CASA GOOFY
INTERNATIONAL
CASA GOOFY INTERNATIONAL
AND LOS AMIGOS CHILD CARE
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model and change the existing reality."
-----Buckminster Fuller
Casa Goofy International is dedicated to creating models of how things can work in tight and forbidding urban spaces. We’re developing a model for a permaculture green space in the Cabrini Neighborhood, and for the El Rio Neighborhood we’re identifying links between the Golf Course and riparian corridors that link up to Silverbell Golf Course and The Sweetwater Reclamation area.
We envision a landscape where gardens and livestock are intertwined with native growth and landscapes, with homes that disappear into the land or under the land with houses whose entrances reference the history of the neighborhood and the land all the way back to some of the first victims of the gentrification steamroller: the Pueblo cultures and the Hohokam.
In this context I’d like to repeat the words of a Tohono O’odham elder in his address to the first Tucson Poetry Festival, words that spoke to my heart more than any of the poetry I heard then or in subsequent festivals, his name was Joseph and he said,
“I wish you flowers.”
Casa Goofy International wishes you flowers, native flowers with native trees and plants, birds and wildlife.
If this proves to be only a vision it can still have a healing effect. In any event we will still have the results of our efforts in little areas we are able to save, little models of how urban dwellers can live in balance, an oral and natural history participatory book in the neighborhood library, models of how small, green, open spaces can become a little relief from the crush of buildings and commerce, models for urban gardening, and a list of spaces identified for development as wildlife preserves and community green spaces with the possibility of help from Abundant Communities Trust.
We’re in the midst of a global crisis in which two football fields of rainforest are disappearing every second, and a species is becoming extinct every twenty minutes, and warming biomass is already releasing billions of tons of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. It’s not a linear, it’s an exponential process in which the hotter it gets the faster it gets hotter, and the more natural disasters and social disintegration become the norm. And now, as if we weren’t already burdened with too many challenges too soon, 1.7 trillion more tons of methane will be released when the arctic ice sheet melts.
Locally, obviously, there’s not much we can do about a global crisis, except provide models. CGI is developing a model for a permaculture green space in the Cabrini Neighborhood, and looking for small spaces around the golf course.
We want also to create spaces that give barrio dwellers and especially kids, such as the kids from Los Amigos Childcare, a chance to get their hands in the soil and the water and see and feel live plants.
We hope also to turn the 16 rental units and temporary housing, gardens, greenhouses and pond systems in Casa Goofy into international visiting artist quarters and an art-in-nature laboratory .
If this seems too big a dream, we'll settle for little pieces of it.
If we can defray utilities we can start making real progress. But it will take a year of work and writing. Meanwhile we do what we can.
WHY CASA GOOFY INTERNATIONAL???
The neighborhood kids started calling my house Casa Goofy so I decided to just swing with it because, I thought, what more rational response can there be to an absurd world? Or, as Ludwig Wittgenstein put it,
“A perfectly good philosophy could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” So,
Why not?
(The Camp Goofy Philosophers’ Society)
FIRST:PRINCIPICUS GOOFICUS
(first principles)
St. Francis, when asked what he’d do if the world would end tomorrow, replied he would just keep on hoeing his garden. Right on, St. Francis! My Main Man! If enough people grew their own food we could survive global warming. If a few people grew their own food they could create their own art, culture and religion and survive global warming culturally and spiritually even if all else fails.
But first you gotta get REAL QUIET
And then…you gotta laugh a lot.
“Anything expressed in words can’t be taken seriously. Language is a leap of faith. And then you die.” Captain Nobody
“When we’re joking we need to be dead serious and vice versa. When we’re doing something we need to be doing nothing and vice versa. You see, THE HUMAN MIND….uh, er……hey wait! Is this some kind of JOKE?!!”---Fathead **
“It’s time we got serious about getting silly.”
