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Via Letter Writers Alliance, news of a super cool art project happening outside of Winnipeg’s unofficial sister city Minneapolis: the Art Shanty.

LWA takes interest in the Art Post shanty, naturally.

As a postal afficionado, I am equally intrigued by the prospect of a small construct where mail will be hand-cancelled, new stamps will be unveiled, and postcards will be mailed. However, I think that the Assiniboine River would be a perfect locale for our own village of Art Shanties!

Some Shanties that particularly capture my imagination:

• Ace Stellar Shanty — for stargazers, astronomers and astrologers!
• Art Swap Shanty — “Filled to the brim with intriguing art objects, and visitors are invited to swap their own art for any work that strikes their fancy.”
• The Black Bania — A working sauna!
• Dance Shanty — I think the name is self-explanatory.
• The Light House — “With the ‘light’ house, we intend to gather as much energy as possible so that we can give it away freely.”
• Shan-Tea — “The door is the handle, the stove is the spout, the Tea fosters hospitality, conversation and giving.”

If you ask me, this kind of project has Art City written all over it. Let’s do it!

I’m picturing Christine Fellows in a songwriting shanty. Fred Thomas in a graf shanty (though I suppose the enclosed space would preclude spray paint — still, there are other tools of that particular trade that are less toxic!). Send + Receive with a sound art shanty. Videopool with a video shanty. The list goes on! It would be a great midwinter antidote to the cold. Plus, one could skate between shanties!

James Howard is (once again, after a year away pursuing a master’s degree) Winnipeg’s cleverest blogger, who brings a genuinely fresh view to civic matters at Slurpees and Murder.

His latest innovation is “Winnipeg Cat” — a macro-style image of a cat’s face in a colourblock background, adorned with text that describes or mocks some aspect of Winnipeg living.

(That reminds me — I need to make some vinarterta for Christmas this year.)

(That reminds me — I need to go to the Bay basement after work.)

That reminds me — Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? was a freakin’ awesome computer game to my ten-year-old self, and it was also an excellent TV program starring Lynne Thigpen and Rockapella.)

The exciting news is that Winnipeg Cat now has its own daily blog, and James will even be posting some reader submissions made with the Winnipeg Cat Generator.

Winnipeg Cat: “Canada’s only, and therefore best, civic meme!”

It often happens that, when reading celebrated music blog Said the Gramophone, I will have my brain slightly wrinkled by the image chosen to accompany the post. It might be Leonard Nimoy-in-costume-as-Spock leaning against a late-model Chevy. It might be a cake that looks exactly like a piece of furniture:

Ceci n'est pas un sofa

The occasion was an art show/tasting put on by the Tate (London) and Kreemart, “an organization that lets artists explore desserts as a medium” (according to Cakehead Loves Evil).

Sweeeeeet

Demolition

You can see lots more photos from the event at ArtInfo (NB: you will also see boobies, so keep that in mind before you click).

What makes this creation so fascinating is that it is simultaneously realistic (I mean, looking at the first picture, would you guess it were a cake without being told?) AND absolutely scrumptious-looking. Look at the photo above and tell me you don’t want those people to cut you a slice. I enjoy watching Ace of Cakes and those other cake-design shows on food TV networks, or the lovely works in the Sunday Sweets feature at Cake Wrecks. The cakes you see there are definitely beautiful and amazing, but they don’t look particularly edible. Looking at this sofa-cake, I have a deep desire to plunge face-first into it.

Speaking of cake, Jezebel is a women’s interest blog, but it doesn’t really do recipes. But yesterday, contributing editor Sadie Stein posted a family recipe of hers (on the occasion of American Thanksgiving) for something called Wine Cake (the photo at left accompanied the post; I’m not sure if it’s an actual photo of Wine Cake or simply a Wine Cake-like cake).

Like many of the best mid-20th-century recipes, this one has only five (well, six) ingredients: yellow cake mix, vanilla pudding, oil, eggs and cooking sherry (the additional ingredient, icing sugar, is combined with sherry for the glaze).

