Body Worlds

This weekend we took the whole family to see Bodyworlds at Philadelphia's Franklin Museum of Science. Everyone was fascinated, from the two-year-old to grandpa and grandma. Dozens of full-sized humans stood in flayed splendor, often in combinations of filleted ingenuity that would make Hannibal Lector blush.

The displays are the brainchild and life's work of scientist Gunther von Hagens whose biography reads like a bad spy novel. After a two year imprisonment by East German authorities for political reasons, he was released after a $20,000 payment by the West German government. His pioneering invention that halts decomposition of the body after death and "preserves it for didactic eternity" through a delicate process of plastination:

A process at the interface of the medical discipline of anatomy and modern polymer chemistry, plastination makes it possible to preserve individual tissues and organs that have been removed from the body of the deceased as well as the entire body itself. Like most inventions, plastination is simple in theory: in order to make a specimen permanent, decomposition must be halted. Decomposition is a natural process triggered initially by cell enzymes released after death and later completed when the body is colonized by putrefaction bacteria and other microorganisms.

By removing water and fats from the tissue and replacing these with polymers, the plastination process deprives bacteria of what they need to survive. Bodily fluids cannot, however, be replaced directly with polymers, because the two are chemically incompatible. Gunther von Hagens found a way around this problem: In the initial fluid-exchange step, water in the tissues (which comprises approximately 70% of the human body) and fatty tissues are replaced with acetone, a solvent that readily evaporates. In the second step, the acetone is replaced with a polymer solution.

The Franklin Institute Science Museum hosts "BODY WORLDS: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies" from October 7, 2005 through April 23, 2006.

Throughout the ages, medical scholars and students have strived to understand how our bodies function through exploration of real human specimens. BODY WORLDS, one of the most highly attended touring exhibitions in the world, takes this tradition one step further by presenting a new look at the human body.

The exhibition features more than 200 authentic human specimens, including entire bodies, individual organs and transparent body slices that have been preserved through the process of "Plastination," a technique that replaces bodily fluids and fat. BODY WORLDS offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see and understand our own physiology and health and to gain new appreciation and respect for what it means to be human.

Visit the official BODY WORLDS website.

Launch of Alphachimp Coaching!

Coaching is a relationship that focuses on you. Who are you? Where are you in your life? Where do you want to be? What are the barriers? What actions do you need to take to get there? You are the heart of this relationship. During this co-active coaching process with Diane Durand, you will discover more about yourself which will lead to more fulfillment and balance in your relationships, career, health and family. LEARN MORE

Map of Creativity

This month's Map of Creativity newsletter features an interesting and inspiring interview with one of the co-directors of the European project WebLabs. Find out how six European countries got kids talking about high level maths and science.

Illustrated Manuals for Development Projects In many rural development programmes field-level training is the most appropriate means of communicating new ideas and practice. Unfortunately, staff responsible for conducting the training often have few resources to help them with this task and work in villages scattered over large areas.

Virtual Hikers are computer-created virtual hiking routes that can be followed by hikers in the real world. While currently experimental research in the area of “locative media in the wild,” the long-term value of virtual hikers is apparent.

Food Force leverages the popularity of video games to educate youngsters about hunger and the work of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

The Black Swans of Nassim Nicholas Taleb

From IT Conversations:

The hardest part of predicting the future is that it's, well, the future. That may sound flippant, but it's essentially true; the greatest problem in forecasting isn't understanding the current situation or the problem itself, it's accounting for unforeseen factors the cannot be predicted. In a session from Pop!Tech 2005, essayist and former financial trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses these "black swans" and their effect on the task of forecasting.

The complexity of the world increases each day, and our inability to forecast events increases as well. "Black swans", unforeseen and unforeseeable events, are impossible to predict but can drastically change results.

These essentially random factors cannot be accounted for, so how can we successfully forecast; how can we account for the unaccountable? Should we just stop forecasting altogether? Not according to Nassim Taleb; he details the pitfalls we encounter while trying to predict the future and a partial solution to the problem.

