Inspiration stations

The blog is sparse, it is it is. And I think it’s because I’ve been lacking inspiration the last few weeks, getting bogged down in the details of trying to organise a community-based project, losing sight of the bigger picture and why I’m choosing to live the life I do. So, you know, I need to rev myself up! Buck up Hanna etc etc! Incidentally, my friend sent me this really good article today about how, especially when we’re freelance or self-directed, or have a weird patchwork of a career, we need to take some time to be our own mentors.

So, I’m going to share with you some things that ARE inspiring me at the moment and reminding me why I do what I do and why I am what I am.

 

1. First up, this lady, Azealia Banks. I am super late to this party, but woooow. She is fierce. She reminds me why I like being a girl. Lyrics are, like, totally rude though so probs not suitable for work (or my parents…).

2. Finally I’m getting round to reading that organising bible, Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. I don’t know what took me so long. It’s already making me feel ridiculously productive, just nodding my head and turning down the corners of the pages I like. These bits from the prologue are my turned-down-corners:

Remember: once you organize people around something as commonly agreed upon as pollution, then an organized people is on the move. From there it’s a short and natural step to political pollution, to Pentagon pollution. 

Here we are desperately concerned with the vast mass of our people who, thwarted through lack of interest or opportunity, or both, do not participate in the endless responsibilities of citizenship and are resigned to lives determined by others. To lose your ‘identity’ as a citizen of democracy is but a step from losing your identity as a person. People react to this frustration by not acting at all. The separation of the people from the routine daily functions of citizenship is heartbreak in a democracy. 

3. I bought a rahlly nice ukelele. And I’m enjoying it SO much it’s ridiculous. Obviously, I’m no maestro, but it is fun seeing myself improve little by little, day by day.

4. This might be the only time I quote a banker, so hold on to your hats. This is a response to the question ‘What is your favourite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?’, posed to a number of important-sounding people over at Edge. I liked this one because it reminded me to sleep, and that life is a loan.

God, it’s all getting a bit deep round here isn’t it? Where are all the posts about lipstick I came here for?

5. Lastly, when I’m feeling in need of a inspirational boost, all I have to do is take a look around. My sister is writing a feminist play (am I allowed to have a girl crush on my own sister, or is that weird? Yeah okay), my friend Emma is taking a Harvard course in community organising in the little spare time she has, Char has a new food blog, Jo’s taking a leap of faith in a new job, as is Dan. Guppi is off to a foreign land for 3 months, and I am surrounded by so many people who are doing their own thing, committed to what they do, and it is crazy inspiring. It’s also comforting, that if you need a time out or a break, that there are all these other people out there, carrying on regardless, doing cool stuff, who will welcome you back when you’re ready.

hanna ♥

Tags: arthur schopenhauer, azealia banks, death, edge, emanuel derman, inspiration, rules for radicals, saul alinsky, sleep, ukelele

Super Sunday

1. First things. I must tell you about the Otesha cycle tours coming up this summer, partly because I am under orders, but mostly because they are one of the funnest adventures you will ever have.

If you like cycling, being green (figuratively, not literally), and the chance to be free and silly then hop on your bike and join us! I cycled 700 miles around the hilly South West for 6 weeks in 2008 and have been on bits of many of our tours since. They are crazy crazy, but you make friends for life and you’ll never forget it.

2. Second things. SNOW. Obviously. Tottenham never looked so pretty.

3. I saw this poster on the wall behind the bar of The Lexington at a friend’s birthday last night, and I managed to persuade the barman to sell it to me for two pounds!! Is it not the best thing YOU HAVE EVER SEEN? Winona forever *crosses heart*.

4. Saw the film Bombay Beach at the ICA on Friday night, which was fantastic. It’s a documentary about one of the poorest communities in Southern California, with a soundtrack by Beirut and Bob Dylan. The result makes you feel like you woke up in some suburban American teenager’s dystopian dream.

5. Spent Wednesday evening driving round East London in a van with my old friend Jonny, moving sofas and eating vietnamese food while listening to 90s r&b. Was so fun, just like old times.

6. This is lahvely. Learning it on the ukelele. (I might have also taught myself how to drum with a margarine tub. OH YES.)

7. Badass! Can I be this when I grow up?

hanna ♥

p.s.

That is all.

