We’ve been having a little dispute here in Livingston with a local developer — he accused those of us who disagree with him of being victims of “class envy” — oh, and he called us stupid too. We were a little pissed off, and I wrote a letter to the editor of our local paper. Looks like it’s been picked up out there on the internets — go have a look: “Class Envy” in Montana: The Ameya Preserve Saga
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I was showing my house to some visitors from LA last week, and Brooke noticed the jams and preserves lined up at the top of my pantry. “Do you know someone who makes those for you?” she asked. “I did that,” I said. “Really?” she seemed surprised, as if she’d never known anyone who made jam. “If I’m here next summer will you show me how?” “Sure,” I told her. “It’s easy.” It got me thinking about skills that used to be considered perfectly ordinary: making jam, running up a skirt on a sewing machine, growing some of your own…
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A few groovy new sites I found: Leslie Land, the GreenGrower: check out the instructions for building a gorgeous twig garden arch in her blog. The Daily Green: has a piece on an upcoming scientific paper on colony collapse disorder. Also, in the New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert writes about colony collapse disorder and her own experience keeping bees. There’s also some great footage of the pulley system she’s devised to try to keep the bears out of her hives.
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Look what I found yesterday? One perfect little porcini. It was just off the trail, it’s little brown cap barely poking through the duff. We’ve had a few afternoon thunderstorms lately, and on a whim, I went up to the trail where I’ve sometimes found boletes … this was the only one I found, but look how beautiful it was. Here’s the cross section: Not one single bug. A perfect porcini. I ate it sautéed with butter and a little olive oil, with some garlic, and parsley from the garden. It was delicious. Perfect.
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Sandra Gilbert reviews the marvelous new Hermione Lee biography of Edith Wharton (Don’t even get me started on the many many ways that Edith Wharton outshines Henry James — just go read the Custom of the Country. Do it now.) Bookslut interviews Thomas Mallon Ron Hogan at Beatrice asks Jean Thompson about her favorite short stories. (Why didn’t I study with this woman when I was at the U of I all those years ago? Why, oh why, did I get Rocco Fumento instead?) Meanwhile, I’m currently mesmerized by Thompson’s recent collection: Throw Like a Girl
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If you’re like me, most travel involves investigation of grocery stores. The Guardian UK asks, “What do you stuff in your suitcase?” Last trip I took was to Seattle — I returned with the following: Paella pan from The Spanish Table spices from World Spice Market cooler full of oysters from Mutual Fish Asian vegetable seeds from Umajiwaya Question for you readers — what did you stuff in your suitcase last trip?
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It’s lovely today — the heat has broken a little bit and so when I took Raymond off for his morning dog walk, we ran into the whole gang down in the creek behind the dog park. We were yakking away when suddenly Bob said “Hey … look at that!” And there on a dead branch not 20 feet of the ground on the far side of the creek was a great big fluffy owl. At first I thought it might be a great gray, but then we saw its little horns — it was a Great Horned Owl. So…
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From CNN: Eat your Yard From Salon: Why I pick lettuce for the Black Panthers
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… to console themselves after a breakup, and some women buy the complete Tales of Chekhov. Because Katherine asked in the comments below, and because he’s been a semi-regular character here on LivingSmall, it seems only fair to mention that the Mighty Hunter will not be making such regular appearances in the future. We hope that the friendship will continue, and that perhaps there might be some game coming our way in the fall, but alas, it looks like I’m going to have a little more time to catch up on my reading, and my blogging, in the near future.…
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Hot. It’s hot hot hot here. We’re going into another week of 100 degree weather, and with the crazy pace my day job at the Big Corporation lately, I took the opportunity to prep some cold food in advance. I roasted a baby chicken one night last week when it wasn’t so brutal out, and so this afternoon I pulled the breasts off. I was going to make some chicken salad, but I decided that cold roasted chicken breasts by themselves would give me a wider variety of options (that’s how hot it was last week, pulling the chicken breasts…