Archive: January 2013

When I was a kid we had a 6-foot square ice fishing shack made out of the same insulation board that was used as sheathing on new houses in those days. We left the shack out on the frozen river all winter long. Sawdust covered the ice as a floor. There was a little oil-burning […]

Some days work out with a theme a person wouldn’t have seen coming at the outset. So it was last week. I went to Nativity Jesuit Middle School in Milwaukee last Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, to meet with my friend Barb Grandoe and the school principal, Jim Wilkinson. We discussed my giving some […]

Edible City is about Oakland, California, but you might not realize it right away. Michael Pollan does a cameo, and Wes Jackson of the Land Institute does a cameo, and I didn’t get what was going on right away because this documentary is a montage of people, gardens, community. It’s a whole bunch of people […]

“You can learn all the meditation techniques in the world or you can just close your eyes and breathe.” ~Two-bit Guru~ In this week’s link list: India requires labeling of GM food, an app that tells you when to plant for your zip code, artists in residency at a dump, an artist sketches her purchases […]

If you’ve ever wondered how much oil it takes to make one plastic bottle, or how many million plastic bottles we Americans use in a day, or how much water it takes to make one plastic water bottle, this nifty plastic recycling infographic can tell you that, and more. Via OnlineEducation.net TweetFacebookLinkedInTumblrStumbleDiggDelicious

We, Alayna and I, attended our first Pachamama Awakening the Dreamer Symposium on Saturday and neither of us knew what to expect. I had a good grasp of the structure of the symposium, but structure is one thing, the actual experience is something else. It was sponsored and facilitated by the good folks from the […]

In the 48-minute documentary, The Trouble With Atheism, level-headed host Rod Liddle presents the conflict in belief between Raging Atheists and Fairly Benign Christians. Perhaps he felt that Raging Atheists and Raging Christians would be a bit much for the average viewer, and of course, who could we root for if everyone is a jerk? […]

In this week’s link list: The city of Orlando is attacking gardens again, more green = less crime, an animation about the history of Industrialized Man, an island of longer life, unschooling and tips for the sluggish to energize instantly. I wish all the people in Orlando, Florida, who are conscious of sustainability would rise up in recognition […]

“Of the many thousands of hours spent around kitchen tables—those eternal kitchen tables of the poor!—there is not much to say.” ~Joyce Carol Oates, in Them. “Of those eternal kitchen tables of the poor there is considerable to say.” ~Two-Bit Guru Looking back, the first thing about kitchen tables is that they were in the […]

We made our second batch of canned sauerkraut, ever, in December. We let the first batch that we made in the fall ferment for two weeks and then eagerly canned it before it turned into some kind of unexpected sauerkraut monster, dripping slime and taking over the kitchen. That first batch turned out edible but […]