Peter Durand created this large scale illustration during, Taleb's talk at the What Do We Know session at Pop!Tech. The other speaker in this session was Robert Trivers. The question and answer period can be heard at the end of Robert Trivers' talk.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an essayist principally concerned with the problems of uncertainty and knowledge. Nassim's interests lie at the intersection of philosophy, mathematics, finance, literature and cognitive science, but he has stayed extremely close to the ground, thanks to an uninterrupted two-decade career as a mathematical trader. He held senior trading positions in New York and London, before founding Empirica LLC, a trading firm and risk research laboratory.

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He is the author of Dynamic Hedging and Fooled by Randomness, which has been published in 14 languages. Nassim's ideas on skeptical empiricism have been covered by hundreds of articles around the world.

Nassim holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. from the University of Paris and is Dean's Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Zero Boy News

Check out the "oh so timely" and "as strange as reality" news podcasts from Zero Boy News.

Zero Boy is part of an online festival called The Huffington Post Contagious Festival. Enjoy a few minutes to check out his piece What Bush is Really Saying.

We met Zero Boy at Pop!Tech 2004, where, in the words of Renee Blodgett:

He's a combination performance artist, stand-up comic & "vocal acrobat." Zero Boy performed for us between sessions; quite a creative and funky twist in the midst of Emerging World Views and Global Creativity. He recounts his zany adventures in Zeroland through a unique blend of sound and mime, the results being something akin to a performed comic book. He combines movement with live, vocally-produced sound effects, and enacts a parade of hilarious, fantastical characters.

Performance artist, stand-up comic & "vocal acrobat" Zero Boy recounts his zany adventures in Zeroland through a unique blend of sound and mime, the results being something akin to a performed comic book.

Combining movement with live, vocally-produced sound effects, Zero Boy enacts a parade of hilarious, fantastical characters that find themselves in the most unlikely situations.
"Reminds one of the best days of Saturday Night Live" - Time Out Amsterdam

From his New York base Zero Boy has written, directed & performed numerous productions on both coasts and Europe, working in traditional theater, stand up comedy, television, street performance festivals, radio, film, comic books, a national magazine, and on the cutting edge of digital media/art.

Woolgathering

Elizabeth Perry is an artist, writer and media specialists working with teachers and students to integrate art, language, science and storytelling through electronic media.

She recently led a workshop at the Mattress Factory, a premier contemporary installation sculpture museum and performance space. (Check out what kids are doing there in the Matress 14 Project!)

Perry's own book-to-blog works of watercolor sketches are wonderful meditations on the simple beauty of the everyday.

From Elizabeth's blog:

I work on a variety of projects, on and off the web.

writing

One of my degrees is in writing. I have published nonfiction and short stories. A children's book, Think Cool Thoughts, was published in 2005 by Clarion Books.

web + video + digital

memory - a movable collage constructed in Flash
Uluburun shipwreck - an interactive archaeological site
Pittsburgh Signs Project - a collaborative online museum
5 x 4 - an experiment in multi-dimensional poetry and Flash
textile - a Flash toy hinting at some ideas I'm always working with
stop motion animation made by kids
more stop motion from a summer camp
my house as a snow globe - animation
Homewood Cemetery and The Ellis School - 360-degree panoramas in QuicktimeVR

knitting

I make up my own patterns, but I rarely get around to typing them up. One of these days...

grass roots community development and activism

My inner-city neighborhood in Pittsburgh has several community organizations. I've served on the board of one of them.

Baghdad Journal

Somehow, watercolorist Steve Mumford, convinced his wife to let him go, the editor of an on-line arts magazine, artnet.com, to issue him a press pass, and his hands to produce beautiful images. All this during the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Mumford's book Baghdad Journal (Drawn and Quarterly, 2005) is a large-scale, saturated visual narrative that deftly captures soldiers and citizens, stay dogs and looters, elegant mosques and burnt out wrecks, beat up sedans and Bradley fighting vehicles–all the texture, color and human drama of the post-Saddam era.

Steve details his first-person narrative as an artist struggling to understand the value his presence can bring to the situation. The results provide illumination on how a peaceful man with no ties to power or influence (and a limited budget) can navigate and survive in a looted landscape; how citizens of an occupied country can extend a helpful hand to a stranger; and, how art can be created in the context of war.

