How to save your sanity with WASTE BOOKS

Last week was one hell of a trip. The spring burn, Euphoria, was not given a permit in Chattooga County (Thu), so it was canceled BUT the board had been busy and we prepped to move the whole thing to another venue (Fri) BUT it was the weekend so the municipality to which we were moving couldn't evaluate our permit request until Monday BUT we couldn't wait until Monday so we moved our stuff AND I laid out the main intersections (Sun) AND redrew the entire placement map in the new location AND THEN...

When I drove into the property on Monday afternoon, the results of inches of rain on Sunday were all too apparent.  The center of the Boulevard was underwater, as were a couple of major camps.

SO just in case we got the permit, I went home and moved the whole burn to our putative parking lot, just crammed everyone in on the map BUT at 8:00 pm, they canceled the burn for good.  (The municipality, though willing to grant us a permit, were bound by their own bylaws as to how long it would take.)

Oy.

So instead of camping with the hippies all week, I was stuck at home. The good news is that it looks as if we're going to be on this new property for the foreseeable future, and that give or take a central marsh when it rains, it will suit our needs rather admirably.

The important thing about the property is that it's flat.  No hills, no slopes, no gullies, just a plain canvas to work with, and that means that I can finally create what I've been shooting for for the past three years: small public squares.

The concept comes from A Pattern Language, specifically 61: SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES. Rather than string camps along endless straight streets, group some of them around squares between 50–75 feet across.  String these squares along the boulevards like pearls on a string, and you accomplish a great deal: discoverability, activity nodes, gateways.

Even though the burn was canceled, and there's no event committee in place yet for Alchemy (the fall burn) and there's too much still up in the air to be sure about anything, I opened up my Placement Waste Book (#2) and started scribbling.  I scribbled ten pages of random notes: how big to make the squares; the outlines of an application for camps to "anchor" a square; ideas for what would make a good "anchor"; process for deciding which camps get a square; extending the placement registration schedule to include the square application process; etc.

It was a noble ABORTIVE ATTEMPT, and it kept me from going nuts sitting at home rather than roaming the boulevards and byways of the burn.