Welcome to the 2009 Slingshot Organizer. Making a calendar is a contradictory thing for radicals because in many ways dividing up and selling off time is a key problem with this modern, capitalist, high-tech world. Clocks and calendars help give the illusion that you can find satisfaction and meaning sometime in the future if you accomplish some goal, buy a particular product, meet the right person, move to a better town, elect the right leader or invent some new device. These illusions keep everyone chasing their tails, thinking about the future, not noticing the present moment and the place we are now. Clocks and calendars allow those in power not only to own the land and machines, but to control the very hours in our days. Before calendars and clocks were invented, people understood time based on the natural cycles of sunrise and sunset, planting seeds and then gathering the harvest, birth and death. In these cycles, each moment has its own special character.
Maybe when you’re using this calendar to keep yourself organized, you can keep in the back of your mind that time and calendars are made up out of thin air by people. Since it is all arbitrary, you can take a few moments to notice what is going on before you rush off to the next thing. We’ve made every day in the calendar look different to remind ourselves how everyday is a new chance to really experience life and connect with those around us.
We hope the organizer is more than just a day planner or another consumer product and that it can be a small source of inspiration for liberation and change. We don’t make the organizer the way one works a job — focused on the pay-off. Instead, like slow food, we’ve cooked up the organizer inefficiently, using locally grown, organic ingredients — concentrating on the experience of the journey itself. We use outmoded and even absurd tools, not the latest computer gadgets: pens, typewriters, rub off letters, copy machines, bicycles, waxers, phonograph records. The art is from people who wandered in, not professional designers. We spent way more time discussing side-topics, laughing and looking into the future with grave concern than we did in front of a computer or rushing around in a car. We hope you’ll be able to taste the home cooking all year long.
This is the 15th year we’ve been privileged to publish the Organizer. It raises funds to publish the quarterly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper. We aim to distribute the newspaper for free everywhere in the US. Send us your mailing address to become a local distributor of Slingshot. Thanks to the people who made this year’s Organizer: Abra, Alex, Artnoose, Bonnie, Brescia, Clyde, Cara, Compost, Crystal Math, Devon, Dominique, Eggplant, Emily, Emily Kate, Fil, Gregg, Jess, Julia, Japhy, Joy, Jon, Kyle, Kelly, Kerry, Kermit, Lew, Melissa, Molly, Paseo, Paul, PB, Peaches, Rachel, Samantha, SarahTops, Sean, Taeva.
Slingshot Collective
3124 Shattuck Avenue • Berkeley, CA 94705 • 510 540-0751
slingshot@tao.ca • http://slingshot.tao.ca
© Anti-Copyright. Borrow whatever you want. We did.
Note on Moon dates: this year we changed the way we listed moons. This year we list the day on which a full moon or new moon occurs for Pacific Time. If you live in a time zone other than Pacific, the DAY of the event may be a different day. Pacific time is three hours later than Eastern Time.
printed on recycled paper
All volunteer collective — no bosses, no workers, no pay.
Slingshot Tip: to preserve your cover & binding, tape your cover with clear packing tape
printed on recycled paper
All volunteer collective — no bosses, no workers, no pay.
Slingshot Tip: to preserve your cover & binding, tape your cover with clear packing tape
printed on recycled paper
All volunteer collective — no bosses, no workers, no pay.