… is stay home. Rebecca Solnit, one of my favorite writers, has a lovely piece over at Orion in which she quotes Gary Snyder: “The most radical thing you can do is stay home.” Like everyone else, I’ve been thinking a lot about the economic situation — as much as I’d like to be economically independent here at LivingSmall, I’m still a good ten years away from that, and my Corporate Job depends on the world economy not collapsing entirely. And while I don’t want to see a world recession or depression, it also seems to me that perhaps we…
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I’m having a very hard time here at LivingSmall believing that Yes, We Can indeed do it this year, that we can vote a “transformational” leader into the White House. Despite the newspaper endorsements, despite Colin Powell’s strong endorsement, despite the 100,000 people gathered beneath the St. Louis arch — I’m fighting a nagging sense of despair. The racism on display at the McCain rallies is so … what? horrifying? frightening? appalling? The open calls for violence, the gleeful finger-pointing and sneering claims that everything is just fine in America, that our wars are just and our financial system is…
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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 agricultural entrepreneurs got together, meeting monthly, loaning one another money, figuring out ways to share skills and resources so that they all prosper. Their website says that their goal is programs that: …will recognize that the 21st century food system balance be tipped towards localization over…
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So, here we are, the last primary in the nation. Although I’ve been an Obama supporter for months, I’ve been lying to the campaign. They (quite rightly) have been encouraging people to vote early, especially since here in Montana you can register any time, including on election day, and you can vote right when you register. The Bozeman Chronicle had a photo on the front page this morning of a line of early voters snaking out the door of the courthouse over there yesterday. But I’ve written on this blog before about how I love to go to the polls…
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So, it’s snowing again this morning — and although I’m quite tired of snow, it’s a lovely soft morning — bit fat snowflakes, no wind, not too cold. So off for our morning dog walk I went — I’m babysitting the MH’s dog while he’s gone to Arizona for a couple of days and it was good to have 2 dogs with me again. So we get to the dog park and we’re coming around the edge of the bluff and there’s another couple coming toward us. She’s on the phone, and he barely nods hello. I don’t recognize them,…
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I was doing laundry yesterday, and while channel surfing in search of something non-football-related to watch, I stumbled upon the UCLA rally. I missed Caroline Kennedy and Oprah, but lucked out and switched to CSPAN just as Michelle Obama began to speak. She was amazing — funny and smart and fierce — to those who say there’s no there there but empty rhetoric, all I can say is that’s the family I want in the White House — people my age, who just paid off their student loans (which Michelle Obama pointed out had only happened because Barak wrote two…
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My 97-year-old grandmother asked for an absentee ballot for the Democratic primary so she can vote for Hillary. My grandmother has never voted for a Democrat before in her life, but she wanted to “vote for that woman.” My grandmother was a crack polo player in the 1930s, when polo was a hugely popular public sport (30,000 people took the train up out from Chicago to see the 1938 East-West game, when Will Roger’s team beat the best players from the East coast). Because she was a “girl” my grandmother wasn’t allowed to play — she could play practice matches…
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My love of Joan Dye Grussow‘s work, particularly This Organic Life, is well documented on this blog. Her experiences over the years growing and storing most of her own food was absolutely inspirational to me when I built my garden, and it’s still a book I go back to again and again. This video has been kicking around the blogosphere for a while now — it’s Joan Dye Grussow, Michael Pollan and Dan Barber of Blue Hill discussing ethicurean issues and trying to figure out how to eat in ways that are good not only for their health but for…
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Because Politics is in the tag line — all I can say is Wow — Obama not only won it, he won it in a rout. I know there are naysayers. I’ve heard all the “experience” talk. And you know what? I don’t care … He inspires people across the spectrum — I’m hearing apocryphal stories about independents and Republicans who will vote for him. He inspires me. Imagine if we could have an inspirational candidate on the Democratic side — not a candidate that we know is the smartest person in the room, not the candidate that we know…
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So, I’ve been buying raw milk from a local rancher since last fall — she shows up every Tuesday with a glass gallon pickle jar full of milk, with a nice layer of cream on the top. The cream has been getting thicker the past couple of weeks — I used to skim about a pint of cream and now I’m well up to nearly a quart. My milk lady left me a note this week stating that she’s going to have to suspend delivery after the 28th until sometime in April after the cows calve. It’s been a hard…