There’s no such thing as a jobless economy. And really? As a nation do we want to be dependent on others for everything? for glass? Glassmaking Thrives Offshore, but Is Declining in U.S. – NYTimes.com “Imagine China,” he said in an interview, “building a huge structure intended to be an important national symbol and importing glass from the United States to build it. There is no way the Chinese would do that.”
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While in some ways I hate to give Caitlin Flanagan any more web traffic for her flameball of an article about school gardens, the response has been very heartening. Here’s a link roundup: Red Herrings Are Not Dinner Food, or why Caitlin Flanagan is WRONG about school gardens | Oakland Local Mag writer: Alice Waters and school gardens are evil An Edible Schoolyard in Durham: How Kids Grow (Video) Samuel Fromartz: Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan Blames Arugula for California’s Failing Schools Chef Kurt Michael Friese’s response was probably my favorite, in part because I find the contempt for manual labor among…
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Here’s an interesting article about buying meat in bulk, including practical tips for those of you who might be interested but don’t know where to start. The Seminal » Food Sunday: I’ll take half a cow and ten chickens please. We’re lucky here in Montana — not only is it pretty easy to find a rancher who will sell you part of an animal, we’re one of the few states that still has small local slaughterhouses. Big Ag has managed to kill them in most other states — I have a friend in Colorado who would raise cattle for her…
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Powell’s reprinted my latest Bookslut essay on The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. Go take a look and maybe even buy something from them. I highly recommend the Indispensibles program — like getting a surprise present every six weeks.
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One of the things we’ve been discussing a lot chez LivingSmall, is the fact that this “recession,” which looks a lot more like a depression to those of us in the self-employment pool, isn’t going away. Every morning in our local paper, we read ridiculous AP stories predicting that “the recovery” is just around the corner, that all we have to do is what? clap our hands and hope that like Tinkerbelle, the economy will return to the roaring days of easy credit, inflated housing prices, and excessive consumer consumption? Hasn’t anyone noticed that there aren’t any jobs, that we…
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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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One of the things I’ve been mulling over since I lost my job, is how much happier I am. Turns out, I’m not alone. Grist tracks Happier living that happens to be more sustainable.
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Caitlin Flannagan’s latest article at the Atlantic has folks up in arms. We all know I’m not Alice Water’s biggest fan, but I am a big fan of interactive education. Here’s a good rebuttal to Flannagan: REAL Gardens: Why school gardeners reap more than they sow : Super Eco.
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Thanks in part to articles like this one from Jessa of Bookslut fame, The Second Sex, the Second Time, I’ve been keeping my eye open for the promised new translation to come out. If you want the short history of the translation issues, Maitresse has a good summary — apparently Knopf is publishing it in the US in April, but when I couldn’t find any evidence of this on Amazon US, I went over to Amazon UK and ordered a copy. (Thanks to my Aunt Daphne for the Christmas check.) I first read The Second Sex as a 21 year…
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Agriculture is a business. Farming without a financial motive is gardening. I use that line a lot when I’m giving talks, and it always gets a laugh. But it’s deadly serious. Not only do farmers have expenses to meet just like any other business, but they also need to be rewarded when they do good work. Any plan that places further demands on farmers without an offsetting profit incentive is doomed to fail. via The facts about food and farming – latimes.com.