-Captain Nobody, author of “Global Warming Natural Disasters On $5 A Day”
“Human survival depends on our vision being restored to wholeness by artists and clowns. Science doesn’t do well with process and whole systems.” And politics? (hey, don’t eve go there!)- General Lies, Philosophy Professor, Casa Goofy University (retired, emeritus, a latin word sometimes translated as meaning “without merit”.)
AND NOW HEEEERRRREEEES......
SUPERDUMY’S GAME PLAN:
MISSION:CROSSING BORDERS TO BUILD THE REAL COMMUNITY
(The Invisible Community Of Those Who Care About The Earth But Who May Never See Each Other)
The community I talked about in 1988, when I created The Ladybug Man’s Walk Across Tucson. Dressed as The Ladybug Man and carrying two dummies, The Child Of The Land, and The Crying Child, I walked 114 miles in ten days, giving away gifts from The Invisible Community, and mesquite seed and wildflower seed and ladybugs to gardeners. The gifts were given randomly by strangers at a performance the night before starting the walk, but there was an amazing correspondence between each particular gift and the person who ended up getting it, the record of which is now lost forever because the rain got into the journal I kept and glued the pages to each other and they have now become one, and one with the earth from which all our thoughts and dreams come screaming,
“Well, here goes nothing!”
the little community of friends for whom I created Secret Identity (mathematical and personal) in 1989, an outdoor gallery and quiet little ritual on some vacant land on West Speedway. Anyone could come around sunset and pull a map out of a hole in a Saguaro, walk a few yards up a trail, kneel down, brush some dirt off the lid of a five gallon can buried in the ground, look down into a mirror on the bottom and see their face in the earth, walk a little further up the trail lined with flood light bulbs screwed into the ground to reflect star energy from and to the earth to a cage with some rabbits in it and a note, saying, you can feed us and keep us prisoner here, or let us go to a certain death in the desert, it’s your choice. And walk further to other exhibits until you come to the end where there’s a roadkill dog surrounded by flowers with a sign behind with a quotation from Samson Et Delilah,
Ce Bon, Ne Ce Pas, Le fin Du Monde?
Beautiful, is it not, the end of the world? The world that is always ending and beginning at our feet as moments come from light years away and whiz past at the speed of a hearbreak. Beautiful is he not, the clown at the end of the world, who says, never forget, he who laughs last, laughs best.
The community of those who care about the earth and therefore have to hate the fossil fools who say we have to keep on using fossil fuels, who don’t even get the bumper sticker that says, Biodiesel. No War Required.
That community for whom I did The Facts Of Our Lives, a series of performances around an eight foot wide roll of photo backdrop paper placed around the walls of the old Rialto Theatre
That community for whom I dressed in wet sweats and dry newspapers about the first Gulf War begun in 2000 under oil man George Herbert Walker Bush...and set them on fire, and the flames went up four feet above my head turning that record of this physical world back into the nothing from which it came screaming,
Well Here Goes Nothing.
GOALS
GOAL #1
CROSS ALL THE BORDERS
ESPECIALLY THOSE BETWEEN:
COUNTRIES
CULTURES
YOUTH AND AGE
THING, PLACE, AND PROCESS
LIFE AND DEATH
THE HUMAN AND THE NATURAL COMMUNITY
CRIMINAL AND LAW ABIDING
MENTALLY ILL AND NORMAL
INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY
GAY AND STRAIGHT
MAN AND WOMAN
CONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS
TRAUMA AND TRAGEDY AND GOOD TIMES AND HAPPINESS
ALL THE FILES IN THE ALL TOO HUMAN MIND
CROSS THESE AND OTHER BORDERS OVER AND OVER
UNTIL THEY AREN’T THERE ANYMORE
THEN
START OVER
DO IT AGAIN
IN THE PROCESS CREATE ANTI GLOBAL WARMING FEEDBACK LOOPS
(SEE “SURVIVAL STRATEGIES” BELOW)
GOAL #2
Develop a sense of humor about the apocalypse and a welcoming committee called….
Armageddon To Know You.