From Baghdad Journal:

Drawing here takes a little getting used to. The Iraqis are intensely interested in most things western, so the presence of an American sitting on a stoop or at a cafe making a drawing always elicits an avid audience. Every brushstroke is watched, and people have many questions. The Iraqi sense of personal space is very different from a westerner's; here people crowd in so close they're touching me, and men feel free to stab at the paper to point out someone I've drawn whom they know. If an onlooker blocks the view, however, he'll be shouted at to get out of the way. Sometimes a passage is greeted with a round of "tsk, tsk, tsk," which in Iraq doesn't necessarily connote disapproval as much as interest (I think).I spend a few hours working on Karada Avenue, the mecca for appliances and satellite dishes. It's a major boulevard, the sidewalks cluttered with big stacks of boxes, satellite dishes arranged like blossoming flowers as far as the eye can see in both directions. Sometimes you have to go through a maze of these boxes to continue down the sidewalk. The usual chorus of "Hey, Mister!" follows me as I go. When I locate a good vantage point to draw, the salesmen come out to look, then offer to pose. One pretends to flag down a cab, and then has to explain to several irritated cab drivers that he doesn't in fact want a ride, much to the amusement of the others.

I spend a few hours working on Karada Avenue, the mecca for appliances and satellite dishes. It's a major boulevard, the sidewalks cluttered with big stacks of boxes, satellite dishes arranged like blossoming flowers as far as the eye can see in both directions. Sometimes you have to go through a maze of these boxes to continue down the sidewalk. The usual chorus of "Hey, Mister!" follows me as I go. When I locate a good vantage point to draw, the salesmen come out to look, then offer to pose. One pretends to flag down a cab, and then has to explain to several irritated cab drivers that he doesn't in fact want a ride, much to the amusement of the others.

Review from Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. With countless war accounts already in from Iraq, it's refreshing to get this dispatch told, from the perspective not of a journalist or a photographer, but of an artist. Mumford, a New York City painter, first arrived in Baghdad in April of 2003 and spent about a year there, and in other cities, accompanying U.S. troops on patrols, raids and combat missions. But the most arresting images in this illustrated journal come from his more mundane interactions: with people in cafés, at a meeting with a local imam, at a galley favored by local Baghdad artists. Mumford writes that, for him, "the act of drawing slowed down the war, recording the spaces in between the bombs," and it is through these spaces, the day-to-day of life in a country where life runs minute-to-minute, that Iraq and its war become illuminated in a way that we rarely see. At first glance Mumford's watercolors carry something of the hasty urgency of courtroom art, but this impression is soon belied by the images' depth of feeling and nuance. Accompanying the watercolors are passages from his journal, written in a lucid and reflective style that perfectly matches these quiet spaces pushing out at the surrounding chaos. His is a remarkable document.

>> Read Steve's journal on-line
>> About Steve Mumford
>> NBC's Person of the Week

Sundance Shorts

Don't miss out on the Sundance Film Festival... especially the fun and freaky (and free!) on-line shorts.

Definitely one of the standouts is Beyond Iraq directed by Tom Eldridge, which shows wounded vets conquering their injuries through conquering the slopes.

Studio 360's Kurt Anderson has a quality interview podcast with founder Robert Redford on his evolution from leading man to leading the vanguard for innovative and independent cinema.

From the interview:

"There is a darker strain in my heritage, or a perversity, whatever - I always believed my whole life if things got too good, maybe it's time to stop. Because you want to be careful you don't fall in love with either success or yourself. I felt with that kind of success at the end of a very productive decade of work, it was maybe time to stop, take a pause and go back to zero a little bit and think about what I was going to do next; but beyond that, maybe give something back.

"And I came up with the idea for the Institute, as a workplace for young artists, for having a place to work, because that's what I would have liked. And then, focus on independent film because it was a category that was pretty much dead at the time. It was pretty much in the academic realm of NEH and NEA grants, which is great. But it's small sphere."

>> Read full transcript
>> Go to the Sundance Film Festival

Needled

I missed the tatoo craze, but am amazed at the Byzantine intricacies of skin art.

