Bunchland

Hey, Hey, Hey!

Thanks, Neatorama, for finding this!

Recently, Boing Boing contributor and dad Mark Frauenfelder posted about the lovefest between his family and the chickens they keep in their backyard (look, in the picture above there’s a little chair set up in the coop for his daughter to sit on while she’s visiting the hens). The chickens were purchased for practical purposes (eggs, fertilizer) but the Frauenfelders got attached. And they’re not alone.  Keeping chickens in urban backyards is on the rise and legal in many cities including New York and Chicago. In other cities, like Toronto and Vancouver, there are ordinances against the keeping of chickens. Those advocating for our fine feathered friends say that chicken keeping is clean and safe, provides them with food and makes them feel good. The chickens are funny and relaxing to watch and pretty darn delightful for the kids. Those against city fowl cite odour, noise and fear of disease as objections. Whether or not chickens should be allowed in urban yards has become a heated issue. To find out if you can have a pet that says bok and provides you with brunch in your neck of the woods, visit the very helpful City Chicken web-site.
Photo: Boing Boing

Photographer Bruce Osborn and his wife and kids live in Tokyo and they’ve invented a new holiday. It’s called Oyako No Hi and it’s a day to celebrate the link between kids and parents (Oyako means parent and child in Japanese). In 1982, Bruce was shooting Tokyo punk rockers and decided to capture them with their parents to show the differences between generations. He was so moved by the images that came out of the shoot and how much they revealed about the relationship between kids and parents that he began work on a series of photos of families that has since become his life’s work. The Oyako series includes shots of kids and parents who are sumo wrestlers, tattoo artists, police officers, and kabuki actors some captured many times over the course of their lives. Bruce has photographed more than 1,000 Oyako and in 2003 he and his wife Yoshiko, who is his producer, launched Oyako day. It now takes place annually on the fourth Sunday of July smack in between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. On Oyako day Bruce and his family invite 100 other families to his studio to have their portrait taken