And Armageddon To Know You will have a one man band called,
The Lake Tucson Yachting Club Dance Orchestra
Sometimes the one man band is unavailable because it has to split up…
(so it can walk through the same river twice)
and then we just have to wait until it gets back together again.
Form a super committee to investigate the conundrum:
“If nature is intelligent, why are people so stupid?”****
ABSURD ARTISTIC STRATEGIES:
CREATE AN INTERNATIONAL ART AND ARTIST EXCHANGE...
Out of the ashes of the old International Arts Center (the old Y at 5th. Ave. And 6th. St) BUT
THIS TIME
With a sense of humor, as an investment in community (like Student Exchange) instead of in big buildings with money targets on their butts, and with an emphasis on art in nature (because we ARE nature).
An investment in community, in caring individuals instead of big buildings and big shots, because?
“People who don’t stay out of the way of the gentrification steamroller
Get rolled. “ ---General Lies, Camp Goofy Mascot Philosopher
AND A THIRD WORLD GALLERY CIRCUIT
Starting with the tribal nations in Tucson and the border communities, and expanding south into Mexico and South and Central America, Africa, India, the Mid East, Far East etc.
With an emphasis on Outsider Art, Art Brute, the art of children and the mentally ill, in order to move out beyond the European esthetic and commodity based value system into international waters
Pride and prejudice and provincialism swirling and bubbling in the bow wave
the figure of OUTWARD at the mast head.
(The community does not end at the city limit sign or any other line.
Therefore embrace absurdity around the world (and in neighboring universes).
AND SHRINES A GO GO:
Shrines on wheels “Shrines A Go Go” shrines for a
Fast moving world, interactive shrines that force people & institutions to decide or at least to decide not to decide.
And remember
EDUCATIONAL STRATEGIES:
TEACH THE KIDS
Art and music and natural science both at Los Amigos Childcare and during field trips to the art farm, art in nature laboratory, at the pond/greenhouse complex.
WHY?
BECAUSE!
Children’s art is unfair competition for adults. That means it’s OK to STEAL from it. And because it’s THERE.
It keeps us younger than we might otherwise be. As far as imagination, gesture and improvisation are concerned, after the first two years of development, old age sets in.
You see, the human mind……hey wait! Is this some kind of JOKE!!!??? (Hey wait! (HEY WAIT! DID I ALREADY SAY THAT? I REST MY CASE!)
“Brains are like eggs. If you drop them from a great height, like falling stars, they splatter out in all different directions, and they seem to be bigger and smaller than each other, but if you cook them up in global warming, they come out nice and round and more or less the same.” Fathed (See You Tube: Dennis Williams: Performance Art In Tucson)
but with what brains I have left:
I see and hear birds singing
under old trees beside waterfalls, fish and frogs jumping, lilly pads and hyacinths, I see kids from Los Amigos coming here, their minds stretched by visions of art and nature, their innocent wonder inspiring artists to do more. I see refugees from wealth and poverty in this and other countries finding a home in motion here.
TACTICS:
EDUCATION STRATEGIES
FIND A SPONSOR FOR A FIVE YEAR GRANT PLAN FOR OUR MUSIC AND ART PROGRAM AT LOS AMIGOS CHILDCARE
(TUESDAY AND THURSDAY AFTERNOONS 3:30 TO 5 P.M.)
WHERE WE TEACH
MASK MAKING
With Ned Schaper from the Matt Bevel Kinetic Sculpture Institute:
AND MUSIC WITH JOHN WHITE
Musician from CGI who plays banjo, fiddle, guitar and ukulele...
AND JIM FROM ARTFARE has an education degree and plays clarinet and trumpet:
ALONG WITH THE MUSIC WE ARE TEACHING ART AND NATURAL SCIENCE WITH EXHIBITS FROM THE ART FARM AT CASA GOOFY INTERNATIONAL
In spite of what a certain conservative radio host says about single parent or no parent families, the kids are affectionate and are well behaved. They learn, they sing they dance, they do art.