[via Cool Hunting]

As Needled was a Yahoo pick this week, it held off on further posts about scantily-clad tattooed burlesque queens. At least for a week. Instead, it stayed focused on tattoos in the news with some potent photos and links to Guatemala gangs and their prison ink, creative ways tattoo artists have adapted to harsh zoning laws, and a public service announcement on why one should beware of traveling tattoo salesmen. In shopping, Needled picked Diabolic DVD as their source for films with a body art edge and looked at the Dooney & Bourke tattoo heart banana bag. For a bit of history, Needled posted links to vintage photos of tattooed ladies in traveling circuses as well as to modern day freaks.

What makes IDEO so... IDEO?

Most people take vacations to the ski slopes, or tourist destinations. This winter, Dominic Muren, product designer and writer for IDFuel, decided that visiting IDEO would be more fun. He wanted to see what makes a firm like IDEO so successful at continually turning out concepts that not only answer design questions, but answer them in ways that are often so far off the beaten path that they create entirely new product definitions.

Check out what he uncovered.

IDEO helps companies innovate. We design products, services, environments, and digital experiences.

Dominic Muren is an Industrial Designer/Mechanical Engineer working as a toy designer in Chicago. He loves mechanical design, materials, and flan. His idols are the Eames's, and James Dyson.

The Monkey King of China

An ancient Chinese legend comes to life at Chicago Children's Museum! This traditional tale describes the curious Monkey King’s adventures through foreign lands as he causes mischief in the emperor’s palace and finds himself trapped under a mountain for 500 years. This interactive exhibit lures you in when the courageous Monkey King is given a chance to redeem himself by escorting a monk to India. You can learn lessons the Monkey King reveals as you help him overcome the perils he encounters in his journey.

Become a mischievous monkey and try to steal the emperor’s peaches before he catches you. Play pranks at the dinner table in the Heavenly Palace. Fly over China, climb through Buddha’s fingers, and extinguish the flames of a burning mountain with the goddess’s fan. Discover China’s mystique in this imaginative, one-of-a-kind exhibit!

Asian American Social Network: Special Partner of Chicago Children's Museum.

[Photo from Adventures in Chinese Culture: The Monkey King's Guide, the East Asia Program at Cornell.]

Blueball Mania

Need a reminder of what efficincy and teamwork is all about?
Check out this wonderful animation at blueballfixed.ytmnd.com.

Rube Goldberg meets SimCity.

[Thanks to Leah Silverman.]

From Book to Blog: Creating An Online Journal

Saturday, January 28, 2006
10:30 AM-3:30 PM
RSVP and advance required (space is limited).
To register, please call 412.231.3169 or write to education@mattress.org
Act 48 credit available.

Cost: $20 ($15 MF members, students/seniors); box lunch included.
Led by new media artist Liz Perry.
Information: www.mattress.org

Participants should bring a sketchbook, journal or artist's book created or in progress, to share online with a larger audience. Participants will learn a range of techniques for creating online books and walk through the process of setting up a free, online illustrated journal, using a digital camera, scanner and free online software. Participants will complete a personal art blog and learn to upload images and text. If possible, participants should bring a laptop and a digital camera. Workshop includes a guided, behind-the-scenes tour and discussion of Messages & Communications.

Elizabeth Perry is a writer and new media artist working at The Ellis School, where she helps teachers integrate technology into a K-12 curriculum, and teaches classes in digital media. She is a founding editor of the award-winning Pittsburgh Signs Project, an online public art project documenting the visual landscape of western Pennsylvania (www.pittsburghsigns.org). Think Cool Thoughts, a children's book she has written, was published in 2005 by Clarion Books. Her formal background includes a BA in English from Yale, and an MFA in fiction writing and PhD in cultural and critical studies from the University of Pittsburgh. Her sketchbook journal may be found at www.elizabethperry.com/woolgathering.

Get all your Monkey News on the Ricky Gervais Show

Thank Zues! Steve Merchant, Ricky and their producer Karl Pilkinton (who is perhaps the most twisted mind of the troica) have a podcast through Guardian Unlimited.

The finest element is the spiraling delivery of "monkey news", featuring unconfirmable recounts of philanderous simians, a tolerant zookeeper (and his wife), and rampaging chimps.

official site | RSS | iTunes

When my wife and I became new parents, one of the best gifts we were given was the first season of The Office, brain-child of and vehicle for the man himself, Ricky Gervais.