Tags: 70s, bombay beach, call your girlfriend, erato, ica, islington, japanese, johnny depp, lexington, london, otesha, otesha cycle tours, robyn, snow, style, tottenham, vintage, winona ryder

DIY Scalloped hem skirt tutorial (for lazy people)

Well hi there. I have never done a tutorial-type thing before, but I was doing this anyway, so thought some photos and tips might be useful for any other gals (or guys) out there who are also partial to a scalloped hem (who isn’t?).

This is definitely for lazy people. If you want to actually HEM your hem, there are tons of instructions out there to help you do that. Also, if you want to know how to make your scallops even, or measure it out or what-have-you – I can’t help you. I didn’t get out a measuring tape. But if you’re a lazy seamtress and still on board, let’s go!

1. Get a skirt. Preferably an old one. I picked this up at the Rokit vintage store on Brick Lane for two pounds! TWO POUNDS!

2. Get something round. The size of it will determine how big your scallops are, so have a little ponder about that. Turn your skirt inside out, and draw around your round thing (I used the top of a tin) with a pencil. Or, if you’re being fancy (and correct), keep your skirt the right way round and use tailor’s chalk. See if I care…

You can make your circles overlap as much as you want, depending on how deep you want the gaps to be between your scallops. I didn’t measure anything, I just guessed, which to be honest was a risky game, because I had no idea if I was going to end up with half a scallop by the time I’d got round drawing the whole skirt. Luckily, I didn’t! So… yeah, you could measure, or you could live life on the edge like me and just hope for the best.

3. Okay! Now get your machine and set it to a tight zig zag stitch. My machine had length set to 0, and width to 5, because we want the stitches really close. I also made my top thread and bobbin thread the same colour to keep it neat, and also because I was stitching on the wrong side of the skirt remember…

Matching the thread to the material will also do you many favours in masking any less-than-perfect stitching you do. Stitch along all your pencil / chalk lines, all the way round your skirt.

4. We’re almost done! Take some fabric scissors and snip all the way round your skirt, close to the stitching, but not so close you cut a thread. Because then the whole bloody thing will unravel.

5. Wear it! Feel smug that you made a pretty thing with minimal effort.

You can also feel happy.

Or pretend you’re Kim Kardashian.

I leave that up to you.

hanna ♥

Tags: craft, diy, easy, fashion, guide, hem, how to, lazy, scallop, scalloped, sew, sewing, skirt, style, tutorial

Super Sunday

Okay, after my Alain de Botton rant…

1. An illustration of the Ryan Gosling Hey Girl meme. I am never going to tire of this. Also, you HAVE to read the story that this illustrates.

2. Beauty from Diane Di Prima. I read her Memoirs of a Beatnik years and years ago, and I’ve just ordered the whole book of Revolutionary Letters. Can’t wait. (h/t Something Changed)

3. I graduated this week! Which was great. Weird fact: Sanjeev Bhaskar is the Chancellor of Sussex University, so I was handed my certificate by Mr Kumar. I know, I was also confused.

4. This week was crazy with work, partly because we’re hiring at Otesha at the moment. As you can see though, I was awarded with joint employee of the week for my efforts (it’s very official). I was good cop

5. More brilliance from the artist Jenny Holzer that’s been going round the internetz this week.

6. One of the highest search terms that lead people to this blog is ‘lipstick’! And since I haven’t mentioned it in a while, here’s a brilliant video about wearing bright colours if you’re not used to it. I’m now obsessed with this girl.

7. This.

hanna ♥

Tags: diane di prima, expensive sadness, hairpin, hey girl, illustration, jane marie, jenni sparks, jenny holzer, lipstick, memoirs of a beatnik, revolutionary letter 4, rookie, ryan gosling, sanjeev bhaskar, savour kindness, turn soft and lovely

Alain de Botton has gone mad…

or, was he always mad? his twitter is fairly mad. what’s the consensus on Botton these days?

ANYWAY, I am prompted to say this because of this Guardian article that describes Botton’s plans “to build a 46-metre (151ft) tower to celebrate a “new atheism” as an antidote to what he describes as Professor Richard Dawkins’s “aggressive” and “destructive” approach to non-belief.”

I have to quote some more of the article so you can get a better idea of what the whole project is about:

De Botton has insisted atheists have as much right to enjoy inspiring architecture as religious believers.