In spite of what that radio host says about Day Care Centers, the teachers here really care and they are a community within the larger community. This Day Care has become the well, the commons, the village it takes to raise a child. It accepts and cares for kids with problems that no other Day Care will take and is having some success with them.
we’re working up a regular schedule of fundraiser performance nights with food, entertainment, games and raffles.
We’re planning on doing:
Community participation murals (make a place for the art of children of all ages).
Gradually changing Dennis Williams’ HVAC-R business by
Adding businesses one at a time that can offer: waste cooking oil, use of space on off hours, catering, or just sympathy for the project so that, little by little, our little community grows within the larger community and more and more time
Can be devoted to CGI.
AND IN ALL THE ABOVE:
We have fun and,
KEEP IT GOOFY!!!
SURVIVAL STRATEGIES
BIODIESEL: NO WAR REQUIRED
WELL DUH!!! OR if nature is intelligent why are people so stupid? “If a lion could talk we couldn’t understand him.” Wittgenstein. This goes without saying. People CAN talk and they can’t understand each other. Which just adds further evidence as to their alleged (but obvious) stupidity. (“And the stupider they get the more arrogant they are.”---General Lies)
So why not:
Burn cheaper and more sustainable fuels:
Here is the Waste Vegetable Oil and biodiesel plant at 1323 W. Hualpai Rd:
(this is a miniature anti global warming feedback loop, it filters waste vegetable oil and makes biodiesel, close to zero carbon footprint, and NO WAR REQURIED imagine how many greenhouse gasses we added to the atmosphere with the Mid East wars.)
DEFRAY UTILITY COSTS WITH GRID TIE SOLAR
Construct work shades in parking lots strong enough and/or to code (plans already purchased) to hold photovoltaic panels. Purchase, used or new but warrantied grid tie panels and inverters in order to get rid of or at least stop the escalation of utility bills.
Continue plan development for solar roof gardens at Artfare’s Arizona Hotel across from the Ronstadt But Center.
MAKE THE POND/GREENHOUSE COMPLEX OFF GRID
(in order to apply for a RAINBIRD grant for the most interesting and innovative uses and reuses of water:)
Solar pumps now pump water to highest ponds in the system. This energy and water is reused by siphoning it down to the lower ponds. This connects all the ponds into one body of water with benefits to potential biodiversity. The water and energy are reused again by running the falling water through troughs with grow boxes inside which wick the water up into any planting medium with minimum loss to evaporation and no loss of soil to the ponds. All this is done with salvage materials.
To add to these uses and reuses of water and solar electricity, the first of a pair of hydraulic ram pumps has been made:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWqDurunnK8&NR=1&feature=endscreen
These two pumps, using no electricity, just the energy of falling water, will take pond water from bell siphons
in tubs (suspended above the highest ponds) filled with gravel gardens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4t-3rFEyS0
down to the lowest pond where they will pump the water back up to the tops of the 24ft. high greenhouses.....from where the water will flow through troughs with grow boxes in them down to the lowest pond again...from where it will be pumped back up to the highest pond, and the cycle starts all over. For this purpose, two tubs, so far have been suspended on heavy steel shelving frames over the two top ponds and one hydraulic ram pump has been made and is ready to connect up. To see how this kind of system works check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFZYD05I29s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AsNuf4tWCw&feature=relmfu
Gambusia, mosquito eating fish have been introduced and are thriving and nourishing existing plants in grow boxes above the ponds and in the greenhouses. We now have a license from Arizona Game And Fish for stocking Tilapia, Bass and Catfish and an order in at Brown’s Fish Farm for fingerlings. Once these are stocked the fish and plants will nourish each other completing another use and reuse of solar energy and water.
INFRASTRUCTURE STRATEGIES:
MAKE SAFE, COMFORTABLE, INSPIRING SPACES FOR VOLUNTEERS AND VISITING ARTISTS
Continue converting 16 units of housing, (50% so far) to artists’ live/work spaces and WWOOFER quarters
Turn 6 ponds and two greenhouses into aquaponic urban farms and art in nature labs.
