Tag Archive for: river

this is my dam halloween costume hoover dam sweatshirt

2010 Edition: Halloween Costumes for the Water-Obsessed

For 2010, we’ve gone DIY! All these water-themed Halloween costumes are homemade. This year, use your skills, creativity and ingenuity to fashion a killer look and unforgetable water statement!

this is my dam halloween costume hoover dam sweatshirtTHIS IS MY DAM COSTUME THIS YEAR: Thirsty in Suburbia exclusive! I made this for myself on Cafepress…perfect thing for recession trick or treating around your local Hooverville. (While I was at it, I made a shop so you can get one, too! Yes, I know, it’s expensive…but who can put a price tag on this level of awesomeness? Check out the mug, too! http://www.cafepress.com/thirstyinsuburbia).

pollution mermaid halloween costumeTOUGH YEAR FOR MERMAIDS: This costume won the 2008 Etsy Costume Contest in the Green catagory. Your 2010 interpretation could be even more timely with sad-funny BP references. Find a thrift shop prom dress and get busy! Great way to recycle that old motor oil. Source Link

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Nemo, txt u l8r

What if you could send a text message to the fishes and find out first-hand how they’re doing? U R SO FINNY, LOL! Sound crazy? Of course, this is just crazy enough to be true.

The Amphibious Architecture project aims to remind us that the water is more than just a pretty reflective surface, it is a habitat that is a “teeming body that’s alive with organisms whose health affects our health while our activities affect their health.

From September 17 through November 7th, two sites along the East and the Bronx Rivers in New York will be installed with a network of floating interactive buoys with sensors below water and light emitting diodes (LEDs) above the water. The sensors monitor water quality and the presence of aquatic life. THe LEDs repond to the sensors, giving above-surface humans a visual cue as to what’s going on below.

Now, the texting part: an SMS interface allows “homo-citizens” to text-message the fish and receive real-time information about the river, and hopefully, spark a larger public interest and dialogue about local waterways. (You’ll get a message back that looks something like, Underwater it is now quiet. The last fish swam by 17 minutes ago. D O level is 7.6 mg/L which is mg/L average.

The project was commissioned for the Architectural League of New York’s exhibition Toward the Sentient City and was developed by xClinic Environmental Health Clinic at New York University and the Living Architecture Lab at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Dumpster Diving in the Merrimack River

Imagine that your city dump is located at the bottom of a river, unseen below the surface… and that same river is the main source for your community’s drinking water. Most people would be shocked to realize how common this scenario actually is.

We need a wake up call, and the people of the Clean River Project in Lowell, Massachusetts answered the call with their July 25th “scavenger hunt” cleanup on the Merrimack River. The competition challenged people to see how much “stuff” they could collect from the river with scoring on a points-based system. (There were prizes for both “small boat” and “large boat” categories.)

Competitors dove in and hauled up cars and car parts, engines, a dishwasher, a couch, a tar and gravel roof (ugh!) and many other nasty polluting items from the river that supplies drinking water to Lowell, Lawrence and Methuen (home of the Methuen bottle tree, which was NOT pulled out of the river!)

After the cleanup, the debris was recycled or properly disposed of. I believe I would have preferred that all of it stayed there for a bit, the entire mountain of rusting, smelly, soggy crap, along with some signage explaining where this mess had been…and where it was headed. That’s my idea of compelling public education.

Congratulations to the hardy competitors! Video (with front-end advertising) and screenshots from necn.com.

Create, Destroy, Repeat: A Natural Process

How would it feel to spend months creating this, only to see it destroyed by the natural shifts of the seasons? To the artist John Ceprano, it would feel perfectly right that the works are created by man and dismantled by nature.

Every spring and summer since 1986, John Ceprano has created these stunning sculptures rising out of the river bed of the Ottawa River at Remic Rapids in Canada. The sculptures are constructed entirely by hand using heavily fossilized, color-laden rock that is unique to the region. Before the next spring arrives, the sculptures collapse and vanish in the harsh ice and storms of the cold Canadian winter.

And the next spring he begins again. What has motivated him to rebuild and re-create each year for more than two decades? In his own words,

…At that time, I began Transcendental Meditation providing a perception of balance in all things, natural and man made. It is also the guiding process for the rock sculptures: BALANCE, HARMONY AND PEACE. The TAO balances and harmonizes the space so that everything fits together naturally, as if being there forever. Meanwhile, the Buddhist principles allow the “letting go” each winter season when the sculptures are dismantled by the river and ice.

Nice Photos! Photo #1 From RougeEtNoireon Flickriver.com,, Photo #2 from Watawa Life, and Photo #3 from Ullysseson Flickr.