What happened to “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”?! When did we get “America The Beautiful” instead? I realize I’m only a post-season fan, and I realize that we’re “at war” but what the hey? Who wants to stand up and stretch to the pious strains of “America The Beautiful”? If you’re going to switch songs how about something with at least a little oomph to it like “This Land Is Your Land”? Sheesh. And LivingSmall is officially endorsing: the Red Sox (when the Cubs are out, all Cubs fans default to the Red Sox) John Kerry/John Edwards Brian Schweitzer…
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There was a really dumb article over at Salon the other day about the heartbreak of being a midlist writer. The anonymous author is being duly spanked this morning in the letters for her whininess, and for the amounts of money she’s made over the past few years, which hardly seem to qualify her at all as midlist. Among the many, many things that annoyed me about this article, the one that hit closest to home is the idea that having a day job and being a “real” writer are mutually exclusive. I’ve seen this falsely romantic idea consign so…
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I have deeply mixed feelings about the Martha Stewart verdict (says the woman who just blogged about ironing for goodness’ sake). On the one hand, it seemed pretty clear from the beginning that she was guilty of insider trading, but on the other hand, insider trading happens every day among folk of her ilk. Why the vigorous prosecution? Why not just a fine and have it done with? I mean, Ken Lay destroyed the retirement savings of thousands of his own employees, (to say nothing of the Neil Bush’s role in the S&L crisis of the late ’80’s — anyone…
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My Apple AirPort base station came today, and in about an hour, I had the card installed, the base station plugged in and configured (including setting up my printer on the base station so I can print from anywhere) and now I’m free to roam the hacienda! And it’s warm enough (42.5 degrees reads my fancy new wireless thermometer) that I’m sitting out on my front porch, enjoying the first late afternoon porch cocktail of the new year. A little buffalo salami, a little cheese, a little glass of lovely Pouilly-Fuisse, the dogs, a cat across the street, some sunshine,…
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Yesterday I went to see the documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides. It was extraordinary. I’ve known about Goldsworthy’s work for a long time — when I was a bookseller, I loved Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature, but I’d never seen his work in motion. In the movie, there are these extraordinary images of his art floating out to sea, or a long sinuous chain of bright-green leaves working it’s way out of a pool and flowing downriver. Goldsworthy himself was also inspiring. I’ve been having a terrible time getting any work done these past weeks — my…
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I got an email from a reader of this blog this morning, taking me to task for being angry and unkind in The Anger Problem. Oh, and for writing beautifully about being angry and unkind. Well duh folks. I’m angry right now. I’m trying to work through it, but anger isn’t kind, anger isn’t pretty, and unfortunately Patrick’s death has, as I warned it probably would, significantly changed the tone of LivingSmall … so if you were one of those people stopping by for another nice dispatch about my happy life in my little Montana town, and what was growing…
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Rest in Peace James Welch has died. I only met him once, years ago, at the very first Art of the Wild conference. He led a workshop with a participant we’d been really worried about — he was this older man from Alaska who had, to our enormous alarm, sent us the entire manuscript of his novel, and it was typed. During the months we were planning the conference, we worried about losing the thing, since it was clear it was probably his only copy. So this gentleman appeared, and we scheduled his workshop for the end of the week…
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Take Back the Flag! Okay Lefties, it’s time to take back the flag from the Right — why should only horrible righ-wingers fly the flag on holidays like the Fourth of July? What could be more patriotic than dissent — has anyone read the Declaration of Independence lately? So yesterday I went out and bought a big flag, and flew it from my porch. It looked swell, especially with the Tibetan Prayer Flags that always fly on the top of my porch. Festive, Patriotic. (While we’re at it, let’s take back “patriotic” too.)
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Requiem for a Bear: R.I.P. Number 264 A couple of weeks ago I blogged about watching our friend Bill Campbell’s documentary Season of the Grizzly on Animal Planet (I’d give a link to the blog entry, but Blogger seems to have decided this morning that all of my archives are unavailable. I’ll have to work on that.) Bill followed bear Number 264 for almost a year and got amazing footage of her and her cubs (although, according to Shannon, the Yellowstone bear biologist who lives two doors down from Bill and Maryanne, Number 264 wasn’t a very good mommy, she…
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A Plug for the Ruminator Review The latest issue of the terrific Ruminator Review arrived the other day and I’ve been devouring it. This issue is devoted to “Cultivation: Rural Lives, Global Issues” and contains interviews with such thinkers on the subject as Gretel Ehrlich, Verlyn Klinkenboorg, Scott Russell Sanders and Maxine Kumin. (This issue also contains a small review of a childrens’ book by yours truly.) One of the unexpected pleasures for me of moving to this small town in Montana is how interested people are in food, in the origins of their food, and in eating close to…