FACILITATE THE GROWTH OF NATURAL COMMUNITIES BY:
INVENTING INTENSIVE GROWING METHODS FOR LIMITED SPACES
Experimental grow box containers made from storm drain are now hanging under some eaves and raised beds made from block have been built at approximately half of the rental units.
MAKE COMMUNITY MURALS FOR FENCES
FORM A “CITIZEN’S AUXILLIARY” GROUP TO
CREATE ANTI GLOBALWARMING FEEDBACK LOOPS
(To Lobby For Large Scale Community Wide Projects such as:
“smokestack algae biofuels plant” and “Solar Farm Trolley”
and solar electric roof gardens.)
AN INTERNATIONAL ART AND ARTIST EXCHANGE
BASED ON STUDENT EXCHANGE....
WHAT’S IN IT FOR TUCSON?
The profitable exploitation of two of our most plentiful local resources: artists and the sun.
We have more artists and musicians per capita than any other city in the U.S. and there is a 10x multiplier effect for business with art events.
The sun is going to get hotter and energy is going to get more expensive.
If a little town like Bisbee can put itself on the map with a once a year Poetry Festival. If a little city like Cleveland (with a river so polluted it burned one night) can put itself on the map with a once a year, month long, International Performance Art Festival, if San Antonio can put itself on the map with its River Walk, Tucson can put itself on the map with an International Arts Center and a Third World Gallery Circuit starting in Nogalles and proceeding South until it’s North (and don’t stop there it’s too freakin’ COLD!).
Tourism is low infrastructure & high dollar business.
And the added attraction just might help fill those seven hundred units of student housing that filled the hole left by the destruction of the International Arts Center when the City Council vacated its own stipulations and subverted its own Historic Preservation ordinance,
JUST MIGHT...
also help fill the seven hundred more units of student housing proposed by a millionaire consortium if it gets to tear down the sixth block in the history of Tucson.
WHAT’S IN IT FOR THE ARTIST OR INDIVIDUAL?
Opportunities to:
Have enriching cross cultural experiences by becoming hosts/guests to international artists.
Host field trips for kids of all ages to the art-in-nature lab in process at Casa Goofy International.
Do projects in that lab and have display space in Artfare’s atrium “Bravo Gallery” across from the Ronstadt Bus Center.
Have hands-on learning experiences growing their own food and art with very limited space, time and money.
Experience in real time, the real meaning of the word “RENNAISSANCE” .
AND…THIS JUST IN!!! (from NEWS MAN)
ASSETS/PROJECTS IN CASA GOOFY:
1323 W. Hualpai Rd: a 2 story concrete dome house with 6 ponds, 2 greenhouses, sculpture garden, & garden. 75% complete.
Two visiting artist quarters in back. 50% complete. (see below)
1329 W. Hualpai Rd: a duplex converted into four artist studios. Raised bed gardens and ramada all around, kiln, workshade in front parking lot. 75% complete.
3428 E. Presidio Rd.: 1 2BR single family residence being used as a studio, and a duplex with sunroom/studio and greenhouse in large back yard. 75% complete.
3430 E. Presidio road. Duplex not converted. 40 X 30 X 12’ High steel building converted into two artist studios. Greenhouse attached. 75% complete.
Art-In-Nature Lab 50% (?) completed.
Community participation murals on front fences and walls 5% completed.
International art exchange website, planning stage.
VISITING ARTIST QUARTERS IN CAMP GOOFY:
Vans & busses in U shape with campers on top, common kitchen & bathroom. 50% completed. Large work-shade common studio between.
(When finished, these will be free housing for WWOOFERS & visiting artists in exchange for working on projects in the art-in-nature lab.