“The dominant feeling you should get will be awe – the same feeling you get when you tip your head back in Ely cathedral,” he said. “You should feel small but not in an intimidated way.”

Another Anglican, the Rev George Pitcher, a priest at St Bride’s, Fleet Street, and a former adviser to the archbishop of Canterbury, “rejoiced” in the idea. “He is referring to a sense of human transcendence, that there is something more than our visceral existence,” Pitcher said.

“This is a more constructive atheism than Dawkins, who is about the destruction of ideas rather than contributing new ones.”

Okay, so now you have a good idea. The ‘Temple to Perspective’ is going to be an incredibly elaborate affair, Botton wants it to be built in the City, and he’s already raised half the funds from a group of property developers who wish to remain anonymous. 

I have two main problems with this whole concept, which are:

• Atheists aren’t robots. We have the capacity to feel awe and wonder when in a cathedral, or mosque, or synagogue (at least I do). Beautiful architecture is beautiful architecture. It’s totally unnecessary to segregate ourselves.
• And: think what you like about Dawkins (that he’s belligerent, patronising etc) BUT he is never, EVER destructive. His whole point, and what seems to drive him, is that nature (and consequently, the science of nature) is deserving of our awe and wonder. My question is, why do we need to build another building, specifically for atheists, in order to experience ‘human transcendence’? When, you’d think, that atheists are capable of experiencing that in everyday life, observing the world for what it is and appreciating everything it has to offer. Dawkins says it better than me - 

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked — as I am surprisingly often — why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn’t it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?

Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998)

Update: An hour after this was posted I got a string of direct messages from Alain de Botton himself on twitter! He said that I had misunderstood the project, that I should read his new book and if I don’t like it he’ll send me a cheque, and that the Guardian is unreliable. I said alright, I’d take him up on his offer, but that it’s not just the Guardian reporting it that way (the Daily Mail article on it, for example, is headlined Battle of the Atheists!, and the copy is almost entirely the same as the Guardian article). So… I guess I have to read his new book then! I’ll get back to you…

Tags: alain de botton, atheism, atheists, richard dawkins, temple, unweaving the rainbow, wonder

Super Sunday

1. We’ve had a crazy couple of weeks at Otesha moving office to Toynbee Hall and getting settled in. Say hello to our new meeting room table and chairs. This is what happens when you put me in charge of furniture. Mwahaha.

2. Sending solidarity over to my friend Vi in San Francisco, who was out and about standing up against anti-abortionists this weekend. Standard.

3. Made an awesome discovery this week with my friend Cress – the Aubin Cinema in Shoreditch. We watched Shame, which was great, but bleak. However, our moods could not be tempered, because we were in the massive-ist, comfiest seats imaginable.

“We all know the classic scene from cartoons: The cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. What the protesters are doing is reminding those in power to look down.”

4. Read this article – The Violent Silence of a New Beginning – by Zizek on the Occupy movement. It’s brilliant.

5. Spent a substantial part of today making these cakes. The recipe is called Cake for Breakfast? YUP. (Also made this for dinner – proper yum).

6. I had a really nice time volunteering at The Ministry of Stories yesterday, mentoring a group of East London kids in creative writing. One of the kids on my table (age 8) wrote a story about a dog-monster called HOUNDOOM who was the devil’s pet. Houndoom ate fried dinosaur’s eggs for breakfast and travelled through a cloud of lightning bolts, which allowed him to pass through time (he also sucked out people’s souls by digging through their brains – eek). It was quietly hilarious. Also – want to know my 8 year old’s top tip for creative writing? “Let your mind go wild.”

7. Look at my smug new jumper face. £15 from UO Renewal. It’s GOLD. Yay.

hanna ♥

Tags: abortion, aubin cinema, cake for breakfast, creative writing, ministry of stories, occupy, protest, shame, ukelele, vintage furniture, violent silence of a new beginning, zizek

Music Monday

Beautiful clip of Stevie Nicks singing Wild Heart while she gets her make-up done for a Rolling Stone shoot. It’s been going round my head all day… Where is the reason, don’t blame it on me, blame it on my wild heart…

hanna ♥

p.s. a note about the highly unpredictable nature of posts at the moment. Another online project I used to work on, called The Multicultural Politic, is undergoing a really exciting redesign and launch, and I’m re-joining the team as Co-Editor. Once I’ve sorted out in my head which posts should go where, and who I want to read what, then things will sort themselves out! thanks for being patient x

Tags: music monday, rolling stone, stevie nicks, wild heart

In the year 2012, 2012

2012 got off to a lovely start, with a couple of days up in Derbyshire for mountain walks, good food, good friends, good chats, and Bridget Jones (I somehow managed to watch it twice over Christmas. Didn’t mind. Also watched Pride and Prejudice… Firth quota for 2012 has already been met).