With only 2 seasons and one bonus Christmas show, the ride was over too quick. Now there is the American version of the office which is... eh... OK, I guess. Plus the HBO series, Extras. But nothing close to the mania and mayhem of the BBC original.

Except this!

The Next Generation of Digital Craftsman

Over 500 Years ago, craftsmen rarely worked for a company. They were contracted for a period time and then moved on to the next contract. To remain competitive in such an atmosphere, many formed “guilds” or organizations designed to provide networking, ongoing training, standards, certification, and even some social services among their members.

Kings did not post jobs in the classifieds to find craftsmen, they contacted guilds who did not compel the employers to hire their members but simply were the only ones who could produce the work.

As “Chief Architect” of PixelCorps, Alex Lindsay merges the very old idea of a guild system made up of independent craftsman with the demands of mastering new and emerging media. PixelCorps serves as a guild for the next generation of craftsmen--digital craftsmen.

They are currently transfering skills in digital imaging and animation to regions in the developing world, so that those citizens may capitalize on the coming media revolution.

In order to survive as a craftsman in this new mediascape, PixelCorps believes companies and individuals must be able to solve the following challenges: inexpensive and on-going training, standardization, access to resources, true production experience and networking with other practitioners.

Globeshakers host Tim Zak talks to Alex about the PixelCorps goals and challenges. Tim wanted to know whether the model can broaden into other areas of technology (ex. medicine, infomatics, engineering, robotics)?

Tim asks: "As someone from the for-profit world of broadcast media, what changes did you have to make as a social entrepreneur?"

Alex shares his experience in working with corporate partners such as Apple, Adobe and others from the film and broadcast world. As the founder of a social-purpose company, he ends the conversation with advice to others who may have an equally audacious vision.

"For me, why bother doing anything else? When you're out there to make a difference for a lot of people--a profound difference--oftentimes many things pop up to help you move further down that path."

Bathtime in Clerkenwell

Need something to get you through the first week back after the holidays?

Our long lost freind, Joe Bill Mathews in North Carolina sends us this absolutely charming and zaney animation that redefines the nursery rhyme "four and twenty blackbirds".

Absolutely family (and co-worker) friendly, it'll have you tapping your feet and singing:

"A doodly-bum-dee-bum-dee-bum-dee-homey!"

Bathtime in Clerkenwell
Animation: Alex Budovsky,
Music: the real tuesday weld with stephen coates based on "sweeter then shugar", by the Mills Brothers

>>play video

From the equally charming video blog, Rocketboom with Amanda Congdon.

Social Enterprise & Time Magazine's Persons of the Year

This may be the year of social enterprise awakening.

With megadisasters Katrina, Rita, the Asian Tsunami, the Pakistani Earthquake, Avian Flu, the AIDS Pandemic... there is a swelling urgency to find fast, effective business models to respond to--and possibly prevent--such wide-spread devastation.

Time Magazine has selected a trifecta of megastars in this field: rock band U2's frontman Bono alongside Bill & Melinda Gates.

The accompanying suite of articles gives an intimate glimpse of daily life for these three who are focused on massive systems, namely health and economics.

From Persons of the Year By NANCY GIBBS

And so another alliance was born: unlikely, unsentimental, hard nosed, clear eyed and dead set on driving poverty into history. The rocker's job is to be raucous, grab our attention. The engineers' job is to make things work. 2005 is the year they turned the corner, when Bono charmed and bullied and morally blackmailed the leaders of the world's richest countries into forgiving $40 billion in debt owed by the poorest; now those countries can spend the money on health and schools rather than interest payments--and have no more excuses for not doing so. The Gateses, having built the world's biggest charity, with a $29 billion endowment, spent the year giving more money away faster than anyone ever has, including nearly half a billion dollars for the Grand Challenges, in which they asked the very best brains in the world how they would solve a huge problem, like inventing a vaccine that needs no needles and no refrigeration, if they had the money to do it.

Important Holiday Travel Update

Thank godness our family stayed home for the holidays!

For those unlucky slobs who had to fly out of familial guilt, make sure you check in with the updated TSA guidelines [posted on the Onion].