ADVISORY BOARD & ASSOCIATES:
Brian Flagg, Casa Maria Soup Kitchen
Bill Knauss, Builder
Jon McLane, host of “Free Green Radio” (KVOI) and Green Party Mayoral Candidate
Carlos Lozano, CEO hunter for Lozano And Associates
Paul Schock, founding partner of the former International Arts Center at the old Y at 5th. Ave and 6th. St.
Peter Anton (retired) electric bike enthusiast, ecologist.
John Peterson, HVAC-R engineer
Daniel Ryan, artist, educator.
Peter Lewis, engineer HVAC-R technician.
Evangelos Vassious, restaurant owner/builder/manager
(Your Name Here)
HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE:
Get on our mailing list.
VOLUNTEER! :Volunteers will be fed, entertained and spoiled rotten.
Donations of $100 or more grant you founding member status and get you a comic book face and a few choice words on all our community murals.
Bring food, friends, art & entertainment to fundraisers.
Help with clean up, construction and gardening.
Help us work with the kids.
Just take an interest.
Be someone we can talk to about how we’re doing and what other things we could be doing on an on going basis.
Become a host. Think about what space you might have for visiting artists to use for a few days to a few weeks. Help us get a list of potential hosts going.
Participate in the fence mural project. There's a place for you and your kids.
BECOME A MEMBER:
Lifetime: $100 (gets your name, photo, & comic book face in one of our participatory fence murals (you participate in the creation of your image, and to get to attend (or not attend) all meetings of The Bored).
Annual: $50 (free pass to our shop & kiln & other facilities).
Contributing: ($25 or more. Five free art-postcards & whatever other goodies we can come up with.)
GET US SOME NEW BLACKBOARDS (OR WHITE BOARDS)
to provide for ongoing, outdoor dialogue aka “exquisite corpses” among residents, (I call it our ‘Little Black Mountain Black Board”
BE OUR WEB MASTER
To do the PR and organization for the Third World Gallery Circuit, and maintain outreach to artists and volunteers from other countries.
AND/OR GRANT CZAR:
Help with grant research and grant writing to stop the bleeding from utility and other bills. We need to:
Purchase grid tie photovoltaics & erect shade frames on which to mount them.
Finish the installation of solar water heating panels for space heating and water heating. (have panels, need storage tanks, radiators, and pumps)
Finish the pond/greenhouse/raised bed gardening system to the point where it is producing food.
Finish conversion of 8 rental units into artist live/work spaces.
Finish the construction of visiting artist quarters at the art-in-nature lab at 1323 W. Hualpai Road.
This will:
make the project financially and ecologically self sustaining,
complete the artist community that will support the mission of outreach to other countries
unite the project around one clear vision:
a world in which the imaginary lines drawn by scientists, economists, politicians and countries are seen for what they are, so that our vision of global problems and solutions can be made whole.
or do it your way and organize your own gift.
(be a big time artist) DONATE ART
or just DONATE:
vehicles, ,anything that could be raffled off or sold for scrap.
(have trucks, have people, will clean your yard)
New or used vegetable oil.
(any kind of waste oil)
Solar panels, PVs, DC or AC pumps, generators, tools. Building materials
(come visit, see what we’re doing, see if you have anything to
contribute, and talk to us about YOUR ideas.)
BECOME A MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD:
(attend online meetings, and less often physical meetings, help with fundraising, structural problems and planning.)
BECOME A MEMBER OF THE ADVISORY BOARD:
No responsibilities, just be wherever you are but be there for us: read, bear witness, listen, review & comment. Be somebody just to talk to about how we’re doing. (What is this? See the note below.)
BECOME A MEMBER OF THE CLOWN COUNCIL
CONTACT:
Dennis Williams
1323 W. Hualpai Rd.
Tucson, AZ 85745-2051
520-429-0347
ON FACEBOOK:
Dennis Williams
Casa Goofy International
AT BLOGSPOT.COM
http://casagoofy.blogspot.com
http://superdummyinlovandwar.blogspot.com
http://secretidentity.blogspot.com
http://logosteleos.blogspot.com
AT BRINK.COM
