Posts Tagged ‘ Other Projects ’

New Offerings from Potluck Creative Arts

November 12, 2007
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At long last, finally, Potluck Creative Arts has a proper home on the web!

http://potluckcreativearts.com

Along with the site comes a number of new and unique music, arts and creativity services offered by Mark S. Meritt. Many involve opportunities for you to participate, collaborate and learn, some from anywhere in the world. Several are based on the innovative process of Appreciative Inquiry, used to a great degree by Emergent Associates, LLC — the coaching, consulting and training company Mark S. Meritt co-founded with Howard Ditkoff.

Potluck Creative Arts’ signature services:

  • Songwriting Workshops — Mark can facilitate a group in writing an original song, from scratch, in a single session, whether or not you have any experience creating music or lyrics. Enroll your elementary school-aged kids in ongoing workshops, and commission workshops for any situation, including tailoring regularly scheduled workshops for your group. Check out the latest Songwriting Workshop samples.
  • Singalong Workshops — Fun Singalong Workshops for all ages — ideal for parents and their young children, but great for anyone. Also, tailor Singalong Workshops for your group.
  • Custom Songs — Mark can create an original song based on your needs and desires.
  • Custom Instrumentals — Mark can create an original instrumental composition based on your needs and desires.
  • Custom Writing — Mark can create an original non-musical writing based on your needs and desires.
  • Creativity Coaching — Mark can coach you in developing your own original creative work.
  • Piano/Keyboard Performance — From Ragtime to Rock and everything in between, Mark can perform music to fit any occasion or play for your “piano bar” singalong or private karaoke night.

Discover all the original artistic works and stories resulting from Potluck’s services, and subscribe to their podcasts and feeds, by visiting the Creations Collection.

Also, browse through the Resources archive to help you learn about creativity and how to express yourself through your own life.

Enjoy looking around!

planBead – up and running

April 20, 2007
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Jen is a beading fool! You can check out her online website at : planbead.etsy.com. She will also be selling her wares at Apple Blossom Day, May 12, in Red Hook, NY. Thanks for all the support!

Nahcotta Tile Works

July 19, 2005
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Through her business venture Nahcotta Tile Works, Sandy Bradley handcrafts traditional hacienda cement tiles. In July 2005, she launched the business’ website, which provides details on available patterns, the handcrafting process and more.

Visit the Nahcotta Tile Works website at http://tile.potluck.com.

Potluck Creative Arts

July 8, 2005
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Potluck Creative Arts is the name under which Mark S. Meritt does business to promote his artistic services and products. It began in July 2005 as Potluck Arts, a website within the Potluck domain, promoting Mark’s arts performances and educational efforts, including concerts, singalongs and music lessons. On September 5, 2006, Mark registered with Dutchess County, NY, to do business as Potluck Creative Arts and revised the site to include information on other services including composition, lyric-writing, musical arrangements, recording and production, as well as writing and directing for theatre and motion picture.

Visit the Potluck Creative Arts website at http://potluckcreativearts.com.

Emergent Associates, LLC

February 10, 2005
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Emergent Associates, LLC was co-founded by Mark S. Meritt and Howard Ditkoff. Mark and Howard conceived of the company in late 2004 and incorporated it as a Michigan Limited Liability Company in February 2005.


Experience how Emergent Associates’ unique knowledge and tools can support you, your family, group, business or organization in discovering and developing your deepest talents and potentials and achieving more satisfaction and success in all aspects of your life from health to career to relationships.

Contact Us now to set up a FREE Introductory Consultation, a comfortable and inspiring conversation with no further obligations.

EA is an agency specializing in the coaching, consulting and training of individuals and groups of all kinds through the application of a unique internally-developed approach. Our philosophy combines solid scientific knowledge of what fosters harmonious functioning, self-organization and emergent change in systems of all kinds with the most effective proven methods for helping people and groups improve themselves. When working with individuals, we aim to help them attain a sense of empowerment, integrity, belonging, security, understanding and excitement by clearly identifying their strengths and other assets and improving their relationships. When working with groups, we aim to foster many of these same qualities, along with the deep sense of community so characteristic of optimally successful organizations.

If you are seeking more satisfaction and success, whether in your career, relationships, or throughout the whole of your life, we can help. If you are a business owner or run a group or organization and would like to improve it in any way, from increasing profits to improving morale to charting strategy, we can help. And if you are a person from any walk of life, from parent to teacher to therapist, that wishes to learn how to help others more effectively, we can help.

Visit the Emergent Associates, LLC website.

Contact Emergent Associates for a FREE Introductory Consultation.

The Friends of Ishmael Society

June 12, 2003
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The Friends of Ishmael Society is an organization focused on publicizing systems thinking through the works of Daniel Quinn. Mark S. Meritt serves as a board member.

Visit the Friends of Ishmael Society website.

Red Hook Village Green Committee

November 5, 2002
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This community group is dedicated to beautifying and ensuring the ecological health of the Village of Red Hook. Mark S. Meritt and Jennifer Norris volunteer. From Fall 2002 through the end of 2004, Mark served as an officer of the group as well as its webmaster.

Visit the Red Hook Village Green Committee website.

Forestry Management Plan

One of Mark’s most significant achievements during his time as an officer was collaborating in the creation of a Forestry Management Plan for the Village of Red Hook. With Mark’s input, the plan ended up designed around some key systems principles. Learn more about and read the plan.