I’ve made all the usual resolutions – cook more, bike more, generally be all-round fantastic person. My one big resolution for this year though is to work hard and follow through all my professional goals for this year. I had an amazing time last year bringing together the East London Green Jobs Alliance – this year it’s all about delivery and making our vision reality. It’s tough in the current economic climate, but I am going to try my very best, and we’ll see what happens. I’m nervous, but excited for what this year will bring!

Here’s to an awesome 2012,

hanna ♥

Tags: 2012, derbyshire, new year, photo, resolutions

What Are You Doing New Years Eve?

So bloody cute. Happy New Year everyone!

hanna ♥

Tags: joseph gordon levitt, what are you doing new years eve, zooey deschanel

Bye bye 2011, you’ve been grand

hiiiii! I hope everyone reading this had a lovely christmas. mine was very nice and chilled and I’m still bumming round my family’s house like I’m a teenager. I thought I’d take some time to recap this year before launching into the next one, and just absorb and appreciate the fact that this year was pretty much the best of my life, after a couple of rocky ones. Yay! I have had so much loveliness happen this year, and I am so grateful. So I’m feeling really mushy, and like, totally universal or something.

ANYWAY. Please indulge me whilst I recap my best memories from 2011:

- I had some amazing opportunities to travel this year, so I am a very lucky girl. I visited San Francisco in April for a couple of weeks and it was the BEST PLACE EVER. It is still my long-term dreeeaaam to move there one day. Cycling over the Golden Gate Bridge, wandering through the camellia gardens in Golden Gate park, photographing street art in the Mission, sing-a-long Wizard of Oz in the Castro, couch-surfing with the two best girls ever, meeting some super cute and amazing new friends, getting inspired by all the great green jobs work going on out there. It was just the best experience. I also had a couple of crazy / hilarious / sister-bonding / romantic trips to Paris which were incredible and filled with croissants, break-dancing, vintage shopping, and cocktails at the Ritz. Totes amaze.

- This year I also learned to love my own company. Even though I am now happily sharing with two lovely girls in London, living on my own in Brighton while I was doing my masters was one of the best choices I have ever made. I made a little haven for myself, indulged my love for baking, played music loud and danced around my living room. I was a pretty good roomie for myself, I have to say.

- I did a masters! In SCIENCE! I still find that hilarious. It was tough-going at times, but I’m proud of myself.

- The path my professional life has taken has been surprising and amazing this year. I could not have imagined at the beginning of the year where I would be now, back at The Otesha Project UK, leading on the East London Green Jobs Alliance. I have met some brilliant people and gained some excellent mentors. I got to speak at Glastonbury in the Leftfield tent (!! personal highlight), was an SMK Campaigner award finalist, and was a contributing author on an IPPR report. It’s been blimmin’ incredible. It also leaves me feeling absolutely terrified at following it all through next year, but you know, 2012 can deal with that one!

- I made some excellent make-up discoveries which I think deserve a mention – shu uemura eyelash curlers (SERIOUSLY), benefit eyebrow zings, mac lipsticks, lucas pawpaw ointment. If you’re into that stuff, get on it.

- I went on some excellent global protests! An anti-nuclear demo in Tokyo (most kawaii protest ever), pro-union protest in San Fran, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy London Stock Exchange, and to round it all off, the Fawcett Society anti-cuts march which ended with a pic of me and my sister in the Observer!

- But nothing, NOTHING, compares to seeing Beyonce live at Glastonbury, only 2 people from the front barrier. I almost died. In fact, I’m dead. (Mountain Goats in Brighton were also amaze).

This year was too good.

Resolutions will come all in good time, but for now, I’m just basking in the glow that was 2011.

Tags: 2011, memories, new year, reflections