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| Me and my girlfriend Jenn in front of the finished sanctuary / cafe. Photo courtesy of NPR |
My grandfather has 80 acres of property out in the Ozarks that have been sitting untouched for years. So, you know, in the course of my architectural media class, I had this great idea, to take the old cottage on the property and convert it— into a sustainable lemur sanctuary. You know, totally wind powered, and biodegradable, with solar panels made of birchwood and lemon husks. Also, you know, the cottage would be like a lego set, so you could fold out and fold in modular pieces. A kitchenette turns into a kiosk and working space where I can work on my blog about neat historical floral typography and Captcha art during the day, and then turns into a foldable loveseat where I can sleep and watch Hulu on my wall mounted IPad at night— you know, that sort of thing. Also, my girlfriend Jenn had the idea to convert the barn in the back of the cottage into a neat Steampunk Cafe. Anyway, so after the grad semester was over, we got in our van and set to work reclaiming materials on Route 77 from old scrapheaps and molasses processing plants. We were working, like, you know 16 hours a day. It was crazy! Of course, we documented all of it on a blog we had set up: OurLemurSteampunkSanctuary.net. The local media even picked it up (well, because, you know, we sent it to them). We made a videolog of our roadtrip, and then we finally set to work. Of course, we couldn’t have done it without Kickstarter. The support of family and friends and all the new special friends we made who were really into the neat, interesting project we were doing was invaluable. After my TEDx Talk in Maryland, things really took off for us, and we were able to get the funds to complete the project. We’ve made a lot of lemurs happy! Jenn had the cool idea of setting up a petting section in the Steampunk Cafe, and we even started making our own Lemur Wine (no alcohol, of course!), from catnip, nectar, and (humanely) crushed fly larvae. Which is available now, by the way, at Whole Foods, and on our site LemurWine4Ever.com, and on our blog. NPR picked up our story and will be spending a whole week with us at the end of April. And we’ve been getting lots of great press on Distractify, and Bored Panda, and Oingo Boingo, and other cool blogs. Life has been pretty great this last year. But you know what I always say: “It’s all good, so long as you share it!” Who knows what neat, interesting, quirky, cool project we’ll come up with next! I’d sure love to talk about it at my next TED Talk!
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| One of our amazing lemur friends— Sasha |
* (Or, the Crest of the Green Meme)
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