If you haven’t read Chris Jones’ profile of Roger Ebert in the lastest issue of Esquire Magazine, go there now. It’s incredibly affecting. I remember my surprise a couple of years ago when I discovered how amazing Ebert’s written criticism is — like so many, I’d thought of him as the thumbs up/thumbs down guy, or as the guy my creative writing instructor at the University of Illinois, the unforgettable Rocco Fumento, used to brag had once been in his class. The U of I and I were not a good fit, and that class summed up many of the…
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According to the BBC, the town of Mouscron, in Belgium, has 50 pairs of chickens it plans to give to residents as a way to decrease the waste stream. I have to say, my chickens have both significantly lowered my household and garden waste, and here in the arid west, they’ve exponentially sped up the composting process. Composting is a real problem here, because it’s so dry. Because there was an 8×10 concrete pad in the back part of the yard, that’s where I built the chicken coop. And because the compost heaps were already in that part of the…
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Over at Alternet, Kate Pickett, and Richard Wilkinson have a fascinating introduction to their new book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. It’s no surprise to anyone who has been reading this site that I think we all need to re-evaluate ideas like “standard of living” and “economic growth” — here at LivingSmall, I follow Ed Abbey, who said in all the way back in 1977, in The Journey Home that: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Picking up on this idea, Pickett and Wilkinson have done a demographic study…
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There are new calves all up and down the valley — they’ve arrived in the past week or so. Not only are they incredibly cute, but they play — a reminder that even beef cattle once had a wild nature, before we bred it out of them. When I leave the cabin in the mornings they’re down there, nestled in the hay, goofing off, nursing, and one bold boy had a standoff with my Subaru the other morning. Today’s wildlife count also included a juvenile bald eagle on a fence post, a full-grown golden eagle on a roadkill deer carcass,…
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My new cookbook slut column is up at Bookslut: Greece is the Word. It’s been a delightful month of lemon and garlic and lamb around here. Several new recipes/techniques going into regular rotation from How to Roast a Lamb: New Greek Classic Cooking by Michael Psilakis, Vefa’s Kitchen by Vefa Alexandiou, and Michael Symon’s Live to Cook: Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen.
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These are the chives that overwintered in my mudroom — they started coming back about two weeks ago, which makes overwintering them totally worthwhile. Although it’s warm here — nearly 60 degrees yesterday! And the sun is beginning to shine again, the ground is still frozen, and the garden chives and parsley have only just begun to think about greening up. Yesterday I got the seeds out, and started organizing them again. I usually start tomatoes and peppers around the fifteenth of march, under lights in the basement. But it’s always an adventure deciding what to plant this year. I…