Scher Mapping New Shores

Forget Google Earth!
For some visceral inspiration, check out the work of Paula Scher.

Her hand-rendered maps blend sardonic commentary, maticulously reserached data, and more than a touch of Rev. Howard Finster madness. These 5' x 7' canvases have it all: meaning, abstraction, information, all compressed in a highly satuarated atlas.

from Metropolis:

In the early 1990s, renowned graphic designer Paula Scher began painting small, opinionated maps--colorful depictions of continents and regions, covered from top to bottom by a scrawl of words. Within a few years, the maps grew larger and more elaborate. "I began painting these things sort of in a silly way," Scher, a partner at the Pentagram design firm, said in a recent conversation. "And I think at one point I realized they would be amazing big. And I wondered if I could even do it. If I could actually paint these things on such a grand scale, what would happen?"

See Hillman Curtis' brief but beautiful video on Scher and her work from the 70s and 80s. In it, her face glows as she describes her love of appliqued letter forms, distressed textures and typography that serves as animated illustration.
From Apple.com:

In any field, to keep working in fresh ways after 30 years requires the ability to continually solve problems in creative ways. For Scher that means “the power of ideas have to drive the work.” Styles come and go; technologies are constantly changing, but “there’s no other way to stay alive in this profession without being able to think.”
Three decades after designing her first record covers at CBS, Scher still gets excited about the future. “My favorite job is the one I’m going to do tomorrow,” she says.

from Z+ Partners Blog:

Although perhaps better known for her graphically designed "retro-look" album covers and corporate logos, Paula Scher is also the painter behind a collection of the world's most disorienting navigation aids. Her maps chart an emotional terrain of swirling nation-states, swooning islands and claustrophobic oceans, providing a beautiful impressionistic view of globalization.

Paula Scher's bio

In the 1970s and early '80s Scher's eclectic, period-oriented typography for records and books became widely influential and imitated. She has often been credited as the major proponent of "retro" design. However, her body of work is broader and more idea-based than this suggests. She uses historical design to make visual analogies, and for its emotional impact and immediate appeal to contemporary audiences.
Scher has developed identity and branding systems, promotional materials, environmental graphics, packaging and publication designs for a wide range of clients including The New York Times Magazine, the American Museum of Natural History, the Asia Society, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Phillips-Van Heusen, Anne Klein, Citigroup, 3Com, Herman Miller, Metropolis and the New York Botanical Garden. In 1996, Scher's highly influential identity for the Public Theater won the coveted Beacon Award for integrated corporate design strategy.

Todd Kuiken and Jesse Sullivan, Mind and Body

As director at the Neural Engineering Center for Artificial Limbs at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Dr. Todd Kuiken has found both a partner and a patient in Jesse Sullivan – a double amputee who has become the world's first bionic man.

This presentation at Pop!Tech shows Jesse as he is: a remarkable man, possessing the patience of Job and a remarkable spirit.

Dr. Todd Kuiken is the Director of the Neural Engineering Center for Artificial Limbs at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. The Center focuses on improving the function of artificial arms using neural integration techniques.

Todd's research interests include improving the care of amputees, the control of artificial limbs, the study of bioelectromagnetics, prosthetic design & development, and wheelchair mobility systems. He is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of PM&R and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs representing the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago in Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. He is an active clinician and the Director of Amputee Services at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. His clinical activity is focused on the care of people with amputation.

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Todd received a B.S. degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University, a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University, and his M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School. He was the Frankel Research Fellow at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago in 1992.

http://www.ric.org/search/kuiken.php
http://www.smpp.northwestern.edu/Kuiken.htm

A resident of Dayton, Tennessee for his whole life, Jesse Sullivan worked for the city's Electric Department for twenty five years. He was seriously injured on the job on May 9th, 2001. Working with Dr. Todd Kuiken and a team at the Rehabilitation Center in Chicago, he has been involved in a major breakthrough in prosthetic technology.

Jesse lives with his wife of 21 years, and family (including six children and nine grandchildren) in Dayton. Before his accident, Jesse enjoyed fishing, hunting, camping and some farming -- things he hopes to be able to do again soon.