printable version)
Download a MAN MADE sticker sheet!  
Related Incidence of Sociometry: PaCT
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ThIS report was originally published on flickr in August of 2009, after the initial survey. IS’s reposting as MAN MADE prominently featured on a 6’x8′ tri-fold display at iSFair 2O12, our quadrennial exhibit of reports generated between 2008 and 2012.

 
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How I Fake Awarded Myself

Sunday, February 10th, 2013

INDIVIDUAL: Agent Janssen
GROUP SIZE: Indeterminate due to their hypothetical nature.
NATURE OF GROUP: The Metro Area Urban Landscaping Award Committee.
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: How I Fake Awarded Myself – Some Of My Neighbors Don’t Like My Yard, But Somebody Does (Sort Of).

I got a notice in the mail from the City of Denver informing me there was a complaint about “weeds” in my yard. Those “weeds” are xeriscaping – hollyhocks, Russian sage, flax, Shasta daisies, irises, mint, yarrow, ect. – all plants that require little water and are great for Denver, a city that’s arid and water-challenged.

From Denver Water: “Denver Water coined the word (Xeriscape) in 1981 to help make low-water-use landscaping an easily recognized concept. Xeriscape is a combination of the word ‘landscape’ and the Greek word ‘xeros’, which means dry.”

Co-workers suggested I write obscenities in the neighbor’s lawn with bleach, but I wasn’t entirely sure WHICH neighbor complained to the city and didn’t want to start a turf war (figuratively or literally).

I decided instead that my xeriscaping was “award-worthy” and made an award sign from a fictitious organization (the Metro Area Urban Landscaping Awards), honoring my yard in the “xeriscaping category”. I mounted the sign on foam-core and used a yard sign frame, then placed it among the flax and left it there until weather destroyed it. I felt good – vindicated, but not vindictive!

Meanwhile, the city didn’t issue a ticket, and closed the case after a neighborhood inspector took a look at my yard and verified the plants are in fact xeriscaping.

SO FUCK YOU, NEIGHBOR AND HAVE A NICE DAY!
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ThIS report was originally published on a tri-fold display at iSFair 2O12

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iSFair 2O12 // Incidence Report

Friday, November 23rd, 2012

INDIVIDUAL: An audience of one
GROUP SIZE: 25 active agents out of a total 628 agents world wide.
NATURE OF GROUP: The 25 agents constituting the group in this report represent participants and attendees to the IS Fair our quadrennial conclave…
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: iSFair 2O12 InfOcalypse.

IS practices and promotes (non-quatitative) Guerilla Sociometry. Sociometry IS the analysis of individuals and their relationship to groups. As a collective IS always strives to create work for an audience of one. From mid-nineties ‘zine reports to the ongoing “all-computer issue” on thIS screen, the expectation IS that a single agent at the end of the line curls up in their layer and relates to IS in an immediatist fashion – individual to group.

See all images here.

IS makes sense in person only; it IS difficult to accurately relate anecdotes to anyone who has not yet related to the group (at least not without arousing their suspicion). So to speak, you gotta’ be IS to be into IS. With thIS method, the impluse to put on an in-person gathering is both inviting and intractable as IS Agents are a sly species who are reluctant to blow their cover.

Nevertheless, IS has persisted over the last 16 years and hosted a pentathalon of five IS Fairs. A small cadre of 11 agents have selected host cities, submitted reports and attended successive IS Fairs. For iSFair 2O12, a 25 agent brigade initiated projects, made displays, transported work, mailed videos, installed a show, became one-man bands, mascotted on the street, and sat on a hot Mission Street sidewalk all afternoon to ultimately survive the infOcalypse.

The conversion of IS’s mail art by way of a zine blog motif to an in-person adult science fair IS an interesting challenge. The logistics of making and moving 2000 sq. feet of displays held together with every type of tape and tack needed to be worked out. The ability of the IS Home Office to reliably crank out tri-fold displays balancing basic design principles with post-modern collage was tested. Concurrently, Agents out in the world who were creating and documenting their relationships to groups came through in person or via post with displays. All the elements were in place. DISseminating IS’s mISsion and vISion outside of the group of indoctrinated agents to the outside individual remains the challenge.

Friday 11/09 Opening night

INDIVIDUAL: A serious looking man, between 25 and 30 with a furrowed brow, pointy beard and clean jean jacket.

ThIS individual was one of the first attendees of the Fair. He moved from display to display methodically reading the ridiculous overload of written content. He would thumb through the literature with a penetrating stare. ThIS agenet attempted to engage the individual with a verbal comment on the tri-fold he was reading. The individual took an immediate step sideways and turned slightly away to avoid engaging thIS agent and quickly left.

About two hours later he returned and picked up reading where he had left off. ThIS agent left him to his devices. He was later spotted chatting with agent BAF like old friends.