Now, “cake mix” doesn’t exactly count as an “ingredient” by today’s epicurian standards — and often rightfully so. For instance, last year I made a couple batches of Bakerella’s Cake Balls for festive use and, on the recipe’s suggestion, used pre-pepared mixes and frosting. The result was something that people praised but in which I was disappointed. Prepared foods always have that inescapable chemical aftertaste, you know? This year, I plan to make the Cake Balls with from-scratch cake and icing. And I might make it gluten-free, too. I think the Wine Cake would lend itself to gluten-freeing as well — vanilla pudding is often found in GF baking for its binding and texture-enchancing qualities.

This morning I came across a new-to-me blog called Pictures of Cake. As you might be able to tell, it is relevant to my interests. The most recent post might also be relevant to Sadie Stein’s — it included this image:

Too bad we missed the big day!

Twilight parodies are utterly essential these days. This one, from College Humour,  is excellent — not just because it stars Parks and Recreation’s Aubrey Plaza, but because her character’s fascination with Three Wolf Moon guy is about as understandable and compelling as Bella’s fascination for Edward. (IMO. I say this as a person who was unable to get through even the series’ first volume, I was so bored by it. I have, however, read extensive, in-depth plot and character summaries, and so feel I am qualified to make judgment on the phenomenon and, of course, hate it.)

Anyway.

As the meme matures, so we mature with it.

This isn’t quite breaking news — I remember reading about this earlier in the year — but Racialicious had a post on it this week, spurred by a current gallery exhibition in Washington, D.C.

Dulce Pinzón took photographs of Mexican workers in superhero costumes. A window-washer is Spider-man; a laudromat worker is Wonder Woman. Here is her artist’s statement:

After September 11, the notion of the “hero” began to rear its head in the public consciousness more and more frequently. The notion served a necessity in a time of national and global crisis to acknowledge those who showed extraordinary courage or determination in the face of danger, sometimes even sacrificing their lives in an attempt to save others. However, in the whirlwind of journalism surrounding these deservedly front-page disasters and emergencies, it is easy to take for granted the heroes who sacrifice immeasurable life and labor in their day to day lives for the good of others, but do so in a somewhat less spectacular setting.

The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of the hero who has gone unnoticed. It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive.

The Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent from workers in the US. Conversely, the US economy has quietly become dependent on the labor of Mexican immigrants. Along with the depth of their sacrifice, it is the quietness of this dependence which makes Mexican immigrant workers a subject of interest.

The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper.

This project consists of 20 color photographs of Mexican and Latino immigrants dressed in the costumes of popular American and Mexican superheroes. Each photo pictures the worker/superhero in their work environment, and is accompanied by a short text including the worker’s name, their hometown, the number of years they have been working in New York, and the amount of money they send to their families each week.

What struck me most was the sheer amounts of money these individuals sent home to their families. Noe Reyes, the Superman/Delivery Boy above, sends $500 a week. That’s $2000 a month — a staggering amount that doesn’t even include his own living expenses in a very costly city (or, at least, metropolitan area).

This kind of “quiet economic interdependence” is not unique to the relationship between New York City and Mexico. You have African traders in China bringing consumer goods back to the Continent (though given the size of China’s economy, it’s not quite the same kind of interdependence). And here in Canada, I think primarily of the Filipino community. Particularly in the western provinces (Alberta, B.C.) Filipina women come to work as nannies and housekeepers, sending large proportions of their earnings back home. I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a local business owner who comes from the Phillipines. She runs a  successful commercial baking operation that services Winnipeg’s large Filipino population (as well as people like me who have a taste for delicacies like ube roll cakes). She told me about how she had just sent half a dozen computer systems back to her sister in the Philipines so her sister could open an internet/computer café where users could pay per hour to use the computers (apparently, Filipino students are expected to hand in typed assignments, but few families own their own computers).

I encourage you to check out the entire series of photographs, in which Pinzón makes visible the “invisible” workers of NYC.

The new issue of Geez magazine is out, and guess what? I have an article in it! The complete article is not online, so you’ll have to pick up a copy to read it (FYI you can get this magazine at McNally Robinson and Mondragon in Winnipeg). Basically, I wrote a love letter to another magazine, Bitch. Just a few words chronicling that magazine’s recent financial difficulties and its timely triumph over them, as well as its continued struggle for continued existence and the reasons why it’s still important and relevant as ever.

The issue is packed with lots of other great stuff, and if you need some independent verification, Geez won the 2009 Utne Independent Press Award for Best Spiritual Coverage.

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