panik | For a change, a really interesting meme.

Shamelessly purloined from

sallymn

Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

Sally begged me to tell all about:

1] agroforestry... so what exactly is this?
2] comedy... what kind? Any suggestions?
3] cuba?
4] mesoamerican archaeology... been there? Should I?
5] mesoamerican myth and legend... oooh, tell me more :)
6] raw foods... which ones do you suggest
7] the inca?

And I answered...

1. Agroforestry; the use of trees in farming; did 2 years of a PhD featuring this quite largely. It's part of the theory now known as permaculture in which you mimic nature as closely as possible when farming so, you mimic the natural forest structure in agroforestry - plant canopy fruit trees, smaller fruit trees under those, bush crops under those and herbaceous vegetables and whathaveyou at the edges and in clearings.

2. Love comedy; I am quite a connoisseur of TV and radio comedy which I also write. I've had 2 sitcoms commissioned by the BBC; had a few sketches produced - I'm currently working on a 6 part, surrealist radio sitcom called 'shed'.

3. Cuba. I lived there for 9 years. I'll be honest, I'm getting fed up with talking about Cuba.

4. Part of that unfinished PhD - I was studying historical ecology; the way past cultures utilised their environments; how they failed and succeeded - and whether they have anything to teach us in that regard. Because I was studying rainforests, that got me into the Maya and Amazonian cultures. I have quite a collection of artifacts...

been there? Oh yeah. I spent 3 years in total bobbing in and out - Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru...

Should I? Definitely!

5. See above; again, looking at tribal myth and trying to work out if stories that had been passed down from the dim and distant had historical roots; if they could tell us about cultural practices back then. Cross-cultural legend, the persistence of myth and its relevance to actual events in history is one of my biggest interests.

6. I used to be really into raw foods but now, not - you're reminding me to update my interests. (o: I still eat certain things - nuts, especially Brazil nuts, sprouted seeds (which do wonderful things for the body); lots of fruits (I have a big thing for fruit... (o:) but in general - not really, not anymore. It's an interesting nutritional theory, that we evolved on raw foods but, you know - those ancient people didn't live longer, happier lives than we do. I tend to like pizza.

7. Same as before really - I was interested in trade links between the lost Amazonian cultures traded and interacted with the 'big' South American cultures like the Inca, the Moche, the Nazcas and etc. What they bought, what they traded back...

Your turn, my babies.

For a change, a really interesting meme.

Sorry, sorry sorry...