small town life

New Community Garden

By cmf
June 22, 2010
New Community Garden

There’s a new community garden here in Livingston, and it’s right up at the end of my alley at the Lincoln School. The Lincoln School was converted years ago into artists studios — they’re not very expensive and there’s always a waiting list for those nice old classrooms with the big windows. There have...
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Go-To Recipes?

By cmf
March 5, 2010
Go-To Recipes?

So all this talk about cooking, just ordinary cooking, has gotten me thinking about go-to recipes, the ones you rely on and can do without really thinking. For Michael Ruhlman it’s a roast chicken. Which I’ve got to second. I use Marcella Hazan’s “recipe” which is nothing more than a roast chicken with a...
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Reduce, reuse, recycle

By cmf
January 19, 2010

What one Montana shipping company did with an abandoned load of tropical plants. Hanser’s donates cargo from crashed truck to Rescue Mission.
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Overheard at a Party Sunday Night

By cmf
November 24, 2009

“The only person I ever heard call Mr. Wright Frank, was Carl Sandburg …”
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Gearing up for spring

By cmf
March 3, 2009
Gearing up for spring

It’s raining today — a nice soft spring rain, so I took the poor scraggly herbs from the Winter Herb Garden and put them outside the back door. The rosemary seemed particularly crunchy, but it did it’s job — it didn’t die. The thyme has been remarkably successful — the last few weeks it’s...
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“Family” Dinner

By cmf
November 10, 2008

A few weeks ago my girlfriend Deb called me on a Sunday evening. Sunday evenings can be bleak when you’re single and don’t have kids — it’s the time of the week when one can feel most adrift. And winter is upon us — it’s dark by five these days and we’re all living...
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On Walking

By cmf
October 14, 2008

Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of the big snow, I realized I was down to only one egg, so I set off, with Raymond, for the little health food store a couple of blocks from my house. Ray hadn’t had a proper walk because of the snow, and I was feeling like I needed...
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Real Economies vs. Fake Economies

By cmf
October 8, 2008

There’s a really interesting piece in this morning’s New York Times about the town of Hardwick, Vermont and the Center for Agricultural Economy. Hardwick was, like many small rural towns, emptying out — main street was full of empty buildings, and there was no way to make a living. Then a group of local...
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Everyone’s Downsizing …

By cmf
July 10, 2008

I always see a fair number of bikes in town in the summer — it’s pretty flat here, and town isn’t that big, and of course, we’re all locked in our houses for six to nine months a year, so once nice weather hits, there’s a lot of biking and walking. But I’m definitely...
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Rodeo Slack

By cmf
July 2, 2008

Independence Day is a three-day event here in Livingston, and the centerpiece is the Livingston Roundup Rodeo. There are so many rodeos in this part of the country over the holiday that they call it “Cowboy Christmas” — most of these riders will do two, three or four rodeos over the weekend chasing the...
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