Outcome: possible pledge

Saturday 11/10 One Man Bands
Pictured: Disposable Thumbs and Employee 

INDIVIDUAL: mErRiL, a punkISh lady in a pink leather jacket – an amateur puppeteer and full time musician on her night off.

mErRiL came to hear agent zMan perform at the iSFair as Disposable Thumbs. mErRiL immediately absorbed IS upon entry into the Fair repeating the copy off of the banner out front, “Free and open to the public,” she said, “All of humanity should be in here”. There IS no financial barrier to entry. There IS, however, an extreme psychological barrier.

Outcome: IS new agent – credentials ISsued.

INDIVIDUAL: A young lady off the street with short hair and clean work clothes IS wide eyed and giggly – clinging to her look-alike date.

ThIS individual was greeted upon entry and ISsued two Analog Survival Kits. With a surprisingly sincere thanks she and her date began to comb through the contents holding the vocab-word quill-pen and eyeball-balloon up close for micro-inspection. Ushering them in past the entry way, they were oriented to the infOcalypse and invited to take anything that was in multiple.

About 11 minutes later thIS agent turned the corner to find her doubled over in hysteria at the sight of her date disguised behind a Mao mask. A bushel of Malcontent ‘zines, No Alien Stickers, IS schwag, and tchotkes spilled out of her hands on to the floor. ThIS agent picked up the fallen letterpressed IRS report and tapped her on the shoulder. She thanks me with wide eyes for the return of the brochure tipping thIS agent off. Though it was her date’s full psychological immersion into the 10 point typewriter text of the 15x15foot ISstory collage that confirmed thIS agents suspicions: ThIS was drugs. They had tripped into the infOcalypse, a free vérité of quizzical brightly colored trinkets that only make sense to someone in a certain frame of mind.

Outcome: adherents. When they wake up with the mao mask and the 8-track mind ‘zine and the WTF haze of the infOcalypse they will start swimming upstream to find IS. We shall hear from them again.

Sunday 11/11 The InfOcalypse

As our screening was cancelled (due to events detailed below) we’re including a virtual screening here. 

Wigman’s Independence from Kelly Monico on Vimeo.

INDIVIDUAL: A 50 something manicured woman out with a friend on a Sunday Mission Street bruncheon.

After two plus hours of waiting to gain access to the show, the inner conclave of IS had set up camp on the sidewalk in front of a locked SUBmission gallery. An odd menagerie of people from mid twenties to mid sixties with a banjo and backpacks huddling in a grimy recessed door. ThIS individual approached Agent Mom and asked, “Are you all ok? I’ve been by here a couple of times and saw you all sitting out here.”

Outcome: concerned citizen. Though certainly not a recruit or even an adherent, thIS individual did notice and engage with IS feeling our dim little tractor beam emanating from our grimy huddle. She won’t remember us.

Frame (clip) from Chelsea Knight

INDIVIDUAL: An ageless hobo, swathed in full hooded outdoor gear with two wheeled trash cans brimming with recyclables.

After waiting three plus hours to gain entry to the Fair we were granted access to encounter thIS individual who had been asleep amidst the exhibit. (We had been instructed by the gallery management to stow anything valuable or not nailed down each night as drunken hordes of latin club music fans came through every morning from 3 to 5am “wasted” with “no respect for anything”.) Apparently thIS individual had been subcontracted to look in every nook and cranny for recyclables, and presumably any other shiny object that needed inspecting.

CHRISTEENE  “African Mayonnaise” from PJ Raval on Vimeo.

Already put off by being locked out, the observance of thIS individual greatly disturbed the agents present as thoughts of our odd little universe of IS relics being rummaged through and possibly disposed of by thIS individual loomed. During our brief stay in San Francisco, gravitating between the Tenderloin and the Mission, IS’s assessment of possible byproducts of homelessness would likely include extreme mental health issues, drugs and more drugs, and constant industrious acquisition and sale of odd trinkets and products on the street.

While packing up the unmolested show thIS agent observed that we were fortunate that the individual was not of the shiny trinket selling persuasion. It IS more likely, however, that this individual simply didn’t relate to the group. With a mandate to grab the recyclables it was clear that the glass head full of 2 dollar bills and light up eyeballs and embossed gold medals, or the Time-clock, or the aluminum briefcase full of human hair didn’t slot into that milieu. It might have value but how? It presented too much of a psycological barrier to be desirable.

Outcome: dISinterested.

SUMMARY:
In retrospect IS did survive the infOcalypse on 11/11. We did in fact go analog. At the off-site closing ceremony Agent Link was awarded the mISs iS Fair DANGER sash. Medals were doled out to the last agents standing: m[i]le[s] for attending every fair, Handsome Jim for making the longest journey, Cyberhobo for the best improvised project with his hack of IS’s long dormant twitter, and Agent Forrsters for being the host/s with the mosts and for being responsible for the locations of the last two Fairs, Chicago and San Francisco.

Possible host cities for IS Fair 2016 Emancipation are: Raleigh, Reno, Omaha and Los Angeles. Check thIS channel in 26 to 30 months for details.

Full reports from iSFair 2O12 projects are being release every Sunday February – June. See Current Reports.
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