Hudson Valley Potluck

July 31, 2002
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In a potluck, everyone brings a little something different. The job of creating the experience is shared and so made easier on everyone. And because all sorts of things are brought to the table, everyone gets out more than they put in. It’s a win-win situation in which the whole, through diversity and connection, is more than the sum of its parts. Whether you’re talking about food or anything else, when unique individuals come together to give life to each other through community, you’ve got a potluck.

These are some of the key ideas we can use to make things better for ourselves, our communities and the world. Inspired by the work of Daniel Quinn and many others, Hudson Valley Potluck is group of people in the Hudson Valley region of New York State who come together to discuss these kinds of ideas and to help each other put them into practice. What can you offer the potluck, and what can the potluck offer you?

History

Mark S. Meritt co-founded this local Ishmael group for the Hudson Valley region in July 2002, creating a Yahoo Group to help coordinate it. In September 2004, Mark was appointed the organizer of the Poughkeepsie Daniel Quinn Meetup group. They became two faces of a single integrated group. In May 2005, Meetup decided to charge all groups a fee to maintain activity. Due to a general lack of activity within the group, it was not deemed worthwhile to pay fees to keep the Meetup group going. Since then, the Meetup group has had no organizer and has remained in limbo, while Hudson Valley Potluck remains nominally in tact.

The group’s goings on have included:

Mosaic: A Magazine of Arts, Sciences & Everything in Between

September 14, 2001
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The site that would later evolve into Potluck started in September 2001 at home.hvc.rr.com/worldtrade as permaCulture: The Systems-Thinking Magazine of Arts & Sciences. In February 2002, it became Sostenuto: The Systems-Thinking Magazine of Arts & Sciences and moved to www.sostenuto.permaculture.net. On April 6, 2003, Relaunched At Last! announced the site’s evolution to Mosaic: A Magazine of Arts, Sciences & Everything in Between at www.mosaic.permaculture.net, where it would remain until becoming Potluck in May 2004.

Staff

Mosaic retained the staff that had been organized for Sostenuto.

Logo

Shaun Hensher designed the Mosaic logo.

Mosaic Magazine Logo

Issue 1: Spring, 2003

A single proper issue of Mosaic was ever published. The index of its contents is reproduced here, with links updated to direct you to the currently available copies of these pieces.

Table of contents

Pieces of War: A Mosaic of Views on the War in Iraq

Issue 0: Our Early Writings

The contents of permaCulture remained static through the site’s time as Sostenuto. After the site evolved into Mosaic, those contents were billed as “Issue 0: Our Early Writings.” The index of these its is reproduced here, with links updated to direct you to the currently available copies of these pieces.

“Green”-eyed Monsters, By Mark S. Meritt, November 29, 2001 — An analysis of Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., showing it to express sophisticated and important ideas about humanity’s relationship with the rest of nature.

“Isaac and Ishmael” and Ishmael, By Mark S. Meritt, October 5, 2001 — A look at The West Wing‘s special episode on terrorism through a unique lens informed by the book Ishmael to clarify some key points.

Trading the World — for a Better One, By Mark S. Meritt, September 15, 2001 — An essay on the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Invitation: When Will We Learn?, By Mark S. Meritt, September 15, 2001 — An invitation to the Mosaic Web site to learn more about the nature of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

The Sad Meaning of A.I., By Mark S. Meritt, July 6, 2001 — An analysis of the Spielberg/Kubrick film A.I. – Artificial Intelligence, revealing it to be, contrary to what many have thought, perfectly understandable, but perhaps in a way that the filmmakers did not intend.

The Unsustainability and Origins of Socioeconomic Increase, By Mark S. Meritt, January 25, 2001 — A masters thesis written for the City University of New York, describing the unsustainable nature of our civilization and suggesting ways to achieve sustainability.

The Nature of Titanic: Film, Phenomenon and Inevitable Self-Betrayal, By Mark S. Meritt, May 26, 1999 — Written for a City University of New York course in Environmental Sociology, this paper is an in-depth analysis of James Cameron’s film Titanic and the social phenomenon surrounding it, showing the entire endeavor to be ambiguously complex in its expression of ecological themes.

Free to be Seinfeld, By Mark S. Meritt, May 19, 1998 — A look at the strange nature of the Seinfeld series finale, turning its apparent message on its head.

Retired Sostenuto Content

In the transition to Mosaic, some previously published content was retired. Links are provided here to direct you to the currently available copies of these pieces.

The Unsustainability and Origins of Socioeconomic Increase

January 25, 2001
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This paper was written as a masters thesis for the City University of New York Graduate Center’s Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program. It describes the unsustainable nature of our civilization and suggests ways to achieve sustainability. It won the Liberal Studies department’s first Annual Thesis Prize for best departmental thesis. William Kornblum served faculty advisor for the paper.

Read the The Unsustainability and Origins of Socioeconomic Increase .pdf.

Read in Portuguese!

Janos Biro took it upon himself to create abridged translations of this thesis in Portuguese so that the material would be available for a Brazilian audience.

Changing the Economic Paradigm
Human expansion and the theory of r-K selection

Based on…

This thesis was in great part based on the following papers, written earlier in Mark’s masters studies:

Spinoffs

From the completion of the thesis until the birth of his daughter in mid-2003, Mark did a large amount of additional research as part of developing a general audience book which expands on this paper. A full book proposal was completed though without accompanying sample chapters. For this reason and other more dramatic ones (described in Mark’s essay Forcing the Balance), the book project has not yet made further progress since the writing of the proposal. Mark sincerely hopes that the right circumstances will evolve one day to allow him to write the book, as well as to develop companion projects in other media, most notably a website and a documentary motion picture.

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